Sitting in traffic congestion on the 4th created by the nexus of an afternoon Red Sox game letting out at Fenway (me) and the Pops concert soon to start at the Esplanade, got me thinking about the new marketing approach -- heralded by Hyundai, but soon followed by many of the auto companies -- that offers consumers a fail-safe purchase by promising protection if they lose their jobs. I wondered how many of the cars around me had been bought because of that plan.

This strategy, focused on customer loyalty rather than satisfaction, also has clear application to the public relations business, where broad measurement of client satisfaction has been seen recently as the industry standard. At its core, loyalty has a direct connection to repeat purchase and is not simply a process to determine levels of approval.

It would seem that during this recession, actions building loyalty offer excellent long-term organic building opportunities, with the caveat that pure over-servicing is always counter-productive. Agencies can actively earn client loyalty by building staff loyalty; aggressively seeking out and eliminating client complaints; enhancing responsiveness; increasing innovation; and most importantly, determining individual client value and building service delivery around that model.

Loyal clients proactively refer clients, making them more profitable than those that are simply satisfied.

Kind of like loyal Red Sox fans, who keep trying to convert the unbelievers.