Most brands are socially inept

by Martyn Thomas ON 3 September 2012

So you’re hanging out with a bunch of friends at a bar and someone you don’t know wanders over. They ingratiate their way into your group and start talking about themselves. What’s your first reaction?

“Hi, Person We Don’t Know, tell us all about yourself.” Or, more likely, “Who are you and why on Earth should we care?”

Welcome to the challenge faced by brands as they struggle with being socially acceptable. Brands seem quite happy to talk about themselves and be self-seeking in a heavy-handed and awkward kind of manner. This is largely borne out of never having the need or incentive to build relationships with their customers before.

Most brands are socially inept

In the past, the world of brands has been one of ‘react and measure’ as new products and services are ‘sold’ at us. Brands are struggling to change this practice of decades to one of ‘listen, learn and then engage’.

In the brave new world of social media people care most about a human connection with a brand, one that is real, not green-washed or good-washed, and certainly not a marketing message.

Think about the relationships you have. Why do you have them? Whether they are professional or personal, it’s most likely because they add something to your life through love, attitude, knowledge, fun, personality or just because of the vibe.

Try to keep this in mind: Great minds talk about ideas. Average minds talk about things. Small minds talk about people and, unfortunately, there are those that just talk about themselves… which are most brands.

There’s a place for marketing, but on social networks I think people reject being marketed to. They want to sound off, be heard, share their opinion, and communicate. It’s a gentle task to handle which no matter how tech advanced we get, comes down to the basics. Attitude is everything.

Some brands should just not attempt social media because being social is not in their DNA. A true social media strategy (external) can only come from a social business culture (internal).

Don’t lose sight of the basics

So why are brands finding it so tough to get their heads around this? I think it’s because as they scramble to be seen as ‘of the moment’ it’s easy to panic and lose sight of the social niceties.

Have you ever driven your car with no destination? Or had surgery before diagnosing a need? It’s not the way you run a business. But that is exactly what it’s like when you start a social media campaign without a strategy that ties to real customer and real business needs.

I accept that the value some brands can add to their customers’ lives can be challenging on face value. The place to start is to think about the role your brand plays in your customers’ lives, consider the human purpose of your brand and how that makes their lives better.

When you create channels first and get to strategy later, your ‘social’ approach is more likely to fail. By giving yourself no real direction or the ROI accountability of a strategy, your channel has a high probability of dying a very public death.

Social media channels cannot be tests

While there is the lowest barrier of entry to create these channels, they are still living, breathing examples of your company and its reputation. What you do on these channels matters and everyone should be responsible for how that is represented. I’m sure we’d be seeing more considered use of the tools if they weren’t free to start. What if setting up a Facebook brand page cost $5000? Or $50,000? I’m sure we’d see more considered strategies deployed then.

Here’s a look at some brands that get it, others who seem to be socially struggling and others who – to my mind – have a great opportunity but have no presence whatsoever.

Brands that get it

Asos (fashion) asos.com/au

They invite their customers to join the conversation to discover daily fashion news, competitions and sale alerts on Facebook and Twitter, plus, see which new trends are emerging on their street style blog, called Spotted. They encourage people to express their fashion personality to share outfits and inspire and they recently hosted their first Shopalong Google+ Hangout for people to throw questions at their US editor.

The Project (current affairs show) facebook.com/theprojecttv

Frequently receive contentious posts on their Facebook page, which they often address on the live program that night. A recent post from a teacher garnered a lot of likes and comments and resulted in an on-air interview with the teacher. (Here are their rules and regulations which manage expectations and rules of engagement.)

kikki.K (Swedish stationery) facebook.com/kikki.K.Swedish.Stationery

They add value by providing food for thought for journal writing, engaging with their consumers in addition to posting their new products. They help people to become organised, with style and empathy. They do a nice job on Pinterest too, which is the perfect tool to showcase their wares.

Socially Struggling

Car marques

It’s all about them

Have a great opportunity but have no presence whatsoever

New home builders

They seem happy to pay premiums to be the first ad in new home magazines where budget is a key discriminator. Ironically, they build communities out of bricks and mortar but fail to see the social opportunity. First mover advantage to be had here.

Energy companies

The concept of branded energy is confusing so the opportunity to take the high ground for the category is there to be had.

Which other brand categories do you think could be missing a trick?

Turning COI into ROI

by Martyn Thomas ON 30 July 2012

Recently, I looked at the issue of social-COI (cost of inaction) and now we turn our attention to making that first step towards the future and the fundamentals you’ll need to consider on the journey. We’ll see the emergence of a chief content officer and I’ll discuss their role and responsibility in the process.

Today, the whole concept of interruption marketing/advertising/media is massively patronising from a viewer/listener/reader perspective. Sure, once upon a time it was the price we paid for free or subsidised media, but not anymore. Advertising is ‘noise’ and consumers are increasingly able to tune it out and are equally empowered to get the media content they desire.

Renting time and space in editorial properties is not going to cut it anymore.

Even the most ardent luddites in business must accept the need to begin crossing the divide from push-interruption marketing to pull-attraction marketing. So do we continue to make ads and hope for the best or do we take stock of emerging trends and fundamentally have a rethink?

The chasm separating push from pull may look daunting but now is a great time to make the crossing. First, because it’s the smart thing to do and you’re likely to be one of the pioneers in your category to carve out a long term and sustainable competitive point of difference (sounds good?). And secondly, there will come a time when it will be too late to make the crossing because your business is struggling as competitors cross over ahead of you and outflank you (not so good).

There are six fundamentals you’ll need to take stock of in order to make the crossing:

Company culture: shifting from silo-based departments to one of department integration, which can be an uncomfortable shift to make for many businesses. Businesses that make the crossing will enhance and improve their marketing initiatives, spend dollars more effectively and align to meet changing consumer expectations.
Resources and staffing: new skills and new technologies will need to be embraced as marketing shifts to storytelling and content. New skills will emerge within marketing as publishers, producers and community managers.
Budget: Facebook may be free, but nothing ‘just happens.’ Content initiatives will require a significant investment.
Service provider relationships: these become more like partnerships, with collaborative openness and sharing.
Tools vs strategy: the need to differentiate strategy from tools. Don’t lose sight of marketing fundamentals as you move towards the bright shiny objects in this space. The tools will come and go.
Advertising integration: de-emphasise advertising and introduce content to become inter-related. In the next five years content marketing will permeate business so begin the process now. Every company will become a media company. Content builds stronger brands, awareness, trust, purchase intent, word of mouth, customer engagement, lower acquisition costs, reduced calls to the call centre, lower costs for search, lower costs for research etc.

So the challenge is how to get customers (B2C and B2B) tuning in to your brand. There will need to be new demands made of the marketing department and business as emerging technology allows any brand to function as a media company. Technology is now within everyone’s grasp enabling brands to go beyond ad campaigns and generate continual initiatives.

There are three categories of content marketing:

Entertainment, eg. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjc5LFThDTQ

Information/education, eg. http://www.openforum.com/

Being helpful, eg. http://www.charmin.com/find-public-restrooms.aspx

and, all of the above, eg. IBM.

The rise of the chief content officer (CCO)

Content may live in marketing but stories and opportunities flow in from other departments whether it be from the customer coalface of sales and service, or working with partners, attending trade shows, conferences… any significant touchpoint, including, vitally, the CEO and key internal stakeholders.

Subject to the size of a company, the CCO will report to the head of marketing or the CEO and will emerge as a leader to oversee all marketing content initiatives to drive sales, engagement, retention, leads and positive customer behaviour. They are likely to come from a marketing and publishing mindset and be able to think like a publisher to lead the development of ‘customer first’ content initiatives to drive business.

The mark of a good CCO will be their ability to nurture, engage and retain customers, increase new prospects and reduce traditional overheads in the areas of customer service, search marketing, research and traditional media.

Where do you start producing great content?

Begin by listening and learning. You can’t know where you’re going until you know where you are. Conduct a content audit to determine current assets and their SEO potential.

Establish which key words your business needs to gather around. Who’s currently responsible for content (possibly a variety of departments). What’s missing? Could it be more topical, more entertaining? You’ll need an editorial calendar to keep focus, assign tasks and ensure the smooth flow of production. Can you repurpose and reuse existing content to reduce creative costs and maximise reach?

Companies who get it right will become leaders in their field. Through leadership, customers will turn to them for advice as trusted partners/spokespeople for their category.

In time all successful companies will make the crossing from push-interruption to the land of pull-attraction. As I write, some companies are standing around, doing nothing, with an air of curiosity and consideration while others are already across and monetising their content. The first of two great examples of this is Red Bull who are more focussed on their live events, their magazine and generally focussing on content over being a drinks company. The second example is of course our good friends at Blendtec who are monetising their content by selling DVDs of their series Will It Blend?… see an iPad blend here. You don’t need to be big to monetise content.

So where’s your head at? Do you want to mill around and wonder, or do you want to begin the crossing?

Social media cost of inaction (COI)

by Martyn Thomas ON 25 June 2012

The social media party is just warming up as business continues its ongoing transformation. An hour with Google can reveal the potential of embarking on a fruitful social media strategy benefitting businesses and their bottom lines, so why then is first mover advantage still there to be had in most business categories?

Management guru Edward Deming once said, “In God we trust. All others must bring data”. The hero topic in most social discussions is ROI, but I believe the focus should be on COI (cost of inaction). The cost of deliberating, for whatever reason, is always going to be higher than simply opening up collective minds to the undeniable opportunity that is social media.

Brands face an incredibly complex challenge as they have to play with many dials at the same time: traditional ads, digital, web, mobile, apps, social, behavioural. All are tightly intertwined, creating flurries of new metrics: ROI, naturally, but also engagement, sentiment and feelings.

So what possible barriers to entry could there be? What’s stopping businesses from capitalising on the biggest opportunity in decades to leverage a long term competitive advantage over their competitors?

We recently ran a ‘Where are you at with social?’ poll with our data/Twitter base and happily share our top 10 findings:

15% are hesitant to begin using social,
60% have tools in place but no long term strategy,
80% manage their social internally,
30% use social to stay relevant to their consumers,
20% use social for brand building,
20% don’t know much about social or how to start,
28% say convincing internal management is a barrier,
40% say having no resource/budget is a barrier,
40% want to know how to enhance their current offering, and
35% want case studies and examples.

To help overcome social media COI I’ve addressed four stumbling blocks:

the most influential people in companies (CEO’s) don’t believe in social,
social media ROI is difficult to identify,
traditional company cultures/structures are a natural barrier to social implementation, and
very few know how to begin the process of getting it right.

Don’t believe

When it comes to social media the first thing to avoid is the HIPPO (highest paid person’s opinion) syndrome.

In many organisations, the highest paid person in your organisation very often has no clue about social media marketing or believes the IT person actually does this! So when this person dictates strategies and tactics, you’re going to run into trouble.

We’ve witnessed time and time again that the most senior people in business ‘don’t know what they don’t know’ when it comes to most things social. Fair enough, sort of, but at least have the moxie to admit it, or invest some time to upgrade your knowledge.

ROI

In April this year Nielsen published their latest report on ‘Global trust in advertising and brand messages’. A key outcome, charted here, is in response to the question ‘What degree of trust do you place in the following forms of advertising?’

There’s been plenty of comment about this survey and I just want to focus on the top two most trusted sources: recommendations and opinions. I’d imagine that the degree of customers’ engagement and the commensurate cost are top of mind for brands.

Brands can have a credible presence here providing they don’t use the new tools in the old ‘push’ way, and providing they understand how they can add value to their customer base, not just talk about themselves.

The problem for traditional media is that they don’t own these two segments – social networks and consumer websites do. The likes of TV and print (newspapers and mags) which attract an annual investment of approximately $3.5 billion and $3.8 billion respectively, in Australia, are based on a less than ideal engagement metric. For example the all-important TARP metric is based upon the TV being on whilst someone is in the room and a reader is based upon having seen or looked at the front cover.

There’s disconnect here between outcome and cost. My thinking is not about one or the other, rather combining the higher reach/lower engagement traditional media channels with a lower reach/higher engagement social play. Admittedly traditional media still kicks ass but damn it’s expensive, is possibly becoming less effective and the ROI metric is far from ideal. Conversely a well-considered social media strategy can deliver trust and true engagement with metrics such as:

identifying who’s (demographics and location) saying what (opinion, sentiment) and where (forums, news feeds, blogs, Twitter, Facebook etc.),
identifying key category influencers and brand advocates, and
identifying real-time insights for your brand and competitors.

Size of budget has always been a key discriminator, until now. Now it’s about building relationships, something that takes time and cannot be countered with a competitor’s short term investment no matter how sizeable.

Company cultures/structures

Although the marketing department is usually the front door for social media, once it enters a business it should become all pervasive, across all departments (sales, customer service, IT, HR, PR, research, search, promotions, creative etc.) Rather than being 100% of someone’s role, it’s more likely to become 5% of 20 people’s roles.

Subsequently well-established silos within business will become eroded in the quest for an open and collaborative culture both internally and externally with partners and suppliers. Clearly this will take time, particularly in larger businesses.

Such a shift will be regarded as threatening by people who run these silos, generally middle management. The thing is that the shift is inevitable and it’s better to champion the new culture rather than ignore the inevitable. This ring true for anyone?

How to begin?

Well it’s not with the tools. If you’re beginning wondering how to use Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook then you’re starting in the wrong place.

It’s highly preferable to begin with your business’s relationship footprint, internally and externally. You have to understand your business needs, social capacity, establish your ROI metrics, audience analysis, staff guidelines, training and support and stakeholder participation.

This is 101 stuff but seems to be basically ignored. Following the six fundamentals of growing a successful social business is easy – you just need to make the jump.

Continue to disregard social media at your peril. Now is a great time to gain ground on your competitive pack through better understanding your customers. Aim higher than cursory ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ and turn COI into ROI.

The full-service agency is dead. Long live the full-service agency

by Martyn Thomas ON 12 June 2012

Given the rate of change in our industry, now is a good time to be thinking about the future of the service offering (creative, media, digital, search, social, PR etc.) to client partners. This is written from a perspective of having worked at five full-service ad agencies and three media shops over 25 years in London and Melbourne.

If you work in an agency, media shop, digital agency, PR, search or social consultancy, then I imagine you’ll be thinking about some of the issues covered here. If you’re from the client side, then it’s just as relevant because you are the people we strive to partner with. Your business model is equally important as ultimately the future service offering needs to be relevant to your future needs.

Back in the day, the ad agency structure could be summarised as below. Creative solutions were the hero (30 seconds/colour pages etc.) with the account team owning the client relationship. Account planning was emerging and media was a backend function. This status quo meandered on to varying degrees for years until the end of the 20th century.

In 2000, my passion was to re-create a full-service agency with creative-communication thinking at the core, rather than traditional creative. I always felt that starting with the creative concept was putting the cart before the horse. I understood that the words and pictures were the instant gratification bit of advertising that clients liked to focus on, but to my mind, if 90% of marketing budgets were spent on media, why was it only receiving 10% of the client’s interest? Surely starting with the who, what, where and when before developing the creative made more sense?

2000 was a time when several step changes were in play; media independents had established their credentials away from the full-service mother ship and digital agencies began to emerge. As media broke away, so too one of the barriers to entry was removed and we saw creative boutiques make a break for it, closely followed by research shops.

Suddenly clients had some serious service-fragmentation on their hands. The previously cosy reliance on the full-service agency account director became a thing of the past as clients had to juggle their time and invest in better understanding the silos of creative, media, planning, digital, research and production.

Over the years, I think we all benefitted as the quality of clients has improved by virtue of their being better informed, coupled with the need to pull it all together themselves.

A generation has passed and we are starting to see all aspects of media and creative merge – whether it be digital or not. Like globules of mercury, various silos are starting to come together again. At the same time, we are witnessing a game-changer emerge: that is, social media. Anyone who has successfully embraced the potential of social will know the knock-on effect it has way beyond just marketing, and the implications for the agency model.

Social media isn’t a box to be ticked or a department to be manned or even a campaign to be launched. It’s about thinking differently about marketing, customer service and the entire company. It’s about realising that consumers are running the biggest recommendation service in the world and that, as has been tiresomely often repeated, they define the brand (no, this is not new; yes, this is becoming more obvious and important by the day). Today, all thinking about a product, its customers and communications, needs to take this into account – social media cannot sit in a silo.

Social is all pervasive by:

Improving customer service, PR and research through a dynamic customer insights (B2C & B2B),
reducing investment in traditional media and search marketing as communities grow generating content,
converting static web sites to web-based marketing tools with shareable content which in turn drives traffic, and
increasing speed of execution, creativity and innovation to enhance marketing effectiveness and in turn generate sales/leads.

Then we have today. Long live the full-service agency. At the very core of a social business strategy is consumer-centric thinking… finally.

Today’s digital and non-digital ecosystem is a good deal more complex than agencies and clients have ever had to face before. If you accept that social needs to be at the core of consideration (and you may not) then the new full-service agency structure, below, is the way forward.

One of the challenges in the world of fragmentation is that business relationships have become relatively wafer-thin. If you’re a media shop, then you become highly vulnerable to a competitor cutting fees, very much a hot topic at the moment. Likewise if you offer creative services or search marketing, then pricing (often unreasonably) can be a differentiator and catalyst for change.

Much is written about who ‘owns’ social. Many put their hands up but the keys to the long-term-relationship-castle are linked to how deeply we can embed ourselves in the platforms, both internally and externally, of our client partners. Social can power business strategy, not just be seen as part of the marketing mix. If you don’t have direct access to a client’s social properties or work closely with their teams, then you’ll be in trouble. The services we provide today must match what the market demands.

So the question arises as to what skill sets are needed for such a comprehensive full-service agency model. There is no training course anywhere designed to prepare your company for the pace at which this space runs. At FRANk we look for T-shaped people. Such people contribute an area of awesomeness with core skill ability and just as importantly, have an appetite for collaboration, enthusiasm and empathy for the contribution of colleagues.

The common denominator beyond the right skills is the need to deeply understand the culture of service, as well as the language of business, to better understand how clients build theirs.

In 30 years much has changed and the rate of change is one of the single biggest challenges facing agencies, specialist shops (media, digital, search etc.) and client partners. We’re at a stage when senior business leaders are happy to admit that ‘they don’t know what they don’t know’.

This social thing is not going away and first-mover advantage is there for most brands to form long term sustainable points of difference over their competitive set.

Who is going to service their needs? Is it going to be a combination of media shop, creative agency, digital agency, research company, PR and search specialists all claiming to be on board to some degree with social, or is it going to be an integrated full-service offering with T-shaped people within?

Be interesting to hear what other service providers think and of course client partners. I’ll be sure to get back to you.

Social business starts from within

by Mark Cameron ON 29 May 2012

People are at the centre of almost every business. Customers, shareholders, staff and other stakeholders are increasingly having conversations online via social media platforms. So whether you like it or not you are in a social media business. To avoid the risk of not knowing what is being said about your brand, developing a ‘social business’ strategy is vital. Let’s explore some of the elements of what social businesses are doing.

One thing that separates a good company from a great company is how much they focus on the customer. Great companies are relentless in their quest to give the customer what they want. If ‘the customer is always right’ then the fact that 65% of the Australian population is on Facebook might tell you something about what the customer wants. The innovative brands know this and are rethinking how they communicate with their customers. It’s not just about doing media differently – it’s about being social and open.

These businesses are thinking carefully about building ‘sharing’ into every communication their brand has. They see their role now as being part of a conversation, enabling an eco-system of communication around their brand. They are thinking carefully about how to build ‘social design’ into their digital assets to ensure these conversations have the best chance for viral spread.

Social businesses are also embedding social media tools inside the business. Communication platforms like Yammer are enabling teams and individuals business-wide to communicate and collaborate. This is driving innovation by breaking down the traditional approach to internal communications. It allows innovative businesses to develop new KPIs and rewards for highly active and engaged staff members. Having an internal social strategy is not so much about changing the way your staff work, but using technology to increase productivity.

The next frontier in businesses going social is how they communicate with shareholders. This is more relevant for listed companies, but private companies would do well to think through the issues. Shareholders are increasingly communicating online about the strategy of the companies they have invested in. Social businesses are not only encouraging this but trying to enable it. The logic to this is if you can’t stop conversations, which no business can do, then you can participate to reduce risk or even better create the platform for the conversations to extract even more intelligence.

The concept of the social business is now mature enough to draw from the successes and failures of other businesses when developing your strategy. The tools and techniques are now well tested and developed. Creating measurable return on investment models is easily manageable. ‘Going social’ is now less about experimentation and more about developing a competitive advantage. We have seen what happens when industries are slow to respond to the developing digital market. Make sure your business is not struggling to catch up by starting your social business plan now.

Knowledge management and social transformation

by Marketing ON 30 July 2009

For some time I have been banging on about my frustration with social media tools simply being used for marketing purposes while they also have the ability to help transform the way we do business.

The following is a discussion of how different business disciplines have transformed and how marketers can gain a better understanding of social media marketing practices today from looking at the past.

Knowledge management fundamentals

Some 15 years ago I was involved in the knowledge management (KM) discipline. At the time it was an emerging field and a group of us were involved in putting together the Standards Australia Knowledge Management Framework.

Essentially knowledge management was about the creation, transfer and retention of that knowledge primarily within organisations.

The buzzwords of the time included: co-creation, collaboration, CoP (Communities of Practice) – sound familiar? These are words that we often use today in discussions about social media.

Knowledge management implementation barriers

Many of the discussions that we had years ago about how to get people to share their knowledge came up against two critical barriers.

Technology

In 1994 the best we could do was Lotus Notes, we thought it was innovative at the time. We started experimenting with wikis, more innovative intranets but the tools were certainly lacking. Today we have tools such as Twitter, Blogs, RSS, Mashups, Yammer, Facebook, and a variety of wiki platforms.

Attitudes/culture

Encouraging people to share their knowledge was fundamental to the success of the KM program, yet the culture of sharing – even in an online social sense – wasn’t embedded in our culture. Sure there were a few forums but the idea of social networks, review sites etc. didn’t really exist. Today the culture of sharing, contributing and collaborating is embedded in our psyche. We want to share and expect to have our say.

Enter Enterprise 2.0

In the past three years the term Enterprise 2.0 has been bandied around but what is it?

Harvard professor Andrew McAfee coined the phrase Enterprise 2.0, defining it as:

“The use of emergent social software platforms within companies or between companies and their partner or customers”.

The benefits of Enterprise 2.0 are often named as increasing innovation, productivity and ultimately harnessing the collective intelligence of that organisation – certainly KM was a forerunner to this discipline.

How is this relevant to me as a marketer?

As a marketer you are probably aware of social media tools and how they are currently being used to help engage with consumers today i.e. with companies blogging, being involved in Twitter and using different social media monitoring tools to listen to conversations

Many marketers understand these tools as essentially external facing, yet the philosophy behind the benefits and use of these tools was traditionally internal facing (i.e. knowledge management through to Enterprise 2.0). Understanding the history and transition of the varying disciplines gives you a greater understanding of the multiple benefits of the tools.

For example: on a simple level it is good to look at each of the tools your organisation is using such as Twitter, but is this being used for marketing purposes only? Or is it being used as a CRM tool? Are you systematically gathering consumers’ insights that can be fed back to R&D for product development? In short, are you getting the best ROI from these tools?

Enter social business transformation

Recently the esteemed David Armano, a senior partner at Dachis Corp penned a post about business transformation entitled ‘From Social Media to Social Business Design. Essentially the post discussed a shift in thinking – less about media and more about tapping the benefits of being a social business in a purposeful way.

Joint partner in Dachis Corp, Peter Kim also posted recently ‘Reflections on Social Business.

At the core of their new idea is The Social Business Design Framework which captures ecosystem (community), hivemind (culture), dynamic signal (collaboration), and metafilter (content). It is not too dissimilar to the Standards Australia KM Framework that also highlights culture, tools people etc.

So am I saying that Armanos so called new business idea is simply KM? No. There is a fundamental difference. KM was primarily interested in managing internal knowledge sources within a company. The Armano model includes both internal and external knowledge management tools and applications for a more holistic strategy.

Knowledge management (KM) was often discussed as a form of change theory – a discipline that can revolutionise the way we do business. Today with new technologies and cultures aligned with collaboration Social Business Transformation will be possible and marketers can play their part in the revolution.