Avoiding the Ralphie Moment

Monday, 28 May 2007

AVOIDING THE RALPHIE MOMENT By Craig Peters   "A crummy commercial."   That's not the reaction you want your customers (and your potential customers) to have following an experience with your brand, is it? Of course not. So when you're working on your brand experience, your copywriting, your marketing communications, your customer service training, your anything that touches the customer anywhere, do yourself a favor. Think about Ralphie.   You remember Ralphie: He's the kid who pines for an official Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot range model air rifle in the holiday classic "A Christmas Story," only to be repeatedly met with the response: "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" (The movie, by the way, is based on the superb writing of humorist Jean Shepherd. The first of his books you want to get, which has many of the short stories on which the movie is based, is "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash." Find out much more about Shep over at flicklives.com.)   In case you're not one of the millions who have memorized each word of "A Christmas Story" by now: Ralphie is a big fan of the Little Orphan Annie radio program, sponsored by Ovaltine. He anxiously checks his mailbox each day for his secret decoder pin so he can get in on the urgent messages delivered at the end of each broadcast only to members of Annie's Secret Society. (Eager anticipation: That's a pretty good quality to have associated with your brand, isn't it?)   One glorious winter day, the package arrives in the mail: It's the decoder pin! What a thrill! (Excitement: That's another great emotion to associate with your brand.) Ralphie's excitement is palpable. The heck with "all this jazz about smugglers and pirates," he thinks, he's finally on the inside! He'll be in on the secret! That's what it's really all about! (Feeling exclusive and important: Those are pretty good qualities to associate with your brand, too.) Finally, the broadcast is over and announcer Pierre Andre begins to reveal the numbers that, when translated by the decoder, would transmit the crucial message from Annie to her Secret Society. ("Old Pierre was in great voice tonight," Ralphie thinks. "I could tell that tonight's message was really important.")   Ralphie breathlessly takes down the information and barricades himself in the bathroom to get down to the serious business of decoding. Letter by letter and as Ralphie's little brother is hammering on the door to get into the bathroom, the message is revealed word by word: "B-e … s-u-r-e … t-o …" Be sure to what? Ralphie wonders. What is Little Orphan Annie trying to say?! "B-e … s-u-r-e … t-o … d-r-i-n-k … y-o-u-r- … O-v-a-l-t-i-n-e."   Ralphie's reaction?   "Ovaltine? A crummy commercial? Son of a bitch!"   It's an apocryphal bit of experiential marketing. In fact, Secret Society messages at the end of Little Orphan Annie radio programs never actually promoted Ovaltine, the show's sponsor. That job was left to Pierre Andre during the show itself. The point comes across loud and clear, though, and is worth remembering in the workplace: It's crucial to take the time to place yourself in your customer's shoes and think through every last detail of your brand experience, whether in the virtual world or the real world.   Because the last kind of experience you want to provide for your brand is yet another Ralphie moment. Craig Peters has been a marketing professional since the early 1980s and an online marketing professional since the mid-1990s. He blogs daily at www.lohad.com

 

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