User meets Marketer perspective on branding, social media, and everything communications.
Archive for March, 2010
The New Media Relations
Mar 31st
When you pull up your media list to do story pitching for a client what information are you looking at? A phone number? An email address? Maybe even the occasional fax number? What about links to their professional (and not so professional blogs)? Are you friends on Facebook? Have you been chatting on Twitter?
My guess is it depends on the client and whether you’ve made that leap yet. (If you’re vying for JetBlue as a client you definitely are because they don’t even want to hear your agency pitch if you can’t find their VP on Twitter.) As clients both big and small start to appreciate the value in a blog post that makes its way steadily through the Twittersphere as much as the 200 word write up on the launch of their new service we will have to rethink what it means to communicate with journalists and which ones we really want to reach in the first place. Is it the guy at the local news desk or the popular local blogger that finds her way to the hippest events in town and brings the crowd with her?
Some big companies are starting to bet on the bloggers. The obvious, and much talked about example, is Chevy’s unabashed attempt to take social media by storm with a South by Southwest invasion that included road trips to Austin in Chevy vehicles by well-connected social media users who shared their experiences via Twitter, blog posts, Flickr, and YouTube, as well as a flood of Chevy vehicles offering free rides to conference goers. Chevy even invited some geek superstars like Robert Scoble and Guy Kawasaki to an exclusive test-drive of their teched-out Chevy Volt and probably got the best SXSW endorsement of the year, Scoble saying “The geeks will love it.” The idea? Provide an influential, prone to sharing group with the Chevy experience, hope they love it, and hope they get a couple thousand of their closest digital friends to check it out.
By most accounts Chevy has been lauded for their effective influencer marketing strategy and ability to leverage others’ social networks to change perceptions and build awareness of the new line of Chevy’s, rather than going the traditional trade publication and auto show route (which I am sure they will still do, but it’s significant that the launch focused on social media). I agree that it was fantastic digital media relations outreach that showed the multi-platform, far-reaching impact of stories shared on social media outlets. Chevy also gets props for doing their homework and understanding their audience. No hard sells here, no press releases, and no “you can share this, but you can’t share that” legal documents were handed out to the participants. Instead, Chevy accepted the loss of control for the big payoff of being readily accepted by a group of users that tend to be pitch and brand skeptical.
What I feel uneasy about is Chevy’s vitural non-existence on these platforms before they dished out big bucks for an SXSW sponsorship, hauling a fleet of cars to Austin, and organizing interactions with top influencers who did the engaging for them. I get that they’re playing catch up here, trying to insert themselves into this space in time for the launch of their first line of cars that make sense for the typical social media users. It would have taken time to build an authentic, loyal community and the influencers already have that (Chevy has 3000 followers on Twitter, Guy Kawasaki has over 200,000).
But this is a bad lesson for your average brand that doesn’t have the resources to buy their way into the space. The same rules of listening and actively engaging your customers have to be followed, even by the big guys. Hopefully in the next couple of months Chevy will start participating in the conversation in a more active way, capitalizing on the jump-start they got from a digital media relations blitz at South by Southwest.
Hi, I’ve got a problem…
Mar 25th
No one ever calls a customer service line to talk about how thrilled they are with a product or how fantastic their experience with the company has been. No, usually those phone calls involve a slightly frazzled to full blown furious customer who is having a less than stellar experience with your company. So the person who picks up the phone in the call center matters. They shouldn’t just be clicking through modules, giving prepackaged answers, processing a customer who not only wants a resolution to their current problem, but wants to be truly heard and reassured that your company will be there for them in the future.
Sounds a lot like relationship building, right? Then why do so many companies take a quantitative approach that focuses on call time rather than recruiting a brand advocate? Why are call center departments so rigid and problem focused, rather than collaborative and brand opportunity focused? How can this model work in the age of social media that boasts the most empowered generation of customers to challenge the corporate world?
Well it really can’t and industry leaders are noticing. Comcast has been successfully using Twitter to help customers on a platform that requires authentic relationship building. Their profile isn’t splashed in red and black with a huge Comcast logo; instead, the profile picture is of the guy (Frank Eliason) who is actually helping you and an unimposing, slightly optimistic (if you’re fuming over cable problems) cloud image. Rather than letting customers broadcast their problems to the Twitterverse unanswered, Comcast employees tackle them head on and lend their side of the story to the interaction. At SXSW Frank said the personal, instantaneous interactions that the team has online has affected the entire service culture at Comcast, improving their focus on quality interaction in the call center environment.
Then there are the companies who breathe their culture into all of their service platforms like Zappos. They have been a Twitter staple for quite some time, interacting with customers who both praise and criticize them in a brand voice that is fun and helpful. Zappos employees are empowered to use social media to talk about the company, interact with customers, connect with other distant employees, and let their own individual personalities shine. So what happens next when customers can’t quite get the answer they need in 140 characters or less? The customer connects with a compassionate, dedicated customer service representative who ditches the typical script and engages the customer in a real way. In a sea of online retailers Zappos has stood out with their ability to “deliver happiness” that extends past the shoe box and through the entire customer experience. The value proposition is so strong that Zappos is going the Google route and using “old fashioned” TV spots to recreate the customer-employee interaction in living rooms across the country.
As customer service continues to become more social, consumers will have more personalized, streamlined, and useful interactions with companies and companies will be able to better assess what we need from them and how they can better deliver it to us.
What are you looking at?
Mar 23rd
All smiles Freshman Year Halloween
Whenever I find myself venturing out of the 305 (even when it’s just to the 954) people inevitably ask me, “Where are you from?” which is promptly followed by, “Miami? Really? What’s that like?” To which I usually respond with this brief, funny, and slightly embarrassing anecdote that I will share with you all now.
I grew up in the middle-of-nowhere Florida in a place that no one has ever been to unless you play golf or are 70 + years old. That was pretty lame so I thought a brief stint in the Midwest would be fun. Now this might seem lame to all of you, but it actually was really fun. This Florida girl got to experience all four seasons for four whole years. I learned to sled, layer clothing in ridiculously effective ways, and practice a devotion to Green Bay Packer football that rivals my culturally Catholic roots. But the most awesome thing about the Midwest are the people. Everyone is as nice there as everyone else tells you they are. No starving models, Jersey Shore fist-pumpers, or cynical city folk here, just smiles, cookies, and a helping hand with just about anything you need.
Okay, maybe I am idealizing this a little bit, but not the smiles part. When you walk down the street and make eye contact with someone you will inevitably be greeted with a smile that you are expected to promptly return along with a wave or a passing hello. I embraced this regional practice fully and completely (probably because of its pseudo-sunshine effect in the absence of legitimate sun, but hey it still counts). So much so, in fact, that I decided to bring it with me to Miami when I moved here four years ago.
If any of you are from Miami you know this ended badly. My first couple of weeks on the University of Miami campus I was just like any other freshman, excited and thrilled about my new found freedom. Everywhere I went I enthusiastically greeted people with a smile and a wave. I didn’t care if they had mega-giant sunglasses on or even if they didn’t respond. I was the normal one here.
Or so I thought, until one girl literally stopped in her tracks, looked me square in my smiling face and said, “What are you looking at?!” I stood there completely shocked and speechless. This was the first of several Miami culture shock moments for me, but more importantly it was the day that I figured out friendliness can actually be regional. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that there are no friendly people here, it’s just not what we are known for.
So began my descent into the land of hater-shades, suspicious looks towards the typical tourist suspects, and an unhealthy amount of road rage. As many of my friends have lamented to me, and as I have found out first hand, Miami is a tough place. We come here expecting to prove to ourselves that not only can we survive the shuffle, but we can make it bend to suit our fancies, whether it’s jump-starting our career, extended bouts of partying, or trying to make it our home. Very few of us survive for very long here, making the trip back East, West, or Mid-West after a few years, but almost all of us adapt to try and make the most of it.
I share this with you not only to provide you with a laugh at my expense, which I encourage you to enjoy as much as the other people who have heard this story, but to provide a real-life framework for how adaptation occurs. As industries shift, technologies change, and consumer expectations grow, we must all be able to adapt quickly, but also be willing to have those “smiling fool” moments. Those are the ones we learn the most from and the ones our customers (and maybe even our readers) will respect us even more for.
Privacy Through Obscurity
Mar 22nd
There were lots of smart people wandering around during SXSW, but probably few as smart as Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, who blew minds with her opening keynote. The title of her presentation, “Making Sense of Privacy and Publicity,” seemed pretty straightforward, but she took several recent examples to expose the tricky and shifting nature of what those concepts mean on the web, and in particular, the social web.
Boyd defined privacy as “one’s control over how information flows.” Even though someone may choose to share personal information through specific online channels, therefore making it public, people still expect an element of privacy through the sheer obscurity of that information when compared to the social web as a whole. Their sense of privacy is rooted in their ability to control what information lives where and who is allowed to easily access it.
Social network users are alarmed when platforms attempt to aggregate additional data (such as Google Buzz) or break down barriers to that data (such as Facebook’s ever increasing attempts to persuade users out of their preferred privacy settings). It is not just the technicalities that upset users, but “non-technical mistakes that disrupt societal expectations,” according to Boyd. For example, the very fact that Google chose to place Buzz, a very public, social interaction tool, within email, a very private, personal platform, shattered users expectations of what Google was providing them. According to Boyd, she encountered several users who believed that because they had signed up, often unintentionally, for the service that their email was now exposed to anyone on their followers list. The mash-up of public and private had immediate ramifications for Google and changed the way their customers viewed them.
A second component to this delicate balancing act of private and public on the web is what is at stake for privileged vs. unprivileged users. While celebrities, or even higher level management, may feel comfortable exposing themselves on the web, it is often because they have less to lose. Their reputations are more easily managed and less affected by the minor social web scuffs that leave the unprivileged in the unemployment line. Unprivileged users must often deter their participation in the social web, or at least alter their web persona, to keep their jobs or even maintain their chances of getting into that top notch university.
Boyd has a fantastic talent for taking the straightforward, adding a layer of complexity, and then making it digestible for the average digital citizen. I hope I was able to convey a portion of her mind-blowing smarts in this “better late than never” debrief. A full transcript of her talk can be found here.
Ditching the Laptop and Going Mobile for SXSW
Mar 18th
So I promised I would unplug for tonight to make up for the constant plugging in I did for 6 days at South by Southwest (SXSW). I lied. I also promised I would be blogging during my time at SXSW. That also turned out to be a lie, but this quick post, my most recent lie to myself, is an attempt to make up for my previous to lie to myself, and of course, all of you.
I lugged my laptop all the way to Austin in hopes of churning out quick blog posts throughout the week. I soon realized my ten pound machine was too heavy to haul and its utter lack of battery life was just too painful to deal with, so I turned to my BlackBerry. This was was easy fodder for all my more Apple-minded friends, but I was rather impressed with its performance. Here are some of the highlights and low-lights of my SXSW BlackBerry experience.
The Highs:
1. FourSquare has a new Beta version for BlackBerries which I promptly downloaded my first night in Austin. I have been a little skeptical of geo-location platforms in the past, but I’m a total believer now. I was able to quickly add my friends through my Twitter account and had an instant network to connect with, most of whom were at SXSW. It helped my friends track me down as I made my way around town and helped me figure out which places and panels had the most to offer. The special SXSW badges were fun to collect too. There have been several articles in the last few days debating whether FourSquare, the better named opponent, or Gowalla, the hometown hero, were winning the hearts of SXSW-ers and most of them agree the jury is still out. From what I saw it seemed like FourSquare was the crowd favorite, but Gowalla doesn’t have a BlackBerry version so my perception may be skewed.
2. Typing that makes sense with a keyboard you can feel. This is my strongest argument for BlackBerry pride and it served me well during SXSW. I easily pumped out Tweets and emails while keeping my eyes glued to the speakers. My i-Phone-d counterparts were forced to keep their eyes glued to their phones if they hoped to end up with a first version of whatever they were typing that didn’t look like gibberish.
3. The mobile version of the SXSW site let me check my pre-made schedule on the go. Since the conference was sprawled out over the Convention Center and the Hilton (along with a couple of other locations) this was extremely useful. Google Maps gave me excellent walking directions to tasty lunch spots in between sessions.
The Lows:
1. Most of the panels that mentioned up and coming social media platforms only had mobile versions for the i-Phone. It made it difficult to follow the conversation since I couldn’t experience the app in real time. In fact, some panels required you to use i-Phone specific apps, like Hot Potato, to ask questions after the presentation. The idea was to move people off the more traditional SXSW-er platforms, like Twitter, and onto some new spaces, but it definitely excluded parts of the crowd.
2. No blogging for me. The BlackBerry, and mobile experiences in general, are still very glitchy. I was worried about trying to blog from my phone and losing internet connection or having a frozen screen moment. Nothing worse than jamming out a post, just to have it snatched away by the tech abyss. So my mobile experience led to quick, spontaneous interaction, rather than lengthier blog posts.
3. Hmm. Don’t have one.
Tried to make it a balanced argument, but in general my mobile experience was awesome. I accomplished everything I needed to in a way that made sense for the fast paced environment of the conference. More posts to come tomorrow about the sessions I attended and some first year advice for anyone planning ahead for 2011.
Exodus to SXSW
Mar 3rd
Next week is the week that I unabashedly raise my geek flag and hop on a plane to Austin for South by Southwest (SXSW). This geek flag is not marked with a “Film” or “Music” badge, but with the uber-geek “Interactive” badge. That’s right. While everyone is catching flights to Miami for Spring Break madness on South Beach I will be submerging myself in the social media mecca. Instead of toting sunscreen, I will be sporting a Net book. Instead of coordinating cab rides to Miami hot-spots for all my out of town friends, I will be trying to keep up with my personal conference schedule that is jam packed with sessions on branding, the future of geo-location apps, corporate culture, and viral video.
So how did I get here? How did my idea of a vacation transform from sunburns and margaritas to blogging and networking? Here’s my attempt to break it down, Anthropology style, and give you a peek into the cultural evolution of Jess (Yes, I realize this is my second blog post where I have referred to myself in the third person. I feel an acceptable limit is 3 per year, so I’m using my quota up early this year).
Long ago when I was a little kid with braces and bangs (thanks mom), I came home with the idea of playing the clarinet in the elementary school band. As I explained this grand idea to my father he sat quietly, listening to all my enthusiasm and once I was finished replied, “Well if you want to play the clarinet, you can’t play softball. You won’t have time for both, so which would you rather do?” I had never played the clarinet before so I didn’t know for sure that I would like it, but I had played softball for two years and loved it. But I also loved music class and my best friend played the clarinet. It was a draw. As I searched for the tie breaker, the angle of my dad’s question suddenly hit me and my eight year old brain grew three sizes that day. My dad wasn’t really asking a question at all, but instead giving me a subtle (well-intentioned) push towards the commitment to sports he had all through his childhood. Once I realized this I quickly answered, “Softball!” and my dad smiled and hugged me and I knew I had chosen correctly. The correctness of that decision wasn’t entirely clear to me until years later when I realized that my utter lack of musical ability would have meant a short lived clarinet career. I ended up sticking with softball for another 10 years and learned all the great things sports teach you like leadership, teamwork, and struggle, all of which I would have missed out on had I taken the clarinet leap.
But that first nudge from my father that led me away from band geek and towards non-geek athlete kept resurfacing in the strangest places. When I wrote for my high school newspaper I refused to attend staff meetings and only wrote satirical commentary on school rules I had no use for. I joined the speech team my senior year of high school to beef up my extra curricular section on college applications, but never told a single one of my friends I was on the team even though I placed first in almost all of the events I entered. When one of my close friends joined drama club and tried coaxing me into taking a role in the spring play I flatly refused, but eagerly read lines with her at night while she practiced.
But then came the college acceptance letter which lead to a different environment, which lead to different expectations, which lead to an evolution of both priorities and interests, which ultimately ended up landing me an amazing position at a communications agency I love that allowed me to plant my geeky feet firmly in the ground.
The last six months have been a blur of brainstorming sessions, late night proposal writing, and an insatiable appetite for anything and everything new media, all of which have coaxed my geek gene back into existence. So when I pick up my badge at SXSW next week it will not only be a pass to countless inspiring sessions, but also a proud symbol of the evolution and liberation of my inner geek.
Stay tuned for recaps of sessions, live-tweeting of events, and lots of pictures.