The events that unfolded during the BP oil crisis of 2010 made us, at this fluid world, question what could have happened if an organisation such as BP had a different approach in terms of preparation, positioning and attitude.
Our belief is that a different outcome, in terms of communications and speed in finding a solution, could have been possible. Due to this we spent the summer of 2010 developing an alternative scenario based on a combination of the changing communications world we live in, the thinking, tools and methodologies of this fluid world, and learnings from the BP case.
The document comes in two parts:
Part one: a summary of the main events of the two first months of the BP crisis, with a focus on the communications side, to set the scene for our scenario.
Part two: a scenario presenting an alternative approach that is collaborative, transparent, responsible, open, honest and rapid.
Nothing warms my heart more than when an organisation does something good, nothing warms my heart more than when media and advertising is used to do good, and nothing warms my heart more than when technology helps to do good.
Today I saw an amazing campaign that reminded me of something that happened a few years ago when I was in San Francisco with my mother. We were taking a stroll when we walked passed a homeless man sitting on the pavement with his dog. I remember having seen a programme about homeless people where they mentioned that the hardest bit was not the cold, not the hunger, not having nowhere to be…the hardest bit is people seeing right through you…as if being homeless all of a sudden makes you invisible.
I therefore looked at the man and said ‘Good afternoon’… as we walked away I heard him say to his dog ‘Did you hear that, she said good afternoon’. He was no longer invisible.
Remembering that moment still brings tears to my eyes.
But seeing this campaign aimed at helping the homeless gives me hope… Please do take a look.
As described by digital buzz ‘The above is an extraordinary campaign from Pathways To Housing & Sarkissian Mason depicting a “virtual” homeless man projected onto a wall in NYC. The campaign to raise awareness hope to create interaction with someone most people just pass by, in prompting the public to interact with the virtual homeless man by SMSing a number that opens a door. Passers by are then given the opportunity to send another SMS to make a small donation instantly from their phone’.
I was so inspired by this that I will occasionally use this forum to bring to your attention examples of when technology makes a real difference in the non-commercial world.
In the meantime I sincerely hope that Pathways To Housing & Sarkissian Mason manages to raise awareness of the chronically homeless, and of course also that they manage to raise the funds necessary to help them in their quest to find a solution to any human being living on the street.
I’ve been asked to speak at a panel at EGR Live (eGaming Review brand) covering the topic ‘Marketing on a shoestring budget’. My role on this panel is as ‘someone who knows about social media’… and it got me thinking.
Everyone loves seeing an underdog make it. And in marketing land an underdog is someone with little or no budget. So when Paranormal Activity, a movie with a production budget of $10,000 and no marketing budget, makes it into American theatres through an active approach to social media, we pay attention, we pay attention and we want some of that magic too!!!
I love stories like this, but I fear that it gives people the wrong impression of the role that digital and social media should play in marketing.
Marketing does not = advertising, we must therefore look at marketing from a broader perspective
The main reaction marketers have when they think of marketing on a shoestring budget is free advertising, and the solution to this is social media and SEO.
This is a limited view of marketing. If, as a marketer, you truly want to decrease marketing cost you MUST look at marketing from a broader perspective. If, as a marketer, you truly want to be part of the social media tidal wave you MUST look at the role digital and social media can, and should play, in the entire marketing mix.
Some companies are getting this right, and ‘qu’elle surprise’, they are also the same companies we keep reading about in the trade press and hearing about at conferences. The reason they’re such success stories is because they do NOT look at social media as a way of decreasing advertising budget, they look at social media (and with this I mean the power of people) as something that can affect their entire marketing mix. Let me give you some examples, and I know you will be familiar with these.
Product development: LEGO with its software ‘Design By Me’ allowing people to design their very own custom made LEGO sets
Price: Open Source Foundation with its promise of being better quality, higher reliability, more flexible at a lower cost
Distribution: Kogi BBQ has several trucks serving Korean food in LA and uses twitter to tell its customers where they can find their van’s each day
Promotion: (the aforementioned) Paranormal Activity
And finally Zappos, a company who gets it right throughout the value chain, has during the past 10 years grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales. This has been achieved primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth.
These are all examples of excellent marketing, and in some cases of advertising on a shoestring budget!
Create an army of fanatics
There is another thing these companies have in common; they have what Jonathan MacDonald, my business partner at this fluid world, refers to as an army of fanatics supporting them. An army of fanatics are people that produce and create for you, talk about you, promote you, sell your products, and in tough times defend you!
Shift marketing investment to earlier stages of the value chain
When we at this fluid world work with organisations that are looking at decreasing their marketing budget (often through social media), we recommend that they shift their investment to an earlier stage of the value chain, in addition to focusing their attention on creating an army of fanatics, rather than on how to advertise as cheaply as possible. Why? Because we know that this will save organisations money across the board.
We recommend:
They tap into the zeitgeist “the spirit of the times”, soak themselves in the cultural and spiritual climate, live breathe and eat what people do, think and talk about
That they create extreme value, be it in utility, convenience, enablement, connectivity, coolness or reward; within and around everything they do. This can only be achieved if stage one is taken seriously, and done well
After having created something extremely valuable make sure it’s ultra findable. The distance between inspiration and satisfaction must be reduced toward instantaneous. Be everywhere! Yes this is where search comes in – but only as a part of it
And finally make sure it’s super shareable. It seems such an easy concept but the efficiencies of distribution become significant when people who like something can share it with others. The ‘viral’ campaigns we see working best are those that have an instant way of sharing between people. This accelerates the advocacy effect of armies of fanatics
Gaming is all about armies of fanatics
As you can imagine, creating an army of fanatics is easier said than done, especially if you’re in the business of selling sugar water or you are, for example, an energy company…
But if you’re reading this and you’re in gaming, than you’re incredibly lucky because you’re in an industry that by nature is made up of fanatics! People who game love gaming, people who game breathe gaming! You already have the army of fanatics to tap into by default. They are there, waiting to connect waiting to play (literally!).
So what does that mean to you? It means that your job is to make them YOUR army of fanatics!
Look at Zynga, the makers of FarmVille, and FishVille, with 230 million users each month (using a limited advertising budget) and Mafia Wars with its 12,104,521 facebook fans (as of 2nd of June 2010). These are games that have created and tapped into fanatical armies at great success!
This, by the way, requires following the same recommendations outlined above. Gaming is the perfect environment for a brand to create THEIR army of fanatics, and for social media marketing to prove itself in every part of the marketing mix.
If the gaming industry gets it right, I believe it could do to social media marketing what porn did to the Internet – accelerate its success!
And for whoever does this well, it will be game, set and match!
Sounds a bit stressful? Well I argue that you already do!
The question “who do you work for” is usually answered by a company name, and in the top five answers to “what motivates you at work” you tend to find money, and being respected by colleagues (the latter measured by how often you’re promoted).
These answers are no surprise in a business world where hierarchy is part of the control and reward mechanism. However, this has one big downside and that is that employees feel they work for management, or for the CEO.
I know what you’re thinking…but we do don’t we?
In practise yes… but I would argue that in principle we work for the customer. Why you may ask? Because they’re the ones paying your salary, they’re the ones that will fire you if they’re not happy, they won’t hire you without extensive research or without checking your references, and you’re more likely to be hired if others recommend you! In summary, what social media has done is created a world where employees receive a 360-degree performance review by their customers, in public, on mass, and on a minute-by-minute basis.
Which makes me think they should be the centre of any company’s universe, and at the top of the management pyramid.
So if I was the CEO of an organisation I would not only create an army of fanatics in my customers (to quote Jonathan MacDonald – Happy Birthday by the way!) but I would also create a workforce with one boss, the customer!
The implication of this on how a company is managed would be radical…We would live in a world where the most powerful person in an organisation is the Head of Customer Care, who of course sits on the board. It’s a world where decentralised structures are systematically favoured, because being responsible to customers in a centralised system is seen as impossible. In this world, customers are regularly part of the recruitment process.
I could go on but I agree that this may come across as a little too much like customer utopia, and not so realistic…but I still argue that a fundamental cultural shift in who companies think they are ultimately responsible to is needed…(and this would require organisations, and therefore everyone working in them, to reconsider who they think they work for)…
… oh by the way I mean a real cultural shift, in both thinking and action – not just paying lip service…
But until then, I’ll keep praying that one day a miracle will happen and I will finally understand my mobile bill, my service provider will call me back when my e-mail is down, and my bank will decide that Sweden is a country, that Swedish Kroners is a currency, and therefore allow me to transfer money there using my on-line banking service.
I spent yesterday at the Figaro Social Media Marketing Conference in London.
During question time an attendee made a statement that made me sit up.
“By the time companies catch on to, and do, social media it won’t be new media anymore it will be old media”.
What he said made me question the definition of old and new, it made me question the feeling that new is better than old, and it made me question the assumption that it (the new) should happen now because we want it to, because we are ready!
Old to me is not about semantics it’s about action
How you define old I suppose depends on how you look at things.
If with old you mean people have spent considerable time talking about it within the four walls of their offices, if with old you mean it has been the topic of conversation at many conferences, if with old you mean that the press has covered it from most angles possible…then yes I suppose the statement would be correct, by the time companies ‘do’ social media it will be old media.
I have a slightly different definition of old, one that has little to do with talking, one that has little to do with writing, and even less to do with power point.
Old to me is something that has been around for a while, something that is clearly understood, something that has been tried and tested, and has been incorporated into business as usual. Basically something that has been done by many, over and over and over again! It’s old because it has worked (at least at a certain point in time).
What’s so wrong with old anyway?
I mean people still listen to ABBA? Old is only bad if something better has come along, (better not just different) and if that something is getting ignored for the wrong reasons (lack of knowledge, myopia, fear etc).
Resistance to something new, to change is normal, and I think in some instances healthy. Can you imagine what business would look like if companies jumped on everything new that came their way? It would have the same disastrous affect as UGG boots had on fashion!
This is why I respect the old. At some point in time it was good enough to convince companies to change, to adopt to something new, it subsequently stood the test of time, and it probably survived a lot of fads.
It won’t happen because we wish it to
Having said this I also like a good spring clean, I like bringing in something fresh, I absolutely think new is needed (OK personally I love new and i love change)! I have spent most of my career navigating uncharted waters, trying to drive change – and enjoying it!
My experience has taught me that resistance to change is not likely to go away, and that nothing is going to happen because a number of suppliers livelihood depends on companies ‘catching on and doing something new’, nor because a bunch of us get inpatient.
Until resources are unlimited, and fear of taking risks eliminated, change will happen because the people advocating, and believing in that something new, will make it happen. If they want to reap the benefits it’s their job to clearly define the value they (or their idea/product/solution) bring, it’s their role to educate the market, to decrease the risk in trying the new, and to develop solutions so successful and sustainable that companies have no choice but to get on board.
So anyone in the social media space (or any other new space) should pray that social media becomes old media. Why? Because this means that we have been successful in achieving the above, in proving the value of the new, in having an impact on business and in gaining a significant part of marketing budget!
So let’s all of us hope that anything new we get involved in becomes old…and don’t worry…if you still have the wonderlust, just find something else new, it’s called progress!
Social media being such a hot topic it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you about my business partner Jonathan MacDonald’s recent experience with the power of social media!
In this post I’m particularly interested in sharing with you Jonathan’s learning/advice after his experience with a TFL worker insulting a passenger (which he caught on camera) on Friday. He eloquently put the story in a blog a few days ago, and the outcome was pretty extraordinary! To focus on the learnings I have taken the liberty to do some editing of Jonathan’s recent blog (only shortening it, there is no change to the content, and have only done so to emphasise the take aways).
However, the link to the full blog is provided at the end and it’s well worth reading through the entire blog as it’s rich with data and interesting information.
At this stage it’s worth noting that Jonathan has been involved in social media for well over a decade, and does not just understand the topic, but lives it, every day, actually if you worked with him you would realise it’s closer to every minute (truly fascinating). It basically is who he is.
It’s his passion for the topic, and our belief in it as a key factor of communication in the future, that has made social media a key part of what we do at this fluid world.
———–
Yesterday I (Jonathan) wrote a blog post about something I had witnessed in an underground station – a guard being verbally abusive to a traveller and eventually suggesting to “sling him under a train”.
Fast forward 24 hours and the story has run as the leader on Sky, BBC, LBC, ITN and on the front page of the Evening Standard. This followed thousands of Tweets and Re-Tweets (including the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, getting involved), 65,000 video views yesterday alone on YouTube and hundreds of comments on this and many other blogs. Plus, the guard has been suspended and is under investigation.
All I did was see something that shouldn’t be tolerated and used the ammunition we have in our hands – video/blogs/network.
This is an example of the incredible power of social media and the reason the story played out the way it did is because of how the social environment works.
Through this post I will cover exactly what steps I took to make this happen and look at ways that TFL could have done things differently.
Understanding the power of social media means that anyone can do what I did – but more importantly, companies and organisations would be able to better prepare for good and bad outcomes – in this case, the latter for TFL (Transport for London).
My original blog post outlined what happened, but here I will give some options of what TFL could have done – most certainly for a more positive outcome. This is non-exhaustive but gives you an idea:
1. They should have been prepared. Without sounding funny, the best way to avoid these things is to be prepared – staff and company alike. But they weren’t – and I hereby extend a public offer of help in this preparation to them – you can contact me from my contact page. Even though the staff members have a tough job, there are probably more productive ways of dealing with the nasty bits – without shouting and swearing
2. They should have been monitoring, in real time, any mention of words on the web such as ‘underground’, ‘abuse’, ‘passengers’, ‘staff’, ‘TFL’, ‘tube’, etc and noticed that an article had been written. It took Google 40 minutes to show my blog in related search terms and the post was written early evening yesterday, so actually, TFL had a 12 hour head start on the Twitter/Blog/Press people
3. They should have instantly suspended the staff member an implemented a pre-arranged procedure where they get someone (maybe even the original blogger – in this case me), to speak with a number of other staff to get a balanced view of what staff can really be like. I would have happily liaised with TFL
4. They should have prepared a circulation for the entire company staff, highlighting this incident and used it as a real time training manual – announcing this method to all press and bloggers to highlight that they not only are aware but are using this constructively
5. They should have joined the digital conversation and pointed out other feedback received, for the world to see the balance in place. Offline, they should have called the press first and invited themselves to speak alongside me at every press call throughout the day – but they didn’t
6. They should have built a campaign around the perpetrator showing the exact steps taken to ensure it never happens again – including posting it on the front page of their site immediately
The Twitterers, Bloggers and commentators were the only people who played this right. The stories were shared and eventually the press picked it up.
What we need is for Industry to learn the key techniques of Involvism that the Twitterers, Bloggers and commentators already implement.
Yes, this means that we need new rules in company staffing, training, strategy and delivery and yes, if we work with people, we have to assume that anything can be caught on camera and distributed.
Like it or not, the only people who should have a problem with that are those who don’t want their quality of work highlighted.
It’s unstoppable and its here, now.
Welcome to the age of Social Media.
———–
Thank you Jonathan for turning this experience into a opportunity for all of us to learn. Click on the below picture for Jonathan’s entire blog post.
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(truly fascinating). It basically is who he is.
