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.

I feel the earth move under my feet

There's so much talk about platforms - Facebook-this, Twitter-that, more specific but no better than loose conversations about blogging or podcasts. I overheard someone say "It's OK, there's a slide on Twitter in the client deck", which stopped me in my tracks. These tools are not the kinds of things that make sense when being described; who in their right mind would want to tolerate 140-character updates among a sea of people you barely knew? It in no way describes the vibrancy of using Twitter, nor the opportunities inherent in it.

Your friend and mine Tim Beveridge has a great saying: in order to understand change, you have to be part of it (it probably isn't his saying, but I'm not sure where he got it from, so it's his now).

The point is the best way to explain Twitter to somebody is to take 30 seconds to sign them up, another two minutes to follow some people they might be interested in, and then sit back and let them have at it. On the (often false) assumption you have a strategic reason for using Twitter, if your client doesn't already use it then paying it lip service is not going to get you anywhere. Only by engaging  do people actually understand, or as I just commented over at AVC, being heard is not enough, you must also be understood.

Starting a strategy conversation by talking about a platform is a recipe for disaster. It is like deciding what kind of house you are going to be build based whatever hammer you have handy. It needs to begin with intent. Every. Single. Time.

For those who've just joined us here by way of Digital Strangelove, thanks so much for stopping by. We're going to keep talking about intent for a bit, at least until the rest of the world starts to understand the power of it.

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Image courtesy of onkel_wart, with thanks to compfight.

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]

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?

The end has no end

If you haven't seen the incredible work of Kutiman yet, make it your bid-ness to do so today. His remix of not only music but words and vision, all taken from YouTube clips is nothing short of amazing. Faris dropped some science around this the other day, delivering the following quote which sums it up (equal parts nicely and awkwardly):

It's because media has become much easier to reproduce thanks to the radical decentralisation of the economics of cultural production [which is the phrase I'm backing as a substitute to social media - I'm not very hopeful it will catch on.]

We all know how I feel about social media. I think Faris "radical decentralisation" is more easily summed up by simply stating it is now as easy to create content as it is to consume it.



Perhaps we need to extend that to being "recreate" content?

I send a message

Image via CrunchBase

Those who know me know getting under social media's skin is one of my pet projects, only because the current discussions (I feel) miss the point, which I believe is the democratisation of platforms from which people have the opportunity to speak on a mass scale. More simply put, with the advent of easy blogging tools (like Wordpress which runs this site), I get to spend my time thinking about what i want to say as opposed to how the infrastructure underneath it all works.

I wondered aloud last August when and how this sort of thing might come to impact the creation of music. Along came MelodySphere which had a simple shot at creating loops collaboratively but in a browser. Nice, but awkward to use. While the newest kid on the block (my block anyway) doesn't get us there, it takes us one step closer to the removal of publishing barriers. Posterous allows you to email text, video, music and pictures to an address and then automagivally does the rest. You don't even need to sign-up as you can see from my simply created Posterous page. It gives you a URL (which you can alter later if you wish) and instantly publishes whatever you sent. In my case, I shot them an MP3 of a song of mine and a minute later got a reply with the URL.

I love this, seriously love the removal of yet another barrier to people raising their voices, and while the geeks out there might bemoan the approach of the madding crowds, I believe the revolutions that will lead us out of economic nonsense will be born of the work being done by folk who are trying to make it easier for ideas and thoughts to be spread, and taking down anything that might stand in their way.

Tools for the linked economy

Last week I was talking about business opportunities that exist around the aggregation and sorting of information, something Fred Wilson just wrote about:

This gets me excited. Because someone could do so much more with this idea. We have a few companies that are trying to extract meaning out of content on the web. Adaptive Blue recognizes pages about things (books, music, film, stocks, wine, people, etc). Outside.in recognizes posts and articles about places (neighborhoods, schools, parks, etc). And Zemanta recognizes concepts in blog posts and recommends content to add to your post.A VC, Nov 2008

I'm digging this notion of building a business around the curation of content right now - not that I'm looking to start one, but there are opportunities to leverage this moment with the right execution and the right brand(s).

Which of course means the race is on to see which ad agency fucks it up first.

(Incidentally, I use Zemanta in regular posts as well as having used it to re-blog the above quote from Fred. It is a fantastic service, any blogger reading this should go check it out - you'll see the little re-blog image in the bottom-right corner of this post)

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.

How simple is Web 2.0?

I like making sure we draw lines between simple and accessible, but could Web 2.0 really be as easily explained as this?



The only fault I'm thinking is the x100 - connections are still one to one, just on a mass scale.

Image courtesy of my mate Alex - if anyone knows the original source please let me know so I can give proper credit.

**Update** Turns out I thought the image must have come from someone other than Alex, when it did in fact originate with him. This is not because I thought him not capable of extraodinarily insightful cartoons, more so because, much like Jesus having walked the Earth, the idea deities occasionally walk among us is somewhat hard to believe. There you go. Alex White, genius personified!

Viral; one connection at a time

Earlier this year in one of my regular guises as copywriter-to-the-stars, I wrote an EDM piece for a competition that began "Oh hai." It was a pure-play in my mind at the folk who would know instantly what I was talking about and at none of the people who wouldn't. In hindsight it perhaps wasn't the brightest move to make, but I was feeling something in my gut at the time that Seth articulated really well recently - in order for people to feel like they belong, some people have to feel like they don't belong; to have insiders you have to have outsiders. I wanted the people who got it to understand a fundamental truth about the brand I was writing for. They did, but I also learnt very quickly that the audience I had in mind was smaller than I thought it was - at least for that particular brand.

We live and learn.

Anyway, for those that don't know, "Oh hai" has its roots in LOlcats, made most famous over the past 18 months by the emergence of I Can Haz Cheezburger. Their CEO, Ben Huh gave a talk this year at the Web 2.0 conference (the same conference featuring the inimitable Gary Vee) about the success they have achieved - almost 100 milion page views a month! His take on things is really simple and a great lesson lies herein for marketers, Ben is focused on two things:

1. Facilitating 1-to-1 connections


2. Making people happy for five minutes a day

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.742916&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Posted with vodpod

Take some time to watch it this morning, it'll make you smile. Oh, found via Dino who is organising this week's BeerSphere in Toronto.

Happy Monday everybody.

Three of the best for Marketers

My friend Matt put up a great post - The Ten Best Marketing Tips Ever. I'm not crazy about all of them, but these three are gems:

1. Make your customer service truly remarkable. No, seriously, you don’t understand. Not good. Not brilliant: remarkable.


2. Find time to get active in your industry association. Offer to be secretary and do an amazing job. Do extra stuff that no one wants to do and do it really well. You’ll be a captain of industry in six months.


3. Engage your customers properly, start conversations with them online and offline (you know, like, when they’re in your store) and do it because you want to, not because it’s the latest fad. Smile like you mean it.

Some thoughts:

• Remarkable is such a good idea, and so under the radar still. Take it, eat it for breakfast. Own it. Be it.


• I was telling my new friend Lisa, there's always an opportunity to be a thought-leader, and she's reaching out to small businesses on Queensland's Sunshine Coast and making a really positive impact by just being good. If you're in that area and need a hand, get in touch with her.


• Passion counts for more than degrees and experience and networks combined. Full stop. Look at my friend Jules for proof of that.


• Matt references Gary Vee's brilliant talk from the Web 2.0 conference, which is required reading watching if you're a reader here ("Stop watching fucking Lost!"). The other great insight from that talk is (and I'm paraphrasing) "Listening is one thing, giving a shit is a whole other thing."

OK. Go enjoy the weekend.

A open letter to Stephen Conroy

Many international readers will not be familiar with the goings on of the Australian political landscape. Back in January I wrote about some unfortunate measures Australia's recently-elected Government was planning to introduce, suffice to say our elected officials are engaged in a well-meaning but ill-informed program of censoring the access Australians have to the Internet. While looking in to the issue I've come to learn I reside in what is by law the most heavily censored Westernised nation, something I find rather ironic considering Sex & The City ran free-to-air here while it was confined to cable State-side.

Regardless, I have written an open letter to Stephen Conroy, the honourable member behind the intiative. Let it be known his intentions are good, but in practice his methodology is flawed, and imposing unnecessary (not to mention ineffective) rules upon the lives of ordinary Australians will achieve few, if any, of the aims of the program.

To read my letter to Mr. Conroy, please head on over to Marketing Magazine. If you feel as strongly as I do, please also visit Keep Your Filter Off Our Internet to learn how you can get involved.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Stephen Conroy is Nuts


• Australia Joins China In Censoring The Internet


• No Clean Feed - Internet Censorship in Australia


• Testing times


• Australia plans tough web rules


• Support fades for Australian net censorship


• Oz admits $85m p0rn filtering FAIL


• Australian Government fails again on Internet Censorship


• Australian Government Equates Freedom Of Speech To Liking Kiddie Porn

Using consumers to tell your story for you (or "Hey diddle-diddle to the people in the middle")

So last week I identified the three ways stories are getting told in advertising. Today I want to talk about the second one: A narrative with the brand at the centre of the story but with the story being generated by consumers, leaving the direction of it loosely defined, usually through a particular campaign moving in a very particular direction. Also known as: User Generated Content.

I said this last week in the office and came under fire for it, but I'm going to wheel it out again because I think it's true: user-generated content in its current context is a crock.

An absolute crock.

Marketers: you don't want a UGC campaign. Agencies: stop telling them they want them, they don't, not if they really understood the trade-offs. And in fact if you really understood them too, you wouldn't recommend them either.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote the following:

As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

The methods are simple: give people a platform, incentivise their involvement, and then let them get on with it. The problem here is the principles of user-generated content stem from people behaving in their natural state, creating work because they want to and not manufacturing it for a purpose other than self-expression and social currency. Brands see the natural enthusiasm people exhibit in their daily lives and and hope to co-opt it into their own work, which is like U2 showing up at an indie rock gig, deciding they like a song and then wheeling it out at Wembley Arena the following night.

In the above scenario, U2 wins by bringing the indie band on stage with them, playing the song together. U2 gets kudos for being hip and championing the next generation, the new band gets exposed to a new audience, everyone wins. Everyone wins. That is a principle of user-generated content, of social media. Mutual gain and that being a good thing is a principle - method is acquiring content for a campaign; that is neither cutting-edge nor insightful and increasingly out of touch.

I could go on, but instead just read this great synopsis of a terribly poor effort on BMW's part, which sums it up perfectly. Brands need consumers more than consumers need brands. Without them their stories mean nothing, and without meaningful stories, there'll be nothing to tell anyone else about anything at all.

The company and kindness of strangers

A month or so ago I was interviewed by Brad Howarth on social media and blogging for an article he was writing for B&T. That has just hit the news stands, which is great. You can find the article on page 34 (it's also available online).

Brad also contributed an article to Smart Company and I've been included in a list of 15 of Australia's best business blogs. A couple friends such as Julian Cole and Gavin Heaton are included, along with a great new blog I've only recently discovered, Get Shouty which is written by The White Agency's Katie Chatfield. In addition there's a collection of other blogs I haven't had the chance to read yet, but I'm looking forward to getting into them.

One thing I'm quoted as saying in the B&T article which is absolutely true is the comments on this blog at times have been far more insightful and valuable than the post they were attached to. To everyone who stops by and shares their two cents, it is really appreciated.

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.

Brand tags

Note: not Brand Tags.



So the above isnt really all that clever, but I quite like it none the less, spotted it yesterday in Carlton as I walked to the park (yay for Spring).

Most people would know French Connection for shirts with lines like "Too busy to fcuk" or "Cool as fcuk", this kinda takes that campaign and gives it a bit of a twist.

If it was actually part of something French Connection were doing on sustainability as opposed to just vandalism that would be even more interesting.

In fact there's an idea - that one is free guys, special Monday gift from me to you.

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.