PiKE's Thinking...

Final Blog

2008-11-18T11:50:00.002+02:00

Hi

I am in the process of moving PiKE's Thinking... to its new home at http://walterpike.com

See you there - read the article on Obama's election.

Is it only about getting EyeBalls?

2008-09-21T07:48:00.005+02:00

I had heard about Eyeballs but it was Louise Marsland at the Cracking the Digital Code workshop who invited me to try it out. I did for a few hours.

My comments are going to appear paradoxical because I think that it is going to be successful, but that its not going to work.

It will be successful because it fits right into the marketers and advertising industry's current understanding of online marketing and branding, both are still purveyors of mass communication and locked into the interruption marketing model, the core principle of which is to find an audience and interrupt them by putting a marketing message in front of them. This is what Eyeballs does, whenever a subscriber receives an sms or a call or makes one an ad appears on the screen. On my Nokia N95 8G its a beautiful image. The subscriber also receives a reward which can be exchanged for mobile value.

Sounds like a good formulae - actually paying your reader to be exposed to your advertising. Exactly the language the market and the agencies understand.

Note that I used the word exposed, getting eyeballs. Listen to Seth Godin here. The old marketing is about getting eyeballs, the new marketing is about getting engaged and delivering relevance.

The future of mobile marketing allows even more relevance, because your phone is with you and so its possible to know where you are and what you are doing and advertising that is geographic, time and context sensitive is appropriate.

The mobile consumer is ruthless - if it doesn't add value to him now, he just ignore it.

In its current iteration Eyeballs is old marketing - SPAM. So it will be successful because advertisers will spend advertising money on it. It won't work because the mobile consumer wont be spammed, he will either just switch off and get rewards or like me get irritated and uninstall.

"Who counts more than how many"

Why arent you in advertising? - a bursary application in 160 characters.

2008-09-07T13:09:00.022+02:00

"If you think that advertising is in you, then SMS the reason to 32532, and you could win a bursary or one of 10 iPods" is the invitation in the aaa school of advertising's new student recruitment campaign.

To be able to complete a bursary application in 160 characters requires some creativity, exactly the type of person the school wants.

Advertising is challenging and fast paced and the type of people advertising attracts are creative, adventurous and even slightly off the wall this is true for both creatives and account management people.

The aaa school of advertising is the leading establishment of its type on the continent and wants to attract people who have advertising in them, the best quality talent of the current crop of Matrics (high school graduates). This group of matriculants will be the first group to have graduated under the outcomes based education system.

We need to reach them during a time when Matrics are already out of day to day schooling and studying on their own. Luckily this generation are seldom off MXit the mobile social platform and Facebook and the internet forms a massive part of their life. Most haven't made up their mind as to what they will do next year and are googling for answers and the majority really don't know what career opportunities exist in the ad industry.

I was involved with social and mobile agency Brandsh in the development of the digital portion of the campaign, the original concept and poster design was done by through the line agency Switch.

In answer to the initial sms the reply will send exploring matrics to a WAP site with more information and to the campaign website Its in You, here they will be able to explore student and alumni work as well as upload advertising, comment and rate local advertising and work from around the world. They will also have another opportunity to enter the bursary competition.

The initial activation is using a full range of media including a poster and pamphlet campaign. A Facebook page and a YouTube channel have been created both linking to the promotional site, extra traffic will be generated by Cost per Click (CPC) mobile advertising, Google Adwords and Facebook ads. A short while into the campaign a MXit competition will launch.

Not only is this campaign tightly targeted, but it also demonstrates the fact that the aaa school is on the edge of modern communications trends.

In July this year I joined the aaa school of advertising as the head of the faculty of marketing and advertising of the Johannesburg campus. The aaa school of advertising is owned by the professional body of the advertising industry through the ACA (Association for Communication and Advertising) and is only private academic institution in Sub Sahara Africa accredited by the IAA (International Advertising Association), New York, USA.

Graduates ALSO receive an IAA Diploma.

Is that the failwhale over @ MyGenius?

2008-08-24T18:53:00.019+02:00

Earlier this week I asked the owners of South Africa business networking site MyGenius to delete my profile and along with it went all my blogs and comments. I now longer wish to associated with the site.

For a while I was one of their most active and loyal members, writing literally hundreds of posts mostly with marketing advice for small entrepreneurs and responding with more than 700 responses on other peoples questions and comments.

I wasn't the only one either, MyGenius was a vibrant, supportive and caring community with discussions that focused a lot on business advice and support but with a healthy dose of fun and humour thrown in.

Although I have never received much in the way of direct business, a core group of members became pretty good friends with business and social interaction both on and offline. At one stage, because I believed in the community, I opted to pay R100 a month for membership for very minimal benefits over the ‘rank of file’

So what happened? Well a number things which changed the dynamics completely:

As the site got bigger so it started losing its intimacy.
A group of vociferous members, who believed that they needed profile on the threads to be effective on the site, but without much to say, started attacking and flaming the regular contributors. Many of whom merely shrugged shoulders and moved on.
The owners decided that they needed a better return and blocked most of the existing functionality except those who were prepared to pay R75 monthly as paid up members, to take on Genius status as its known.

I decided not to continue with my subscription and stopped paying and was accordingly downgraded. I took this step partly because the quality of interaction had already decreased dramatically but also because in comparison to other online networks MyGenius now didn't offer value. Furthermore I believed that the move would result in a fall off of members and a therefore even a further reduction in value.

I wrote a discussion thread to inform my followers that they would need to contact me directly or follow me at other places and leaving my profile up just “in case” and still a member of the community moved on.

Last month I received a call from one of the MG members who wanted my assistance by being the speaker at an event organised at her initiative to promote one of the member's undertakings , a Spa and lodge outside Johannesburg. I agreed to do so and even waived my speaker’s fee completely. I also booked the lodge for the Flying Solo unconference in September.

As part of the promotion to MG members it was suggested that I write a “blog” from “beyond the grave” so to speak and invite my supporters to attend the event. I did this in the style of an update and was posted by the member who had suggested it, as I was no longer a Genius I had lost that functionality.

The resulting furore, malicious and downright rude posts as well as the hate mail which both I and the organiser both received were flabbergasting. But are not isolated incidents. I was even insulted by being accused of having questionable ethics and being of low class by the MG owners. The reason was that instead of them seeing the value offered by a professional speaker speaking at an event for FREE the focus was on a perception that I had set out to avoid paying the R75 membership in order to make the post, and that someone else had used their membership to do so. I still battle to understand the logic.

This and because of the threat of a boycott of the event being organised I was asked to withdraw my participation which I did. The event was today.

Is there soemthing to learn? Communities only exist because they offer value to their members, quite possibly MyGenius still offers value, I suspect mainly to those who have already lost the ears of the gossips in the school car park. Often outwardly brave but actually insecurely hidden behind their computer screens disconnected from the people they are addressing, they say stuff they would never say face to face.

But consider this:

Even online communities are brands and unacceptable language and attacks should be rooted out.
Online comments are still subject to the normal laws protecting individuals against defamation. People have been sued.
Quality contribution should be encouraged, even incentivised.
If you are going to charge make sure that you offer real value, much more than what members can get for free say on LinkedIn, ecademy and Plaxo.
Online communities are fickle, with a short attention span and with low exit barriers and massive choice, and can and will easily leave.

It is possible that I haven’t understood what the site owners wish to achieve, maybe the they felt the more supportive environment doesn't work for them. For people like me and a number of the previous more supportive community with whom I have spoken the current ethos is not what they want and they are reconsidering their involvement.

I've already made that decision and one thing is for sure MyGenius is one place online where you won’t find me!

(The failwhale is the error screen image that appears whenever Twitter has a technical problem)

UPDATE:

LOL: it apears that on Nov 18 a link to this blog was posted on MyGenius and - Once again there is a hurricane in a teacup - with discussion threads discussing me . "small things amuse ..."

Why social media should be impacting your thinking.

2008-08-16T05:54:00.004+02:00

Crowd Policing, originally uploaded by Dom Dada.

South Africans are connected. If you are connected to the internet you are likely to be participating in social media. If you have a cell phone in your pocket, you could be connected.

South Africa has one of the highest penetrations and usage of cell phones in the world and international ad servers rank South Africa in the top three countries internationally as consumers of mobile advertising, just as once we were one of the top five most connected countries in the world. If you are a marketer and you are ignoring social media you may already be a dinosaur. Maybe not a dinosaur yet, but certainly perched precariously on the edge of the tar pit!

Technology has created the ability for people to connect, any people and all people and on a massive global scale. It has also allowed information to be accessed, accumulated, stored and shared in a manner we could never have dreamed would have been possible. What is more we don’t even need to look for information – it finds us through sexy RSS feeds.

The control of information has always been an important source of power. In the commercial world information about products and services has been carefully managed by the business, brands built and positioned with advertising and carefully controlled PR spin for so long that we think that’s the way things are, that business owns the brand?

What the social web has done is effectively shift the power in the transaction. The customer is now irrevocably in control, information, opinions and thoughts are now all in the public domain, people sharing their opinions with not only their immediate circle but with the world. The most important market conversation now is not the conversation between the business and the customer it is the conversation between your current customer and your prospective customer. The power in the transaction is being transferred to the market, which is talking amongst each other. That power of controlling what they read is gone, and will never be back.

What this does is fundamentally change the way we must think about markets and how we think about marketing and branding and how we engage in the market conversation instead of trying to manipulate it, or instruct it.

Social media enables us to identify our target markets to the unit of one, the individual. This implies that the widespread use of mass media will continue to reduce in effectiveness not only because of the lack of trust consumers have in the process of brand manipulation, but also because products and services can be customised, personalised and delivered economically and profitably to market segments that were previously just too small to identify.

Social Media changes the way we coordinate, motivate and manage our staff, whom we can see as url’s in an organisational cloud rather than a block on an organogram. Check it out, your business, probably already has staff pages on Facebook, where your employees are hanging out.

There are many who feel that social media is just another buzzword, a fad soon to fade away like many others have. Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 are not just technology, they are a response to a fundamental change in the way society connects, how information is understood and how perceptions are being formed. Adapting and changing to them mean a complete rethink in the way we understand data, information and customers. It means a rethink in the way we coordinate and build businesses. It even forces a rethink in the way we measure organisational performance.

For the real marketer this represents a huge opportunity to deliver value, because nothing else is going to cut it in the new marketing landscape.

Google is a great brand

2008-08-15T05:30:00.003+02:00

photo by marcos papapopolous

In my view Google is a great brand. My views contrast with those of brand consultant Patrick Carmody who in a recent article on Bizcommunity, states that Google is not a strong brand at all it is merely “the name of a phenomenal search engine” and could easily be replaced by another as in the new connected world “ we are loyal to a value delivery system, not a brand”, and in a follow up comment refers to the new Cuil search engine as an example of a how “we can shift our loyalty instantaneously and en masse from a very established global brand to a brand new brand (like Cuil)"

Reviews of Cuil have been disappointing although it claims to index a greater proportion of the web and organise in a more logical manner than Google my own experience and those in my twitter stream don’t bear that out good but certainly not great is the overall verdict. In fact leading technology blog TechCrunch refers to Cuil having turned from potential Google killer to Google lunch in an instant. Cuil has in fact fallen victim to the most basic of branding mistakes by building massive hype without substance and in my opinion has a long way to go before it is even recognised in the same competitive frame as Google.

It probably worth discussing what brands are, they are essentially a collection of perceptions in the mind of the customer or other stake holder. The easiest way to understand brands is to see them as “reputation” in this way the brand concept can be applied to anything from products and services to people. Reputation is gathered from a number of sources including advertising but most importantly performance and the most powerful way of building a brand is by the consistent delivery to the customer of value. "Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you." - Stelios Haji-Ioannou, EasyGroup.

In contrast to Patrick’s view I believe that Google has engaged in extensive brand building, the guiding principle from its inception has been “focus on the user and all else follows” brand building is not brand mantra’s, doctrines and advertising, these are tools to understand and spread the word. Brand building has got to do with delivering value to customers.

The presence of the internet especially the social web is often put forward as a reason why branding is changing. What is actually happening is that it is forcing brand management to be even more vigilant on how brands deliver value. The real power of social media is found in its ability to connect people and that this connection leaves a searchable history. So networks have grown, both numerically and geographically and the opinion of the more than 184 million bloggers worldwide can be easily sort. Brands and the companies creating them are having to understand that they do no longer control the flow of information.

A recent twebinar “Who really owns your brand” and the accompanying tweets discuss this view, a view concludes that brands are a partnership. Brands have in fact never changed in their essence; they are the opinions of the customers and other stake holders of the performance of the product or service. For a more in depth discussion refer to the “The Economist eBook on Brands and Branding"

Google is in my mind without doubt a strong brand. Google is recognised as the predominant search engine in the world, it is the automatic choice for millions, the majority, of internet users. Google is also a collection of other advanced web based services, from superior email, document collaboration and social networking services that have certainly made it a very significant and routine part of my day. But I’m not the only one, Millward Brown rate Google as the biggest brand in the world with a value of $86bn and Superbrands announced Google as the top brand in the UK last month. Around 9 out of 10 internet searches in the UK are done with Google

Patrick, I agree with what appears to be the main thrust of your article that the branding landscape is changing, but on this point. Not at all.

This is repost of an article I wrote for bizcommunity.

Social Media is Archaic

2008-08-10T12:44:00.011+02:00

Social media is archaic. It is pushing the world back from a process focused efficient market place into the village based economies that existed before the Industrial Revolution. A really big village, the world. In the village craftsmen made products and deliver services for customers they knew and understood, mostly they produced customised products for specific requirements.

Crowded market street
Originally uploaded by Charlie Hudson

Then came the industrial revolution – bringing prosperity and consumerism to millions. The industrial revolution was all about efficiency. The rules of that game was to drive profitability by productisation, the more standard the product the cheaper to produce and the greater the margin. Mass products to mass markets, promoted using mass media, and to make it work - brand management.

But people have never really been mass consumers, the average Joe is largely a myth. People are all individuals. Except for the basics people have always wanted products designed to suit them specifically but routinely buy average mass produced products and never use most of the features in them.

The internet has created a new market space, a market in which it can still be efficient to build customised product in volume.

It also turned the one way mass communication into a conversation. Because millions upon millions of people are connected. The connection by internet or by mobile phone, has also recreated the buzz of the village, people talking to one another.

This connection between people has threatened the traditional thinking of branding as a process of manipulating perceptions. People trust people more than they do corporates and bureaucracies.

So it’s ironic that technology has taken society in a full circle – from communities and then back to communities again.

Rapid corporate adoption of social media

2008-07-27T21:07:00.000+02:00

Twice as many rapidly growing companies believe that social media is very important in their marketing strategy in 2008 than did in 2007, with 77% using at least one form of social media, according to new research released by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research. The subject of the research was the Inc 500, a list of the fastest growing companies compiled by Inc Magazine.

The study also revealed that in a year the number of Inc 500 companies which have a corporate blog has grown by 20% now up to 39% in total, compared to 11.6% of Fortune 500 companies up from 8% a year before.

Social media in this study referred to blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking and wikis, which is not the full gambit.

The Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study is a statistically significant study that proves that social media understanding and adoption in corporate America is growing at an astonishing pace, with the leading, most exciting and quickest growing companies leading the pack.

In South Africa it appears that most companies are still testing the water but it is significant that corporate head hunters are starting to scramble over the few people in South Africa who get social media. I know of three significant appointments this month alone and more on the horizon.

Yet another one is the extent of the interest in social media in public talks on the subject. The few who are able to talk with authority on the subject are packing out venues and we are finding that knowledge on the topic ranges from total ignorance to a voracious appetite for understanding.

What is clear, however, is that the application of Web 2.0, which is the technology enabling the social phenomena, has moved from the domain of geeks into the strategic realm. The hype is becoming good business sense. This fact has still only dawned on the quickest-thinking businesses which realise both the enormous opportunity presented by social media but also the tremendous risk of becoming irrelevant in a rapidly connecting world, a world in which South African consumers are leading players.

Writing for Social Media is NOT the same!

2008-07-03T09:38:00.000+02:00

Social media is different. Its different because the reader is in control and the reader is cynical and doesn’t trust spin and brand speak. The reader will participate and comment and because he or she is connected will share his or her views with their network. To some it may be bad news but social media is not a fad and it is here to stay.

Traditionally copy in ads, news media and PR is a one way communication in the control of the writer who could persuade and form opinion as he alone held the floor. This is not the case when everyone is empowered to speak, then the opinions become user generated. In this space we need to consider our approach to writing business copy and that may mean learning new techniques, techniques which are going to become more and more important in the future of marketing and advertising.

I recently stumbled on an eBook titled The 19 NEW rules of successful social media copywriting, written by Nicky Jameson, and downloadable for free from her website Download Here it is interesting reading and a great guide.

In my view though her approach doesn’t do far enough, I discussed this with her on the net, Nicky is in Canada and true to the spirit of social media she engaged in the debate with me. The point I raised was that her approach is still too persuasion orientated, as based on her considerable experience on writing response copy she is always looking for an call to action. I argued that because social media is not just selling sometimes conversations are just building rapport. She is addressing this point in future writings.

We have no disagreement over her key point however and that is that social media is about relationships. To me relationships are built out of developing an authentic personal voice that nurtures a relationship with the reader, out of the relationship develops the opportunity to nudge rather than convince the reader and that relationships develop over time.

Further essential reading for anyone venturing into understanding the social media is Brian Clark’s blog CopyBlogger.

Social media is such a new space that we don’t know the rules but we can all agree on the that its about content and that traditional approaches don’t work, they aren’t trusted

Download the report – its really worth reading, and let me know what you think, I am really interested to learn from your views.

Warning: Social media is dangerous

2008-06-03T12:47:00.003+02:00

One of the guests sitting at my table last week at a networking dinner at which I was the speaker expressed the view that social media was dangerous, total tyranny, that companies were now at the mercy of the public – that they could say anything and people would listen. She felt that your brand could just be destroyed by a vindictive member of the public and years and years of careful nurturing of the brand would just be destroyed.

Is this really a threat?

It really depends on your mindset. If you believe that you are in control of your brand then it is. It’s a threat because spin and puffery don’t work when people can examine the source and have alternative sources of information.

You have certainly lost control. Maybe control was nothing more than an illusion anyway, people have always spoken about things, about products and about people. The sum of their opinion is your brand or your reputation.

What social media has done is amplify the public/costumers voice by creating better connections. The same technology that links people keeps a permanent record which can be found and tracked by other members of the public BUT also by you, so NOW you know what they are saying!

The antidote is nothing new. Truth and transparency. If you build your own personal reputation by doing and being what you say you are then there is no danger, same with your brand.

On the other hand…

Did the earth move for you? ... How far?

2008-05-18T14:38:00.004+02:00

Imagine your intimate relationship being driven by measurements, little scorecards with smiley faces portraying emotions from suicidal to orgasmic scoring the welcome home kiss, the supper, the children’s behaviour. Little boxes of scorecards on the sink, at the front door and on the bedpost. You couldn’t measure your relationship like this can you? You measure it by tummy flips, by the warmth and by the passion.

Customers are people too, people who have invested time and effort into their purchase, ok maybe not for the tube of toothpaste but mostly.

What is your mindset, do you treat your customers as a means to an end, a wallet to plunder or do you treat them like people with whom you would like to have some type of a relationship.

Customer satisfaction is the positive comparison between expectation and experience. Expectations are created by the brand image, what the advertising has said but also about what else is happening in other product categories and markets. It’s a constantly changing benchmark and you have to make sure that you are measuring the things that actually are important to the customer, not just things that you think are important.

To make it even more interesting is the fact that the experience changes from week to week day to day and in fact at different times during the day.

Consider this instead of the normal approach:

1. Instead of your research taking a snapshot of customer experience you take a movie.
2. That the movie is a travelogue and during the trip instead of staying on the highway you take diversions– if they appear interesting, and explore them.
3. That instead of only measuring you engage your customer in innovating their own experience.

Consider this thought what if people actually don’t buy products, people buy services, products have utility, they work, but even so they only have value in the service they deliver. There is no value in watching an ice cream melt, the value is in its eating. Services have emotions and feelings. Products either work or they don’t and you can measure how well. Relationships are different, relationships have feelings and passion, they make you feel happy, sad and excited you feel angry and destructive sometimes, you may even be driven to take revenge. Lover's Revenge

The principle underlying this all is the conversation. All relationships start with talking. In our consulting we have the innovative methodology to do these measurements to take the movie, to explore the diversions, fixing what is important and innovating.

Today you can talk to thousands maybe millions of customers. Modern social media technology has allowed us to engage in this conversation, customers are connecting with each other and we can connect with them day to day.

A niche luxury car manufacturer told me a story last week about a salesman who had sent out an email to 50 customers, forgetting to use the BCC feature. The one customer without thinking just sent reply to all and inadvertently set up an email discussion group. So a customer pressure group known as the Pretoria 47 came into being. Does that scare you, It excites me.

It excites me because in an era of user generated discontent we can move our relationships with our customers from mere statistical representations and bar graphs to what actually makes relationships work. Trust, Transparency and Talking.

Online friendships ARE as strong as direct relationships

2008-05-18T13:46:00.006+02:00

Consider that almost everyone who is online is participating in social media in some way, around 60% have joined some sort of social network and the same amount use social media to vent about poor product and service experience.

More that 70% of internet users research a company’s’ customer care performance before making a purchase.

Now new research released by Symantec, The Norton online living report reveals that of those who have made friends online up to 60% enjoy these friendships at least as much as their offline ones. Dismissing the assumption about the nature of purely online relationships which are assumed to be superficial and weak.

As the evidence rolls in from around the world about the power of online communities and user generated branding South African businesses are increasingly starting to take notice. Not even six months ago in my corporate discussions I was receiving blank stares, in the last few months I have received dramatically improved interest.

In the South African context the question is what is the entry point into social media technology. In order for money to be spent there needs first to be a budget.

Will the entry point be in either the customer care service or the marketing department, or will it be internally in change management. The business mindset seems to see the customer relationship changing at the point of sale from marketing and selling to after sales service forgetting that the brand is created by the entire experience the customer has at every interface.

If it’s the marketing department then the approach is likely to be social media empowered interruption marketing, targeting messages at customer groups and aimed at customer acquisition. If it’s the PR department the effort will be directed at reputation management. Customer care will be problem solving and dealing with complaints.

The increasing power of customers enabled as it is by their social networking activities does indicate that customer may finally no longer be a means to an end (turnover and profitability) but customer satisfaction a goal of itself.

Would the final goal be customer acquisition activities integrated with “traditional” marketing and the major effort at building the conversation with current and prospective customers so that when the 70% who do research the customer experience when making a buying decision get onto the internet to do so they find an business engaged in a conversation with their customers delivering the value the customer now only dreams of and delivering massive financial returns.

Links

The Norton online living report
Blogs are mainstream media
Customer decision making affected by social media

Influence and Authenticity

2008-05-13T09:00:00.001+02:00

Influence and authenticity. These are the underpinning principles of social media marketing and of word of mouth.

People very seldom make decisions independently, what they like depends a lot on what they believe others like. If it wasn’t for this there would be no fashion trends, no music trends and no fads The Tipping Point ideas and trends take hold sometimes dramatically and sometimes not for intrinsic quality reasons, or else why would we have overnight sensations.

These trends can be ascribed to the existence of Mavens (people who attract and gather information) Connectors (people who link people together) and Salesmen (people who have the gift of the gab and can convince others)

Social media empowers these people, it empowers the connectors to connect, the mavens to gather information and the salesman to have an audience to convince.

The market is a conversation and with huge numbers of people connected its essential that the each participant is authentic. There are just too many people to be able to fool so you may as well not even attempt. The classic case of how spin fails in the new world is the Kryptonite bicycle lock company The Kryptonite Affair luckily this works both ways and the weight of evidence can often foil the attempts of people to try to break down a reputation.

Consider signing up for a tracking service such as Google alerts or Trackur to find out what people are saying about you and your brand and find triggers to engage.

You social media strategy will take this into account. What role do you play in the network and how to maximise that role and always a commitment to authenticity.

Industrial dinosaurs

2008-05-06T21:27:00.004+02:00

The modern organisation grew out of the huge changes that were created by the industrial revolution which focused on scale economies and process and efficiency driven business.

As we commence to reap rapidly diminishing marginal returns from process and efficiency improvement, we need to look elsewhere for sources of competitive advantage and it is easy to discover where. In relationships with our customers.

Was marketing in the twentieth century an aberration when a focus on economies of scale forced mass marketers to sell mass products to mass consumers using mass media?

There are many who say yes.

Social media technology has allowed millions of people, of customers, to talk to one another like they did for centuries in the meeting places, the pubs, and campfires of their time.

Customers are individuals.

As the mass marketing dinosaurs fall into the tar pit of our time the new marketers, more nimble and more adaptive are embracing social media as the tool enabling the marketing of the future.

Trust and word of mouth was both the past and the future of marketing.

Markets are conversations. Get talking.

(This post was inspired by comments by Pam Sykes - thanks)

Has Marketing Gone Full Circle?

2008-05-04T11:37:00.003+02:00

“Good afternoon Farmer Giles” remarked Fred the Farrier as Farmer Giles rode his bay mare Bess past on the cobblestones, the click click of the iron shoes ringing loudly. “ that shoe still looks pretty tight, you know that’s something that all Thunder’s progeny have is that soft white strip on the near fore, actually made a special shoe to compensate you know”

“And a jolly good job you did too, Fred” answered Farmer Giles.

A pretty normal conversation a hundred and fifty years ago. Every village craftsman had an intimate relationship with his customers. They had probably been doing business for generations, knew all the issues and all the personalities. This relationship was built on conversations and trust.

If something went wrong you can be sure that the whole village knew about it and the issue debated in the pub that evening, good service was also shared along with the gossip about that brazen milk maid.

The industrial revolution changed all that. The focus was now on production and efficiency and because the cost advantage so persuasive mass production took the centre stage.

Is it possible however that we have maxed the gains to be found in productivity and now we are producing and buying parity products and with all this choice out there where are we going to find new sources of sustainable competitive advantage.

Modern communication tools have turned the world into a village, we SMS, Twitter and blog ourselves into the daily lives of thousands, with even less effort than going to the pub we can talk about our experiences during the day and products and services with hundred maybe thousands every day.

The new source of competitive advantage is found in personal relationships. Intimate relationships with customers with whom we have conversations.

The new marketing is about these conversations.

My 15 minutes of fame on National TV and Radio

2008-05-02T07:25:00.002+02:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to be interviewed twice on national TV in the last couple of weeks once by SABC and once by CNBC Africa (and interviewed on Media@SAFM on Radio)talking about my seminar on social media to be held on May 8.

Posting the interviews here if you are interested:

CNBC Business AM News

and SABC 3 News at 1

I hope that you enjoy.

Mayo Brains

2008-04-30T03:26:00.000+02:00

Just wanted to introduce you to Patricia Mayo who lives in South Carolina and who is part of my social media marketing team.

This is one smart chick who really knows this space and I have also joined her expert panel which to quote her consist of:

"My panel of really smart people at my side include the social media expertise of Brian Wallace with NowSourcing; guru product evangelist Mike Davis; the marketing maven Walter Pike of Pike Strategic; and the psychological marketing smarts of Gideon Shalwick."

Her website is under construction but is at www.mayobrains.com

Confirmation customer decision making is affected by social media.

2008-04-23T10:15:00.006+02:00

A social media think tank, the Society for New Communications Research conducted a survey to quantify the effect of social media on customer service. Top line results were launched in California on April 22, 2008.

The research quantifies what we have suspected and that is that social media has a very big effect on customer decision making and that influential people are making use of it to “vent” and that other people are listening.

Headline results are:

59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience
72.2% of respondents research companies’ customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes
84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care at least sometimes in their decision to do business with a company
74% choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online
84% of respondents consider the quality of customer care in their decision to do business with a company at least sometimes
81% believe that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, but less than 33% believe that businesses take customers’ opinions seriously.

That less than a third believe that their opinions are taken seriously is also an important finding. It indicates that companies have a lot of waking up to do. You cant expect to be successful in a competitive market with parity products and services unless you are able to leverage relationships with your customers and where customers have the ability to talk not only to their 6 closest friends but to hundreds of thousands and even millions of people about their experience indicates the seriousness of the situation.

Customer intimacy is an intervention developed by PiKE to address this problem by engaging customers in a conversation, using the same technology but in a closed or gated community in addition to the standard PR, advertising and social media activities.

The research was conducted amongst affluent 25 – 55 year old graduates. It was not South African research but I am sure that a lot of value can be extrapolated from it as at this level I believe that there is global commonality. The situation has not been brought about by social media. Social media has given our disgruntled and happy customers a platform. The implication is that we have to learn how to manage brands in a world where we are not in control.

PiKE is a marketing strategy and branding consultancy based in Johannesburg. Walter Pike is conducting a morning seminar on the effect of social media on marketing on May 8, 2008.

Blogs are a mainstream media world wide

2008-04-21T11:12:00.007+02:00

Universal McCann recently released their Wave 3 study in it 17,000 internet users in 29 countries were interviewed. South Africa was not one of the countries in which interviews were conducted but that does not detract from the value of the information, which points to major trends which if not already reflected in South Africa soon will be.

What is clear is that participation and sharing information over the internet is a rapidly burgeoning trend.

Internet access is restricted to the higher strata of South African society, billions of rand are none the less already spent on the internet annually, and there are millions of internet users who account for a large proportion of the South African economic spend.

The Wave 3 researchers have identified these points as highlights

The vast majority of users are producing content and there is an ongoing shift towards participation.
Media consumption is internationalising along language lines thanks to global social platforms.
Consumers are moving to on-demand media such as video clips and podcasts.
The role for advertisers and brands has never had so much potential – branded applications, content and services all offer huge potential in social media.
Emerging internet markets are leading the way in usage, closing the gap with developed countries.

More Wave 3 trends

Social media is a global phenomenon happening in all markets regardless of wider economic, social and cultural development. If you are online you are using social media
Asian markets are leading in terms of participation, creating more content than any other region
All social media platforms have grown significantly over the three Waves
- Video Clips are the quickest growing platform, up from 31% penetration in Wave 1 to 83% in Wave 3
- 57% have joined a Social Network, making it the number one platform for creating and sharing content
- 55% of users have uploaded photos
- 22% of users have uploaded videos
The widget economy is real
- 23% of social network users have installed an application
- 18% of bloggers have installed applications in their blog templates
Blogs are a mainstream media world-wide and as a collective rival any traditional media
- 73% have read a blog
The blogsphere is becoming increasingly participatory, now 184m bloggers world-wide
The number one thing to blog about is personal life and family
China has the largest blogging community in the world with 42m bloggers, more than the US and Western Europe combined
Social media impacts your brand’s reputation
- 34% post opinions about products and brands on their blog
- 36% think more positively about companies that have blogs

The report also touches on the use of social media applications in niched segments but does not make any mention of the value of using the technology in internal corporate cultural change and brand advocacy which I see as a very important future trend.

The report can be downloaded from the Universal McCann website(http://www.universalmccann.com/).

The marketing penny won't drop

2008-04-20T19:32:00.003+02:00

One of the biggest misconceptions even by those who are part of the marketing industry is this notion that marketing is about changing perceptions and convincing people to buy.

It is also the myth behind which the old style interruption marketing approach operates. (I hasten to add that even that isn't marketing - just the customer acquisition phase of marketing)

Interruption marketing is where I look for a medium or an environment where a prospect is likely to use or frequent, and stop him/her with ads.

The ad is set up to convince or sell an idea or product, and is created with relevance, impact and originality in order to do so.

It also a telling approach (the company tells the consumer)and assumes that the information presented will be accepted or believed.

It was never all that effective but it was the best we had.Its even less so now as levels of consumer trust in advertising and this style of marketing communication is at an all time low.

Because customers have so many bulldust filters available one of the radical new thoughts that is emerging out of the fresh marketing approach is the idea that Honesty is the currency of the new marketing.

And really its pretty obvious.

Find out what the customer wants, design a product or service (the value proposition)to deliver it and make it available to him/her. Thats actually what marketing always was and always will be.

No need to convince, to change any perceptions, you give me something I want, when I want it, at the price I am willing to pay for it and I know its available and I'll buy it. You lie to me you wont see me for dust and I'll tell my thousands of friends around the world.

Really very simple, I wonder when the penny will actually drop.

It’s time to stop lying.

2008-04-13T14:57:00.002+02:00

In some recent research in Europe advertising practitioners and PR bottomed out of the scale of the most trustworthy professionals. Not surprised? We have got so used to the idea of PR spin and advertising puffery (over promising) that we just accept it as the way.

For years we have lived in an economy in which the business/seller has controlled the flow of information. In this kind of space PR could spin and advertising could promise what they liked nobody really knew better. In the connected economy this is becoming harder and harder to do.

Yesterday when a customer caught you out and they told their friends it was very serious because 6 or 10 or 20 people heard the story. Today you let down the same customer and guess what, the entire world could know about it and it will be searchable on Google forever.

Many times we in South Africa sit back and say “oh well not such a big deal we aren’t that connected” WRONG. Clearly its different in some markets than others but do you know that the amount of computer users who have more than 5 years experience of the internet will very soon be nearly double that of just more than a year before. Seasoned users who know where to look for stuff on the internet.

Consider that there are about seven million Mxit users, mostly from South Africa. Then there is facebook and so on.

News spreads like wildfire. Instead of the customer telling their 10 closest friends they can now tell their closest few hundred thousand friends

At the showcase talk I gave on the effect of social media on marketing last week I was asked the question. “What happens if we go the social media route with our clients don’t we just open ourselves up to being slaughtered?”

The answer is no that customers are talking anyway, you had better get involved in the conversation.

But also here is a revolutionary idea, how about you as a business develop a value proposition that you can deliver, tell every one about it and then ACTUALLY deliver it then there will be no need to lie.

Maybe people will then start talking about you differently.

Reminder – the 15% early bird booking discount on the social media morning seminar on May 8 is only for booking received by April 15, Its only R1295 (excl) anyway but why not save some petrol money.

Just email Elise at smart@pike.co.za

Using the power of social media

2008-03-06T21:38:00.002+02:00

"I wish that I could use the massive power of social media in my business to deliver results instead of being at the mercy of user generated discontent.

But there is so little expertise available"

Internet usage has reached a mature stage in South Africa with nearly 4 million users who have been online for more that 5 years. International and local research has shown declining levels of consumer trust in advertising and PR, less time, less attention and at the same time, better communications, product parity and media proliferation. This has put the customer in change.

Social media is a very important force shaping the marketing landscape, but as much as it is a threat it is also a huge opportunity.

The backbone of the PiKE intervention is the deployment of state of the art but proven local social media technology in a closed, private or gated community.

We have proven expertise in building virtual communities and have the ability to use the power of the technology to implement CUSTOMER INTIMACY, (built on Talking, Transparency and Trust). The approach has an internal and external leg which can be implemented independently and according to your requirements.

The internal leg of delivering customer intimacy is creating EMPOWERED CUSTOMER FACING STAFF able to deliver the brand by:

. Building a brand community linking the informal networks across an
organisation and across the country.
. Building teams in an online/offline environment.
. Short circuiting long hierarchical communications channels, bringing
the brand essence close to those delivering it.
. Influencing culture.
. Unearthing hidden talent.
. Creating a sense of belonging/community.

From the external or customer/marketing/brand point of view it is creating ENGAGED CUSTOMERS through:

. Customer conversations.
. Customer generated branding.
. Customer innovation - customers innovating solutions.
. Customer experience management.
. Marketing research and concept testing
. User groups.
. Brand advocacy.

Our proposition is the combination of marketing thought leadership and the delivery of our proven expertise in designing and developing virtual communities and sparking the interactions to make them work.

Our impact is measured by:

. Improved staff retention.
. Consistent understanding of the brand.
. Delivery of a consistent customer experience across all customer
touch points.
. Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
. Brand advocacy.

This translates into a improvement of the brand position and sustainable market share improvement, an investment with massive returns.

The cost will surprise you.

But will it work for you?

Are you are involved in marketing or organisational change in organisations with a high involvement product or service brand or category?
OR
Do you deliver your service through a dealer, franchise or branch network.
OR
Have a need to influence or build your corporate culture for example at start up or after a merger.
OR
Are you driven to achieve exceptional customer service.
OR
Coordinate a diverse supplier network.

For example: Automotive, Financial Services, Hospitality, Restaurant chains, Real Estate, Petroleum, C-Stores, Retail and Office automation.

Does advertising build brands?

2007-12-12T00:02:00.000+02:00

One of the claims often made by ad agencies is that they will build the brand and we often hear about agencies claiming to operate as brand custodians. Your brand is not just a collection of images and design – it is a collection of experiences.

What advertising actually does is to manage expectations. It puts a thought into the mind of the customer as to what he or she should expect from the experience.

The Brand is created by the ACTUAL experience.

"Business success lies not only with the perceived incremental value of a business’s products and services, but also with the perceived value of the experience the business gives its customers."

Advertising doesn't control this perceived value either - it is controlled by the customer and the customer is networked and becoming more and more powerfully linked. Linked by social networks such as facebook, by email and by mobile phone.

As these links become more and more powerful so does the power of the customer, and the way business is forced to behave.

Most don't know how.

Today’s Killer AP. Delivering customer value!

2007-11-07T19:27:00.000+02:00

“Our strategy is correct - we just seem to have a problem with how it is delivered on the front line of the business.” This is a comment we frequently hear when chatting with business leaders. Some even rate their success at the customer interface as little as 15-20%. This is especially true when these leaders have to operate through a dealer, branch or franchise network.

Its only when you realise how the entire marketing landscape is changing that you understand how important this comment might be. The power in the commercial transaction has moved steadily from the producer or seller to the user or customer.

The recently announced Orange Index results bore this out, revealing that performance expectations have increased and overall satisfaction decreased over the past year. One of the reasons has been the improvement of communication between customers. The 2007 research also showed that customers have lost faith in company systems and processes and rely instead on consistent performance from customer facing staff, not “hero” type customer service.

One of the major trends is the power of customer conversations, the telling model of marketing communications (traditional advertising) is losing effectiveness customer engagement is gaining importance as is the businesses ability to empower its staff to deliver this experience.

One of the drivers of this has been the massive growth of social networking systems such as facebook, my space and others. Consider their power, a few weeks ago the entire Gauteng shut down early on rumours of a devastating storm. Sure it was only a rumour, but it was also a very powerful demonstration of the individuals’ power to communicate within their community. This power is exercised daily by your customers - through the internet on networking site, by email AND through mobile phones. They are telling their network about good and bad experiences!

A colleague of mine – having persistent problems with the gearbox on his car, was able to negotiate a full free replacement because he came armed with information from around the world, gleaned from a simple Google search, that the problem was due to a design fault and endemic.

In this kind of market if you are only delivering 15-20% of your brand and your strategy at the customer interface you have huge untapped opportunities, even delivering 80% is not good enough, more and more we are starting to understand that its not through advertising that your brand is built - it is through a customer experience. Only a few years ago you could isolate the damage of a bad customer experience or patch it up with advertising spend or programmes. Today you can’t because your customer is connected, not only in your local area, but also around the world.

The PiKE Applause methodology is a comprehensive program of enablement and empowerment of the customer facing staff and the translation of strategy through the business. We use many innovative and some traditional approaches in the methodology and we have applied the same networking dynamic to organisations, as a method to deliver the brand at the point of customer interface.

One of the differences we have, and we believe it to be a world first is to capture and enable the social network contained within an organisation in a closed, private or in-house electronic social networking platform, your own company “facebook” in fact, but using our proprietary technology.

An electronic social network is nothing like the traditional intranet. Rather it enables a vibrant corporate community allowing the culture and values of an organisation to be truly experienced by each individual – whether they are across the country or around the corner. For the staff it creates a feeling of belonging, and of contribution. For the company it creates an access to the community, and a conduit to influence culture which works infinitely better than an email. Furthermore, it also provides the opportunity to unearth the hidden diamonds amongst the staff and creates a path for innovation.

We were very pleased to see that the futureworld newsletter this week saw this approach as a glimpse into the future, pointing out the massive benefit for the companies who adopt this. They are right but they were wrong about one thing its not in the future - We with some leading edge organisations are doing it now!

Brands and Branding

2007-10-20T18:37:00.000+02:00

I was at the launch of brands and branding on Thursday, I wrote an section in the book on "The New Branding Frontier."

I proposed that it is the customer experience and that it is no longer about design and the stuff we normally think about as branding. In other words what actually happens when the customer is in contact with the business determines the brand.

That has always been the case of course, but because marketing communication was linear or in an 'us to them' mode it was easier to manage.

Nowadays things are a little different for two reasons firstly because in a product parity world in many cases the final measure is the customer relationship and secondly because of the communication power in the hands of the customer.

What struck me was how many people I found still talking about US TO THEM communications, even those who set themselves as experts on electronic media - are still talking that way.

We need to start thinking about communication as engagement!

You can get the book The Encyclopedia of Brands and Branding 2007 at Exclusive Books

Link to read the full Brands and Branding article The New Branding Frontier