Discuss: Why Social Media Agencies Are The Emperor’s New Clothes (Column)
“There’s demand in the marketplace for creating a new type of agency,” said Sean Corcoran, an analyst with Forrester Research. “The question is whether that’s viable long term.”
Because it can touch everything from Communications to Marketing to Customer Service to Product Development, Social Media has created a muddied playing field that some see as ripe for creating agency opportunities …
Now the question for social media firms is whether they’ll translate the short-term demand for Facebook pages, Twitter campaigns and audits of social chatter about a brand into a long-term strategic business … Otherwise what they’re offering clients will quickly become the domain of established agencies in Public Relations, Advertising and Digital.
The jury is still out on this one
First of all let me state clearly that there is no silver bullet with regards to whether a Digital Agency or a PR outfit should be leading the charge when it comes to Social Media.
Furthermore, one size certainly doesn’t fit all when it comes to whether your company or organization should be utilizing Social Media or not, and if so with whom.
Mitch Joel (@MitchJoel), from Twist Image (Canada), also weighed in on this subject:
Going back to that quirky quote from AdWeek, it’s like saying, “we can help you build a Facebook fan page or a Twitter profile, but if you need a microsite or some banners to promote it, you’re best off calling a Digital Marketing agency.”
Newsflash: Social Media is Digital Marketing.
Sorry to break this news to the Social Media Gurus and social media agencies of the world. You can dance around this statement all you want … let’s face it: all Social Media strategy and first-contact happens in the online channels.
The results of that strategy and activity may filter through how an organization communicates, markets, handles after-care or customer service, but Social Media starts and lives in the Digital Marketing channel….
And, if it does live in the Digital Channel, but as a social media agency you can’t help your client also build both the platforms and presence online, what does that say about your skill level?
Let’s not make it bigger than it is.
Like a strong direct marketing strategy, advertising campaign or affiliate program, Social Media is one spoke in the marketing wheel (it just looks more shiny than the other spokes because platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are new and exciting).
In fact, Social Media is much more like a spoke in the Digital Marketing wheel. This doesn’t mean it should be diminished, but to think that a strong Digital Marketing shop doesn’t have the abilities or capabilities to lead Social Media is downright silly and unfounded.
A great Digital Marketing agency that truly meets the clients’ needs is one that can develop the digital strategy and then execute on it (the design, content, technology, marketing and communications).
It’s going to be interesting to see what unique offerings these social media agencies bring to the brand table that the Digital Marketing agencies were missing.”
Read the whole post and the comments over at Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel at Twist Image: Social Media Gurus – That Old Chestnut (Who Owns Social Media?)
Challenges for Businesses with regards to Social Media
A few days back Liz Pullen(@nwjerseyliz) tweeted the following on twitter (see screen grab below):
I tweeted in reply that Social Media on a personal level doesn’t scale:
It´s a scientifically proven fact that there’s only so much meaningful interaction, friends, interconnectivity, sharing, status updates and ReTweets one can take at any given moment in time.
And this isn’t even taking time management or life hacking into account; strictly speaking there’s (Dunbar’s number) a bio/psychologically maximum amount of social interaction and stimulus our brains can handle – be sure to keep an eye on the latest Oxford findings regarding this.
What this also means today is that people in general -becoming ever more acquainted with Social Media and most of its apparent benefits & setbacks- are increasingly critical about whom they connect, or “friend”, with online (quality/potential Vs. quantity). And, as a result, how much time they spend with them on any given social network.
The analogy goes that you could compare it to standing in a café socialising with friends and familiars; you wouldn’t appreciate someone breaking in the conversation or party (with a commercial message) without introducing properly first.
These developments have spin-off effects for your brand in this space as well.
Think about this for a minute.
Now, let’s take a look at the slight nugget called Legal, as Clorox has done:
That could help explain why the marketer has taken the unusual step of advertising for a full-time in-house legal counsel to focus on social media — a rather surprising sign of how entrenched social-media marketing is becoming even for relatively established household products.
Currently, having such expertise in-house and full-time at a marketer is rare, said Jack Greiner, an attorney with Cincinnati’s Graydon Head & Ritchey, one of the few attorneys on LinkedIn to list social-media as a specialty. “It’s the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“Social-media channels are a growing focus for consumer communication and stakeholder engagement for our brands and company,” a Clorox spokesman said in an e-mail.
“As a newer communication channel, the application of existing laws to this medium is evolving. For those reasons and the rapid pace of communication in the Web 2.0 world, we’re seeking an attorney to focus on social media as well as talent rights.”
The primary duties, he said, are to clear and procure intellectual property rights regarding production and distribution of advertising, including Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Recording Artists issues, consumer privacy and video licensing.
Comment addendum by Antone Johnson:
Regarding social media policies, I think it’s helpful to divide the universe of communications into two distinct buckets.The first category is the everyday online chatter by thousands of individual employees, which may or may not touch on the company’s business or products.
This kind of communication can and should be regulated by a well-thought-out social media policy, enforced by HR and/or IT in the same way they enforce other employment-related and IT usage policies. (A little training during employee orientation goes a long way.)
The second category is messaging from authorized corporate communicators:
Senior executives, PR, MarCom, Customer Care, Community Managers on online forums, etc. A social media policy alone isn’t enough; these folks need individualized, timely, thoughtful legal guidance.
Their statements can and will be taken as the corporation’s official view of things. Social media make it easier than ever to make misstatements that can be used against the marketer as “Exhibit A” in litigation.
This is particularly true for large corporations, which are perceived as having deep pockets and become targets for class action plaintiffs’ lawyers and government regulators.
As the quotes above underline, social media expertise should occupy two seats: one inside the advertiser itself (I’ll get back to this in more detail later on) and one inside dedicated Digital Agencies, since, inherent to their DNA, they’re better suited at this than pure traditional Agencies are right now.
Dedicated social agencies can’t create effective Social Strategies
Though I’m all for entrepreneurship and an avid fan of innovation, I’m quite sceptical about yet another specialist niche branch forming, (viral seeding agencies anyone?) be it inside or independent of traditional or Digital Agencies: yes, I’m looking at you, social media agency.
Especially since in this specific case the subject matter ties so close –too close- with the core business of any organization: i.e., taking for your customers / prospects / leads.
Why exactly is your company contracting a newly formed “social agency” to do the crucial interaction with these people in such a delicate environment (sometimes volatile even)? A few more questions:
- Can this freshly formed organization handle the scale 6, 12, or 18 months from now (community management, moderating in real-time 24/7, mob behaviour even)?
- What about legal liability (see the quote above from Jack Greiner) when it comes to international operating brands on Facebook?
- What about accountability (towards customers/end-users, partners and B2B clients), lead follow-ups, customer retention and so on?
- What about integration with the online display, SEA campaigns and the mini site?
- And what about the connection with the core brand values “as seen on TV”?
- Do they understand the finer intricacies of your business goals on the one hand vs. customer service & needs on the other hand?
Make no mistake about this, many industry thought leaders are (the dotcom bubble freshly in the back of their mind no doubt) rightfully questioning this trend of social agencies and self-proclaimed guru’s:
Do they even know your competitors, the field your operating in, the challenges you face, regulations, et cetera? You know; the stuff any Marketing Agency worth their salt actually takes into account before helping you set a long term strategy? If so, then why set up a separate one-trick-pony-entity instead of integrating it in the (digital) media mix? It just doesn’t add up.
Social Media is Anthropology, meets PR, meets Customer Service, meets Sales, meets DM, meets Sociology, meets Business Intelligence, meets Legal, meets… what-have-you, all for the greater good of meeting Business Objectives at the end of the day.
So. Exactly what are the business credentials of the people employed in this social agency, apart from having set up a Facebook fan page for their local small-town barbershop?
[Note: I’m not talking about credentials in a “certified social media company” kind of way, nowadays most of us are aware that in IT -for the most part- certificates (Google AdWords and the like notwithstanding) don’t prevent disasters, nor do they guarantee a pleasurable partnership or outcome. How many big IT projects had multiple Black Belts overseeing certified .NET implementing professionals and failed big time?]
Getting and staying involved in Social Media isn’t the same as setting up a one-way Interruption Marketed Advertising campaign for six weeks and it isn’t action based Sales Promotion with a short term focus either.
Nor is it about hiring a Web Care Team after the damage has been done in order to clean up the online response on a subpar product coupled with bad customer service.
UPC (Cable giant) has felt this here in The Netherlands as recently they’ve been indexed as the company with the worst customer service in a research conducted by the Customer Insights Center from the University of Groningen, intelligence agency MIcompany and Dutch research firm MetrixLab.
This despite being an innovator online by being the first Dutch company to deploy a Web Care Team with varying success. Sweet Irony to some, Social Media in full effect to others (as sharing bad customer experiences has become ubiquitous).
Social Media is a mindset ideally to be adopted throughout the whole organization, just like company values. Larger organizations will have to act on this in the coming decade.
Joseph Jaffe: In my opinion, this isn’t about tactics or platforms….it’s about a mindset shift. Commitments versus Campaigns. Retention versus Acquisition. Conversation versus Communication. And in the former cases, we’re dealing with decidedly post-marketing platforms that are – for the most part – decidedly brand unfriendly.
It’s an ongoing process, not to be automated.
Au contraire; it’s actually about interacting with human beings(!) in a passionate and authentic way, all whilst keeping the mutual interests of the organization, as well as the customer in mind. Though balance to strike.
Earned Media vs. Paid Media (Dealing with The Shift)
Who knows? Maybe over time they’ll embrace your efforts and your brand.
Then again, maybe they won’t because a few days back your Call Centre Manager was focussed more on her maximum allowed Average Conversation Duration Per Service Employee instead of solving the problem of a frustrated customer. So, said customer has started a flame blog, which TechCrunch has picked up, turning it into a trending topic on twitter overnight, which in turn has been indexed by Google in less than an hour, effectively making your SERP turn off potential customers and would-be B2B partners, despite that carefully planned and crafted Super Bowl Ad…
As you can see, Social Media is much as it has always been in real life actually, with the critical difference that these interactions between your brand and “them” are online, out in the open, for all to see, to monitor, to be spread in real-time and archived. Forever (or until Singularity at the very least).
This, combined with the fact that your organization has to structurally change internally for any meaningful long-term results, make this quite a complicated and challenging era, as you cannot afford not to be at least somewhat social, yet it can backfire significantly when implemented in the wrong way. Or with short-term focused expectations from shareholders, the board or senior management for that mather. Oh, and I’ve left the whole Social Media ROI debate out of the equation.
Still convinced that fancy social agency is well equipped and worth the check/PO?
Possible solutions: Internalizing the knowledge
The point I’m trying to make is that these new upstarts are either interested in making a quick buck over the back of you and your customers, or they’re focusing on the “What?” (“Which social tools should we deploy? YouTube or twitter?” -in other words: operational tactics), instead of focusing on the “Why?” and on what Social Media could mean for you and your customers.
Take heed of the former, and as for the latter, well, benevolent though their intentions may be, know that the way to hell is paved with good intentions…
Notable exception / leading example in this discussion are the Social Media Monitoring companies like Radian6 as they have a very tasty asset, or two actually: hard data and experience.
They’ve been busily beavering away for the past years, before Social Media became de rigour and have actual added value in the partner chain around your project/organization. They have the data, the knowledge and experience to translate social media output into actionable insights.
To my eye the solution is as follows:
Your organization must internalize Social Media as soon as possible -not tomorrow or next week necessarily, but do start as soon as you can (word has it your competitors are already a few laps ahead -sensing the urgency yet?).
Then, drilling further down, you should have one or more internal champions, digital marketers along with their traditional kin, who can sit down at the round table with IT partners, Social Media Monitoring Companies, Digital Agencies & Traditional Agencies alike, and get down to business.
You don’t outsource Sales, you hopefully are not outsourcing your Customer Service* and you definitely should refrain from outsourcing direct contact with your target audience and customers. If you’re not convinced yet, then feel free to take a look at an interesting development over at one of the biggest brands on the planet: Coca Cola are internalizing Social Media as they go .
Ford Motor Company is, arguably, one of the leading big brands in the world when it comes to having garnered considerable achievements in/with Social Media; admittedly having Social Media rock star Scott Monty (@ScottMonty) aboard as an internal accelerator or catalyst as well as a CEO backing him helps a lot. Ford’s Scott Monty has the following take on this topic:
“If you have a dedicated social media agency they need to be well integrated with the rest of your team because none of this stuff stands alone,” said Scott Monty, digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford.
Rather than have a single social media shop, Ford works with several for different needs. It leans on the social skills of OgilvyPR, while also working with Social Media Group and Undercurrent. “This is the year that will separate the pretenders from the practitioners.”
[* In twenty years time we’ll have a jolly great laugh looking back on the days when you actually didn’t help the customer yourself because... err, business books and MBA’s thought us it was the right way, we never questioned its merits out loud towards senior baby boom management and the internet, social media et al didn’t exist to expose this mindset, but I digress...]
Off course, your mileage may vary, depending on whether your organization is strategically focussed on either Cost Leadership, Innovation or Customer Intimacy.
And it could be both Mitch, Scott and many others in our field, are proven wrong over time as, like I said above, the jury is still out on this one.
Speaking of Mitch Joel, he posted the following piece regarding ROI and Social Media:
Richard Binhammer (from Dell‘s Social Media team) gave a presentation and when one of the audience members asked about how Dell measures the ROI of their Social Media strategy, Binhammer responded that ROI was nothing more than an accounting term and probably has little to no place when it comes to measuring the success of any Social Media marketing initiative.
How would that make your clients, team members and supervisors feel?
Binhammer … concluded by saying that he doesn’t think about ROI, rather he looks at the overall business objectives and if Social Media can help him meet those objectives, then that is what is ultimately the most important thing.
Let’s repeat: forget the ROI and look at the business objectives.
In looking at business through this prism, Dell has changed the way they do business and – in doing so – they have made lots of money by being engaged and using everything Social Media that is under the sun.
In a more primal way, they’re focused on using Social Media to meet practical business objectives and not looking at the overall ROI…
Comment addendum:
My argument is not against metrics and measurement as it relates to social media and business. My point is that we sometimes get lost in the forest for the trees….and one step further, some of the traditional metrics and insights need revision when we think about social media and business….but fundamentally we do measure measure and measure more.
Source: Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel at Twist Image: Killing ROI
Conclusion: Due Diligence/Beware the Snake Oil
All in all, the debate regarding ROI in social media and the added value of social media agencies still has yet to give birth to a definite, industry wide accepted outcome, and maybe won’t for some time.
To my eye, all facts point to one conclusion which I’ve summed up in the title of this very column.
Bold statement?
Dunno, like viral agencies we’ve yet to see a yearbook worth of big brand cases produced by dedicated social media agencies that showcase their worth, yet they tend to position themselves with the swagger as though they have seeded viral or social media campaigns with an 80 to 99% success rate…
Should anyone care? Aren’t we “all in it for the money”?
Well, yours truly is not and I’d like to believe most of us are “in it” out of a passion, which happens to provide us with the means of getting food on the table, paying the rent/mortgage, etc.. Make no mistake, I’m an entrepreneur at heart and a positive minded one at that, but with great power comes… (well, you know the drill)
Remember the dotcom bubble bursting less than 10 years ago? We’ve seen what self-proclaimed consultants in green field markets/industries are capable of if left unchecked: wrecking havoc amongst clients eventually seriously damaging everyone in this space.
Sounds farfetched? The Credit Crunch demonstrated to us what happens when an influential industry is left unchecked and nobody calls out the cowboys.
Granted, social media is new, standards are yet to be fully understood, found and implemented. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take pride in our work, our profession, our science, our art. It is a professional responsibility to call out the snake oil sales men.
Perhaps more than anything Social Media is also about the “echo chamber”; about memes being spread. By adding my voice to the ever increasing echo of industry specialists, agencies and bloggers, I hope to amplify the growing consensus that social does not an agency make. That you should be mindful of letting your company in with any self-proclaimed guru or social agency. Due diligence.
This column turned out somewhat longer than expected, so thanks for bearing with me. I will be keeping a close eye on this topic as it continues to evolve.
In the mean time I’m really curious if there’s an angle I might have missed, so feel free to drop a comment below.
Ford CMO: 37% Awareness Level for Fiesta Thanks to Social Media
“Ford’s Chief Marketing Executive James Farley says the company has made a bigger digital and social media bet than rivals because, “If you are trying to communicate, as we are, that you have been reinventing the company , you can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other.”
Perhaps Ford’s biggest single bet on digital and social media has been the Fiesta Movement, a program that began in 2008, 18 months before the cars will actually arrive in dealerships.
Ford gave 100 European Fiestas to people to drive and live with. The results of the blogging, Facebooking, YouTubing and Tweeting by those people, plus the echoing of those messages by the blogosphere, followers, etc. has been an eye opener.
Consider this: The awareness level of Fiesta, a car that is not even in the U.S. yet (though it has been a fixture in Europe for years), is 37% among Generation Y…
That is about equal to the awareness level of Fusion and Flex, models that have received hundreds of millions of dollars in traditional media spend.”
Source: Business Week – Ford Spending 25% of Marketing on Digital and Social Media
The Internet: Not Just A Media Channel, But a Utility (QUOTE)
“But maybe… just maybe, we need to stop looking at when the Internet will surpass television and benchmark it against something else entirely. The Internet is much more than a media channel and it is much more than a communications platform. It’s both of those and so much more.
We should start benchmarking the Internet against electricity.
Electricity is a utility. The phone is a utility. The Internet is a utility (and so much more).”
Mitch Joel (Twist Image) on Benchmarking The Internet Against TV
Why the Click Is the Right Metric for Online Ads (On Adding Value and Thinking Beyond the Display Advertising Business Model)
“…many advertisers in the past gave most of the credit for a sale or conversion — which in the web world could include anything from visiting a website to printing an online coupon — to the last ad clicked on or seen by a consumer. But that means brand-focused sites such as NYTimes.com and MarthaStewart.com and even social-media sites such as Facebook and MySpace lose credit because they are often not where a consumer will see that last ad. And when they lose credit, they lose advertisers, and when they lose ad revenue, well, you’ve read that story.
“Publishers have a lot to gain,” said Steve Kerho, VP-analytics, media and marketing optimization at Organic. Mr. Kerho has been doing lots of analysis on how online-display ads affect search and conversions and found that in some cases, a display ad can increase a search ad’s click-through rate 25% to 30%. If he had simply measured the clicks from search, he would have missed the display ads’ influence.”
Source: Adage
So… If we’d translate the above model to, say, a real world situation; that’d mean that the sales guy in the local electronics store should get a piece of the provision pie, and maybe you’re neighbourhood whiz kid should be offered a small fee too, since they were the ones that influenced you before you decided to shell out on a new bleeding-edge desktop and order it directly by mail-order, no?
Of course, the conclusion presented above is preposterous to say the least. Not giving full credit to the last click shows a lack of common sense and of everyday reality:
If we’d were to apply this model to the offline advertising industry we’d might as well start charging less for TV ads during the Super Bowl or advertisements in general, since it has never been empirically proven that said ads actually sell significantly more cars, to name but an example.
(Actually I hereby challenge thee naysayers to tell me why the fledgling automotive industry in the US can’t be saved by throwing more money against Interruption Campaigns now that the going is though… Odds are it’s because it just doesn’t work that way nowadays…)
Publishers would of course love to use such a model, since suddenly those abysmally low Click Through Rates on social networks ´d become a license to print money, yet that’s not where the problem lies: it’s about engaging with the visitors of the Facebook’s of this world if and when they feel like it, adding value to the community, giving them something to talk about or a good reason to get rid of their friends. The engagement model is a far more viable one since it makes it very clear for all stakeholders what the true value of those brand interactions are for everyone.
Conjuring op schemes to charge more for a product -display banner- that, on it’s own, has failed to truly deliver on its promise up until this very moment, is not the way forward out of this recession. The research budget would be well better spent on innovation, adding value to the visitors, strategic alliances -you name it, just do not waste it on taking undercover pot-shots at “Go -Emperor CPC- Gle” et all.
There is one thing that does ring true about the statement that a conversion shouldn’t be attributed to just the Last Click alone; and that’s the reoccurring coincidence that carefully crafted, creative Crossmedia campaigns drive word-of-mouth & website traffic, allowing for a tighter control on conversion, ánd they also have the uncanny ability to tip the Attitude scale in your Brands’ favour. A little…
It’s common sense and it’s what marketing should be all about: influencing as many factors as you can to get the prospect to turn into a consumer, making her loyal, spurring her on to buy more and in the end becoming a brand-ambassador.
The communication mix as well as the quality of your product combined with the customer centricity level of your organization all contribute to that end.
As well as a million other tiny factors (does the sun shine, did THAT girl on the train give you a smile, do you have enough money to spare, etc., etc..)
Yet, if we’d follow the philosophy of Mr. Kerho to it’s conclusion, it’d mean we’d have to split the Cost-per-Click revenue and spread the wealth over all communication channels and creatives -and not just the display banner- in order to get a somewhat “fairer” representation of value/conversion for money.
[The Adage article starts with this quote: "The great paradox of the web is that it's an interactive medium and everything can be measured. And that's wonderful -- unless you're measuring the wrong thing."
I'd think what they should be stating is: The single greatest asset of the web is that it's an interactive medium, perpetuously capable of reinventing itself. And that's wonderful -- Unless you don't keep your feet firmly on the ground and try to look at opportunities with a positive mindset!]
2009: New Marketing, Privacy and The Cloud?
The slide -embedded below- is a comprehensive-yet-easy-digestible presentation, sensibly touching upon The Cloud, the hype and misconceptions surrounding it, and the biggest issue the Tech industry will face in 2009: Privacy.
“The Biggest Issue the Tech Industry will face in Two-Oh-Nine is Privacy.”
Nat Torkington from O’Reilly Radar has rounded up a whopping 191 slides on the Future of the Cloud and how this ties together with our online privacy; food for thought as we approach enter The Year of Change…
[Note: Expand the presentation to full-screen so you can read the accompanying notes]
As Social Media reached its Tipping Point in 2008 (judging by the Web 2.0 supercharged, grass-roots powered, landslide victory of Obama in the US Presidential Elections, and the explosive growth of Facebook) claiming that Twitter and RSS feeds will break into the Non-Digerati mainstream in 2009 doesn’t seem to be a farfetched forecast for the New Year -at first sight.
Some other predictions: 2009 will be remembered as The Year Of Privacy, Authenticity, Relevancy (in Marketing), Personal Branding & Change Management. Invoking Trust and investing in Innovation will also be two key cornerstones and challenges on which businesses will have to focus in the coming twelve months. WIRED has an interesting post, zooming in on Six Tech Trends.
Yet, as Seth Godin rightfully points out in one of many brilliant posts this month, backed by the outbreak of the Subprime- & Credit Crunch and the Financial Crisis between August 2007 & September 2008 and the ensuing events; long-term predictions tend to fall flat on their face. Often. And in a very ugly matter actually.
[If you've always wondered how any non-gamer/marketer could have fallen eyes wide shut in the Farce that Second Life inevitably turned out to be (even though it was fairly obvious to gamers that it had "FAIL" written all over its face), see the video directly below.
It perfectly communicates what definitely won't be happening in 2009 or what has obviously already come to pass in the past years, all presented by a "Trend Watcher" preaching otherwise.]
Trends FADS In 2009
Now if there’s one thing -the outcome of- the Obama ’08 Campaign strategy should have proven to Old School Marketers and Agencies, it’s that releasing control over your brand is actually a good thing and even if this casus doesn’t convince them, the word on the streets is that The Crowds seized this “control” ages ago.
Another fact that should have become crystal clear to even the most obstinate of naysayers, is that in 2009, traditional advertising agencies -and newspapers- will have to either sink or swim in order to survive the Interactive Marketing Tidal Wave: The days of the Mass-Media-Interruption-Marketing-Only approach for immeasurable branding purposes are over, as are the days of unaccountability and vaunted effectiveness of artistic-award-winning-yet-incomprehensible advertisements.
In its place we’ll welcome Neo Marketing [jpeg, 69.75 KB (71428 bytes)]
Neo Marketing = Permission Based Marketing, meaning that we’ll only approach people, humans, individuals -and not “target audiences”- with relevant conversations if and when they see fit; taking in their feedback directly, treating it with respect and giving it some order of priority, all the while keeping a sharp eye on Conversion Rates or Task Completion Rates by Primary Purpose, when speaking of the web specifically. Very transparent, results-driven and opt-in actually ;)
Utilizing Neo Marketing is the most effective, consumer-centric way of building and retaining your business/brand in this day and age. A sound investment by any measure.
“Sending one-size-fits-all messages using mass media, as 20th century marketing bibles and preachers would encourage and even declare as The Truth, has now definitely and officially become an unaffordable waste of precious resources, time, effort and money. Time to move on.”
Note: Branding won’t become obsolete any time soon, it’ll actually become a much stronger focus in your communication plan with one key-value to communicate: Trust.
So, the corporation has taken a step down from its pedestal, in order for the consumer to be seated on her rightful throne: Thus the internal process (the rules behind which mediocre employees tend to try to hide behind when running from responsibility) or technical system setbacks -“IT department doesn’t allow me to help you out with this problem, even though you’re not the first client facing it and it’s pretty obvious that we’re the cause”- shall no longer be the driving- or leading force behind the way we operate our company or engage with our customers.
Instead servicing the end-consu -serving people shall become the core mindset around which the constellation of your organization shall revolve, as it always should have been the main focus of your Service Strategy.
Some more knowledgeable professionals say some of the developments sketched above will be powered and spurred on by the rise of Enterprise 2.0 (Yup, I’m aware of the “Yet Another Two-Point-Oh Suffix”), and the global economic downturn shall see to it that such (r)evolutionary innovations will come to fruition in the coming year, requiring some serious change-management skills (but also a change of culture and heart for our friends from the “Behind-The-Company-Firewall-Within-The-Current-Software-Platform” IT department, putting the employees needs first in its stead).
[Side note to all skeptics- ("But you lack data backing this thesis") and pessimistic- or conservative detractors out there questioning the coming fall of the current Corporate/Advertising Status Quo:
Please do bear in mind that the Financial Armageddon of 2008 was impossible to foresee by even the savviest and clued up of Economical Analysts anywhere in the world.
Also try to remember that the concepts of Democracy, Freedom and Individualism as we know them today, didn't exist once/not too long ago either, yet they've become more widespread than any medieval Feudalist could have ever feared, the 44th President of The Free World being the crown jewel supporting this thesis reality. And so on, and so on...]
Furthermore, results-driven Contextual Marketing (powered by the Semantic Web) and data backed analyses shall give us unprecedented REAL and actionable insights into customer behavior (only with their consent!) & their TRUE wants, allowing for even better segmentation and targeting.
Social Networks will further position and consolidate themselves as the new market place where we can meet up, connect with, and empower our customers and prospects, hopefully turning them into brand ambassadors. But only when THEY see fit; it’s their territory after all, see.
This year, the challenge for your organization lies in trying to be available for your consumers and prospects whenever and wherever they feel like reaching out to you, or:
“In 2009 Brands need to become truly ubiquitous in their interactions with consumers”
Brands need to become truly ubiquitous: If prospects or clients wish to ask you a customer support question via Twitter or show their brand loyalty by joining your Facebook Group; then please, by all means, let them have it :)
And if there’s a heated debate on a forum about your product, service or your brand in general; don’t hesitate to join in (Think Vodafone‘s WebCare Team). Social Media Tracking tools like Trackur can help you, giving you a dashboard on what the latest talk in e-town is concerning your brand.
To be able to do so, you’ll have to learn to actively participate and interact in those spaces first.
[UPDATE: The Air Force has updated their Social Media Diagram]
Just as “doing a Brand Activation” through TV and Radio in conjunction with print has become the holy trinity for Fortune 500 advertisers in the second half of the 20th century, the post-modern marketer should let go of The Fear of losing control or actually becoming -God forbid- Accountable and add the online platform and all of its interactive channels in the mix as well.
Conclusion: The internet shouldn’t be treated as just another pillar in the marketing mix; it’s a whole New World of communication opportunities next to the Offline world.
The Break Up
We must try harder to convince our peers, decision makers and conservative marketers that the only other option is to face losing out to the competition; remember this crisis is a catalyst for a long overdue change in not only marketing but business acumen as well.
All in all it won’t be an easy ride though: In the end, if your product or service doesn’t manage to live up to your story, then your organization and all of its stakeholders -CEO, shareholders and employees alike- will have to deal with the harsh consequences, now more than ever.
In the coming months, (enterprise sized) brands will have to show their human face to invoke trust and through this process the Personal Brand will have its mainstream breakthrough.
Employers will have to find a way to somehow incorporate this into their Marketing Strategy fast, as their Corporate Brand, as well as their Employer Brand, will benefit from this -if handled in an authentic way: Forrester Sr. Analyst Jeremiah Owyang has a post touching on Personal Branding vs. Corporate Policies, as always carefully and thoroughly approaching it from different perspectives.
And all the above somehow, mostly ties in to that omnipresent “Privacy Issue” that we’ve got to take into account as well, bringing us full-circle to this excellent presentation by Nathan.
Happy New Year :)
[Update 13-01-09: link to NYTimes.com & US Air Force Blog Diagram v2]
Thinking Big About Solutions to Worldwide Poverty (BLOG ACTION DAY 2008)
Coming up with One Big Idea to resolve the issues of Poverty, Child Starvation or any other (in)directly linked anthropocentric crisis such as Global Pollution, Global Warming or the Energy Crisis -Peak Oil- for that matter requires consensus: Is there a problem? And if so at what scale? Consensus.
Professor Hans Rosling‘s infamous presentations at TED back in 2006 and 2007 shook up our Western beliefs of developing and underdeveloped countries, if not challenge the very definition of what we should label as a developing country in the first place, based on the correct context of data. Consensus on the data upon which one can act.
Up until recently (2006) Pluto was known as a planet, nowadays its part of a different celestial class of its own, thousands of scientist worldwide went through several heated debates before consensus crystallized out of the fog of intellectual war.
Just as there had to be worldwide consensus to recognize the scale and possible implications of the root-rot in our global financial systems before tackling that challenge head-on, the same consensus and sense of urgency has to be developed towards Poverty and the other great issues of our time.
But where to start?
First of all I don’t believe that we’re ever going to have this global consensus -at least not with regards towards Poverty, for one simple reason: the very human nature of not acting unless the Danger is imminent and tangible. (The Global Financial Crisis forced our governments to act aptly and directly, because in light of the gargantuan consequences there simply was no other option.)
We shouldn’t attribute this to culture, greed or unwillingness, but to biology and more specifically our inner brain: A small genetic gift from our Prehistoric ancestors, which also seems to be the key to many addictions like drugs, smoking or drinking too much liquor. So, one might argue that we don’t have a software problem, but that ours is more akin to a hardware glitch so to speak.
Yet I do believe that in spite of all the above, we’re not excused of acting. Warren Buffet has once stated that we’ve all picked a lottery ticket at birth and so we should be happy and thankful to be born on the right side of the fence, in the right timeframe: Nothing should be taken for granted.
Whichever worldview you hold, you’re inherently part of an ecosystem and thus you profit -roughly speaking- from trade rights, education, infrastructure, communications, municipal services, place of birth, local history and the like. Not all of this stands on itself and not all of this can be accounted towards just paying taxes; If there’s anything the Financial Crisis has reaffirmed it’s that we’re part of a global village and what we’ve taken so far should be given back in some way or the other…
So in my humble attempt to join and contribute to the global poverty discussion on over 9.000 websites and blogs worldwide today, facilitated by BlogActionDay.org, here’s my part of the solution:
Free Education Through Free Internet Access.
Poverty has many, many causes, but if there’s one thing we can have consensus on, it’s that there’s a significant correlation between low education and poverty: I’m cutting some very rough, sharp corners here, but arguably one could state that education leads to knowledge, leads to opportunity. Not to say that access to education in and of itself is the full solution, but we should at least enable the poor regions in the world to gain access to the levering power of the web, now more than ever.
Just as the economy of the free web has proven to us that you can gain more by giving and sharing unconditionally, the same democratizing effect could apply to underdeveloped regions.
What can we do?
Google has partnered with HSBC to to deliver free internet access to the unconnected world by way of satellite already and they’re running their Project 10^100 contest, so if you happen to have an actionable idea waiting to get funded for a jumpstart, that would be a great start.
The BlogActionDay website has (links to) many more ideas aching to be implemented. Some are free, others are awaiting a micro-contribution; some idea’s are larger than life, whilst others take a more smaller approach. And while we’re at it: Let’s not forget to address poverty in the West too; we mustn’t assume that everyone living in the Developed World is living at acceptable standards and so here too there’s a lot to be done, starting with efforts to create worldwide consensus on Hidden Poverty as well.
Let’s create a Wiki of sorts where thought leaders from around the world can contribute and facilitate ideas to tackle poverty. And since all major social issues require an holistic approach to achieve sustainable results: Let’s give the underdeveloped those much needed 100 Dollar Laptops with free unlimited Wireless Internet access so they can learn, grow and contribute to the solutions themselves and then let’s use that community platform to tackle the Energy Crisis and Global Warming, together!
[This column is dedicated to the cause of Blog Action Day 2008: Poverty on the 15th of October 2008.]
E-mailing Brand Equity or Inversed Strategy?
There’s an interesting e-mailing debate on the Signal vs. Noise blog. Now I mostly agree with some of the business philosophy of mister Fried and co., and I’ve got a deep respect for what they’ve achieved and the way they did it, but the idea of trying out new e-mail designs First before applying a design overhaul to the website based thereon is inane.
Though I can sympathize with the “Process-Breaking-Possible-Mind-Freeing” idea behind the post, there are two obvious pitfalls Jamie (the author) is unaware of, both stemming from a misguided thought pattern.
1. Conversion and Marketing Strategy
The author is putting Form over Function, Tactic above Strategy and Outcome before Process.
There’s a good reason why
“…emails have their conceptual birth in another medium altogether: a Catalog, an Advertisement, or the Website.”
And why
“The concept and strategy was already finalized before it goes to (the web designer). At that point it was all about production.”
Please read the whole 37Signals post and the discussion here for some more context.
Strategy ultimately leads to Production and not the other way around, for all the obvious reasons.
That being said, let’s try to break down the raison d’être of E-mail Marketing once more, starting off with a fundamental question: Strategy and communication plan aside,
Why send out an e-mailing in the first place?
Your sending out an e-mailing to stimulate your reader base to take action (on your website), be it either:
- Reading the latest news (gaining you the required eyeballs for advertising revenue);
- Signing up for a service;
- Filling in a survey;
- Updating their profile (both offering more accurate targeting = opportunity to add more relevancy);
- Buying a product;
- Booking a ticket or
- Simply just showing your appreciation for them being such loyal customers…
Whatever your primary motives may be, you’re mainly sending out that mail to communicate to your (potential) customers in order to generate higher conversion rates.
Make them click! That’s your core Sub-Goal*.
Your sole priority lies there, design details such as shadow and rounded corners are superfluous and should be geared towards supporting you in reaching that goal, not detract from it. Your main objective is not to go against all logical and proven processes by designing a fancy e-mail template as a way of alpha-testing a possible future website redesign.
It’s the message and the call-to-actions therein that count, and though it doesn’t hurt to have a neatly designed mailing, it’s a waste of your efforts if you spend too much time on art instead of investing it in sensible e-Copywriting. In other words: “Substance Over Style, please m’am”.
The only exception here is when you’re Crowdsourcing your website re-design and have a dedicated address list of people that are aching to be part of the drive testing(process) or if your regular subscribers have given you Permission to do so. If such is the case, don’t forget to add a feedback button in there as well…
This approach allows you to obtain valuable feedback because people are consciously paying attention to the careful alterations you make to your template, whereas in all other cases some people are bound to take notice of the gradual changes somewhere down the line and probably think you don’t have a clue about what your doing…
[* Note that I said "sub goal" deliberately, because an e-mailing is a part of your communication plan and thus should support your overall Marketing Strategy. Seeing a pattern here?]
2. Consistent Authentic Branding
The second pitfall was correctly pointed out by a comment in the thread from none other than Seth Godin himself. 37Signals has a reputation of having a very unique and dare I say intimate bond with their customers/users.
Part of their reputation, appeal and charm lies in the passionate and practical way they look at how to improve a business process and how to get rid of excess weight, so to speak. And more often than not, the sluggish corporate way of doing business is at the receiving end of their rants and riffs.
Unless your target audience is expecting it from you, suddenly adding a standard Corporate styled e-mailing in the communication mix isn’t going to strengthen that relationship. On the contrary; you’re actually running a huge risk of erecting an invisible wall between yourself and your clientele.
Other than that, this operation could turn out to be a “me-too” approach for 37Signals: Since they’d be stopping with communicating in a personal (and their very own Getting Real) way, the receivers might unconsciously end up getting a change of attitude towards them; leading to a loss of sympathy over time, which ultimately leads to less loyalty and brand connection. Stay authentic, be consistent.
Have I already mentioned that the suggested Inversed Strategy approach isn’t conversion centred?
When I’m subscribing to a newsletter I expect (nay, want!) a clean and simple, (mobile device friendly!) swiftly-loading mail in my inbox, communicating a focused, relevant and -in this particular case- personal message. That’s the way I got charmed by & connected with your brand in the first place.
It’d be a waste to ruin the expectations and experience of your target audience and clients by giving in to a (misguided) personal desire for creative freedom.
If it’s more creative freedom you want, it’d be much wiser to start thinking about rearranging your career, instead of rearranging a proven process or something as fragile as your E-mailing Brand Equity.
Google As Your Context-Sensitive Corporate Homepage
Nowadays the general notion of Marketing, Communication, PR and HR(!) is that it’s not just about branding and influencing the attitudes of your core audience by connecting with them.
It’s about the big picture, about adding value to their -shared- experiences, or even better still, the big story you create together with your customers, empowering them to become your ambassadors. Your Corporate EQ if you will. All this undoubtedly requires a lot of hard smart work, but it can be as fun and as fulfilling as you’re willing to make it.
From the quality of your product/the service itself and the way you communicate about it with your consumers (and handle their feedback), up to the way you give out, say, a profile-customized receipt after a successful transaction took place. It ranges from cold-calling to After Sales, all the way up to Customer Services and helpdesks. Offline and online, back and forth. And also the core-values you hold, portray to, and share with your employees.
So, if all of the above is true, then why this post?
Because when we take all these facts and zoom in on your Online Marketing/Strategy in general and your online corporate presence in particular; than somehow in spite of all the research, proven best practices and cases of how it can and should be done, some of us still tend to forget (or rather just plainly fail to see) that your company’s online presence doesn’t just end with the mandatory neatly SEO’d corporate website, banner campaigns and the use of Google AdWords and the like.
It’s about the Search Engine Results Page (SERP): For many prospects and consumers indeed Google is the context-sensitive corporate homepage and this article by Mr. Owyang from Forrester outlines the strategic considerations to take into account when sharing your story online. Once again essential reading by Jeremiah. Amen.
