Author: Drew Neisser

SantaCon: A Fuzzy Red Social Media Metaphor

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Unless you’ve been hiding under a sleigh somewhere, chances are you’ve noticed the annual gathering of sloppy Saint Nicks otherwise known as SantaCon.  At first glance, it’s simply a raucous day of naughty carols, random gifting and extreme silliness.  But dig a bit deeper, and you’ll find this highly social event is a near-perfect metaphor for the state of social media.

A Global (and Subversive) Phenomenon
Possibly started by subversive artists in Copenhagen way back in 1974, SantaCon has since expanded to 37 countries and 270 locations.  Social media is even more ubiquitous, touching just about every country around the globe and, perhaps just as subversive, playing a part in protests in at least 5 countries via Twitter.

Emphasis on Crowd Size
Often referred to as a bawdy flash mob, SantaCon is all about getting together with thousands of your so-called “friends” as per the credo “the more, the merrier.”  Similarly, there is an emphasis among some ambitious social marketers to grow their social footprints without regard for the quality of the fans or levels of engagement.

All About the Pictures
A quick search for the hashtag #SantaCon on Instagram reveals over 43,000 photos from last Saturday’s gathering.  With social media, pictures are playing an even more prominent role, increasing engagement on Facebook and Twitter and, of course, driving the success of newer platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.

No One is in Charge
SantaCon is a totally grassroots affair, taking different forms in different cities on different dates and even having alternate names like Santapalooza and Santarchy.  Social media at its best is equally free-form, with consumers driving content development, platform choice and desired interaction with brands.

Mobile
SantaCon revelers rarely stay in one place on the big day, making for an ever-morphing, highly mobile parade.  And so it is with social media, as smart phones and tablets become the dominant means of consuming and contributing social content.  Recognizing this shift, jolly marketers will want to jump on the mobile bandwagon.

A Whole Lot of Fun
At its best, SantaCon is a day of harmless fun in which red-suited revelers share good cheer with strangers and friends alike.  Similarly, social media is an opportunity for marketers to have fun, engage with their fans, align with their passions and remind us all that people ultimately choose to do business with people they like.

It Can Get Sloppy
At its worst, SantaCon is a day of out-of-control drunks that get banned from bars and end up being anything but nice.  Social media shares this potential for sloppiness, as consumers feel free to rant about brands on Twitter and Facebook, write nasty reviews on TripAdvisor and even produce negative videos for YouTube.

Not Going Away
Despite cries from Gothamist to end SantaCon in NYC, this mistletoe-rich movement is clearly unstoppable.  The gift is out of the bag, so to speak.  For marketers, the “gift” of social media is potentially one that keeps on giving, creating the opportunity to turn detractors into proponents and fans into true advocates.  And you don’t even have to don a red suit!

So ho ho ho and Happy Holidays to you all.

The Evolution of Social Media Strategy

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Kip Wetzel, Executive Director of Escalations and Social Media Strategy at Comcast, makes a strong case for social media as a customer service channel.  I saw Kip speak at the recent Social Media World Forum (SMWF) and was lucky enough to follow that up with a lengthy interview.  Here is part one of that interview in which Kip explains the notion of escalation, why it is important to treat all customers equal (even Bruce Springsteen) and how Comcast’s approach has evolved over the last few years.

Drew:  For the readers at home, can you explain what escalations are?
We have an operation that spans our entire reach of customers and our entire footprint of where we operate.  Escalations for us are when we are at a point with the consumer that we need to go beyond a traditional front-line customer service representative.  That’s typically a level of frustration that something hasn’t worked or something hasn’t gone right.

Also on the other edge of that sword for us, it’s an opportunity to really make a difference for that customer.  When we get into an escalation scenario, we are trying to ensure that we can get the most rapid support for a customer based on something that may have been habitual, a question that hasn’t been answered, and an item they want addressed.  We have a team that’s very dedicated and a very coordinated effort across all of the markets that we serve to ensure that we can get that resolution in place for that customer.

Drew: So how does social media fit into escalations?
The social media efforts that we do are a part of that escalation program.  We don’t have separate stand-alone social media policies, escalation procedures and communications standards.  We found that the standards, policies, and processes that we have in place already for the rest of our business translate well to social media.  For us it was a nice way to extend our service model; to go out and meet customers where they were operating and leverage things that already worked for our business and apply it to Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and Pinterest.

Drew: So let’s imagine that Bruce Springsteen is having a problem with service—does the escalation process change?
Let me answer that by giving you one bit of context to how we operate.  I’m a part of our national customer operations team, which means without the big title there means we are in our customer service department.  A lot of other brands operate their social care strategy through comms, PR, or brand marketing.  We’re very proud to operate this group out of customer service and our NCO group.  Because of that, the answer to your question is no.  We don’t think people should be treated differently.

Regardless of how I feel about Thunder Road or Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen is a paying customer just like his neighbor down the road who happens to be a schoolteacher, an accountant, or a lawyer.  From the care perspective, things like cred and clout and influence or status — from a care perspective, we operate under the guise that everybody as a paying customer should get the level of service that they deserve as being a subscriber to Comcast products and services.  That’s the way that we operate because of our operation in customer service.

Now, some variation on that is that the way that we might evaluate or triage that situation with Mr. Springsteen or other people is what is the triage of the impacting situation?  If Customer A has a DVR that didn’t record Dancing with the Stars, but Customer B is a part of a commercial power outage where an entire portion of our service area is out, we will triage the situation differently; the severity of the impact of the situation to our customer base.  Regardless of where Mr. Springsteen resides, we want to evaluate the situation itself, not Mr. Springsteen’s status on social media platforms.

Drew: Do your marketing folk have different thoughts on this?
Do my peers in product marketing or sales or content, acquisition content strategy — do they have a different feel of how influence or status or Kred score or Klout score should be considered?  I would argue that they should.  That’s inherent to their goals for our business and their respective operating strategies working for Comcast, but in the care world no.

Drew: How has your approach for using social for customer service evolved over the last year or two?
First, it’s been 4 ½ years since our first Tweets went out and after a significant amount of listening and observation, we’ve really focused on putting some strong operations in place.  That comes in the form of better staffing, better service and hours of operation.  With the same number of people, we are able to cover more platforms and more days and hours of the week.

We standardized our presence.  Over those first couple of years, we had a lot of dabbling here and there with different names, different images, and different profile pictures.  We’ve really tried to ensure that we standardized the way that people engage with us.  And we’ve made sure we have a verified presence across multiple platforms, really driving home that we are the Comcast team and we are there to provide support.

Drew: Have the tools changed as well?
We’ve really started to expand our use of advanced technologies to listen, engage, and measure our work with customers.  The early days it was just a byproduct of Twitter and South by Southwest 2008.  The tools didn’t exist.  Now that we’ve got advanced tools to help us listen and track things like sentiment, affinity, trends and topics, and keyword analysis, we’re matured to a point now that we’re looking at our key performance indicators.

Drew: Are you getting better at measurement as well?
I think very soon our ever-maturing data set will allows us to get more insight into what our social operation is.  We can actually start marrying that and coupling that with existing data sets that we have across our business.  The role that data plays to help us understand our operation; it continues to be an ever increasing important part of what we do and how we do it.  Then starting to really get smart about what the impact of what we are doing.

We also have expanded, right?  We’ve not expanded necessarily the team size, but we are really focused on being in touch with the players in be it Silicon Valley, be it Canada.  These new tools and platforms that are coming — I think as you’ll know from the Comcast Cares story we had to sort of play catch up, which was there were a number of customers talking about us, asking questions, posing items, and we weren’t there.  We had to play a bit of catch up.  We were sort of meeting customers on the platforms that they were already active on.  To subtly change in that we’re trying to do though now is we’re trying to greet those customers.

Drew: Do you continue to look at new social platforms?
As these platforms are evolving, we want to greet them.  We want to have a presence there as customers adopt these tools, rather than having to play catch up like we did in the early days.  That not only shows to our customers that we’re there, we’re active, we have a presence with them, but it also demonstrates our overall — I mean as a brand and a company to be sort of an innovative, technology-focused company.  That’s been a big part of our maturity.

CMO Insights: B2B Marketing

Posted on by Drew Neisser

As you may have guessed by now, I talk to as many smart marketers as I can to gather content for articles and insights that inform Renegade’s work on behalf of our clients. So it was a double treat to catch up with Stephanie Anderson who recently became SVP of Marketing for Time Warner Cable Business Class and get some of her insights on B2B marketing, about which she is both a relentless student and expert practitioner.  I think you’ll find Stephanie’s thoughts on the use of data, instinct, TV and social media quite enlightening.

Drew:  There is a lot of talk about turning B2B marketing into a science through the use of data, marketing automation tools & CRM.  Do you see that trend continuing and if so, do you see any risks of relying too much on this approach?
Knowing your customers and prospects will never go out of style.  I think marketing is 60% science, 30% creative and 10% gut.  The science part is getting more airplay now mostly due to the incredible measurability of the web.

Drew: Is there any room for intuition and “gut” decision making in marketing?  If so, in what circumstances. If not, why not?
Yes, gut matters – or maybe it is more “experience” that counts.  Mostly, I would say you need to keep in the forefront whether or not there is anything you are saying or doing in your content that conflicts with your Brand and what you stand for as a company – that is where gut comes in the most – it may not always be obvious -and always try to make sure you understand the possible unintended consequences.  I always say “if you do the right things for the right reasons, you will get the right results!”

Drew:  Digital is getting more and more of the marketing spend, especially search and retargeting.  Do you see that trend continuing and are there any limitations here in terms of brand building and customer relationship building?
The web is a very interesting place – it is called the web for a reason.  There are so many puts and takes you could burn through a lot of cash and resources trying to track down a single customer.  The most important lesson I have learned is that you need to think like your customers and non-customers and show up where they are most likely to engage with you – being careful not to annoy them.

Drew:  Does TV advertising still work?  If so, what role do you think it has to play in B2B marketing? 
TV has a role, but it is getting more and more difficult to measure.  Cable actually makes TV advertising more targeted and relevant, but it is still challenging in B2B to determine how a customer really got to your door.  The old way of extracting this information was to measure phone calls by having a discreet phone number on all of your materials.  Now, it is challenging because the web site is the most memorable – but how did they get to you? Because they saw your ad on TV and then searched for you?  Even though it’s never one single tactic that delivers a prospect to your door, we tend to measure and budget with that in mind, particularly when it comes to TV whether cross channel or broadcast.  The bottom line is that you have to be in the game, to win the game and if no one knows you in your category, then you can’t be considered.  We use TV for consideration and awareness and locally for lead generation.  No signs of stopping.

Drew:  Social media has been all the rage on the B2C front.  Do you see similar opportunities for B2B brands to participate and leverage social media?
Just as the iPad and BYOD is the way of information technology in businesses, so goes social media.  I prefer to think of it as social commerce on the B2B side – it’s just doing business the way that is most natural for people.  Businesses especially rely on communities and external resources to help drive their decisions – particularly in the communications and technology or IT types of decisions.  If you think about it, User Groups in the technology world have been around for 30 plus years – so basically taking that on-line or using methods of communication that make it easy to reach others and collaborate on topics in support of business decisions is ideal.

Making Your Social Global

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Most of the time on these pages when I’m talking about Social Business it seems I’m quoting someone from IBM (see 2012 interviews with Jeff Schick and Ethan McCarty).  Well, given the supreme importance of this topic, I’m happy to report I caught up with Jeremy Epstein, VP of Marketing at Sprinklr, a company that will be sharing its expertise with attendees at this week’s Social Media World Forum.  Jeremy offers a clear road map for companies looking to take social global.

Drew: There are a lot of definitions of social business out there. What’s yours?
It is when you are fully engaged in conversations to establish meaningful relationships with your customers, prospects, and community.  There are three criteria that must be met:

  1. No conversation is left behind, no matter if you are getting 10, 100, 1000, or 10,000 messages a day
  2. You add meaningful value when you speak. Each interaction results in your customer feeling like you care more about them this time than in the last interaction.
  3. The business speaks with one voice at all times, so the customer always knows that it is your business engaging with her in the way you want her to be treated.

Drew:  What role does Sprinklr play in helping companies become a social business?
Well, first off, I should be clear that we only play this role for very large companies. Over 80% of our clients have $1 billion in revenue and we’re designed specifically for their unique needs.  We’re not designed for SMB or solo practitioners. We provide a SaaS platform and related services to make the  3 criteria I shared above possible across teams, functions such as Marketing, Sales, PR, Corporate Communications, HR, etc, geographies, and division. As you know, social touches every single part of the organization. It’s not constrained to one part such as Marketing, so enterprises require one comprehensive platform to help all of these disparate teams coordinate in an effective, fast, and secure way. That’s where we come in. We enable large brands to be social at scale.

Drew: Can you walk me an example of a client that has used your service to become a social business?
While I would love for Sprinklr to take all the credit, we’re just a piece of the puzzle, working with some of the largest, most innovative social companies out there, so let me share one from a very large, global electronics company that wanted to roll out a social strategy in 70 countries.

All told, this is global social media deployment that ran to a cost tens of millions of dollars. It had 5 key steps. Here’s what they did:

  1. Built a complete a strategy map outlining the business objectives and the social activities to get there.
  2. Outlined the roles and responsibilities at the corporate, regional, and local levels.
  3. Set up an operations plan that covered things like rules of conduct, best practices, and policies for sunsetting/deactivations of accounts.
  4. Created an online brand style guide.
  5. Set up a reporting infrastructure and taxonomy so they knew which social and which business metrics would matter.

All of this led to an RFP where Sprinklr was chosen as the company to power the global social infrastructure.What we did  then is take all of the requirements, roles, policies, brand elements, and reporting templates and customize our platform for them,  so they could quickly execute their plan. You can see the full story here.

Drew:  Looking at your own marketing, what role does social play for Sprinklr?
It’s the primary way that we identify and cultivate our prospects. We are obsessive about the three criteria of the social business. We also measure the effectiveness of our social content religiously, optimizing it by audience, channel, and more.  We’re not quite there yet, but we’re on the road to making sure that Social is baked into everything we do.

Drew:  Do think there will be a new title next year like Chief Social Business Officer and is this even a good idea?
Yes, there probably will be and it could be a great idea.  Or a lousy one.  If the company appoints a CSBO (there, I’ve already done the acronym, so it must be legit!) and the rest of the exec team says “oh, great, I don’t have to worry about social,” then it will fail.

However, if the CSBO becomes the driving force for integrating social as a cultural shift supported by the right people, processes, and technology, then it will work. Either way, it’s temporary.

Drew: Looking ahead to next year, do you anticipate any new challenges for marketers in social?
Absolutely. A few of them.

  1. What happens when Engagement Works:  If you are successful in creating conversation with your audience, at some point, you are going to have a volume of messages that you can’t manage, but people expect a response. What do you do do then? This is the challenge of scale.
  2. Cross-function and cross-division collaboration becomes mandatory: Marketers will have to be more agile in working with others outside of their area in order to quickly come together and address customer concerns.
  3. Connection Social profile data to existing CRM data: It’s going to be critical to connect the two worlds. We’re advising clients to mimic the taxonomy of the CRM system in the Social Media Management System. Once you do that, when the time for the integration happens, you’ll be ready.
  4. Measurement and Impact: The same conversation about the ROI of Social will occur. Some of the innovators, however, are figuring it out.

Drew: Finally, what kinds of trends are you seeing (through your data) that marketers can capitalize on next year?
One trend we’re seeing is the investment in “Upskilling of employees”—training people to participate in the conversation economy in a way that will help, not hurt the brand. This gives marketers force multipliers in terms of achieveing their objectives through their co-workers as brand ambassadors.

Another is in LinkedIn for b2b marketing. We recently became one of the first four social media management partners for LinkedIn and our clients are very excited about exploring how to use it for b2B relationship building and lead gen..through a comprehensive platform, so they can compare apples:apples. We’ve been very impressed by the LinkedIn partnership and think you’re going to see them start to break the perception that there are the “big 3 of Twitter, FB, and YouTube” and then the rest. Global templates with local empowerment for App development.

We’re seeing marketers have a much larger range of tools at their disposal as global teams set up templates for social apps. My suggestion would be to become familiar with the concepts of Social app development and their capabilities. Even if you don’t know how to build one, you’ll benefit from understanding that.  Some practitioners will become quite savvy at drag/drop app dev and drive meaningful results from them.

What is Social Brand Management?

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Some might think that the phrase “Social Brand Management” is a multidimensional oxymoron given the prevailing notion that companies have ceded control of their brands to the consumer AND that social may be the last place brands can be managed. Fortunately, Social Brand Management is among the many misconceptions being tackled at this week’s Social Media World Forum in NYC.  Nicole Bohorad, Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing at Capital One is on the Social Brand Management panel and as you will see from the interview below, provides some terrific insights into how her company is grabbing the reins from the proverbial marauding hordes.  (And at the risk of killing the suspense, I did not ask Nicole, “what’s in her wallet?” but be my guest if you’re coming to the conference!)

Drew: So what exactly is “social brand management?”
We see this as guiding people’s perception of our brand, and the ability to direct consideration for and involvement with the brand, through the use of various social channels and social technologies.

Drew: How do reconcile the common desire to “manage” social and the desire for social to be “organic?” Does one necessarily negate the other?
Of most importance, we focus on social being organic. We know our customers recognize Capital One’s brand equity in being clever & funny, and this is something that compells them to share stories about our core values – best value, ease of use and great user experience. To do this effectively, however, we must manage the process by amplifying reach to our most active and supportive customers on social. They then act as evangelists for other customers who are not as loyal or new to the brand. We do this through tactics, including content calendar strategy, social listening and moderation, public relations and advertising to inform our content around topics customers want to hear.

Drew: Can you give me an or two example of how Capital One is “managing” social right now?
We are actively participating in moderation through engagement with customers in live Tweeting events, such as with History Channel’s Mankind The Story of All of Us. This series includes a focus on the creation of commerce and money, so it gives us an opportunity to bring value to the story and engage with fans of the show while talking about our expertise.

We are also monitoring the success of our content performance on Facebook and develop page post ads that highlight the most engaging content. We’ve found, specifically, that our focus on travel interests does quite well, so by including this content in ads, our fans are able to endorse their interactivity for their friends to notice in their newsfeeds and take interest.

Drew: Has social matured this year and if so how has that effected your approach to social?
Yes, it has. Key channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, have started to really differentiate their platforms across user base, content posting strategy, reason for using the channel, and accessing the channel (such as mobile). This has caused us to fine-tune our content with a focus on using each one for a specific purpose, such as a real-time news and interests for Twitter, and travel memories and sports stories (around our NCAA experience) on Facebook.

There has also been a greater focus on analytics measurement, where channels have to prove their effectiveness – not only to show how content and ads drive actions and business back to our site and product use, but also how the channels are playing a greater role in affecting media consumption – for example, how Twitter conversations are affecting consideration for brands on TV.

Last, greater linkable search capabilities, such as Google’s ability to tie Google+ with YouTube, and social listening tools that tie into social channels, have proven to add a critical new layer that informs product insight and organic content development.

Drew: Did you try any emerging platforms this year and if so, how did it go?
We launched our Google+ page in May with a focus on travel (tied to our Venture Card), as we saw this was an area ripe for content development. Google recognized the quality of our posts and featured us in their Travel Circle, giving us exposure to more fans with a passion for travel. This has helped us become a financial category leader on the channel, with more than 80,000 featuring us in their circles.

Drew: Capital One has expanded well beyond credit cards in the last few years. What are the tricks to managing social with so many lines of business under one brand name?
Not only that, we have extended our social presence in both Canada and the UK. Luckily, we have strong brand standard guidelines that help guide us in the way that the brand is represented consistently on social channels. We also have a strong brand personality stemming from our TV campaigns that we work to maintain across channels. But we don’t have all the answers yet, and we are continuing to test and learn as we go.

Drew: What’s on your wish list for 2013 in terms of social brand management?
We are going to be refining our brand engagement approach on core social media channels. We want to monitor analytics more closely to define how we attain key brand and business metrics from social content. We also want to test new channels to see where we can extend our brand conversation with consumers. We hope to look at how social can affect brand affinity when coupled with TV viewing behavior. Last, we want to refine our approach to social advertising as it relates to building the most loyal customer bases on social channels who can share our message.

Thanks for reading.  If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to TheDrewBlog.  

5 Marketing Myths Busted by Small Business Saturday

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Today marks the 3rd annual Small Business Saturday, a day in which the nation is encouraged to “shop small” and, in fact, does just that. Nestled between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, SBS is a powerful example of “Marketing as Service” from American Express, a company that has been taking this approach successfully for the past 25 years.

But look carefully at Small Business Saturday, and you will also see a work week full of marketing myths busted, one day at a time, before you can tweet, “#MarketerMonday.”

Monday’s Child: Big Ideas Take Time
Most marketers are nothing if not deliberate, taking months to conceive, strategize and ultimately execute their ideas, big or small. And given the audacity and complexity of establishing SBS as a new holiday, it is reasonable to assume a lengthy planning cycle, right? Wrong. According to Scott Krugman, Director of Communications at American Express, SBS went from idea to execution “in a matter of a few weeks.”

Tuesday’s Child: It’s About My Brand
Naturally, marketers want to put their brand at the center of their communications, expecting it will be the shortest route to an effective program.  With SBS, American Express asserted the counterintuitive brand position: “It’s more than just about us.” By putting their customers at the center of an entire program, AmEx “created a solution to help spur more business for small businesses, and small business owners really took to it,” Krugman reported.

Wednesday’s Child: Social Media Just Happens
In some naïve marketing circles, there is a wishful notion that social media success (like its cousin “viral success”) just happens organically. A careful look at SBS, which became huge on social media by any measure, including reach and engagement, reveals that AmEx kickstarted every social channel with paid media, along with a carefully orchestrated PR effort that generated a surge of earned media. Facebook even threw in free ads for small businesses on their network to encourage even more social promotion.

Thursday’s Child: Partnerships Must Be Controlled
Some marketers spend as much time trying to control partnerships as they do setting them up. AmEx took the opposite approach, allowing anyone and everyone to participate in SBS. Explained Krugman, “For small businesses to participate, they don’t have to accept the American Express card.” Seventy five other companies, including FedEx, Facebook and Delta, ended up joining the “shop small” movement in its second year and many more will be doing so in 2012.

Friday’s Child: Doing Good Doesn’t Pay Out
Mention a “do good” program and most marketers will discourage discussing its ROI, as if ROI is a bad thing that could somehow diminish their altruistic intentions. Even AmEx’s Krugman tried to convince me that as long as small businesses felt good about SBS, that was good enough for AmEx. He let slip, however, that “card transactions were up 23 percent for merchants that accepted the [American Express] card” on SBS 2011. Sounds like ROI to me.

Bonus Myth: Congress Can’t Agree on Anything
It isn’t news that the U.S. Congress is more divided politically now than at any other time since the Civil War, which makes their unanimous resolution to support Small Business Saturday all the more remarkable. In fact, officials in all 50 states embraced SBS, and President Obama’s personal effort to “shop small” on SBS in 2011 also made the evening news.

Final Note: In addition to talking to American Express’ Krugman, I also caught up with Denise Yunkun, FedEx’s Director of Alliance Marketing, who helped me get a sense of the program’s scale. Yunkun reported that in 2011, “More than 500,000 small business owners leveraged an online tool or promotional materials for SBS.”  You can find my enlightening interviews with Krugman (part 1 & part 2)  and Yunkun right here on TheDrewBlog. (If this article seems familiar, you must have seen it on MediaPost.com).