Marketing Influence & Thought Leadership

The Year of the Social Customer has Arrived & My Top Ten 2011 Social Media Predictions

2011 is the year of the social customer. Never before has the power of one been more powerful in the history of business as we know it. You cannot hide from the social customer as I have demonstrated on several occasions with big brands like UPS and Starwood. Those of you who read my blogs last year know that I became a social customer, blogged about it and demonstrated how it can impact brand, reputation, product and service. I must admit I had a lot of fun becoming a social customer.

 

My Top Ten Social Media Predictions for 2011

1. The power of one has arrived.
2. If you are not a social business you are not in business.
3. The social media police have arrived.
4. Mobile applications will provide a new platform that enhances the business to customer experience.
5. B2C, B2P and B2B Marketing will be challenged to create and manage thought leadership.
6. More and more people will begin interacting with news reports and journalism creating a totally new platform for information exchange and influence.
7. Plagiarism and (now called content scraping) will rage out of control.
8. Data, data everywhere, analytical tools will be key to controlling brand reputation.
9. Everyone is a journalist

10.  Measuring and identifying influencers will become more difficult.

The Power of One http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/30085/united-parcel-service-gets-social-media-customer-service 

“Encouraging illusions of personal power in this way is ethically questionable.” This is a quote from a comment on my Social Predator blog late last year. The last time l looked 834 people had seen my reviews on Yelp and hundreds viewed my Trip advisor reviews posted during my travels in 2010. And one tweet solved a yearlong issue with UPS. Today you can check on the reputation of nearly any product and/or service on Yelp and other sites including piercing and tattoo parlors and auto service. I rest my case.

If you are not a social business you are not in business. http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/25685/why-you-need-know-your-social-customers-because-they-control-your-brand

This is really a no brainer and if you aren’t already aware of your reputation in the world of the social customer and aren’t interacting with them I am concerned about your business. Think about how to leverage social business to build yours and demonstrate thought leadership through blogging. Know who your social customers are! And remember in business there are always customers that you want to send to the competition, social business is no different.

The Social Media Police have arrived http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/32103/social-predator

After nearly thirty years of writing my content was censored for the first time by my own company in 2011. The Social Predator voted one of the best blogs by members of this site was removed from the highlight list because some “marketing people” thought it was too aggressive for my company SAP. Get ready for more of this as those who can write begin expressing their opinion, which may not be what some in the company want. But it might be what the company needs! In today’s a sea of words, blogs and social media peer groups no one remembers your name unless you say something memorable.

Mobile Applications http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/28039/social-customer-goes-mobile

The explosion of inexpensive mobile applications has help drive Apple’s market cap beyond Microsoft’s to $317 B. I really like Vogue magazine’s new stylist application and the way it interacts with the consumer. This is the way of the future. Last year I even tried to call coyotes in the desert with my IPhone’s Quik hunting calls application, it didn’t work but you get the point. The mobile buying frenzy during the holidays reflects this.

B2C, B2P and B2B Marketing will be challenged to create and manage thought leadership. http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore/27449/four-cs-social-media-marketing-content-connection-communications-and-community

This will be key as many marketing organizations are not organized and/or have the talent to create thought leadership let alone manage it. Facebook fan pages are not a simple answer here but they are a beginning for many companies but how will you leverage them?

More and more people will begin interacting with news reports and journalism creating a totally new platform for information exchange and influence.

When I read news now I am amazed at how many people comment and I have begun commenting, organizations now have instant gratification when it comes to news reports and I find the comments fascinating. This offers a new platform for interactive journalism.

Plagiarism

As a scientist by original training I have always been sensitive about people stealing my ideas and yes this year there has been another case of someone stealing my original content in “the five Ps of marketing.” The link below is to a blog that my colleague Don Bulmer wrote last November 1,  If Facebook were a Country http://everydayinfluence.typepad.com/everyday_influence/2010/11/if-facebook-were-a-country.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+EverydayInfluence+(Everyday+Influence)

This idea showed up in the San Francisco Chronicle Business Report January 11, 2011, entitled “The many facets of Facebook,” the Facebook Nation, I mean this is kind of disgusting in my view and reflects that journalists are scraping content.

Data, data everywhere, analytical tools will be key to controlling brand reputation and predict social customer behavior.

In the first wave of social business many companies quickly assembled reputation and brand protection swat teams to monitor social business. New intelligent monitoring tools have emerged and many IT vendors are now integrating these tools to identify and monitor influencer and social customers into CRM products. Many more will emerge this year and some will begin to employ predictive analytics, what will my social customers do?

Everyone is a Journalist http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/29302/everyone-journalist

This was my most popular blog out of the 37 that I wrote during 2010, and when you think about it if you can blog you are a journalist. Although many blogs are written by people that really have no place blogging because of lack of experience, their voice can be heard and their opinion felt. Journalists would argue that you might not have the training and research background to provide objective opinion, I don’t agree with them.

Measuring and identifying influencers will become more difficult. http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/30607/measure-me-profiling-social-media-influencers-analysis-paralysis

This is a continual battle and using search engines is not the answer. Blocking and tackling still needs to be done, you need to go to conferences and look beyond their followers they may not be who buys your products and services. Look closely at their ecosystem of influence and how it aligns with you company’s business. http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/30873/ecosystem-influence

Net/Net

Proctor and Gamble is way ahead of the pack when it comes to understanding the social customer, they even build places for us to live and interrelate! An article last week’s in the NYT “As the Web turns “called them out as having a reputation of unusual marketing; I think it’s called modern marketing. Their newest site ManoftheHouse.com is again genius marketing, but what is surprising about this article is that both analysts quoted don’t get it. Forrester’s Josh Bernoff called it the new version of “As the World Turns” a 20^th century version of the soap opera. We are not surprised by this after Forrester prohibited many of its analysts from blogging and building their brand which ultimately enhances theirs. Even Mr. Oywang of the Altimiter Group doesn’t see the big picture here; he said all of these discussions are already happening on Facebook and they should be careful about overusing the brand. Really?

This is no different than what P&G did with the mommy network and teenage girls and they are clearly targeting a market and will undoubtedly leverage this into supply chain logistics, brand building, price and product testing etc. etc. Get it; the analysts don’t, as I have always maintained if you don’t know the market better than the analysts you are in big trouble. Until next time I wish you get selling and marketing in the millennium!

A list of my social customer blogs for 2010.

• Social Media Rules of Engagement and $10,000 at Tweet December 6: 795 Views
• The Social Predator November 9: 1294 Views
• Measure Me: Profiling Social Media Influencers & Analysis Paralysis September 29: 2225 Views
• United Parcel Service Gets Social Media & Customer Service September 14: 2511 Views
• Everyone is a Journalist August 31, 2010: 3948 Views
• The Social Customer Goes Mobile   July 28: 1001 Views
• 4 Cs of Social Media Marketing: Content, Connections, Communications and Community July 16: 1720
• Why you need to know your Social Customers: Because They control Your Brand June 21: 1002 Views
• Designing a Social Media Peer Group For Best Buy May 4: 467 Views
• The Economics of Social Business April 22: 474 Views
• Is the Social Media Bubble Bursting or will the Tsunami Continue March 30: 343 Views
• Thought Leadership and the Social Customer March 18: 242 Views
• The B2B Social Media Olympics March 9 2010: 614 Views
• On the Front Lines of Social CRM February 18: 548 Views
• The New Mobile Social Customer is Here are You Ready For Them? February 2: 118 views
• I am a Social Customer January 15, 2010: 417 Views

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Social Predator & Your Brand

I have evolved beyond the social customer; I am now a social predator. I am more mobile, the weapons I use to find and grade your business and services are now at my finger tips always. I use a rich suite of applications on my IPhone that lets me find you anywhere I am. It doesn’t matter if you are a theatre, pharmacy, gas station, hospital, bank, hotel, bar or restaurant, I can find you in seconds and read about your products and services. I am your brand’s best friend or your worst nightmare, you decide. I own your brand. I can rip right through your brand so fast you will bleed to death before you get to me. And hundreds of people in my social networks will read all about your greatness or your weakness before you can do anything about it.

My Weapons Include:

• My smart mobile device, IPhone 4
• AroundMe  gets me to you and knows where I am in any city
• Yelp provides me with an instant gratification platform that can make your brand bleed.
• TripAdvisor provides me with an audience in the thousands that trusts me.
• FaceBook and Twitter connect me directly to my networks globally and now my friends read my trustworthy reviews from Yelp and TripAdvisor here.
• BC reader my latest IPhone app lets me scan your business card quickly into my contacts.

You don’t own your brand experience anymore the social predators do. In the swamp under my tree lay the discarded carcasses of many brands that did not see me coming; only a few noticed me and reached out to me. They paid the price in bad reviews for shabby service and products and never knew why the customers went to a competitor. In many ways I am your competitor but I do not seek bad service and yearn to write about it. I have the simplest of taste, I only want the best. In fact most of my reviews of your products and services have been positive, and if you look closely most of the social predator brethren’s reviews are of the same ilk. And most importantly I can do nearly all of this without a significant investment, Yelp is free as is TripAdvisor and so is AroundMe, but I did pay for my IPhone and some of the apps.

When I joined TripAdvisor in March I would never have imagined it now has over 40 million reviews; here are my most recent TripAdvisor stats and hundreds of people had read my reviews, I know because TripAdvisor sends me the stats.

Trip Advisor Reviews:

 November 4, 2010 Carmel Ranch: One of the Best Experiences in California and Best Value

Rating 5.0

Oct 15 2010 Berkeley: Hotel Shattuck Plaza: There is No Service like No Service

Rating 2.0

July 14 2010: Medford: Rogue Regency Inn: Great Value and Location

Rating 4.0

July 13 2010: Portland : Westin Portland: Over Priced Without Air Conditioning and Service

Rating 2.0

June 11 2010: New York City Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers: Shabby and Unsecure

Rating 3.0

May 21 2010: Orlando Hilton: Elegance in the Humditiy: Rating 5.0

April 30 2010: Bloomington: Sofitel: Rating 5.0

March 8 2010 Houston: The Houstonian: Class in Houston: Rating 5.0

March 8 2010: Healdsburg: DuChamp Class in Healdsburg: Rating 4.0

 

On Yelp I am known as the "The Guy from Gloucester" nearly 700 people have reviewed my profile, here are my stats from Yelp. I have reviewed 38 restaurants, and have posted six review updates. Below is the synopsis of my reviews which I believe are very fair.

 

 

 

Net/Net

 

Know your social customers; there are many more of us every day. As a consumer of products and services, I feel tremendously empowered by the ability to express my opinion in the hope of changing a poor experience into a better one. I want more value for my money in this age of global economic restructuring, because now I have morphed into a new consumer, and I can be your social predator if you ignore me.

 

Earlier this year I became a social customer and posted two blogs about my experiences I am a Social Customer “Know Me You Get My Business and I Promote Yours” http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/25670/i-am-social-customer, and I quickly became a mobile social customer, The Social Customer Goes Mobile, http://thesocialcustomer.com/peterauditore1/28039/social-customer-goes-mobile.

 

I feel even more empowered now by the fact that hundreds of people will see my reviews and some will trust my judgment. Last Friday I had a poor service experience with a manager in the wine department at a high end super market, I Yelped it, but have not gotten a response back yet. Many businesses are not prepared for the social customer, let alone the social predator. In the course of reviewing ten hotels and writing 38 restaurant reviews I have been contacted only three times by the business I reviewed, The Sheraton and Towers in New York City gets it, so does La Costanera a Peruvian restaurant in California and The Bastille Café and Bar in Ballard WA, gets it. Why don’t you? Knowing the social customer is no doubt a competitive advantage today. Until next time I wish you great marketing and selling in the millennium.

 

 

The Ecosystem of Influence

Social networks are radically changing the way we do business and are a new ecosystem of influence. They are virally creating communities within communities that are driving brand recognition and experience, product innovation and everything else associated with communications.  Social networks facilitate and automate vast interactions, connections and networks of people by enabling collaboration with colleagues, clients and suppliers anywhere and at any time. This new ecosystem almost completely eliminates the need for travel, and incorporates a rich suite of evolving Web 2.0 applications. Most importantly, however, within this new ecosystem there are individual influencer ecosystems with their own dynamics interrelationships, characteristics and influence models.

The Global Bazaar

The impact of these far-reaching social networks on business is becoming clearer every day as millions of consumers, partners, suppliers and businesses discuss and share their brand experience. Enter the new business to person (B2P) paradigm. Mohan Sawhney, author of The Global Brain reinforces this in his book, “social customers are driving innovation, they are empowered and collaborative, they are the drivers and initiators of innovation and are increasingly viewed as a strategic asset to companies. Today’s customer is looking for a personalized experience and relationship, demanding solutions rather than products,” in what he calls the global Bazaar.

As a former marine biologist I am often intrigued by how often ecological terms are used to describe business. The term symbiosis is often used to describe a business process, event or association that is viewed a synergistic or favorable. Symbiosis is not necessarily a good thing as parasitism and mutualism are also forms of symbiosis. So sometimes I have to laugh about the use ecological terms as metaphors or analogies in business because they don’t make sense. But let’s get back to the concept of an ecosystem of influence. First let’s define an ecosystem here is the scientific definition and my definition of a social media ecosystem.

Scientific Definition: An ecological system, a natural unit of living and nonliving components which interact to form a stable system in which a cyclic interchange of materials takes place between living and nonliving units, Dictionary of Biology, 1971.

Social Media Definition: A highly collaborative global area network of interconnected machines and people who communicate, collaborate and spread influence at the business velocity of the Internet.

 

Observation is King

When studying a biological ecosystem there are many parameters that have to be identified observed and quantified, the same goes for modeling an influencer ecosystem. The most important activity to conduct during and evaluation of an ecosystem is observation. This is paramount. Observing interactions and interrelationships within the ecosystem unveils its dynamics. But remember another important aspect of any modeling exercise is, understanding that there are always unpredictable and unmeasureable parameters and also influencers.

The Influencer’s Ecosystem

• Economic market conditions in which the influencer exists
• Geography global, regional and/or local reach of the influencer
• Competitors who don’t agree with the influencer
• Other Influencers who think the same and are part of his network
• Partners who support the influencer
• Customers who consume influencer content and trust it
• Vendors who work with the influencer
• Channels of influence, Facebook, twitter, blogs etc.

 

So let’s model the dynamics, interactions and interrelationships of Paul Greenberg a prominent influencer in the world of CRM and SCRM influence. Most notably Paul is the author of CRM at the Speed of Light and is one of the most prolific writers in the industry and it seems like he is competing with Ram Charan for world’s most traveled business influencer. What makes Paul successful is of course his knowledge and insights into everything CRM, but what separates him from the traditional one man boutique research and consulting house is the ecosystem that he has built around him.

Paul is also a visionary and this is something that I don’t see in the ranks of traditional market research companies anymore and his work on the concept of social CRM is way ahead of the pack. In fact his knowledge and use of social media as a channel of influence is a best practice in the industry for any influencer. One of the key advantages that Paul has in the market is business agility, he is not confined by any management team and/or antiquated culture that is holding back many of the traditional market research companies when it comes to social media. 

I have been working with Paul now for three years and here are some of my observations:

• He is a major influencer in everything CRM and is the father of our newest acronym SCRM and he participates in a highly competitive global industry where the market conditions vary with geography.
• He is global and is asked to speak at events globally and consults and advises companies on everything CRM and now SCRM.
• There are some influencers that think that customer experience management is more important than CRM.
• Paul has an ecosystem of influencers around him that he leverages including traditional market research companies; however, he differentiates himself by understanding the business value of technology and how to apply it to achieve business objectives.
• One of the most powerful aspects of Paul’s influence is the ecosystem of influencers around him including the conference and associations he participates in, and the CRM playaz. http://crmplayaz.com/
• Most CRM partners and vendors work with Paul in some capacity leveraging his insights and influence.
• Paul has a huge following on Twitter, he is always on Facebook and his ZDnet CRM blog is the most read in the world.
• The majority of the information that Paul provides insights on is accurate and trustworthy.

Net/Net

Last month I posted a blog entitled Everyone is a Journalist and Paul’s ecosystem picked it up and broadcasted it through their Twitter and Facebook channels, before I knew it I had over 3000 readers. This demonstrates the power of his ecosystem. People are joining and participating in social media peer group and communities globally and are forming ecosystems of influence of their own. Until next time I wish you great selling and marketing in the millennium.  

 

 

 

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Facebook in the Experience Economy & Cephalopods Pelagic Raptors of the Deep

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore’s book, The Experience Economy 1999, was a harbinger of the end of the services economy, which according to these authors peaked some years ago. As observers of the rapidness of commoditization in nearly all markets and business they were vaticinators of the experience economy we are now realizing in social media. The social media tsunami is fueling the experience economy as people, groups, customers, partners, companies, and governments and many other organizations are interacting and forming interrelationships via the social media peer groups in new and unforeseen Web 2.0 ways.

The societal and anthropological aspects of social media peer groups are just now beginning to be understood and the ramifications of these interrelationships are just being felt. These new platforms are enabling communications that leads to interrelationships between people, and groups that has never been seen before. They now enable us to create, build, maintain and reestablish previous relationships from other points and times in our lives, and are enabling new relationships with our government, NGOs, and the companies we consume products and services from.

Enter the social media landscape: craigslist, facebook, youtube, myspace, twitter, flickr, photobucket, linkedin, digg, ning, yelp, tagged, squidoo, scribd, stumbleupon, hi5, bebo, reddit, myyearbook, technorati, caboodle, Friendster, flixster, xanga, epinions, plaxo, mybloglog, yuku, metafilter, blackplanet, care2, getsatisfaction, friendfeed, clipmarks, cafemon, newwvine, omgili, gigya, ballhipe, current, revver, ping, tribe, magnify, digo, dzone, xing, faves, tweetdeck, ecademy, twine.

(The Fifty Top Social Media Sites from Website Magazine’s Feb 2010 issue, I added craiglist)

The Good, the Bad, the I don’t care and now the Ugly

In the world of Sociobiology our father E. O. Wilson taught us about societies and behavior previously unknown to man, the hierarchy of termites, ants and other insects that have one common trait, altruism. Each member of the community communicates, interacts, behaves and performs a function that is predetermined by the community hierarchy and all are in the best interest of the community, harvesting, defending territory, nurturing eggs and gardens within. Humans don’t act like this and when presented with a new community like social media they will act in many ways that are often predictable and sometimes nefarious. What we don’t know about Facebook and many of the other sites is how humans are really acting and what the good, the bad, the I don’t care and the ugly experiences are.

The Good

Two years ago I found my long lost cousin in Australia on Facebook, wow we Skype nearly every week now. This is a good interrelationship. I have found enormous professional value in being a member of LinkedIn and my network has expanded to several hundred colleagues and professional connections. My Facebook community of friends and colleagues is mixed with both, but I would prefer that it be only my friends and that is where the line blurs. I know that HR people can profile me now on Facebook and even decide whether I am culturally fit for a potential job, this is good and bad. I could be culturally unfit just because I am too old or because of their perception of my sexual preference. This is good and bad. Facebook in particular has now become a great tool for social media marketing for small and large businesses alike in addition to non profits who want to get closer to their customers.

The Bad

The beginning of the bad is when relatives that did nothing for you suddenly appear and want to be your friend. They are the relatives that you wanted to forget, but they are still there back at you as if nothing really happened. It’s like that Rodney Dangerfield joke, “would you be friends with your relatives if you weren’t related to them?” It can get really worse if you are stalked by a former girl friend or boy friend and Facebook has many stalkers, I even had one person do what they thought was a cute video of me during the last holiday season. There is a tremendous amount of information out there on all us and it is growing every day, so be careful when you share information about traveling and other personal issues. Remember that according to statistics a high percentage of identity theft comes from your own relatives that are jealous of you. There are also many stalkers that use Facebook’s IM to get people’s attention to start a conversation; they may come from your friends networks. For example some men will IM every women they know to be single a happy mother’s day wish even if they don’t know if they are mothers or not. This just happened to one of my friends. 

I don’t care!

Then a series of old friends from high school came back into the picture, and I connected with them, but have found their world to be one that I don’t live in anymore. They talk about the little insular and provincial New England town that I was raised in and invite me to groups and events important to that town. These events aren’t important to me, I don’t live there and to be quite honest I really don’t care about them. Nor do I want to enter into relationships with people that I really have nothing to share with anymore. I am not trying to be snotty or uppity but I really don’t care about their home town lives. I don’t live there.

The Ugly

The ugly stories keep pouring in and with hundreds of millions of people on Facebook and within other social media peer groups, I bet there are hundreds if not thousands of stories like the following happening all the time. Last weekend I had lunch with a friend that hates Facebook. He claims it has wrecked his brother’s and his best friend’s marriages. In the case of his brother, his wife left a marriage of 23 years and a 14 year old daughter to be with another woman. Unfortunately, she forgot to de-friend my friend and is flaunting her new life on Facebook for all to see while abandoning her husband and daughter.

In the case of his best friend his wife also left because she found her high school sweetheart on Facebook and recently just up and left another 20 year marriage with two children to be with him. I heard the same story from my hairdresser on Monday of last week about how her sister just up and left her family. It would be easy to dismiss these situations based on unhappy marriages and the times of uncertainty that we live in today because of our broken government and financial system, but I don’t think so. Facebook and the other SMPGs are enabling communications that would have never happened before. What do you think? How many stories like this have you heard?

The Personality of Cuttlefish

Cuttlefish (Sepia sp.) are marine invertebrates and are actually are mollusks in a class called Cephalopoda which is highly adapted for swimming. They are the fastest swimmers of all marine invertebrates and employ a highly evolved jet propulsion system using water. Some species can actually propel themselves out of the water and are known as flying squids. There are only around 650 species in the class which includes squid, octopods, and nautili, the largest are the giant squid. Giant squids inhabit depths along the continental shelf to depths of 600 meters and the most famous of them the Humboldt squid range in large schools up and down the Pacific coast.

 

All cephalopods are kings of camouflage and can change their color instantly and in some cases their skin texture to match their immediate surroundings to hide from predators or lie in wait for prey.  Cuttlefish are slower swimmers than streamlined squid and leverage their small shell for bouncy along with fluid and the gas nitrogen. Light is a major factor for Cuttlefish and it regulates its bouncy the more light the less buoyant. They spend the day burrowed into the bottom and at night they become active gaining more buoyancy to swim up into the water column to hunt. Cuttlefish and squids are what is called highly adapted for raptorial feeding and carnivorous diet, they have ten arms arranged in two arrays of five around the head. Eight are short and heavy while the other two are twice as long and are called tentacles used for seizing prey.

Some Cuttlefish live at depths of more than 1200 meters and others live in shallow tide pools in our warmer oceans. These animals have the highest degree of nervous system development of all marine invertebrates which enable their mobility and carnivorous nature. They are diecous (meaning there are males and females) and they engage in copulation with normally the male seizing the female head on. Cuttlefish can display complex color changes which are thought to be directly related to behavior and most species change color when alarmed. I hope you have enjoyed this blog post and good luck selling and marketing in the millennium. And how will your behavior change the next time you log onto Facebook, will you turn a different color?

Why you need to know your Social Customers: Because they control your brand!

I am a Starwood, Marriot, Hilton member but it gets me almost nothing to be honest, I have been a United Mileage plus member twenty years, and I even have a frequent parking account. But what really frustrates me about a lot of these programs is that they don’t know who I am and many organizations are not leveraging them for competitive advantage. When I arrive at hotels they never upgrade me, and for the most part I never hear from these programs anymore. I remember a time when we got monthly statements about our activity and then they were moved to quarterly and then disappeared completely! Why because they forgot about us, their most loyal customers.

I expect more for my loyalty, don’t you? What many companies don’t understand is that they no longer control their brand, the social customer does. All of us should become social customers; this will enable us to drive up the overall quality of products and services in many companies and industries globally. Most importantly companies need to know who their social customers are; here is a real world example of how social customers are impacting business today. I am a social customer and now hundreds of people are reading my Trip Advisor hotel reviews. Here is my most recent post read by 100 people in less than a week, and so far the poor reaction to my comments about this hotel from its management.

Sheraton NYC Towers Trip Advisor Review

This was my second stay at this hotel in less than a month and I have to say it needs a major overhaul, all the way from the rooms down to the bell desk and into the club lounge. What was most scary about this place was the overall lack of security especially at 1-2am when no security people were at the elevator entry areas. I did really like the club level and the breakfast is fun and coffee nice along with the overall environment. The bar at the club was missing the martini stirrer and didn't have absolute vodka, a woman next to said “it’s always like that here.”

But let’s start at the beginning, we arrive late its 85 degrees and humid as we enter our stuffy room on the floor twenty and the air conditioner doesn't work. I call down to the desk and they say they will send up maintenance, thirty minutes passes no one arrives. We pack up our stuff and head down to the front desk this time pissed off. We ask for another room and I complain about the room assignment, the front desk attendant says "what do you expect me to check out every room to see if the air conditioner works?" I ask for a manager and he is even ruder, and guess what? I am a ten year Starwood member and our company recommends this hotel, I remind him of that, but he doesn’t care. They assign me a room above the club level, make sense? I don't think so, the next day I ask for the day manager, Zoe Cohen and she is nice and gives me 12,000 Starwood points. 

Two days later it is raining and we attempt to go out for dinner, the cab line is long and the bell captain is nowhere to be found, so I jump the line and get my own cab. The next morning we leave at 5:45 am and guess what? There is no bell person to help with anything? What is up with this? Overall a great location and it is unfortunate that all our European visitors are treated to the same level of poor service. I noticed many Italians during my two visits. The good news is our maid service was very good, but I don't think I will stay here again, because as a Starwood member I expected my room to be ready at 1AM. On my previous visit my colleague’s room wasn't ready either and we checked at 6:30PM.

Sheraton’s Response to my TripAdvisor Review

Dear Paul,

Thank you for taking the time to provide the feedback and recap of your visit here in NYC.
The content, although some of it painful is critical to our performance and garnering guest loyalty. I would like to discuss your visit in more detail if you have the time. During this conversation I will also update you on our direction for renovations that are coming soon.

We look forward to hearing back from you on how to connect.
Sincerely
Mark Sanders

Net/Net

 

Identifying and managing your social customers is paramount in the social media landscape of today and it can be a clear differentiator in many industries, in this case especially hotels as they are very vulnerable. I think it is great that Sheraton at least corresponded with me but the same lack of sincerity and thoroughness about their product and services was reflected in their response.  First of all they got my name wrong, they did not address one of my issues and a security lapse in NYC is serious. They did not recognize me as a Starwood member or even say we are making sure that the club bar is stocked an appropriately appointed with martini stirrers. I pulled the latest statistics off TripAdvisor and although the site says that 67% of travelers recommend this hotel, the number is actually closer to 57%.

The general manager was nice enough to offer the opportunity to talk with me, but to be honest; I am not too interested in communicating with you if you can’t even get my name correct. The power of social media today is the power of the community, not the power of one. If I was the manager of a large iconic hotel in the most visited city in the America I would be shocked that only 2/3^rd s of the visitors to my hotel could recommend it. TripAdisor, Yelp and many others are now the voice of the people and their voice travels globally at Internet speed. As a business, know these communities and leverage your customers loyalty in new and exciting ways that can keep them loyal and provide you with the opportunity to find new loyal customers that can enhance your brand.

 

Sheraton NYC Towers Reviews All (1,464)

67% of travelers recommend this hotel

 

·         Excellent                                             331

·         Very good                                            484

·         Average                                               275

·         Poor                                                     222

·         Terrible                                               138

 

 

 

British Petroleum Begins a New Era of Responsibility for NGOs

We all need and consume oil, and the myriad of products spawned from its ecosystem. We all share in the risk of exploiting it, some more directly than others. And then there are those neighborhoods (next to the refineries) that absorb more risk than others. And then there are the oil companies that take on the risk of exploitation, but in the case of BP we are learning about worst practices in risk management, governance and compliance, not best practices.

British Petroleum’s lack of governance and risk management combined with our own government’s absence of regulatory compliance and oversight marks the beginning of a new era.  In this new era governance, compliance and corporate social responsibility will be driven primarily by non government organizations that are the voice of the people. It has become brutally obvious that large trans-national corporations can’t govern themselves, and more importantly the collaboration between them and governments, (in this case the oil lobby) facilitates an environment of risk and recklessness in the management of natural resources.

After experiencing a near collapse of our financial system, we know now what a joke Sarbanes Oxley has become and that the government regulatory apparatus completely failed.

The hard truth is that our government is challenged to:

·         Manage our natural resources and fisheries

·         Manage our financial system

·         Manage our healthcare system

·         Manage and/or regulate the safety of our food supply

·         Manage or control our borders

British Petroleum is a trans-national corporation active in thirty countries with more than 22,000 service stations and sixteen refineries, and they upstream 2.3 million barrels of oil a day. BP reported 2009 revenues of $239 Billion, a profit of $14B so why can’t they manage their risk and govern themselves, they certainly have the resources?

BP’s Code of Conduct

“A fundamental BP commitment to comply with all applicable legal requirements and with high ethical standards”

I copied the code of conduct from their overly green and seemingly environment friendly website, but there is something about this statement that says who they are. Compliance with all legal requirements, hum what does that mean? Well it means that they will go only as far as the law of any country requires and not further. This is in essence is their problem; they need to go further than applicable legal requirements in the high risk and “high profit” business they run. Compliance with “high ethical standards” is about as vague as you can get and we know they vary with culture, country and company. So what BP is really saying is that we only go as far as we need to and we don’t go the extra mile because it might affect profitability and this is further reinforced by the following quote from their CEO Tony Hayward.

“We are responsible for our operations and we are accountable for setting and observing consistent and high standards within them. Our code of conduct, for example, provides clear expectations on behavior and compliance.”

I had a higher view of BP until the disaster in the gulf exposed their lack of governance and risk management. BP put up $500 million for a bio-fuels research center at the University of California at Berkeley and that is great, but now they have a PR and brand disaster of unprecedented magnitude on their hands. And in my view they have fueled the fire so to speak by setting up a live feed of the well leaking for weeks on end. Perhaps some good will emerge from this when all oil companies take a call to action and re-examine their risk management and governance across operations.

Enter the NGO

Non Government Organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council have now been put in a position of power and truly have the opportunity to be the voice of the people because government has failed. Those who oppose egalitarian groups and view them as zealots and extremists in some ways will rethink their role in world business. Like Exxon, BP will recover from this event and we can only hope they will live up to their responsibility in this terrible environmental disaster.  NGOs now have the power of social media at their disposal and we know that NGOs and many non- profit organizations are harnessing that power to gain influence and audience.

As a student of at the University of Massachusetts College of Food and Natural Resources I learned about the management of our planet’s resources and was taught that there are three principal approaches to managing natural resources:

·         Preservation

·         Conservation

·         Exploitation

 In the beginning many egalitarian groups advocated preservation of natural resources which was and is in direct conflict with the exploitation of our resources, the management approach still prevalent today driven by our capitalist system. This put NGOs at great odds with government and industry and their radicalism challenged many people including the scientific community. Times have certainly changed as NGOs now are important players in the global economy and can significantly impact brand reputation through their influence.

Conservation of natural resources employs management practices that enable the resource to be sustainably harvested and maintained for our children. This means that resources are not irreversibly damaged like our fisheries populations, many of which will never recover from over-harvesting and exploitation. In the case of oil, it is not a sustainable resource; there is only so much of it on our planet. That does not give license to energy harvesters to haphazardly manage operations and put other natural resources and industries at risk, such as fisheries and tourism. NGOs have a greater responsibility than ever in ensuring that large multi-nationals and governments are looking out for the best interest of their people. Join an NGO today and make your voice heard, your state senator, local representative and/or government may not be looking out for your best interest, unless of course you are in California where our governor  Arnold “just said no” to just drill baby and off shore drilling!

Further Reading: Why We Hate the Oil Companies, by John Hofmeister

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silo Busting is Key to Achieving the Customer Centric Enterprise

Data, data everywhere, but no one knows where it is or how to find it, let alone use it to create a customer centric enterprise. Organizations and companies are so siloed they can’t get a 360 degree view of their customers. They are so siloed by politics, organizational structures, culture, poor data management and resistance to change that they can’t help themselves. The age of the data warehouse and the single subject data mart has passed but still we can’t see all of our customer’s data. Why? We have sophisticated data analysis tools that include predictive analytics and even OLAP, but we still can’t see the customer. And now there is the promise of In-memory data bases, which may enable and real time data mining of online transaction processing systems. This is certainly something that everyone has wanted, but will this enable us to see all of our customer’s data? I sincerely doubt it.

On Friday my Internet went down and I had to call COMCAST, unfortunately they had to send a technician. The technician called me but did not know what he was being sent out for, he didn’t have my data. My DVD player died during the week and I went to Best Buy and got a new one. They offered me a three year line of credit on a new TV without interest, but they wanted me to fill out a credit application. Are they for real? I have purchased products from them every year in cash, they should know who I am, don’t you think? Why don’t they don’t who I am, they had my data did they lose it?

It has been almost three years now since I began my sixth startup experience, SAP’s Business Influencer Group, (BIG). BIG is the second startup I have attempted in a large organization, the first was Gartner’s G2 Group a technology research unit focused on industries. SAP’s BIG and Gartner’s G2, however, have come with all the challenges that startup people face in a large organization; achieving high levels of business velocity and the inability of people to look at things differently and adapt to change.

My first visit as Head of the BIG group was to Harvard Business School where I met one of today’s most important academic influencers Ranjay Gulati. Ranjay researches everything customer focused and in May of 2007 he published an HBR Spotlight Article on Customer Focus, Silo Busting: How to Execute on the Promise of Customer Focus. As you might imagine, I spend a great deal of my personal time keeping up with important academic research that aligns with our company’s business initiatives and I think that Ranjay’s Silo Busting research was well ahead of it time. For anyone involved in anything customer related this article is a must read and I think it is one of the most undervalued articles I have come across over the last three years.

 

 

Ranjay’s Four Cs of Customer Focused Solutions

In Silo Busting Ranjay profiles Jones Lang LaSalle a commercial real estate provider, Cisco, General Electric’s Medical Care Systems, and interestingly enough Best Buy. Ranjay invented a seemingly simple approach to creating a systemic customer centric enterprise, the four Cs.

Coordination-Cooperation-Capability-Connection

The four Cs might look simple at first but making it happen requires that scary word, change. And there needs to be top down support for anything like this to even have a chance of surviving in any organization or company. I won’t go into them in detail, but his four Cs span, the realms of change management, technology, organizational culture, metrics, training and knowledge management. I would think for many organizations this would be a best practice in becoming a customer centric organization and I think it’s one of the reasons why Ranjay is now a Harvard professor.

Silos of Data Prevent Customer Focus

Enter me the social customer. As a social customer I expect business and all organizations that I interact with to know me. And no I don’t want to join their fan page on Facebook. I want them to know me, and interact with me in a way that demonstrates this? Those companies and organizations that demonstrate this will get my business and interactions. Those that don’t will be out of mind. I am a social customer and I want you to be prepared to interact with me in the way that I want to, and most likely in the future that will be through my smart phone or IPad. Don’t put my data in a silo where no one can see it! Use it to make me the social customer happy and engaged. 

Is the Social Media Bubble Bursting, or Will The Tsunami Continue?

According to Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media lab,  the social media bubble is about to burst, here is an excerpt from his post on HBR March 23, 2010, “I'd like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn't connecting us as much as we think it is. It's largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” You can read the full editorial and it is actually quite an interesting myopic look at the new world of Internet communications: http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_social_media_bubble.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-MAR_2010-_-HOTLIST0329&referral=00202

What is most fascinating about this post is that he tries to draw a connection in the form of a metaphor on the subprime loan business? Quite bizarre indeed if you think about it, the subprime loan scenario evolved from the perfect storm of:

·         Giving anyone a loan that could fog a mirror.

·         A spectacle of American greed where banks and investors were not and are not being held accountable even today, so much for Sarbanes Oxley.

·         Digitization of mortgage loan origination systems where loan processing leveraged business process management software to take loan processing time down from months to less than several days.

(There were business rules engines in the BPM systems that could easily kick out those with low credit scores, but somehow they were tweaked to let those less worthy in.)

I simply don’t get this metaphor, do you?

Trust Enters the Global Social Media Landscape

All right lets attack this hypothesis. The customer is king and has just been given a new pen that moves at Internet business velocity and the only thing slowing down the social customer’s influence (word of mouth marketing) are time zones. One of the issues that Mr. Haque argues is that social media sites lack trust, well that may be the case for some sites that are blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, but they are not creating fake thin relationships in my world. In fact we decide to enter into them and they are bringing us closer to our friends, past friends and relatives that we still want to know more than any other platform. In the business world we know exactly how social media helps to bring us closer to our customers and how they are leveraging the platforms to drive change.

One of the key findings from our SNCR research last year was that professionals do trust information and relationships on social media sites. This is key for any business and for many companies it’s all about influence because trust is the foundation of influence on the social media planet influence flows like water, it’s everywhere. This is why I always say that social media is the new word of mouth marketing. In several of my previous posts I have demonstrated how P&G, Indium, Kodak, SAP and others are gaining competitive advantage through social media. Is your company leveraging social media to their greatest advantage?

Why the Internet is the Greatest Innovation of Our Time

When Proctor and Gamble decided to build a social network of more than six hundred thousand mothers, do you think they were worried about trust? Probably not, but what they did was build and leverage a social network to build their brand and get competitive advantage. This is a story best told by the most social customer of us all Paul Greenberg, the inventor of Social CRM. The Internet has not only connected us in ways that are innovative and great but from an anthropological standpoint it is melding the cultures of the world.

As a member of the WWW conferences I had the pleasure of working with many early Internet pioneers who would have never predicted the social media tsunami. At the time we were still babbling about how a protocol standard called TCP/IP had just created a global area network called the Internet and debating the nuisances of stateless vs. stateful protocol streams. Remember that this was just sixteen years ago. For those of us that have gray hair we remember how Microsoft fought the Internet and would not endorse this routable protocol even though theirs wasn’t routable. Wow times sure have changed, but guess what, now I am a social customer, author, participant and B2B marketer.

·         I don’t think my relationship with the hundreds of people that read my blogs each week is weak or fake.

·         I don’t think that sites like YouTube are a fad.

·         When I don’t like something in a business I go Yelp about it.

·         When I need information I do a search.

·         Before I buy a product I do a search.

·         My sales friends are using Facebook and LinkedIn to do “digital hard rock mining.”

·         When I need to find old friends and relatives I go to Facebook and most of them are there and I don’t think my relationships are weak.

·         When I join a professional group I go to LinkedIn.

·         When I watch baseball now it’s on the IPhone with MLB.com.

·         And today I did not join 304,059,724 against Obama's Healthcare takeover.

·         I would really like to know how the Havas Media lab positions itself as a platform for a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs and firms experiment with, craft and drive radical management business models and strategic innovation.

 

Net/Net:

The Internet has rapidly expanded to become a global network of seamlessly connected computers and devices that has revolutionized information sharing and communications, challenged governments, broken down cultural barriers and driven innovation and business velocity to levels never before imagined. One of the most important successes of the Internet is how it is enabling globalization and more importantly business model innovation. Today’s most successful companies are driving product and business model innovation from outside their own walls by leveraging the Internet as a collaborative community building platform. This platform has allowed organizations to harness the innovation power of the community and not just individual innovation.

There are many that would argue that many of the enabling technologies that drive the Internet and Web 2.0 today have been around for some time. The reality is that we are finally leveraging their potential in new and exciting ways, there is more to come, because the Internet is all about innovation. 

Is the Social Media Bubble Bursting, or Will The Tsunami Continue?

 According to Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media lab,  the social media bubble is about to burst, here is an excerpt from his post on HBR March 23, 2010, “I'd like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn't connecting us as much as we think it is. It's largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.” You can read the full editorial and it is actually quite an interesting myopic look at the new world of Internet communications: http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2010/03/the_social_media_bubble.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-WEEKLY_HOTLIST-_-MAR_2010-_-HOTLIST0329&referral=00202

What is most fascinating about this post is that he tries to draw a connection in the form of a metaphor on the subprime loan business? Quite bizarre indeed if you think about it, the subprime loan scenario evolved from the perfect storm of:

·         Giving anyone a loan that could fog a mirror.

·         A spectacle of American greed where banks and investors were not and are not being held accountable even today, so much for Sarbanes Oxley.

·         Digitization of mortgage loan origination systems where loan processing leveraged business process management software to take loan processing time down from months to less than several days.

(There were business rules engines in the BPM systems that could easily kick out those with low credit scores, but somehow they were tweaked to let those less worthy in.)

I simply don’t get this metaphor, do you?

Trust Enters the Global Social Media Landscape

All right lets attack this hypothesis. The customer is king and has just been given a new pen that moves at Internet business velocity and the only thing slowing down the social customer’s influence (word of mouth marketing) are time zones. One of the issues that Mr. Haque argues is that social media sites lack trust, well that may be the case for some sites that are blurring the lines between our personal and professional lives, but they are not creating fake thin relationships in my world. In fact we decide to enter into them and they are bringing us closer to our friends, past friends and relatives that we still want to know more than any other platform. In the business world we know exactly how social media helps to bring us closer to our customers and how they are leveraging the platforms to drive change.

One of the key findings from our SNCR research last year was that professionals do trust information and relationships on social media sites. This is key for any business and for many companies it’s all about influence because trust is the foundation of influence on the social media planet influence flows like water, it’s everywhere. This is why I always say that social media is the new word of mouth marketing. In several of my previous posts I have demonstrated how P&G, Indium, Kodak, SAP and others are gaining competitive advantage through social media. Is your company leveraging social media to their greatest advantage?

Why the Internet is the Greatest Innovation of Our Time

When Proctor and Gamble decided to build a social network of more than six hundred thousand mothers, do you think they were worried about trust? Probably not, but what they did was build and leverage a social network to build their brand and get competitive advantage. This is a story best told by the most social customer of us all Paul Greenberg, the inventor of Social CRM. The Internet has not only connected us in ways that are innovative and great but from an anthropological standpoint it is melding the cultures of the world.

As a member of the WWW conferences I had the pleasure of working with many early Internet pioneers who would have never predicted the social media tsunami. At the time we were still babbling about how a protocol standard called TCP/IP had just created a global area network called the Internet and debating the nuisances of stateless vs. stateful protocol streams. Remember that this was just sixteen years ago. For those of us that have gray hair we remember how Microsoft fought the Internet and would not endorse this routable protocol even though theirs wasn’t routable. Wow times sure have changed, but guess what, now I am a social customer, author, participant and B2B marketer.

·         I don’t think my relationship with the hundreds of people that read my blogs each week is weak or fake.

·         I don’t think that sites like YouTube are a fad.

·         When I don’t like something in a business I go Yelp about it.

·         When I need information I do a search.

·         Before I buy a product I do a search.

·         My sales friends are using Facebook and LinkedIn to do “digital hard rock mining.”

·         When I need to find old friends and relatives I go to Facebook and most of them are there and I don’t think my relationships are weak.

·         When I join a professional group I go to LinkedIn.

·         When I watch baseball now it’s on the IPhone with MLB.com.

·         And today I did not join 304,059,724 against Obama's Healthcare takeover.

·         I would really like to know how the Havas Media lab positions itself as a platform for a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs and firms experiment with, craft and drive radical management business models and strategic innovation.

 

Net/Net:

The Internet has rapidly expanded to become a global network of seamlessly connected computers and devices that has revolutionized information sharing and communications, challenged governments, broken down cultural barriers and driven innovation and business velocity to levels never before imagined. One of the most important successes of the Internet is how it is enabling globalization and more importantly business model innovation. Today’s most successful companies are driving product and business model innovation from outside their own walls by leveraging the Internet as a collaborative community building platform. This platform has allowed organizations to harness the innovation power of the community and not just individual innovation.

There are many that would argue that many of the enabling technologies that drive the Internet and Web 2.0 today have been around for some time. The reality is that we are finally leveraging their potential in new and exciting ways, there is more to come, because the Internet is all about innovation.