Several people asked me about my experience at the Nashville Apple Store, so I thought I’d share how that went. They have what they call a “Genius Bar” where you can go for technical issues, repairs, etc and work directly with an Apple Store employee.

Apple holds a reputation for being a superior company with superior products, and the name Genius Bar alone carries a certain presupposition.

You expect to have an “experience”. Well, I can tell you… my experience was not so hot. I arrived at 3:00 on a Thursday afternoon, and the store was packed and very noisy. There were wall-to-wall people browsing the product demo’s on the sales floor:

It took me several minutes to find an actual employee at the Apple store, to inquire about my appointment at the Genius Bar. It turns out that the Genius Bar is simply a shelf around the edge of the sales floor.

When your name gets called over the noise level on the sales floor, you’re escorted over to a free spot at the shelf to the side of the room. It’s crowded, you’re being bumped into constantly, and it’s incredibly difficult to focus. Not ideal at all, in my opinion for a “Genius Bar”.

My expectations were not over the top. I didn’t expect special treatment, or for them to bend over backwards for me in any way. A little empathy and personal assistance would have been nice.

I was misquoted the price for repair or replacement of my shattered iPad, because they failed to ask about my product specs before giving me an “at the most” quote. There was no apology for that at all, just a blank stare from my rep and a very matter-of-fact attitude about the cost.

I chose to purchase the replacement iPad at $349 plus tax, and the rep proceeded to put it in my original iPad box – which was full of glass. He also insisted that I clear my data from the original iPad, meaning I had to use the shattered touch screen – leaving me pulling tiny shards of glass out of my index finger.

Next I asked for recommendations on an iPad cover or case, and an iPad stand. I had originally purchased the Apple iPad Case, which doubles as a stand, but I was very disappointed with it. He argued with me that he thought it was very stable, even when I set it up in the stand and showed him how it wobbled back and forth. Again, a blank stare.

He stood by as I browsed the iPad cases on the wall and offered little to no help. He finally said the Incase iPad case with stand was probably the closest thing they had to what I was looking for. I wasn’t allowed to unbox it or demo it before making a decision, so I decided to bite the bullet and get one.

Since the registers were so busy with other customers, he offered to email my receipt to me. I have never received that receipt. And with an Apple iPad and the Incase products in hand, I had to ask for a bag to carry out my items.

Not only was it not an exceptional experience, it was a negative experience all the way around. The customer service was seriously lacking from the moment I walked in the store and actually had to locate a rep.

I don’t plan to ever order from Apple.com again, or step foot into an Apple or MacAuthority store. From this point forward I will purchase any Apple Products I want or need from Best Buy, where they offer great customer service and product insurance options. As for repairs, from now on I will look for independent local service providers…

I could have left happy. I expected the 4-hour round trip and a substantial cost for the repair/replacement, but they had an opportunity to make me feel like the brand new Apple customer that I am. They could have easily kept me as a free word-of-mouth marketing machine…

Their loss.

I’ve heard rumor that there is a similar Android product hitting the market soon. I’ll be interested to check that out, as I get excellent customer service (and insurance!) from Verizon.

I do love my Apple iPad. I now have well over $1,000 invested in it, and use it on a daily basis to manage my online business. I’m just sincerely disappointed in the quality of the Apple iPad Case, and the level of service & support they offer their customers.

p.s. In my next post I’ll show you the Apple iPad Case, the case that the guy at the Apple Store recommended as a replacement, and more on my quest to find the perfect case and stand…

You know that “inner child” we hear so much about — the one that’s supposedly deep inside of all of us?

Well, I live with it. As a matter of fact, I call him “Austin.”

In the five years I’ve been a parent, I’ve realized that the notion of the inner child is more than just a neat psychological construct. It’s very nearly a literal thing. As we grow up, we don’t change so much as drape layer after complicated layer of adult emotion on top of that inner child. The child doesn’t vanish; he just gets obscured and filtered.

You don’t get an evolved, new mature being. You get Austin with fifteen blankets over his head.

Because that kid always remains at our core (and if you’ve ever caught yourself playing kids’ games with genuine enjoyment, you know that it does), our base motivations remain as well. They just get a little harder to see.

Kids ask for love; adults have complicated passive-aggressive relationships. Kids eat what tastes good; adults want the cupcake, but worry about it going straight to their thighs.

So you want to learn about marketing? Well, despite the complicated models and terminology that some of the gurus use, it’s actually quite simple. To see what works and why, all you have to do is look to my boy.

Make the customer “want that”

When the TV is on in our house, there are sometimes twelve sequential minutes of relative quiet. Then, as the commercials come on, we get a loud play-by-play as Austin begins talking loudly to nobody:

“I want that.”

“I don’t want that.”

“I want that. That last thing. Not that; the thing before.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as incredibly annoying, but if you think about it, it’s actually really revealing.

(OK, it’s incredibly annoying too.)

Without all of those complex adult filters, kids are a conduit to something we don’t normally allow in the adult world: pure desire. There are none of the shoulds and should nots, no rationalizations and thoughts of what is proper or responsible.

That kid is still inside everyone. So the dead-simple lesson is this: Every sale starts with pure desire. Customers either “want that” or they don’t. The rest is just mental gymnastics to justify that core emotion.

Know what your customer really wants

Recently, Austin stormed through a six pack of kids’ yogurt so that we’d buy more, because each six pack had a tiny, ridiculous comic book inside. Yoplait could have filled those containers with shredded paper and they still would have gotten our dollars if Austin had his way.

Did he want the yogurt? Not so much. He wanted the comic book.

Similarly, we sometimes go to McDonald’s because of the dumb little toys they stick in Happy Meals. Or because of the giant playlands they have everywhere.

I have this experiment I keep meaning to try: I want to tell Austin that McDonald’s serves food, because I think he may be surprised to learn it. We don’t go to McDonald’s for the food. We go for the Batmobile that fires a small plastic stick at the back of my head while I’m driving.

Now . . . Wendy’s? We don’t go to Wendy’s. Their kids’ meal prizes are audiobooks on CD. Bleh. Same basic food, but none of what the boy really wants.

Interestingly, as I write this, I’m sitting at a Borders book store. There’s also a Barnes & Noble in town, but they don’t have as many big poofy chairs to sit in, and their ambient music is too loud. Apparently both stores have the same books, but I wouldn’t know that because I just come here to buy a latte and work in a comfortable chair.

Don’t lie to your customers

Cheers to McDonald’s for recognizing that small toys will get kids in the door. But jeers to our local managers for failing the “implied contract with the customer” test.

Recently, my wife and I were assaulted by a barrage of McDonald’s requests because the current pieces of plastic junk that the clerks were dropping into Happy Meals were Bakugan figures, which are Japanese balls that transform into things. (Don’t ask.)

My wife took Austin once and he returned angry, showing me a nondescript plastic Pancho Villa-like figure with a spinning sombrero. Later, I took him and despite the display for Bakugan, we again walked away with a bogus replacement — a miniature stuffed monkey.

Twice burned, Austin’s McDonald’s lust backed off significantly. And, seeing as our son had been lied to twice, my wife and I instituted a temporary boycott.

Associative conditioning works

We often buy SpongeBob SquarePants macaroni and cheese. It’s terrible. For some reason, a complicated spongelike lattice doesn’t present cheese and pasta in a pleasing ratio. And yet Austin eats it and requests it again and again because SpongeBob is on the box.

I tested the limits of this adoration yesterday over dinner. Austin hates lettuce more than anything in the world, so I asked him if he would eat lettuce that had SpongeBob printed on the leaves and came with a free coloring book. He was all over it.

Then he got mad at me when I told him that such lettuce didn’t exist.

Of course, this only works on small children. Only kids are dumb enough to fall for such a simple trick, right?

Um, not quite. Most advertising is based around associative conditioning, which is taking something that you already like and pairing it with something that they want you to like. Or with someone you already like, in the form of a celebrity (or sponge) endorsement.

You may not buy terrible macaroni because a cartoon tells you to, but you buy Nikes because LeBron James endorses them. Or you buy a phone you can’t actually talk on because it’s white with a silver Apple on it. And if you don’t do those things, then I’ll bet you were buying Pepsi because of Michael Jackson back before they lit his hair on fire.

You may be standing up and denying angrily that you do any of those things, but billions of advertiser dollars say either that you’re quite unique or that you’re mistaken. Maybe you don’t come out and say, “Ooh, Tiger Woods. I want that!” but it happens anyway — deep down, at the inner child level.

Like so many things, marketing can appear way more complicated than it is. But marketing is simple — not always easy, but simple. In fact, it’s so simple that you may be overlooking the reasons it works when it does, and why it doesn’t work when it fails.

If you have kids, look to them. See what they like, and why they like it. See what pushes their buttons, because it’ll tell you a ton. Kids aren’t dumb. They’re just adults without all of those complicated outer layers.

About the Author: Johnny B. Truant is giving a free teleclass called Attract Clients, Lose the Stress, and Do What You Love tomorrow (November 12, 2009) with his marketing veteran mother. She knows Johnny’s inner child better than he does, because she lived with it for eighteen years.

Raise your hand if you’ve heard of relationship marketing. Now keep it up if you know what it means.

Lots of hands still up, huh? OK. Fine. You, there. You with the iPhone and the I’m Kind of a Big Deal on Twitter t-shirt. What does relationship marketing mean?

Mmm hmm?

Sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. I tuned out at “creating authentic connections” and “establishing many-to-many connections that foster meaningful dialogue.” DING DING DING. You are WRONG, my tweep, my Facebook friend, my FriendFeed flunkie.

Let’s talk about what “relationship marketing” really is, shall we?

According to Wikipedia, and Len Barry who coined the term, “relationship marketing is a form of marketing which emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction, rather than a dominant focus on point-of-sale transactions.”

1. Relationship marketing is not about relationships. It’s about marketing.

As a relationship marketer, I focus on making sure you not only buy my stuff today, but you keep buying it over and over and over. “Relationship” refers to the customer’s purchase history, not some deep interpersonal connection.

We do not take moonlit walks on the beach. We are not friends. We are not acquaintances. As a matter of fact, we couldn’t pick each other out of a police lineup.

As a business, I’ve simply agreed to listen to you — or, more likely, people demographically similar to you — for long enough to know what you might buy. Then I make it and sell it to you.

If this is our relationship, we both need therapy.

2. Relationship marketing is not about authenticity.

I could tell you I’m just an ordinary person who happens to be exactly like you. I could tell you I’m the reincarnation of Cleopatra’s pool boy. I could tell you I’m a one-eared lumberjack.

It doesn’t matter a whit. If I get you signed up for my advance discount list and give you a good enough deal, we both win.

3. Relationship marketing is not about transparency.

Transparency is nice, and sometimes necessary, but it’s not what this is about.

It’s fascinating when Rand Fishkin tells me how much money he made last year, but it doesn’t affect whether or not I keep my SEOMoz membership.

4. Relationship marketing is not about connection.

Just because Steve Jobs doesn’t know your kid’s name doesn’t mean you’re going to buy a Dell next time.

5. Relationship marketing is not about being social.

Social is Sunday morning brunch with your buddies. It’s not Twitter.

And frankly, you’ll have a tough time selling anything in either place.

6. Relationship marketing is not about equality.

The only thing that’s equal about you being my “fan” and me begging you for money is that we’re equally codependent.

7. Relationship marketing is not even about communication.

I buy apples every week and the things don’t even have a label, let alone a communication strategy.

You joining my Facebook fan page is not a relationship.

You following me on Twitter is not a relationship.

You commenting on my blog is not a relationship.

Let’s face it, if your boyfriend treated you as badly as I do, your mother would tell you to break up with him.

Relationship marketing is about marketing.

The touchy feely, Summer of Love, gosh-aren’t-we-great-friends stuff is nice. Sometimes it’s even necessary. But it’s not what relationship marketing is actually about.

Relationship marketing is about getting the customer to stick around long enough to keep shopping. And it’s about making sure that customer comes back next time to buy more stuff.

Don’t fall so in love with the relationship that you forget about the marketing. Like talking about benefits and not just features. Like having a halfway decent market position. Like a real call to action. Like, you know, selling stuff.

All the authentically transparent connections in the world won’t fix those if they’re broken. But stick a Wheaties coupon on the back of every box of Wheaties and you’ve got it nailed.

About the Author: Naomi Dunford is the woman Brian Clark lovingly refers to as a marketing genius and Tourette’s survivor. She is the author of IttyBiz and co-author of How To Launch The **** Out Of Your Ebook. Her alleged potty-mouth is prominent in the former and virtually non-existent in the latter.