If there are more and more people engaging with brands on the social web, the opportunity to collaborate with the social community becomes a lucrative meaning for brands – and their product strategists. These managers could open up a new “external R&D department” when they use social technology in order to increase product innovations by integrating their customers in the process of product creation and development.
A recent Forrester study of 181 consumer product strategy professionals from companies around the globe states that product strategists in companies strive for social innovations. Though Forrester makes clear that social innovation is not yet where it should be from the product strategist’s point-of-view. The study shows the familiar picture that we see in more or less all departments in companies: It is still early days also for product strategists to work with social media. And only some leverage social media in favor of social innovations.
Still it seems to be a big challenge for companies to find their way from being engaged with their customers on the social web to understanding the impacts and chances to social innovation management. This becomes clear when we see that 83% of the companies use social media to drive customer conversation but then not even half of those have product teams that influence product design, creation, or strategy by using social media.
It is also surprising for me to acknowledge that it is not the resources that are lacking. More than two-thirds of the responding product strategists have dedicated social managers or teams. On the one hand, it lacks the right technological connection bridges between the different company departments. On the other hand, when not more than one-fifth have formal policies in their companies for sharing data from social technologies with product teams, the road to succeed with social co-creation efforts seems to be long.
Spot On!
The best way to produce the right products for your customers is to ideally let them inspire a business. In the past, we had focus-groups which were cost-intensive, time-limited and time-consuming. The concept of social creation and social innovation can work on a day-to-day innovation platform. Just think of Dell Ideastorm, MyStarbucksidea, Adobe’s ideas lab or the IKEA Hacker approach. Nevertheless, companies should be aware that customers very often need or want some kick-back for their inspirational efforts. So, in my eyes the point of giving away some form of incentive will be necessary to get such communities started and make them sustainable.
Or will customers in the future co-create for free to receive better product-price-quality? What do you think?
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One of the great things about being a busines blogger is that you have the opportunity to exchange thoughts and views with interesting and successful business people. People you would never get to known in life but then meet them for a drink, for dinner or -which I really appreciate- for lunch. Sometimes you are the initiator and sometimes it is them who do the first step to invest time in networking and in exchanging “brand and business philosophy”.
In the end, it is all about conversation, and conversation is key for building trust.
Last week, I had one of these comfortable meetings when Aedhmar Hynes, CEO at the PR agency Text 100, spent two hours of her busy time with two her nice colleagues and me in Germany in the restaurant lounge Schweiger2. Apart from enjoying a wonderful menue (should have written the review in English), we exchanged our views on the latest development concerning the challenges for brands on the social web in the future.
In order to share some of her valuable and deep knowledge, Aedhmar summarized her view of the impact of social media on brands for us.
The funny thing is that the restaurant definitely won two “fans” for their delicious showroom cooking, received a positive review and it would be interesting to track the offline word-of-mouth buzz the restaurant gets from us. One of the reasons why I asked her later on, what she things about the power of the brand-vangelists (or brand-advocates) and how to leverage those for business.
Just before I recorded these statements, she said “Openness and authenticity are the things that drive brands”, and I could not agree more. Nevertheless, I think brands still have a lot to learn to make this real from a customers point of view.
Would you agree?
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Can social media have a psychological influence on your customers? According to Dr. Rachna Jain it can if we see it from a perspective of spreading content the viral way. This, she shows seven strategies companies can employ to help their content succeed.
Ever wondered how search results (SEO) and your input in the social web support your web-strategy? Adam Singer explains 10 reasons why social should enforce your future SEO strategy… and he underlines his theory with a nice and convincing graphic.
Twitter is on an all-time high at the moment. Nobody can see the end of this hype. But don’t forget that Twitter is not everything in your life, your content strategy, and for your web-strategy. Lean back and enjoy a collection of 40 funny Twitter comics that Yogesh Mankani collected. My favorite is this one as it tells us not to mix up offline and online situations. The Cluetrain manifest should not get access to your personal life…
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We have asked ourselves this question when talking about the future working place and personal branding on the Lotus JamCamp: How effective are corporate social media policies? This study by security solutions provider nCircle shows again that 39% of the companies still ban social media usage at work. Reason: Security risks! While F-Secure finds that more than 54% use Facebook at work…
It is about time to find some proof and more case studies illustrating the effectiveness of social networking at work. Especially, when teens expect social networking access at work…
If you think about the alignment of social media and your brand, there should be more to consider: 25 things for example, thinks The Financial Brand.
“Bread and Cicuses” to the people. McDonalds knows how to get the customers in their shops. Connecting, offline, online and mobile with one campaign…
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In the last four weeks, some of the users of The Strategy Web might have seen a small icon on the right hand side of my blog called ‘SocialSpace’. You might have wondered what it is. Or how to use it. Here comes the answer. Now, that the team around the eblizz founders, Jeanette Okwu and Martin Wawrusch, has completed the integration of the social software tool, I will introduce you to a technology that I would call the next social shopping extension for future business.
Social networks are on an all-time high. Corporate websites and shops loose out on traffic and referential linking as people start talking, connecting and linking via social networks like Facebook, Twitter or other social networks. SEO doesn’t work here as closed front doors don’t allow access for SEO tactics. And with the massive rise of social networks, especially Facebook, the question comes up how to bridge the lack of a connection between social networks and homepages or shops.
eblizz offers this solution. It brings social networks and brands together. In a way that social Networks become an integral part of brand websites – be it homepages, shops or blogs. For now, eblizz starts with Facebook – but Martin told me, other networks will follow.
With eblizz users can interact with their social networks without leaving branded sites. Content can be shared with friends on Facebook. Users can immediately comment from the website they are on. Or store products visually in ‘The Shoebox’ and keep it for later purpose or use. Content can be, or as eblizz calls it, has to be ‘liberated’
What is the benefit of eblizz? Business perspective Think about it. Prosumers create masses of content on the social web. Consuming that content, prosumers realize that brands become more and more exchangable. This causes problems for companies. They need to increase efforts to make their brand get heard. So ideally, companies make use of recommendation marketing to use the buzz of their brand fans.
User perspective Consumers often find things like nice products in online-shops. Or great music. Or funny videos. Or great pictures. And they want to recommend this to friends they are connected with on social networks. Today, it is impossible to take your friends from homepage to homepage, and easily share that content via a social network with one click.
Imagine your Facebook friends follow you from website to website. And, when you want to recommend something to them, you don’t have to change browser windows. You don’t have to cut-and-paste content. You just drag and drop it to the relevant person. Watch the short explanation and tell me if this isn’t really cool…
Companies pay a fee to get their websites eblizzed – no matter if it is a shop, a homepage or a blog. Their sites will be defragmented like a cake. This makes it easy for prosumers to share and recommend relevant pieces of content of a website: videos, links, pictures, etc.
Once a site is eblizzed, users find a button called SocialSpace – the button I started talking about at the beginning. The user logs in with on the question-marked face with their social network account. The SocialSpace opens up in a small picture on the website they are on. The users see their profile, the friends and updates immediately. They can also search for friends. And, they can immediately interact with their social network friends.
Users can even ‘bookmark’ interesting content in their Shoe-Box. The Shoe-Box is a place for personal content belongings. Here the users keep very special things in their SocialSpace. Maybe to recomment or remember a product or present for a Christmas or birthday in the future.
eblizz offers a next generation website customer service. eblizz integrates social network interaction in companies websites. And eblizz will become the driver of social commerce efforts by enabling engagement and brand buzz.
“Prosumers” create masses of content on the internet, including blog posts, product reviews and ratings. Producing all that content, prosumers begin to blur the lines between brands, making them more interchangeable. Not good for individual brands. That’s why companies need to increase efforts to distinguish their brand from all the rest. One way is to capitalize on “recommendation marketing” — build the buzz created by their brand fans. eblizz can help.
And here is how it works…
Consumers often discover products that they love online. And great music, funny videos and awesome pictures. They want to recommend them to their social-network friends. Today, it is impossible to take social-network friends from homepage to homepage, and easily share that content via a social network with one click. This is a universal social web problem!
So, imagine your Facebook friends follow you from website to website. And, when you want to recommend something to them, you don’t have to change browser windows. You don’t have to cut-and-paste content. You just drag and drop it to the relevant person.
eblizz was created to make things easier for anyone who wants to recommend content, product and services to any or all of their social-network friends. Websites and blogs sign up to get “eblizzed”. The fee seems very reasonable. Once a site is eblizzed, a button appears on the site’s homepage called “SocialSpace.” When a user logs in with their social network account information, Facebook for example, the SocialSpace opens up into a small picture that displays the user’s Facebook profile, Facebook friends (and their pictures!) and updates that are happening on facebook right from the website the user is on. The user can then drag and drop anything from the website right onto the Facebook page of any or all of their Facebook friends.
The user can also ‘bookmark’ interesting content from the website by dragging into their “ShoeBox.” This content stays in the Shoe Box for the user’s later use, can be edited and also shared.
Spot On!
So for me, the reason for a website to get “eblizzed” is simple. eblizz integrates social network interaction for all the users who visit a website, making it easy for them to recommend and share the website’s content. That’s how eblizz helps companies distinguish their brands. What is your take on it? Maybe you want to test it with my eblizz SocialSpace button? Drag and drop me your best videos on advertisement, funny pictures, shopping tips or cool texts. Looking forward to it!
And sure, let me know what you think about eblizz…
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An apocalytic vision of the advertising future? A prevision of advertising mistakes? Or just a gag of a digital event-organizer that wants to wake up the advertising industry? Or does the event need more attendees? Maybe it is just a simple commercial clip? Or is it even meant to be spread the viral way (well done then, it seems to work, right…)? A video clip that allows so many questions, is worth being mentioned.
This video commercial could also be just a short film to demonstrate the creativity of the co-production companies FITC, Saatchi & Saatchi Canada, Lunch, and Tool. For their next flash event in Toronto the FITC has started a remarkable commercial ad that will make the advertising agency world think… hopefully.
The spot introduces an advertising agency that does not exist but might have been the last agency on earth “mps+c worldwide”. And the story is told just after the last employees have left the agency. A nice idea, right?
Allow some remarks…
If I had had the idea, I had tried to set up a community website for this fictional agency (the creators did not… at least for now) and created a charity story or some alike fiction around it for all people working in the ad agency industry.
It could have been a nice approach. Especially for advertising people to get ideas out of the cultural advertising change trap. Agencies could have collaborated and networked. Agencies could have… But, do agencies really want that? Collaboration, communication, creativity in an open world?
I had tried to integrate social comments function to enable, engage and enter the conversation directly on the website. If you understand how the customers are moving along the web, then why not living the idea with the viral… (is the reason a lack of resources and community management for such a sustainable idea?)
The increasing trend on the web is described quite well and companies should be thinking about this customer change in web use: “Internet Viewing, Facebook Updating and Obsessive Blogging”.
The production companies of this video clip could done much, much more with such a nice idea. Oh yes… But the message sounds great. Should we say that agencies should really, really, really wake up? Oh yes… And I am asking myself what comes after the last advertising agency has gone? Oh yes… Produce another film? Why? Success is never final! (Winston Churchil)
The change we see is a cultural one with high social impact on the world we live in. And companies should start seeing the web from a business-strategic point of view and understand, find and align their web-strategy with it. Companies should stop producing TV ads or banners without any call-to-action. And starting Twitter streams like “clowns” is definitely not the right way to approach the future of customer communication…
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Ellen Davis interviewed Julie Bornstein (Senior Vice President, Sephora) about the ROI of social media – an interesting case study of a successful retail brand.
The new Apple iPad commercial shows all the features of the product in 30 seconds and with it the future of “infotainment” – and why it is better than Kindle and the likes.
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Die meisten meiner Follower und Fans werden mitbekommen haben, daß mir die Verwirklichung des Paid Service Gedankens sehr am Herzen liegt. Es wird Zeit, daß sich auch wertvoller Content vermarkten lässt.
Aber bitte nicht die Diskussion um Paid Content, sondern weiterhin zukünftig bei Paid Service bleiben. Was die Verlage nun über Jahre nicht geschafft haben, will nun Peter Sunde schaffen – Gründer von The Pirate Bay. Sein Projekt heißt Flattr.
Flattr ist ein Social Micro-Payment Vision, die bisher noch nicht am Gedankenstart war. Aber sicherlich nicht nur den Micro-Content Anbietern gefallen dürfte…
Flattr läuft in der Beta und man kann sich als Content Anbieter um einen Account bewerben – Email Adresse abgeben genügt. Gleich vorweg: Reich wird man damit nicht!
Wie funktioniert Flattr?
Der Internetnutzer zahlt einen fixen monatlichen Obulus. Wer die Seite eines Content-Anbieters besucht, findet neben den Inhalten einen Flattr-Button. Wenn der Inhalt gefällt, wird geklickt. Am Monatsende werden die Klicks des Nutzers gezählt und der eingespielte Betrag entsprechend dann unter allen Empfängern anteilsmäßig verteilt.
Spot On!
Die Idee klingt gut. Der Teufel steckt in der Umsetzung und die hat es in sich. “Every month the Flattr User pays a small fee.” Wer bezahlt denn da eigentlich? Eine Vorauszahlung für Content, den ich vielleicht gar nicht bekomme oder konsumiere? Soll das eine Art Donation-System sein? Hmmm, ist das ein gangbarer Ansatz?
Und dann mag ich gar nicht ausdenken, wie sich das auf die positiven Kommentare in Blogs und RTs auswirkt. “Hey, ich hab schon bezahlt. Lassen wir das mit dem RT oder Kommentar mal…”
Oder liege ich mit meiner Sichtweise falsch…? Nochmal die Idee ist irgendwie cool, aber auch bis zu Ende gedacht?
The customer service world around us is changing with the social web, new technologies, and especially mobile apps. The question is how much this is effecting our perspective of the real offline world around us. A new technology is evolving that is beginning to connect the offline and the virtual world from a customer perspective as it will offer some new form of customer service. The term is Augmented Reality (AR).
It is a technology that brings your visual experience and information from the web or networks together, and by doing this enriches daily situations with relevant data from the web – and in more and more cases the information provided will come from the user.
The competition for users and companies has already begun. We have augmented reality browsers like Layar, explaining us instantly which famous buildings are surrounding us. Or, another AR browser named Wikitude that starts to become one of the most-wanted AR browser apps (not only for iPhone users) and gets nominated for one award after another. With wikitude.me shops and service providers of all sorts can already use this cool service to make themselves visible in the offline world by geo-tagging their office or location with simple online entries. If somebody is new in a city, this person can find a laundry or the next wine shop much easier in the future – just by using an AR browser app.
There are products like T-shirts projecting interactive games with AR. Digital cosmetic mirrors where women in cosmetic shops can see in real-time what a new eye-liner or make-up is looking good at them without testing it in reality. Adidas will launch a series of shoes, each printed with an AR code on the tongue which give you access to an interactive game that changes on a montly basis. Is this the customer service of the future?
Now, just imagine what this technology could do for customer service in the future. Wouldn’t it be a positive effect when we get immediate feedback on health information about the food and drinks we consume?
The following short film, called Augmented (Hyper)Reality, shows us a world some time ahead, where augmented reality is part of our daily offline life. We see what the actor sees, from his own perspective, and get to know the oppotunities that AR might offer to our daily life. OK, if we agree to getting networked completely…
The interesting acknowledgement for companies will be the advertising part of the film – although in some way it might be shocking…
Spot On!
The complete overkill seems to be the massive sea of logos flooding our sight in the beginning. Although the above examples might seem an exaggerated view of a futuristic branding scenario, it gives some idea on how the world might change customer care in the future. And you never know if this will be really happening, or not. Today, this all might sound strange to us but just think about how common the use of artifical medical help is for us, or how often we use the navigation system in cars today.
And then, think about the options when combining location based advertising with augmented reality. This opens a complete new world of customer care…
Don’t you think?
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In the last 12 years, the credo of my business life was “Customer First!”. It surprises and disappoints me when I experience poor customer service. Or when I hear from unhappy friends, colleagues or relatives telling me stories about how companies treat the centre of their business: customers.
Last week, when I was thinking about how to leverage this to a higher level, I came across a modern business strategy vision by Ranjay Gulati, Harvard Business School professor and author of the book “Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business“. In the following video Gulati tells us how to deliver what customers really want.
Reorienting vs. Reorganizing
Ranjay Gulati sees the fundamental changes appropriate for some movement in company processes. Customers have more information, more choices on products while companies are facing global competition. So, businesses have to think about their business (not only marketing or sales efforts!) and how it operates.
Redefining vs. Reinventing
The analysis of the customer base might show that the website is designed for male while the majority of the users might be female. So, we need to ask questions like “Who are my customers?”, “How do my customers shop?”, or “What do they really want?”.
Gulati explains with the latest success of Best Buy how women and men shop. At that point, he also hints to the upsale opportunity of recommendations.
Success for businesses, he believes, comes from “Inside-Out-Perspective”. Companies don’t have to produce everything themselves but need to make the client happy like Apple with the iPhone. 90% of the inputs are not made by Apple. The same occurs to the apps in the Apple store where Apple basically just orchestrates the customers wishes.
“Make this identity shift. I am not here to sell what I produce – I am here to solve a set of customer problems (…) and actually acting on that!”
How to get to a customer-centric business…
1. Shifting mindset: the intention to solve customer problems.
2. Sense of curiosity and humility: the wish to understand your customers.
3. Make a creative leap: the will to understand their needs.
4. Align the elements in the organization: the motivation to live the customer-centric business.
Spot On!
Interested to get your view on this modern business strategy. Let us know what you think about customer-centric business. Or do you think the social web will be leading us towards this business process anyway?
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If there are more and more people engaging with brands on the social web, the opportunity to collaborate with the social community becomes a lucrative meaning for brands – and their product strategists. These managers could open up a new “external R&D department” when they use social technology in order to increase product innovations by integrating their customers in the process of product creation and development.
