Spreading the Word
Corporate evangelists recruit customers who love to create buzz about a product
When Google hired Vint "Father of the Internet" Cerf last September, it gave him the ecclesiastical-sounding title of "Chief Internet Evangelist." His job, as Cerf himself has explained, is "helping people understand--both inside and outside of Google--what Google's potential is." Now to nontechnophiles or those residing outside Silicon Valley, the move might have seemed like another New Agey gesture by the search-engine superpower. This is, after all, a company with the it's-hard-to-keep-from-rolling-your-eyes corporate mantra of "Don't Be Evil." So, is chief Internet evangelist just an effort to apply a quasi-spiritual gloss on some glorified marketing position?
Don't be cynical. Google is only one of many companies, mostly in the technology sector, designating certain employees as "evangelists." Microsoft has technology evangelists reaching out to developers and consumers through company-sponsored Internet forums such as Channel 9 and The Hive. Some companies, such as Sun Microsystems, have even created the overarching position of "chief evangelist" who focuses more on trumpeting core values and vision. The word "evangelist" comes from the Greek word eu-angelos, meaning "bringer of good news." But the job of a corporate evangelist is about way more than preaching the wonders of a company to customers and clients. "Evangelism is about selling your dream so that other people believe in it as much as you do," says Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist for Apple Computer and one of the key people responsible for marketing the Macintosh in 1984. "Those people then, in turn, get even more people to believe. Just like Jesus was an evangelist who recruited 12 more evangelists."
Bypassing ads. With corporate evangelism, the goal is to find and identify those customers who are already crazy about your product or service--who are actively talking it up in blogs or Web forums, for instance--and turning them with loads of personal attention into "customer evangelists" who then spread the word to others, who then--well, you get the idea. A more secular term for these superfans is "influentials," the people the rest of us seek out and trust for advice about what cars, computers, and clothing to buy. So evangelism is a way of actively creating word-of-mouth advertising or marketing, turning your passionate, influential customers into a volunteer sales force. "If word of mouth is the skeleton, then customer evangelism is the soul," says consultant Ben McConnell. He's coauthor, along with Jackie Huba, his wife, of Creating Customer Evangelists, a book documenting how companies like Southwest Airlines and Build-A-Bear Workshop have used evangelism to increase sales. Many CEOs see evangelism as a way of getting their corporate message through to an authenticity-craving public that seems ever more immune to traditional mass advertising, especially with the advent of commercial-skipping technology like TiVo. And companies ignore influentials at their own peril, especially the bloggers. "These people can either be evangelists for you or vigilantes against you," says Huba.
The importance of influentials as customer evangelists is why on this October morning Simon Phipps, chief evangelist at Sun Microsystems, is speaking at a downtown Chicago hotel to a small conference of technologists about Sun's corporate philosophy. Is it really worth it for Phipps to fly in from the Netherlands to speak to a few dozen conference attendees? It sure is, he says. "These are people who work on software that powers huge websites that millions of people around the world depend on," Phipps says. "There may not be many people in the room, but the effect they have on society is huge." Phipps doesn't really talk much about Sun products during his presentation. Instead, he talks about the company's long-term vision. "I'm the weaver of a coherent story to help our customers see how it fits together and to see that Sun is a company they can trust," he says.
Two-way talk. True evangelism isn't a one-way approach to marketing. "It's not about creating a better megaphone," says Bill Hamilton, CEO of TechSmith, a software developer with 100 employees in Okemos, Mich. "To be successful, companies need better conversations with their customers." The TechSmith side of the conversation is handled by chief evangelist Betsy Weber. "My job is about relationships," she says. And that means loads of contact with users of TechSmith's products--software used to capture images and activity from Windows desktops for multimedia presentations. Weber estimates that she chats with 400 of her customer evangelists several times a month via E-mail, instant messaging, phone, private forums, and meet-ups on the road. What does she do for these people to help them keep and spread the faith? She tries to reply to each and every E-mail, forwards problems or complaints to product specialists, invites the customer evangelists to groups beta-testing new products, and, of course, supplies the occasional tchotchke.
That attention inspires incredible devotion from product users like Tim Fahlberg, who uses TechSmith's Camtasia Studio software for his business, CoolSchool.com, which instructs teachers and students in how to create multimedia tutorials. "I'd say that there are few people--outside of my family--on our planet who I appreciate more than Betsy Weber," he writes in an E-mail. "It's entirely possible that without Betsy Weber's help and encouragement I might have given up on my work years ago." Fahlberg recalls meeting with Weber in Seattle and walking across town in the rain talking about TechSmith. No wonder Fahlberg says he sings the company's praises every chance he gets when giving seminars.
Think a competitor is going to pry Fahlberg away with a slightly better product? Not likely, says author Huba. "This all has to do with loyalty," she explains. Satisfaction with a product is great, but a customer can switch as soon as the next cool gadget or service comes along. The highest level of a company-consumer relationship is where customers feel they have some ownership in the company. "This is where companies need to go," Huba says. But not all companies want to go there. They don't want to interact with independent users in forums and blogs. "The No. 1 reason companies don't want to do this is that they worry someone may say something bad about them," she says.
Forget about the critics. Look how many companies seem befuddled about how to deal with pro-company bloggers like McChronicles, a blog devoted to one McDonald's fanatic's take on the Golden Arches. It's written by a guy in the Northeast--he didn't want his name used in this story--who visits McDonald's here and abroad, reviewing the restaurants for service, food quality, and cleanliness. Sometimes the reviews are critical, but often they're positive. And even the negative ones are written with a constructive attitude. It's clear that McDonald's holds a special place in his heart and stomach. "I was poor as a kid and never went to McDonald's until my teens, but I always thought of it as a happy place where you have wonderful experiences," he says. This is a guy who admits there was a point in his life when he ate pretty much nothing but fast food from Mickey D's, yet he claims never to have gained a pound. What a powerful, personal counterpoint he would make to Super Size Me filmmaker and McDonald's critic Morgan Spurlock. And although McDonald's employees have visited the site, the company has never directly contacted the McChronicles man. This sort of nonreaction doesn't surprise Phipps. "Many companies are still stuck in the 'pre-participation' world," he says. "It is a world where a company did careful construction of your messaging and then got out their marketing death ray to beam that message into the community. The thought of a space where they don't control the message is terrifying." McDonald's spokesperson Anna Rozenich wouldn't comment on McChronicles, but she called blogs a "valuable communications tool," adding that "we appreciate that customers who relate to our brand are sharing their thoughts about McDonald's with others."
Scooter stories. But some companies have embraced bloggers as customer evangelists. Motor-scooter company Vespa recently brought in two fans as unpaid bloggers on its website. "Vespa has incredible fans, and we thought the best approach was to let the customers tell their stories online," says "micropersuasion" strategist Steve Rubel, whose firm, CooperKatz, was hired by Vespa to do online marketing. Real people giving testimony is a cornerstone of evangelism. Instead of salaries, the bloggers get an opportunity to test out new models, plus pick up the occasional seat cover or rain jacket. More important to them, they get a big forum to write about their passion. "My agenda is to get more people scootering and get more people to buy Vespa," says Neil Barton, 32, whose full-time gig is running a computer network for a publisher.
Let's try a thought experiment. Imagine you're a CEO and want to use evangelism to grow your business. What steps should you take? U.S. News asked consultant McConnell what he would do if he was named chief evangelist at Wal-Mart--assuming he was a gonzo fan of the company. While McConnell cautioned that "a customer evangelism approach is a marathon strategy," here are a few of his ideas:
Find customer evangelists through online searches and store surveys. (In fact, there are pro-Wal-Mart blogs out there.)
Fly groups of them to Bentonville, Ark., every month to meet with senior executives so the evangelists can tell the chieftains what they're doing well and how they're screwing up.
Start blogs and podcasts to humanize the people behind the company's too-opaque walls. One caveat: PR spinmeisters should be forbidden from being involved.
Talk openly and frankly about controversial issues like employee health benefits, the company's impact on state Medicare programs, outsourcing, and the hiring of illegal immigrants.
Of course, Wal-Mart already has one critical asset that any corporate evangelist would love to start with: loyal customers. The key is to build on that base of support and use it to launch an evangelism program so your loyal customers will recruit even more loyal customers. But if a company makes a product that doesn't work or provides a service that falls short, any attempt at evangelism is likely to disappoint. After all, says Kawasaki, "you can't evangelize crap."
This story appears in the December 5, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.