Digital Influence Mapping Project

Social Media Fatigue or Just Fatigue?

Attending LeWeb a couple of weeks ago, many of us saw Forrester CEO George Colony, as Mark Evans from Sysomos put it, “…he threw a bucket of cold water on social media by suggesting people have no more time for social media and, in particular social media services.”

The quote from George Colony read, “We believe social is running out of hours. Forrester believes we are reaching the limit of hours that people can give to social.” 

I am certain he is onto something. Even the Global Web Index report on US social media behavior reveals that social users are lightening up on the content creation,

“One consequence of real-time social is a move from creating content to sharing other peoples content. We call this the rise of the “transmitter ecosystem”….We also see that there is a continual fall in most activities and forms of contribution on social networks. This indicates a growing passivity and a realization that social networks will not become the one stop shop for the total internet experience that they have often been hyped as delivering.”

Narrow definitions are confusing

Will people commit more time to the social distractions of reading and updating Facebook-like social networks? Probably not. Time is our premium resource. But that’s a narrow definition of “social.” Most digital experiences will be social in one way or another whether they be utilities like my Jetsetter iPad app, information tools like my new Flipboard iPhone app or entertainment experiences like some of the best YouTube videos (I love the Criminal Minds cast video “Wheels Up”). People will continue to shift time to those things that deliver perceived value.

While I would assume that some media buckets like TV watching are here to stay and are unlikely to be completely cannibalized by new digital activities, the fact that my son watches most of the little TV he likes on his PC may deliver bigger behavior changes down the road than even Forrester can predict. 

For brands considering how much to commit to social media as a platform for customer engagement, I would just say two things:

• Most brands are woefully behind the behaviors of their customers in digital and social. While some behaviors may be topping out or slowing growth are you using social media at the same level and with the same time commitment as your customer? Probably plenty of room for growth there. 
• If anything, the Forrester POV and The Global Web Index findings tell a story of consumer fatigue on those things that don’t provide enough value. The pressure is on every brand to work hard to deliver content and experiences to their customers that they would find valuable. Relevance will get harder going into 2012. 

 

4 Ways to Get Integrated Social Media Programs to Work

Go to any social media conference now and every other speaker will be touting the benefits of “owned, earned and paid media” as if they discovered fire. But few know how to actually make this work within big consumer and B2B brands.

There are two barriers that I see keeping us from living the dream. 

Multi-agency friction

The way that brands task their multi-agency rosters with bits and bobs of particular programs works against integration. Big organizations have diverse business owners each contributing to revenue outcomes like increased sales of products and services. Many of them hire specialist firms to extend their team’s ability to design strategy or execute marcom programs. There’s a certain belief that brand marketers need to pick “best-of-breed” specialists and constantly pit them against each other to leverage the best commitment or price. It’s all quite logical in a way. It also produces far too much friction to really overcome some of the barriers to truly getting all of your disciplines working in a complimentary fashion. The best that most brands ever achieve is a campaign success where 2-3 disciplines (out of 5-6) are aligned enough for a time to produce remarkable results for a short period of time(think Old Spice).

Big teams vs. small teams 

Brand + Agency teams have become large. Whenever something isn't quite going right, the answer is to add someone new to the team. It's crazy. The type of innovation we are looking for (“imagine a program where all disciplines were aligned to inspire as much sustained positive word of mouth for a new product – all measured by a common, focused dashboard…”) comes easiest from small, tight teams with common motivations. Either brand managers need to become the team leader of these small teams featuring a few members of different tribes and agencies or brands are going to have to take a chance on a single agency/partner who has enough of the right disciplines within their camp to pull it off.  

 

4 Ways to Get Integrated Social Media Programs to Work

• Behavior-driving Planning Model

It is so hard within a multi-agency team to have a single planning methodology prevail. I am a fan of Ogilvy’s Fusion model not because it’s ours but because it’s designed around driving behavior. Rather than have every discipline chasing its own planning approach measured by impressions, click-to-actions, GRP’s or whatever, focus on a collaborative planning approach that is designed to get people to take an action or actually change behavior. Do you want people to try a new product? Buy more at one time? Exercise every day?  And just where are they on the proverbial customer journey? A behavior-driving model can take advantage of the most useful research in behavioral economics. It's a more sympathetic approach to our customer and more effective.  

The planning model should also tell the team what they find important. As more brands use contests and promotions to lure consumers to interact on Facebook, some marketers are swearing off contest incentives preferring to generate engagement and word of mouth through "ideas." This is an example of a belief that ought to be shared by the core planning team (I am neither endorsing this particular notion or bashing it - merely using it as an example).  

• Unified Story and Content Strategy

Different brand organizations use different tools to align work across their marketing and communications. “Brand Keys,” “Brand Creative Ideas,” “Brand Platforms,” are all models for distilling what a brand stands for and what the most contemporary messages are during a particular season. But few brands develop a holistic approach to content no matter whether delivered via the Facebook wall, television or online display advertising, or in the stories pitched to traditional media. Customers, consumers , people-like-us are losing track of what they ought to expect from different channels. They just want relevant content – if they actually want anything at all beyond a good product that delivers on a promise. Marketers can make better use of the mix of touchpoints with customers if they take care to form clear story(ies) and then manage content cohesively across the different ways and places customers make use of it. 

 

• A Blended Measurement Framework

Instead of having a different metric for each discipline, have a limited number of KPIs - each of which reflects desired behavior and is shared by all efforts. Perhaps, brand marketers feel like they already have this or that sales data is the bottom line. What I see again and again is teams tracking and reporting 10-20 data points and often becoming lost as to which are most important. They count Facebook fans, comments on wall posts, wall postings, individual ‘likes,’ tab interactions, retweets in Twitter, Twitter follower acquisition, blog mentions, “impressions,” and so much more. Some are trying to roll up all types of interactions like commenting and ‘likes’ into a single engagement metric. That certainly helps marketers get focused back on driving engagement (e.g. time-spent or interactions believed to be steps along the way to persuasion and product-related behavior change).  Like our planning model – what do we want people to actually do? Let’s count that.

If we need proxy metrics to help optimize an effort, let’s make the effort to confirm that they are the ones indicative of behavior change. 

• Prioritize Key Operational Changes 

We have to do things differently to expect different results. Brand marketers are used to commissioning one of the agency partners to come up with the creative big idea that all other disciplines will interpret. It's time to evolve beyond the creative idea as the only binding principle. Now we need a small team who will work together to optimize the relationship the brand has with the customer and make certain it delivers great value to both brand and customer.  

Since marketing has become more ‘always-on’ and less purely campaign-focused, it makes sense to designate a small strategy team that guides all disciplines through their ongoing and iterative execution. A small team can look at the overall effort and make a call that the paid advertising online is not leading to the level of active fan acquisition, for example, or that the volume of peer recommended trial is not all that was hoped and that 2-3 disciplines might work together to incent more customer sharing and trial. Designating this small strategic team at the helm would be a big shift from the large group model so often put in place. 

What other operational changes: 

• Run brand program reviews like editorial meetings - look at the data and decide what is working and what is not. Make changes on the fly and try that
• Embrace the pilot - in the race to get immediate results, some brands avoid pilots as they seem like lengthy trials with little business impact beyond learning. As Facebook says, "Fail fast." We can get better results quicker by conditioning ourselves to run quick pilots that can easily be scaled. 
• Let the word of mouth guys run the core strategy team - as more brands embrace the importance of brand advocacy and word of mouth, it makes sense that the experts at driving valuable word of mouth be at the front of the bus

6 Truths about Social Media and Social Business

I still use an RSS reader (in fact I use our version of NetVibes - TheDailyInfluence). I read lots of people who write about their experience in digital marketing and social media. I routinely check in on Olivier Blanchard who blogs/tweets under the brandbuilder handle and has a sharp POV. 

Recently, Olivier wrote a post titled "10 Truths about Social Media & Social Business you need to know." I have a bone to pick with him. Of his ten points, I disagree with 3 and agree with 3. The other 4 are indisputable. Okay, truth be told, Olivier has given us all a good list which I am merely using as foil to make my own points. You can see his full post here to understand his points. But here they are in headline form:

• “Social” is something you are, not something you do
• You cannot outsource customer relationships to an agency
• A blog is just a blog. It isn’t a magical trust and influence publishing converter for the web
• Marketing on social media channels isn’t “social.” It is just marketing
• Transparency isn’t just a word. If you don’t intend to practice it, don’t preach it
• Change management, not social media tools and platforms, is at the crux of social media program development
• People are more important than technology. Hire people who care about other people
• Social media should not be managed by Marketing anymore than your phones should be managed by Sales
• Shut up and listen
• Any consultant, “thought leader,” agency or partner who doesn’t tell you these things isn’t fit to be consulted on the subject

 

3 "Truths" I Disagree With
 

Social is a way to behave - Many companies do have cultures and ways of doing business that are conducive to "being social." And, in fact, there may be many companies who are not very customer-centric in their practices and find it difficult to embrace all of the marketing and communications behaviors that fall under the broad umbrella of social media (not every company can be Zappos). But social media marketing and communications and the broader category of social business are all about ways of behaving. Never before have organizations been judged so relentlessly on their behavior and actions as they are now in the vast bright light of the Internet. Many companies are trying to change and using social media as the catalyst. They are each doing this through new behaviors. Last week at our social business event at PivotCon, Christine Cea shared about her stewardship of the Unilever Social Engagement Playbook. That is a great example of a marketer with a particular culture changing with and because of the pressures of social media. 

Organizations must align all partners to build strong customer relationships - brands outsource services all of the time. This biggest example is customer service - the front line of customer relationships. We manage tons of customer relationships for brands via Facebook walls and Twitter handles and more. We can do this because we live and breathe 'customer-centricity." At our best, we become fully integrated partners with clients where our brand knowledge and understanding of the business is indistinguishable from a brand staffer. The notion that a partner like an agency consultant is driven by different priorities is over-played and just plain wrong. We will when we accelerate our client's business, period. That being said, I do believe that our work on the front lines of conversation management is a training wheels moment for brands. We give clients the chance to quickly implement community management programs such that they can then budget for staff in year 2 or 3. 

Transparency isn't black and white - we all wave the flag of transparency around a bit too indiscriminately. Transparency in business is a strategic choice and there a thousand choices to make about when to be transparent, somewhat transparent and purposely opaque. We tend to confuse the simple principle that "transparency is good" with the practices of business which gets messy. Most folks are "for" transparency. Smart business people must make decisions about employee privacy, intellectual property protection, liability and risk, competitive advantage and more. All of these things can limit a company's ability to act transparently and should. Alternatively, proponents of transparency say the company's supply chain should be transparent, for example, and reveal poor practices like hiring suppliers who exploit workers. Supply chain transparency is inevitable. Anyone can discover almost anything with enough digging. I would prefer if companies focused more on their commitment to character which would eradicate choosing suppliers who behave unethically then worry about how transparent they ought to be.  

3 "Truths" I Agree With

Marketing on social media platforms isn't inherently 'social' - I call it the practice of just "being there" - being on Facebook, being on YouTube. Just launching a cool application on Facebook or series of videos on YouTube isn't inherently social in that it is not designed to build a two-way relationship over the long haul. To this day, there are heated debates about what defines social media - what is its true nature. That is a false argument (IMHO). I believe brands can reap the biggest benefit from social media when they design programs to earn the attention, advocacy and action from their customers, influencers and stakeholders.  That doesn't mean that programs that stop short of this are bad. they are simply something else....marketing. 

Social media is changing organizations - few companies talk in terms of "change management" around their marketing teams or partners. But, whether they are conscious of it or not, the practice of trying to master the benefits of social media is driving big FMCGs and mainframe companies to really change how they are organized, how they do business, how they treat employees and how they measure success. If that isn't change management then I don't know what is. Look at IBM. They launched an internal and external focus on "social business" where they productize what they have found valuable to their own organization. Big consumer goods companies like P&G, Unilever and Nestle are changing how they market and how they manage customer relationships. Unlike the Deming principles of Top Quality Management or other models to guide change management which often champion starting at the top, social media has been provoking change form the middle or even the bottom but certainly around the edges.  

Social media should not be managed by marketing nor any other single discipline - we have spent a ton of time building a social media expertise that spans all of Ogilvy's disciplines from marketing to CRM to communications to customer care. Social media is as much about new  behaviors as tools and platforms and it certainly isn't as simple as a new channel. No one group within the marcom mix can take full responsibility for it. Olivier makes a point that the most complete use of social media can best happen in the consumer/customer relations discipline. They do play a key and under-represented role. But every part of the business needs to embrace social media. Not just marketing and communications but product development, legal affairs, HR and more.  

"10 Truths..." is a good post and Olivier makes important points we must all keep in mind, challenge and add our take to. 

Think in Terms of Addressable Customers, Prospects and Influencers

Managing Relationships

The divide between public relations and customer relationship management (CRM) is shrinking. I have literally been in meetings with multidisciplinary teams (brand advertising + public relations + CRM) where PR and CRM will face off about whether managing the conversation in a Facebook wall is more about communications (PR's other name) or more about customer relationship management. This is the annoying beauty of social media. It forces integration or at least discussion within established marketing and communications organizations. 

Postive Effect of the Disciplines

Looking at CRM and PR alone for a moment, each is in the process of teaching the other a thing or two about managing profitable relationships. The CRM discipline is used to managing data to understand the profitability of customers. As a very data-heavy discipline, CRM generally has a more rigorous performance measurement model than most public relations professionals. It's hard to diagnose where the lack of measurement discipline in some PR circles comes from. Conversely, some of the smartest measurement people I know are in PR, there just aren't as many of them amidst all of the other  sub-specialties like media relations, event marketing, public affairs, etc...CRM ninjas are bringing more data-driven measurement practices to the PR folks as each play a role in social media-based relationship marketing. 

The PR discipline knows about the value of advocacy. Getting people - customers and influencers - talking positively about products and services is probably the most powerful sales-related communication goal one can have. The CRM folks are only used to 'optimizing the spend' of customers. Often that leads to annoying "stimulation" tactics like email blasts intended to drive purchase or re-purchase. The PR pros are teaching the CRM folks of the value of advocacy and just how to earn that action. 

If humility can prevail within the ranks of both groups, this should be a win-win situation - more disciplined metrics within PR and a greater proficiency at 'earning' people's attention, advocacy and spend among CRM experts. It is likely that through the influence of CRM marketers, social media marketers will get closer to ROI marketing modeling sooner.  


Addressable Channels

Authors can now, address personal messages to readers via the channel established with ebooks. Kindlegraph now lets authors do just that. This is another form of addressable channel where authors (literary brands?) can interact with their customer directly and can use data to try and get the most relevant message to the right person.

Add this to all of the other addressable channels we are all working with on behalf of ourselves and other brands:

• Facebook fans
• Twitter followers
• LinkedIn group members
• Instagram followers
• Google+ Circles
• Vkontakte fans (Russia)
• Orkut followers (Brazil)
• Email lists (yes, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water)

Each allows us to maintain a direct, ongoing relationship with customers, prospects and influencers. Each has different ways to use data to better target our message or deliver value and earn people's attention, advocacy and 'spend.'

Addressable Customers, Prospects and Influencers

With so many channels or platforms where we can now talk directly to groups of (or individuals) customers, prospects and influencers (our 'publics?'),  it would seem that brands must start to structure their realtionship-building activities around segments of their stakeholder groups that transcend specific platforms. Rather than have a view of different levels of fan types on Facebook* and a different model for their email subscriber base, can a brand create one framework of their customers, prospects and influencers who choose to have a relationship with a brand by one or more of these channels?  

*fan segmentation models

• RadicalTrust's simple three tier model - enthusiasts, advocates, and influencers
• Scott Meldrum's three-tier model - causal, casual and  committed fans

What Comes After Facebook (for Brands)

Someone noticed that Facebook had 155 million active users in the United States in the beginning of May (people who checked in at least once) and only 149 million by the end of the month for a net loss of 6 million active users.

Is Facebook sliding into oblivion? It's laughable to look at the slowing growth of the behemoth as some precursor to a MySpace-like death spiral, brands are always asking what's next. I would argue that many do this as they feel late to the party on platform F (i.e. Facebook) and feel if they could just forecast the next Facebook, they could enter into the fray early and forever be known as an innovator. 

Wrong Question

It's the wrong question, especially for brands.The more relevant and immediate question for marketers is how should they change how they use Facebook and social media. If the name of the game is not acquiring fans, then what is it? Facebook is still growing strong albeit that growth is faster in some emerging markets. Farhad Manjoo from Slate has a great POV on what is happening with Facebook growth in his Slate article: 

"...why is Facebook losing customers in America? Because there's no one left to go after. As Inside Facebook's Eric Eldon points out, Facebook's growth always stalls when it hits 50 percent market penetration within a country. Facebook is now experiencing something unprecedented in the short history of social networking—it has captured every plausible user in several countries, and the only people who are left are folks without Internet access, people who do have access but don't spend a lot of leisure time online, and the few lonely die-hards..."

And on the next phase of growth for Facebook:

"Instead of growth, then, what we should consider, now, is what Web stats nerds call "engagement"—how much time people are spending on Facebook, and how they're using it. Inside Facebook's Eldon points out that this is a tricky number for third-party traffic researchers to glean (Facebook itself says only that half of its users check in at least once a day). But he suspects that in established markets like the United States, engagement isn't declining. "Every person has a reason to come back to Facebook pretty often," he says."

If finding the next Facebook is not the right question and if asking how to sustain limitless growth is not the right question, then what is? 

 

How Should Brands Be Using Facebook Next? 

1. Integrating Facebook as part of an overall customer/fan relationship management solution

Laurence Buchanan who works for Capgemini had a simple post on what comes after the mad rush of growth on Facebook. I would call it getting back to the new fundamentals. These are not quite the way we thought of our business pre-social network yet they do represent business fundamentals freshly illuminated by the constant state of change we now exist in. Here are some of the questions that he thinks we ough to pivot to:

• "How can we build stronger customer relationships based on true value co-creation that will be less susceptible to cannibalisation by passing fads?
• How can we keep track of where our customers are currently engaging with our brand and with each other? How can we spot changes?
• How can we cut through vast quantities of customer data with accuracy and drive insight into action faster than the competition?
• How quickly can we embrace change within our organisation?"

These are very marketer-centric questions. Lest I come off siding with the marketers in the ongoing communications (PR) vs. marketer debate, you could easily rephrase each as communications-centric questions - e.g. how can I build a large base of advocates who will support the brand in good and, more importantly, in bad times.

Either way, we are better off re-examining our use of Facebook, Twitter and the rest to meet these business goals. Too many executives settle for a Facebook fan number as a end onto itself. Think of all the email lists with millions of names being squandered by companies around the world. Many marketers grew those lists and under-leverage them to this day.  It's what you do with these followers that matters.   

2. Figure out how to make social commerce work for your brand

Social shopping or social commerce is the next frothy frontier. Everyone remembers P&G putting the stake in the ground by saying that 39 of their brands will end up selling product on Facebook. Who else is selling via Facebook? 

According to the 2011 Social Commerce Study from Shop.org, purchase behavior fueled by social media is on the rise: 

• "42% of US online adults follow a retailer via Facebook, Twitter or blog
• Average US adult follows 6 retailers; and does do primarily for special deals (58%) – other top reasons were for new product news (49%) and to participate in promotional contest and events (39%)
• 28% of Facebook users have purchased something online via a Facebook link"

It all makes sense, of course. We all should be able to purchase products and services in the same stream where we recommend them (or warn people off). Or put another way, if recommendations from family and friends are amongst the most trusted sources for purchase decision then putting those recommendations right on the store shelf makes sense.

We will be defining what social commerce and social shopping is for some time (here are some trends from The Next Web that are helpful). Inevitably, Facebook will play a significant role either by embedding storefronts in the social network or by connecting Facebook to every sell-point available.

How Will Facebook Drive More Value to Brands? 

If limitless growth is out of the question, how will Facebook deliver more value to advertisers and business partners beyond better ad targeting solutions? What may be next from them? 

1. Unlock more data: We have only begun to see what is possible using aggregate data from Facebook as most remains behind lock and key in the vault. Facebook will enhance the value they can deliver to brand marketers by unlocking data and using it to target and actually be predictive.  

2. Constantly deliver new ways to engage a fan base: Between facebook, itself, and the broad developer community building solutions on their platform, we will see a coming together of the options to deliver more value to fans (i.e. thus earning their attention and engagement) and the tools to monitor the effectiveness of our real-time efforts. The net result is more ways to engage fans to deliver and derive value. 

3. B2B services to integrate Facebook social graph data to legacy CRM systems: the emergent efforts to connect social data from Facebook with customer databases are intuitively exciting. Most are happening with social CRM start-ups like  What will happen when Facebook gets in the game by providing IBM-like integration services between FB data and corporate CRM systems?   

A Marketer's Look at Social Media in Vietnam circa 2011

I met up with Thu An Nguyen Ha at our Hong Kong Summit.  She leads strategy for clients out of from our Vietnam 360 Digital Influence team. I was struck from her by how fast social media is being adopted in Vietnam. Combine that with the economic enthusiasm in the country and I would guess we will see big leaps forward there. 

I asked her about what is hot and happening there now in relation to brands and social media.

 

Q: What would you say are 1-2 defining characteristics of the social media world in Vietnam today? 

A:  The social media world in Vietnam today is going through an experimental phrase for all those who embrace it: users, developers, and brands.  Adaptation from successful global entities kicks off with some interesting platforms like social network ZingMe (facebook inspired), linkhay microblog equivalent of twitter, two.vn answer to foursquare, and recently in the last 6 months we saw an aggressive development of group buying sites such as nhommua (similar to groupon).  

Vietnamese social media users are loyal to their platforms. This might sound obvious as we’re community creatures but this basically means individual blogs, bloggers and influencers don’t exist or stand out without being attached to a mass and popular community.  And yes it’s true, to be fair, Facebook has replaced the Yahoo!360 phenomenon and 'facebookers,' anyone really, who has more than 2,000 fans can be considered an influencer. 

Social media in the eyes of brands and marketers in Vietnam today is starting to be ‘noticed’ – with the same mentality of discovering what platforms can bring to their integrated digital communication plan. There’s a feeling of almost ‘testing the water’ and trying out different ways to engage in social media effectively.

The majority of social media ‘pro’ brands are the FMCGs or consumer goods companies such as Unilever, Dell (technology & communication industry), Coca-cola, etc. All the development seem to be in-sync together: platforms are setting up while brands are also still figuring out which are the best and where audiences and users are also choosing to base their own social graphs. Although I must admit Facebook in most cases still wins over the mentality of the current ‘best’ preferable platform. If we didn’t suffer the limited access, I have total confidence that Facebook would have grown well beyond the current limited 1.4mill users. 

Q: More and more brands are experimenting with social media for marcom purposes. For a typical B2C marketer what would your top three recommendations be? 

A: I can't stress enough the importance of developing a strategic approach to social media. Some brands consider it’s just production, an add on to their digital communication plan. Most don’t have a clue what the role of their Facebook page should be, while others can't think of anything else but creating a Facebook page.  The normal pattern we see would be brands jumping straight onto the social media wave without understanding the nature of it. So I would say think hard on a strategy and the objectives that would help a brand drive their total brand goals or communication goals. 

Secondly, content. Brands, by large, are still thinking of one-way communication and not really thinking from a consumer perspective. The standard behavior of wanting to push out messages, campaign and programs without having a good story or asking the basic questions like how can I involve my audiences, what value do I bring to them, and how can I be a part of my consumers' conversations.  Conversations in social media require solid, interesting, relevant and almost unique type of communication where content is at the core of everything. Develop a social media conversation/content plan to tie in with your audience's behavior and preferences and then marry these with your branded content. Alternatively, create content uniquely for social media as those are actually quite cost effective.

Be Brave – I would say. Brands should at least start to realize and take up the belief that social media is changing the way they’re operating, do business and communicate with their audiences and customers.  Companies who are already doing digital work, especially great work, need to move fast into the area of social media, get a good advisor/agency and embark on the social media path. 

Typically PR managers – who would normally view digital as a brand manager or marketer job, should have the courage to do ‘social’. The ‘social’ territory might seem vague and mysterious, probably due to the fact that PR managers are not familiar with the possibility of having proper, effective measurement for social media programs. In addition, brand managers can start to venture into the area of applying social media to drive business impact that goes beyond brand awareness. 

 

Q: Which brand(s) is doing something interesting in social media in Vietnam and why? 

A: I would say Coca-cola (Coke). Instead of using the globally aligned Facebook platform, Coke in Vietnam has identified its target audience locally: targeting a younger crowd, focus on a teen to the first-jobbers market that is also the biggest internet users segment in Vietnam. 

Coke connected with the young spirit of online users and most of the population who loved to be entertained, via the most popular SNS platform ZingMe. Using the already massive user database and network, Coke built a site that sits within the community. With the new direction of ZingMe going less gaming and moving into more communication, it would be interesting to see how the Coke community within ZingMe grows. 

A few international brands in Vietnam have started to plug-in their global/regional program of establishing Facebook counts despite the difficulty in access. We see Dell, Adidas, HTC, Ford, Vietnam Airlines etc… operating here. Hence the question very soon would be which brands have the successful Facebook cases and doing great things in this platform.

Q: Any new technology/platform  that excites you?

A: To be fair, ZingMe development kinda excites me a bit as they will be growing more towards the direction of communication rather than just games. ZingMe has a perceived perception as a very young, teen-like platform where nothing serious is going on there, this will soon change. We already see a few big brands taking the interest in building brand presence within the community and I would be keen to see. 

Geo-location based is another one that I keep my eyes on. Since Foursquare we now see services that mimic this global trend being adopted here. Brands have not been ‘brave’ enough to invest in this, but Vietnamese users favor location & activities sharing and the mobile communications, and this will push these platforms forward. I do hope to see great mobile campaigns!

 

A Marketer's Look at Social Media in China circa 2011

 
It was a treat to run into Jeremy Webb at our Hong Kong Summit the week before last. He leads strategy for clients out of from our Beijing 360 Digital Influence team and has been designing and executing social media-based programs there for years.

I have been traveling to Asia for the past 5 years and am struck by how fast the social media and digital marketing landscape is changing. The kaleidoscope of social platforms many, arguably, the counterparts Western social networks, have gained subscribers at a terrific rate.

I asked him his POV on a few points to get a clearer picture of what is going on there from a marketing and communications perspective.  

 

Q: What would you say are some of the defining characteristics of the social media world in China today for marketers?

A: Social media in China is Chinese, by which I mean that social media use takes place almost entirely on domestic platforms. Foreign social media platforms are, for the large part, blocked in China and in their place have developed some fantastic equivalents that are providing great opportunities for marketers over here. 

"There's lies, there's damned lies, and there's Chinese internet statistics." People are making money on social media in different ways here in China. This, along with various cultural factors, leads to all sorts of crazy dynamics that do not exist in the West and a ton of unreliable numbers. One factor is platforms charging brands for the privilege of having a brand space, which can lead to platforms making spaces look artificially active with fake fans as a way to justify the spend. Individual social media influencers also often expect money in return for communicating a brand message, which has led to a rise in career bloggers that have learned ways to make their content look more successful that it really is.

An important part of our job, therefore, is to see beyond these numbers and find the influencers and influential spaces that can truly generate value for our clients. More and more brands are experimenting with social media for marcom purposes.

 

Q: For a typical B2C marketer what would be the top three recommendations that you might generally make for them? 

A: Listen to what your customers and competitors are saying online. This does not necessarily have to be an expensive automated system, nor does it have to result in a fancy 50-page report. Asking an internal member of staff or an agency employee that understands your business to perform daily checks of the relevant platforms and flag up potential problems or opportunities is a good first step. Of course, investing more in listening posts that can provide quantitative analysis and analysis that can provide recommendations can also pay huge dividends. 

You must provide something interesting or useful to your target. For me, creating "something interesting" and sharing it online for free is the only way to make social media work. There is no short cut. This something interesting could be a video, a Weibo feed, a hosted community, an ebook, and so on. The something interesting is the "hook" that will make your target stick around for long enough for you to tell them your message. Luckily most brands have plenty of content, opportunities to create content, and people willing to create content - make the most of them. The chances are that you already have tons of content that your target would love to interact with online - could this be repackaged and activated on one or more social media platforms? You are probably hosting regular events - could the reach of these be extended online?

Finally, your employees are some of your most powerful potential advocates - could you be empowering them or providing them with a platform to better promote your brand? Be very careful when choosing a social media agency partner in China. Ask yourself, how are they able to guarantee a million video views? How are they able to promise 100,000 new fans in 4 months? At best, dodgy tactics that deliver inflated results are a waste of money; at worst, they are a business risk. 

 

Q: Which brand(s)  is doing something interesting in social media in China and why? 

A: Vancl, an online clothing retailer in China, is a great example. Every aspect of their marketing - their outdoor, their TVCs, their online display ads - all consider and integrate with social media in some way. The copy on bus stop ads, for example, plays on the latest social media memes. 

In what was, in my opinion, the biggest social media campaign of 2010 globally (yes, bigger than Old Spice!), Vancl unlocked and inspired the creativity of millions in China with "Vanclize". Riding on the back of an incredibly successful ad campaign - a campaign that featured social media celebrities - the brand willfully ceded control of the message, allowing and encouraging creative young people to create and share their own photoshopped version of the ad, replacing the copy and the celebrity with things that would get their friends excited. The campaign inspired other brands too, leading to a host of copy-cat campaigns over the past year.

 

Q: Any new technology/platform  that excites you? 

For the past year I have been saying that Weibo is the second most important social media platform in the world, second only to Facebook. Weibo is best understood as a Chinese cross between Twitter and Tumblr - a supercharged microblog that allows users to share multimedia content and write a lot more. Two players dominate the market, with Weibo platforms operated by Chinese internet giants Sina and Tencent. 

Weibo is the "Facebook of China," in my view. Not because of it's functionality (it is more a content-sharing platform than an SNS), but because of its position in society. It is the first platform to be changing online and offline interactions in a similar way to Facebook is doing so in the West. People arrange their nights out on Weibo; they "live tweet" those nights out. Weibo is increasingly setting the agenda of traditional media - many radio DJs often only take questions on Weibo; my journalist friends find their story leads on Weibo. Eavesdrop into any conversation among young people here in Beijing and you will probably overhear the word "Weibo"; this is increasingly the case in smaller cities and among older generations. 

Making Products Speak for Themselves via Mobile & Social

Purpose-driven marketing is gaining in popularity amongst major marketers. Phillip Kotler outlined a clear view of it in Marketing 3.0 and big consumer products companies like P&G and Unilever are making hay with the concept. In short:

"...Part of that is rise of "purpose-driven marketing" which is a thesis about the strength of a company that has a higher mission when combining its community mission with its business mission. Brands see a future where the constant product variation that fueled sales in the FMCG world - new flavors, new packaging, new brand positioning - will not drive sales nor loyalty from customers going into the future." 

As marketers look for more ways to be 'of-use' to consumers at retail, they could help us all make product decisions at that moment we stand in the aisle by letting us review the pedigree of the product via our mobile device. 

Access to the 'Purpose' at the Shelf

The IOU Project is about to launch and aims to outfit clothing with QR Codes that will reveal the story behind each product. Now, they have a very particular platform that is very pro-craftsman. You will be able to trace the provenance of your shirt back to the individual weaver. That's one way to make the idea of product provenance come to life. 

But what if a major consumer products goods company used their QR Code (or even a branded visual target) to give instant access to:

1. the sustainability story behind the product: connects the broad sustainability activities of a global brand with the product that people choose

2. an introduction to some of the people behind the product: builds a personal connection with the big, faceless enterprise (here's how a small example of how we did it with Ford Explorer)

3. suggestions for how the consumer could be a part of a larger solution on a relevant issue: acknowledges that we are all in this together and invites the consumer to take part

Using your smart phone and your code reader, you could quickly point and get a baseball card-summary of the story of your products with links into more - like the video of the creators - and a way to bookmark or save these product summaries in a way that would be useful to you.

And once you have done 1-3, there is no reason you couldn't offer more information about performance and benefits of the product. Sound backward? Shouldn't we lead with that type of information ("more scientifically-proven moisturizing globulets..," "heated steering wheels..," "New 100 mega-pixel camera!")? Maybe, but if you buy into Marketing 3.0, it is these additional attributes that feed our heart and spirit that may drive product selection more and more. 


From a Presentation by Phillip Kotler on Marketing 3.0

What will Social Business Training Look Like for Us in 2011?

We have trained hundreds of people within our company and our clients to use social media effectively not just in marketing and communications (marcom) but across the enterprise. We have designed and delivered curriculum over the past 5 years that has really served to empower both the 'thinkers' and 'doers' in social media. We have wrestled with and addressed the three key challenges with affecting change through training (not "won" as there is always room for improvement):

1. Deliver experiential training that goes beyond knowledge and information - we roll up our sleeves and use social media during training to solve business problems. Its not enough to understand our planning framework or the digital crisis management system we apply or how we combine social grassroots (e.g. Facebook) with content and experience design. We run trainings around business problems in a challenge setting. That drives understanding.  

2. Add scale via an always-on, on-demand system - we launched our online Social Media Belt Training resource this year. Team members from anywhere in the world can hone their expertise by accessing dozens of training modules to understand how to activate events via social media, ensure best-practice ethics in their work, measure performance and more. Now we can reach beyond the never-ending schedule of terrestrial trainings to reach even more people. 

3. Design everything around an accredited "belt system" - People need to have goals that they recognize. Business managers need them too. Our belt-system, defined 3 years ago, has been formalized and expanded. And its being tracked.

This has all generally worked. Now the temptation is to slightly improve upon this model and continue to deliver it. After all, this has accelerated our ability to have the most experienced and expert global network of social media strategists that I know of. (This is a claim I feel confident of and have worked hard to deliver. I am keenly aware that this may draw challenges from other expert groups out there and I look forward to that challenge).

That being said, it will not be enough going forward. In the spirit of Ogilvy's "divine discontent" we must reinvent our approach to training. There are three key pressures that cause me to rethink this approach. 

Three Persistent Pressures

We have focused our training on creating "white, red and black belts" in social media throughout the agency. Our never-ending goal is to maintain every agency team member as a "white belt" with a large group of red belts and a growing group of super-expert black belts who not only design programs but execute them, as well.

1. The expanding application of social media to business - IBM held their Social Media Business Summit, more brands than ever attended the WOMMA Summit and the Marketing50 event in Boston earlier this month brought C-suiters together to wrestle with a bigger impact on business than just marketing and communications innovations. Social media affects employee policy and communications, IP protection, IP development/innovation, legal and more. Our training must expand into these areas.

2.The leadership divide - current business leaders around the world continue to wrestle with a divide of those who believe and even understand digital and social media innovation and those that remain either skeptical or intimidated by the change. No single "executive digital immersion" workshop will solve eradicate the divide. Rather there is a cycle of learning and embracing that will continue for some years until the application of social and digital become so pervasive in business to the point that we will likely stop using the words "social" or "digital" to qualify initiatives. Everything will be social and digital. 

3. We are talking 'behavior change' not new "channels" - 90% of the gifts I purchased this holiday season were researched and purchased online. Some I bought through my smartphone. Almost all were ideas I heard from family, friends and peers at least 50% of which I heard about online. I paid attention to reviews on many of them. I Googled to find variants and colors I wanted. I never went to a mall. I didn't have the chance to watch much television as I was too busy. I read 5-6 magazines religiously yet none were key to my purchases except one (Monocle). Anyhow, you get the point. My behavior is much different this year that last. My influences are more personal and more complex at the same time. Advertising plays a role but is not primary the way it once was. This means that the entire marcom "industry" will be trying to change going forward to match that change. 

One of the highlights I took away from the recent experience Ogilvy had with the Hyper Island digital training that was also highlighted in a solid article in Fast Company. That highlight was captured by my colleague, Sean MacDonald who runs a digital strategy group at Ogilvy. His point was that there are so many great thinkers/creators in the marcom disciplines who are essentially intimidated by 'digital" and "social." If we could reduce that barrier - make them more confident through knowledge and experience -  we would all reap the benefits of their seasoned expertise and creativity. While that may simply sound like a justification for more training, it also means the existing "black belts" in social have to be a bit less exclusive about their expertise and quite a bit more willing to admit that making social media principles accessible to more seasoned marcom pros will unlock more social media creativity.  

These persistent pressures and our own experience training marketing and communications professionals over the past 5 years points me towards a new training priority next year: Sleeveless Social Business Training in 2011

more on that in the next post...

The Future of Advertising isn't Advertising - Take 2

Robin Grant at We Are Social wrote a post around a presentation he created on the evolving agency landscape. He named it "The Future of Advertising Isn't Advertising." He offers a view of how agencies (successful agencies, I presume) will re-assemble around social media. 

I think successful agencies will reassemble around business acceleration.  They will become relentless about learning and applying any discipline that can help their client meet today's and tomorrow's business challenges. Today that includes dramatically shifting from marketing mix-thinking to reflect true consumer behavior around social and digital. Tomorrow, it will likely be the effect social media will have on the entire enterprise. 

Relentless Reinvention

I love reinvention. Complacency kills. But so does fanaticism. We have been reinventing the agency for some time. First, we were pressed by the world transformation by everything that can be called 'digital.' Then, we needed to embrace all that is "social' once it became clear to everyone that the explicit and implicit changes brought about by it were irrevocable and great. Some of us were fanatical about the change and it sounded like we were throwing everything great that had been accomplished in marcom. That wasn't the way to go. Two things happened along the way:

1. we really changed
2. we realized that we will always be changing

Converging on Social Media
Robin makes the case that all of the traditional agency types - media, advertising, communications and digital - are converging around social media. The success stories will be formed around 5 expertises to define "a new agency." Here are Robin's ingredients: 

• An innate sensibility for social media
• A deep understanding of digital marketing
• Using PR techniques evolved from PR
• Strategic, editorial and creative talent
• Research and analysis expertise

I actually believe that the next success stories will be driven by three principles:

1. they will be organized around influence vs. the marketing mix
2. they will be fully integrated in all the ways that matter
3. they will mix the rigor of mature disciplines with innovation around new ones 

Organized around influence - Shopper marketing; social CRM; integrated strategy (owned, earned & paid media), environmental marketing, cultural marketing - these are all disciplines that emerge in response to how customers behave and think - how they are influenced. No doubt that interruptive advertising is no longer the 'blunt instrument' in the top of everyone's toolbox. We are now expressing a lot more empathy towards consumers and constituents and finding better ways to earn their attention and involvement (and ultimately their business). How people are influenced - from advertising to consumer-based earned media to just-in-time utility delivered to POS - is more important than the traditional marketing mix org structure

Fully integrated - Agencies are a business model. Adaptive teams are an operational model. Adaptive teams are assembled and adjusted based upon what it will take to solve the client problem or accelerate their business. These experts are pulled together based upon their contribution to the solution and client. They may belong to other tribes for the sake of discipline development (my folks come from the social media "tribe") and they come together to work as a team. Agencies who do everything possible to allow for the friction-less formation of these teams will win. Big or small agency is a pointless argument (except I think "big agencies" have an advantage again so long as they really make team work the priority. After all, they have the best experts from many disciplines who understand how integration works).

Mix of rigorous discipline and innovation - No doubt that social media significantly changes the game for brands. But it doesn't burn all previous marcom logic to the ground. What we need now is a mix of the best of marketing and communications disciplines - key skills like reputation management, CRM, interactive usability - and new POVs born from social media and the behaviors it serves.  

The New Kind of Agency

So if these are the principles, then I would define the following ingredients to form "the New Agency:"

Social Brand Management - brands have a new side to them. Its how they behave on Facebook. It's what they do to provide more value like delivering utility or entertainment. It may not turn brand management on its head but it certainly requires new skills and insights.    

Blended Strategy - you have your blended teams and now your blended strategy. It should be a strategy to accelerate business. It will include marketing, communications, customer service, sales and more.  

Customer Experience Design & Management - whether in a Web site, facebook app, or physical storefront, nothing could be more important today than the customer experience. In loyalty studies, customers' crave simplicity. If we can make their experience to checkout 5% easier, we have really helped. 

Conversation Management - okay, call it community management, I don't care. I do think our ability to manage conversations with communities of customers and stakeholders will be key to clients and agencies for the foreseeable future.

Always-on Research and Insight - from cgm listening to search intent modeling to polling and more, we have added a collection of fast, responsive research techniques to our everyday work. 

Performance Marketing - nothing happens without great measurement. We will finally enter the age of dashboards where we are able to refine all of the bazillion things we can measure into simple, actionable views. 

Adaptive Team Model - we will expend significant energy to reducing barriers to cross-discipline team work, enhancing how we work virtually and how creative gets done in a networked universe where many more people are 'creative.'

Efficient Production - we have to respond to business needs for lower cost and quick "operationalizing" anything that works. 

Robin's got a good view of the agency of the future. I have added some things that come from our own transformation. There will be no more "ad agencies" in the future. Those that were defined by advertising in the past will become the new agency lest they be reduced to buying boxed sets of Madmen and drinking gin martinis till they pass out on a Monday night.