Topic: Marketing
Word of mouth or viral marketing has always been with us, although it clearly has been given a massive boost in the Web era. When everyone can tell everyone about anything instantly, the ability of an organization to hide from –or ignore- word of mouth (WOM) is greatly reduced. On the plus side, the opportunities to amplify positive buzz are also enormous. Either way, it all means the best way to operate now is to be pretty darn good, and empower everyone in the organization to put their best foot forward.
WestJet VP of Culture and Communications Richard Bartrem crystalized this for me at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Mass to Grass World of Mouth Marketing Conference at Ontario Place last month. In his talk, “Caring Owners: Driving Word of Mouth through Employee Empowerment and Engagement” Bartrem came off like a West Wing character: one of those handsome and fast talking, but witty and smart, people dedicated to doing good in a tough, but ultimately collegial environment filled with other fast talking, smart, caring people.
Okay, I admit I’ve been spending too much time with the full season box sets of Aaron Sorkin’s great TV series about life in the White House lately (it truly is a great primer on public policy, politics and issues management-and still relevant nine years after the first episodes aired). By even making the comparison here I’m playing into Bartrem’s and WestJet’s evil WOM propaganda plan. But if the shoe fits... The talk rang true with my perception of the WestJet culture, and there’s no question that it really set the tone for the whole Mass-to-Grass day - not a presenter or panelist on after him that I saw didn’t reference his comments glowingly.
The key to successful manufacturing positive WOM Bartrem said is to distinguish yourself to be a story worth telling. Logistics and channels etc. are all secondary to having something to say. “We can’t make you speak, but we hope we’ll make you want to speak.”
And Bartrem and WestJet clearly believe that stories worth telling happen when front line staff is “empowered to do things beyond expectations.” That might include having staff dressed up as Elvis greeting passengers on the first day of service to Los Vegas, giving check-in employees the discretion to waive excess baggage fees when they see fit to regularly allowing “guests” to propose over the in-flight intercom (432 engagements on planes as of June 11).
It doesn’t hurt that WestJet has as its primary competitor a company that consumers have extremely low expectations of (expectations that are regularly confirmed). But WestJet does have an obviously funky, informal culture. Bartrem characterized it as being simultaneously “loose and tight:” tight on take off and safety procedures, but loose on the other stuff.
One area WestJet pays careful attention to is language. Staff are “Westjetters” not “employees.” It has “team leaders” rather than “supervisors,” “passengers” are “guests” (and definitely not depersonalized acronyms like “PAX” or “COWS” as is common with U.S. carriers) and instead of “polices” the company has “promises. (This might be called corporate speak, as per my last post, but it is notable-and I think laudable- that this approach to language is about jettisoning jargon for clearer, simpler –and yes kinder and gentler- verbiage.)
But WOM all comes down to having stories to tell. At Mass-to-grass Bartrem told the story of the autistic kid who got kicked off an Air Canada flight out of Moncton but who WestJet found a way to accommodate to illustrate the bottom-up “promises” vs. the top-down “polices” approaches to employee engagement.
The child was upset and nervous and apparently couldn’t be calmed down. After a short time Air Canada made the call that the child wouldn’t be able to take the flight. The mother walked over to the WestJet gate, explained the story and the airline immediately started to work to find a way to make it happen. The child and parent were boarded first and given more than a half hour to acclimatize to the plane, which included getting to spend some time in the cockpit. It ultimately meant a 45-minute delay in take off, but all the passengers were told why. Naturally, the incident made it to the press –and naturally, WestJet came off looking better than Air Canada.
“This where stories happen,” he said and “136 people on the plane can tell the story.”
And Bartrem can also tell it -again and again- at industry conferences.