I just finished the book "The Mobile Mind Shift" by several of my Forrester friends, Ted Schadler, Josh Bernoff and Julie Ask. (If you use that link, you can download the first two chapters for free!) It is a good and timely book about how brands must monitor consumers' changing mobile habits, identify "Mobile Moments," empower employees and transform business processes.
While I recommend this informative book, it left me thinking less about the need for companies to embrace mobile technology and more about how vital it is for them to empower people regardless of channel or technology. The book may have focused on mobile, but I think it says more about the customer mind shift than the mobile mind shift. Brands don't win by being great at mobile but by better serving the customer in every channel! [Tweet that]
This point is underscored by the new 2014 UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study conducted by comScore. You may be surprised to learn that a whopping 61% of consumers still prefer a PC for researching products, and the next most common research channel, preferred by 13% of consumers, is physical stores. Only 1 in 5 consumers prefer smartphones or tablets for research at the current time. The preferences are no different for purchasing products--in fact, consumers are even more oriented to PCs and physical stores for purchase. Just one in nine people prefer to buy on tablets or smartphones.
Of course, consumers will continue to shift to tablets and smartphones for research and shopping, but a substantial portion of your customer base will not be giving up their PCs any time soon. Even when consumers do shift research and shopping preferences to mobile, brands must be careful with their assumptions about what this means. For instance, the same study found that when shopping on mobile devices, more people prefer a retailer’s full website (41%) than mobile websites (34%) or mobile apps (25%).
The mind shift your brand must make is not to be mobile but to be responsive to customers in every channel. [Tweet that] If your brand is shifting to mobile but ignoring users of PCs and those who prefer full websites, you are making a terrible mistake.
Which of these data points is more vital to your brand?
That consumers use apps more than the mobile web or
that consumer do not use many apps?
As you adopt more mobile practices, be careful not to misread the data; for example, too many brands today are racing to launch their own apps. This seems reasonable based on the data that shows apps dominate the mobile web. That's an interesting data point, but here is a better one to help mobile planning at your organization: While Nielsen has documented a substantial 65% increase in time spent with mobile apps over the past two years, the number of apps consumer use has changed very little. Nielsen reports that the average number of apps used per month grew from 23.2 to 26.8 in those same two years. In other words, consumers may be ever more addicted to their Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Candy Crush and Instagram, but they are just not that interested in your app. Unless your customers have a compelling need to interact with your brand regularly while out and about (such as banking or paying with the Starbucks app), a mobile app may not be the best strategy.
The message seems clear: Yes, you need to "get" mobile, but you first need to "get" the customer. Embracing mobile at the expense of other channels is no less a mistake than ignoring mobile. Brands that succeed in the future won't be "mobile first;" they will be "customer first." [Tweet That] This means furnishing value in whatever channel customers wish (mobile web, mobile apps, traditional web, physical, social, email, wearable) and in whatever way consumers wish (meaning both the traditional ownership economy and, increasingly, the new collaborative economy, as well.)
There is a pervasive attitude in business nowadays that companies are not adjusting quickly enough to the adoption of smartphones. I agree that is a risk, but I don't think that is the biggest risk companies face today. After all, companies scrambled 15 years ago to adopt to consumers' Web mind shift, but many did so in the most vapid of ways, launching static websites and banner ad campaigns rather than changing how they conducted business in a digital world. While Borders used the web to market its physical stores and books, Amazon made buying and downloading books easier--Borders made a web mind shift, but Amazon made a customer mind shift.
If companies launch mobile mobile apps that merely cut and paste today's web functionality into an app, they should not be surprised when they fail. Sure, Sears can launch a mobile app so people can shop on their phone, but how many people are going to boot up a Sears app regularly? Compare that to Amazon's new Firefly feature on the Fire phone, which uses the phone's camera to identify products in the real world and instantaneously provide links to that product in the Amazon Marketplace. Retailers that simply offer traditional web shopping in an app are making a mobile mind shift, but that will do little to combat Amazon as it continues to lead the customer mind shift in retail.
The mobile mind shift demands that brands use mobile technology, but a customer mind shift may suggest other ways to win the customer. For example, Sears has spent the past decade cutting in-store staff to a bare minimum (or below) to try to keep costs in line with shrinking margins in bricks-and-mortar retail. (Sears head count per store is now less than half the industry average.) But think about the brands that are succeeding in physical retail--Restoration Hardware, HomeGoods, Kate Spade and Lane Bryant lead the market in sales per square foot growth, and they didn't achieve that by offering a poor customer experience.
Oh, and hey @Sears, aside from the terrible service & tardiness, they also left the fridge like this. Um, excuse me? pic.twitter.com/6je0RF5zwy
— Cristin McGrath (@CristinMcGrath) September 1, 2013
At Sears Eaton Centre lady's shoe disaster zone, Charlie Brown's Xmas song is playin & now I am soso sad. #xmasblues pic.twitter.com/trFqWkIlDb
— April Wozny (@aprilwozny) November 23, 2013
A new mobile app may help physical retailers a bit, but it will take more than an iPhone and Android offering to stem Sear's bleeding. (Sears Holdings' market cap is down more than 80% in the last six years.) The only way for Sears to respond to a mobile mind shift of smartphones with showrooming apps is to provide a unique, differentiated, value-added experience in the physical space. Having the proper staff and offering digital in-store assistance is the way to keep people shopping and buying in the real world (where 94% of all retail still happens in the US!), which means Sears' most pressing need is not to make a mobile mind shift but a customer mind shift!
Explore more SHLD Data at Wikinvest
I am not arguing against the mobile mind shift, but hasn't the time come to stop worrying so much about channels and instead focus more on the customer? Tomorrow's customers will be more mobile, of course, but they will also be more social, more digital, more inclined to rent and share than to buy and own, more demanding that brands earn their trust and have higher expectations that brands will act proactively and in real-time to resolve problems.
Go ahead and launch your mobile app, but if you are counting on that to keep your brand relevant, I respectfully submit you will be deeply disappointed.
A new report from Forrester’s Nate Elliott reveals what many of us in social business have long suspected: Brands may be using Facebook for marketing, but they are not particularly happy with the success they are seeing.
Forrester surveyed 395 marketing executives from the US, UK and Canada about the business value derived from 13 different online marketing sites and tactics. The outcome was that, “Facebook offered less value than anything else on our list.” Just how dissatisfied are marketers with Facebook? Even Google+ marketing is rated higher!
The report, “Why Facebook is Failing Marketers” (free for Forrester subscribers), notes that more than seven in ten marketers already post updates to a branded Facebook page and approximately half buy paid ads on the social network. Despite this, marketers report Facebook is furnishing disappointing business value and that Facebook ads “generate less business value than display ads on other sites.”
Forrester notes that Facebook status updates are delivered to just 16% of a brand’s Facebook fans; by comparison, the average opt-in marketing email delivery rate exceeds 90%. In the footnotes, Elliott notes, “It’s safe to say that if your email service provider was only delivering messages to 16% of your mailing list, you wouldn’t think twice before firing them.”
The report concludes with recommendations for marketers and Facebook. I hope both parties are listening, because if big marketers yank their ad dollars and Facebook fails to evolve their ad products, Forrester predicts a further degrading user experience on Facebook.
What I really liked about this report is that it does not simply stop at what marketers are saying but also digs into how significantly Facebook’s potential to change advertising has been missed. As I noted in my post earlier this month, “Facebook's Missed Opportunity to Change Advertising As We Know It,” Facebook had promised to change the very nature of advertising with new forms of marketing based on social signals. Today, however, the social network offers advertising almost undifferentiated from that available on other highly trafficked websites. “Only approximately 10% to 15% of the ad impressions delivered on (Facebook) use social connections as a form of targeting,” according to a Facebook executive, leading Elliott to note that the social network “has become a Web 1.0-style ad seller.”
For more information on Forrester’s survey of marketing executives and what marketers and Facebook should do to improve marketing value on the social network, check out Nate Elliott’s blog post or buy or download the report at http://bit.ly/WhyFacebookIsFailingMarketers.
As a former research analyst, I see a lot of reports and white papers. Many frustrate me with weak analysis, dubious data and suspect methodologies. I find some reports informative and thoughtful. But it is the rare research report that I find not just vital but also inspiring. Forrester’s new report, “Financial Service Brands Fail To Earn TRUE Consumer Trust,” is one of those rare reports. I recommend that brand, product and service leaders in the financial service industry get their hands on this Forrester publication. (Subscribers to Forrester’s Social Technographics can download it for free; others may purchase it for $499.)
Forrester’s TRUE Brand Compass explores consumers’ attitudes about specific brands, evaluating the extent to which the brands command preference, referral and price premiums. Together, these success metrics combine to create what Forrester calls “brand resonance.” To arrive at a brand’s resonance, Forrester evaluates it on four attributes -- being trusted, remarkable, unmistakable, and essential.
By evaluating consumers’ responses within an industry vertical, Forrester can identify those attributes that are most important for driving brand preference, referral and price premium within that category. In the past, Forrester has performed its TRUE Brand Compass research for verticals such as health and beauty and food and beverage. Now, the research firm is applying its TRUE Brand Compass to financial services.
It will come as no surprise, I am sure, that being trusted is the attribute that drives the most brand resonance for financial service firms. Of course, trust is no small challenge for the finserv industry right now; as the report notes, we are in “an era where the reputation of many financial institutions has been tarnished,” and as a result, “financial service brands must work harder than ever before to regain consumer trust in their brand.” (For some examples of how financial service firms are working to solve the trust gap, check out my blog post and presentation deck from the recent LIMRA/LOMA Social Media conference.)
The Forrester study finds that being a trusted brand in financial services helps to build advocacy and preference, but that is not sufficient to create pricing power. To earn a premium price, brands have to become essential by making themselves irreplaceable in consumers’ financial lives. How? I know this is going to rock your world, but Forrester says the secret is “having products and services that meet (customer) needs, producing the highest-quality products/offerings, and providing good value for the money.” (Shocking, I know!)
The meat and potatoes of this thoughtful and informative report is the TRUE Brand Compass data furnished on specific brands such Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, Fidelity, Capital One, Citi and Bank of America. A few of these brands are doing well, creating brand resonance, trust and pricing power, but Forrester found that seven of the 10 financial service brands surveyed are laggards.
Forrester’s TRUE Brand Compass approach and findings are especially relevant to the financial service industry as it continues to struggle to win back trust after the 2008 financial crisis. Five years into our weak economic recovery, the industry still has a great deal of work to do to encourage greater trust. Social media can be part of the solution, but it is just as likely to be a driver of problems until financial service companies succeed in earning greater advocacy, improved Word of Mouth and more trust.
For more on this report, please see Tracy Stokes’ blog post on Forrester.com, or download/purchase the full report at http://bit.ly/ForresterFinServTRUE.
If there’s one reason we have done better than of our peers in the Internet space over the last six years, it is because we have focused like a laser on customer experience, and that really does matter, I think, in any business. It certainly matters online, where word of mouth is so very, very powerful.
Jeff Bezos
photo credit: niallkennedy via photopin cc
This quote from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos represents a sort of "north star" for me--user experience is a guiding principle upon which I set my professional compass. Give people what they want and make it easy, and you succeed. At least, that's the theory, but in the last few years, I have come to feel my compass does not always align to the actions of today's most popular online services. Some have lost the customer experience religion, and I predict a few of our top digital services may soon have "come to Jesus moments" with their increasingly annoyed and neglected customer bases.
The user experience of many top sites and services has become mediocre, and this is happening at a time when the tools of competition have never been more available or less expensive. The growth of social and mobile technology, advent of wearable tech, arrival of the sharing economy, rise of cloud services and ever-lowering cost of developing scalable digital products will bring new and better alternatives. I have been lucky to attend many of the New York Tech Meetups in the past year, and the creativity, power and polish of these tiny startups demonstrate that there are many capable Davids looking to defeat today's overly confident Goliaths.
I predict a wave of change in the next several years. Either the functionality and usability of the sites and tools we all love and use will evolve rapidly, or consumers will soon adopt new sites and tools to love and use. Some will argue the companies I cite as examples have grown too big and have too much traffic and too many users to fail, and to them I say this: Monster.com, Myspace, Goecities, Prodigy, AOL and Excite. This last site is an excellent example, because many people today would be hard pressed to recall Excite, but the company reached a peak market valuation of $35 billion in 1999, more than LinkedIn's or Yahoo's market cap today. No one is safe--even the most popular online services can lose loyal customers to competitors offering better customer experience.
It is hard to understand why some businesses need to relearn the importance of customer experience when the lessons are still so fresh. Bezos' observation tells the story of why some online firms succeeded and others failed, both in the halcyon days of the dot-com boom and the distressing years following the bust. Prodigy and Excite, with their pages full of blinking and distracting ads, are gone, while Google's clean, white interface lives on. A thousand e-tailers went bust, but the transparent consumer ratings and one-click purchasing of Amazon earns ever more customers and retail dollars.
But even if one is not familiar with recent history, the importance of customer experience is evidenced by a constant barrage of studies and surveys:
The Temkin Group studied the attitudes of 10,000 US consumers and found that "Customer experience leaders have more than a 16 percentage point advantage over customer experience laggards in consumers’ willingness to buy more, their reluctance to switch business away, and their likelihood to recommend."
In the Business Impact of Customer Experience, Forrester estimates that moving from below-average customer experience to above average would yield more than $3 billion of annual revenue benefit for wireless carriers, more than $1 billion for hotels, $262 million for insurers and $227 million for retailers. Forrester further finds that brands are not performing well in this regard--its 2013 Customer Experience Index found that 61% of brands rank okay, poor or very poor in customer experience compared to just 8% that rank excellent.
The 2013 Edelman Trust Barometer found that consumers value companies that "listen to customer needs and feedback"--this attribute ranked a mere one percentage point behind "quality products and services," and the gap between consumer expectations and company performance was much larger.
According to the 2011 Customer Experience Impact (CEI) Report, commissioned by RightNow and conducted by Harris Interactive, 86% of buyers will pay more for a better customer experience, but only 1% of customers feel that vendors consistently meet their expectations. The same study found that 89% of consumers began doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience and 79% of consumers who shared complaints about poor customer experience online had their complaints ignored.
Accenture recently found that the performance of digital orientation in high-growth companies is 21% greater than in negative sales growth companies. CMOs in high-growth companies have found a less turbulent path by working across the organization to infuse a digital focus in all business processes and functions and improving the digital customer experience.
Avaya released a 2013 study that found 63% of consumers say they would be extremely likely to continue spending money as a result of an exceptional customer experience, while almost half are extremely likely to stop spending money with companies as a result of a bad customer experience.
It is obvious customer experience is paramount, but someone needs to remind today's most popular web sites and digital services. I think three services are on the bubble in the next three to five years, and the rest of this week I will explore how Groupon, Yelp and Facebook may be facing customer experience crises that could hurt their bottom line and limit future growth potential.
These three are hardly alone--in recent months I've had frustrating experiences with the web sites and customer service processes with a variety of firms, from giants like Sprint and Comcast to tiny upstarts like Pebble. Still, Groupon, Yelp and Facebook are good companies to focus on because all have risen quickly and have much to lose if the companies do not rapidly improve customer experience.
In the next few days, I hope the lessons learned about these three companies may provide you with some guidance and ideas to implement at your own organizations. As always, I welcome your input about the companies you see as being at risk due to disappointing customer experience and the ways you feel customer experience will affect business in the coming years.
I published my first-ever post using Storify. I found it more than a little difficult to use, but I'm glad I finally got around to giving it a test drive.
Here is the post, which is about the wildly contradictory data around the association between social media and purchase decisions. It includes links and data from over a half dozen studies, surveys and research reports. Some show social drives substantial purchase behavior; some could find evidence for almost no association between the two.
In three days, it will be the two year anniversary of my first blog post on Experience: The Blog. Originally intended to be an exploration of experiential marketing strategies, my interest and focus quickly turned to social media and how the growth of the peer-to-peer groundswell creates challenges and opportunities for marketers. It is apt to recall on how my blog started as one thing and became another, because change is in the air again. I'd like to reflect on that change, put it into context and invite you to join me as I shift my blog publishing to a new address.
A month ago, news broke that Forrester would be altering its blog policies and analysts would shift their industry-related blogging into a new, common platform on Forrester.com. I posted at the time that I believed aggregating Forrester's thought leadership in one place made sense and that I was eager to continue blogging, sharing news, and building my reputation within the new Forrester blog.
The reaction was swift and emotional. Hundreds of tweets and blog posts weighed in on the topic; a few supported the new blogging policies, but most did not. One person tweeted I was "licking the boots of (my) corporate paymasters," and a friend sent an email with heartfelt condolences at the loss of my blog. I ignored the tweet and assured my friend that I was not progressing through any of the stages of grief (unless bemusement was one of those stages.)
The reaction was interesting on several levels. First of all, there seemed to be a knee-jerk backlash to the very concept of corporate rules for social media. The idea that corporate policies don't have a place in social media is patently ridiculous and ignores the responsibility companies have to protect against legal, reputation and brand harm.
Many observers made rather wild assumptions about the intent of the new policy, drawing incorrect conclusions that analysts posting to the new Forrester platform would no longer be free to share their thoughts without constraint. This is also silly--how could it possibly benefit Forrester to restrain analysis, dialog and thought leadership? Those are the very things that create value, demand and differentiation for Forrester's services.
Lastly, there were detractors who implied Forrester's actions were designed to undermine analysts' abilities to build their brands and reputation. I find this accusation lacking for reasons far greater than that I still have my own blog with my own name and my own thoughts. In fact, I was particularly bothered by this argument because of what it implied: That my reputation, personal brand and value were inexorably bound to an Internet domain.
To paraphrase the movie "The Elephant Man," I am not a URL; I am a human being! Wherever I go in life, my experience, knowledge, reputation, abilities, value, and personal brand go with me. "Experience: The Blog" doesn't contain Augie Ray; I contain it. And later this week when I meet with a Fortune 100 organization to discuss their social media opportunities, it won't be my Twitter feed or domain address they care about but my ability to consider their situation, analyze the research conducted by Forrester, and draw insights and recommendations that drive their business.
My blog has not come to the end of the road; it's just changing lanes. If you subscribed to "Experience: The Blog" I invite you to join me at Augie Ray's Blog for Interactive Marketers (or subscribe to my blog's RSS feed). I hope to see you at the new URL and (as always) welcome your comments, feedback, criticisms and ideas.
[This blog post has been cross-posted with my new Forrester blog at:http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/my-first-forrester-report-tapping-the-entire-online-peer-influence-pyramid.html]
Three months after starting at Forrester, my first report for Interactive Marketers is now available: Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. Forrester subscribers can click the link to read about the Peer Influence Pyramid, which describes and shares recommendations about three types of online influencers: Social Broadcasters, Mass Influencers and Potential Influencers.
Each of the three types of influencer is important to marketers, and each must be engaged in a different manner. Social Broadcasters are appealing because of their large followings, but they tend to assist more with awareness than with preference. Mass Influencers are a new category of influencer--28 million in number in the U.S. alone--created thanks to the scale afforded consumers by social media tools. (I'll be sharing more about Mass Influencers in my next Forrester report.) Finally, the vast majority of social media participants are Potential Influencers, people who have modest networks rich with trust.
For me, the publication of this report marks the end of a long journey and the beginning of another. I started this report back in September, before I was even a Forrester employee. As part of the recruiting process, Forrester requested I write and present a report that demonstrates the sort of research and analysis I would offer to Forrester clients. Version one of the report did the trick and I was hired.
At that point, it seemed the "Peer Influence Pyramid" report might be polished and published within a matter of weeks, but instead it took over three months; I have lost count, but I think the report now available on Forrester.com is version number seventeen. One reason for the time and edits is that Forrester reports adhere to a very particular style of writing. I am having to unlearn some bad habits and enjoying my continued development as a writer.
Another part of the challenge was that Forrester has a rich history of research on the topic of influence. Before Forrester could release my report, the concepts and language I developed independently as a job candidate needed to reflect and expand upon the work done by my new peers and those who came before me at Forrester.
Most importantly, I learned that Josh Bernoff had just completed some new and fascinating research on the topic of influence in social media. That research was conducted for the upcoming book Groundswell HEROes, a follow up to the popular and very informative Groundswell. This good luck in timing afforded me the opportunity to work with Josh and leverage some groundbreaking research to further guide and strengthen the ideas within my report.
A lot of time, effort, and consideration went into Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid. I hope Forrester subscribers find it informative and interesting. Within a month, I will be sharing some news about my second report, which dives even deeper into the new category of influencer--the Mass Influencer.
[I just posted my second blog post since joining Forrester, this time on the Marketing Leadership Blog. You'll find this same blog post cross-posted athttp://blogs.forrester.com/agencies/2009/12/social-media-is-the-new-super-bowl-pepsi-refresh-and-what-it-means-to-marketers.html]
If you track Social Media news, I'm sure you saw the eye-catching headline: "Pepsi's Big Gamble: Ditching Super Bowl for Social Media". For the first time in 23 years--23 years!--the brand will not be purchasing a Super Bowl spot. Instead, it is sinking $20M into a Social Media program called Pepsi Refresh. The Pepsi Refresh site will allow people to vote for worthwhile community projects, and Pepsi expects to sponsor thousands of local efforts via this program.
What does this news mean to marketers? Some potential ramifications (and non-ramifications) include:
No, this doesn't mean TV is going away, but it will be fighting for marketing dollars on an increasingly level playing field with Social and Interactive tactics. Despite the meltdown in traditional media, TV advertising will continue to be a big line item in the marketing budget for top consumer brands, but expect it to continue to shrink as a portion of the overall marketing budget. Shar VanBoskirk said it well: "Advertising budgets will decline. But marketing investments won't." Moreover, as Lisa Bradner points out in her report, Adaptive Brand Marketing, the era of annual TV budgets is ending. Expect more iterative budget setting based on "test and learn" cycles where the best and most successful ideas can quickly command more funding regardless of channel.
Social Media programs don't begin and end with Social Media: There can be a mistaken assumption that Social Media Marketing means brands being on Twitter and Facebook. As the Pepsi program demonstrates, Social Media is the means to an end, and not the end itself.
It doesn't matter that you have followers, fans, or a community; those are assets, not return. It is how you use those assets that matters. In Pepsi's case, they've clearly found a way to gain new followers and fans, but that's not the objective of the program; instead, the brand is putting Social Media to work for a higher goal--making the world a better place and associating the brand with that vision.
Social Media measurement = brand measurement: Do you think Pepsi is going to measure the effectiveness of this program merely by how many fans or page views they get? They may count retweets, but what are the chances the $20M investment will be evaluated based upon 140-character pass-alongs?
The success of this program won't be measured primarily with Social Media metrics (fans, followers, RTs, votes, etc.) but on traditional brand and marketing metrics. How much PR does Pepsi earn from the program and the funding of thousands of community projects? How many people hear about the program, and how does it affect their purchase intent for the brand? How many points increase does Pepsi see when it asks questions such as, "Pepsi is a brand that cares about me and my community?" and "Pepsi is a brand I'd recommend to friends?" Does the brand see a lift in sales? Those are the types of metrics that matter in this (or most every other) marketing program. My peer Nate Elliot points out that you must "choose metrics based on objectives rather than technologies."
Another nail in the coffin of merely likable advertising. Super Bowl advertising has become its own kind of sport. Shortly after the big game, the scoreboard goes up (USA Today's Ad Meter) and the winning team does an end zone victory dance (agency press releases bragging about the results). All this hullabaloo implies that ads are entertainment and likability is all that matters, but it is just one element--and hardly the most important--in effective advertising.
Pepsi's actions demonstrate a commitment to something deeper than jokey ads. Pepsi is betting the brand can win by making a deeper connection (consumer involvement versus seeing an ad) for a greater purpose (making the world a better place versus a laugh at the end of a 30-second spot.) As my online friend Brandon Sutton recently wrote on his blog, "Instead of trying to get clever with your messaging, why not try thinking smarter by understanding how humans think and behave and how your brand fits into the bigger picture of this dynamic?"
Social Media changes everything. Social Media alters the playing field for everyone within the enterprise; formerly successful strategies and tactics are being challenged, while old and tired methodologies are getting new legs. For example, Best Buy is using Social Media to improve its customer support in new ways; Starbucks is embracing consumers' ideas and driving innovation and loyalty; and, as we see, Pepsi is using Social Media to give new energy to cause marketing.
Cause marketing is hardly new, but Social Media gives brands the ability to power it in new ways. Previously, cause marketing tended to be about a company making a donation and leveraging that for PR, advertising and in-bound links. Today, cause marketing can be about embracing customers' values and ideas about how to spend charitable dollars and then energizing consumers and employees to get involved and make a difference. Social Media offers us new ways to breathe life into this old marketing idea!
Early next year we'll find out how Pepsi's decision to trade the Super Bowl for Social Media plays out, but it's already earned the brand enormous visibility. Articles about their decision can be found on ABC, CNN, NPR, Reuters, AP, Wall Street Journal, and others. Of course, the first brand to dump Super Bowl advertising in place of Social Media marketing will earn headlines; the fifth brand to do so will not.
So, how are you going to use Social Media to give old tactics and strategies new life in 2010?
Social Media practitioners use the word “transparency” frequently, but it seems to mean different things to different people. To me, transparency isn’t something organizations bring to their Social Media efforts but instead is a fundamental change in corporate mindset being accelerated by Social Media’s growth and adoption. It isn’t a choice made on Twitter but the way an organization may choose to live. In short, transparency is a principle, not a strategy or tactic. Some recent experiences with Fullhouse and Forrester, my current and future employers, have helped me to recognize the meaning, value, and importance of transparency.
Over the past two months, I’ve had the very good fortune to be part of the intensive recruiting process of market research firm, Forrester. As readers of Experience: The Blog know, I will start with Forrester in the San Francisco Bay area in mid-November. I feel very lucky and excited to be joining a firm I hold in high regard.
There are many reasons that I respect Forrester, but one is quite personal: the smart and respectful way their analysts responded to a blog post in which I critiqued their guidance on Sponsored Conversations (AKA Paid Blog Posts). I noted that they support Sponsored Conversations on blogs, so I jokingly offered to pay Forrester for coverage on their own Groundswell blog. Of course, I knew Forrester would never accept such an offer, but I hoped my approach might spark dialog about one of the hottest topics in Social Computing.
It certainly would have been easy enough to consider me a nuisance and opt for an opaque or translucent response, such as ignoring the post, contacting me privately, dismissing me as incorrect or uninformed, or perhaps even firing off a “cease and desist” letter to demand I discontinue quoting material from the Groundswell blog. Instead, Josh Bernoff and Sean Corcoran responded both on my blog and on the Forrester blog, and they did so in a public way, inviting response and interaction from others and engaging in open dialog.
Josh and Sean lived the transparency they recommend to their clients; they treated all voices in the debate as equal and informative, discussed rather than defended, listened, and considered. Not only did my deliberately cheeky blog post not earn their animosity, it was among the reasons they included me as a candidate for the analyst opening.
Meanwhile, as the recruiting process with Forrester grew more serious, I made the decision to be transparent with my current employer, Fullhouse. I felt I could be open about my career opportunity because the agency is a caring and transparent place. Of course, my bosses were not excited about the possibility of losing an agency leader, but they opted for support and transparency over alternatives such as showing me the door or making it difficult to take the time I needed to meet with Forrester. In the words of my boss, “Had you told me you were interviewing with the agency across the street, I’d kick your ass, but I recognize why Forrester would be such a great fit for you.”
By making transparency a part of the culture at Fullhouse, its leaders gained quite a lot: They were aware of and could plan for my departure rather than finding it a surprise; they fostered an environment of trust and respect; they reinforced why Fullhouse is such an excellent place to work; and they made my decision more difficult. Fullhouse may have lost an employee, but they continue to have a raving fan.
For Forrester and Fullhouse, transparency is a part of the culture and is represented by their care for those inside and outside the organization, their willingness to meet stakeholders halfway, the respect they demonstrate for individuals and ideas, and a commitment to live by principles that consider others’ interests, not just their own.
Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting once shared his definition of a principle, and it is one that stuck with me: “A principle isn’t a principle unless it could potentially cost you money.” Transparency can certainly cost an organization money in the short run, but a commitment to transparency will bear benefits in the end.
In an increasingly social world, brands and companies cannot build networks, earn trust, create fans, or foster influence through defensiveness, self-interest, close-mindedness, or other opaque attitudes and actions. Transparency isn’t easy, but as demonstrated by Fullhouse and Forrester, transparency is a principle that is increasingly vital in a world of frictionless communication.
As some of you who follow my Tweet stream may know, I am leaving Fullhouse (a place I love full of bright people I respect) for an exciting new opportunity; I'll be joining Forrester's Foster City (Bay area) office as a Sr. Analyst of Social Computing.
You may have noticed that my blog production has been down a bit recently; that's because Forrester's recruiting process is thorough and time consuming, but also very fun and exciting. I got the chance to write my first Forrester report and then present it in their Cambridge, MA home office. (I hope to share more about this report--exploring the relationship between trust, influence, and scale in Social Media--in the future.)
I found the experience of researching and writing a report to be very similar to the process I've used on this blog, only with Forrester there are some tight (and very helpful) guidelines. Also, while blogging has been a solitary endeavour, the Forrester process is collaborative. I've always been conscious of the challenges and limitations of being a one-person research, writing, editing, and proofing team, so working on the Forrester report with another person's input was different and enjoyable.
I intend to continue to maintain this blog in the future, but the coming couple of weeks will be challenging ones as I finish up with Fullhouse, move 2,189 miles, and begin my new and exciting career at Forrester. Please continue to monitor this blog, where I hope to share observations about my transition to Forrester, explore report ideas, convey Social Media news and insights, and ask for input and guidance from my readers.
If any of you have thoughts on what you expect from a good analyst, topics that I should explore, contacts I ought to make, or even tips on the Bay Area (I'll be settling in San Mateo, 20 miles south of San Francisco), please feel free to email me (augie --at-- mkeray.com) or comment here. While ExperiencetheBlog.com may not get my full attention for a few weeks, I am committed to keeping it an exciting, informative, helpful, and interesting spot for Social Media, Social Marketing, and Social Computing commentary.
