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Rappers, Monsters & Men
Eating Fruit In The Jungle:
A modern parable in marketing & loving your customer
I flew into Washington State, Seattle specifically, for an incredible time of rest and relaxation and pressing into the spirit of God. A time that was much needed for me. I’ve been on a long health and fitness journey, losing over 100 lbs. for the last two years, but haven’t really taken the time to take rest.
I had the incredible opportunity of visiting the offices of Amazon and even walking past one of CEO Jeff Bezos’ many offices in the campus. It was truly an honor for me to walk on the ground of such a successful company that has made it it’s mission to LOVE their customers above all.
Amazon is known as “Earth’s Most Customer-Centric Company” here’s a quote from their “About Amazon” page, which you can read here
From Amazon.com: With a mission “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices,” Amazon.com and other sellers offer millions of unique new, refurbished, and used items in categories such as books; movies; music & games; digital downloads; electronics & computers; home & garden; toys; kids & baby; grocery; apparel; shoes & jewelry; health & beauty; sports & outdoor; and tools, auto & industrial.
But I digress: a few months ago I bought some headphones from Beats by Dre, contrary to what some friends of mine in the ‘pro-audio’, music production community suggested. Sadly a month after having them, they broke.
As I came up to Mt. Rainier in Washington (of which, I took that photograph you see above, isn’t it AWESOME!?), I went to WAL*MART and thought to myself, “I’m gonna look for some other headphones”.
What stood out to me, were actually the headphones by Monster. The cable company that makes wire cables for televisions, HDMI cables, etc. so I bought their red and black headphones.
Then something really hit me, and that’s where I’m coming from in this article: These headphones are some of the best sounding headphones, that I’ve ever listened to. Monster has a reputation for making some really high quality products, or so I figured, “Monsters products don’t break!”
Alot of people I’ve found are very loyal to Monster… Until I did some further research.
Now, I’m not going to go into alot of details on my opinion of the following situation, because that is not the point of this article, but I will reference another article from GIZMODO that shed ALOT of light to me on this subject, and you can draw your own conclusions:
http://gizmodo.com/5981823/beat-by-dre-the-inside-story-of-how-monster-lost-the-world
Long story short, back in 2009, Monster was the exclusive manufacture of Beats by Dre, a brand that accounted for half of the annual $1 billion in U.S. sales for the headphone market. Until HTC purchased a 51% stake in Beats by Dre in 2011, and took over production in 2012.
Now, Beats by Dre and Monster are two very exclusively different companies, that still sell similar products: headphones.
On one hand, Beats by Dre spends millions on superior marketing, producing far more sales than Monster does for their headphones.
On the flip side, I have never seen one advertisement for Monster’s headphones, even though Monster carries a reputation of having some of the highest quality products on the market.
As it turns out in this parable, things aren’t always what they seem.
As i did more research about both companies, I’m starting to read rumors and opinions that Monster actually, more often than not, sells overpriced products with lower quality, but used to have a reputation of selling the best quality products and services. Whether this may or may not be true is up to interpretation by the consumer, but this leads me to conclude that Monster may actually be the one partly to blame for the bad reputation garnished by Beats by Dre, during the time that they were the exclusive manufacture from 2009-2012, before the HTC partial acquisition. This is, of course, a purely editorial opinion, but the more I read, the more certain facts on the subject matter are starting to come to light to suggest such opinion.
If Beats by Dre shifted towards combining the highest quality customer service, and build quality, like Amazon’s mission, combined with the highest quality advertising and marketing, truly loving their customers above all, and selling the crap out of their products like they have been, I believe Beats by Dre as a brand could be the best brand of headphones, and now streaming music services with their Beats Music platform, on the planet.
With the creation of Beats brand new streaming music service, combined with Apple’s iTunes, they appear to now be a very serious threat towards Spotify, one of Google’s companies, that has been paving the way for streaming music for the last few years.
Combine Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre’s many years of experience in the industry; this is why the game might forever change from here on out, and I’m very excited for this. I’m a customer of Beats Music myself and love it!
And this above statement is what leads me to believe that Apple’s acquisition of Beats By Dre is will change the headphone & music industry forever, as well as the brand opinion of Beats by Dre, over time.
You see, this is what has made Apple great. Superior quality products & customer service combined with superior marketing & advertising.
Truly loving their customers.
Last week, I walked into the Apple Store on the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, MO before I flew out to Washington State. I actually spoke with one of the store managers and we talked about some of our goals with the company here at A Real Change.
From the time that I walked into this Apple Store, until I left, I felt loved. I felt honored. I felt this insatiable need inside of me to go out of my way to give more Apple more of my business because of this.
Microsoft on the other hand, sells almost the same kind of products to consumers: Computers, Operating Systems, MP3 Players, Phones. But everyone knows, after the old Apple vs. PC ads (brilliant marketing campaigns by Apple, by the way), that Microsoft is no longer perceived as the foremost authority on personal computing and technology products as they were in years gone by.
And this brings me to the close of my parable: If you can combine superior marketing with superior customer service, that is how you win.
These two very important things are not mutually exclusive!
Marketing and loving your customers: by combining both schools of thought, for any product or service that you offer, you will be successful, at whatever it is that you do.
Now, obviously I can’t guarantee success for you, because that would not be ethical at all. But if you follow the trends of what these companies: Apple, Beats, Microsoft, Monster, and Amazon have done, and really glean from this with awareness and an open mind: I believe that you could, in essence, if you apply yourself, with the right product, the right service, the right customer service and the right marketing, become successful (whatever the word success means to you, whether its monetary or you can give a lot of money away to charity, or you can just feel good inside yourself that you served your fellowman to the best of your ability) at whatever it is that you do!
We here at A Real Change have taken note of all of this and made this an integral part of our business. Every day, we strive to bring to the market place the highest quality products and services for you, and the best customer service on the planet.
I had the privilege when I was in Washington of speaking with one of Nordstrom’s employees who absolutely loves her company and their values. In our discussion, she shared with me how they have structured their company:
Nordstrom goes by an inverted pyramid structure, where the customer, is at the top of their organization, and the executives are at the bottom, serving and loving their customers every single day.
This concept really resonated deep inside my soul! We have actually decided to adopt this visual to describe our corporate structure, here at A Real Change, as a result!
This is one of the biggest reasons why I toured Amazon’s headquarters in Washington, to see what their culture was like, what they do, what we can do here at A Real Change to do things better!
So many amazing things are coming down the pipeline here with our Social Media Experience Event in Kansas City, Sandpaper Tablet (our new tech company) and more.
The goal behind all of these new things is this: we want to do our best to help you, the customer get the highest quality products and services, at the most affordable price, loving you as our customer every single day.
I truly believe that if every single company in America, and worldwide, modeled this in their business, the economy of this entire world would change. This article is meant to really be a call to arms to business owners to do this one simple thing: LOVE YOUR CUSTOMERS! Above all else, get the dollar signs out of your eyes. If you take care of the customer, the person who is most important in business, the money will follow!
And it’s a beautiful thing, because, at the end of the day, everyone wins!
If every company in the marketplace made it their mission to serve and love the most important person in every company on the planet – at the end of the day, the person who truely wins the most is: the customer.
And by doing this, we are serving and loving, and honoring to God.
Luke 6:31 in scripture says this: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Treat others how you want to be treated.
This verse is often called the “Golden Rule”
I really believe that the reason it’s called the ‘Golden Rule’, is because it directly translates to PURE GOLD in your business. Money, monetary gain, that can be used to change the economy, create more jobs, help those in need, and love more people.
Loving your customers makes you more successful in business and in life, and will reap a higher ROI in your business than anything else that you can do.
So today, before you do anything else in your business, please take some time to ask yourself “am I really Loving my Customers, or am I just looking for the fastest way to make money”.
If you run everything you do through this filter, that my friends, is how you win at business!
Jeremy Krakowski
Director of Media & Marketing
A Real Change International, Inc.
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