I'm gonna take you on a surfin' safari

While back home over Christmas, I caught up with your friend and mine Ben Rennie to discuss Digital Strangelove, media business models and a host of other things. This is the first of three videos, I'll be sure to link to the others when they're ready (those reading this in email or RSS readers can click here to see it).

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.918325&w=425&h=350&fv=]

posted with vodpod

Ben is also continuing the good work he started last year with Innovation Forums with a couple events coming up soon. The next is in Melbourne on February 23rd, and there are still early-bird tickets available for a paltry $29!

Ben will be following the Melbourne event with one in Sydney shortly afterwards.

This is what I sound like

I had the pleasure yesterday of joining Scott Hoffman on his Cliqology podcast to talk about all the madness around Digital Strangelove, and the ideas contained in it.

We talk about the presentation itself, the response it received, and how some of the ideas contained within are going to play out over the next few years, while also looking at some things that are emerging now that weren't obvious when I first made the deck. Wordpress is being difficult and not letting me embed the player, but Tumblr is giving me no such issues, so please go here to listen to it. I'd love to hear what you think, what you thought was on the money and even more so what you think completely missed the mark.

Regardless, I had a great time doing it, and will be rejoining Scott in the new year to do a special look at how small businesses can apply some of the thinking to what they do.

Hope you enjoy it, and thanks again to Scott for having me!

**Update**

I totally forgot to mention Digital Strangelove has been nominated for Slideshare's Zeitgeist Awards. To vote for my presentation, all you need to do is go to the page, and click the Nominate just next to my picture. Your vote is greatly appreciated, I promise to lower taxes and serve cold beer at a reasonable price.

On to the next one (Commented on "Gary Vaynerchuk")

Seems everything is moving so fast right now, I'm finding it hard to take the time to write. So instead I'm trying to read more, comment, and where I can bring those comments back onto this blog. I wish Wordpress had a Disqus plug-in for their hosted sites (which is what this one is) as that would mean we could continue the larger conversation wherever we were, unfortunately they bought a Disqus competitor, so that is unlikely.

Your friend and mine Gary Vaynerchuk posted a video saying social media wasn't the "seasoning" to the changes going on, it was the steak. I have a slightly different take on this, which I commented on. Watch the video then see below.

[viddler id=c123a603&w=437&h=288]

I feel like the "steak" is made up of so many things though, of which social is a part of.

Or to put it another way, we've operated under the guise of the Internet being, well, the Internet, and "social" being a part of that.

The reality is the web is *inherently* social, and given every business must have a presence online, every business is now missing something core if they don't have a social aspect to what they do.

In the ridiculous growth that we've seen the web go through, I think we've confused maturity with expansion. We're still figuring out exactly what this beast is, but I think we can assume bringing people together and giving them something to do is not going to go away.

So, here's to the steak. I wonder what else it comes with? =]

Originally posted as a comment
by davidgillespie
on Gary Vaynerchuk using DISQUS.

This is an echo of something I said to Fred Wilson last November which he re-blogged here, which is itself an eho of a post I made last October. Social media is not part of the web, it is the web. The sooner we all realise that, the sooner we get onto the next thing.

And as a fan of buzzwords and technology, I always love the next thing.

This is for everyone out in the real world

There was always something about the idea of influencers I didn't quite get, as if someone interested in being one somehow popularised the term, and it became self-evident based on that. It was easier for me to believe the audience tuning in to American Idol were environmentally pre-disposed to engaging in that type of content than it was to accept mass stupidity had somehow infected the entire known world. Mind you, that may still be the case...

Never the less, your friend and mine Katie Chatfield has a stunning piece up about this, citing research suggesting the important thing is not key influencers changing behaviour en masse but rather easily influenced people influencing each other in an interminable cycle. The main deck she references is below, but go visit her and say hi, she is a bit of a genius after all.

[slideshare id=432947&doc=duncanwattsicitizen051608-1211987312341473-9]

You're invisible now

I was going to title this "Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people" but that was too obscure, even for me. 5 bonus points to the person that picks the song without using "The Google".

So my motivation has been a little lacking lately (alliteration = triple word score), and try as I might I hadn't been able to rekindle it. I chatted long into the night with your friend and mine Matt Granfield who pointed me to his recent piece on sourcing the appropriate place to express a particular thought. I read it and it rang true, though it uncovered another thought of mine, that being a general wondering how long we will maintain digital identities we segment into neat boxes as if our own lives existed in a similar fashion.

And that's when it occurred to me that something had recently clicked inside my head, and all of a sudden I realised that even using the word "digital" felt utterly redundant. When it permeates so much of what we do on a day to day basis it ceases to make sense in drawing any distinction. Having an afore-mentioned neat little box for it has worked until now, because for a long time it existed in a way we could separate and escape from. Now however we're in a place where it no longer makes sense to segment it, and to not include some sort of digital element to a campaign, a product, a service, whatever is to commit commercial suicide (extreme viewpoint I know, prove me wrong!).

While this thought was buzzing around my head I swung by TIGS, as Faris had posted plenty while I'd been sunning myself in France. He, of course, had gotten here a little bit before me but along the same line of thinking, having said

Increasingly I'm finding the work 'digital' more of a hindrance than a help. It's too broad to mean anything.

in the same post he linked a great Slideshare presentation from Helge Tennø, Strategic Director of Screenplay, an Oslo, Norway-based agency. Helge's presentation is simply titled "Post-Digital Marketing", and while I'm loathe to attach a new name to it, it seems to make sense. Have a look at the deck, it's really quite lovely.

[slideshare id=1700217&doc=137postdigitalmarketing2009-090709062105-phpapp01]

Of course Iain Tait beat us all there, telling me early in '08 "digital is not a thing anymore". I didn't get it at the time, but I do now. My only concern is having canned UGC, social media, and now "digital" itself, I'm going to need to invent some new things just to shit on them.

And I'm quite OK with that. And I'm OK with not writing about "digital", in fact I'm excited about it.

"You're excited by a blog ostensibly about nothing?"



Yes.

Let's give them something to talk about

So while waiting for Toronto's subway system to get its act together this morning, I caught Clay Shirky's latest online lecture, given as part of the TED series. The title, "How Twitter, Facebook and cell phones can make history" does a lousy job of conveying the depth of information and the ideas contained within. Back in November I touched on issues around social media and the gross misunderstanding of what was important in this new revolution, making the following statement:

It is a period that will forever be known as a time where it became as easy to create content as it was to consume it. THAT is the important part of what is going on.

Now, I'm on the record as being a fan of smart people agreeing with me, and in this case, Clay's latest talk is bang on the money.

The moment we're living through is the largest increase in expressive capability in human history.

He says it far more eloquently than I, granted, and the rest of his talk is loaded with fantastic insights and examples of how technologies, once ubiquitous, develop interesting uses (and not the other way around). The TED Talk is below. Enjoy, then go change the world.

[ted id=575]

Best digital work this week - June 7th, 2009

Hi,

This is an ongoing series I'm doing rounding up the most interesting digital work I've come across in the past week. Sometimes it won't necessarily be new, it's amazing what can slip under the radar. If you find something you think is worth checking out, please leave me a note in the comments!

Cheers,

David

P.S. This post is best enjoyed with some Motown on in the background and a glass of wine/ice-cold beer.

----

This week has been somewhat of an odd one, I've been fixated on augmented reality (henceforth referred to as "AR") and have thus been scouring the web in search of the latest and greatest while trying to concoct ways to foist it on clients. Aside from just geeking out over it though, I really think there's an opportunity to tell some interesting stories in ways that have previously eluded marketers. Mini started off with a cute but ultimately shallow AR spot, I like what Ray Ban have done though, upping the stakes ever so slightly and making sure to use the medium to do something others can't (THE rule of ANY advertising: what can we do here that our friends in other disciplines can't?).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAHYadYNz0w"]

As has been called out in other places however, not offering the option to "BUY NOW!" is a wasted opportunity.

In the interests of pushing things forward, I also came across a mad genius Russian raising the interactivity stakes, creating an environment virtual characters could interact with and makign it accessbile from your mobile (if your mobile happens to be a Nokia N95).

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyWVH6jkDHg"]

And I couldn't bring this up without of course pointing you in the direction of a video I found and lost a long time ago, bless the Japanese for all they have brought us:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JOM6Y_88Nc"]

Experiential markteters: take this and run with it. Please.

Now, as I am a big proponent of brands getting more into the facilitation of experiences and services in more of a sponsor sort of way, I was a big fan of this new webservice, Supercook. The premise is simple: punch in the ingredients you have lying around and let Supercook display recipes that match what you already have in the pantry.

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMAr8p6UdQY"]

Dear Heinz,

Why are you not all over this?

Hugs and kisses,

Gillespie.

Moving on, in a great example of transparency, however cultivated I'm sure it is, I had no idea the Obama White House was running its own Flickr photostream. All companies who sell people-powered service please take note: putting a human face on what you do will always, always bring your customers closer to what you do. Next thing you know there'll be a Get Satisfaction feedback form on the official White House page.

Adding another section to platform cold war going on right now, a game called Spymaster has launched a closed beta. "What is so special about a game being in closed beta?" I hear you ask. Well, not much, except it has been built on and is to be played using Twitter. Mashable have a great round-up of it, and while this shouldn't be all that surprising given the myriad of web services already available, it's interetsing to see people extend Twitter's platform into a realm of sheer entertainment.

Last but not least, I couldn't help but share this Brazillian site encouraging people to...errm...urinate while in the shower as opposed to the toilet. I can't say it's a practice I'll be indulging in, and while I risk exposing myself for the hypocrit I am by including this site even amidst the lack of meaningful interaction between the site and its visitors beyond obligatory links out to various social networks, the execution is lovely and put a smile on my face.

Really, what more can we ask than that?

Standing on the rooftops, shouting out

I think I need to start a competition amongst readers to see who can pic the song each post's title is from. Here's a hint:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5pmwhd_MfA"]

Anyway, your friend and mine Tim is fond of saying "To understand change, you have to be part of it." Now, he perhaps didn't come up with that himself, but I am always reminded of him whenever I think of it, which is as good an exercise in branding as you'll find.

With this in mind, I have spent some time this morning trying to bring my own silos of conversation together. My marketing self tends to exist only on this site, but my musician self is spread across Facebook, MySpace, iLike, YouTube, and God knows where else. Oh, not to mention another website of his own. Now, I do my best to keep my two selves separate, but bear with me for the purposes of this conversation.

It goes without saying that nobody working full time has the means to update all of the above sites, let alone engage the way we all insist we should. On top of that, there's a requirement for authors who establish these sites to get a little more versed in the nuances of the technology than they're otherwise compelled (or able) to do. What it means is more time spent tweaking the various underpinnings of a site or service and less time doing the things you started a site for in the first place. Cue frustrated creators and audiences in silos.

David Jones (a person, not the store) is a guy I've come across here in Canada. I spotted him tweeting one day "Don't tell me what you would have done, tell me what you did." - and that really struck a chord. Talk of best practices is all well and good, but evidence of how you've implemented it for yourself and others is much better. For the time being, until the big players in this space decide to make their platforms talk to each other, we all get to take part in a zero-sum race to a dead end.

Now I can understand each platform's desire to control the artist dashboard, as the eyeballs are currently what gives them value. The reality however is if the smaller players don't make it easier to pick up syndicated content, they're going to see a reduction in usage.

I want to make it easy for people to consume my content in whatever manner best suits their existing habits. Turning that into a reality however currently means an ultimately unsustainable adjustment to my own. Something's gotta give.

Digital ash in a digital urn

So I wanted to find a site that compiled the best work in digital over the past week. It seems there are a bunch of niche sites doing this well but nobody covering the entireity of the space the way Best Ads On TV bring you...well...you get the idea. A couple categories are obvious: best site, best banner execution - however I'm keen to track down the best applications, be they in Facebook, in the browser, Adobe Air, whatever. I sould take the time to note that a pretty piece of Flash that could be a TV commercial (or, in a lot of cases, IS a TV commercial does not count). Leveraging my previous thoughts ojn the subject, I'm looking for executions that couldn't have been done in any other medium.

If somebody knows of a site that exists doing exactly what I'm after, please let me know, as there's lots of other thigns I could do with my time. On the assumption they don't however...

This week's best site is...The FWA's 50 Millionth visitor takeover.

• Because: It lives by that most important principle of bringing people togetehr and giving them something to do. Instantly leveraging its own community, the execution with Facebook Connect extends the community into the personal profiles of each person who takes part, making it instantly viral. Drawing a baseline at common interests and going from there, it plays to the narcissist in each of us by allowing a profile picture on a highly trafficked website and offers opportunities to connect. Brilliant execution.

This week's best banner execution is...Apple (struggling to find this to link to, so I've included an image and a link to a previous Apple banner which is different but still quite cool).

• Because: Each time I think they've taken the idea of PC vs. Mac to the end of the road, they find a corner to take. The content will be familiar but I like the use of space the best - yes lots of people have done this and pused the space better, but this got shared around with friends due to it being enjoyable to watch, not because it was clever. It's almost sponsored content in a way, Apple making me smile for 30 seconds a day. Microsoft, what have you done for me lately?

This week's best app is...Skype.

• Because: Apps, particularly on Facebook appear faster than anybody can document them. I didn't manage to get hold of my Mum last week for Mother's Day, so in making good on that, arranging a trip in July to see U2 in Ireland, and generally being a bit easier to get hold of, Skype running through Facebook has it for me.

So next week I'll think about this a little more. I wanted to dive into it today as I'm a big believer in digital requiring more of a willingness to figure it out on the fly. If you have things you find during the course of the week please shoot them through. For those, like me, in Canada today, have a great long weekend!

Up where we belong

Since the demise of social media (in my head) I've been struggling to get excited about something again. I was sitting thinking about opportunities for a client this morning, and I was reminded of the enthusiasm I talked about the potential of browsers with. This stems from a beautiful execution last year by Poke London on behalf of Orange called Balloonacy, which purported to be (and who is going to argue) the first Internet balloon race (I just noticed they won an award for it too, as it should be!).

The (thoroughly sexy) idea here is Balloonacy didn't quite exist anywhere, rather it played out over the pages of people who took part, and, flying left to right over the screen you would land on new web pages when you went off the right-hand side. It was an app that didn't require Facebook or an iPhone, it was a campaign that didn't require a media buy. It was in fact an execution that could only have been done online, and there is so little work out there we can really say that about.

I don't know if I'll actually be able to get something in the browser off the ground for this client, let's be honest there's a barrier to entry, not to mention compatability issues, but in the same way processing is getting faster, the walls around technology are getting lower, which means more people participate, which means we get where we're going faster than we did before.

As I said over at Socialized when the web was abuzz with Skittles nonsense, we're all leveraging each other's work, and getting there together.

Intent = stuff white people like

"People have a really good  ability to see through you projects on the Internet that are just done to try and make you famous."



Great quote. This is why I bang on about INTENT!

Watch this Google talk, from Christian Lander, author of brilliant blog Stuff White People Like.

Strategy | Intent | Persistence (and tigers and bears OH MY!)

Digital strategy is a business decision, not a marketing decision. That doesn't mean your marketing team shouldn't be in the room, it means everyone else should be there with them.

Julian Cole wrote a piece a few months back saying "Don't trust an agency with your digital strategy." It does then beg the question (if I may, for a moment, speak client-side) "Then whom shall I trust in your festering cesspool of sharks, narcissists and hopeless egomaniacs?

Good question.

A single unit needs to own a company's strategy, and they need to be able to talk about each channel with authority. That sounds like a no-brainer I know, so I'm going to put this out there and see how it feels: you won't find it anywhere where the last name of an ad giant from yester-year hangs their name on the front door. That isn't because they don't have intelligent folk from all disciplines working for them, that is because their business models and internal practices will not permit the structural changes required to achieve genuine innovation and next-generation creativity for their client's businesses, let alone their own.

If anyone is hearing that for the first time, I promise I'm not the first.

I can't say I know all of the answers, or even any of them. But not enough people are asking the question. Or questions; you can phrase them in a myriad of ways, let's maybe start with something like this: why does Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne now have four people in its planning department, none of them digital natives? Tim, who worked there as a member of the planning team up until a week ago, had this to say:

I’ve been arguing for a long time now that as product, advertising, sales and service, all get closer together, advertising agencies really need to become creative marketing consultancies...some drastic restructuring needs to take place.

Drastic restructuring then did take place, though perhaps not along the lines he was thinking.

David Armano has talked about a move away from the silver bullet, much like Tim has. I took a personality test recently that told me I rated close to 0 when it came to perfectionism, but was a polar opposite when it came to creativity and a love of thinking. Call me biased (I won't argue), but that sounds like something very different to where we're currently at, and given that test it is no wonder I'm a fan of this new direction. I'm also a fan of offering substance, something advertising doesn't do very well at all.

I've talked a lot about intent, and I think this chart speaks to the heart of the same thing I'm on about. It is also the same thing Seth Godin means when he says the following:

Persistence isn't using the same tactics over and over. That's just annoying.

Persistence is having the same goal over and over.

My friend Michael Hewitt-Gleeson calls it SDNT: Start Do Notice Think.

I call it intent, and when I talk about it, I talk about constanty refining the work we're doing to ensure the outcome is matching the intent; if it isn't we change it until it is.

Intent is at the heart of everything we do, and the group that owns your strategy should have it etched onto their brains, directing nothing less than strategy that delivers the intended result tomorrow better than it did today. Starting here I'm advocating a move away from the single-minded proposition to the statement of intent; it is fluid and flexible, and it ensures the goal is forever just over the horizon. It will keep you and your organisation passionate and motivated and restless.

And that is how it should be.

Strategy for the next revolution

At the risk of this becoming a Fred Wilson love-in, I'm catching up on my unread items and he mentioned a conference coming up focused solely on creating add-ons for browsers. I'm a BIG fan of add-ons that make it easier for what I'm trying to do - as I've said before this revolution we're going through is based around making it easier for the majority to express themselves (which is subsequently why there are now businesses around organising information - see what we did?).

What is happening in this space though is people are harnessing the notion of the web as the platform and getting away - slowly but surely), from operating systems as we knew them.

The moves that Microsoft, Google and Mozilla have been making though are ones towards the inevitable (and closer than you think) point where there is no such thing as an offline experience. At that point the browser is the experience, with different plugins and views for different things (word processing, spreadsheets, etc.).

Where we're also headed is the recovery of our personal data away from the social networks and back to a central repository, one we are in control of. I wrote the following for Marketing back in May this year:

(Facebook are) desperately trying to maintain hold on user data, under the daft assumption it was somehow their's to play with in the first place.

That idea, and the moves MS, Google and Mozilla are making, brings the online experience back to the user, it takes the data back to the source, rather than downstream where it currently resides. Facebook exists as a repository for personal data, wrapped up in a layer of communications software that shares it with your friends. Nothing more, nothing less. Facebook gambled - and rightfully so - on that information being worth something; they've made a fundamental mistake though in attempting to build a business around something they do not own or control: your information.

So, in playing the game of would-be gate-keeper, distracting you long enough with werewolf bites and status updates, Facebook are trying to build a profitable business around supplying access to the owners of the information.

...stop me if you've heard this one...

Meanwhile, people innovating in the browser space are building out their own platforms - ones that exist at a pre-site level. By doing this, they will tap the water supply at the source and not down-stream, and while yes we will still be the ones handing over the information, they know we need software to facilitate interaction with the web, that isn't changing any time soon.

Facebook's strategic advantage could be in opening up its system and allowing people to build Facebook applications that reside in the browser and not on their website. But in order to do that, they have to make some fundamental shifts in strategy and philosophy, and move from a siloed-mentality, the kind that built businesses in the 90's, to an open one - the kind that builds businesses today. They have the scale, what I doubt they have is the will to become, almost overnight, one of the largest publishers of web applications on the planet and give a massive boost to the fledgling economies of browser plug-ins. In Facebook Connect they half-heartedly attempted to extend the reach of their platform beyond their own domain, and it plays like it is: an attempt to be a little bit open, but not too much.

Meanwhile companies like Zemanta, and like Adaptive Blue with Glue, are building businesses for the next revolution by creating technologies that do not require something as decidedly old-fashioned as a website to exist. Indeed they more than anyone recognise there is limited value in pushing a destination, but endless value in pushing content.

As soon as the hardware conversation goes away, the website-as-destination will quickly follow as we embrace the distributed web. So too, I imagine, the gross over-valuation that came and went with everyone's favourite social network.

This year's one anyway.

--

Props to Alisa Leondard who got me thinking about this, you should go and read Socialised. Wait, she's American, so it's SocialiZed. Dig.

Image courtesy of Digger Digger Dogstar, with thanks to compfight, who've just had a facelift. Go tell them they look pretty - they'll put out. Promise!

Make your problem somebody else's

Experiences facilitated by brands but not about brands - David Gillespie (broken record).

Entertainment, content of all shapes and sizes, offline, online, anywhere you like it. The problem could be a lack of conversation, and when you give the community around your offering the tools and platforms to make themselves heard, you take a step towards something much bigger than where you've been before. As I said when I called social media out, the exciting thing about where we are in our digital evolution is for the first time in our history it is as easy to create content as it is to produce it.

So what are you doing with this opportunity?

User-generated content was the first ham-fisted attempt to do something creative in this space, but it is only going to get better as organisations get more comfortable with the conversation going on about them. There is no silver bullet when trying to harness the enthusiasm of your tribe and align it with an organisation's goals, this quote from Henry Jenkins though will steer any effort in the right direction:

The key is to produce something that both pulls people together and gives them something to do…I don’t have to control the conversation to benefit from their interest – Henry Jenkins - MIT

If your problem is nobody knows about you, make that the community's issue and give them a reason to talk. Rally the tribe and give them purpose, make your anonymity their problem, let them solve it in their way. If you've been good to them along the way, they will reward you more than your own efforts ever will.

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Image courtesy of paf triz, with thanks to compfight.

I know what you're about to say like your hype man

I was going to spend the week talking about story-telling in interactive mediums and the ways brands can leverage it, and I'l get to that, but I've woken up with something on my mind that I want to get to first.

Over the weekend when not lying in the park or dining with friends I was working on my latest (overdue) column for Marketing Magazine. It will be out in their December/January issue and I was talking about brands finding their voice online, which I'm quite excited about, I look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts when it comes out.

I feel though like that's the running part, and we're struggling to get the walking right; we're doing that because the fundamentals of success in business and marketing are shifting and we're not keeping pace with it. I harp on about it, but only because I think it is important enough to do so: intent. Intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent, intent.

While you're at your desk this week, in each situation I want you to ask yourself "What's my intent here?". We make sales calls under the guise of building relationships, we dump on other agencies under the guise of offering advice. We put energy into things that distract us from our main purpose in the hopes that people won't really get what we're on about.

And then we go do it with the brands we're supposed to be building.

Let's all agree, week beginning Monday October 13th, 2008 to gut-check what the intent is in the work we do this week. Let's not discuss "new ways to talk to our customers" when the reality is we need email addresses added to a database. By stripping away the stuff we cloak our actions with, we get to the heart of the matter much faster.

And I promise, the campaigns you run are going to be all the more effective for it.

--

Image courtesy of The Alieness Gisela Giardino, with thanks to compfight.

Mo' money, mo' problems

So I got on a bit of a soap box earlier today regarding what I think I'll come to call Currency 2.0 (where was that when I needed it). Currency 2.0 concerns itself with appreciating what is precious in marketing that isn't a physical world dollar. Email addresses, phone numbers, these things matter, it is a form of currency that you can build ROI around, and you should.



Julian Cole has been tagged at the end of this, it's an idea we've been kicking around for a while where we'll post a video and tag someone ese at the end to respond. It's open to anyone who wants to play, just be sure to create a video response on YouTube and we'll pick it up.

You and me, and the games people play

Content. Engaging content. Stories being told. Experiences facilitated by brands but not ABOUT brands. The logical extension of "This program was brought to you by..." in life after the 30-second spot is entertainment created solely for or by a brand. Entertainment that doesn't ram a message home, but simply offers it up on a plate and says "Hey, yeah we did this. Hope you dig it." The goal is of course still re-enforcement of whatever your brand's values are, but there are better ways to do it than to just spit out a tagline.

The below quote from Henry Jenkins sums it up for me. I'm trying to figure out where it came from, it's been sitting in my drafts folder for quite sometime...ahh here it is. I <3 Google.

The key is to produce something that both pulls people together and gives them something to do…I don’t have to control the conversation to benefit from their interest

That ties in nicely to something I read over on Slideshare the other day (found by way of my friend Tim's Insight + Ideas blog) that I liked so much I wrote on a Post-It and stuck it to my screen at work:

Autonomy (the ability to make a choice) plus Competence (a feeling like you have the necessary resources to make that choice) plus Relatedness (a sense you are working together towards a common goal) equals Happiness.

Maybe even a good deal of love for your brand.

--

First image courtesy of via, with thanks to compfight.

Second image courtesy of my own bad self.

21 Questions - part one

Earlier this year I had some trouble with Vodafone. In fairness it started when the great southern ocean danced with my BlackBerry and came off best. Then the troubles came whcih manifested itself in my Open Letter to Vodafone. I posted it one evening and woke up the next morning to find Vodafone had spotted it and responded, wanting to help. The only catch was Vodafone UK were the ones coming to the rescue, Vodafone Australia were none the wiser.

Eventually the issues were sorted and in the aftermath I got the chance to pose some questions to the Vodafone UK team. The were great about it, if perhaps a little heavy on the marketing speak at times (I've removed the offending questions). Have a read below and let me know what you think, I'll also be speaking to Vodafone Australia in the near future, if you have something you'd like to ask them, leave a note in the comments and I'll follow up with them.

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This is the first part of an interview I did with Samantha Bottling & Aileen Thompson who heads up the Group Consumer, Enterprise and Brand Media Relations for Vodafone UK.

A lot of consumers have fairly lukewarm feelings towards phone carriers, it seems to be something that transcends borders fairly easily. The forum you have seems a positive first step, how far do you think companies in this space are truly willing to go in terms of transparency?

Customer service over the last 10 years at Vodafone UK has focussed on giving the customer a choice about how they deal with us as no two customers are the same. Customers also expect that choice, which traditionally has been in the shape of help and advice over the phone, in a retail store, through help centres on a web site or by contacting us by email.

However, web 2.0 has moved the expectations of customers on. More and more customers are using forums to get help from other customers or mobile phone users be it about a particular service or a handset or advice on what decision they should make when choosing a price plan. This has generated a very interesting customer service phenomenon for Vodafone UK.

The early adopters of web 2.0 were in fact those looking for more technical specialist help. Two years ago the dedicated technical services team who take the calls of people who need technical help began to notice a trend online for using forums and decided to monitor the activity. Gradually they began to intervene on the forums helping out customers who were having difficulty getting a mobile to perform a specific function for example - making it clear that they were from Vodafone and a credible source of help. The activity has grown over the last two years as more and more customers grow familiar with the web for help and as more and more forums spring up.

The response to the help the team was providing on forums was extremely positive and has helped to forge a very strong reputation for concise clear help from Vodafone. But not only is there an appetite for this kind of help so the breadth of topics on the forums has also grown - no longer is it just technical handset help that is required. The natural step for the team was to set up a Vodafone hosted forum, which would allow the team to help with very specific technical queries right through to queries about Vodafone services, as well as more general mobile questions.

Another reason for having our own forum is that we can use the content more effectively by linking to and from it – using the forum content cleverly to maximise value to customers. So in the Help Centre if customers need more specific help we can direct them to the forum, and in the forum we can link to existing help content, inter-linking the content and making it more valuable overall than two stand-alone areas.

ROI on social media and blogs is pretty hard to justify in traditional terms. How was that tackled at Vodafone? Is it something that requires a constant effort to justify the existence to the bean counters or have you managed to find a way around it?

We can measure it in relation to how the service is used, frequency and the strength of the 'customer delight' it brings. Since launching the forum last autumn, Vodafone has seen a steady growth in registrations and page views. Around 3,000 people visit the site each day and use the forum as a database for help.

The forum runs like any other forum in that customers are helping each other out, sharing experiences, solutions and tips and also recommending services and products. The forum has some guidelines and Terms & Conditions for use and is monitored and moderated 24/7. The forum team is always on hand and very quick to respond because it is managed around the clock. The team intervenes to help when a customer's query can't be answered by another customer and if necessary make factual corrections to posts. If the query is sensitive and shouldn't be discussed in front of other customers - like a billing query - then the forum team arranges to contact the customer another way.

What we have also found is that this is not necessarily replacing calls to the contact centres – though it does replace the calls that are complex. In fact we believe we are helping customers who might not have otherwise contacted us and would have struggled on or just not used a service properly or at all. We are filling a customer service gap.

It is also giving customers more confidence to try new things because it is a safe anonymous place where they can share their experiences. The forum is also a place where people can either quickly find an answer using the forum as a database or can post a question and come back to it later in the day if it's not urgent and they don't have the time to make a call to us - the forum is simply a new way for customers to get help but with minimum effort, which is just as customer service should be.

It is also very cost efficient for us. We can answer a question that perhaps 1000 people will view and find useful because it saves them the time having to post a question and wait for an answer.

I was talking to the MD of a digital agency recently, and he said quite candidly that we're still figuring out what "digital strategy" really means. How much of your approach is to throw it at the wall and see what sticks?

We do have a strategy in place for CRM and for online. It is executed according to what suits the local market. For example in Spain forums and blogs are set up in relation to particular campaigns on music for example and run the length of the campaign. In the Netherlands Vodafone has a combination of forums for campaigns,  as well as monitoring external forums to help out customers and blogging on new editions to the handset range, adding handsets to Flickr, blogging on news service. The Dutch online audience is so great in Holland that this blend of activity it is expected of them.

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I'll post the second part tomorrow, thanks to Aileen and Samantha for their time.

I'm a rocker, baby I'm a rocker

"Marketing must be one of those professions where salaries give you the best bang for buck as an employer."

He was saying most marketers aren't all that bright.

I can't say I disagreed with him at the time.

The above quote was delivered to me yesterday at breakfast from a friend who heads up international business development at a company any Australian who reads this blog would be familiar with. I'd just finished telling him how a client had recently said to me "We don't know about that technology stuff, we're just marketers."

When she said "that technology stuff", she meant the Internet.

Give me strength.

I said last week marketing isn't rocket science, and it isn't. Unfortunately it's also almost completely devoid of the courage required to alter the markets these people exist in (As an aside, they say no one is so sanctimonious as a reformed smoker, I wonder if the same can be said for anyone who walks away from jobs in marketing and advertising to something a little less transient?).

Of course the flip side of that is agencies who have those ideas clearly need to get better at articulating the more strategic paths forward, and in order to get there we need to prove we're good for more than just the last campaign. I spoke to someone last night from the company responsible Coke's new bottle debacle and reiterated my point: someone should have been fired for that nonsense.

Regardless, let's forget all that marketing stuff today, go read this fantastic post by Umair Haque, What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn't. Be warned, it is loaded with "that technology stuff".

*sigh*

Ok, almost 9am, time to give her a call. Serenity now...serenity now...

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Image courtesy of Stephen Poff, with thanks to compfight.

How low can you go?

Here's the thing: companies don't need strategies (even digital ones), they need a fundamental reason to exist. Having arguments about which discipline should lead is like entering a three-legged race with you and your partner on your knees; by the time you figure out something is wrong, everyone else has long since finished.

One thing I'm trying to move the folk I deal with away from is the desire to be so channel focused. While I'm a passionate advocate for digital, I'm not blinded by the channel (or even the myriad of channels that make it up). Depending on your audience there's an argument to be made for using traditional media, and some of the most innovative movements in marketing business strategy at the moment are tapping in to as many different channels at once as possible.

I said a couple weeks back things will get (really) interesting when we get down to a level where everyone functions as a single organism, and that can happen as a joint venture as Marcus advocates, but I imagine it can probably happen a few other ways too.

Whatever form it takes, it is about getting so deeply involved with companies that you do move as one. That will take a lot more trust on both sides than either client or agency is prepared to invest right now. But I believe we're headed there, and I find that pretty exciting.

What's that? How deep?

How low can you go?

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Image courtesy of lolodrake, with thanks to compfight.