The #tweetaconda needs feeding

March 7th, 2012

The tweetaconda is a Twitter campaign by Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The idea is simple, feed the tweetaconda and he grows. Hopefully creating the worlds longest snake, which currently measures in at more than 32.75 feet (based on a snake found in Celebes, Indonesia).

If you want to get involved, Tweet with the hashtag #tweetaconda or type in a message over at tweetaconda.com.

The goal of the site is to drive traffic to the exhibit and increase the Museum’s digital footprint by engaging its 25,000+social media followers. “We want the community to keep learning beyond the walls of the Museum,” said Amanda Bennett, director of marketing for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

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Defining Social CRM

March 7th, 2012

Social CRM is a topic that we have covered at length on this blog in the past, looking at definitions, case study examples and feedback from Social CRM events that we attend and speak at.

In our experience, the one defining characteristic of Social CRM is the range of misconceptions and misunderstandings about the core elements involved. Therefore, we have decided to pull together this post to cover off three of the key questions that we come up against when discussing Social CRM, and then build on the focus over the coming weeks.

1. What is Social CRM?:

Perhaps one of the best definitions that I’ve come across on Social CRM was from Esteban Kolsky - Founder at ThinkJar, who spoke at Social CRM 2011, London, which I attended last year. He stated: “Companies tend to start using social media to talk at their customers not to listen to them” he then defined CRM as a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment.

This is a good reflection of how many organisations start out on the road to Social CRM (jumping straight into a tactical approach and talking ‘at’ customers but not listening ‘to’ customers), in comparison to where they really need to be, which is simply to focus on improving real interactions with customers.

In practical terms this means the organisation will need to implement a system and related technologies, built around an overarching ‘business’ strategy. And by business strategy, I mean a strategy that is developed with the whole business in mind, understood by the business and executed by the business.

2. Why does Social CRM matter?

The key here is taking CRM beyond a marketing or customer services specialism, and building a philosophy that translates across the organisation. If Social CRM is purely a function of customer services we are missing the point. In today’s socially connected world, customers can intersect and engage with an organisation at many different points, and do not follow traditional channels of communication. Therefore, the Social CRM strategy must be implemented across the business to succeed.

This has been evidenced on many occasions by customers discussing organisations with their networks, forming opinions and influencing others through their experiences. This is the heart of social conversation and the essence of a social business. If an organisation’s Social CRM strategy cannot positively impact this process then it is failing, and to succeed it must be implemented across the board. For example, your sales staff maybe excellent relationship managers, but if your service staff are rude and unresponsive, the overall impact will be negative.

Furthermore, we now learn from and engage with our customers more than ever before, but we can also learn from the data that social and online activities offer to us. It is important however to manage this data and put it to use, not all of the data will be useful, in fact much of it will just be noise, but social CRM offers us the opportunity to learn about customers, process these learnings and engaging accordingly.

3. How do you develop your Social CRM strategy?

If we consider that Social CRM is a method of translating social activities into the fundamentals of CRM, and in turn we understand that Social CRM is part of the evolution towards the development of a wider social business then we are half way there. However, we also need to focus on the customer need, which is not to be a fan or friend of the organisation, but to derive value from his/her engagement with the organisation. As David Meerman Scott said: ‘Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems. Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them’‘.

With that in mind, we need to translate our strategy into deliverables, and according to Kolsky, there are four key functions of Social CRM:
1. Community management (listening and engaging usefully)
2. Social analytics engine (gathering and processing data)
3. Actionable layer unit (identifying and actioning learnings)
4. System-of-record integration layer (Integrating learnings into the business)

It is also important to note that a key part of Social CRM is engaging with humans as humans. Machines talking to humans rarely works, especially in terms of a meaningful conversation. Therefore, remember it’s not about the technology, it’s about the person using it and the conversation. If we lose sight of the fundamentals and hide behind automated monitoring and response it will be the equivalent of a business leaving an answer machine to deal with customers, it won’t learn or react, it will just repeat.

Further reading

You can review our previous Social CRM posts on Social CRM 2011 London here, and Vikki Chowney at eConsultancy also recently did an excellent checklist on social customer service.

If you want to learn more on the subject, and speak to those organisations and agencies involved in Social CRM, I would also recommend The Social Customer event in London on March 29th, run by Our Social Times.

Posted in Blog, Content, Industry events, Liberate Media news, Social media, Social networking, Trends and research, Useful resources | 3 Comments »

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RIP Privacy - Google changes the rules

March 6th, 2012

It’s been a dramatic few weeks for issues around internet privacy. Alongside a string of high profile cases in the mobile arena focused on consumers’ private data being harvested without consent, Google has ploughed ahead in the last few days with the consolidation of its privacy rules, to widespread dissent.

Google announced the changes back on the 24th January which were designed to streamline the privacy rules of over 60 web services under one policy, enabling services like Gmail and YouTube to share data with each other. The company contends that these changes are primarily motivated by the need to streamline overall data flow and improve the relevancy and quality of service to its users.

But the move has been pilloried by critics and privacy advocates, who argue that this aggregation of personal consumer data is unlawful and driven by competitive agendas. Indeed, the EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, has announced that the changes directly contravene European data laws, and a full investigation is underway.

Online privacy is clearly entering a new phase and no one knows for certain how we will negotiate this delicate balance between maintaining our privacy and driving progress in the digital age. If you are online, then you already have a digital footprint, and how your personal information is managed is becoming increasingly unclear and difficult to control.

It’s important to bear in mind that online, just as in the real world, nothing comes for free. Whether you’re using social networks like Facebook and Pinterest, or photo sites like Picasa, then the pay-off is your personal information and it’s a marketing goldmine.

Consumers do still have a choice and can vote with their feet to leave certain services, although this is obviously easier said than done in an awful lot of cases. But with a bit of research, it’s possible to find great alternative search engines and email clients that have better privacy controls and won’t share your data without your say so. However, that’s really up to the individuals and many will choose mass market popularity and ease of use over privacy concerns.

The Google story will clearly run and run, with no one quite knowing the long term outcomes for privacy. We’ll be watching this space but in the meantime, here’s some excellent further reading from digital commentators Joss Wright and Tom Chatfield in The Guardian, who look at how our notions of privacy in the digital age will inevitably change - well worth a read.

Posted in Blog, Content, Digital communications, Digital media, Useful resources | 1 Comment »

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When Larry met Sergey is more than just an infographic

February 22nd, 2012

The Google story is a fascinating one, and one that I have personally followed very closely. A great way of finding out more about how Google started, way back in 1995, and its journey to success since then, is the embeddable Evolution of Google timeline aka When Larry met Sergey.

When Larry met Sergey is a creative infographic that actually made me stop and read the facts highlighted throughout, which include such gems as:

“Google implements industrial shipping containers to house their servers, each containing 1,160, for an estimated total of 200,000. Each is powered by Intel and AMD x86 processors and comes with an integrated 12-volt battery in case of failure”.

My favourite aspect is the fact that when you scroll down through the years, you get an ever increasing update on the number of Google users and the number of employees working for the company. In 2011 that figure stood at 2,100,000,000 web users, 31,353 employees with a current net income of $7,032,000,000 (in quarters 1 through 3). Not bad for 16 years work!

If that isn’t enough, there is a link to a list of sources found on the bottom right hand corner of the timeline, encouraging you to dig even deeper into the the world of Google.

So what does the future hold for Google? Will people begin to move away? Will the likes of Bing, Facebook and Twitter halt Google’s progression? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section of this blog.

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The Howling Football Campaign

February 21st, 2012

There are two huge sports-related events in the summer, the London Olympics being one, and the other is the European Football Championship hosted in Poland and the Ukraine. This post will focus on the latter.

A German non-governmental organisation has created the video shown below to raise awareness for a so-called “street cleaning programme”. Apparently street dogs and cats are being removed (exterminated) from the streets of the Ukraine to make the country “cleaner” in preparation for the expected mass of football fans.

The video is very well shot and certainly grabs attention. The sound of the ball howling when kicked is very haunting indeed.

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Are we really still talking about PR vs search vs social?

February 17th, 2012

Warning: rant coming…

First of all, this is not meant to be an attack on the recent post, titled ‘PR Agencies: Adapt or Die‘, on the Forrester blog. It made some good points, but it was also the spark that re-ignited my ongoing frustration with the industry that perpetuates this ‘x vs Y approach’, or ‘we’re better at it than you’ nonsense, which in my opinion misses the point entirely.

Yes, the traditional PR agency needs to adapt, and the same has been said for many years. The smart ones already have, and the others, well…they are slowly learning why they should.

In that time the search agency became all powerful, then became a digital agency and is now trying to redefine itself, and it’s a similar tale across the industry.

The reality for PR agencies, social agencies, digital agencies, search agencies and the vast majority of agencies, is that simply offering one element of a much wider remit of brand communications is not enough.

You cannot expect to live by one skill alone any more, and it’s pretty clear that brands are not willing to pay five agencies to do five roles that one should really be able to accomplish. Is it too much to ask that brand communicators should be able to establish emotional connections with customers, without the client needing to worry about where each level of service implementation comes from?

Some may argue that mobile is a specialism and one worth maintaining outside of the brand communications sphere of skills, and although it could be argued that is true for now, it was true of search and social at one time. Therefore, the simple truth is we as consumers absorb media quickly, and expect our services, brands and conversations to be cross-media very quickly, so why shouldn’t we expect the same of our agencies?

Getting back to my point, the issue is not about whether PR lives or dies, in its traditional form it has been struggling for 10 years. Search is losing its slice of the pie as skills go in-house and revenues tumble, and social agencies need to up-skill across the board to remain competitive, or risk being stranded as a specialist. So the issue is not so much who will win, but what will win.

By what, I mean that the agency of the future is not search or social or PR or even advertising. It’s more likely to be earned or paid media, and even earned and paid. This agency, let’s call it simply a brand communications agency (although I realise that has negative connotations traditionally) can do all of the above. This agency will be the winner, and yes that will upset many business models and eat into carefully laid profit plans, but that is the reality I see, and I don’t mean this agency will need to hold all skills in-house.

So yes, PR agencies as a general rule don’t do digital very well, this is not news, but it’s what PR, social, search and digital will become that is much more interesting.

Finally, a note to our regular readers. My apologies if you have seen this same rant in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and now 2012, it seems change takes time.

Posted in Blog, Blogging, Content, Digital communications, PR, Social media, Useful resources | 1 Comment »

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Amnesty International unlock campaign

February 15th, 2012

Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which is described by Wikipedia as ‘an extrajudicial detainment and interrogation facility of the United States located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba‘ is well known for many reasons, and often the target of campaigns aimed at closing it down.

On the camp’s 10th anniversary, Sweden’s Amnesty International arm devised a campaign using iPads and an animation across a digital billboard. The idea was that you signed a petition on the iPad using your finger, which would unlock a prisoner on the digital billboard across the road, to highlight the cause.

If you would like to support this campaign, please get the free mobile wallpapers from here http://m.amnesty.se/slidetounlock/. They are used as the images when you unlock and lock your phone.

Check out this video to see how it worked in real time.

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Shortcut to replace QR Codes?

February 14th, 2012

QR codes are everywhere at the moment, but a Swiss company called Kooaba offers an alternative. Kooaba want to replace QR Codes with a mobile app called Shortcut, formerly known as Paperboy.

So why use Shortcut?

Kooaba’s Tom Desmet says in a blog post “Despite the enormous media attention QR is getting, it still is not at a level where people are really using it. It does not seem to fit into peoples daily routine. Besides that, we have also seen a lot of misplaced QR codes, and many mistakes like codes in magazines that are too small to scan… for print and outdoor advertising, it is simply not needed.

“Interactive print advertising is going to play a bigger role in the future. Using Shortcut, you will get access to the most interesting deals and extras on your mobile phone by taking a picture of ads and billboards with the shortcut icon.”

See Shortcut in action:

For more information, downloads, and a list of all the supported print titles visit our new Shortcut website.

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Another RIM #fail?

February 8th, 2012

The recent RIM BeBold Twitter campaign started well enough, but did it eventually #fail? I’ll let you decide!

RIM asked users to tweet their resolutions for the New Year, using the hashtag #BeBold. The initial start to the campaign received a good response, however it didn’t end so well.

The campaign closed with an infographic “The Bold Team” in which RIM unveiled four cartoon characters designed to reflect the main themes featured in the resolutions – Achievers, Adventurers, Advocates and Authentics.

Unfortunately for RIM this went down like a lead balloon. One tweeter writing: “The BlackBerry new #BeBold campaign is really, really cringeworthy. Dated characters and painfully bad copy. They should just die gracefully.” The Huffington post Canada tweeted ”RIM when we suggested you #beBold with your business strategy this is not what we had in mind”

This was RIM’s response.

We’ve noticed The BeBold Team has received a lot of attention over the last couple of days, and wanted to clarify – this infographic is just intended to be a bit of fun. On New Year’s Eve, we asked BlackBerry Twitter followers and their friends to submit their resolutions on how they plan to Be Bold in 2012. More than 35,000 resolutions streamed across Twitter, Facebook, and giant billboards in Times Square. As we looked at the resolutions and the data, majority patterns and categories emerged. We decided to organize the data and share it in a fun way, and the result is the infographic. This is not a new ad campaign.”

You can find the notorious infographic here. We would love to hear what you think about it.

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A Day-off after the Super Bowl?

February 7th, 2012

The Super Bowl has run its course for another year, but Coke Zero has come up with a cheeky little campaign asking to make the day after Super Bowl Sunday an American public holiday, calling it ‘Magnificent Monday’.

The reason behind this is clear, they say 7million people call in sick after the big event and another 4 million show up late to work.

Coca Cola is asking the Twitterverse to submit ideas and show your support using the hashtag #magmonday let’s just hope it doesn’t get hijacked like some other high profile brand campaigns recently!

Good luck Coke Zero, we are fully behind you.

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