Category: Drew’s Articles

The Expansive Role of Marketing Part II

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is part 2 of my interview with Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles.  In this portion, Tim discusses youth marketing, social media, fan passion, social responsibility and the expansive role of marketing within the Eagles organization.  Again, even if you’re not an Eagles fan or a sports fan for that matter, I think you’ll find it most enlightening.  Also, click here for my article on FastCompany.com related to this.

Neisser:  You mentioned your target is very broad.  Are you doing any more targeted efforts?
McDermott: There are two areas that we feel that we can grow more significantly. The youth market being one and the woman’s market being the other. We launched a three-prong youth strategy back in 2004. We had a kids TV show. We had a kid’s website, and a kid’s club. And we had the largest kids club membership of any sports team in the world. And this year we are reshaping that to continue to grow our impact amongst the youth market.

 

Neisser: Your fan base is famously enthusiastic to put it nicely. Talk to me the role the fans play in building your brands.
McDermott:  If you are a sports executive or even if you’re an owner of a sports team, I think you are really a steward of a brand. It’s really a public trust. And that’s the way you really need to look at it. And I’ve been fortunate enough to work with owners both on the football side, and in the hockey world who always made that their statements, that they are responsible for a public trust. And I think if you take that approach and you think of it as the fans are the true owners of the team. Then you’ll always do the right thing.  You simply do what is right for the fans. And it takes a lot of the complexity out of it.

Neisser: How are you handling social media and community management?
McDermott: When I returned here in January 2010, we reorganized a bit, and part of that was to set up a digital department. And the department is fully devoted to all things digital (i.e. apps, mobile apps, websites, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest– whatever the latest platform is that’s coming down the pike.) So that’s the way that we’ve decided to structure ourselves, because we felt that the world had shifted. And we needed people who were 100% dedicated to evaluating, understanding, and determining how to create, how to use some of the different new media technologies that they’re coming out there. So we do have dedicated social media coordinators, who do evaluate all of the different “what’s next?” and making suggestions on how we can use it.

 

Neisser: Can you articulate what the Eagles brand is about?
McDermott:  Sure. In fact, a couple years ago we went through an exercise with Landor, to put together a brand book and style guide. So we do have that in a very refined piece that we can then share with both the internal as well as with corporate partners. Our brand has some unique brand attributes. We’re well known for our tough as nails, passionate fan base. And it’s a unique sort of passion–I know a lot of teams would say that their fans are passionate, but our fans are passionate. I really don’t think most teams have the breadth and depth of passion, and exemplify it in the way that we do. At the same time we’re a very community oriented brand. Social responsibility is very important to our organization. So those are some of the key hallmarks.

Neisser: And I notice that there is a lot of social responsibility on your website. I imagine that’s handled separately from marketing, is there a group that is dedicated to that?
McDermott: Sure. In fact, a couple years ago we went through an exercise with Landor, to put together a brand book and style guide. So we do have that in a very refined piece that we can then share with both the internal as well as with corporate partners. Our brand has some unique brand attributes. We’re well known for our tough as nails, passionate fan base. And it’s a unique sort of passion–I know a lot of teams would say that their fans are passionate, but our fans are passionate. I really don’t think most teams have the breadth and depth of passion, and exemplify it in the way that we do. At the same time we’re a very community oriented brand. Social responsibility is very important to our organization. So those are some of the key hallmarks.

Neisser: What else do you have going in this area?
McDermott:  So back in 2004 we created a tackle, called Tackling Breast Cancer campaign. And in 2004 the first year of it, we sold pink hats with the Eagles logo. And in a period of 30 days during October, which is breast cancer awareness month, we sold 32,000 pink hats. That’s probably more hats than most professional sports teams will sell in an entire year.  That was all around raising money for breast cancer awareness. And that became a platform that we have now run for the past eight years. We’ve dedicated over — are getting close to two million dollars in donations from that.  And we’ve made it an ongoing platform since 2004. In fact, we were recently named the global sports team of the year for all of our various off the field activities.

Neisser: How big is your marketing department?
McDermott: About 35 to 40 people, about 40 people. That includes all of the merchandising staff. So we oversee our own retail shops and our own pro shops at the stadium. We oversee our outlet store. We oversee our online e-commerce. We oversee the game day sales.  We have a television production group–we call it Eagles Television Network, where we produce, or co-produce or partner on, eight different weekly TV and radio shows. So it depends upon how you define marketing. If you want to define marketing in the more myopic approach instead, it’s relatively small. It’s probably seven people that are just in the so called “marketing department.” If you want to define marketing in the more myopic approach instead, it’s relatively small. It’s probably seven people that are just in the so called “marketing department.”

Neisser: When you look at ahead at the Eagles brand building activity, what’s on your sort of wish list?
McDermott: Well I keep looking at all the possibilities coming through digital media and what’s next. I’m fascinated by some of the augmented reality concepts that are coming out there. And really excited about what might be and just how quickly some of these augmented reality concepts have come to fruition. You can have a print ad in a newspaper, and all of a sudden you can have that ad be the full 30-second TV commercial through augmented reality. So every year we send out tickets to people with an image on those tickets. Now through augmented reality you could actually bring that ticket to life.

Neisser: How do you rationalize this kind of experimentation from a strategic point-of-view?
McDermott: Strategically, I think sport teams are really media companies. We aggregate millions and millions and millions of impressions.: where the people who look at us at games, come to our games, watch us on TV shows, websites, Facebook, Twitter all the different vehicles that are out there. And at the end of the day, we can aggregate communities of people through all these channels. And as a result of that I think you’ll see us acting, and executing in ways that more of a media company. And again, just the way we produce content, the way we distribute content is just one example of that.

Neisser: Do you have any words of wisdom for other marketers?
McDermott:Any time I tell somebody outside of my area of expertise, on what they can do I want to give that a little extra thought. I know that there are very bright very smart marketers out there, and quite honestly I think that often times, we in the sports world are borrowing and stealing the ideas that we see from other people so.

Final note: if you found this post informative, feel free to subscribe via the button at the top of the page!

The Expansive Role of Marketing Part I

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Tim McDermott, CMO of the Philadelphia Eagles makes a compelling case that marketing a sports team is not all that different from marketing other products like consumer packaged goods.  After spending over an hour with him on the phone, I not only came to see his point but also realized that he’s a marketer who really understands how to build a successful brand.  (By the way, I met Tim through The CMO Club.)

Having spent a number of years marketing sports teams (both hockey & football) Tim also did a stint at Comcast and earned an MBA from Harvard along the way.  Here are the highlights of my conversation with Tim broken into two parts that I think you’ll find most enlightening even if you aren’t an Eagles fan!

Neisser: is there anything keeping you up at night?
McDermott: Insuring that we are providing value for season ticket holders. We need to continue to find ways to add value to being a season ticket holder. Find ways to invest with our fan base, and continue to market why it’s a great experience. Why it’s fun to come to the games. Why it’s great to watch us on TV or to be part of purchasing our merchandise…

Neisser: And that’s an interesting place to start, in that there are things that you can control as the marketer and then there’s what happens on the field.
McDermott:  I think there are a lot of similarities between marketing sports property and marketing for other companies. Whether it be the jean companies or the entertainment companies. The reality is we’re probably doing the same things that the marketers are of other retail oriented companies. We’ve got “widgets” to sell in the form of tickets. And we go through the exercise of segmentation, targeting, and positioning our products and our brand the same way that other marketers do. We build brands. We engage in all the different forms of marketing, and advertising as other companies do. So we’re doing everything from market research to CRM implementations, to automated emails; to managing social digital campaigns to direct marketing, to direct response. You name it and I think we do it.

Neisser: So what are the key differences in marketing a sports team?
McDermott: Everyday my product can fluctuate–it can change. And as much as I want to or want our fans to have an undefeated Super Bowl season, I can’t control that. Whereas when you walk in to the McDonald’s or when you purchase Tide, it can be consistent. And that is certainly a challenge to the sports marketer is that you have to able to accept the fact that it is inconsistent. You have to accept the fact that at the end of the day, you can’t control your product. And yet still be able to create demand for your product and create engagement, and create interest in your product.

Neisser: What about your fans?
McDermott: Then the one thing that we do have going for us, which some of those other types of companies don’t, is the tremendous amount of passion that our consumer has for our product. And you see that displayed in a lot of different ways. You should see the letters that we get and the emails that we get. People write stories, poems, music about our product, and they’re willing to sit down and spend time with you, for free of course, to tell you all about how they feel about your product. And to wear your logo on merchandise and they’re walking around with your product. When I step back I know I’m very fortunate because we have such a passionate consumer base. There are many companies out there who would love to be able to have consumers who are as passionate as ours.

Neisser:  A losing season must be a sort of torture test of brand loyalty.
McDermott: There’s obviously some level of correlation between winning and off the field success. How much that correlation is, and how much the causation is between the two, is probably open for debate. And probably depends on a lot of different variables, from the city that you’re in to the kind of the winning tradition or how much success your team has had over an extended period time. To the sort of marketing and brand engagements that you do, all the way up to how people perceive your ownership group. I think if you look at the best sports brands though, all of the ones that have crossed that threshold, where independent of wins and losses, they create a brand that fans want to be associated with. And even in times that aren’t so good on the field, or on the ice or on the court, fans are still showing up. And they’ve created a connection with that fan base. They’ve made being a fan of that team something that does cross the threshold of just wins and losses. So that is something that all sports marketers are trying to do, is build that equity so that when the rainy day occurs people don’t leave. The fans don’t depart.

Neisser: What can the team do off the field to build loyalty?
McDermott: One of the biggest things we can do as team marketers is to create transparency and real trust with our consumer base. I think you can create trust through creating that transparency; and so having ways and methods on processes in place to listen to your fan base, to engage your fan base; to talk with them, but also provide them an avenue to share what’s on their minds. That’s something that we’ve been very successful with.

Neisser: Can you give me a specific example?
McDermott: We’ve created a season ticket holder advisory board. We’ve got a 35-person board that we started a year ago. The board membership runs two years. And it’s not just a glorified focus group. The people that have signed up to be part of this board, signed up to be solutions providers. They are very passionate about the Eagles. At the same time they would tell us what we’re doing right. They will tell us what we’re doing wrong. And they provide or I should say the quid pro quo is, they as being part of a sports membership they also have to provide us or help us come up with solutions to the problem.  Don’t just tell us what we’re doing wrong, but be an extension of our marketing department, and help us create the solution. So we’ve been very successful with doing that. And I think it’s truly a concept of listening, and engaging, and developing trust with them.

Neisser: What measures do you have in place from a brand health standpoint?
McDermott:  We look at TV ratings, website traffic, overall traffic on Facebook and Twitter accounts among other metrics. Merchandise sales is generally another sign of brand health. And of course, season tickets and how well you’re doing with ticket sales. If you’re sold out as in our case, then it’s a matter of monitoring your wait list and seeing if your wait list is growing. And then there are more scientific research based brand tracking studies. We do our own brand tracking study every year to see how we’re performing. And then are third party brand trackers, ESPN Sports Poll is an annual brand tracking study. And some others that are out there as well.

Neisser: And how is your brand doing?
McDermott: Our brand is doing well. Going back to early 2006, we were the fastest growing brand in sports according to a poll by Forbes. You can see some correlation there between how we were performing on the field as well. We had gone to a Super Bowl in January 2005. We lost in the Super Bowl to the Patriots in 2004-5 season. So there was some correlation obviously between on field success and off the field success. Overall today if you look at our website traffic, if you look at merchandise sales, if you look at the TV ratings, all of them are doing extremely well. In the 2010 season, we set TV ratings records. We set website merchandise sales records. 2010 was a very strong season for us. Last year, we saw a little bit of a dip. Again we were an eight and eight football team last year. We didn’t live up to some of the expectations. But when you look at most of the metrics, we performed well. We’re an extremely a strong brand, and you can see that even in a not so great on the field year, that our brand has been built in such a way that it can withstand a not so great year.

Be sure to read part 2 of this interview.

Tweet Emotion (continued)

Posted on by Drew Neisser

The 140 Characters conference is a downright hugfest, as founder Jeff Pulver insists on giving physical hugs to the speakers and virtual hugs to the audience.  The virtual hugs come in the form of carefully chosen speakers whose unique stories inspire, cajole and even move the audience to tears.  Here is a recap of day one excluding five stories I included in my MediaPost article today.

Making Machines Smarter
Robert Stephens (@rstephens) founder of Geek Squad believes that we are moving from “automation to anticipation,” where apps will be able to talk to other apps.  Stephens lamented that the autocorrection on Mac’s don’t currently learn from your input, something he believes could and should be solved with a little artificial intelligence.  Another basic example is of the open garage door that automatically shuts after 20 minutes of disuse.  Stephens explained that, “once is a hint, twice is a pattern and three times is a preference,”  so if apps can observe this behavior then the “fourth time becomes a habit.”   Stephens also offered a new model of privacy he called “prefacy,”  in which the preferences we share via our social networks help services serve us in a more personalized manner–like a hotel anticipating our pillow preference.

Data Can Be Beautiful
Hjalmar Gislason (@datamarket), Founder & CEO, DataMarket, talked about creating a Google for numbers tat could find the best data available for your particular query.  More importantly, Gislason pointed out how most of us can find much in the data unless it is transformed into graphs and charts that bring the story to life.  Visualization is critical, explained Gislason, who didn’t not want his deeply insightful charts to be confused with typically useless infographics!

You Can Find Just About Anybody Via Social Media
Dan Lewis (@sesamestreet), Director of New Media Communications at Sesame Street, told a cute story how they tracked down the name of the actor who appeared in a pilot for the show four decades ago.  And then Dan shocked the audience with his revelation that Big Bird is actually a puppet!

Social TV Is Probably Not About New Apps
Caroline Giegerich (@DailyMarauder), Founder/Editor of Daily Maraude, Ian Schafer (@ischafer), CEO of Deep Focus and Rishi Malhotra (@rishimalhotra), Managing Partner of [212]Media did not express a lot of love for new Social TV apps like GetGlue.  Instead, they felt networks like Twitter and Facebook would fulfill the “water cooler” need through the use of hashtags.  Also, when discussing the long-anticipated convergence of everything on one screen, Schafer believes that we are more likely to see “everything on every screen,” and that we are likely to continue to live in a simultaneous multi-screen environment.  As one of the speakers noted, “who wants to buy a 70″ TV and see Twitter trash or YouTube comments (lowest life-form!)”

iPads as Teaching Devices
One of my favorite sessions was with Kevin Honeycutt (@kevinhoneycutt), a teacher who is “out to change the world, one classroom at a time!” Honeycutt demonstrated how an iPhone could help teach kids basic chords thus getting them started with music, something he believes can help them see they can do just about anything they put their minds to.  He then took an iPad, velcroed it to a cardboard guitar and proceeded to rock the house. Honeycutt, who uses his own humble origins as a continual punchline like “getting kicked out of his trailer park for thought lifting,” believes his highly entertaining teaching style can help prevent the “cognitive blisters” that impede learning.   I have no doubt he’s right.

Revisiting The Scarlet Letter with Jack Abramoff
This would be a good time to thank my 11th grade English teacher Betty Orbach for permanently imprinting the meaning of the scarlet letter in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic tale.  Just in case you didn’t have Ms. Orbach, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a big red A on her sweater after committing adultery.  After years of social service, people begin to see Hester’s A as standing for “able” and then ultimately as “angel.”  Jack Abramoff (@jackabramoff) might as well wear a big fat A on his chest, being among the most infamous of Washington lobbyists. Taking a page from Prynne, a humble and repentant Abramoff, is now trying to diligently drain the cesspool he used to swim in so effectively.  Good luck with that Mr. A.

This One Made Most of Us Weep
Heather Hamilton (@tjzmommy) had most of us in tears as she told the tragic story of her son Zack whose life was cut short way t0o early.  During his few years, Zack fought a courageous battle in and out of hospitals, finding joy in among other things Sesame Streets’s Elmo, who became “a fifth member of the family.”  During this same period, Heather discovered a community of supportive friends via Twitter and Facebook.  After Zack died, the York Central Hospital in Toronto asked Heather if she would like to name a kid’s play room after Zack and help raise the $25,000 needed to fund the room.   Throwing herself into this project, Heather reached out to her newfound network and was astonished by their support.  Total strangers held fundraisers and online auctions. Ultimately, Heather not only raised the funds but also she was able to engage the Sesame Street team to produce a video with Elmo called Zacky’s Song that now welcome’s visitors to Zack’s Dream Room.

“Knowing Where You’re Going is Irresistibly Attractive”
Liz Strauss (@lizstrauss), Founder, SOBCon, is a terrific speaker, telling tales of her childhood as a wellspring for inspiration and overcoming obstacles.  Strauss reminded us that we need to train ourselves to hear opportunity which is usually on the other side of every problem.  The challenge is to filter out all the negative noise and then focus on “seeing yourself where you want to be.”  She reminds us that “everything you’ve succeeded at you decided you were going to finish before you started; that way when the roadblocks came; you didn’t drop back and say this is too hard.”  Strauss talks of being in the moment and not worrying about the past; any opportunity can be a vehicle to get where you want to go.  My favorite quote, “knowing where you’re going it is irresistibly attractive.”

Fighting Intergenerational Incarceration
Andy Dixon (@andydixn), a self-described, “ex-con with convictions,” told his remarkable story of over-coming “felonism,” an inherited inclination to commit crimes and go to jail.  Andy simple message is that breaking the cycle is hard BUT can be done by helping the 2.7 million kids with parents in prison get a decent education.

Everything You Need to Know About Social Media, You Can Learn from a Small Town Liquor Store
Becky McCray (@BeckyMcCray) Co-Host of #140conf Smalltown and Co-Author of Small Town Rules, made a great case that running a successful social media program is not all that different from running a small town liquor store.  Since it can be intimidating to get started; spend time building 1:1 on connections at first. Then get involved in the community and support them anyway you can.  In both cases, it is important to think long term and to be helpful to anyone and everyone. Honesty is essential. Word spreads fast in a small town (and online.)  McCray recommended personalized attention and sharing information, even if it means carrying a wine for just one customer.  While McCray doesn’t recommend giving your product away, giving advice for free is a no brainer, helping to build trust and loyalty.  Cheers to that!

Finally, a Few Shout Outs

Carlos Delgado (@carlosdelgado21) made a compelling case for his non-profit organization ExtraBases.org and using Twitter to help it grow!

Jodi Sonoda (@KarmicEvolution) told of dealing with mental illness and helping herself and others through her blog.  She got and deserved a standing ovation.

Mark Horvath (@hardlynormal), is a powerful advocate for the homeless, helping them in transformative ways.

Hank Wasiak (@hankwasiak), believes this is an amazing time for marketers to do well by doing good.  Wasiak presented research that suggests most marketers spend 90% of their energy on product claims when the real persuasion happens by focusing on brand values, explaining why a brand exists and the impact it seeks to make in the world.  Adds Wasiak, while ideals are not proprietary, how you bring them to market is and he backs this up with Jim Stengel’s research that concludes that ideals-driven companies outperform others 3 to 1.

Anthony Rotolo (@rotolo), Professor at Syracuse University’s @iSchoolSU. All I can say is I wish I had this teacher with this kind of energy and creativity when I was at Duke.

Greg Corbin (@JustGregPoet) is the Executive Director of the Philly Youth Poetry Movement, a program that inspires high school kids to write and perform spoken word poetry.  Two of his students performed and they were awesome!

Amanda Greene (@LAlupusLady) and Tiffany Peterson (@TiffanyAndLupus) are formidable “Lupus Warriors” who moved us all with honesty and intrepid positivity.

And that was just some of the highlights of Day 1.  I’m afraid I had to go back to work and missed Day 2. (If you enjoyed this post, feel free to subscribe to my blog.

Big Brands are Bigger in Social Too

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Originally the domain of scrappy startups, social media has definitely hit the big time, or at least has become the province of big companies. The recent Social Media Fitness Study (by yours truly) reported that large and midsize brands significantly outscored their smaller counterparts, filing respective scores of 57 & 56 versus 44 (with 100 being the maximum score). While these results may surprise some, a deeper dive into the reasons behind the gap reveals intriguing insights into the overall state of social media fitness. (FYI: This is a longer version of an article that first appeared on MediaPost.com).

Big Companies Have More Resources to Commit
That large sucking sound you hear is not from jobs leaving the US, but rather the time that disappears because of planning, executing, listening, responding and reporting on social media, time that small businesses find hard to allocate. Notes Nelleke Kloet, Marketing Director at fast-growing startup TagMan, “Social media done right requires resources in terms of money as well as people, which bigger companies have more of.”

Social Media Has Matured Into a “Must-Have” Asset
While small companies are focused on getting the right people on the bus and their next big “pivot,” thereby making social less of a priority, large companies are three times more likely to see social as a transformative proposition for their enterprise. Explains Constance Walker of PPL Electric Utilities, who weathered a storm-caused outage in 2010 by communicating to customers via social channels, “That nailed it for our management as far as the importance of social media.”

Recognizing the Need for a Designated Driver
It takes a certain level of maturity to realize that, just because you have car keys, it doesn’t mean you should get behind the wheel. In the past few years, larger companies have evolved their approach to social, replacing “twinterns” with professionals, and are four times as likely to have a designated social driver. Grant Johnston, CMO of Pegasystems, notes, “We’ve added another dedicated full-time resource to further our social media efforts, and we’re confident that this role will continue to increase.”

If Your Ears are Burning, at Least You’re Listening
As the social part of social media becomes better understood, brands come to realize that listening and responding is as important as or even more so than just talking. Interestingly, large companies are twice as likely to be monitoring 24/7 and responding in real time than small companies. Clearly, large companies like Intel have the advantage here. Explains Jennifer Lashua of Intel, who has a social team around the world, “We have the ability to monitor and moderate 24×7 and in multiple languages.”

Social Media is Not All Fun and Games
To steal a bit from Allstate’s campaign, mayhem is everywhere. This is especially true in social media, as the folks at Domino’s, Comcast and Pfizer would no doubt warn you. Large companies are increasingly aware of this fact and therefore are five times as lucky to have a disaster plan developed or in the works. Adds Greg Tirico, Senior Social Media Manager at Sage, “We are in the lucky majority of social media participants that have had the opportunity to learn from other’s mistakes. It seems very natural to have a disaster plan much like a company would put a business continuity plan in place.”

A Little Training Goes a Long Way
Only someone with a death wish would try to run a marathon without training first. This is especially true for social media, in which a little training can make a huge difference; yet, nearly half of the small companies I surveyed had no training in place. One exception to this finding was a non-profit organization called God’s Love We Deliver. Emily Findley handles social for GLWD and served up this explanation: “By training our staff in the basics of having an account, retweeting our work and sharing our posts, we’re further involving them in spreading the message about the work that we do.”

Power to the People Doesn’t Play as Well in Big Co Land
The one area in which small companies seem to be ahead is their willingness to encourage all employees to be involved in social media. In fact, while half of small companies encourage this behavior, only one-fourth of big ones do. While this may be done out of necessity for small companies, big companies that restrict access to social media nonetheless are missing out on a huge opportunity to unleash an army of advocates for what Sage’s Tirico calls an “overall customer-centric market approach.”

It’s Hard to Get Ahead, If You Don’t Know Where You’re Going
Though it is a relatively new concept, large companies are more than twice as likely to have a social media road map in place, while more than four out of 10 small companies are prepared to wing it. This is obviously a mistake. As Erin Bush of Neustar summarizes, “They don’t put the time, effort and resources against it in the proper way and they expect to see results immediately. I like to remind folks that if you have no social media presence at all, it’ll take 18 months to see results. Most companies don’t want to wait that long.”

For a full copy of  The Social Media Fitness Report or to see how socially fit your business is relative to other companies, click here.

Social Media for B2B vs. B2C Brands

Posted on by Drew Neisser

DN: Do you have any thoughts on why large B2C companies are more “socially fit” than large B2b companies?
Social media began in the hands of consumers like music enthusiasts looking to promote their tunes on MySpace, students using Facebook to connect with classmates, retail customers looking to get deals on their favorite brand through Twitter etc. It hasn’t been until very recently that businesses who serve other businesses have started to realize the benefits of social, but it’s quickly moving into the enterprise. The stuff that has sprung up on the consumer side is just the tip of the iceberg. The real mass, the real power to transform, is on the business side.

DN: Do you think there is still skepticism among B2B marketers that social can help them achieve their business goals?
In conversations I’ve had with peers in the industry I think there’s broad agreement that social marketing can be effective in business to business. However, there’s still a major shift underway in terms of the resources aligned to social and to digital approaches in general (beyond banner advertising and search term marketing.)

DN: Are there any risks in terms of pushing messaging or ignoring customer service by having social run out of the marketing department?
Yes. More importantly, it is risky to look at “social” as somehow separate from business processes and create distinct “social” teams. I feel the same way about “digital.” The more sophisticated or mature approach is to see both social and digital as modes of interaction that can affect any business process. Our Social Business Management council has representation from sales, supply chain, product development, HR, security, legal etc in addition to marketing and communications.

I know I seem to interview folks from IBM a lot but that is only because I think they are doing so many things right especially in the area of social media.  (And oh by the way, I’m going to be interviewing another IBM’er May 3rd: Real-world B2B Social Media Marketing Success: CTAM Conversation with Ed Abrams of IBM so you can expect more to come on these pages).  This is my second interview with Ethan McCarty who holds the title of Digital and Social Strategy at IBM. As you will quickly see, Ethan gets it and as such requires little introduction.  Thanks Ethan.

DN: Most companies especially B2B struggle to develop engaging content. What’s your trick?
At IBM we are focused on quality standards for everything from videos to info-graphics to social network landing pages and tweets. We have a strong understanding of our brand that we can rely on and extend to our teams globally and even our agency partners.

DN: You mentioned  that IBM is in the process of auditing all of your social channels” — what do hope to learn from this audit?
As I mentioned, we are focused on quality standards — but also improving the signal to noise ratio on social networks. For example, reducing the number of IBM community pages on Facebook that were started with the best of intentions by IBMers around the world but then became stagnant. We’ve had really good success with this already — and it just means that someone looking to connect with IBM can find us easily and get a better experience at the end of the day.

Social Media Fitness: Financial Services

Posted on by Drew Neisser

Among the many contributors of insightful content for the Social Media Fitness Study was Kris Gates, AVP, Participant and Interactive Marketing, Mass Mutual Retirement Services Division.  If you haven’t tried to do social media in Financial Services then you have no idea the regulatory barriers these folks face everyday.   I think you will find what Kris has to say about these challenges and others quite interesting.  Thanks again Kris.

DN: Besides regulatory risks, do you think there is anything else holding Financial Services firms back from committing more time/money to social media?
Beyond regulatory concerns, I think the inability for marketers to provide the business with a social media ROI the way we do other mediums continues to play a role in firms commitments. This seems to be the item that most of the naysayers point to.

DN: Can you shed some light on why your organization developed a disaster plan? Did you by chance have a disaster first?
No disasters. Due to the nature of our work, our company takes disaster planning very seriously. Our communications and mediums to distribute those are all included in our planning.

DN: How have you dealt with customer service related SM issues and / or recruiting via social?
For now we continue to manage social out of our marketing area. When customer service related items come up, they are assigned and resolved through members of our customer service team (call center).

DN: What are the barriers to creating highly engaging content?
It’s not that the content is not engaging so much as the topic. We’ve noticed a consistently steady rate of view, clicks, etc but not less comments. So a lot of people are consuming our content without responding/commenting. While we continue to create more compelling content, I believe consumers personal financial issues/questions/thoughts are something they are not entirely comfortable sharing with their Facebook friends. Funny that people will share details about their personal life via social channels, but are hesitant to let others see they struggle with financial literacy…

DN: Can you speak to the expected benefits of coordinating the customer experience across all communication channels?
We look to provide the same value, support, education for our consumers no matter which channel they prefer to engage us in. From a content creation standpoint, I challenge my team to the three channel test. If a piece of content is not compelling enough to be utilized in some form in at least three consumer channels, then it’s probably not worth creating.

DN: What if anything is holding you back from being in more channels?
If this is referring to social media channels, the answer is resources. (for content management, response, and compliance/regulatory review). Although. I believe this as an area we will expand upon in the future.