Aide-Memoire

The best place to see engagement marketing in action is in a small town that is not far from a large shopping centre.

Here the shopkeepers know that if they do not engage with you then you will simply jump in the car and head off to the choices offered by the big shopping mall just down the road.

At my local store the shopkeeper always greets me by name and keeps special things aside for me. It makes the choice of dropping by to her local store simple. Because she is (a) friendly and helpful; and (b) goes the extra mile for me and I feel the desire to keep coming back.

There’s nothing like the personal connection. And that is all that engagement marketing really is – connecting with customers so they will choose you above alternatives.

I go back to my local shop because I really enjoy the personalised experience (it’s probably a bit more expensive than the mall) – but my local shopkeeper knows me and my family, she holds items for us and get things in specially.

Marketing does not get much better than this. My whole neighbourhood talks about how good we feel going into that local shop. Just popping in the pick up a newspaper can put a smile on my face for a whole day.

Over the past few years a plethora of Social Media Experts* have cropped up and their tweets, posts, podcasts etc serve up a cacophony of advice and pontification.

Here’s a few of my thoughts on the matter, from the perspective of someone who sees herself as an apprentice on a learning journey.

Anyone who claims to be an expert in social media is probably talking through their hat.

Social media has been with us for only a few years. Expertise is not developed overnight.

Deep knowledge is founded on a basis of research and experience. Lessons learned, especially from failure and pushing of known boundaries, are key to development of expertise.

But research has shown that expertise in a particular field is achieved over many years of research and practice. Since social media has been with us for such a short time it is unlikely that any of us have gleaned more than primitive insights as yet.

As Wikipedia notes:

Some characteristics of the development of an expert have been found to include

• At a minimum usually 10 years of consistent practice, sometimes more for certain fields
• A characterization of this practice as “deliberate practice”, which forces the practitioner to come up with new ways to encourage and enable themselves to reach new levels of performance
• An early phase of learning which is characterized by enjoyment, excitement, and participation without outcome-related goals
• The ability to rearrange or construct a higher dimension of creativity. Due to such familiarity or advanced knowledge experts can develop more abstract perspectives of their concepts and/or performances.

Some people may have expertise in other areas that gives them unique insights into the possibilities inherent in social media. They may be able to fast track the development of expertise in social media by building on their previous knowledge and experience.

Further, social media is just media and communications on a new platform. I’m not quite sure if that fact privileges social media in some special way?

Rather it seems that what we are undergoing is experimentation with the new media publishing platforms – from hard copy to soft copy, from television to online, etc.

This is no different from the platform change that ensued with the move from radio to television. I wonder if there were a bunch of Television Media Experts running around back in those days too? And I suspect that those experts of olden times would have known just as much as the average Social Media Expert today.

Perhaps rather than being social media experts we are social media learners? If indeed social media is a real thing we should even consider in and of itself (but that is a topic for another day)?

* Updated: OzDJ also reminded me of the various “social media ‘luminaries’, ‘mavens’, ‘gurus’ et al”

Here are the slides from my presentation at the National Growth Summit in Sydney today.

I’m speaking at the National Growth Summit 2010 in Sydney this week about engagement marketing and running a workshop on Technology to drive Growth.

The line-up includes a number of international luminaries along with local experts, gurus and knowledgeable people such as: Mick Liubinskas, Stephen Collins, Mike Walsh & Stephen Belfer.

There’s also workshops available on day 2 of the conference – for a special discount on the Technology to Drive Growth workshop use this registration form (opens pdf)

I’ve been thinking about having an overarching theme for my blog this year and have finally decided on women in …

that is women who are doing interesting things like

• finance
• technology
• science
• engineering
• management
• innovation
• start-ups
• marketing
• media
• and whatever other interesting careers pop up

Women have come such a long way in a relatively short time regarding careers and choices. It’s worth sharing stories of successful women and finding out some of their secrets.

First post on this will a profile of a fascinating woman in finance.

If you think that there is an interesting woman others should know about please let me know.

I’ve been thinking about my recent American Express experience – outlined in AMEX discovers new depths to customer service.

It is clear to me that companies have the right to choose which customers they deal with. But it seems that how they remove those customers from the books is the critical thing for brand and customer experience.

I’m not sure if American Express were really trying to get rid of me as a customer. But if that was the case, it is entirely within their rights.

However, it is not so much the “what” they did that rankles; instead it is “how” they did it.

In this case Amex abandoned a customer in a foreign town with none of the promised financial resources for which they had contracted. American Express provided little advance notice in case their customer was not at home. Thus, in this case, American Express left a woman who was traveling alone unable to rely on the card that exhorted us to “don’t leave home without it“.

So people like me – who believed in things like the claims made in all those American Express advertisements; the many years of services provided and payments made; who trusted in the credit limits offered – were left abandoned without notice in a foreign place without help or support from a brand that had made promises to us.

What does this experience of American Express customer service say to me? It says that I can’t trust any companies anymore. No matter how good their advertisements sound it does not matter. If a brand that I once respected, like American Express, can abandon me like that then I can’t trust any brands.

Any brand that does not want me as a customer has an absolute right to let me know that – I don’t want to be where I’m not wanted.

But I do expect that companies will treat me in a civil manner. That they will give appropriate notice of their intentions. And that they will enable me to make an orderly exit from their embrace.

I am angry and saddened that my trust has been damaged so badly by the way that American Express treated me. It is not what they did to me (in terms of change the terms of our agreement, e.g. reducing credit limits) that is the problem. But I do have significant concerns about how they went about it (e.g. giving me no advance notice of the changes & leaving me in a foreign city unable to rely upon their promises).

What is most disturbing is the way that my trust has been destroyed, not only in the institution of American Express, but in all other similar institutions.

#amex

I’ve been an American Express customer for a long time.  But recently they made it apparent that they do not want my custom so I’m in the process of closing my accounts. Unless their customer service tactics are treat ‘em mean and keep ‘em keen something very strange is happening at that company IMHO.

It went thus …

I’ve had and used both a gold charge card and a gold credit card for many years – which I got especially because Amex is supposed to be a good card to have while traveling. Both cards are paid up and in good order, with automatic payments set up so I don’t forget to pay on time.

Last week while traveling interstate I went to pay for a taxi using the gold credit card and it was declined. I did not think much of it and just used my ANZ Visa card to pay instead. Then later I tried to use the Amex card and it declined again. Mildly cross I put the card away. It seemed weird because based on my credit limit with Amex I had over $10,000 left of my credit limit available at that point in time.

However, unbeknown to me Amex had decided reduce my credit limit by over 50% and I now had no credit limit left on that card. IT IS A VERY GOOD THING THAT I WAS NOT TRAPPED, A WOMAN ALONE IN A STRANGE CITY, WITH ONLY THAT PARTICULAR AMERICAN EXPRESS CARD ISN’T IT?

Thank heavens for my ANZ Visa card – again an account in good standing – and one that was not ripped from under me in a very hostile way.

I arrived home several days later to find a letter from Amex advising me of the change in the credit limit. Sadly that letter at my home which reduced the credit limit without notice served no good purpose for someone who was 2,000 kilometres away at the time.

The letter also advised that my card could no longer withdraw cash from ATMs; further it stated:

As your current balance is close to the revised limit stated above, please ensure you make a payment prior to using your card next….

Yours faithfully,
Adrian Janssen
Head of Credit Services
American Express Credit Card

Oh thanks Mr Andrian Janssen (who signed the letter) that really helped when your letter arrived while I was traveling. Perhaps a short notice period might have been a bit of good customer service to cover such a case?

Of course, upon arrival at home late Friday I tried to phone Amex to discuss this matter. To no avail as the credit department do not work outside of ‘business’ hours.

Up until now my relationship with Amex was settled. Even though their cards are not widely accepted in many places that I shop and merchants often add an extra several percent onto transactions to cover the higher Amex merchant acceptance fees, I still kept their cards. But no longer.

The matter is easily resolved. I simply took out my cheque book, wrote a cheque and walked to the post box and dropped my payment in the post.

I’ll be calling at a more convenient time for Amex – during the ‘business’ hours they work – to close both my accounts. My life is busy enough without rubbish like this. Voting with my feet will make me feel a whole lot better.

Here is a sample of the Twitter conversations regarding this matter.

Source:the nice folks over at Sency

Startup Barcamp Sydney was on yesterday and I managed to drop in. It was held at one of my favourite venues for unconferences – ATP Innovations- and it might possibly be the first barcamp to feature fresh coconut juice in the shell.

This event was part of Global Entrepreneurship Week (which was hosted nationally by Matt Jones from Social Alchemy) and it provided a chance for the local startup community to get together & share ideas.

Due to other commitments I was only able to stay for the morning sessions – but saw some really good quality presentations from Brian Menzies (@BrianMenzies); Joseph Renzi (@josephrenzi) and Matt Jones (@socialalchemy).

Major kudos to the un-organisers – including @davidsoul & @ryancross – it was a good event. Reading through the Twitter stream made me wish I’d been able to stay for the afternoon sessions.

I also gave a little talk about Trade offs, balance, support and Startups. It came about through a realisation that most of my friends are startup junkies. Also I had come to notice the sheer number of broken relationships (across families, friendships and partnerships) in the startup community. Upon consideration, it seemed to me that startups are not so much about technology or the ideas – they are about people and relationships.

The slides are up on Slideshare. The key message was that startups don’t leave much room for work life balance & that people really need to weigh this up before they decide to undertake the startup journey.

#startupbcs

A recent study in Scientific American about How the Brain Reveals Why We Buy discusses advances in neuroscience that are giving rise to a new field of neuromarketing.

The article cites the famous example of Coke v. Pepsi – where blind taste tests showed a preference for Pepsi, whereas visible labels gave rise to a preference for Coke.  Brain imaging shows that different parts of the brain are activated for each result.   This kind of technology enabled insight into our feelings will revolutionise focus groups.

It seems that as neuroscience advances it will inevitably inform our marketing practices. This means that marketing will begin its transition from black art – in the hands of the creative folks – to science – in the hands of the boffins.

We are moving into a time of Pavlovian marketing where stimulus + response = results based on scientific and quantifiable principles.  No more will people say “I know 50% of advertising works, I’m just not sure which 50%”.

It will be interesting to see how long this transition takes.

As both an educator and tertiary student I’ve been able to see both sides of the fence. A recent experience with Queensland University of Technology stands out as exemplary in both student support and customer service.

A change in personal circumstances recently meant that I needed to make a decision and act very quickly regarding my studies. And I required speedy access to some information about my options as a student in the QUT Law School.

I tried phoning the Law School and was unable to get through to anyone. Immediately I sent an email outlining my issues to Kaylene Matheson, the Administrative Officer (Student Support) in the Law School.

Kaylene responded within minutes, phoning to give me a run down of the options available. She then emailed me contact details for Student Services, who could fill in the last bit of information so as to finalise my decision within the necessary timeframe.

The next morning I called Student Services and spoke to a really helpful chap, who patiently talked through my options explaining the consequences of each. We had a constructive discussion and I was able to decide on a course of action. He then explained exactly how to finalise my decision & noted what records I should keep for future reference.

Both Kaylene & my unknown helper at Student Services provided support and great customer service. They were patient and helpful, taking the time to help me to understand what I needed to do. They are a credit to QUT & are great brand ambassadors!

The funny thing is that this makes sense; as everyone that I’ve dealt with at QUT has been helpful and supportive. Clearly this is part of their organisational culture. What this all means is that when you put the good customer service together with good academics and good student support systems (like Blackboard and website) it makes a good place to study.

Following are some of my off the cuff responses on Twitter:

“the student services people at QUT.edu.au totally rock – they are super professional & really helpful!!! = EPIC WIN!!!”
10:02 AM Sep 17th

“some other unis should learn from QUT!”
10:03 AM Sep 17th

“if you are looking for a uni for distance education I cannot recommend QUT more highly – a very professional & positive experience”
10:03 AM Sep 17th

Here’s an excellent example of a legal or marketing department (or both) who don’t seem to get how the internet & search engines work.

Further, it shows a real disconnect between the kind of content on the site and the policies supporting the site.

Wonder why they bothered putting all that funky interactive content on their site if they don’t want anyone to link to it? Hey *Vegemite – perhaps it’s time to revisit your policy?

 

Vegemite’s Ass-Backward Web Philosophy: Don’t Link to Us

What Was It Thinking With This Privacy Policy?

Posted by Abbey Klaassen on September 11, 2009 @ 03:17 PM

Here’s one for the annals of marketer stupidity.

As BoingBoing points out today (after noticing it on Tetherd Cow Ahead), Kraft’s Vegemite site has perhaps one of the most backward privacy policies known to man and marketer. It forbids anyone from linking to it.

Yes, you read that right — you might actually like Vegemite, you might appreciate the recipes on its site, you might find useful the “Kids Corner” section where it offers up Vegemite-themed classroom activities for grade-school teachers — but don’t even think about giving any link love. With links being an integral piece of a search strategy, perhaps that’s why Vegemite’s own site wallows in the bottom half of a Google search, below videos and shopping links. (Sneaking on the first page of search results for the brand? The BoingBoing post that highlights the ridiculous linking policy, which shows just how beneficial a smart linking policy can be for SEO.)

via adage.com

* I am ready for the Vegemite jokes that suggest this is all part of a plan to save the world from this product

People have been asking me for ages if any real companies are using social networks for their marketing, so it was interesting to come across this data from Capital One in the UK.

Robin Goad from Hitwise reports that “Facebook is now its second biggest source of traffic, and even overtook Google UK for one month earlier this year.”

Here is an example of a mainstream company that is using online effectively to redirect advertising spend and obtain measurable results.

As I have been known to say, we need to fish where the fish are.  These days the fish are overwhelmingly on social networking sites.  The real trick is catching them.

I recently experienced how easily one can disrupt a stable ecosystem. And I learned the hard way how difficult it can be to re-stabilise that same ecosystem!

We have two dogs and one of them likes to socialise around the neighbourhood, and to this end she will dig amazing tunnels or climb over the high fences in our back yard.  To keep her in safely we have laid various bricks and paving stones around the perimeter of the yard.

Not long back I moved one brick from one part of the perimeter to another. Several months of chaos, escapes and tunnel digging ensued.

Just one little brick gave Trotsky the idea that escape was viable and she turned her considerable energy & intelligence to that end. The ecosystem of my backyard suffered for months following the removal of just one brick.

It’s all sorted out now.  But this got me thinking about how we often cannot see the pattern that keeps an ecosystem strong and stable.  Just one little thing that looks almost irrelevant can pull the whole thing asunder.

This is precisely the kind of thing that we are seeing in the traditional marketing ecosystem with the impact of social media and social networking.

Businesses are grappling with this problem.  They are continuing to execute the old faithful marketing plans and see them deliver less telling results than before. Debates are happening in board rooms about the importance or otherwise of the web.  And many business people think that it is all a fad that will pass like so many others.

People are using & consuming media and technology in new ways – for example a recent Nielsen study showed users want to use TV and internet simultaneously. The change is deep, and it is important because it is a social phenomenon. It is also impacted by the convergence of web and mobile phones that see traditional ways of consuming internet changing – this Pew report gives some indication of these changes.

Luc Vallee sums it up nicely in the title of his recent blog post: Moore’s Law x Metcalfe’s Law = Chaos? It all reminds me of Yeats:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

Time will ensure that we work out how to deal with the changes in our business ecosystem that arise from the changes in people and their use of technology. But it is these in-between times that challenge us and create fear, uncertainty and doubt.

Seth Godin’s recent post Out of bounds got me thinking about the implicit contracts that we create almost unconsciously everyday.

In Seth’s post he’s talking about companies and their marketing. He notes how upset people get when a brand or product does something that does not fit into the consumer’s preconceptions.

But I realised that the same things happens with us as individuals. We get put into mental pigeon holes by the people we deal with every day (and we do the same to others). Sometimes it can be hard for us to escape from those preconceptions. Also it can be hard for us to realise that an individual has changed or grown past their original parameters.

This is an interesting question for both brands and people: how can we grow and evolve beyond our original boundaries?

An important foundation for growth is to understand and develop the skills, knowledge and capabilities that support the new boundaries. There is no point trying to move on past old boundaries if you’re unable to deliver the goods. As Seth notes, “The real problem is that when marketers believe they are going out of bounds, the work they do tends to be lousy.”

It’s interesting to consider these ideas from an individual perspective as well as a business one.

Back in the old days at GE (pre GFC) we were taught that all business ideas or problems should be considered from the “outside-in” or from the customer’s point of view. This was part of their Six Sigma approach using Voice of the Customer principles.  Now admittedly that was a few years ago, but the principle remains sound for business in general and also in relation to social media.

There are many voices articulating rules for social media engagement – from simple  ideas like ‘treat people the way you would a friend’ or ‘treat people the way you’d like to be treated’ to long lists of tips.

One thing that many of these approaches have in common is looking at things from the business perspective rather than that of the customer.

For example, hypothetically: I might treat friends (as I would like to be treated) by calling them a boofhead & punching them in the shoulder. Such interaction might simply annoy a customer who is a suburban mother of two.  Instead it might be better to find out how that customer actually wants to be dealt with.

Indeed it might even be worth understanding if there are different kinds of customers who’d like to be treated in different ways.  Perhaps football-watching beer-drinking men might like to be called a boofhead & punched in the shoulder?

One thing that social computing has enabled is for micro-segments to emerge.  Once we treated customers as a large block, dissected them up into fairly big chunks and called that segmentation.  But now we have the ability to mine data to a degree unimagined in the past. And this capability lets us understand the groups within our customers.  Data mining is a key capability powered by web 2.0 and social computing.  We are now in a position to obtain deep insights into our customers, their needs and their behaviours.

We have also seen classic examples of companies totally misreading their customer audience.  Motrin Moms was an amazing lesson for onlookers late in 2008.  Within hours really angry mothers online via Twitter had mobilised against the brand and Motrin backpedalled furiously to quiet the issue.  Jeremiah Owayang gave a good summary of this situation with Motrin Moms (as they came to be called).  He also offers some insights into testing and planning these kind of campaigns.

Social computing has brought about the democratisation of the means of communication.  In the past customers, like the Motrin Moms, did not have access to the means of protest.  But now within hours they can slam down a carefully planned and executed media strategy.  The sooner businesses come to terms with this democratisation of communication and the related shift from monologue to dialogue the easier life will be for all of us.

This is the traditional marketing model we all learned in university. But we really need to consider if this model remains appropriate for the digital age.

My instinct is that we need to adapt this traditional model to incorporate new media channels and collaborative communications rather than abandon it. But many people seem to be saying we are moving into an entirely new paradigm.

[RANT: I remain sceptical about the utility of notions such as paradigms & paradigm shifts in general, and also in particular in relation to completely unscientific domains such as marketing*. And I remain sceptical of their utility as an explanatory construct for most things.  In fact, the word paradigm when used by anyone except philosophers of science (like Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Imre Lakatos or Paul Feyerabend)  & in relation to the philosophy of science makes me feel queasy. But that could just be my early liberal arts education coming through (three years of studying philosophy must have some impact!). /RANT]

But putting on a business hat it is clear that we need to find effective ways to allocate scarce resources to enable our brands and products to be known in the marketplace. Further, business experience has shown that structured approaches to expenditure tend to be more sustainable in the long term.

Thus, even in the digital age, businesses need a structured way to plan, coordinate and allocate marketing resources to deliver business value.

For this reason it is unclear why digital and online is not simply considered another medium or channel that is sufficiently encompassed by a traditional marketing model.  The situation regarding digital and online marketing is analogous to that of television when it was introduced. In the early days of TV people did not yet understand the medium and how to communicate using it (like in the 1950s ad below). But only a few years later they had mastered the medium and were delivering messages effectively.

The real difference with this new medium is to understand how it needs to be used from an audience perspective. Especially since now that the audience is no longer a passive consumer, but is becoming an active participant.

Another key area that we need to understand better is metrics for digital and online. In the same way that TV required new ways of measuring value, digital and online marketing must be able to demonstrate ROI.

* BTW anyone out there who thinks marketing is scientific needs to read What Is This Thing Called Science: An Assessment of the Nature and Status of Science and Its Methods

[Image source]

Jeremiah Owyang’ post on A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media should be required reading for all marketers seeking to venture online.

Some of the issues in these marketing disasters include:

• lack of openness & authenticity
• just not getting the community & what made sense to them
• not getting that there is often a community out there
• that the consumers were able to talk back about the campaign
• the message did not resonate positively with the community
• the message annoyed the crap out of the community & galvanised them into some kind of action
• the message or brand got subverted and used to further another cause (e.g. brandjacking)

What has changed & what do we need to do?

The answers are pretty simple.

• Authenticity and transparency are key – be open, tell the truth.
• It is getting harder to keep secrets with mobile devices and camera everywhere – own up to bad stuff, follow good crisis management principles (NB: opens pdf Principles of Crisis Management in a Viral Age).
• Bad behaviour and bad products get outed very quickly these days – develop rules of engagement for staff so they know what is acceptable behaviour, if bad stuff happens own up. I am a Civil Servant shows how rules of engagement can be done.
• Consumers can now share their displeasure and mobilize fellow consumers quite easily – if consumers voice  their anger engage with them, listen to their concerns, and don’t be defensive.
• If you annoy people it can go around the world in minutes via channels like Twitter (refer Motrin Moms for great example of this) – so monitor reputation online as a matter of course so you are aware of what’s going on.

The success stories – like Dell moving from ‘Dell Hell‘ to ‘Dell Community‘ are the result of hard and consistent work, dedicated resources and a willingness to embrace openness and authenticity.

It is really worthwhile to learn from the experience of others before dipping a toe into the somewhat murky waters of social media.