Edelman Trust Barometer 2012: CEOs down, Social Media getting better…

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Year on year, Edelman’s Trust Barometer checks the credibility and trustworthiness of politics, companies, CEOs and media from a quite generalistic point of view.

The findings for this year were published in the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer, a global survey which came out yesterday in its 12th year. The survey offers insights from over 30,000 people in 25 countries with the main focus on “Informed Publics”. By “Informed Publics” Edelman sees college-educated people between 25-64 years of age that are among the best earners in their countries and describe themselves as heavy consumers of media information.

Obviously interesting for me were two things… How are people trusting CEO’s after CEO’s criticized their marketers some month ago in a study by the Fournaise Marketing Group. And also, how are consumers worldwide gaining trust in social media as a source of business information.

Let’s start with the CEOs first.

When Edelman asked respondents how credible information coming from a CEO would be, 38% replied they would trust the information. Although this sounds not bad, it is a 50% dump from last year and the biggest drop since Edelman started doing the survey 12 years ago. And although government leaders were less trusted than CEOs, in more or less all the countries responding, 49% would want to see an increase of government regulation of business.

And how about consumers’ trust in Social Media?
Well, let’s put it that way… Social Media is on the rise but still lags behind corporate websites and traditional media. So, you marketers should better not rely solely on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages.
The 2012 survey tells us that 14% of respondents see Social Media as a trusted source of company information — an increase of 6% to one year ago. But it’s still getting the lowest trust score of the four options shown below. This comes close to the trust in company websites (16%). Traditional media still is top of “news pops” (32%).

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So which business is trusted most? Technology companies are most trusted with 79% saying they believed tech companies do the right thing. Indian, Chinese and the United States tech companies earn most trust, UK, France and Germany rank lower. Trust in financial services companies and banks soars, and those companies are the least trusted businesses. 47% said they trusted banks to do what is right. 45% saying they trusted financial services companies.

Who do you trust? Would you agree with these Edelman findings?

Memories – History of Disruptive B2B Innovations

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Sorry, if I am getting emotional in this post… After far more than 1.000 posts, there must be one that is more personal than the rest of this blog: Memories.

I haven’t been alive 1851. Well, I am not alone on that one, right…?! No, I haven’t changed the world.
Obviously. Many of the companies on this infographic could not make this happen…

However, in 1999 something happened that I did not expect those days, or when I started my career in the B2B marketing and media world. It was disruptive in my B2B marketing life. Ok, I admit it was no innovation…, maybe some tiny idea and thoughts were those days. It was a milestone for me personally. And a tipping point in my business experience…

Getting an award is something that gives people a career kick. No Grammy. No Oscar. No… whatever. Having an award from the company that is mentioned at the beginning of this chart is something special to me, especially when you were young, inexperienced but eager to become better and better in business. When United Buisness Media bought CMP in 1999, I achieved a Salesperson of the Year award from CMP. Big emotions, big memories, I can tell you…

Seeing JESS3 and Eloqua mention CMP in their history of disruptive B2B Technolgy Innovations infographic brought back these long forgotten memories. I haven’t seen anyone mention CMP for years…

This infographic is not only rewarding the importance of content marketing, it also shows that content marketing will remain to be relevant and thrilling in the future. However, it might shift more and more from text to audio-visual touchpoints? We will see…

PS: Thanks to Mai Nguyen to ping this through to me…

Big Tech Players New Year's Resolution 2012

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What are the plans of the big tech players for 2012? Nitrozac and Snaggy have some great thoughts and ideas, well at least they suggested that this could be their visions, or let’s say their resolutions, or what ever you want to call it. Maybe you want to add something…?

The CEO of the future is social

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This new infographic from CEO.com illustrates that more and more CEOs are figuring out social media and finding great benefits as a result. Some weeks ago, we could see in a study that European business chiefs understand the power of Twitter and support its use these days. It seems Social Media is making its way to the C-levels.

Will the CEO of the future really be more social…? Let’s see…

Innovation study: Is culture or strategy the key to success?

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Obviously, the headline question is not easy to answer. Both elements have their impact on business success. At this years IBM JamCamp, we could hear many presentations why “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and how to turn your business into a social business (i.e. Sandy Carter’s speech) that will drive innovation to new dimensions (and here is some hint how companies might get huge investments for social business realization).

A new study by Strategy& also shows that spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The results from the study illustrate that the most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation. The study surveyed almost 600 innovation leaders in companies around the world, large and small, in every major industry sector.

So what makes a truly innovative company? For sure, a focused innovation strategy, a compelling business strategy, deep customer insight, intelligent networking, as well as a splendid set of bright tactics. These are all elements that help giving your company an innovation boost. Still, the study states that corporate culture ties everything together — the organization’s self-sustaining patterns of behaving, feeling, thinking, and believing.

Still, the results of this year’s Global Innovation 1000 study make clear that only about half of all companies say their corporate culture robustly supports their innovation strategy. Moreover, about the same proportion say their innovation strategy is inadequately aligned with their overall corporate strategy. And although entire industries, such as pharmaceuticals, continue to devote relatively large shares of their resources to innovation, the results are much less successful than they and their stakeholders might hope for.

What I like about this study is that it supports my assumptions and thoughts of the Community Centric Strategy model. Across the board respondents identified “superior product performance” and “superior product quality” as their top strategic goals. And their two most important cultural attributes were “strong identification with the consumer/customer experience” and a “passion/pride in products”.

Statements like the following from the study could be taken as a proof for the future development towards a more cultural business attitude that puts the consumer in the middle of your innovation efforts…

“Our goal is to include the voice of the customer at the basic research level and throughout the product development cycle, to enable our technical people to actually see how their technologies work in various market conditions.” Fred Palensky, Executive Vice President of R&D and CTO, 3M Company

In my presentation at the IBM JamCamp 2011 I made clear that companies and brands need to close the perception gap between consumer’s demand and company goals. If companies don’t respect the 5 C engines of the Community Centric Strategy these two expectations cannot be aligned. We will continue to talk of target-groups instead of consumers that are grouping together in “community centers”. This is more of a cultural development companies need to go through than definable strategic capabillities by companies to drive innovations. By closing both the strategic alignment and culture gaps, companies and brands will better realize their goals and attributes.

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The study results show that companies and brands should rethink the way they drive their innovation strategy. It suggests that the ways R&D managers and corporate decision makers think about their new products and services are critical for success. This includes all aspects how they feel about intangibles such as risk, creativity, openness, and collaboration. When nearly 20% of companies said they didn’t have a well-defined innovation strategy at all, it offers the chance to start anew and with the right approach. The Community Centric Strategy might be one solution for companies to evaluate culture as one of the main drivers to achieve your strategic goals in a modern way of doing business.

The Virtual Handshake

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Marko Greitschus / pixelio.de

When I was a kid, my grandparents had a little pub. Nothing special. Nothing glamorous. Just a comfortable meeting point for friends or business partners to catch up for a drink. The best day always was the “market day”. Merchants were setting up their booths at the marketplace in the little village my grandparents were living in, early in the morning when most people were still snoring in their beds. When their job was done, they popped up at the pub around 7am when their wives took over to sell their goods.

The guests in the pub did not expect very much. A drink was their desire. A tasty sandwich was luxury to them. Competition amoung pubs was tough, even in this little village a long time ago. There were many pubs around in that coal distrinct north of Germany. The owners of the other pubs in the village changed more or less every year, some even earlier. My grandparents’ business stayed for over a decade, until they decided it was time to stop working. The guests loved their attitude, their individual touch, their personalized way of talking to them. My grandparents’ business was successful.

What was the key to their success story?

Before I answer this question, let me ask you something… When did you shake hands last time with a friend, or a business partner? Do you remember? Did you ever think about why we are shaking hands with people? Have you ever not returned a handshake? It is a common habit of introducing ourselves and of saying Goodbye. We just do it. Well, let’s say in the offline world we do it…

Those days, whenever somebody came into my grandparents’ pub, my grandma and granddad gave them a personal handshake, embedded in some small talk about the weather or last nights sports results. The conversation made people feel good, feel wanted, not just being anonymous guests. They created a living room. People started talking with them about their personal hopes, fears, issues. The handshake had broken the ice…

In our social web world of today, customer relationship management and social networking become an increasingly important factor to be maintain a successful business within a more and more challenging and competitive world.

Many relationships today begin with a virtual handshake. So you may ask: What is a virtual handshake? Today, it comes in the format of a comment on a blog post, a LIKE on a status update on a Fanpage, an introduction mail inside a social network, or an invitation to join a community (Facebook or LinkedIn or a company specific).

In the offline world, nobody would turn away and not return the handshake. However, in the online world individuals put effort in terms of writing, talking and engaging with companies and brands, making their brand passion transparent, or just opening their minds to “business” (or privat?) conversations. All of that often before having received a virtual handshake with those companies that are reaching out to them via their -often anonymous- social hubs.

By participating in a community or engaging in conversations, customers take the initiative, they state a case and describe an act of will. Companies tend to forget that this is a virtual handshake. “Hello! Here I am! Look what I am telling you…”.

Many companies and brands do not answer. They don’t reply on social networks. They don’t value the hand that is right in front of them waiting. The hand which feeds them and their business. The free opportunity to connect, collaborate, or convert. Lack of time and resources is the killer of many of their social web activities.

My grandparents never forgot to shake hands with people that came to visit their pub. This was their success story. So simple, right…?

Think about it next time you set up a group, start a community or approach someone on a social network (be it via InMail on LinkedIn or a status update on Facebook). Relationships start with a handshake – whether real or virtual. There just needs to be somebody that returns the handshake. For some this might be a change management process, for some it is just natural attitude towards customers…

Study: C-level executives still unsure how to leverage Social Media for business growth

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It seems to be a love and hate relationship: Executives and Social Media. On the one hand, companies see how critical a social business strategy is for their business. On the other, they still don’t know how to harness the value of the new modern media landscape and the feedback channel online world. This is the insight we get from a survey of C-level executives conducted by Harris Interactive for Capgemini.

The findings, which are part of Capgemini’s Executive Outsourcing Survey, were published with their launch of the social media management service. The survey asked 302 senior executives at Fortune 1000 companies.

The question where to position Social Media inside the company seems to be omnipresent: Marketing? Customer Service? Corporate Communications? Or really change the company to become a social business operation? Does someone have a crystal ball? More than half say that Social Media is a part of their company’s customer care operations. However, 64% of those responded that it is a pure responsibility of their social media marketing department.

Surprisingly enough, 74% executives stated in the study they were not even sure how many employees are dedicated to customer care via the Social Web activities of the company. The value of Social Media can be seen by 57% of responding executives who think that it is “inviting customer input on product and services, lead generation, responding to complaints, internal reporting, and measuring customer satisfaction.”

And it is best to forget the 13% who still believe that Social Media is not important for future success of the company.

Spot On!
The attitude from executives towards Social Media also describes the fact that less than half of executives (41%) are monitoring online conversations about their brand, product and/or services. They only respond to an online conversation when a customer poses a direct question, representing a significant missed opportunity for companies to proactively solicit feedback and enhance the customer experience. The ooportunity to engage with the customer is there but executives (and probably their management teams) need to embrace the opportunity and change their business into a social business strategy and align it with their web strategy team.

The Social Travel Revoluton (Infographic)

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There is not one industry today that is not effected by the way we interact through Social Media. The Swedish start-up Tripl illustrates with a fantastic infographic how much the travel industry is influenced and effected via modern online conversations and check-ins. The necessity for hotels, airlines and restaurants to engage and understand Social Media is obvious: 50 Mio. reviews have been created on tripadvisor only 495.000 rated hotels!

Some key facts…
– On a daily basis, 72% of social network users access their social network sites while travelling
– The top 5 airlines have 2,566,000 fans on Facebook
– 200 Mio. passengers will board GOGO-WiFi flights in 2011
– Traffic growth of travel companies from social networks? Facebook 69% and Twitter 46%!

…and that is only 7% using mobile internet while tarvelling internationally!

Honesty – The ambient campaign driver that brings virtues back…?

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Some years ago, Billy Joel sang his song “Honesty” and I always remember this one first line… “Honesty is such a lonely word. Everyone is so untrue.”. Apparently, it seems that Billy was not quite right with his statement (although he took a different approach to his somng argumentation). It is interesting to see that more and more campaigns seem to pitch with that virtue proof…

I wrote about the interesting HonestTea campaign. That campaign not only proved the value of Earned Media but more importantly how honest people in the world were. And it also pointed out that honesty as a virtue might become a wonderful topic for campaigns – a real ambient campaign driver.

The National Australia Bank (NAB Group) is another example how companies come up with that topic. Some while ago, the NAB was shaking up the financial services industry by encouraging the customers of other banks to “break up” with their bank. The campaigns continues now to a next level now…

The NAB is challenging the honesty of consumers with a series of social experiments on the virtue of honesty. The honesty project of the NAB proves that Australians are very well behaved and very honest.

The bank is publishing the results in little clips. Watch the results…

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This modern ambient approach to make a change in the communication to consumers from banks I found quite refreshing, compared to the traditional annoying and boring print letters I still get today. If banks open up to customers with some clever ideas like these it will be a perfect way to get Earned Media which leads to Owned Media and puts a question mark behind the honest value of “Paid Media”. And that is a fact, that is my honest truth.

PS:: What is your view on the campaign? The honesty approach? The value of honesty from a bank’s perspective?

Google Plus – When the leaders chase the leader's strategy…

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As Facebook and Twitter are becoming stronger and stronger, the search giant Google had to do something about it. Especially, after Google Buzz did not really take off. Google more or less had to announce some new social networking tool as a leading technology company.

Now the baby is born. It is called Google Plus… So we are going from Google Buzz to Google Plus. Sounds similar, doesn’t it? However, it isn’t…

With Google Plus the brand wants to “make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life”. A video explains how Google Plus works and you can decide if this is for the classic user, or just for the advanced web nerds…

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This example illustrates how leading tech brands are challenging the success of other leaders from leading tech companies. It looks as if they cannot afford to miss out on a leading trend, need to start and copy, and then create their own “Me too” product or solution. However, the challenge is to create the simplicity, design, user friendliness and fascination around that new platform. And if a companies strength is technology and development of software, then it will become difficult to challenge a leader’s strategy that relies on the ease of human behavior, their conversations and interactions… and vice versa.

Still, they all do…

Spot On!
Google Plus offers a bundle of exciting and interesting features that other platforms don’t have in that evolved technological perfection (yet). The technology is good, no doubt. It has great functionality. OK. However, the question will remain if it will become a killer for Facebook as another challenging social network platform? Google’s leaders will definitely chase the strategy and tactical efforts of the Facebook & Co. to be part of the social networking game in the future. Nevertheless Bruce Lee once said: “Simplicity is the key to brilliance”. From a strategic business perspective, I would add: If simplicity of a Me Too product cannot trump the leader, ask yourself if the users will benefit from it. For Google Plus, I personally doubt it…