Walter Adamson

Is the perfect "social" business video?

One of the most common hesitations I see with businesses wishing to deploy more social techniques of engagement is their hang-up about making a video. This example from Google strikes me as the perfect example of a "social business" video i.e. the "casual" video for social engagement with an invisible professional touch.

I see this reticence whether the discussion is about making videos for internal use (for enterprise social networks) or for external consumption somewhere on the social web. The argument is usually polarised and runs like this:

• "We need to professionally present our business and have it professionally made and that will cost us $3,000 per video, I know that because I have just spoken to the video people we usually use".
• "No, everybody is used to Youtube and they even use those types of amateur videos on the daily news and even business programs - these days we are all able to get the content without fussing about the quality".

I actually favour the second view, just make it with your iPhone and do the best you can to hold things steady and get some good lighting and sound. People just want to hear what your customers or other employees are saying and if that is in their noisy office or factory that is ok.

OK I'll admit that my leaning towards the more casual approach does not usually solve the problem. Mostly I just think that in time those in the "professional" camp will become more relaxed, and until then they just miss out on the opportunity. 

But there is a middle ground, and the Google Deep Learning video shows it. Here's what struck me about this video (aside from the astounding content):

1. The setting is extremely casual;
2. The framing, angles, and lighting are professional.
3. It's extremely "business social".

I think that this is a perfect model for those companies concerned about conveying a professional image in a "social" video. I doubt very much that this cost $3,000 to make, but on the other hand it was carefully planned.

What do you think?

Walter Adamson

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Spreets says go, supplier says no - one messy customer experience

Like the other daily deal sites Spreets has offers which appeal to me, from time to time. Although I must admit to being more likely these days to mass delete the stream of daily offers than even read their headlines. When the customer service between Spreets and their vendors goes off the rails, that really chews into my remaining interest in these services. How far does responsibility for the customer experience extend for the coupon vendors?

The latest offer I bought was a messy frustrating deal, with each blaming the other for non-performance. Here's a snapshot:

1. The offer - buy a tailor made shirt - $49!
2. OK, I'm up for that, bought 2 vouchers, received them - valid from 22 August 2011.
3. Jumped on to the A Tailor site at shirt-tailor.com.au and into the 3D Designer and spent time picking my combinations, and then some more time measuring myself for the custom fit.
4. Went to check out, and the only voucher entry keeps repeating Invalid Voucher.
5. Check, recheck the voucher, puzzled by the instructions "enter voucher number and unique code" since the website just has a single voucher number field.
6. Eventually it's clear, after trying every combination, that nothing is going to work.

OK, how can I save all my work, all my colours, sleeve and pocket selections, and measurements, so that I can sort this problem out and come back?

AH? Nothing seems obvious. Have to go to the next step - checkout - no nothing there either unless I pay in full.

AHH! now going back everything is GONE! My whole shopping cart empty.

Responses

The contact page for the supplier has no telephone number. But they did respond to my form the next day - they say the website won't be ready until the 24th of August!

And, from Spreets:

Your request (#102752) has been deemed solved.
Yuan, Aug-23 14:03 (EST): Hi Walter, We understand your frustration as we expected the business to upload the codes immediately after the deal ended. However this was not the case, which caused customers to not being able to redeem their vouchers. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Looks like case closed. Nothing like "we will chase up A Tailor and ask them to ensure that the vouchers are accepted on their website as soon as possible", or "it seems as if A Tailor misunderstood the start date of the vouchers and we will chase that up..." etc etc. It's just thanks, goodbye!

So today everyone else wastes their time

Which means that today everyone going through the same painstaking process on the vendors website will find themselves having wasted their time, like me. Wow, that's a big investment in cheesing people off by A-Tailor.com.au

We messed you around but please fan us on Facebook!

And how did A-Tailor finish off their response to my form contact about not updating their website, with this:

Lastly please be sure to Like our facebook page as we will be offering new products in the future ALL tailor made: Jeans, suits, belts, ties, bags at fantastic offer prices, also will keep everyone updated on deal site promotions we will be running.

I DON'T think so! Well actually, it is one of those ironic cases where you have to Like to make a complaint on their wall.

User experience extends beyond the coupon site

I guess the coupon places run themselves like the cut price airlines - you're getting a cheap deal so like it or lump it. You would think that, despite the pressure on the sales team, that outfits like Spreets would require their vendors to meet certain customer experience standards. Otherwise everyone loses. 

The coupon experience surely isn't just about buying the coupon, but also about redeeming it. Is that too radical a thought?

But it's apparent that Spreets don't have systems and processes in place to manage or audit anything other than the selling of the coupon. Or perhaps they do, but the processes clearly don't work.

I JUST WANT MY SHIRTS :)

Thank you Spreets, thank you A-Tailor, and let this be a learning experience for me before buying another Spreets voucher. 

How would you describe the customer experience lifecyle for the coupon companies?

How would glitches be best handled between coupon vendor and service vendor - it's complicated?

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

BREAKING NEWS: A Tailor responds on Facebook and blames Spreets:

To be honest with you we are shocked by the response from spreets as they sent the coupon codes to us just before close of business yesterday.

Our IT department is working feverishly to implement these codes on our system all day today!

The contract we have with spreets is that coupons will be ready from Wed 24th Aug, it was a typo on spreets behalf on their add that said coupons available from 22nd Aug. I am happy to forward emails to and from Spreets to your email address to show you exactly what has been said.

So just one question - even if Spreets has messed up why do you leave it to the day the offer closes before programming the coupon coding, let alone testing?

How social business exposes relationship marketing as an Emperor with No Clothes

Since the early 80s Marketing has taken a turn towards "relationship" marketing and such things as "lifetime customer value". However this "value" is still transactional-based.

The kink in the road toward relationship marketing was a reaction away from immediate transactional value towards creating and measuring long-term net gain based upon superior customer satisfaction and benefits.

The trek to "relationship marketing" has been a long 30 year journey, and it still rates a conference spot. See for example Session Three of the upcoming "annual Miller Heiman Sales Performance Summit for sales leaders" where the National Australia Bank is presenting: "Transformation Time; Paul Freeman, Head of Capability Business Banking of National Australia Bank, will present on their journey to become a World Class relationship bank".

The concept of the relationship model has been highly successful, as we all take this for granted as Business 101 these days. Or perhaps it was always obvious but was glorified and codified by Marketing theorists seeking the next swag of publications and seminars?

Marketing professionals resisting social business

In any case, although the business community broadly accepts this relationship model as a given, ironically there is still a strong resistance about social media's role in this among the marketing professionals and more-so the Marketing Professional groups with which I am familiar.

There is some kind of turf resistance while they try to figure out how to "professionally" own this space. For example up until now the Australian Marketing Institute Annual Conference has had zero content on the topic, and although there was some this year it was at the level of "Facebook campaign success stories" - the epitome of transactional relationships.

Relationship marketing is about transactions over a longer time frame

Now here's the thing. This "relationship marketing" and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) still focuses on transactional value - it's just a form of discounted cash flow of the lifetime events of a customer as they relate to probable transaction capture from those events. The marketing "edge" is as simple as this - to be at the right place at the right time for those typical lifecycle events - drip feeding at the right reading of the tea leaves. The "relationship" part is a view of a different time frame - long-term versus short term, not of different forms of customer valuation.

Relationship marketing is still just about focusing on the customers with the highest lifecycle sales possibilites.

New forms of customer valuation are required

But, what we know today is that new forms of customer valuation are required, and many organisations are reconsidering how they determine customer value. They are recognising that instead of focusing on revenue or profit associated with an individual's or household's transactions, that they need to start to think about the value of influence and collaboration.

Understanding a person's social reach combined with their propensity to share thoughts becomes a method to extrapolate value, and in turn to help update segmentation rules and adapt relationship strategies.

The relationship wanted is the relationship of the social medium

But here's the catch - these very same customers want and expect a different kind of relationship with the companies whose products and service they buy. And it's not easy to predict what those expectations are - for some it may mean a deeper relationship extending to business innovation and for others just a more efficient buying experience with little or no product enquiry or interaction.

Fragmented social business isn't going to work

To know which suits which customer segments it is imperative to track and understand holistically across the organisation the influence, referrals and collaboration of the customers in their social spaces. That's no easy task because very few organisations today deploy this holistic social business management.

This need for a holistic approach to social business implementation and customer relationships is a recurring theme in the drive to increasing customer value today. For example in social media customers need to be treated in the right way, they need to be interacted with and engaged in the right way, and different arms of the organisation need to be fully aware of the nature of the interactions, if not the detail.

For example if the new knowledge gleaned from successful social engagement leads to more efficient segmentation then the appropriate parts of the organisation for that specific segmentation need to take a coordinating role, otherwise value could be destroyed.

It's a complex business. And it requires serious top-down support, and serious cross-organisation implementation and measurement. It's not about a support team of 4 people in an organisation of 4,000 people servicing the squeaky wheel tweeps.

Takes proper business planning not more staff monitoring

It's a truism that the growth of social media has put the customer in a stronger position. Anyone can have a voice and everyone expects “human” near-real-time responses. Organizations operating without improved customer value metrics are hiring staff to monitor and respond to virtually everything – which is difficult to scale – not only because of the sheer volumes of activity, but the risk of having inconsistent responses or staff that are untrained in the art of risk mitigation.

What they really need is not a rush to operational solutions, but proper business planning and strategy. It will most likely require the services of a solid management consulting group, skilled in complex organisations, industry sectors, project management and organisational change. It's not a "call center up" initiative. And to be frank it's not something that can picked up at a marketing conference or from Facebook campaign award nights.

Bearing in mind that most complex enterprises already have ways and means of successfully coordinating cross-functional activies,then this provides a lever for the transformation to a social business and more extensive measurement and action around enhanced customer value.

Real change requires top-down support. The business case for investment should be about the extent to which new customer valuation insights can help the organization to compete more successfully. That means integrating customer engagement across the organization, not developing a silo directed at social media.

What is the new valuation metric?

However if we are talking about Customer Loyalty Value rather then Customer Lifetime Value then perhaps we are starting to embrace some of the new valuation metrics made evident through social business using social media. Unfortunately "loyalty" programs have all but degenerated into very broad direct marketing programs so we might be best to dispense with that term. In which case we need a new term, and of course new measures for customer lifetime value.

For example traditional CLV models use variations of "propensity to purchase" in their mathematical calculations, and it typically is related to recency of last purchase. Internet marketeers know that the very time a customer has just purchased a product from the web is the best possible time to offer them something else - the upsell. In the offline world it is similar - the upsell of extended warranties on home appliances at the point of sale of the latter.

However do we now need to measure not the recency of last purchase but also the recency of last significant interaction. This could be via contact with an influencer, a high value collaborator, a review on a website, a comment on Facebook? This is where we need a new addition of Berger & Nasr's classic "LIfetime Customer Value" - one of the most cited books on the topic. In fact if you refer to their book you'll see how directly transactional their mathematical models are.

Adding in social metrics is a whole new kettle of fish. What that really means is that adding in social metrics would for the first time turn the traditional CLV "relationship marketing" equation from one based on transactions to one which incorporate measures of relationship! 

How do you re-envisage customer value?

What non-transactional measures are the most important for a social business?

What would the new Customer Lifetime Value equation look like?

What is the greatest organisational roadblock to implementation new CLV measures?

Walter @adamson

Is social business just better customer service?

Debate around the role of brands has been endless, and there is no end in sight.

Is it all too complicated?

Is a brand simply something that is there when you need it, at the right "investment" cost, that you trust to deliver, and for which you have little affinity except for those reasons? Loyalty isn't a key determinent in this process - but just the tendency to buy the same brands or products is. 

Doug Garnett provides a sharp analysis in his post Humanity, Humility, Statistics & Brands. Thoughts About “How Brands Grow” by Byron Sharp. He also hits out at social media:

New media theorists seem think that a consumer loves nothing more than to spend their life searching for brand related content on Facebook while trying to learn the latest social media engine. Truth is that we spend a lot more time thinking about other things (like family, work, money, vacation, …) and don’t think about brands all that often.

According to Garnett, Sharp finds that:

• brands don't become big on the sales of their most committed customers. Rather, big brands are big because a lot of people buy a little from them;
• statistics show the 80/20 rule is wrong. This rule suggests that 80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers. Research shows that isn’t true;
• statistics show that what most marketers think of as “consumer loyalty” is non-existent. What consumers do is simply have a tendency to buy from a few brands.

Those insights are based on deep and wide statistical analysis.

To me, as a simple person on the street, those insights and Garnett's comments all ring true. That's why I recommend reading his post.

How can we apply these insights to social business?

There's no doubt about the ROI success of businesses becoming more social - there are numerous and well-known examples. It also makes "human" sense that this works. Not because people are buying "brands" but because they are getting responsiveness, convenience and their tendency to keep buying is reinforced.

But isn't the buying cycle and buying behaviour changing?

Economists are reknown for basing predictions on past behaviour, and therefore often getting it completely wrong e.g. the GFC. Is this research and the book likely to suffer from the same problem? Are we in a completely new era - shaped by online and digital? It could be. That's a potential concern in marketers taking the past analysis too far - how much have things really changed?

What does this mean for social business?

Let's say things aren't going to change all that much.

What does that mean for "social business" which is something for which Doug Garnett appears to have little time? Could it mean that the essence of social business is really just about customer service? Being responsive, being perceived as trustworthy - and at its most basic that's about delivery -and having a little edge in maintaining the "tendency" to buy?

Doug Garnett is an insightful guy, you might also find his Shelf Potato blog worth reading for its pragmatic advertising and brand advice.

Do you think that there is more to social business than just great customer service?

Walter @adamson

Social Shift: Brian Solis move to Altimeter signals consolidation in social media firms

Brian Solis has a Klout ranking of 78 and Klout generates this summary of his Twitter status:

Brian Solis is a Celebrity You can't get any more influential than this. People hang on your every word, and share your content like no other. You're probably famous in real life and your fans simply can't get enough.

So when this message appeared in his Twitter stream it caused a flash of reponses:

News: I've joined @charleneli @jowyang & the team at Altimeter Group http://bit.ly/dNON9b about 12 hours ago via web

The responses were mostly congratulatory, but the thinking behind the scenes, as from @axels for example, was about the forthcoming consolidation of the social media consulting industry.

Is the the first big signal of that consolidation?

Almost certainly - YES!

Brian Solis refers to his reasons in his post Flying to a Higher Altitude with Altimeter Group and here are three that signal the shift to me:

1. The move of "social media" to "social business" and then to just "business" and therefore business strategy. That's accelerated as leaders understand the pervasive role of "social" in their cross-functional business plans.
2. Because of point #1 it then becomes a complicated path to execution - the gap between strategy and execution as Brian Solis says. To execute requires advice and assistance from business consultants with a wide range and depth of experience, the least of which may be "social media" per se.
3. Developing strategy and implementing it, in a complex organisation with breadth, depth, people, existing processes, politics, legacy, and everything else requires a well structured consistent set of methodologies and training built around those and applied consistently. These methodologies, or frameworks, are also a basis for continuous improvement - an important requirement in bigger enterprises.

As I read it, Brian Solis' move to Altimeter is to consolidate these capabilities, among others.

The new consulting firm

You can think of it as building a new "McKinsey" from the roots of social business consulting - branching up into business and strategy. Strategy consulting itself, as a standalone field, has become very difficult. McKinsey itself has extended its reach and range into more execution teams, and into operations and measuring as examplified by their JV with Nielsen NM Incite.

Therefore blending a touch of good strategic thinking capability, with execution and operational experience in social media, with good methodologies and training, and a critical mass of people able to sing to this same hymmbook, and you have the new consolidated social business group.

Why aren't the global "agencies" the natural winners in this race?

For one because agencies and "creatives" usually rebel against the "straight jackets" of methodologies and the details of complex execution. The shift is to business strategy/innovation + project managemennt/execution, not creativity + campaign.

For another reason, their scope of activity is usually firewalled to the marketing or sales group. That's a severe impediment in terms of the forthcoming shift and where the power axis for social business will lie in the enterprise. It's not bad news for agencies, their role will just continue as it is today, in essence.

Do you believe that Brian Solis' move signals a consolidation trend?

What will be the nature of the consolidated firm?

Who will be the clients who most seek these firms - the issues to solve?

Walter @adamson

Vodafone kills complaint form because too many complaints !!!

Would a company in crisis management choose to disable it's online customer contact because it is getting too many complaints? If the company is Vodafone then the answer is yes! I know that's almost beyond belief but it is true.

Yesterday Vodafone Australia reinstated its online contact form which it had suspended while it "while it worked through a backlog of customer inquiries".

Vodafone Australia is currently the target of a class action with over 15,000 participants. This action is due in total to Vodafone Australia's appalling service delivery - customers basically claiming they were swindled and wanting out of their contracts and Vodafone refusing to release them. It's also in the midst of a privacy scandal, first denying and then yesterday sacking staff after being "tipped off by a newspaper reporter".

The class action and the lead up to it have undoubtedly reached the highest levels of Vodafone Corporate - this isn't just a Vodafone Australia fiasco. You just wonder on what kind of magnets the Vodafone executives have been sleeping?

Australia is in the midst of a series of El Niño events, including flooding across most of Queensland - an area bigger than combined Germany and France under water (but 1/4 the population of Switzerland). These unusual events seem to include the Vodafone PR disaster plus a couple of other monsters as we start into 2011. One other was specifically in relation to the floods, where retailer Bing Lee decided to donate to the flood relief fund but only on the condition that people Liked their Facebook page!

This was slammed by the very social media to which Bing Lee had appealed. (But, surprisingly their Facebook page remained unapologetic and actually accelerated their Fans and Bing Lee then donated $10,000 to the relief fund.)

The whopper, before Vodafone, was a loud and high-profile campaign by Australia's most renown troglodyte businessman Gerry Harvey condemning people who buy online as "unAustralian"!!!

Harvey runs a very successful retail chain, but he's most known for his head-in-the-sand on all things Internet most famously declaring in 2000 that online retailing was a fad and would die. In fact he's continued on that theme for a decade, being quoted as little as a year ago saying that "online retail sales were a dead end".

Harvey was upset that overseas online purchases of less than $1000 do not attract any sales tax for Australia buyers. The Australian Tax Office says that collecting the money would cost more than they gain.

The result of Harvey's ferocious campaign is that more Australians than ever are aware of the money they can save by purchasing online, and that Harvey now faces a monstrous backlash from store shoppers. Survey's showed up to 97% of people disliked Harvey's conduct of this PR exercise. Even Harvey himself expressed regrets, having been vilified across the nation, and remarkably said that "getting involved was 'suicidal'." PR agency FD Third Person were the geniuses behind the campaign, I wonder if they were paid on press clippings as they surely would have received a bonus!

So in summary El Niño has left a trail of rain and PR disasters in its track down under. Vodafone takes the prize for the most amazing customer relations exercise of the decade - suspending their complaints form - and Gerry Harvey's unAustralian online shoppers runs a close second.

What is your biggest customer relationship disaster story, or success story, for 2011?

http://xeesm.com/walter @adamson

Starbucks, ask a simple question get 10,000 answers!

It's astounding that when Starbucks asked on Facebook "How long is your drink order?" they had nearly 2,000 answers per hour for the first 5 hours, and about the same number of "Likes". It only represents about 0.1% of their amazing fan base of 12 million on Facebook, but even so what a instant and huge resource for research.

You'd have to say (as we have been saying for a while) that the days of most "market research" groups are severely numbered. It's a bit like the disruptive shift of cloud into the computing landscape, social media is a disruptive shift for market research. It has to be this way - bad news for all but the most agile MR firms - because while Starbucks has a relationship with its customers through social media any marketing agency can only have a transaction.

I don't know what Starbucks would make out of the answers, perhaps some ideas of improving service or product selection. Or perhaps they just did it for fun to engage with their fan base.

I'm a bit dull, I just order a "latte", others ordered " double chocolate chip mocha frappucino, double blended.. EXTRA chocolate!","A grande, soy, decaf, sugar-free vanilla, no-foam latte", "venti caramel frap with mocha and whip cream and extra extra caramel on top and on the bottom and all over", "White chocolate carmel frappachino extra shot with whip cream"... !!!

While I was skimming the comments a few impressions formed in my mind. The first was people don't go to Starbucks for coffee!! The second, and a powerful image, was that Starbucks is one big diabetes-generating machine relentlessly doling out sugar and calories. And the third, a peripheral one, is that while working in a good coffee shop would be something that I would do if needed, I certainly wouldn't want to work at Starbucks, because of the previous point.

What impressions come to you when you read the comments?

What do you think people go to Starbucks for if it is not the coffee?

http://xeesm.com/walter

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Earned media as a distinct form of media

I'm a bit late to the party and wasn't really on top of exactly what "earned media" is - so I have to admit to dragging my heels. I'd read the Nielsen/Facebook report which showed that earned media significantly increased ad and brand awareness and intent to purchase. That was back in April.

Wikipedia gives a definition, although it is surprisingly sparse. And Brian Shin CEO of Invisible Measures gives a good account in "How 'Earned Media' is Providing Value to Brand Marketers" on Beet.tv.

So I had the gist. But it wasn't until a read a June article in the McKinsey Quarterly that the penny dropped. I'm not really sure why as the article is quite light-weight. As a matter of fact it was because it was so light-weight that I stopped to read it again as I thought there must be something here, as an insight, that I'm missing!

So I concentrated again on the opening background, and I guess the second paragraph got me thinking about the "mind-set" of earned media:

More recently, we have adopted a new mind-set: we think of word of mouth generated on social networks as a distinct form of media. This idea is more than a semantic detail. When you think of word of mouth as media, it becomes a form of content, and businesses can apply tried-and-true content-management practices and metrics to it. In addition, word of mouth generated by social networks is a form of marketing that must be earned—unlike traditional advertising, which can be purchased. We therefore concluded that we could succeed only by being genuinely useful to the individuals who initiate or sustain virtual world-of-mouth conversations.

Somehow, when I read that slowly, it made "earned media" mean something more to me than in the past. I have no idea why but the "mind-set" idea clicked, and now I have a nice little compartment in my mind for "thinking of" earned media. I didn't get much from the rest, but there you go, one good "click" makes the article worthwhile in any case.

Have you a clear way of thinking about earned media?

What's the best article on earned media you have read?

Do you think the McKinsey article had other useful insights?

http://xeesm.com/walter

McKinsey: B2B customers prefer fewer, more meaningful interactions

In the recent McKinsey article The basics of business-to-business sales success  the  B2B customers surveyed said "they care most about product and price, but what they really want is a great sales experience".

And in particular they want sales reps with "adequate product knowledge" and "fewer, more meaningful interactions" (only 3 percent said they weren't contacted enough).

McKinsey goes on to say:

"Striking the right balance between contacting customers too much and too little requires understanding their stated and actual needs. There should be a clear strategy for reaching out to customers based on needs and profit potential, with schedules dictating frequency. The best contact calendars center around events that create value for customers, such as semiannual business reviews..."

When it comes to specifics, McKinsey found customers were "more than happy to use self-serve or online tools and selectively tap specialist support for the most complex situations".

What's this mean for social media in B2B?

We already know that the buying cycle and the selling cycle have moved completely out of sync, and in particular that buyers not only inform themselves but that they now determine their own schedule for when they want to contact a selling organisation. They also trust recommendations from independent online sources, in particular forums, more highly than from any company source.

Therefore, the customer-contact recommendation above strikes me as quaintly old-fashioned, and even out of touch with McKinsey's own assessment of the strategic role of social media for business. The recommendation is an internally-focused process with a schedule! This seems a country mile from the way customers want to be treated today, given their presence in the social media.

As an alternative I would recommend "reaching out to customers" has to be a very regular operational activity in the social media, following the usual rules of contribution and participation. The rate of contact will depend then only on the relationship building and value, and not a calendar.

Reaching out in this regular will provide many opportunities to direct customers and potential customers to online forums, and self-serve tools in a value-added way which is relevant to the moment, as indicated through the social media conversations.

McKinsey concludes their article by recommending that companies should examine exactly how they are performing by asking the following questions:

1. What are the most influential drivers of the sales experience?
2. What things are your sellers doing that could damage relationships?
3. How does the perception your customers have of your sales force compare to how they view your competitors?

I'd probably put it a little differently, bearing in mind the social media context and the misalignment of the buyer-seller process.

Firstly, I would ask how can continue to better use social media and digital engagement/assets to really understand the buyer's buying process?

Secondly, what are the most effective things we are doing to facilitate the buyer's buying process (and hence our relationship)?

Thirdly, what can we learn in the social media about how our customers and potential customers view their buying needs and interaction with us versus our competitors.

The exciting thing is that all this information, for many companies, is available today in the social media.

How would you advise a company to improve its B2B sales engagement using the social media?

What would be your three key review questions?

http://xeesm.com/walter

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Social leveraging an ordinary product into strong customer engagement

Image via Wikipedia

I read recently an admonition in a comment to a post that social media/business "only works well for companies who already deliver a competitively superior product".

I don't agree with that comment, especially since by definition the majority of companies don't deliver a "competitively superior product" - the majority deliver a fit-for-purpose product which satisfies a value equation in the mind of the buyer.

It's the old salesman's lament - we're having trouble selling it because we don't have any competitive advantage. Sure, so how many companies are selling the next Walkman or iPad? A minuscule fraction of a percentage point. Most are selling pizzas and Chevrolets and doing ok, some very well. Go get another job!

Fast Company just reported on how JetBlue has redefined the airline category and now has the 4th greatest "social currency" of all US brands, headed by BMW, Mercedes and Lexus - Apple #5.

Here's the amazing truth, in a comment by Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO of Vivaldi Partners and author of the study. He thinks JetBlue's blue chips, visual identity, terminal, TVs, and amenities are distinctive but not breakthrough different.

"Every aspect has been copied or exists with another airline.

 As a brand that follows this logic of distinctiveness, social media and technologies are the absolute godsend communications tool.

 A distinctive brand disproportionately benefits from social tools."

Aha. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and amplified through social media. This is the business of incremental or continuous improvement, leveraged through social media, as opposed to "creativity" "brainstorming" and "innovation departments". And since social media is the lever of WOM just as steam powered the lever to create the Industrial Revolution then social media powers WOM to create tremendous shareholder wealth.

JetBlue's greatest distinction is that it ensures satisfaction in an industry where it's competitors don't seem to care. (My mind flashes to banks, there's an opportunity!). So what happened to the poster child Southwest Airlines in all this - perhaps they just missed the social media oomph of JetBlue?

So the message is to let the little bits add up, sweat the details, make sure it all integrates, including the social media strategy, and then let WOM do it's job.

I'm also thinking that JetBlue have mastered that tremendously illusive quality of brand depth. We're pounded by brand promises, and the airlines are masters at the smooth ad, but not only does the promise rarely align with reality, but when something goes just slightly wrong you find yourself dealing with a hell on earth i.e. there is zero brand depth.

What's your take on Jet Blue's success and the role of social media, and where did Southwest fall off the map?

http://xeesm.com/walter

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