A guide for social media brands

Losing control is a primary reason stated by brands who are unwilling to open themselves up to the conversation - and a major reason why most continue to use social media as little more than a brochure on the web. And yet the illusion of control is just that – an illusion. By not involving yourself you actually do more to remove control than if you did.

The illusion of control

In traditional marketing and brand management you set out the position you want to take, the message you want to get through and then you put it out there. You feel in control because you’ve lined up your one-way communications and in a vacuum everything appears to line up.

Combine this with your brand tracking research, which abstracts the consumer response, and you create a feedback loop where your marketing activities and your market research self-reinforce the illusion. And yet under these circumstances you have, and have always had, precisely zero control over what people think and how they will respond to you.

The reality is that great branding has always been about influence and not control – influencing consumer choices and desires in a manner conducive to your goals and their satisfaction.

In today’s world, the way to achieve this is not through bigger advertising budgets or better creative, but through involvement – first by observing the conversation and then by involving yourself in it. As a result, it’s likely that those brands with the most effective influence strategies rather than the most effective control strategies will be the most successful.

Being a good influencer

Clearly, this represents a major shift in how you think. Below are three principles that good influencers appear to demonstrate, and which anyone considering an influence strategy should keep in mind:

1. Listen then respond. Brands are not generally good listeners, mostly because they’ve never had to be. Before engaging with the conversation it’s important to first listen to it, see what is being said and interpret what this means. Once you engage with the conversation it’s important to be honest and to have real sense of empathy in what you say – if people are excited and interested in your brand you must be supportive. If people have issues or problems with your brand you must seek means of genuinely helping them.

When Hulu pulled FX’s “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia” without notice, fans were in an uproar. Days later Hulu CEO Jason Kilar apologized for the event in blog post titled Customer Trust is Hard Won, Easily Lost, during which he admitted “We handled this in precisely the opposite way that we should have.” The post was lauded for its honesty and transparency and was a major step toward repairing the damage done. The two-way nature of influence rather than the one-way nature of control was crucial here.

2. Be comfortable with ambiguity. Conversation is messy, real time, and often capricious. At first what you see will appear chaotic, unmanageable and intimidating. The reality is that it isn’t your job to manage or control it – but to respond to it. Here you must learn to filter what you see and think in order to respond and take part. In an extreme case, Wachovia continues to use Twitter to engage even after the banking crisis and their subsequent takeover by Wells Fargo. Calmly helping people deal with everything from debit card activation, to how long it will take for the Wells Fargo sign to appear above the door.

3. Filter through your purpose. If you’re a great listener, and you’ve become comfortable with ambiguity, you still risk being overwhelmed by the conversation pulling you in multiple directions. Here, having a strong brand purpose is a crucial tool – it becomes the tangible filter through which you listen and respond. It defines the nature of your brand’s conversational voice, and is fundamental to the influence that you seek.

Social media brand to watch: The Flying Dog Brewery

The Flying Dog Brewery is a perfect brand for social media engagement. Their “Way of the Dog” is about delivering “purposeful, provocative irreverence” and this entirely defines how they engage and what they do. Here’s a brewery that encourages customers to write haiku about their beer on Twitter, engages in snap polls about favorite brews on Facebook, uses their blog to invite everyone down to the bar for a beer and then Flickr to show everyone who couldn’t make it what ensued. (And not only that, the beer is pretty damn good too.)

And yet, for every good example, there are thousands of brands large and small who are struggling to figure this all out.

Perhaps the place to start is to think through what kind of influence you want to achieve, and then think about how you might engage in order to achieve it. If you listen first, you will see what is being said about you and this will identify useful and helpful ways in which to insert yourself into the conversation.

Who knows? You might even find that losing the illusion of control isn’t so bad after all, and you might just strike up a whole new obsession with influence.

21 August 2009, posted by Paul Worthington

Off track

From controversy to scandal, debacle to shock announcement, it really is difficult to keep up to speed with F1 these days. But Ecclestone’s latest comments – praising Hitler’s ability ‘to get things done’ – highlighted how misguided the upper ranks of the F1 hierarchy have become. The rift between FOTA and Mosley certainly hasn’t helped matters. Sadly, we are faced more and more with an F1 that is not fit for the 21st century. The world has changed and F1 hasn’t matched the speed of that change. They’ve lost sponsors and carmakers, they’ve been slow to implement cleaner fuels and lower running costs, and they’ve been hit again and again by negative press. Unfortunately, the reputation of the F1 brand has already been tainted, Ecclestone’s remarks were simply the final straw.

Throughout these big issues, F1 has lacked clear leadership. We all know the best brands have great leaders who embody what that organisation is about: Manchester United and Ferguson, Virgin and Branson, ‘America’ and Obama. The problem is that it’s not entirely clear what the F1 brand stands for today. Paul Hayward of the Observer recently summed it up well,

“The question is not whether culling two geriatrics will restore F1's identity but whether F1 has an identity to restore”.

The best brands have well defined ownership for the management of their brand. With so many different stakeholders and so many contrasting agendas – including the FIA, the FOTA, the Formula One Group – it is difficult to decipher what direction both the sport and the brand are going in.

If F1 could rectify their issues in these two areas there is an opportunity for the brand to reconnect with its huge fan base, particularly with a drama-packed 2009 season on the track and growing interest from new markets behind it. But for that to happen F1 needs a much clearer purpose both as a sport and as a business.

Back in March, FOTA Chairman Montezemolo made the right noises:

”We all share one common goal to work together to improve F1 by ensuring stability, sustainability, substance and show for the benefit of our most important stakeholder, namely the customer”.

Unfortunately for F1, it’s not just what you say but what you do that matters most.

14 July 2009, posted by Richard Houston

Real service?

Today 56% of UK households have broadband Internet access compared to only 12% in 2004. That’s more than 14 million households. With wider accessibility to broadband, the convergence of different telecommunications services has become a lucrative business opportunity. But in a highly competitive market, how can telecoms brands drive differentiation and build long-term success?

In 2006 Virgin Media was the first company to hit the competition with its bundles of competitively priced and cleverly packaged telecoms products. Triple and quadruple play media, integrating broadband with digital TV, mobile and land telephone technology, have now become common practice. And with a virtually identical product offer, service becomes the obvious competitive advantage.

The likes of Tiscali and BT pride themselves with putting customers at the heart of their brands. They claim to ‘help customers thrive in a changing world’. They consider themselves trustworthy (‘we do what we say we will’) and helpful (‘we work as one team’).

However, in the last year Otelo, the UK independent telecoms ombudsman, had 104,000 inquiries about disputes and was forced to step in to resolve 4,139. Two out of three inquiries were about customer service. And this doesn’t include all the complaints to the individual service providers.

I heard many cringing stories about bad service experience with telecoms firms. Often the cause is not necessarily the issue itself, like a fault or wrong billing. It’s how the issue is dealt with.

According to a recent survey by Money Mail, telecoms firms are perceived to ignore complaints about bills and service. They force customers to use automated call centres, they ignore letters and fail to return calls when promised.

Other saturated mass markets like financial services face similar challenges and very few brands managed to build their success around what customers truly need.

First Direct is a great example of impeccable customer service. It doesn’t claim to have the best rates nor does it deny the possibility it may fail to deliver at times. Yet customers trust them because they’ll always be honest and transparent. They’ll always try to help. And most importantly they really will do what they say. First Direct’s customer loyalty is such that it is recommended by its customers every five seconds.

In the integrated telecoms market a brand that puts service at the driving seat will be the one to leapfrog the competition. Service brands need to start from what really is at their core: people.

Rather than focusing investments on product innovation like everyone else, engaging employees with a strong, powerful brand built around the customer experience can prove a cost-effective, powerful approach. Brand can empower people to deliver outstanding service through a strong idea that can be easily translated into practical actions. And once trust and loyalty are earned, more value from the customer will follow.

29 June 2009, posted by Giorgio Rondelli