In the age of digital conversations, digital relationships, and digital communities we often forget about some old school ideas that potentially offer great impact to our efforts in connecting with our customers.
Three weeks ago I was on a flight from Barcelona back to the USA on Continental Airlines. I had the luck, and luxury of flying in their business first cabin. The flight was uneventful and all was fine. This week I received a card with a handwritten note from Continental Airlines that read:
Dear Mr. Brice
On behalf of Continental Airlines I would like to thank you for having you on board of flight 121 from Barcelona to Newark. I hope you’ve enjoyed this flight and from all of us on the Bacelona team we would like to see you again on any of our flights.
Yours Sincerely
Ben
Kudo’s to Continental Airlines for the highly inefficient snail mail, but oh so effective customer experience. This makes me recall Danny Meyer’s message that service is different from hospitality. Service is the about the process and operations of service execution. Hospitality is about the experience and relationship with the customer. The service of the flight met expectations. The personal note brought an added sense of hospitality, and a better experience with Continental’s brand.
I recently read a post from the Lonely Marketer Blog where Patrick Schaber recounts a story he was told by a family friend about a simple idea she had. The idea was to put a topic and two chairs in the open, and wait for employees to come and sit with her and then engage in a conversation about a particular topic. The concept of “The Chair” is as follows:
““The Chair” is designed to spark open, face-to-face, one-on-one conversation with employees in the simplest way possible: by offering employees a topic to talk about, an empty chair to sit on and an Employee Communications team member to listen to them (really listen - without a laptop, cell phone or Blackberry in the way). “The Chair” gives us a pulse-check on employee opinions, thoughts and ideas, while giving employees a place to be heard. “The Chair” is set up every other Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. to noon for corporate employees, with plans to expand it to store employees in the future.”
According to Patrick, there is now a line of people waiting to converse on topics with another human being.
Two points for consideration. One is to not forget about good ole analogue forms of communication in your social media thinking. Face to face, handwritten notes, phone calls etc. These analogue communication channels aid in building your relationship with your customers and prospects. The challenge is in identifying where and how to use them in the most cost effective and efficient way. It’s not 100% digital or analogue but rather what’s the optimal integration of all forms of communication that build the best dialogue with your customer/prospects. Second point is that sometimes the simplest idea can yield the greatest results, and when thinking of social media do not forget about those constituents inside your company…Nuff said.
René Bonvanie brings nearly 25 years of executive management and marketing experience in the enterprise software industry to Serena. At Serena, Mr. Bonvanie’s responsibilities include developing business and marketing strategies to consolidate Serena’s position as the leader in application lifecycle management (ALM) and capitalize on future trends in application development, such as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), Web services, and Software-as-a-Service. He also leads Serena’s efforts to develop partner relationships and go-to-market activities for new products and services.
1. Rene, What exactly are Mashups?
The simplest way to explain Mashups is to think of them as amalgamations of two (or more) artifacts into something new that provides additional value.There are many analogies in the “real” world;music Mashups (also known as mixes), artwork that uses multiple artists for inspiration, and even Coke and Mentos…
Things that can be mashed up that are of interest to businesses include visuals such as Google maps and real estate information, data such as prospect information from salesforce.com and pricing information from SAP, or processes such as discounting approvals from SugarCRM and signingprocedures from Peoplesoft.
The big difference between what used to be known as “composite applications” and Mashups is that Mashups are assembled by business people –not developers in IT.Mashups address the need business users have for simple applications that are not being addressed by the IT department.Thanks to technologies such SOA and Web Services, as well as very easy to use Mashup tools (such as Serena Mashup Composer), a whole new generation of self-enabled business people – often referred to as the “Facebook Generation” – will build Mashups.
2. Why should an old school marketing guy like me care about Mashups?
There are two ways to answer that question.The first is that the Mashup “saga” is a great lesson in how to use marketing to re-position what was once a rather boring technology/IT discussion and turn it into a red-hot fashionable phenomenon that every vendor wants to participate in. The second is that it is about going after an entirely new audience that no longer responds to classic marketing tricks.These self-enabled people do things on their terms and timelines, and don’t respond to the things we “old school marketers” consider conventional wisdom.The biggest trap marketers fall into is to think that what worked once will work again.Not so when the world around us is changing so rapidly!
There is a final angle here – marketing is often the poor stepchild in most companies when it comes to attention from IT.Mashups allow marketers to take control of their application destiny – similar to when we took control of the Web site away from IT and started using simple tools to manage it.
3. How can Mashups help support the Customer & Brand Experience?
Mashups link people to people, processes to processes, and people to processes.So when it comesto enhancing the experience we offer, Mashups make a big difference.One of the very obvious ways I always cite is that most companies externalize their internal organization on their web site.Hence, they end up with fiefdoms that each enforce different behavior; different passwords, different levels of access, etc.Mashups can streamline that experience and give people a simple way to work across all the silos.I’m not saying that Mashups will make them go away per se, but I do firmly believe that they can dramatically change the customer perception.And that’s what’s most important in then end anyway.
4. Could Mashups be used to support demand generation? If so how?
I have started to see some interesting ways where to use Mashups in demand generation.Let meshare one example.
I have found over the years that classic demand generation typically ignores everything the company knows about you and assumes you’re brand new to the “experience” – times over again.Sure, we use some techniques such as cookies and profiles, but at the end of the day, how many times have you seen an intelligent demand generation piece or campaign?With Mashups, we can rapidly assemble an experience that not only knows who you are, but more importantly what you’ve bought, what you’re using, what issues you’ve run into, and what things you attended, etc.And the beautiful thing is that you don’t need IT guys to make that happen…
5. Are Mashups only relevant to new line companies or can old line companies leverage this technology?
Mashups in my mind are relevant to anyone who suffers from the application backlog disease – also referred to as the “long tail” of applications.I’ve seen this in small young companies just as much as big old companies.I’ve seen it in rich companies as well as poor ones.What makes people adopt them is a desire to rapidly innovate and do it without necessarily asking for permission from the IT guys.Innovation is what makes mediocre companies become great companies – and that applies to all of them.
Any parting comments on the future of Mashups & Serena Software?
The Mashups Are Here!With application development being grossly unproductive and not supportive enough of the demands and desires to innovate, we’ve found a way to distribute the task to people who know what they want and feel confident they can do it themselves.That’s truly the promise of Web 2.0.
I was trolling through Social Media Today, and came across Esther Lim’sBlog on the topic of Social Marketing. Esther linked to a recent Business Week article on the power and potential of blogging, and was commenting on how much further people needed to be educated on the changes brought about by social media. The really interesting content Esther had were some stats from the London School of Economics and the Harvard Business Review related to the ROI of WOM (Word of Mouth), which I have excerpted here:
Companies enjoying higher levels of word of mouth advocacy such as HSBC, Asda, Honda and O2 - grew faster than their competitors
Companies suffering from low levels of word of mouth advocacy and high levels of negative word of mouth grew slower than their competitors
7% increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1% additional company growth
2% reduction in negative word of mouth boosts sales growth by 1%
For the average company, a 1% increase in word of mouth advocacy equated to $16M extra sales
There has always been a constant hummm about how to measure the ROI on social media. While I have always found this effort a little pointless as it’s pretty obvious that you should do anything that delivers better communication with your customers, these studies are shedding some light on the value of stronger conversation. As social media becomes more main stream in our marketing efforts I’ve no doubt that the ROI will be proven out. Nuff Said.
Here’s a lesson to all marketing professionals on the importance of listening to their customers and what happens when they don’t. I’ve excerpted from Dennis Howlett’s Blog on the nightmares that Netsuite is having with its delivery of its on demand software product:
Last September I wrote about how NetSuite has been failing its customers. It isn’t getting any better. Following that post I started to receive emails going into detail about how NetSuite’s sales talk bears no relation to what the company is able to deliver. It seems that most of the problems stem from the CRM product but there are broader issues. Commenter - JP Browne56 captured the mood of many commenters:
NetSuite is a catastrophe: sales people promise the moon but there is little flexibility, no support, and no willingness to help solve problems. My firm is small and we almost went under because of thedelays and costs of dealing with NetSuite. We had to junk the entire solution and start over from scratch. Avoid NetSuite at ALL costs!
Now imagine yourself in the shoes of this CMO as he/she pulls away from their latest print advertising copy review to address this viral mushroom cloud. Build your conversational channels, listen to them, and address your customers needs….Nuff Said.
If one thing is clear it’s that the old ways of doing marketing where you placed your advertising on TV or in magazines, attended your industry trade shows, and pumped your prospects with high gloss collateral are at an end. Having marketing focused on “Telling” is over, and the beginning of Marketing as a function for “Listening” and “Conversing” is here. So how does one adjust to this new age? Especially if you’re from the “Old School” like myself.
First, realize that the game today is about the customer. Ah, but hasn’t it always been about the customer? Yes (or at least it should have been),but we lost our way as marketers when the mass media channels enabled us to fire the shotgun and look like heroes for the 1 or two birds that we bagged. We we’re lauded as gurus with new creative that brought to life all that we we’re trying to say. We we’re worshiped in the day when all it took was brand loyalty to drive business, big creative splashes at trade shows, cool looking TV campaigns, box seats at the World Series, and a race car logo thrown in for good measure. The sad truth is this stuff doesn’t work any more and it’s very telling when the average CMO tenure is less than 27 months, and all management wants today is leads, conversion rates and marketing ROI. Marketing ROI? What happened?
A Revolution Is Underway
In today’s game there is no such thing as brand loyalty in a networked world, where Word of Mouth is king, and the prospect is in complete control of their own buying process. The pitches for massive amounts of money spent on immeasurable brand advertising need to be redirected elsewhere like product innovation, valuable content creation, and customer community building. I’m still fighting a losing battle on converting airport media spend to search investment as the sales guys like to see the airport advertisements when they get off the plane.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a social media purist that says all advertising is dead. All I’m saying is look at your marketing as if were a big demand funnel and invest wisely in driving awareness, turning that awareness into inquires and then facilitating your prospects and customers information requirements with high value added content that addresses their questions, and hopefully nets you information about them in exchange for this content. Joe Pulizzi’s video provides good over view of the content revolution in marketing that is now underway.
It’s the delivering of high value added content that I think impacts marketers more in this day and age. It’s because marketing is really becoming a publishing model. In 2010 you are what you publish. What does that mean?
You need to really understand your customer and prospects. Not just titles but every day scenarios and issues that these roles deal with, and how these roles work together in identifying a solution. The rise of ethnography is sure to be a big trend in future marketing departments, and agency services.
You need to develop a task model. A task model is basically how your company defines the buying cycle that your prospects and customers will go through. It will link together role requirements at each stage in the buying cycle to key information needs, content requirements and use cases, and ultimately to what the content deliverables should be. Your task model should be central in defining developing your content model.
Syndicate your content to your targeted prospects and customers. The media channels are now firmly in your and your customers control so start using them. Beyond just your website think about communities, RSS, blogs and rethink the tried and true PR model. The traditional press release it my view is dead. The old model of “it must be news worthy” and “it must have a customer quote” is 20th century. Today’s press releases are written with SEO terms in mind first, syndicated across many different media channels, and even promote and link to demand generation offers. Think about publishing more of what you have, more frequently, as you will be defined in an environment where media channels are controlled by the users.
Measure: The beauty of the networked world is everything is able to be tracked and therefore is measurable. How many of you are using SEO, and search research to identify what the market is searching on in order to write your collateral copy? If your not, you need to be as your search team could be one of your most valuable insight assets today. You can measure the success of messages, content deliverables in order to keep the good, toss out the old, and develop new compelling content that furthers your conversation.
Fear Not Old School Marketer
Done well a marketing publishing model offers even more opportunities to be creative in identifying and delivering value added content to your prospects:
You actually meet the needs of your customers during their buying process
You market and sell solutions instead of feature-function
You build closer relationships with your customers
Your in a better position to support, and in some cases drive company innovation
Last, but not least, you cast a wider digital net so the search engines can find you more often
If done well your goal is to position your company as the destination in the industry to go to for information. Imagine how much more cost effective your lead generation will become if you do in fact become a destination. Remember, don’t focus on the tactics of blogs, wikis, pod casts etc.. Focus on really understanding your customers roles and how the play out in a buying cycle relevant to your industry, and market segment…Nuff Said
The traditional marketing model is being challenged, and (CMOs) can foresee a day when it will no longer work.McKinsey Quarterly, 2005, Number 2
For those of you that read my blog you’ll know that I like to decipher fact from hype, and there is a lot of hype today around social networking to be sure. However there is one thing that is changing or least going back to its core fundamental roots depending on your view and certainly age. That thing is your brand.
While one can point to many evolutionary models of how brands evolve I generally have looked at two main stages of traditional brand evolution:
Branding v1.0: Product or Service Defines the Brand. This is where most brands we know start. A product or service defines the company and its brand. That product or service is delivered in such a way to meet its promise to its customers. The branding is focused on conveying the functional attributes of the product or service.
Branding v2.0 The Brand as a Promise: Eventually competion catches up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate on functional attributes alone. At this stage a company needs to focus on positioning a differentiated brand promise. This is where the brand promise begins to convey an emotional relationship, in addition to functional attributes, as a means to position the product or services in a superior position within the consumers mind. The more enhanced this brand promise is the more efficiently the company can communicate, and extend its brand into new growth opportunities.
Brand V1.0 & v2.0 has fueled what Seth Godin calls the “Industrial Advertising Age”. In this environment mass mediums of communication worked well in communicating the product attributes and brand promises. These mass channels of communication worked well because they were born in an age of very centralized, and controlled company communications that were focused on telling and not listening. Back in the day when the company controlled the buying process, and told you what you needed to know, when they thought you needed to know it. During this era we saw the emergence of brand portfolio management where brands were clustered according to investment and growth opportunities and managed as a portfolio across communication and budgeting channels.
Brother…The times they are a changing. “The workers should appropriate the means of production”-Karl Marx.
They have and they are, and this is why the brand must too evolve. Why?
•In 1965, 80% of 18-49 year-olds in the US could be reached with three 60-second TV spots.In 2002, it required 117 prime-time commercials to do the same.” (Jim Stengel, Global Marketing Officer, P&G)
•Big Six study (US): People with PVR’s watch 12% more TV, yet 90% of them adskip (Germany : 88.2%)
•78.2% of Germans are irritated by advertising, only 24% actually still watches it (GfK Marktforschung)
•54% of US consumers avoids products & services which “overwhelm” with advertising (Yankelovich Partners)
•85% of Chinese stop watching TV during commercial breaks. More than half change the channel, while the rest do housework, eat, chat or use the bathroom. (McKinsey & Co.)
The internet has disintermediated the traditional communication channels between a company and its customers and placed control, content production, and now media broadcasting in the hands of the individual. Now the brands must become focused on the individual, and seek to establish a positive and compelling experience in the context of a converged product, service and individual consumer.
This is causing an entirely new evolutionary path to be embarked on for those v2.0 brands that will seek to exist in the new networked world of 2010 and beyond.
Branding v3.0: The Age Of The Individual Brand Experience
Everyday we are seeing more convergence between product & experience. My own company SAP is a great example. Its new product Business By Design is entirely online and is converged with our website to enable the user to gain information across the buying cycle, experience the solution, purchase the solution and even update and modify after purchase. Product, customer experience, brand all converged in a network environment.
Look at the Wii. The companies’ website is not about the hardware or the great graphics instead they devote huge amounts of web real estate to enabling you the prospect to watching the experience of a mother and her child enjoy the Wii gaming console.
Look at the recent Tide Super Bowl advertising where they bring you back to the web site and ask you to create your own talking stain advertisement. You can also share advice for stain removals with other stain fanatics. Kudo’s to P&G for taking a commodity like laundry detergent and mashing it up web 2.0 tactics. However this attempt makes me think of Seth’s recent book Meatball Sunday. To this end I think there are some brands that will never converge with product, experience because it doesn’t make sense. So take heed in that I think Brand v2.0 is great for some products and companies and they shouldn’t look to evolve to v3.0.
As product, service, network and brand experience converge the customer becomes the new brand champion to take the company’s message to market. Not the corporation. Note the following:
76% of consumers don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising (Yankelowich)
The Edleman Trust Barometer points says that people no longer trust in one source of information
Word of Mouth ranks as a top influencer in B2B buying decisions (Enquiro)
These tends clearly state that the corporation is no longer in control of the message, or the experience. The customer is truly regaining control of the relationship and cementing himself/herself as King/Queen. Here are some of the major shifts I see in this new environment for brands:
Branding v3.0
From
To
1 to Many Communication
Individual Experience
Push Content (Telling)
Pull Content (Listening)
Controlling
Empowered
Company Owned Content
User Generated Content
Company as Brand Champion
User as Brand Champion (Story Telling)
Building Web Sites
Building Communities & Networks
Transforming to Brand v3.0 From Brand V2.0
Transforming a Brand v2.0 company into a Brand v3.0 company will not be easy ( I put myself and my own company into this transformational challenge). The challenge is that while we all recognize the change taking place we, and our teams are too focused on the tactics. We’re like Tide in many ways. Let’s get a blog started, let’s create a community, lets get users to think of adverts, lets put a video on YouTube.
These are tactics and we can all go buy the software to make these tactics happen overnight. The real change is in changing our corporate culturse from a Brand V2.0 orientation to a Brand v3.0 orientation. We need to let go and become less controlling if we’re going to evolve our brand and create a converged experience beyond 2010. This is where the new companies of Facebook, Myspace etc are a leg up on us. They have grown up in a very different way of thinking about business and the relationship to brands and customer experience. They are much less controlling but sill susceptible to Brand 2.0 influences like selling out to mass advertising media channels and selling our personal information.
There is hope for us. While I poked fun at Tide I do give credit to A.G. Lafley who got it right when he said he said “Consumers are beginning in a very real sense to own our brands, and participate in their creation. We need to begin to learn to let go.”
What is Really New?
Are the times really changing? Is the brand really changing? Or are we just going back to our roots in business. Back to a time when a business owner knew all his customers, had a relationship with them, learned from them, and delivered new solutions to meet their needs. Maybe what’s really different is the new technology and networked world is enabling us to find our way back to how business was done, and how should have always been done. Maybe what’s really different is that we now the tools to scale the engagement and relationship and more importantly the innovation…nuff said.
I was inspired by and used several spruces for this work and I urge you to check out the following:
In the age of digital conversations, digital relationships, and digital communities we often forget about some old school ideas that potentially offer great impact to our efforts in connecting with our customers.
