What is it?

You might be aware of the Mr. Clean AutoDry Carwash System.  Well, Mr. Clean Car Wash I am talking about here is not a product.  It is an actual car wash service that P&G opened up in Ohio.  Two locations have been opened so far, one in Mason and the other in Cincinnati.  Besides this innovative brand extension, it has also been reported that P&G is opening up Tide-Y dry cleaners in the Kansas City area.

Why is it a good idea?

(1) Household products are a highly-saturated market.  Branching out from the product market to services opens up a whole new set of opportunities and revenue potentials. As an added bonus, the services area is also highly fragmented competition-wise, unlike the product market.

(2) A physical shop gives P&G an opportunity to put a face to its products. Managed well, this can lead to more intimate and meaningful customer relationships.

(3) The shops can serve the function of advertising and publicity for the physical product/brand.

(4) Having first-experience with people’s carwashing and dry-cleaning behavior can give P&G valuable market research information.

Small Print

Sometimes an idea is so pioneering and unusual that it naturally comes with some risks. For P&G, the biggest risk is in its ability to execute these service shops well.  Being a consumer packaged goods company, it is not exactly an expert on services marketing and service logistics.  If not done right, bad customer experience from the physical shops can have a damaging effect on the core brand.  I suspect this is partially the reason why P&G has been very cautious in this area, so far keeping a very low key, only experimenting with the idea in selected local areas and possibly rolling out nationally if the experiments prove successful.

A recent real-life encounter with Second Life turned out to be a big disappointment. For an academic research project, my co-author and I were looking for a list of real-life brands that have a presence in SL. The natural point of contact seemed to be SL’s press inquiries: Lewis PR. Being a geek, I tried email first. More than a week (or a year by Internet standard) went by, and no response. So I digressed to the more traditional way of telephone. Luckily, I reached a lady named Christen from Lewis PR. After explaining the situation to her, she said she would send me something related to what we were looking for. I was reaching the point of happiness and almost convinced myself that telephone is the tool to use when you really want to get things done. But not so fast! A few days later, I still did not receive anything from Christen. I called again, afraid that she might have written down the wrong email address. I only got her voicemail and left her a message with my email address and multiple phone numbers. After another few days, it’s still dead silence from the other end. Repeated calls to the contact number resulted in nothing but her voicemail (this is the curse of Caller ID technology).

It makes me wonder: is an academic project too ivory-towerish to deserve proper attention from SL or Linden Lab (the company behind SL) or Lewis PR? I did mention to the lady that the project will eventually turn into a journal publication. Is that not worth the same efforts as compared to, say, a prominent article in New York Times? I teach Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC). One of the main principles of IMC is that no matter whom a firm is communicating with, whether it is customers, internal employees, or the general public, the firm should always keep a consistent brand image. The fun and cutting-edge image of SL in my mind certainly does not match up with the disappointment and ill-will I felt during the recent encounter.

Ironically, the following quote from the SL marketing team was featured prominently on Lewis PR’s front page:

“It really does feel like our marketing team has four more members — I sometimes almost forgot that the LEWIS team isn’t actually part of the Linden Lab.” — Catherine smith, director of marketing and brand strategy, Linden Lab

Maybe that is the reason why we did not hear anything from Lewis PR. They are spending too much time functioning as Linden Lab internal employees and not giving enough attention to real-life external audiences…PUBLIC relations. Alas!

Flying back from Puerto Rico, I was pleasantly surprised that both legs of my flight left and arrived on time. Having traveled more than I normally do in the last few months, delays (and subsequently missing the connecting flight) have become an expected frustration in my travel experience. So I did a little search on airlines’ on-time performance. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the on-time rate for all airlines combined was 64.34% in December 2007 and 72.36% in January 2008. The on-time rate for the major airlines in 2007 are as follows, from top performers to bottom performers:

Southwest Airlines: 80.85%
Delta Airlines: 76.89%
AirTran: 76.81%
Continental Airlines: 74.24%
United Airlines: 70.33%
American Airlines: 68.74%
US Airways: 68.71%

Surprisingly, in the bad month of December 2007, out of 35.66% delayed flights, only 1.39% was caused by weather. National aviation system delay and air carrier delay each accounted for 10.42% and 9.17% of the delays. What these numbers reveal is an outdated air traffic management system that is unable to satisfy the current travel demands. With all the fancy technology today, one would think that managing flights should be done better and faster. But historical data show that airline on-time performance has not improved but rather has slightly declined from an on-time rate of 77.20% in 1998.

It is time for airlines and air traffic controllers to rethink the model of air travel and the hub-and-spoke system. Ironically, I saw a BMW display ad at the Atlanta Airport saying “Miss your flight. But still make it to your meeting on time.” Too bad most people cannot afford a BMW, otherwise, we’ll all switch to the “flying” experience of a BMW, even though no peanuts and beverages are served.