212 Degrees – The Extra Degree (click on heading to link to the video)

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees it boils. And with boiling water, comes steam. And steam can power a locomotive. One extra degree…makes all the difference. And, the one extra degree of effort in business and in life…separates the good from the great!

The average margin of victory for the last 25 years in all major [golf] tournaments combined was less than three strokes. The margin of victory between an Olympic Gold Medal and no medal at all is extremely small. In the 2004 men’s 800m race, the margin of victory was .71 seconds. At the Indy 500, the average margin of victory for the past 10 years has been 1.54 seconds. On average, the winner took home $1,278,813, the second place prize was $621,321—a difference of $657,492.

It’s your life. You are responsible for your results. It’s time to turn up the heat. To get what we’ve never had, we must do what we’ve never done.

• 212 degrees Attitude: The only thing that stands between a person and what they want in life is the will to try it and the faith to believe it is possible.
• 212 degrees Kindness:  “It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life…we can never help another without helping ourselves.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
• 212 degrees Belief:  Belief fuels enthusiasm, and enthusiasm explodes into passion. It fires our souls and lifts our spirits.
• 212 degrees Focus:  Having a simple, clearly defined goal can capture the imagination and inspire passion. It can cut through the fog like a beacon in the night.
• 212 degrees Perseverance:  “Perseverance is not a long race; It is many short races, one after another.” (Walter Elliott)

You are now aware. You now have a target for everything you do.

Customer Service, Customer Loyalty, and a Spirit of Success

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service, delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.  Accordingly, Southwest Airlines is the 2011 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty award winner among airlines, and is among the list of J.D. Power 2011 Customer Service Champions.

Southwest Airlines is used as an example for the achievement of business success and customer loyalty as an industry leader in customer service in the book 212 Service: The 10 Rules for Creating a Service Culture (Mac Anderson, 2011), which highlights the leadership philosophy of Herb Kelleher, founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines: “I always felt that our people came first. Some of the business schools regarded that as a conundrum. They would say: Which comes first, your people, your customers, or your shareholders? And I would say, it’s not a conundrum. Your people come first, and if you treat them right, they’ll treat the customers right, and the customers will come back, and that’ll make the shareholders happy.”

According to Freibergs.com, an Executive Coaching consulting group in San Diego, CA, the key to lifetime customer loyalty is creating a Spirit of Success. “Your major point of differentiation…is in the spirit and attitudes of the people who work for you. Competitors may be able to compete with you on price and model but it’s very difficult to compete with you on cost, quality, and service because all three depend on the commitment and enthusiasm of your people–spirit and attitude are extremely difficult to replicate!” Also referring to Southwest Airlines’ envied model for superior customer service, which results in high-level customer loyalty, Friebergs points out that people frequently ask Libby Sartain, Southwest’s VP of People, “How do you get your people to be so nice?” Libby says, “We don’t get our people to be anything, we just hire Nice People!”

Based on the customer loyalty success of Southwest Airlines, I believe that if you capture the message of the video and create a 212 Degree culture in your company, hire employees who aspire to live and achieve at 212 degrees, and then continually inspire those employees, you will reinforce your company goals and values for superior service to your customers/clients. The payoff will be increased customer loyalty to your company and your brand. Again, small things can make tremendous differences.

Recently, I engaged a panel of marketing executives, my fellow graduates of the internationally ranked Penn State Smeal College of Business Executive MBA program and fellow Brand and Marketing Integration Coaches designated by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, in a discussion on marketing return on investment (MROI). I posed several questions and asked the panelists to provide insight based on their own experience.

Meet the panelists:

Jody L. Jacobs, B2B Marketing Strategist/Partner, Wavelength B2B Marketing. Jody provides strategic marketing consultation to clients, helping them to align business objectives to marketing strategies. She has more than a decade of experience serving global companies in their efforts to achieve global brand integration and local relevant messaging. Jody’s passion lies in helping firms both large and small deploy relevant marketing strategies that develop their brand as an asset that creates value for their stakeholders – and the bottom line. Among her many specialties is ROI planning and analysis. 

Lance Baird, Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Godfrey. Lance oversees Godfrey’s business development and outbound communications programs. When he’s actually in the office and not traveling the trade show circuit, he works diligently to understand client needs in order to offer solutions that are relevant and highly effective.

Teresa J. Avery, experienced marketing and public relations leader.  Avery worked in a marketing and PR agency environment for over a decade, leading campaigns for clients from large pharmaceuticals to small clothing manufacturers. 

Do you feel it’s possible or worthwhile to quantify the effect of marketing spending in terms of marketing return on investment?

AVERY:
Selecting appropriate objective measurements and tracking them carefully is critical to the success and continued relevancy of any marketing initiative. The marketing department exists in order to allow the company to bring its goods and services to consumers. In order to do that effectively, we must have solid knowledge of the impact of our campaigns. This is important not only to “sell” our existence to the front office, but to ascertain our work is achieving real results for the entire organization. 

BAIRD:
MROI can – and should – be calculated to the best extent possible.  Of course, that’s the trick, isn’t it?  At Godfrey, we take a big picture view at calculating MROI, being sure to break things down tactically and very specifically.  It’s only in doing so and measuring the KPIs (key performance indicators) that have been mutually agreed upon on the front end and by both parties involved (agency and client), are we able to say to our clients, “our collective actions have produced X leads for you.”  From there, it’s in their world.  But that’s (eventually) real money.

JACOBS:
It is both possible and worthwhile to quantify the effect of the marketing investment to impact to the business. In fact, it is this very premise from which my company, Wavelength B2B was founded. When I begin to work with my clients, the conversation starts with the objectives of the business. This is because a strategically-centered marketing program must tie both upstream marketing (branding efforts) and downstream marketing (marketing efforts that help the sales force add value) to the company’s business goals. If marketing does not impact the achievement of those goals, then why do them?

At the Institute for the Study of Business Market’s (ISBM) annual meeting this past September, the director Ralph Oliva challenged that “marketing should be the engine that PROPELS the growth of a company by defining its future. That philosophy positions the marketing function at a very pivotal role within the success of a firm. With that responsibility, measurement is essential.
 

Does your organization or do your clients value and/or use MROI calculations to justify marketing spending, and does this impact decisions about marketing strategy?

BAIRD:
To us, marketing ROI is more than a single view of investment versus “bottom line” sales or demand generation. We believe it is important to show and measure how each step leads to the next in the sales and marketing process. Also, analytics offers us the ability to continually improve all aspects of our programs. As data comes in and is analyzed we will want to change, test, improve and measure again. 

JACOBS:
Absolutely. Although, clients are now approaching MROI measurement as a tool – and not a method by which marketing tactics are flat out cut. More often, we are collaborating with clients to determine what needs to be improved within a program to make results even better.

MROI doesn’t impact strategy per se, but it does impact tactical direction. What is great about measurement now is that the process by which you determine if you are hitting the mark or not is tied to analyzing data that can become strong intel for the sales force. Previously, the marketing department would be begging sales for insight on the customer. Marketing now has the ability to respond in kind – providing intel and tools that help the sales channel add value to the customer.

AVERY:
While communications and creativity are important attributes of a marketing department, they may in fact pale in comparison to the importance of careful analysis of objective measurements. Marketing is as much about the numbers as it is about the message.

What do you think is the best approach for calculating MROI (e.g., what components should go into the calculation)?

JACOBS:
The best approach for calculating MROI is to begin by identifying the firm’s goals.  One common denominator is the impact to the relationship to the customer as it impacts the bottom line. Common to all firms, MROI should include the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of maintaining the relationship with the customer in relationship to the revenue generated over the customer lifecycle. Other factors should be included, but they should be tied with outcomes that are specific to the firm or the firm’s specific market dynamics.

BAIRD:
Beyond “pure” measurements, there are “indicators” that can be tracked that give a short-term view of trends. They are not true measures, but if tested they should be able to detect patterns that reveal where the overall trends are going. Some methodologies we use for measurement based on objective:

Objective — Building Awareness:
Indicators: search engine rankings, website traffic (macro and targeted), editorial presence/mentions.
Objective — Generating Interest:
Indicators: PR coverage in markets, responses to communications focusing on relevant issues, search engine results, visits to market section or application or case history web pages, time spent on a site, downloads, newsletter and e-newsletter signups.
Objective — Creating Desire:
Indicators: Visits and downloads of informational materials that pay off values and differential; subscriptions to e-news; membership in real-life or online community.
Objective — Producing Action:
Metrics: website downloads, Contact Us form or expert help inquiries, literature fulfillment, leads from all sources (800-number calls, business reply cards, PR inquiries, literature requests, etc.), sales appointments.
Objective — Prospect or Customer Cultivation via targeted Marketing
Metrics: e-news delivery, open and response; website visits, pages viewed, time spent, movement (if possible), downloads, forms/inquiries, sales activity.
Objective — Competitive Comparisons, Share of Voice, etc.:
Primary methodologies: measurement of competitive ad spending and PR activity, using publisher resources and independent resources; search engine (SEO and SEM) activity, investment and effectiveness comparisons (our Google-certified staff has access to more tools than publicly available); broader Internet advertising studies.

One challenge in measuring marketing returns is estimating the incremental revenue, contribution, and net profits attributable to marketing. What do you feel is the most difficult challenge in calculating MROI?

BAIRD: 
Having access to the [client’s] sales channel such that I can quantitatively prove my ROI in dollars rather than leads.

JACOBS:
The biggest challenge in my experience, is getting focused on measuring the “right things” and choosing the correct measurement to determine MROI. Today, there are numerous results and customer behaviors that can be tracked. (Web traffic, conversion statistics, etc.) These results more often than not are indicators of the impact of individual tactics within the larger sales and marketing program. These are clues we as marketing professionals can and should utilize to measure if we are on track with reflecting the voice of the customer, to provide intel to the sales channel, to test our messaging, and so on. These are not measures of MROI.

We also know that it is not one mere marketing tactic that is going to make or break your marketing program. This is because it is the BLEND of experiences that a customer has with your marketing communications that impacts the brand experience for the customer. So, for example, if your firm has a top notch public relations program, and your offering is receiving tremendous editorial – and let’s say that the PR program has been very successful at communicating your company’s competitive differentiator, which is that you are “easy to do business with.”  If your web site isn’t easy to navigate, or if the customer encounters a gruff sales or service contact – you’ve proven that you are not easy to do business with, and the customer therefore compares his/her experiences to what was written about this claim.

To respond to that challenge, I counsel my clients (the contacts in the C-suite) to select a few, key measures of the program’s success. These are typically tied to sales results: Cost per lead, cost per acquisition, cost to achieve conversions with downstream activities, etc. For example, one of my client firms is shifting his offering from a product offering to a SaaS offering. In doing so, we have helped them with both upstream (branding) and downstream (sales funnel) support. What is key, is that the client is focused on measuring distinct, key KPIs to determine if the collective efforts of the sales and marketing functions are providing ROI: 1. Cost of new customer acquisition, 2. Revenue over the life of the customer relationship, 3. The number of subscribers/number of users.

Are there any external factors not usually considered in calculating MROI that should be considered when trying to justify marketing spending or when trying to quantify the effect of marketing spending on revenue?

JACOBS:
For our purposes here, I’m going to define “external” as anything outside of the pure marketing department of the firm. So yes, there ARE external factors not usually considered, but marketers should prepare to be measured on the function’s impact to other functions within the company: impact to the sales function, impact to the R&D function, and impact to the supply chain (supply chain was most recently tackled in a recent 2011 issues of Industry Week.)

I’m already seeing evidence of that today. A recent online marketing campaign to drive orders for a particular component product line is such an example. The goal of the campaign was to drive orders for components that were produced in the U.S. versus those that were manufactured elsewhere.  This campaign was to solve both a manufacturing problem (validating capital investments made for in-country manufacturing) and to resolve a supply chain problem (At the start of the year, the company originally thought it had enough orders for these components to make manufacturing quotas. It turned out there was an error in the enterprise system, and we had to act quickly to turn this around.) As we monitored the success of our marketing efforts in driving demand, we discovered intel that was helpful to the sales organization.  This included a line card challenge in the channel that the regional sales manager was then able to proactively resolve, as well as discovering growing demand for these components in an emerging market, which aided forecasting activities.

This is incredibly interesting and to me, a natural evolution of holding marketing accountable for its key role in the success of the firm. In the 1980s and 1990s, the movement within marketing was to make marketing tactics and functions “integrated.” Today, that’s the cost of entry. Watch for emerging efforts to break down the silos between corporate functions and for future MROI to include elements that indicate the impact marketing has on driving the success of other corporate functions.

What else would you like to point out or discuss pertaining to MROI?

BAIRD:
Reporting of results can range from daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, depending on the type of project or program. We generally recommend that brand awareness and perceptions be measured every 12–24 months, depending on the situation. Advertising programs leading to web destination pages are generally reported on a monthly basis. Ongoing program elements, such as PR programs and e-news campaigns, are usually reported on a monthly basis. Targeted marketing campaigns and events such as trade shows, webcasts or press conferences are reported as soon as possible after the event.

According to the Wharton Executive Education institute, a recent McKinsey survey, presented at the Chief Marketing Officer Summit at Wharton, found that CEOs expect marketing leaders to cut costs and increase contributions to growth. At the same time, the rise of new channels, such as the Internet and wireless communication, and the increasing importance of word of mouth and sponsorship, make marketing resource allocation decisions much more complex. Both marketing and finance executives are under incredible pressure to make every dollar count.

What comments do you have on this panel discussion, or would you like to pose any follow-up questions to the panelists?  Also, if you have anything to share on your own experience with measuring the impact of marketing on financial results, I’d like to hear about it.

Wavelength B2B is an award-winning agency whose mission is to help companies use marketing to drive top-line growth. The Agency works with foreign-based companies entering the U.S. Market, international and national marketers as well as select regional companies and government/non-profits. The Agency’s most sought after services include strategic marketing program development, Customer Engagement Strategies, Lead Conversion Strategies, Integrated Content Development, Sales and Marketing Alignment Programs and Mobile Phone Apps that improve sales and marketing alignment. Traditional services also offered include branding, advertising, public relations, interactive, direct, illustration and trade show support.

Godfrey is one of the leading business-to-business marketing communications agencies in the United States. The agency offers research, strategic consulting, brand management, digital marketing strategy and execution, advertising, public relations, digital marketing solutions, lead management, measurement and the ability to implement cutting-edge technologies.

Penn State Smeal College of Business Executive MBA program. Located in Metropolitan Philadelphia, and serving executives from Connecticut to Washington, D.C., the Penn State Smeal Executive MBA program is one of the top ranked MBA’s in the world. Available only to business professionals, the Smeal EMBA meets every other weekend over 21-months.

The Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) is a center of excellence in the Smeal College of Business Administration at Penn State. ISBM is networked with researchers, educators and practitioners in business-to-business marketing in companies and universities throughout the world. If your focus is business-to-business marketing—marketing from one business or “value chain” to another—the ISBM is a valuable resource for you and your firm.

How many times have you heard this?

“Oh, if only I had been involved, I would have explained that to you sooner/told you that idea would never work/made everything right in the universe.”

According to Kevin M. Hoffman in the User Interface Engineering reprint of his article, Kick Ass Kickoff Meetings: By dubbing the first core team meeting the “project kickoff,” you are creating a project history that gives the impression that decisions are being made before everyone in the larger group has a chance to make their voice heard. So don’t do that. Call that meeting the “pre-kickoff meeting,” or the “kickoff planning meeting.” Sure, start by meeting with trusted colleagues on the client side, but save the name “kickoff” for a much more robust experience. Have a process that allows everyone to have their say before the project starts, and take a little time to research and explore the problem at hand from your client’s/partner’s perspective during that gap.

One of my critical success factors for building a reputation as a trusted product/project manager is to manage the expectations of all stakeholders. To manage satisfaction, you must carefully manage your client’s expectations. To do this, you must be networked throughout both your own organization and your client’s organization.  Also, you need to provide all stakeholders every opportunity to speak up and ask questions throughout the entire project life cycle, starting before the official project “kickoff meeting.”  If no one is asking questions, or you don’t provide that opportunity up front, you can’t assume everything is perfect or everyone is on board. Often, someone will hold out asking the important question until late in the game, and you’ll wish they had asked sooner. Client project teams must be a consistent presence both internally (within their own organizations) and externally (within the client organization), and must initiate frequent two-way communication.

Hoffman reminds us that everyone’s a stakeholder.  Expanding the list of qualified stakeholders as much as possible increases the likelihood that you will go into a kickoff meeting with a more accurate range of all the miracles this project will achieve, he says. More traditional approaches to defining a list of stakeholders focus on the departments directly responsible for what you are building, or that special group of people who have the ability to fire you. This ends up with information gleaned from director-level folks, vice presidents, etc. But you should talk to lower-level managers, line staff, and even building maintenance personnel if relevant. Anyone with a relationship to your project, no matter how tangential, will have insight into organizational culture. And by expanding the guest list, you are building a better understanding of the problem at hand, and engendering project awareness and trust throughout the organization. I agree with Hoffman that “Projects have their own cultures, just like organizations. The sooner you take an active role in building that culture to complement the organizational one, the happier everyone will be.”

Start Building Relationships Before the Kickoff

Use pre-kickoff stakeholder interviews to break the ice in a more natural, one-on-one or small group conversation. Then ask some questions that will reveal specific, personal hopes and fears for the project—the more brutally honest the interviewees are, the better. Assure them that certain questions are “off the record,” and then get them to really explore the relationship between the organizational culture and their project expectations. Who is the one person that will make this project a success, and who is the greatest challenge? If this is a redesign, what worked the last time they tried to do this, and what didn’t? Questions like these reveal pain points which kickoff activities can confront directly.

Here are a few specific examples of questions we ask and why we ask them, says Hoffman.

• What is the one thing we must get right to make this project worth undertaking?
• How does this/your organization define success? What is the role of this project in achieving that success?
• What aspects of the internal culture or external environment could put this project at risk to fail?
• Assuming we mitigate that risk, what would exceed your wildest dreams?

In addition to these questions, in his book Flawless Consulting, Peter Block suggests asking questions such as these to get a good picture of the culture around the project:

• What kinds of questions do you think I should ask [stakeholders] to get a feel for what is going on around here?
• What ideas have been supported by people but have not gotten enough support?
• What would you recommend if you were in my position?
• How hopeful are you about making real progress on this problem/project? What obstacles do you see to our final proposal/project recommendations being accepted?

Armed with the answers to questions such as these before the client project kickoff meeting, and by involving various levels of stakeholders up front before the project kicks off, you will be prepared for a much more robust project initiation meeting. You will also have established the necessary relationships with all project stakeholders and will have set the course for open, ongoing communication with those stakeholders throughout the project.  Don’t forget to include all of these stakeholders in the project kickoff (or at least follow up with them soon afterwards) and also include them in any project feedback sessions. By following these suggestions, you can properly set the stage at the official project “kickoff” meeting and ultimately be able to prepare all stakeholders for “no surprises” when you later present your final proposal for the project.

I did a little research recently and identified 5 companies that seem to understand the importance of customer touch points and have included some of the unique approaches taken by these companies to truly engage their customers, as well as some insights from some of their leaders. You’ll notice that much of the focus among these companies is on social media marketing.

 Zales

 Customers on Zales.com share real-life stories about the celebrations in their lives and the role Zales played in making them memorable. Zales added stories to create an online destination (lovestories.zales.com) that features customers’ own narratives about the celebrations in their lives, and the role that Zales played in making these days special.

“The jewelry business is one that’s built on people’s personal stories, since fine jewelry is often given to celebrate joyous occasions like weddings, birthdays, the birth of a child and special holidays,” says Steve Larkin, executive VP and chief marketing and e-commerce officer of Zale Corporation. “Bazaarvoice Stories gives Zales customers a place to share their own love stories—whether humorous or heartfelt. This user-generated content is a great resource to connect shoppers with each other—and to build brand involvement and loyalty in an authentic and organic manner.”

Zales—a part of Zale Corporation’s $2 billion company with 2,100 retail jewelry stores across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico—promotes the Love Stories initiative, powered by Bazaarvoice Stories, on its homepage and via a targeted e-mail campaign, encouraging the thousands of people who have reviewed products on the Zales site to share their own personal stories. The company also promotes Love Stories through sweepstakes and contests that drive participation.

“Zales has been a pioneer in listening and responding to their customers via ratings and reviews, and their launch of our Stories product is just another milestone on their path to complete customer engagement,” says Brett Hurt, founder and CEO of Bazaarvoice. “Studies prove that when customers engage with one another by sharing their real-life stories about certain brands or products, they become more loyal to the brand, purchase more products and become brand evangelists to their friends and community.”

(Source: http://www.salesandmarketing.com/article/zale-corporation-deepens-customer-engagement-and-loyalty )

Cirque Du Soleil

The Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas are truly something to behold. Full of spectacle and amazing visual experiences, fans of the shows know that Cirque experiences are special indeed. Over the last 25 years, Cirque du Soleil’s brand has been built largely on the power of word of mouth and the enthusiastic recommendations of their audiences. So when Cirque got started in social media, in many ways, it was like returning to their roots.

“Our fans are an extension of our brand,” says Jessica Berlin, Cirque du Soleil’s social media manager. “The great part about social media is that we can now participate in conversations directly with our fans, in the communities and on the sites where they’re gathering.” Cirque empowers their online community to be brand ambassadors by giving them access to insider information, special promotions and discounts, and tickets to the shows. They recently hosted a Cirque-n-Blog where Berlin invited a dozen Las Vegas bloggers to attend their Zumanity show and post reviews of the performance. To them, it was proof that social media – and the community around it – matters a great deal to their brand. “When we tracked the coverage of the show in Radian6 across social media, Zumanity emerged as our most talked-about show overall. And as a result of the blogger event, our coverage and reach on microblogs like Twitter was much higher than usual, bringing us awareness and interest from new audiences and creating conversation among our existing fans.”

In May 2009, Cirque du Soleil announced their “Summer of Cirque” promotion to celebrate their 25th anniversary. As part of the promotion, they offered ticket specials, and they launched a contest to win a trip to Las Vegas and tickets to all seven of the Cirque shows. In the first two weeks of the promotion, all of their communication was done through social media, and they could directly track the conversation – and sales – that resulted. Over the course of the next several months, Cirque used what they learned about their community through listening to build excitement for future shows. Instead of traditional audience outreach, Berlin and her team used and is using social media as the primary means to distribute insider, sneak-peek information to their audience members. By following Cirque on Twitter or joining them on Facebook, fans will get exclusive content and special discounts that they can’t get elsewhere.

“Building our brand in social media has been rewarding and successful for us at Cirque,” says Berlin. “Our fans are our greatest brand ambassadors and it’s now become a priority for us to closely monitor what is being said. By listening and engaging in these conversations, we can only improve the Cirque du Soleil experience.”

“We’ve always believed that our fans are what make the Cirque du Soleil experience fantastic, and what keeps our brand vibrant and healthy. By not only participating in social media but tangibly measuring and communicating our success, we can harness the power of our online community to keep Cirque du Soleil shows in demand for another 25 years.”

(Source: http://www.radian6.com/resources/library/cirque-du-soleil/)

Carphone Warehouse

Creating a successful viral marketing campaign is something of a dark art – “The things that generally work really well are something that puts a smile on your face, has a good story to it… don’t necessarily be too preoccupied with the time, but keep it tight… the consumer has to feel that there is a payoff,” says YouTube’s Bruce Daisley – and in some cases it appears there is more luck than judgement involved. However, there are other ways that organisations can create videos that notch up major YouTube views for minimum spend. And firms should think about how YouTube can in some way embody what they want the brand to be about. As an example, Daisley highlights the work Carphone Warhouse, among Europe’s largest independent mobile phone retailers.

“The Carphone Warehouse brand wants to be remembered for expertise – that their sales people know more than the sales people in any other shop. So it noticed the phenomenon of ‘unboxing”, where people queue over night to buy a new gadget, then they take it home and video themselves opening the product and unpacking it. So watching it you’re vicariously experiencing that through them, and the amount of views these videos get is remarkable.

“So to create a tease for the shops, Carphone Warehouse made these low-fi videos of people opening products and uploaded them. It received loads of comments, and people started to go straight to the Carphone Warehouse channel to check out new phones. It was a very simple way of bringing their brand qualities to YouTube. And more and more brands are realising that video is a massive phenomenon, and it can affect small businesses as well as your Nikes and Sonys.”

Absolutely, social media isn’t an exclusive one size fits all solution, says Guy Stevens, former Customer Knowledge Manager at Carphone Warehouse. There are many different platforms to choose from, and they can all be used individually or in combination in any number of different ways.

What’s key is that in taking part you are offering something relevant and meaningful to your customers, [such as] The Carphone Warehouse employees publishing helpful tips and hints about mobile phones via their Eyeopeners channel on YouTube.

If I think back to my time at The Carphone Warehouse, reflects Stevens, the reason we could try things out was simply because of our approach. Part of this is having people who ‘get social’. And this touches on an important issue. From a resourcing perspective, it’s apparent from talking to those who are going down this route that their approach is very much around hiring people who understand social media, and then training them in terms of the customer service skills they will need.

If we move onto the practical issues surrounding the use of social media for customer service the key issues for me are communication and integration. For me, says Stevens, it comes back to looking to, working with and trusting your customers to help you find the answers to these questions. Companies no longer hold the dominant position they once did, and we are in a period where companies are being forced to re-evaluate, and in some instances re-engineer, the way in which they engage with their customers.

(Sources: 
http://www.mycustomer.com/topic/customer-experience/more-just-marketing-using-youtube-customer-engagement/104489

http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy-alerts/online-customer-service )

UPS

Understand from Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, UPS’s marketing and advertising partner,” after a decade of work and the investment of billions of dollars to successfully transform the company, UPS on Sept13,2010 launched a communications program to demonstrate how it has vaulted past competitors to offer the broadest range of logistics services in the industry. The creative elements of the platform will focus on the theme “We Love Logistics” to reflect UPS’s passion for delivering transportation and supply chain solutions that can bring competitive power to its customers, UPS also will support the campaign through various social media channels.

“Logistics became the focus as a way to articulate everything we do,” said Betsy Wilson, director of global advertising at UPS, which has acquired more than 40 companies in the past decade to bolster its services. In addition to package delivery, UPS offers trucking and air freight, retail shipping and business services, customs brokerage, finance and international trade services.

The shipping company created a dedicated microsite, www.thenewlogistics.com, which contains downloadable case studies of some clients, including electronics company Toshiba and plumbing product company Toto USA, said Maureen Healy, VP of customer communications at UPS. There is also a corresponding Facebook fan page, Twitter feed and YouTube channel, she said.

Wilson said the company will measure customer engagement and business impact. “[We want to emphasize] UPS has a way to partner with clients and bring value to your business through our integrated network,” said Healy.

UPS’s  facebook fan page “shows off” their outstanding “hardwares” and “software” by using lots of nice photos and videos, and they provide regular wall postings.

UPS’s blog  is where members of UPS family worldwide contribute stories to the online community–everyone “writer” use his/her own name. Featured writers have the chance to show up on the home page together with his/her picture. No doubt it’s great for staff self branding and encouraging participation.

On its blog, you can click “Follow UPS on Twitter” and on their Twitter page immediately notice that they respond to their customers promptly.

The new UPS logistics campaign is also easily found on YouTube. One ad proclaims “Everybody loves something. We love logistics. We love its precision, its epic scale, its ability to make life better for billions of people. Each day, our customers count on us to choreograph a ballet of infinite complexity played across skies, oceans and borders. And we do. What’s not to love?” – UPS

At end of the day, what matters to customers are still cost and service–service for logistics comes from transit time, on-time delivery and the ability to deal with emergencies, regardless of how good the commercial advertising is.

But UPS have proven that a well integrated marketing campaign goes a long way to building customer engagement.

(Sources:

http://logisticsweek.com/news/2010/09/ups-delivers-first-global-b-to-b-campaign-we-love-logistics/#

http://www.cherrysolutiononline.com/case-study-new-logistics-new-ups-with-social-media/ )

Adobe

Engagement is the new business mandate. As I talk to customers, partners, and employees, it becomes increasingly clear to me that the health of a company relies on the extent to which it creates meaningful and sustainable interactions, says Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO, Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Adobe knows that engaged customers are a company’s best assets. You can’t compete successfully in the marketplace only by creating a better product or holding down costs. Quality products and competitive pricing are required just to stay in business, but customer engagement provides a long-term competitive advantage. Without engagement, you can’t expect to build a successful company or organization.

A lot of research validates that engaged customers are less price sensitive, buy more frequently, are more loyal, are more likely to recommend products, and are more apt to provide useful feedback. It pays to retain these engaged customers and, interestingly enough, it typically costs less to service them.

Adobe enables engaging experiences by developing the technologies that help companies create, manage, and deliver information more powerfully, so they can connect with their customers. Adobe products help construct the touch points where companies interact with customers, from media-rich websites to mobile phone displays to collaboration software and web conferencing. Adobe has spent the past 25 years driving innovation that delivers engaging experiences and continues to build on that legacy. Of course, staying focused on engagement—how to do it most effectively, how to measure it—is challenging for all companies, Adobe included. I try to keep it a top priority, says Narayen.

Technology—and innovation—are keys to customer engagement. Today, customers expect dynamic, more engaging experiences than ever before, and companies must constantly innovate to meet and exceed these expectations. Technology has heightened customer expectations, and it’s also through technology that businesses will meet their customers’ increasingly higher demands.

Adobe is especially well-poised to provide the technology needed to engage consumers. Through our software applications, platforms and services, our customers can create and deliver compelling content and powerful applications across all devices and media. The opportunities to bridge media and give people access to exactly the information they want, anywhere, anytime, connected or not, are virtually unlimited.

(Source: http://www.adobe.com/engagement/q_and_a.html )

Do you have a customer engagement tale to share?

Johnson predicts 11 key trends will dominate the Loyalty Marketing Industry in 2011 . I’ve highlighted three that focus specifically on customer engagement:

Companies will increasingly look at how customer engagement and employee engagement work together to drive bottom line results.  A 2009 Gallup quantified the impact of customer and employee engagement.  They found that those in the upper half on customer engagement and the lower half on employee engagement, or vice versa, get a 70% boost in bottom-line results; those in the upper half on both customer and employee engagement get a 240% boost.

Relevancy will be a key driving force of customer loyalty, engagement. Today’s customers want loyalty programs to be “about me” — individual, relevant, meaningful, etc. Personally relevant deals are the second most frequently chosen reason for spending more with a company, mentioned by 48% of people, according to new research by Ipsos Mori and The Logic Group. Data collection and usage is extremely important in building relevancy.  Brands need to use the information they collect strategically to show customers they’re listening and give them what they’re asking for.

Goal of customer loyalty initiatives will be to engage customers. Marketers now realize that although spend and number of transactions are important, customer engagement is the holy grail for loyalty initiatives. Because with engagement comes loyalty, advocacy, trust, passion —- the soft side of the customer relationships that directly impacts the bottom line.  

Knowing why your audience cares is as important as knowing what they care about, feels Erica Friedman, President of Yurikon LLC in New York, creator of “Microniche Marketing” (TM), a process that harnesses social media by finding your audience – engaging your audience – rewarding your market , and author of SocialOptimized. “Be the resource for info and perspective in your field,” she says.

In another recent article, Mike Cholak, consulting practice executive at Convergys, provides his Top Ten Customer Engagement Tips for 2011.

“What we’ve learned about delivering a superior customer experience in the past year is well worth building upon in the coming year,” says Cholak.  “Here are ten tips gleaned from our proprietary research on the customer experience, and our customer management work with Fortune 500 companies in the communications, technology, banking and financial services, retail and e-commerce, and health care industries.”   

#1:  Focus on the quality of your customer service and the quality of your product or offering.  Don’t let price be your key/only differentiator.
Despite recessionary financial constraints, consumer emphasis on price has decreased since 2008 and 2009. Consumers indicate an increased desire for value: they want the best possible combination of product and service at the “right” price.

#2:  Listen to the voice of the customer and amplify it throughout your organization. Your employees need to be as sensitive to the current state of service as are your customers.
77% of customers say that in the past year the quality of customer service provided by companies has stayed the same or gotten worse, while 50% of employees at those companies providing the experience think service has improved.

#3:  Communicate the ease and accessibility of reaching live agents in channels of the customer’s choosing, and prepare and empower your employees to provide first-contact resolution.
62% of customers who said it was “hard” to deal with a company said it was because their issue was not resolved the first time they contacted them for service. 43% also said they found it difficult to reach a service representative.

#4:   If great service is a focus don’t give in to temptations to cut, cut and cut costs. Service is an investment in your company and customers.
Customer service employees reported an 8% decline in their preparedness to deliver the right customer service experience. Most notably, employees were 11% less likely to say they had the necessary tools to solve customer’s issues, compared to results captured in 2009.

In response to the recession, most organizations have reduced their investment in their customer care operations, as reported both by executives and employees. Customers express a correlated sense of decline in service in the form of:  more bad experiences, fewer resolutions, and registering greater defection rates.  The adage of “penny wise, but pound foolish” is very relevant here – customers are placing significantly more emphasis on customer care.  If care erodes so too does a company’s customer base; the two are more linked now than ever before.  Companies looking to strategically cut costs should think twice before making across-the-board investment reductions in their customer care operations, along with their service representatives and the tools and systems that support them.

#5:  Make sure you are listening to all the contact channels you’ve deployed or “intended” to support.
Two-thirds (66%) of customers are taking the initiative to contact a company after a bad experience, effectively seeking a resolution before they decide whether or not to take their business elsewhere. Today’s consumer has become more vocal (58% reported their bad experience in 2009) as they feel greater empowerment and duress from the economy. The vast majority (71%) are contacting live agents on the phone or in-person, but a meaningful 23% are using email and text messaging to vent. And, customers using indirect channels expect a response as much as those who call, and are just as likely to defect if they don’t get a response and/or resolution of their issue. This is no small issue, as 20% of the customers who reported their bad experience said they did not even get a response from the company. Ultimately, 57% of them decided to take their business elsewhere.  Not responding, or slowly responding to these channels can be especially disruptive.  Every channel matters and needs tightly defined resolution processes; the customers who use these channels have high expectations on the offered channels being useful, effective, and closed looped.

#6:  Aggressively promote the fact that you want feedback. You want to know when you get it wrong. And, make it easy for customers to contact you and get immediate access to empowered and empathetic agents.
41% of customers who did not bother to report their bad experience (34% defected without saying a word) said they did not bother because there was no convenient way to report it to the offending company.

#7:  Listen to and engage customers on social media.
80% of customers who had a bad experience took their story to the court of public opinion, and 12% used social media to amplify their voice. On average, an individual using social media reached 45 people with their individual tweets or postings. And, for those customers who could recall reading about a friend or colleague’s bad experience, 62% said they avoided doing business with or stopped doing business with that company.  Social media will play a greater role in customer care as the Millennial generation and those who follow it increasingly gravitate to this communication medium to create communities, share their experiences, and express their opinions. 

#8:  Avoid the temptation to put too many eggs in the self-service basket.
Self-service certainly has its time and place, but when issues are complex or frustrating, customers want (and demand) access to live agents. In fact, preference for live web chat has grown 33% in the last year, and preference for email by 50%.

#9:  Use proactive communication to get the conversation started with (transferred to) an agent.
100% of customers said it is appropriate for a company they do business with to proactively contact them. However, companies must be sensitive to the reasons and channels they employ, as the vast majority of customers are not open to anything and everything. Companies can manage both the customer experience and call volumes by controlling what types of messages go out to whom, and when, and prompting customers to call.

#10:  Invest in the experience and don’t lose customers, because you likely won’t ever get them back.
Only 16% of customers who left a company after a bad experience said they would be willing to do business with that company again if some effort were made to win them back. Don’t burn the bridge by not providing the best agent-based experiences, and don’t focus so much on diverting your customers from agents that you damage the relationship.  Millennials are the most forgiving (40% willing to reconsider), while Gen-Xers (16%) present some opportunity and offended Boomers (4%) and Seniors (2%) are nearly impossible to sway and incentivize.

In a recent LinkedIn discussion on the issue of engagement in 2011, I received some insightful responses. “I’m with Mike Cholak…on the need to communicate,” commented Sharon Bailly, Owner at TWP Marketing and Technical Communications in New Hampshire. “The methods–a printed brochure or a Facebook game, a cold call or a Tweet–will change with the times but the goal is always the same: to listen for and respond to the customer’s need. Communciation with customers is what I stress in my own blog about marketing and technical writing. Too many companies think they are communicating with the client when they are merely knee deep in a monologue about how wonderful their company is.” Margie Clayman, Director of Client Development at Clayman Advertising Inc.  in Akron, Ohio says, “I think a lot of companies are going to confuse being ‘present’ with being engaged and interactive, and that is going to be a potential nightmare. Having a Twitter account and saying “I hear you” is not the same as having a Twitter account and saying, “Let’s fix this now.” That’s what customers are going to be expecting more and more.”

Which of Mike’s customer engagement tips do you feel is the most relevant as we enter 2011?

There are many different ways of measuring brand equity, but keep in mind that higher equity scores are not an end in and of themselves, says Randall Beard of Branding Strategy Insider. What’s needed is a more direct cause and effect quantification of how changes in brand equity actually cause changes in sales or market share, he says.

First of all, there’s the debate about whether fewer more powerful metrics are better than many different metrics that provide a broader picture of the equity of the brand. Brand managers and marketers might consider applying the “law of parsimony,” also known as Ockham’s Razor, attributed to the 14th-century English logician, William of Ockham who wrote “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity” or “plurality should not be posited without necessity”. The Razor is a principle that suggests we should tend towards simpler theories until we can trade some simplicity for increased explanatory power. According to this tenet, when providing an explanation for an observed effect, the simple explanation consisting of a few “causes” is more reliable than the more complicated explanation that invokes many causal variables.

Imagine a world where we launch products but since we can’t measure the impact of brand equity on sales and market share, we stop trying to build brand awareness. This scenario is posed by Sandeep Khullar, Business Development Manager, Chicago. “We stop trying to differentiate our products and thus products become commodities. Retailers demand discounts that we can’t afford to give. I am sure no CFO will ever like that scenario. Thus we have no choice but to build brands. “ Khullar contends, “Measuring brand equity and linking that to sales and market share is an inexact science. I think in this time starved society, it is hard enough to get simple answers out of people, forget about measuring brand equity by surveying consumers. There are too many other factors going into sales and market share on a daily basis.”

So, then, how many and which brand equity measures should we use to relate improvements in sales and market share? Following are some common measures of brand equity highlighted in the book, Marketing Metrics: 50+ Metrics Every Executive Should Master.

Young and Rubicam Brand Asset Valuator:
Y&R maintains that four major dimensions dominate consumers’ beliefs about brands: perceived differentiation in the market, relevance to consumer lifestyles, the esteem in which consumers hold the brand, and the perceived degree of knowledge of the brand that consumers possess. Y&R claims that stronger brands attain high values across all four measures. Growing brands show higher values for differentiation and relevance. Declining brands show relatively higher values for esteem and knowledge.

David Aaker’s Brand Equity Evaluators:
This brand evaluation technique uses 11 unweighted tracking measures to diagnose brand strength: Differentiation, Satisfaction/Loyalty, Perceived Quality, Leadership/Popularity, Perceived Value, Brand Personality, Organizational Associations, Brand Awareness, Market Share, Market Price, and Distribution Coverage.

Interbrand’s Brand Valuation Model:
This proprietary measure is designed to separate tangible product value from intangible brand value. A figure for earnings associated with the brand is isolated by removing estimated earnings attributable to tangible assets from total earnings. Thus, this measure draws upon financial analyses or residual earnings forecasts, as well as market analysis of the role of brands in creating those earnings, in order to estimate the portion of profits attributable to the brands. This portion of the profits is then combined with growth and discount rates to estimate a value for the brand.

But the question still remains, how do you truly quantify the effect of brand equity on sales and market share? Casper Gorniok, MBA, MCIM, marketing and business development manager from the UK, says “I’m going to stick my neck out and say in a recession for many consumers, price rules. I’ve worked in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) for over 13 years. Retailers are only interested in rate-of-sale and profit per square foot. This is the key metric of the moment. “ As a classically trained marketer navigating the new world of digital marketing, Jim Matorin, Owner of Smartketing in Philadelphia feels “there are too many factors that come it to play. It depends/varies by the industry, products, services and time line (age) of the brand. “

Most marketing professionals would probably agree that measuring brand equity should involve a mix of perceptual, financial, and behavioral measures, tied to brand strategy. However, what is the right approach to quantifying brand equity? I’d like to hear your ideas or thoughts on this issue.

Back in February I posted an article on Creating Meaningful Customer Interaction via Social Media Marketing with some ideas for using social media marketing to create engaging customer experiences for propelling business. I said that rather than focusing on the content you want to deliver, you should focus on the experience you’re creating for the customer. This time around, in considering measures of business success, I’d like to say that rather than focusing solely on KPIs such as market share and profits, you should (again) focus on the experience you’re creating for the customer.  According to Andy Blackstone, Owner of Blackstone Associates Sales Training and Consulting and author of “Small Changes That Help Small Companies Make BIG Increases in Sales“, Portland, Oregon: “It depends somewhat on what you are selling, but generally I think you can make a compelling case that quality of customer experience is the most important underlying key to market share and profits.”

Customer engagement is key for Sir Richard Branson.  He strives to set a culture of being fearless in engaging customers. “I’ve always enjoyed calling randomly selected newly arrived Virgin passengers in one of our limos to say ‘Hi, This is Richard Branson, I wanted to say thanks for flying with us and see how you’ve enjoyed the flight.’ On more than a few occasions this has been met by derisive comments like ‘Yeah, right. I’m sure the real Richard Branson has nothing better to do. Who the hell are you?’”  Also, says Branson, “At Virgin we look for opportunities where we can offer something better, fresher and more valuable, and we seize them.” Creating a breakthrough customer experience and combining brand with the physical customer experience is what the vision should embody!

Yoram (Jerry) Wind, Professor at The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business and author of “Marketing as an engine of business growth,” Journal of Business Research) says these types of interactive relationships are the first step to changing the role of the customer.  Instead of passive ‘‘consumers,’’ these customers become active stakeholders and advocates.  Instead of passively monitoring customer satisfaction, companies are looking at active customer ‘‘reference-ability,’’ the likelihood that customers will refer another person to the company. Recent studies have found that it is not customer satisfaction that drives loyalty and repeat purchases, but rather this reference-ability. It does not take much commitment to circle a ‘‘highly satisfied’’ choice on a customer satisfaction form, but it takes a lot more to put your reputation on the line in making a recommendation to others… Building these interactive relationships with customers requires changes throughout the organization, he says. Any employee who has contact with the customer is involved in the interaction. Systems need to be in place to facilitate the knowledge-sharing needed to effectively interact with customers when and where they choose. And there need to be effective financial systems and revenue models to ensure that these increased interactions continue to be profitable for the company while delivering value to the customer.

According to the Customer Think article, CEO Andy Taylor and his team at US-based Enterprise Rent-A-Car only focus on one thing; the number of customers who give the highest rating for satisfaction and are willing to recommend the company to others. Frederick F. Reichheld, director emeritus of Bain & Company and author of Loyalty Rules! calls these enthusiasts “Promoters” and by deducting the percentage of customers who say that they are unlikely to recommend he calculates a “net-promoter score.” Enterprise enjoys both the highest rate of growth and, at near 35 percent, the highest net-promoter percentage in the car-rental industry according to Reichheld.

Do You Really Listen to Customers?

According to MyCustomer.com, one of the Five Barriers to Measuring Customer Experience is that we don’t really listen. They suggest that many companies don’t ask the right questions to truly get at the customer experience, or ask questions in a way to get the answers they’re looking for.

Do you ask customers about the details of their emotions about your brand, about the basic proposition, about service levels? Do you listen to their tales and stories? Stories quickly convey complex thoughts and difficult emotions. How do customers feel beyond satisfied and not satisfied on a 1-10 scale? Stories give us a way of locating the desires, perceptions and attitudes of our customers.

Companies like Zara and Red Bull listen to customer stories and then use them in their brand building – always monitoring the outcome, according to the article.  Norwich Union uses emotional feedback measures they have found to be important, such as “do you feel appreciated as an individual” and “do you genuinely feel that NU cared about meeting your needs” and use the result back in ‘customer innovation’ sessions with staff.

In his book, Andy Blackstone also touches on the importance of listening to customers: Probe deeply for the real reasons they bought, and be sure you understand the nuances and details of the problem they solved with your product.  To get at the important real reasons for their purchase, you might try to understand what your customers were trying to accomplish, rather than focusing on the problem they were solving.  Pay particular attention to how they are using your product.  Ask yourself if it is the way you intended it would be used.  Are they creatively making a different use of the product than you thought they would?  What product features are important to them?

“Managing a consequent customer experience is very important these days and it will become more important,” says Eric Jan van Putten, Regional Marketing Manager at Sitecore, Netherlands. “Social media will play a roll in this. For example: You manage all your channels perfectly and the customer has a good experience. Then he sees one bad Tweet and it could be over. KPI’s are important also on sales and market share, but I think it will shift more and more to the customer experience.”

What are your thoughts on monitoring and measuring the quality of customer experience vs. other KPIs such as market share and profits? Can you share a success story?

They suggest that if your organization is instead a “product first” environment where each product has its own strategy, product managers compete for R&D and marketing resources, everyone believes their view of the market is the correct one and sales does anything necessary to make quota, you may be working harder than you need to.

Follow these five steps to calculate your organization’s market focus quotient:

1.  List Your Target Markets

List the market segments that will account for the bulk of your revenue over the next 24 months across the entire product portfolio.  For B2B companies, these are vertical market segments in most cases – retail, telecom, healthcare, non-profit, etc., or sub-segments of those categories.

2.  Evaluate Your Marketing Program Spend

Determine the percentage of your marketing program budget that has been spent year-to-date on lead generation programs specific to the market segments listed in step 1.  For example, if you have a $10 program budget and you’ve spent $6.50 on collective programs for the market segments listed in step 1, your number is 65%.  Do not include corporate campaigns that are not segment specific.

3.  Evaluate Your Sales Pipeline

Take the most recent snapshot of your sales pipeline and calculate the percentage of prospective customers that fall into any of the market segments listed in step 1.

4.  Evaluate R&D Resource Allocation

Determine the percentage of R&D resources allocated to projects with broad market value for one or more of the segments listed in step 1.  Do not include one-off projects that correct quality or design flaws or projects that are specific to a single customer.

5.  Calculate

Total the numbers from steps 2-4 and divide that total by 3.  The result should be a number less than 1, for example .67.

Interpreting the Result

• The closer your score is to the number 1, the better aligned your organization is to its target markets, greatly improving your odds for success in chosen markets.
• A score of at least .51 means your organization has a slightly stronger focus on target market growth initiatives than anything else – a good thing in most cases.
• The closer your score is to 0 the less market-focused the organization is, the thinner its resources are spread and the less impact each initiative will have on overall growth. 
• The younger the organization, the closer its score should be to the number 1.  Trying to be too many things to too many markets too soon will bury most start-ups before they get out of the blocks because the unique needs of each market can spread a young organization beyond its ability to do anything well.
• If the marketing lead generation machine is working the way it should, 80% of the sales pipeline should consist of buyers in the target markets listed in step 1, assuming that you’re marketing to buyers who are the best fit for the products/services you can deliver today or in the very near future.
• R&D initiatives typically falls into three categories; market growth, customer satisfaction and competitive.  One of these categories should command a substantially larger share of the R&D budget than the other two in order to make a significant impact on your longer term objectives.

Social media marketing affords the opportunity to create a community of fans and customers alike. According to Jim Goldstein (“Social Media + You – Brand and Reputation Management = Disaster”), “Reinforcing the positive sentiment of this audience is key to creating a long lasting positive (brand) perception. In addition a passionate following will ensure that as negative sentiment arises that the community behind you supports you. A supportive community of followers expands the number of eye and ears looking and listening on your behalf. It’s not uncommon for passionate supporters to actually take on negative sentiment directly on your behalf.”

The problem is that incidents move faster in social media, so you need to create a crisis response plan, suggests Jeremiah Owyang (“When It Comes To Social Media, Many Marketers Jump The Gun”). “For instance, how would your company react if some of its products turned up in an unflattering YouTube video on a Friday evening before a three-day weekend?” He says many companies jump into social marketing before they are ready. “The opportunities to connect with customers, learn from them and benefit from word-of-mouth marketing are irresistible. But CMOs must first establish the internal resources and processes that are necessary for their companies to be successful in social marketing.”

You don’t need to look far to find examples of business who were not prepared to handle an unforeseen crisis, manage the risks, or harness the power of social media:

• According to Owyang: Greenpeace’s organized brandjacking of Nestle SA’s Facebook page is making CMOs afraid of social media. There is good reason for this: The power has clearly turned to those that participate, and now detractors are starting to organize using the same organized marketing campaigns that companies create. Greenpeace takes issue with Nestle’s purchase of palm oil from farmers who are destroying forests. The organization prepared a frontal assault with prepared assets such as off-brand logos, detrimental videos, and called for their Twitter followers to attack Nestle’s Facebook page. Nestle, the giant food company, was unprepared. It apparently lacked qualified community managers, a community policy and an advocacy program. Proof of the power of online communities: Today the Swiss company said it will work with a nonprofit organization to probe the firm’s palm oil suppliers.
• In his article, “Better have a social media risk management plan”, Rick points out that in terms of bad online sentiment, it doesn’t get much worse than BP’s continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He says, “a search for “BP oil spill” on YouTube returns over 900 videos about the disaster and last week BP was one of brands that was generating the most buzz on Twitter. BP seems to have a poor micro-blogging strategy and each twit is drowned by a deluge of hostile Tweets. This is partly just a question of quantity, which could be balanced if BP had a larger presence on these sites and more followers to begin with – but since it’s too late to do anything about that, the company might benefit by at least putting a more human (and humane) face on its social media communications. Let’s see the CEO make some personal twits – a symbolic gesture which might help temper the maelstrom of negative PR currently engulfing the company. Or even better – lets see the CEO apologize in a video broadcast.”

Should you be concerned about bad sentiment circulating online about you or your business? Certainly, says Goldstein, but not to the degree that it paralyzes you from doing business. Bad things will always be said about an individual or business. We can’t please everyone all of the time, but it is possible to keep bad situations (and unpredictable events) from getting ugly in the social media world…Strategically speaking turning lemons into lemonade is a critical online business strategy. You just need to plan ahead and be prepared.

Does your organization have a formal social media risk management or crisis response plan?

Borrowing from the Institute for the Study of Business Markets’ (ISBM) definition of a brand, Lance Baird, VP of Sales and Marketing at Godfrey in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, asserts that a brand is a “relationship:” a relationship with a market based on cumulative customer experiences, tied to trademarks and other identifying elements, which has economic impact for a firm. Baird agrees with the idea that people, not companies, own the brand. He says this is especially true in our age of social media.

In his article, “The Importance of Branding in the Digital Age,” Greg Satell tells us, “Essentially marketing communication is about how people interact with products emotionally. People love some brands, hate some others and don’t think much at all about most.  How the consumer feels about a brand will determine whether she is willing to buy it and what price she will pay.”  He believes a brand is a promise, or a bundle of promises.

Whether you consider a brand a “relationship” or a “promise,” I hope you would agree that how a client/customer feels when they encounter your brand is the essence of the brand. This should be considered and defined as part of the brand “footprint” that you create. It’s this connection or feeling that gives ownership of the brand to the client or customer.

Social media empowers people to spread and promote your brand essence. You can create meaningful client interaction to propel your brand through effective social media marketing.  A recent debate on Interbrand’s Brandchannel about what social media branding strategies will look like in the near future reminds us that millions of consumers are spending their valuable time and energy helping to market their favorite brands via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.  The debate suggests that “Consumers will own the brand: the democratization of information means that consumers are now in control, and brands must adapt to this.”  It goes on to say, “People will continue not only to endorse brands, but increasingly align their very own identities with them.”

Last year, I posted an emotional and thought-provoking article titled ‘The USA Brand,’ which challenges you to think about what defines any brand, and supports my points about brand ownership (even for place or destination branding).

I’d like to hear your thoughts on brand ownership.