Say Goodbye To Soaps, Shampoos And The End Of An Era

The following article originally appeared in Luxury Daily, "Soaps, shampoos and the luxury hotel."

Traditionally, luxury has been marketed through exclusivity, status, quality and excess – the latter of which implies “more,” not “less.”

This is what ran through my mind recently as I read a Reuters article, “Greetings trump giveaways at luxury hotels,” about how luxury brand hotels are doing away with the fancy freebies – amenities such as shampoos, lotions, soaps – and replacing them with more “enhanced” service in the form of personalized greetings. Whatever that is, anyway…

In my mind, this is very misguided thinking on the part of luxury hotels.

Bar none
Speaking at the Reuters Global Luxury and Fashion Summit last month, Arne Sorenson, chief operating officer of Marriott, expressed the view that, as rates rise back to pre-recession levels, customers will expect more.

“I think, as rates begin to go back up, which they have been doing since roughly midyear last year, you start to see customers expect more … as they expect more, it will cause us, on balance, to increase service in most brands,” Mr. Sorenson said at the Reuters event.

So, tell me, if consumers are expecting more, why do the soaps have to go?

The disconnect here is that while hotels admit that customers are expecting more with increased rates, hotels are, in fact, giving them less by taking away amenities.

So, in place of this bundle of amenities – a staple of hotel luxury over the last few decades – hotels are expecting that “Hello, Mrs. Smith, welcome back!” is somehow going to excuse a lack of shampoo in the room?

How will hotels convey this message to Mrs. Smith, “Sorry, Ma’am, but instead of shampoo, we’ve memorized your dossier.”

It sounds silly, as it is meant to, but it highlights an important point: luxury hotel guests like amenities, will expect amenities, and given the absence of amenities, will ask for them.

Are hotels ready to explain to Mrs. Smith that it is due to cost cutting, when she is paying a higher rate?

Is the front desk ready to tell Mrs. Smith that her shampoo was replaced by a smile and greeting as she entered the lobby just a few moments ago?

Won’t wash
In working with travel brands and hotel companies, I understand the financial argument: replacing costly extras with enhanced personal service always looks better on the books.

However, luxury customers do not care much about the hotel’s books.

Such customers are willing to pay more, to get more, in both service and amenities. And if they do not get what they want – or expect – they will simple go elsewhere.

Both amenity products and enhanced personal services are part of the “experiential” nature of luxury goods – something that we are going to see a lot more of from travel and hotel brands.

When Mrs. Smith buys a service, she purchases a set of intangible activities carried out on her behalf.

But when she buys an experience, Mrs. Smith pays to spend time enjoying a series of memorable events that a company stages to engage her in a personal way.

It could be argued that when luxury guests check-in, they are buying into such an experience from the hotel.

Personalized greetings, enhanced services, and superior products – products that are different than what they normally use – all combine to form the entertainment and escapism necessary to provide luxury consumers the experience that they are expecting.

Additionally, in luxury marketing, enhanced and personalized services are seen as “a special touch,” or a unique way to make the customer feel even more exclusive.

Luxury consumers see such services as an added bonus – one that adds to the experience.

In no way are these services seen by the luxury guest as a replacement for a bundle of physical products that the he or she has received and enjoyed for many years.

Suds, not duds
The only time that luxury brands should even consider getting rid of amenities is in a recessionary, low-rate period, since the customer might excuse the loss of amenities at the lower rate.

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To Like, or Not to Like?

What does it mean to “like” something online? That designation was vague from the get-go, and with the power-punch of overzealous marketing and social media campaigning, we've become veritable liking machines. Every post has a heart, a thumbs-up, or a plus sign next to it, and after it gets published (whether it's a sentence or a full article), there's StumbleUpon, Tumblr reblogging, and Google +, in addition to standard Twitter retweeting and Facebook liking. My brain hurts already…

In reaction to our increasingly noncommittal “liking” trend, Neil Strauss of the Wall Street Journal mourns the loss of the real online opinion. Gone are the those pioneer days of internet nonconformity, which Strauss blames on a blend of general development and advertising, served with dashes of greed and the ever-present search for “opportunity.” Plus, the internet's gone the way of approval-seeking and of time-wasting, he adds. It isn't only the lack of comments and the bland “+1” labels that reek of herd mentality, but the time-suck of retweeting and view counting that could be funneled into worthwhile internet activity – say actually opining in the comment box.

Lest you write off this post as the ranting of a disillusioned blogger, remember last year's drama when Facebook changed its previously-titled “fan” system to the maligned “like.” Critics also rallied against the switch from “Old Facebook,” but this was something different. Instead of aesthetics, this was about definitions - and clever marketing tactics. In Facebook's case, studies showed that people were twice as likely to click “Like” rather than “Become a Fan,” and that's most likely because the word is nonthreatening, bland, and well, noncommittal. Is that the definition of engagement? Um, no.

Sarah Jacobsson, in a PCWorld article, expounded her issues with “liking” things on Facebook: “'Liking' something on Facebook is a quick, easy way to acknowledge something—give it props, say—without having to be involved at all. […] Facebook seems to think that it's the language that's stopping me -- and that I view 'liking' something as less involvement and therefore easier to click on than 'becoming a fan' of something. This, at least, is true -- I do view 'liking' something as less threatening than 'becoming a fan' of something. But that's because it is true.”So really, “liking” is a very lazy direction to take when it comes to online interaction.

Think about it from the other end: if you're publishing an article that took you hours, would you rather see 50 “like” clicks, or 50 comments on the content you've produced?

That question should be a no-brainer, much like the act of “liking” itself.

A Life Before Email? Does Not Compute

Our tablets, phones, and laptops of 2011 chug away in harmony, not unlike J.C.R. Licklider’s 1960 vision of human-computer symbiosis. Licklider—a veteran of Harvard and MIT computing-based endeavors—maintained that the human-computer connection would allow machines to address mundane, time-consuming tasks in a highly efficient manner. For the field, his work was outstanding; for a trained psychologist, his contributions were absolutely incredible.

Licklider saw computers as tools with tremendous capability, even convincing his employers to purchase a $25,000 computer in 1957. Imagine? He imagined future work desks as command stations tethered to the wall, with the essential “umbilical cords” completing a “telecommunication-telecomputation system.” Much like his conceptual sketches of electronic libraries and information retrieval (hello eBooks!), Licklider was years ahead of his time.

In fact, Licklider's ideas were accurate enough that they seem basic to us today. Using a computer for essential tasks? Sure. Plugging in at work for the ultimate human-machine team? Done. We use our “machines” to handle the mundane and necessary, and that includes email, which originated with two geeks leaving “Read Me” notes on disk files in the '60s. They wanted electronic mail for practicality's sake, and we still do today – despite the naysaysers who claim that email is dead. But were we productive back when we weren't answering emails every few minutes? We were, but just not as concerned with hearing back from someone a few seconds later. Others argue that we're getting worse in the productivity department: according to a recent study, American office workers spend up to three hours daily on tasks that aren't work-related (44 percent of that time “playing” on the internet), with lost productivity cost employers an estimate of $750 billion last year.

It's also about expectations—and memory retention. Once we know what our machines can do, it's easy to decrease acceptable communication waiting time, permanently. But while Grandma still says that handwritten thank-you notes are more considerate (and, of course, human), there's another reason to turn to paper occasionally: permanence. If you don't want your words to be edited, muddled, or misconstrued in the digital age, making hard copies wouldn't be the worst idea—this New York Times piece says it all. Plus, with new studies showing a 15 percent to 20 percent increase of memory retention in 3D digital media, we're in for a wild ride in advertising.

And I don’t care what anyone says, email is definitely not dead.

What Happens When “Hearsay” Goes Viral and Global?

Gossip seems to travel faster than ever these days. When a rumor about a company picks up steam via Twitter or Facebook, it can send a PR division into a complete tizzy and overdrive on clarifications and retractions. With that kind of speed, companies have a rock-solid reason for finding social networking-savvy PR representation—unless they want to become a post-gaffe trending topic.

Even if a company has a huge budget for PR backing, crises can and will occur. Delta Air Lines, for example, which got hit hard after making a switch. The rumor? Delta and Saudi Arabian Airlines (SAA) joined forces, meaning that Jewish passengers couldn't board Saudi Arabia-bound flights. It began with an article published by WorldNetDaily, which spread to the Huffington Post. With headlines like USA Today's “Jews Not Able to Fly on Delta Flights to Saudi Arabia” (title since removed), things were not looking good for the largest airline in the world.

Delta could very easily have quashed the ill-intended rumors and clarified any controversy with a well thought out and timely statement. Instead, it seems that paralysis struck its crisis team – panic took over in the anti-Delta free-for-all, which lead The Economist to say that its efforts were “incomplete, unhelpful, and basically added fuel to the fire.” In any case, Delta's full response was submitted far too late to have any real effect - and that battle would be considered lost by any PR company.

For the record, Delta hasn't banned Jewish travelers. Saudi Arabian Airlines joined SkyTeam Alliance, so Delta will be offering tickets from SAA. As Saudi Arabia has their own visa requirements, some Israel-born Jews will have difficulty buying tickets, although this isn’t anything new - and there are workarounds. But does it matter anymore, considering how much negative feedback is still present on Delta's explanatory post?

It's not just Delta, of course. Facebook went under fire for changing its privacy policy, later switching it back after The Consumerist broke the story. In 2008, musician Dave Carroll claimed that United Airlines damaged his $3,500 guitar, which the airline refused to reimburse until he went all out on YouTube. Another PR issue of note happened in 2009 when Toyota's ad agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, offered $15,000 in prize money in a Toyota-sponsored video contest, and then proceeded to choose one considered not only sexist, but “lewd.” Despite public outcry, there wasn't much response from Toyota to smooth things over—and this drama claimed Get Satisfaction's blog's lowest rating. And then there was the safety issue… but that’s for another post.

Crisis or not, bad news moves fast regardless of whether ­truth has little weight in initial rumblings. That means that PR companies need to hustle a lot faster, have a crisis plan in place, and have crackerjack monitors watching (bad) buzz to deliver a swift attack right back. It might not be easy for every company to do this, but surely the world’s largest airline could spare a few team members to ward off boycotts, inflammatory headlines, and tweet storms that stretch for a week.

And before crisis management? How about trying some crisis prevention, front and center.

The Great (Work) Happiness Debate

We've heard it before. Americans are working more and getting paid less; job security's nothing like it used to be. A study in 2006 showed that American working families are clocking in 11 extra hours of work per week compared to their 1979 counterparts, and those who hold professional positions in medicine and law now consider a 40-hour workweek “part-time.” While I’m in neither of those professions, 40 hours is definitely part time for me.

The 50-hour workweek is the new 40-hour workweek in the high-powered world, and if you don't agree, you could be in for a pay cut. The Center for American Progress report highlighted in the Huffington Post states that professional women get pressured to put in longer hours, noting “'Part-time' [female] lawyers often take an immediate wage cut of 20 percent per hour for a 'part-time' schedule of 40 hours a week.”

And we get little comfort from economist Todd Buchholz if our salaried positions are sneaking in extra time. Buchholz began a writing a book about how we're torturing ourselves trying to make it in the rat race, and then he concluded that the rat race was what makes us whole.

In other words, the pursuit of success is actually what makes us the happiest.

The frontal lobe craves action, and in a life of leisure? Confusion, followed by brain-withering—Buchholz points to retirement, which he says ages us. At least it's comforting for those pulling 50-hour workweeks with paychecks better suited to 40 hours.

In Buchholz's train of thought, perhaps increased hours represent a change in employee lifestyle. Are we defining ourselves by our jobs more than before? Community involvement can't hold a candle to the good ol' days of knowing thy neighbours, and now that we're always plugged in, it's even harder to unplug to pursue hobbies or socialize. As companies try to foster quality “employee engagement,” wouldn't that inspire us to work extra hours in return for feeling valued?

We're looking at black and white when we should get out a palette and start mixing for the right shade of Compromise Gray. While Buchholz says we need to work to stay happy, we're not sure how much we need to work to stay happy.

Surely it's relative. Will the part-time life—“Rat Race Lite”—still suffice as long as we feel we're getting ahead? I’m not so sure.

Dirty Men, Double Entendres, Damage Control

I almost started this column four weeks ago, just after news broke of Anthony Weiner's pecker being paraded on Twitter. But I hesitated: what's the big deal? It's a harmless pic ... pervy men post tasteless photos of their willies all the time. It will blow over.

And blow until last week it did.

Over the following weeks, I watched as Weiner's story morphed from a computer hack to a misjudgment, to a televised apology à la Tiger, to a string of lies that revealed Anthony Weiner to be not only an insidious liar but a destroyer of progressive ideals and a shatterer of political integrity.

Okay, maybe that's going a little overboard, but Weiner's shenanigans demonstrate a trend among male politicians -- the crown for which, until recently, was held by Republicans. A trend that highlights how hypocrisy, lies and political sex scandals have become acceptable in our society.

It seems that perviness, narcissism and good old-fashioned idiocy are bipartisan offenders. I won't go into the "why" here, but how can they think they'll get away with it? Is the public to blame?

Perhaps.

One rule when being sworn into office is not to lie to your constituents. Another is not to expose your private parts to the universe. Clearly, a lot of men can't help themselves with the latter, but we've tolerated a growing number of sex-related scandals in the past few years (Sen. David Vitter and Mark Sanford's, for example) that have set a precedent.

So why have we accepted that it's okay to deceive, deny and lie publicly if you're a politician? One could argue that when a degree of morally bankrupt behavior gets a pass, it lends a teachable moment to A-listers' PR factories. Each indiscretion, however miniscule, provides a backdrop for the next literal battle of the bulge, Weiner-style. For social networking scandals, there's the hacking defense; for extramarital affairs, there's sex-addiction rehab. Just as our communication options have skyrocketed, so have options for finger-pointing.

There's no doubt that Weiner's lack of a PR powerhouse made a difference in how he handled his scandal. The end result of resignation may have been the same, due to the last straw that was wife Huma Abedin's pregnancy news, but the timeline and details would have been different.

Weiner committed many a foul that could have been squelched by a PR professional. The laundry list includes calling a CNN producer a "jackass" and responding to initial inquiries with a political-brand blend of defensiveness and near sarcasm. Not to mention the bald-faced lying. Backtracking on hacking claims didn't enhance the sincerity of Weiner's following press appearances, nor did his lack of a promised "investigation" into the Twitter-centric rumors.

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Women's Pay: Equal Or Is Answer Elusive?

When International Women's Day rolled around in March, I contemplated the topic of why men make more money doing the same job as women. In the PR industry. Was this the truth, or had I succumbed to a perpetual myth? Or was I dredging up ghosts à la Feminine Mystique? Undeniably, some discrimination within the greater marcomm industry still exists, but is it pervasive enough these days to warrant such a generalization? From my own experience, as employee and employer, I couldn't see the pay inequality.

Demystifying the pay divide

Statistics, however, skew the results in men's favor. Spread over all industries, men simply earn more than women because they occupy a higher percentage of the highest-paying jobs. This does not suggest that there's a blatant discrimination, just that women are still playing catch-up in earning advanced degrees and breaking into the traditional higher-paying fields such as engineering, medicine, and law.

Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It," asserts that women are still more comfortable moving into jobs that promise the more flexible hours required by the primary family caregiver. While this point makes me a bit squeamish, I can see the merit in such a position -- not that women are assuming their "traditional" (barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen) roles -- but because a good number of women I know do, in fact, plan for a future with children and move toward flexible careers. Which, unfortunately, can preclude them from those that are higher-paying.

Another possibility is simply a chicken versus egg scenario: maybe the more flexible jobs -- traditional jobs that women excel at and gravitate toward -- have undervalued or pay-discriminated against women for so long that low pay has become standard pay?

Regardless, the answer is elusive.

So what about the PR industry?

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