Glenn Meyer on Social Media, Marketing and Everything Else in Between: April 2012

Monday, April 30, 2012

Data Visualization

Monday, April 23, 2012

"People do business with people they like"

In recent times, companies have recognized a shift occurring in the way they engage with their customers. This shift places customers in the driver's seat and new marketing approaches, tools and skills are required for companies to stay competitive. The four challenges I feel that could be universal game changers are Data Explosion, Social Media, Proliferation of Channels, and Shifting Consumer Demographics.

Welcome to the start of the social era where digital Darwinism has caused the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than their ability to adapt. The millennial generation represents one-quarter of the American population. 70% of millennials feel that once they find a company or product they like, they write about their positive experience online with companies and products online. On the flipside, 39% will share negative experiences. Because of this, customers are in the driver's seat and new approaches, tools and skills are required for companies to stay competitive. Due to this change, nothing today is too big to fail or too small to succeed. This has become a major game changer in all aspects of business. Some will fail, some will thrive, however all businesses will have to evolve to this new environment or risk termination. Organizations such as Tower Records, Borders Books and Music, Ann Arbor News and Blockbuster Video to name a few, that once appeared invincible to any market conditions have all fallen to the social era and are now terminally ill or deceased. The days where great organizations, products and services organically connected with their markets are numbered. Social media changes the way organizations operate internally and externally. In this highly competitive attention economy, where attention is a precious commodity, organizations must firmly connect with connected consumers and deliver exceptional experiences. Organizations need to transform into a social enterprise.

In his book, The Living Company, Arie De Geus did a study on the Fortune 500 companies and found out that the average life expectancy of a multinational corporation is about 40 to 50 years. About a third of the organizations listed in the 1970 Fortune 500 had disappeared by 1983. He also found out that long- lived organizations, which were 200 years old or more, survived for a couple of reasons. One of the main reasons was because these organizations were sensitive to their environments. He states, “Societal considerations were rarely given prominence in the deliberations of company boards. Yet they managed to react in a timely fashion to the conditions of society around them.” In fact, a report by David Mearman Scott showed that the stock price of Fortune 500 companies that engage with their customers was up 67% but those that didn’t was up only 42%.

In today's social era, organizations need to find better ways to listen and connect with their customers. As the old saying goes, "People do business with people they like."

Most organizations are afraid of change and they are not comfortable with the idea of going social. In fact, by understanding how businesses should be managed, they can better comprehend the benefits of going social. A customer has specific needs and wants and looks to businesses to fulfill them. Those needs are either satisfied or they’re not and products and services represent varying levels of value to customers in addressing those needs before, during and after the sale. Organizations need to become more customer-centric in order to provide better products and services, as it is difficult to see the customer or empathize with them if organizations are too focused on a spreadsheet

Organizations need to become more transparent in dealing with the public. They also need to have an active team of “listeners” that can respond immediately to comments from the public. This is where social media comes into play. Social Media allows for real time responses and it also allows organizations to develop real time strategies based on customers’ feedback. Technologies have changed how organizations are operating. Customers have more information on organizations, and organizations have more information on customers. With this much transparency, organizational success will be increasingly dictated by those that can use social media and technology in the smartest way possible to better understand what is happening with customers and competition.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Social TV

Social media and mobile technology have greatly affected traditional TV consumption. Here are some of the trends from a consumer and marketing perspective.

Social Connectivity

With the degree of separation getting smaller, people today are even more interconnected than ever before. Social media has a big part to play and this trend of coming into groups has affected and will continue to affect the way TV is consumed. Traditionally, TV is consumed by 4 members seating in front of the television. However, presently this does not happen anymore. You will find that while watching TV, you could be tuning in as well to your tablet, laptop or mobile device. Marketers need to pick up on this trend to keep their consumers engage. It is quite common now to find that reality TV shows such as X Factor or American Idol run a live twitter feed to find out what the audience is saying and this plays a big part in the ratings of TV shows and helps TV producers to plan strategically. Nielsen has discovered that social chatter has a direct correlation to TV viewing. They found that at social chatter are usually very active at the start of a series and at the season finale. This ties in directly with the large TV ratings and viewership for each TV show. Large viewership in TV shows can encourage advertisers to spend more during certain time slots.

TV and the Internet

Technologies have enabled us to pause, rewind and record live television. As a result, consumers are now able to skip all the TV commercials that advertisers spend millions on. For example if a commercial is scheduled to air at prime time 8pm and if your consumers just forward through the commercials because it was recorded, the advertisement would not have reached the desired targeted audience and the entire advertising budget would have gone to waste. A trend I have noticed is that as people are spending more time on the internet and their mobile devices, companies are doing 2 things. Firstly they are creating apps for their consumers to use while watching a TV program. This could be in the form of back stage cameras or commenting on the live show with other people of similar interest. Secondly, TV commercials are being used to direct viewers to the internet where they will be able to view more information and relevant cool content. Taking this trend into mind, the messaging of TV commercials are starting to evolve. The TV commercial is a platform to direct consumers to the internet, and from the internet, direct the consumers to the shops or make an online purchase. Previously, the TV commercials were used to direct viewers directly to the stores. Keeping this in mind, we will start to see spending on TV commercials decrease and more budget allocated towards internet and video internet marketing. Companies like Ford and Proctor and Gamble have realized this and have started to take their marketing budget to the internet . My prediction is that in 10 years time, the total amount of money spent on Super Bowl commercials will be only $5million.

Brand Resilience/Responsiveness

In this weeks article "Managing Brand Health In The Digital Age" by Chris Stutzman, it was apparent to me that managing the 4V's (volume, velocity, visibility and volatility) is very important. Due to the speed a which conversations take place on the web, brands need to be more equipped at steadfast in responding to queries or comments that may improve or damage your brands reputation. Lets take a look at the following examples.

It is obvious that social media has changed the way we interact with one another and get about our daily lives. An unhappy customer can now write a nasty review online talking about their bad experience with a company. Other customers that feel the same way will probably do the same thing. Now you will have a community of unhappy customers sharing their negative experience online and this may potentially ruin the reputation of your company and chase away potential customers reading these reviews. The exact opposite can also happen where positive reviews can attract new customers to the business. This new formula of one plus one equals to many has the potential to enhance or destroy a company’s reputation. A company can no longer get away with consistently offering shoddy products and services or ignoring customers concerns and needs. Organizations need to capitalize on this new trend and understand how they need to change the way they operate. They need to incorporate social media into their organization to help them stay connected to their customers and it takes a leader and culture of engagement to navigate this market in transition. A great example of an organization that does this, is Dell

Back in 2005, a reputable media thought leader Jeff Jarvis, published a blog post that expressed his hatred for a company that he felt had failed him. His post titled “Dell hell: Seller beware” reached his big group of followers and now the reputation of Dell was left hanging. He concluded the post by saying, “You know what: If Dell were really smart, they’d hire me to come to teach them about blogs, about how customers now have a voice; about how their customers are a community- a community often in revolt; about how they could find out what their customers really think; about how they could fix their customers’ problems before they become revolts; about how they could become a better company with the help of their customers. If they’d only listen.” What did Dell do? They listened. But they did more than that; they adapted. Dell established a “Social Media University” and is currently training more than a thousand employees to be the face and voice of Dell in Social Environments. In doing so, Dell led the way for other businesses to follow, learn and adapt. Dell’s new adaptive business plan wasn’t simply about social media; it was about improving customer experience through better products or services. As Dell’s CMO, Erin Nelson says, “To be successful in a highly competitive marketplace, companies need to truly and transparently understand the full range of customer’s experiences”. A few years later, Jeff Jarvis was blogging about Dell again. This time he was singing praises. Companies need to understand that we now live in a recommendation based economy where consumers can bypass traditional resources, looking to their peers to support them in making decisions about everything under the sun.

In today's' social era, organizations need to find better ways to listen and connect with their customers. As the old saying goes, “People do business with people they like”. Social media provides an answer to this. Most organizations are afraid of change and they are not comfortable with the idea of going social. In fact, by understanding how businesses should be managed, they can better understand the benefits of going social. It is that simple; let us go back to basics. Brian Solisstates in his book, The End of Business as Usual, businesses exist because of customers. Customers have specific needs and wants and look to businesses to fulfill them. Those needs are either satisfied or they’re not and products and services represent varying levels of value to customers in addressing those needs before, during and after the sale. What he is basically trying to say is that organizations need to become more customer-centric in order to provide better products and services as it is difficult to see the customer or empathize with them if organizations are too focused on a spreadsheet. Take BP for example, here’s a company that didn’t get it.

On 20 April 2010, the explosion of Deepwater Horizon killed 11 men working on the platform and injured 17 others. Most importantly, 200 gallons of oil was released into the ocean making this oil spill the biggest in US history. During this period, the cries of anger echoing throughout the social media environment intensified. As the saying goes, news no longer breaks, it tweets. Angry citizens started spewing hate on Facebook, Twitter and blogs. An Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, even tweeted on the issue saying, “Someone said BP must not be let off the hook. I agree.” Another Tweeter promised, “You can rest assured that I will walk before I would even buy a gallon of your gasoline.” Instead of being open and upfront about the oil spill in the Gulf, the company misread the social environment in which it operates and took a “less is more” approach. They didn’t reach out to ask for help when it became clear that BP didn’t know how to fix the situation – despite the fact that thousands of people would have jumped in with assistance. In fact Dwayne Spradlin, president and CEO of InnoCentive, launched an oil spill challenge to source solutions to help BP solve the problem. Thousands of solutions were submitted by experts online; oil spill recovery experts, chemists, and construction engineers. However BP turned a deaf ear. Thankfully the spill has been stopped. During that period, its stock price fell from $59.88 to $27.02.

There are a few lessons that we can learn from these examples. Firstly, companies need to become more transparent in dealing with the public. Companies also need to have an active team of “listeners” that can respond immediately to comments from the public. This is where social media comes into play. Social Media allows for real time responses and it also allows companies to develop real time strategies based on customers’ feedback. Technologies have changed how companies are operating. Customers have more information on companies, and companies have more information on customers. With this much transparency, a company success will be increasingly dictated by those that can use social media and technology in the smartest way possible to better understand what is happening with customers and competition.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

ECommerce - Social Buying

E Commerce has been around for quite a while now and as technology continues to evolve, terms such as M commerce and Social commerce start to emerge as mentioned in the articles for this week. Ever since EBay and Amazon emerged, internet shopping has become popular. Consumers are now a click away from things and purchasing items without going to a brick and mortar shop as been made much easier. Due to this trend of E Commerce, many other companies have also join this arena as they realize how profitable it can be, retails manufacturing etc...

3 companies come to mind when I think about Social Buying - Opensky, LikeBids and myTab

Opensky - Twitter for curated shopping . Opensky is a shopping site that is curated by the tastemakers that individual users “follow.” It provides a customizable online shopping experience. When users sign up, they can chose from a list of about 60 tastemakers to “follow,” including celebrities such as Molly Sims, Padma Lakshmi, Kristin Cavallari, Bobby Flay and Tom Colicchio. Each tastemaker chooses products to recommend to followers and writes a short explanation of why each item was chosen. He or she runs a special on about one item a week that gives followers a 20% to 60% discount on the item. Since launching in April 2011, OpenSky says that it has grown 50% month over month. The site has about 1 million users, and The startup announced a $30 million round of funding back in October 2011 , bringing its total amount to $49 million.

I like the idea of Opensky as it is a Groupon + Twitter combined together. People trust recommendations from people they know or believe to have some sort of social capital and Opensky represents that. I believe that this new trend of recommendation based buying is going to increase in the next 5 years and more companies will start to integrate this trend into the way they do business. Amazon for instance should be releasing soon a function called "what friends are buying". This captures the essence of integrating social into E commerce.

LikeBids - Likebids distribute coupons through facebook. LikeBids users win coupons by Liking them and encouraging others to do so. When a threshold number of Likes are reached, a coupon is emailed to everyone who clicked.The advantage of distributing coupons this way is that even participants who aren’t particularly excited to spread the word about a discount end up doing so anyway. When they Like the coupon, it’s automatically posted on their wall and friends’ feeds.LikeBids has also built in a motivation for users who are excited to spread the word. Each coupon has a price attached to it for the person who motivates the most people to Like it by sharing a unique URL. Right now LikeBids’ offerings are pretty sparse, but the startup has set up a situation that encourages users to promote brands to their friends. If those users indeed appear, that’s an appealing proposition.

E commerce is still growing quickly since it first started. I believe that there is a huge potential for E commerce to be even greater than what it is right now, it's just a matter of finding the right idea for the right product.

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