While reading the HBR blog, I gave a look at the tag cloud and notice that the prominent word is leadership, followed by recession, strategy, managing people, communication.
They are all (well, recession is not, indeed) included in the social business definition.
To develop an innovative strategy is like being at the helm of a boat, and in recession time you are at the helm of a boat in troubled waters.
Being the skipper of a racing boat requires a strong leadership: all the crew has to follow your instruction without hesitation, fear, doubt.
You have to be a real leader, collecting information by the staff and taking decision.
In your working days, agency, consultant, client, how many leader have you met?
Take 8 minutes to watch this video.
It’s the commencement speak from the Minneapolis College of Art and Desing professor Daniel Pink.
What’s inside that makes it a must-see-video?
Among the rest, there is what I believe is a crucial concept for the present and future of marketing and the Web 2.0: don’t do things for instrumental reason, do things for fundamental reason.
Acting for instrumental reason will soon make clear any lack of transparency, any hidden goal in your action.
While acting for fundamental reason, because you think that what you do is inherently valuable, will boost the empathy of your action.
In a world where personal and direct relation is the key, this approach pays very high dividend in the personal world as well as in the business world.
(fonte http://www.fmsasg.com)
Vodafone just announced the launch for the coming Fall of its own social network.
Where’s the problem? Nothing special but the fact that another social network will come to steal another fraction of your time.
I’m a fan of social network and truly believe that they are a cool and efficient way to connect with people.
I think that there always be place for a better social network, better than the current social networks, easier to use, custom made, less invasive maybe in term of privacy and that eventually will not try to sell you advertising.
I believe that brands should try to establish their own playground and collect the information they need to be close to customers.
But, be honest how many chance there are that a new social network will succeed?
What may be the reason why I should share in another network my stuff?
How many chance there are they I will get connected with the same people I’m already linked somewhere else?
In my opinion, the social network that will be born in the next months will have the same issue of the wide audience tv, the generalist one.
While the next generation social network is built on shared passion: politics, culture, sports, environment and, here and there, a bit of a mix of the above passions.
My advice if you plan to launch a social network:
1. Define a clear strategy and a clear road map
2. Define your goal and where you want to go (please, do not say sales; sales will be anyway the final result if you have performed well)
3. Define main area to cover
4. Define actions to defend your own territory from competitors
5. Be lateral
6. Be focused
7. Be consistent
8. Be patient (Rome was not built in one day)
Any other insight?
In a previous post “Selling to the soul – Soul marketing”, I wrote “Turn your brand into a catalyst for appreciation, not only for the price, but for its inner quality, for the added value it can provide with, for the ability to talk and listen on a constant base, for the capability to share a longer life span with its owner.“
This thought is defining a new product life cycle, no longer defined by advertising or by a new news, but by the product itself.
People will not necessarily flock to a store to buy the latest in flat tv or detergent ot toothpaste or car pushed by advertising investment and pr effort or just because to replace is easier than to fix a something broken.
The replacement process may turn in something more articulate and pondered.
How to be with customers in this unpredictable moment?
Well, there is only one strategy with two execution: recency.
Recency means being close to the customer when he/she is on the way to buy a good.
This moment is not longer predictable because we all perform the buying process in our own personal time and place.
If you are still 100% into advertising, recency can be executed in a rather easy but expensive way: you buy some tenth GRPs every day of every week of the year or according to the product seasonality in your target prime time.
P&G was master in this planning activity in the 90s and the first half of the last decade.
But what if you don’t have their money? You are in troubles, indeed.
If you are into communication, or you are shifting from advertising to communication, well you can be close to your customer with a daily conversation, opening a direct channel to communicate with them and be in their top of mind of appreciation and perception.
This execution is far less expensive and more personal, which is the way the new customer prefer to engage with a brand.
So, now it’s up to you to choose which form of recency you prefer.
The much revered Sun-Tzu’s Art of war was the bible of business school and businessmen for the last 20 years.
The book is fascinating.
The description of strategy and tactics to implement the strategy is detailed and narrated with reference to real events of the life and career of the Chinese general.
Being a book about war, it is pervaded by a natural aggressive behaviour. As a consequence, the translation into a business book brought this behaviour along.
Target and other military terms walked with us for all these years in advertising business, too.
Until the communication was top down, from the brand to the target, fair enough, but now that we want to establish a conversation with customers, well, it’s time for diplomacy and the art of listening.
That’s why it’s time to say goodbye to Sun-Tzu, thanks him for the support given in these years, and look for Madame du Deffand, the French lady whose salon was renowned as the place which gave birth to the art of conversation.
And being able to have a conversation, required another strong effort to businessmen, used to talk and not to listen: to be informed of what’s going on outside your office, to be immersed not in the paper on your desk but in real life of your customers and prospects. You have to talk about something that really matters to people and it may not be necessarily your brand as first step. But it pays dividend.
Here we are @ LeWeb ‘08.
The event takes place in one of the toughest and darkest time for the economy since decades.
Apparently the answer as number of attendees is very good but will we be here to share and get inspired or to celebrate the funeral of the Web 2.0?
Some guys @ valleywag are rather nasty about the event.
Personally, I believe that we are an opportunity for the economy that will be.
But we must turn to
- be accountable
- be measurable
- be responsible
Don’t try to sell something for the sake of it or because a client fell in love with it without really being in need.
What’s your feeling?
What do you believe is your role here?
Fruit market at the Cour Saleya market in Nice (France)Pic proudly by myself
This is the title of a compelling post by Karl Greenberg, I read this morning on Mediapost.
I do share his point of view and I do believe that we have to rediscover some practice that give us the pleasure of using time to think and to do something with our own hands.
Something as handwriting, conversation vis-à-vis, engagement with ourselves.
We do talk a lot and write a lot about brand that must engage with customers, but when we will talk about the skill of engage with ourselves?
The economy up and down, more down to be honest, and the new world scenario should teach us the lesson that the time of growing without limits, the neverending expansion, the technology development without a real reason, the assault to the environment, this kind of world has to come to an end and leave the place for something sustainable and mindful.
Are we ready, as marketers, to this challenge? Are we ready as men and women to adapt ourselves to a different life style? Do we believe our customers, or ourselves as customers, are the same we were one year ago?
My Plurkaddiction is eventually generating some interesting insights about Social Media and their application in the business world.
Along with fellows plurkers Geoff Livingston, Frank Martin , Sonny Gil, Amber Naslund generated a conversation about the impact of Social Media on jobs other than Marketing: Sales and Business development, Customer and client services, Product and Brand managers.
The list is truly comprehensive and I wish to share with you all.
Enjoy the reading.
While there is someone out there cashing on the myth of working far less, no more than 4 hours a week, most of marketers, communicators, advertisers, agencies all over the world do work far more.
Why?
I have some thoughts I want to share with you:
- fragmentation is urging to get not only the big pictures but all the pixels, too
- matching new forms of communication with old business and reporting models does seem a try to break a Guinness world record of people squeezed in a phone boot
- conversation with customers does call for a far deeper knowledge of your business and your company: you never know what kind of question or issue may arise and must be quick in answering
Some answers?
- To spread the company culture
- To create internal metrics to measure the success of marketing activity
- To implement online marketing suites to manage complexity of data
- To shift and delegate brand image activity to internal evangelists
- To support external evangelists
There is a common ground in all these answers: knowledge.
Today and tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, knowledge is and will be the most valuable asset to work better, if not less.
Knowing before and anticipating issues and catching opportunity is the way to stay ahead.
You should no longer surf the waves but, as extreme skiers do, run ahead the avalanche.
(pic by Your new friend Pete from Flickr)While we are focused on get customers and prospects engaged, there is one single and straight preliminary question:
If you do not ask this question in complete transparency and honesty, beware of the consequence of asking clients to be once more time creditors to your company
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