I’m really fond of my Cuisinart coffeemaker. It’s a sort-of-retro 12 cup model with dials and switches, and a stainless steel finish. For a drip coffeemaker, it makes superb coffee. I first became acquainted with this model in 2002, when we bought one for the office — it’s still going strong, in fact. I got another one for my apartment, and I’d like to think I influenced my in-laws when they bought one too.

So, it’s no secret that I like my Cuisinart and have told others about it. But what amazes me is how often I see the same exact model on TV. I’ve spotted it on the set for a break room, a kitchen, and other places on shows like 30 Rock, Criminal Minds, and more. And I’ve never noticed a commercial or promotional credit for Cuisinart during those shows, which leads me to believe the product is getting all this free placement just because people like it.

It makes sense, when you think about it. When it’s time to outfit a TV or movie set with various products to make it look real, set decorators are generally going to use stuff that they like and can get their hands on. Unless someone has paid to have their product there, the process favors brands that are popular and widely available in the marketplace. Based on my experience with Cuisinart coffeemakers, and their near-ubiquitous presence on TV shows, I can only guess that a lot of other people feel strongly about the product. For Cuisinart, this provides a steady flow of free product placement that would be incredibly costly to purchase separately.

I’ve been using Amazon’s Subscribe-and-Save program for several months, and it’s pretty neat. Basically, you tell them how often you want to receive a certain product, e.g. snack crackers, and they ship them automatically based on that interval. You also get a discount on each order, typically around 15%. And so you don’t feel locked in, Amazon sends you an email before each shipment and gives you the opportunity to cancel it, just in case you don’t need more of the item yet. Overall, the service saves me time and is a nice way for Amazon to encourage repeat purchases.

But there’s one scenario where Subscribe-and-Save breaks down. If Amazon stops carrying the product you subscribed to, it stays in your subscriptions page without any way to search for a replacement item or to request that they carry it again. In fact, I don’t even think they send you an email about the missing product until the next scheduled ship date comes along. By that point, you’re already expecting the order to be sent, and you haven’t had the chance to make alternate plans and choose something else.

Granted, this is only a minor annoyance. The service is still quite valuable even if discontinued products can throw Amazon’s system for a loop. But the takeaway is clear: if you’re giving customers a way to save time by automating their recurring orders, it pays to make sure there are no glitches in that system. Products will be discontinued or replaced with similar items that carry different SKUs. Credit cards will expire and customers will forget to enter the new info. By planning for these inevitable issues, and letting customers know about them as far in advance as possible, you help people achieve their goal of a hassle-free buying process — while keeping your own recurring revenue streams intact.

A lot of customer loyalty is squandered because people simply don’t remember which product they bought before. This is especially true with everyday consumables like paper towels, which lack any visual cues to help people recognize them in the store. Sure, the brand names might be easy to recognize, but how do you identify which one was the best within a series of largely unmemorable product experiences? Without this information, many shoppers just start at square one and pick the product that’s on sale.

The solution to this problem is to give customers a tangible memento to associate with the product. For my paper towel example, the manufacturer could just print their brand and product name on the cardboard tube inside each roll. That way, when the supply runs out, the customer has an obvious reminder of what they were using. Plus, you can make sure they keep that reminder close at hand by printing a coupon right on the cardboard tube.

With this simple modification, a part that usually gets discarded becomes a brand building and promotional tool. It prevents customers from forgetting which brand they prefer, and gives them a financial incentive to stay loyal during subsequent purchases.

In big cities, you often see advertising on the sides of buildings. This typically takes the form of static billboards, although giant LED displays and projected images are making inroads too. But what about buildings that are under construction? Aside from a few signs promoting the financing company, even the high profile buildings here in Chicago are devoid of advertising. Just think of all the clever campaigns that somebody could run on the empty canvas of a skyscraper during its multi-year construction phase. Unless there’s some ordinance that prevents using unfinished buildings like this, it seems like a logical way to generate revenue before a new building opens its doors.

A few days ago, one of my coworkers called tech support for help with a BlackBerry problem. You know what they told him? Just upgrade your firmware to the latest version and that should fix it. There’s one small problem here: I’ve done firmware upgrades before, and they’re not pretty. It takes hours to run the upgrade and get all your settings configured the right way again.

Clearly, the tech support people at our mobile carrier have no idea what’s involved in the solution they recommended. They don’t understand what a hassle the process would cause for the customer. In fact, it’s possible they’ve never used a BlackBerry for more than a few hours of training.

But the rest of us can learn from this experience. Specifically, try to educate your customer-facing staff about what’s involved in any process they recommend to customers. That way, they’ll have a better idea of the effort they are asking the customer to commit. In turn, your staff will encounter much less resistance from customers after they’ve presented the recommended fix for an issue, and everyone will be happier with the results.

While watching TV last night, I saw ads for a bunch of shows that are returning in the fall. At the end of each ad, they provided the date of the season premier. But instead of writing it normally, like “September 9, 2008” or just “September 9”, they decided to get clever. So, the screen said “9.9.08” instead. This sort of thing drives me crazy. And it’s not just limited to dates — marketers do it with phone numbers too. For instance, they’ll write 212.555.1234 instead of (212) 555-1234.

Why does this matter? Well, people are accustomed to looking at dates, phone numbers, prices, and other common data in a certain format. When you mess with that format to make something look cool or trendy, it means that fewer people will be able to read and remember the key information from your ad. In other words, you’re making things harder for your target audience and increasing the hoops they have to jump through before they can respond to your ad.

When faced with this type of design decision, the best approach is to adopt standard formatting for the data I’ve mentioned. Then, be as creative as you like with the part of the ad that actually talks about your product or service. In short, you should wow people with your product benefits, instead of daring them to figure out how to read your phone number or grand opening date.

I’ve read several insightful articles about the problems that arise when the buyer of a product and the user of that product aren’t the same person. In these cases, the buyer often takes the form of a committee that looks for a big feature list and low price, while paying little attention to ease-of-use. As a result, the user gets stuck with a bloated product that’s painful to use.

So far, that’s old news. The part that interests me is how this dynamic kills any hope of marketing to customers through blogs and other conversation-oriented methods. Since the buyers never use the product, they don’t invest the time to learn about what it needs to do, follow industry blogs, etc. And since the users are forced to work with a suboptimal product, they’re often too fed up to even bother getting involved with blogs, message boards, and other discussion channels.

Obviously, this situation is bad for customers and vendors alike. But with more and more decisions being made by incompetent purchasing committees who solicit almost no end user feedback, the trend will continue to worsen. Since the committee mindset is so entrenched in the operating model of big companies, the only advice I can offer is this: If your company insists on wasting time and money by forming a purchasing committee or issuing an RFP, try to recruit actual users of the product to lead that process. By encouraging those users to learn as much as they can about the products they’re evaluating and immersing themselves in blogs and other industry resources, you’ll empower these individuals to fight the natural biases of the committee. In other words, you’ll give the company a chance to select something that actually works and makes life easier for the employees who use it on a daily basis.

Would it be good for consumers if certain types of businesses were required to display a record of recent complaints against them or their overall customer satisfaction rating? I’m thinking about industries that typically have low satisfaction scores, like used car sales. While the idea sounds good on paper, my own experience suggests otherwise.

In particular, I once bought food from a restaurant that had failed its health department inspection. I didn’t notice the sign indicating this (which I assume the city makes them post) until after it was time to pay at the register, at which point I felt dumb for not looking for it earlier. I’m pretty sure other people made the same mistake, since the restaurant was quite busy and nobody even asked about the sign — let alone being deterred by it. Thus, I think any type of proactive consumer warning is going to be futile unless you invest equal time and money in training customers to look for the warning in the first place.

Navigational signage really seems to suffer in the suburbs. During my latest trip on the Metra train system, I came across the following sign: “Passengers traveling to Chicago should wait on east side of station by the shelters.” This has two problems. First, there’s no way to tell which direction you’re facing at the station. Second, there are shelters in at least two different places. Of course, I ended up going to the wrong one and nearly missed the train.

There are much better ways to design this type of signage. The key is to drop any assumptions and make the signs totally obvious — even for new visitors. For example, don’t assume that people will know which way is which. Instead, just put an arrow on the sign that points to where customers should go. So the instructions in my example would look something like this: “For trains to Chicago, wait at the last set of shelters ->”. As long as the arrow is pointing the right way, this direct approach will reduce errors and get people where they need to go.

A few days ago, I needed to buy some printer paper on short notice. I didn’t have time to order it online or trek out to Staples, so I decided to try the little OfficeMax store that’s only a few blocks away. However, when I got there I found only a vacant storefront. In fact, the site looked so abandoned that you’d never know a store had been there at all.

With OfficeMax out of the picture, I had to start over and find an alternate source for my paper. The old storefront was a dead end, offering no guidance about where to look next. This is a shame, because the unused storefront could be a highly-targeted means of sending customers to the next best choice. In other words, the old tenant in that space could pay to put up some signage directing people to their other locations in the area. That way, customers don’t feel abandoned when they arrive at the now-defunct site.

Here’s another option to consider. The first store’s competitors could keep an eye on the store closings, and pay the landlord to put up their own ads once a space goes vacant. For example, Staples or Office Depot could rent out the old OfficeMax windows and display a sign like this: “Looking for office supplies? Visit the Staples store 2 blocks south of here.” Sure, it’s a little opportunistic, but the approach is good for shoppers and thus for the market segment overall. Even if they start at the dead-end store, people will have a simple, direct choice for how to complete their tasks. I’m surprised I don’t see more contextual ads like this, but perhaps the recent number of store closings in various sectors will provide an opportunity for companies to explore the idea.