Apr 16, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Social Media
Former CEO of Scandanavian Airlines, Jan Carlzon write a book in the eighties called “Moments of Truth” which reflected the journey of SAS from its commercial deathbed to being the most admired airline in the world. It was a best seller, articulating the then revolutionary idea that each interaction an enterprise had with a customer was a “Moment of Truth” a point at which the consumers experience would shape their attitude and future relationships with a brand.
It occurs to me that it has changed now, and the moment of truth that now matters as much, if not more, is now the point at which a consumer posts, tweets, or other wise publicly records the interaction and their experience with it for others to see, hear, and feed into their memory banks for reference.
The 21st Century has opened up a number of opportunities to interact with consumers Carlzon never anticipated, the referral power of the devices we now routinely use has changed Carlzons Moment of Truth to just the first of many crucial moments.
Apr 15, 2013 | Management, Small business, Social Media
Over the weekend just gone, I was a part of a strategy group setting out to build the marketing plan for an occasional client. There were several guest speakers, one an articulate and persuasive purveyor of what I regarded to be social media snake oil, and so a vigorous debate ensued.
His contention was that every business, particularly SME’s needed to be active on every major SM platform, and that a part of every employees job was to represent the interests of their employer on the various platforms.
Superficially that argument has some attraction, as an advocate of SM for SME’s, it is hard to argue against a proposition that SM is more available than traditional media, and that employees should be engaged and committed, or they ceased to be useful employees.
However, there are three very real arguments against the proposition, all of which I used.
- Not all social media platforms are equal, and they play vastly different roles, attracting users for different reasons, and in different situations. Individually, each platform is just a small piece of the SM pie, but if you try and consume the whole pie, all you get is indigestion. Much better to understand the pie, and go to where the goodies are hidden.
- Then I thought about the senior maintenance engineer who had worked in the business for many years. An enormously competent and committed bloke, and great in a group at the pub, but the owner of a left field sense of what is funny, sometimes even acceptable, and what is not. Encouraging him to be anywhere near the 140 characters of Twitter sends shivers down the spine, but I desperately want him to continue running maintenance
- The clincher, SM is not free, it consumes lots of the most valuable resource an SME has, time. The invoices may be lower than with traditional and paid media, but the commitment of time to do a good job is significant, and most often will attract consulting fees of some sort as SME’s fill the capability gap, which then offers the opportunity to be paying for snake oil, unless you are good at identifying the snakes.
The real management task is to have a very clear business purpose, supported by a few strategies that have evolved from understanding the business, its value proposition, customers, competitors, and operating environment, and making the choices that drive the priorities and resource allocation decisions. Social Media is a part of the mix, an important part, but you need to be putting round pegs in round holes of the right size, and not getting confused about which is what.
Apr 10, 2013 | Change, Communication, Social Media
In the economy of C21, we are far less interested in physical stuff that we are in intangibles.
A measure that will emerge both as one of internal corporate performance, and the performance of markets is the velocity of ideas.
How quickly do the ideas being considered in the executive suite filter to the shop floor, and in what form are they perceived?
How quickly is an initiative taken up by others externally upon which depends the success of the initiative?
This morning I was at a meeting of small businesses, 700 of them, gathering to voice our dismay at the total disenfranchising of small businesses in our political process. Together we employ millions of Australians, are the biggest generator of economic activity, and we create, innovate, and drive the health of the economy, but are ignored.
Hopefully no longer.
By the end of the meeting, the “#toobigtoignore” handle on twitter had generated substantial traction, and the hits on the website www.toobigtoignore.org.au were starting. The velocity of the spread of the ideas expressed will be a key measure for the success of the initiative, and by watching the velocity of the ideas, and the depth of engagement of those reached, will be not just measures of success, but leading indicators of that success.
Ignore the notion of idea velocity at your peril.
Apr 4, 2013 | Marketing, Social Media
I have been intrigued by the differances in material delivered to my inbox, when compared to a colleagues inbox, using the same search terms.
Our lives are run by algorithms, every time we log on, our history, and assumptions based on that history, plays a determining role in what we see, the order in which we see it, and the offers that get delivered.
Given that Maths output is exact, black and white, it is the assumptions made based on the patterns of past behavior that create the differences in the content that individuals have delivered to them.
It proves again the old adage, “what you see is what you get”, albeit in an entirely different context.
Apr 2, 2013 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Are these two separate ideas, or just opposite ends of the same stick?
In a world increasingly driven by data, and as someone who has been known to rant about the necessity of measuring marketing efforts in order to build a better ROI on marketing investments, where does emotion fit in?
Data is a bit like the framework of a house, you can see where the bedrooms and bathrooms are, how big they are, are there any windows, and so on, but that is a sterile, emotionless representation of the home that framework can become. Add some colour, furnishings, a kids teddy on the floor, and the framework becomes a home. It is these additions, the accoutrements of life these added things that all have their own stories that adds the emotion to the framework of the house.
We are rushing headlong into a world run by data, but it would be a mistake to let the pendulum go too far, and overwhelm the emotion, as we live and remember with stories, and memories, data is just the means we use to make them more accessible.
As you contemplate the analytics on your web site, and the data in your CRM system, don’t forget that each data point represents a human story, experience, feeling, and some sort of emotion, and it will add great value when you are able to incorpoare that into he way the data set works.
Mar 27, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business, Social Media
Things move on petty quickly.
It is just a few years ago that even ordinary websites had a reasonable chance of being noticed, and communicate something worthwhile. Not now, a site that just offers static information is as relevant as last weeks chip wrapper.
“Content” suddenly became the next big thing, useful information in graphic and video formats, links to other sites, and research reports to the wazoo, all offered in the interests of “engagement” of the reader. Still pretty useful, but the production of content has become so easy, that most of it around is just crap, and it takes effort to sort through it. Research comes from unknown, unqualified sources, video is largely of the result of a kid with a mobile, there is simply so much of it, that no longer does it easily fit the bill.
Social media of various types now fills the role of information, and engagement. Websites are rapidly becoming the business end of the sales process, and as such must be transactional, their relevance as purveyors of information, is rapidly eroding to that of relevance only in the sence of confirming terms of trade.
A website without a capacity to transact is like a fancy car without an engine, nice for enthusiasts to look at, but no good for getting the shopping.
