We at Ogilvy have been delivering what we call social business solutions for the past few years. We have a staff mix of social media strategists who themselves come from marketing, digital and communications backgrounds and management consultants. Each brings something valuable to understanding business problems. The consultants have strengths that really surface in the solution design part of an engagement while those with marcom backgrounds also get implementation in a way that most management consultants envy.
What is social business?
Social media can deliver value to businesses far beyond the narrow application to marketing and communications goals. It can help a workforce be more efficient and productive. It can inform product design and service delivery. It can fuel innovation. It can enable better recruiting and talent management.
We use the term social business to describe the value businesses derive from social media technology and behaviors across the enterprise. Often it implies some type of change or transformation but rarely do businesses come to us expressly asking for change management.That usually comes later once it’s clear that enabling a workforce to become brand advocates, as an example, has all sorts of implications on governance, legal and human resource policies. Even then, we are focused on solving a business problem using social media-related solutions or thinking. We see social business solutions falling into four categories:
Why diverse teams?
Jay Baer had an interesting post that questioned whether media and marketing specialists make the best social business solution providers. I believe they are indispensible but I also believe they are just half of the solution. Good management consultants are the other half. These guys and gals understand how to evaluate a business problem, interrogate people, process and organization and then design a solution that is equal parts good design and real politik of implementation. Most marketing experts focus on solving a marketing program completely divorced from the intricacies of an organization. They know how to design and implement great marcom solutions but with no entrée to change an organization to be more successful at marketing, their assessment of internal politics is done somewhat superficially.
Strengths of management consultants
- Recognizing business problems and opportunities for change
- Stakeholder interviews and investigation
- Designing programs aligned with organizational realities and complexity
- Defining and delivering against business value
Strengths of marcom specialists/social media strategists
- Understanding the technology and behaviors of social media
- Designing solutions based upon behavioral economics
- Implementing programs (not just designing them)
- Fast, agile execution
Jay asks, “If you’re a major corporation that’s convinced you need to make some serious changes to prosper in a rapidly shifting future, do you turn to your PR firm, do you turn to a legacy management consulting firm (Bain, Accenture, McKinsey, Deloitte, et al), or do you turn to one of the new breed of specialist firms (Altimeter, Dachis, et al)?”
I say they should turn to those who can deliver integrated social solutions and scale them across the enterprise. Experience, cases, methods that combine the best of disciplines – these are ingredients for a results-oriented business solutions firm. Firms like IBM understand the business potential of social media – enabling collaboration between employees, connecting a far flung network of experts more directly with customers. They not only embrace social business solutions but have offered to deliver same to their own clients. They are an exception.
Right now, most businesses that need social business solutions are discovering that need in the course of more ordinary work, much of it in marketing or employee relations. We work to share best practice social media marketing and communications across 30 markets and end up in a marketing transformation project. So, management firms like McKinsey are not the default right answer. Nor are the pure PR firms with lots of Facebook programs under their belt. This territory remains wide open. Clearly, I am biased to the team we have deployed. That’s why we did it. Time will tell who earns the reputation as the top social business providers.
Based on recent experience there's a lot to be said for your approach to social business, especially for larger, more complex client organisations.
As you say it will be fascinating to see how the market for social media advice pans out over time. Your approach feels different, well thought through and robust. Good luck.
Have added my tuppence worth here - http://philadams.co/2012/01/story-fracking/
Posted by: Phil_Adams | January 31, 2012 at 02:20 PM