Brand Advocates: Turning Enthusiastic Customers into a Powerful Marketing Force

Chapter 6

Unleashing Brand Advocates: An Out-of-the-Box Approach

Jen Grant (Figure 6.1), is a marketing innovator. She likes trying new things. So on December 8, 2011, Grant—the VP of marketing at Box, a red-hot Silicon Valley start-up led by precocious 26-year-old CEO Aaron Levie—tried an out-of-the-box marketing approach. She turned her company's enthusiastic customers into her marketing department.

Figure 6.1 Jen Grant

Source: Courtesy of Jen Grant.

Finding Box Advocates

On that day in December, Grant's marketing team sent an unusual e-mail to 2.5 million Box customers. Unlike other e-mails, it contained one simple question, the Ultimate Question for customer loyalty: (on a scale of 0–10) “How likely are you to recommend Box to a friend?” Within 48 hours, about 25,000 Box customers answered either 9 or 10, highly likely to recommend Box. In other words, in about two days, Box created an Advocate army of 25,000 enthusiastic customers.

Unleashing Box Advocates

Silicon Valley start-ups move quickly so Box didn't waste a second. Immediately after customers said they were highly likely to recommend Box, Jen and her team gave them an opportunity to share the love. They asked Advocates to rate and review Box products, using a review app created by my company.

The response was off the hook: 6,600 Advocates created reviews within three days. The average star rating was 4.5 out of 5 stars. ...