Customer Complaints At The Speed Of Light

Word of Mouth no longer travels at the speed of sound. It travels at the speed of light. There is a lot of talk across the internet and in marketing meetings that focuses on the question ‘what can social media do for me’? Track any marketing blog and it will often contain lists of helpful suggestions about how your organisation can leverage (did I really use that word!) social media to benefit your business.

Country music singer Dave Carroll reminds marketing executives used to focusing on pushing what they want to say onto customers that another key social media question they need to ask themselves is ‘what can social do to me’?

There is often more than one version of the truth when it comes to a Brand. There is often a difference between what what the brand owner would like you believe about the brand and the reality of the experience. There is often a story of bad service experience waiting to be spread around the globe at the speed of light. It seems that bad service experiences aren’t called ‘moments of truth’ for nothing.

As Tim Weber BBC Business Correspondent points out:

“These days one witty Tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video – forwarded to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse – can snowball and kill a product or damage a company’s share price.”

Businesses need to be mindful that a powerful combination of sociological and technological change is occurring. The norm for customers and consumers is going to be complete and comfortable familiarity with social media, high quality video production tools, use of sophisticated instant communications applications and an increasing sense of realisation that they can and will have an effect. The fundamental difference is that these are personal skills, not team, departmental or organisational skills, not skills that only geeks and the I.T. department have. These are skills that customers of future are learning at elementary school, skills that will be learned long before they attend a high school or graduate business studies course.

Taylor Guitars certainly ‘get it’.

The Penny Drops About Social Media & Networking

Its funny how you think you understand something and then you have an experience which gives you a new and deeper grasp of what’s actually going on.

The other day I had the good fortune to spend a little time with some people who work for the Woodland Trust. These people are at the forefront of what I would call ‘Cause Related Marketing’ in the digital space. They have a really deep sense and understanding of the notion community engagement and how getting it right can transform the sense of a Brand in the mind and experience of key stakeholders.

If you glance back at previous posts on this blog you will find that a common theme is a questioning of the validity and effectiveness of the so called traditional ‘managerialist’ mindset. In particular there is an implied concern that ‘career marketeers’ remain broadly unaware of the philosophical foundations on which their ideas and actions stand.

Let me make myself clear before going on. I am all for gathering helpful evidence, I am all for metrics and trying to articulate the likely return on a resource investment and I don’t think self indulgent creativity has a place in organisations with specific goals and purposes. Crucially though the ‘metrics’ should help not hinder (Norton and Kaplan) the achievement of goals, they should leave room for entrepreneurial spirit and innovation, not strangle it to death. There has to be the will and realisation in any organisation that the future can’t be known with absolute certainty and that re-ploughing the same furrow might keep you on the safe and familiar but it results in increasingly deeper furrows that are harder to get out of.

Now I realise that ‘bottom lines’, ‘bums on seats’, ‘cash in boxes’ are unequivocal measures of immediate effectiveness. They are also very short term and very simplistic. When I worked in the gaming industry people claimed to make rational decisions on the R.O.I. of the product purchases they made on a weekly basis. Sure enough there was a correlation between value and volume. What nobody could explain was the ‘affinity’ that buyers had for certain brands that guided their purchase decisions when the ‘numbers’ weren’t so clear cut. This affinity made a monetary difference over the longer term.

Affinity is subjective. Causes are subjective. A ‘Cause’ is an emotional concept. It is an ‘attitude object’ held in the mind of the individual. Causes are inextricably tied to people’s sense of identity and purpose. These are the deepest of values. People support causes with money if and only if they ‘believe’ in them. That’s not to say there aren’t utilitarian reasons for supporting a charity such as tax benefits or educational benefits. Nonetheless people can choose where to put their charity dollar, and supporting a belief runs deeper than a mere exchange of cash.

If you aren’t measuring values, affinity and beliefs as well as financials its like just measuring someone’s height and overlooking their diet to check how healthy they are.

You only have to dip into the digital space to see that there is a continuous conversation about justifying social media and networking activities, about how to convince the unconvinced. Give the decision makers the ‘numbers’ and they will jump on board is the line of some. Many nevertheless have a strong sense that is only part of the story because the ‘social space is different’. This line invariably gets shot to pieces because traditional ‘marcomms’ see it as not very different at all, just old wine in new bottles, what we’ve always done…but with a computer or mobile phone.

This is where the penny needs to drop.

We can talk about getting customers, consumers, subscribers to engage, to take part in the conversation, to have a sense of community. We say we need to get them ‘to engage’, ‘to converse’ to join ‘the community’. Two things to ponder here. Firstly traditional marcomms minded managers might pay lip service to these notions because they are new and trendy, yet they will revert to media management type when doing the day job. Second if you talk about digital marketing in this way you are unwittingly expressing yourself in typical positivistic objective management language therebye unwittingly reinforcing the ‘status quo’.

The point is that digital marketing is done ‘with’ others not ‘to’ them. There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’ in the traditional seller and buyer sense of the arrangement. The people who work for a cause are not separate and different from the people who support the cause, they are one and the same. The cause is the unifying theme. This has profound implications for traditional product and service industries too. There are glimpses of this with for example Apple workers, customers and fans, and Norton motorcycle workers, customers and fans. (see Adamson, Garry; Jones, Warwick; Tapp, Alan. Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management, Jan2006, Vol. 13 Issue 2)

It has a basis in ethical trading and a sense of providing value and service, of care and concern for others rather than seeing them as a financial resource from which to extract as much cash as quickly as possible.

What digital marketing seems to be saying is that the issue is not ‘what’ money should we make but ‘how’ we should make it. Traditional marketing may have developed relationship and service flavours in its migration from 1960s consumer marketing. Maybe ‘community marketing’ is a conceptual evolution of marketing in the making. An ethically grounded way of doing business. Conventional business might take a serious look at charities and causes as a way to enhance their brands.

The Woodland Trust are walking the talk.

Of Course Social Media Is A Waste Of Time and Money

There is little point in attempting to provide an objective and rational justification for some of the things we do as marketing professionals, because that isn’t always the exclusive aim of the things that are done.

As you listen and watch be mindful of how you feel and what you are thinking about. Perhaps you feel ‘moved’, ‘connected’, ‘inspired’, ‘tearful’, ‘warm’, ‘uplifted’ or something else. God forbid you feel ‘human’! The clue is in the title….social….media.

Getting people to feel connected to a brand (aka value promise) is a crucial aim of competitive marketing. Social Influence experts use our sense of connection and solidarity by making it easier for us to relate to people with similar attitudes. This is known as the Granfalloon technique. Granfalloon was originally a perjorative term invented by author Kurt Vonnegut to describe “a group of people who outwardly choose or claim to have a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless”.

Marketeers use the method to suggest meaningful connections. A good example being Boots using ‘Here Come The Girls’. The Stand By Me – play for change video invites us to chunk right up to a feeling social connectivity with the whole world. Aw…go on…gimme a hug. Of course Social Media is a waste of time and money if this means nothing to you.

A Curious Case of Social Media Addiction

I have been dabbling with social media and networking for over two years now. One of the things that has struck me are the similarities of between general social media and networking interaction and my knowledge of the gambling industry. What is especially curious is the way in which my role as a ‘blog poster’ casts me in the role of ‘player’ rather than ‘designer-developer’. The BBC news site carried an article on the 19th March 2010 titled Technology addicts offered treatment. This is a news theme that is covered from time to time and it got thinking about my own behaviour and the ways in which people engage (or not in social media/ networking activities)

Take this post for example. Its been a few weeks (again) since I posted. Lurking at the back of my mind has been a nagging concern about that. The little voice in my head has been saying “you really should write another post…go on…get on with it.” When the time or the headspace hasn’t been available to do this I notice I’ve become irrititable too “not the damn dog walking again…do I really have to fix the venetian blind?….can’t it wait!?. Minor signs of addiction onset? Quite possibily.

So how can social media/ networking addiction be explained? Well, my layman’s knowledge of addictive behaviours gleaned over a couple of decades in the gaming industry might offer some insights. If you want a more informed and professional view you should check out the UK’s leading expert in this area Professor Mark Griffiths

Lets take the The Illusion of Control. Psychologist Ellen Langer described this phenomenon wayback in the 1970s. It relates to the mistaken beliefs that people hold about how they can control the outcome of future events. It is closely related to what is called Gamblers Arrogance, which is where very regular gamblers believe they ‘can stop playing whenever they choose, they just choose to keep playing’. In my case its probably chasing the illusion of social influence! Writing a post gives a strong sense of ‘being in control’. From a formal academic perspective there are no peer review processes to go through (although social media peers will review what is written), and crucially there is no need to approach a publisher. I’m in control. I create the content, I press the ‘publish’ button. I can post or not post whenever I choose. Can’t I?

The curious thing about setting up a blog is that you begin to believe you have readership to serve. No posts and you’re letting your ‘public’ down. No posts and Google won’t regard your blog as fresh and you’ll be banished to the oblivion of search page 57. No posts and they won’t be cross posted to Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed, Delicious, Reddit, Digg and all the other social networking sites you have diligently set up accounts for. Set up because without them you simply won’t be heard. You’ll have no reach. You’ll be a…nobody!

The most compulsive thing about social media/networking are the stats. Instant feedback. The quick hit (sic). The gambling industry runs on statistics. In particular ‘cash box’ take. The amount of money a game nets each hour/day/week. It is a powerful independent arbiter of just how appealling the game content is. For the social media/networking addict stats work in the same way. Post content, wall content, forum content is all driven by popularity metrics. Hits, clicks, followers. They all indicate how you are doing, how you are percieved. They drive compulsion. I recently helped a friend create a Squidoo article. The previous articles were getting between 5 and 20 readers a week. Writing one about Stefani Germanotta Before The Fame (That’s Lady Gaga to you and me folks) and my friend gets a whopping 250 readers a week. Now that is a buzz. That’s where the endorphins kick in and you want more of it, and the only way to get it is to write another post. Your’e in control. The outcome is down to you. You decide what’s written, where the links go, who they go to. Every editorial decision is yours. If it flies its down to you. If it flops its you again. It beats being an armchair football team manager hands down!

And so some posts are ignored, some are hugely popular, some nearly make it with a few readers but not enough to say its a top post. Now this is where another dimension of compulsion kicks in. Nearly writing a very popular post entices you to write ‘just one more’. Just like the gambler the next post is going to be ‘the big winner’. You have to best the last post, you study your previous form (from the stats) you talk to other professionals to get tips. You keep going and you are more likely to keep going if you had a popular post when you first started. This proves you can do it, you just have to re-create the magic.

So if social media/networking is as compulsive as this how come some people don’t engage? If anyone has set up a Ning community site they may have found that the world is not made up of technological obsessives. Not everyone is a technological determinist who believes that the next new widget will transform your life. I guess the answer lies in the fact that we are really dealing with a social not a technological phenomenon. Or is that too either/ or?

People aren’t addicted to ‘the technology’ they are addicted to what the technology ‘does’. If the technology doesn’t satisfy some personal or social need, or solve some personal or social problem then there is no way they can be ‘hooked’. Compulsive social connectors have the roots of their problem in issues of need for control and this includes a thirst for knowledge and gossip, need for independence and sense of self. People who get these needs satisfied in other ways in other ways probably don’t need to Blog, use Facebook, Twitter, or Ning. That doesn’t mean that as human beings they are not socially addicted!

Who Has Time For Social Media?

You only need to look at the date of this post and subtract the date of my last post to see its been a while since I added any content to this blog. The problem? Lack of time. Who has the time for social media? It seems that readers do. They have a seemingly insatiable appetite for content that ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, the informed to the opinionated, the long the short and the tall, the good the bad and ugly of social and business information.

Generating content is another matter altogether. Young bloggers in the USA are Bored With Creating Content. Since 2006 the numbers of US teenagers who post content to blogs has halved. The phenomenon of reducing attention span and reluctance to engage in ‘effortful’ thinking (Eagly and Chaiken) looks fairly common.

The implications are profound for individuals and organisations who are being wooed by the siren song of Social Media and Social Networking. The ‘hurry now whilst stocks last’ mentality of many so called ‘marketing agencies’ to get their clients to participate or risk being left out understates one key fact about Social Media and Networking. It takes time. Not only that how much can you say on a frequent basis that is helpful, insightful and original. (Social Media types reading this post will already be muttering that there’s nothing new in pointing out the existence of the ‘Time Vampires’ that are social media applications.)

Content posting has several purposes. It also needs you ponder (which takes time) on who your audience is. Are you giving knowledge? are you persuading people to approach rather than avoid your organisation? are you generating and managing a reputation? The thing about creating content is that it is a reflective and effortful process whereas most of the consumption of the content is ‘cue’ based and effortless.

How might this all play out? I guess it comes back to the basics of informational need. A continuumm of light and trivial through to deep and meaningful. Go for D&M and you’ll need plenty of time wether you create the content or choose to read it.

Got more time?
Real People Don’t Have Time For Social Media
Social Media Time Management

Will Technology Convergence Change The Way We Think About Marketing?

I subscribe to a great blog called Serious Games and this latest post highlights the rate of technology convergence and its impact on the increased use of Social Media and the decrease of traditional Media.

I can see that if your world is marketing communciations then technology is having a big impact on the places where advertising is placed and brands are positioned.

The change of channels might have changed but has technology driven any degree of fundamental change in marketing thinking? I find it hard to see how this can be the case.

Surely the technology can only manifest what the practioner’s philosophy decrees. So a micro economic Kotlerian position will see the technology as a means to facilitate needs based exchange, standing in Nordic School position will see technology as a means to enhance relationships, look at the world through Vargo and Lusch’s Service Dominant logic and the technology is their to underpin community building and co-creation of products and services.

Didn’t all of these things exist before digital techologies? The marcomms tactician used to be skilled in media planning and production that utilised 20th century technologies, all that has changed is the hardware and software. Nothing has necessarily changed for Marketing as a philosophy or a strategic endevour. Or has it?

Convergence is certainly interesting from a consumer demand perpsective. Do people like you and I prefer Convergent or Dedicated Products Han, Weong and Seok have found that Products with a high degree of technological Convergence are preferred.

Convergence is also interesting from a managerial perspective. The people using these converged products will be using them to engage with Brands. Schau, Muñiz Jr., & Arnould have written a fascinating article in this month’s Journal of Marketing titled How Brand Community Practice Create Value.In a broad piece of qualitative research that looked at brand communities as diverse as Apple Newton, Garmin GPS, and the Xena Warrior Princess TV Show they have identified 12 value creating practices that included ‘grooming’ where communities share how to care for your product, ‘justifying’ that creates social proof about why the brand is a good buy, ‘badging’ where models and versions of products are built up like an ancestry.

The killer observations for me by the authors are their identification of 4 strategic themes that need blending for effective community value creation, and significantly digital technologies are at the heart:

Social Networking that facilitates stuff such as welcoming, and governing.

Impression Management that facilitates justifying and evagenlising.

Community Engagement that facilitates knowledge sharing.

Brand Use that facilitates tips and tricks.

I like their ideas because they view the thing systemically. Each theme is interconnected and interdependent. It is also clear that digital technology means that creating communities and keeping them alive is much easier these days than in the past. So maybe technology is changing the way we think about Marketing afterall, not necessarily introducing anything new but foregrounding something that might have been easier to ignore in the past? If you can get your hands on a copy of these articles I recommend you do so.

Same As It Ever Was?

I’ve just picked up a thought provoking post from Kyle Lacy. Kyle draws our attention to the crucial issue of understanding your customer, and in particular your business to business customer.

Your customer base is changing as I type. The people who will take the decision to buy your products and services will increasingly come from so called Generation Z. This is a generation that takes social media for granted. For them it isn’t hip, new, trendy, or cutting edge, its just ‘is’.

This fresh generation of business leaders and decision takers see the world differently to their predecessors, they gather their information differently, they build business relationships differently, they socially influence and are socially influenced differently. These are the Wizards of Oz Z.

If all this gives you the feeling that you that you might be ‘over the hill’ don’t panic. Forrester reckon that Generation X can still play too! This theme also is taken up by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Laura Sherbin, and Karen Sumberg in their Harvard Business Review article How Gen Y and Boomers will reshape your agenda. In the article they point to the internal forces competing to dominate an organisations cultural agenda and how what was once valued in organisational life is undergoing change. To manage the upcoming and outgoing they talk about Time Warners Digital Reverse Mentoring program:

“in which tech-savvy college students mentor senior executives on emerging digital trends and technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and other Web 2.0 applications.”

For managers who operate from the fundamentals of a critical marketing philosophy the capturing of a deep understanding of the beliefs, attitudes and behaviours of their customers is a continually changing endevour.

Nothing is the ‘same as it ever was’

Are We Wasting Time With Social Media?

Web Traffic Secrets has recently posted a collection of videos of Seth Godin in which he discusses the ways in which Social Media can be a waste of time.

Even scratching the surface of Social Media takes time. It takes effort to become familar with blogging applications and the myriad of networking, bookmarking, and aggregating applications that support and interconnect with them. Much has been posted on becoming aware of the dreaded ‘Time Vampire’.

Is Seth saying anything new though? Imagine if I baked a cake today with scant knowedge of cooking, the ability to understand and follow recipes, and ineptitude in the cooking process. If the cake I baked didn’t rise and didn’t taste very nice then I might conclude that ‘cooking’ was a waste of time. Obviously it isn’t.

Take a look at any major management initiative of the last 15 years and the same reasoning can apply. Many management fads have been written off as ‘wastes of time’ when they have been deemed to have failed. Business Process Re-engineering, TQM, Organisational Learning, Searching for Excellence, CRM, etc.

Social Media is no different to any of these. You waste time with them if you don’t devote time to gain a deep and true understanding of their philosophy and intent. You waste time if you don’t devote time to drawing out the value and purpose of the activity. You waste time if you don’t devote time to continually questioning your reasons for doing something.

The only way you will waste time with Social Media is because you have a half-baked understanding of it.