With all the major corporations realizing that the social web may have a beneficial impact on their reputation with their customers, we can see a list of newly born social network about almost every topic.
The result is that the web ecosystem is getting more and more crowded, think of a traffic jam on a motorways, and the navigation through a terabyte of new information deliver solid headache.
Too much choice equals no choice at all.
At the same time, I feel that there are many concerns about the quality of all the stuff uploaded every minute.
Trying the give a dimension, every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube and the quality level can’t be consistent.
It’s clear that to gain relevance and retain some top of mind in this plethora of contents require very strong assets:
1. Strategy – no operation into social web should be put in place without a clear strategic frame
2. Tactics – for each part of the strategy, actionable should be defined in advance
3. Plan B – no one can give you a 100% guarantee that the activity will be successful (if yes, be very careful) maybe not even 50% guarantee. So better be have a plan B ready for any situation that may arise
Even after those steps are fixed, clutter is and will be the worst enemy for any social web activity in the near future, at least until people has a job and a family
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.
Eating out has become a real threat to your wallet, lately.
As well as a lot of concerns is raised about the quality of the food served, its source, its hidden cost such as impact on environment.
The two issues are creating serious troubles for restaurant and for restaurant chains.
In two separated posts on MPdailyfix, Ted Mininni and Andrea Learned write about McDonalds’ and Chipotle reaction to the issue.
McDonalds’ is launching, across the States, the bigger, premium burger nationwide at 4.00 usd.
On the other side Chipotle announced that it will sponsor free screenings of the newly released documentary film, Food Inc.
As written in the comments to Ted’s post, my point about McDonalds’ is
a) McDonald’s offer is unrespectful of any of the arising question about the impact of red meat on the environment
b) if Americans would reduce a little their red meat consumption, the entire world could benefit in terms of less CO2 emission
c) if you offer that amount of meat at half the price of your competitors, I suspect that we can have a lot of concerns about how cows are breed and the trend about animals fair breeding is a fast growing one.
From my point of view it may make sense for people still not into these consideration but on the other side they should move quickly to something more sustainable.
And this launch of the ‘bigger, premium’ burger nationwide” is not the answer.
It’s an old economy tactical answer to the current economic situation.
I’m not saying that all the world should turn vegetarian, but I’m saying that we must go back to a different approach to food, more responsible and consistent.
Chipotle, where personally I have never had the chance to eat, is tackling the issue from a totally different perspective: “By inviting its customers to see the ugly truth, Chiptole is walking its talk of a responsible and healthy food movement.” as Andrea write. The ugly truth is the movie Food,Inc. a movie very critic, to say the least, about the food industries. I urge you to visit the website and watch the trailer.
Where’s the benefit of this approach?
a) Acknowledging (and embracing) the fact that they are on a journey* toward a greater goal
b) Choosing to rise above the competition by being an industry educator
c) Creating a unique position from which defend better margins
My take is that if Chipotle was in Italy, there won’t be any competition between the two as my personal choice.
But, if it was up to you? What will it be your choice?
(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.
Do you think it is possible to sell something to a soul?
Do you believe you can talk with your heart and make customers listen for?
Me, yes.
I truly believe that we are at the gate of a revolution in marketing and in economy.
My vision?
A world where responsible people produce sustainable goods sold at a right price to discerning customers. Wow, am I going too far?
Maybe, yes. But think for a while at how our life has changed and is changing in the last months.
Yesterday evening, I had a phone conversation with a very good friend of mine, a skilled professional living on the West Coast. She said: I learnt to live with less frills and, frankly, I live better.
Then, I read this Conversation Agent’s post, where Valeria Maltoni wrote:
“I’m all bought out. In fact, it’s been a couple of years that I started paring down what I own and being very deliberate about purchasing only when I need something and mostly to replace something else. Take my iron, I’ve had that for 15 years (wow, do they make things that last that long?).
It seems that the more time I spend creating and being creative – at work and with writing on the blog, etc. – the less I need to acquire things. “
There is many signs that people is reshaping its mind about being obsessive with stuff.
Which impact on the marketing we know?
Well, love brands are probably in a better position but we are not all working for a love brand.
It’s time for a soul marketing.
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.
On a recent vacation week, I had the pleasure to travel along with a manager of a world renowned winery and his family.
We had a fascinating conversation about how the winery world communicates and how it retains and defends its magical aura (and margins, too).
The conversation focussed on two crucial points:
1. Wineries do not advertise, they communicate
2. They use the Web 2.0 techniques since a long time
1.You may have seen some mass advertising from large production wineries for low price wine. This activity seems to be pushed by the need to sell volumes. High profile wineries tend to reach customers with an articulate communication strategy built on events, tasting, ubiquitous presence in top restaurants. The goal is to generate a closer relationship with the top wine labels and a halo effect for the winery other products.
2. The strategy pillars are the same of the Web 2.0: conversation, relationship, share of information and knowledge, release of the brand control, word of mouth. Most of this activity is vis-à-vis, online is gaining ground with some already established brand, like Wine Spectator, Decanter.
Still, the main feeling I had is that the whisper of an expert is the most powerful weapon to sell the wine experience. No matter the price of the bottle (at least if you are not alone in front of a shelf without any advice: there high price means high quality), no matter how much you understand about wine, this world is ruled by experts whose voice makes the difference.
How much is worth such a whisper? How do you measure the Roi of a whisper? Only with sales or in brand perception?
My take is that brand perception is the crucial return for a high scale market and it will result in sales and margins.
What about you?
Which other markets are built on whispers?
Metrics are the modern nightmare for marketers: after years and years of rather simple things to measure, such as sales, revenues and so on. Everything measurable with standard metrics.
Then this world crashed into a place where those metrics are no longer able to include all the variables and left marketers alone in the dark and in the hands of CFO.
In the quest for the new Graal, the metric that makes measurable the unmeasurable, the bigger danger is to get caught measuring unnecessary item and get sidetracked.
This article from NYTimes is illuminating.
Shortly, a basketball player with unremarkable conventional statistic has unconventional effect on his team performance. Why?
“he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates — probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways”
Here we talk about developing meaningful statistics, as the trainers staff is doing here, not the standard ones or the one the CFO wants to hear because it is the one he knows.
This is the hardest task for marketers and agencies, today.
Because to draw meaningful statistics, you have to get a full understanding of your business, to be able to think out of the box, yet to remain consistent with some financial goal.
The ability to identify the appropriate metric for the implemented activity is a crucial task to allow test and trial without getting fired.
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.
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