Category: Drew’s Articles

7 New Rules for Public Speaking in the Age of Social Media

Posted on by Drew Neisser

This is the most widely read and tweeted article I’ve written to date and appeared first on FastCompany.com.

It was painful to watch. Jon Bond, the former ad giant turned social media honcho, was actually getting heckled at the Pivot Conference. A feisty crowd to begin with, Bond’s admission that he “didn’t like Twitter” was like throwing fresh meat at rabid dogs. But rather than raise their voices, they let their fingers do the shouting. So while Bond continued to speak, a steady stream of snarky tweets projected on the wall behind him, acted like foghorns essentially drowning him out.

Being a great speaker was never easy but now, with your audience likely to have a mobile device in hand and real-time access to multiple social channels, the challenges have gotten that much greater. To get a sense of the impact of social media on conference presentations, I interviewed a bunch of regulars on the social media circuit. In the process, they helped me identify these seven (somewhat snarky) new rules for public speaking in the social media era.

1. Don’t Panic if They Aren’t Looking at You
Sure it is disconcerting when you gaze out at the audience and no one looks back. But whatever you do- don’t panic. Just because they are transfixed by their mobile devices, doesn’t mean they aren’t all ears. Explained Jenny Dervin, VP of Corporate Communications at JetBlue who received raves at a recent BDI event, “I think the body language tells you if they’re paying attention – it’s far more distracting to see people whispering to each other than it is to see someone tapping on an iPad.”

2. Stifle the Temptation to Ask for a Device Moratorium
As tempting as it might be to ask your audience to shut down their devices, every speaker I talked to thought this would be a huge mistake. Former actor and speaker extraordinaire John C. Havens suggested, “I might get their undivided attention but it would be mixed with their ire at being told how to watch my presentation.”  Havens also reminded me that in the old days, “before digital devices, a lot of people would take notes on a pad,” which isn’t all that different than tapping out a tweet.

3. If You Aren’t Nervous, You Should Be Now
When I first learned public speaking, an experience advisor suggested that you “imagine the audience is naked,” to quell the initial butterflies. Today, speakers are probably better off reminding themselves that they are the naked ones. If your facts are wrong, your audiences will Google then tweet the corrected data before you can say, “I’m just sayin’.” And if that isn’t scary enough, as author and speaker Jeff Jarvis proclaims, “the lecture, as a form, is bullshit” so you better ask yourself what you’re doing up there anyway!

4. If You Don’t Speak Tweetese, It’s Time to Learn It
Let’s just imagine for the moment that your audience is absolutely riveted by your every word. Chances are some, if not many of them, will want to share your wisdom with their network, not tomorrow when they get back to the office but right at that very moment. It is for this reason today’s effective speakers are not just sharing their Twitter handles upfront but also mixing in tweetable quotes. Added Havens, “puns, sound bites and pithy phrases are [also] ways to aid in retention.”

5. Congratulations! You May Be Speaking to Millions You Can’t See
The irony of speaking in the social media era is that audience in front of you may be far less significant than the collective reach of that particular group. Explained Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media for Citibank, “I’d much rather have the broader reach, it is one of the better measurements of speaking at events.” Havens confirmed, “odds are half of them are tweeting about my presentation and they’re helping market me!”

6. The Reviews Are In – In Real Time
Rather than waiting to ask a friend after the fact how you did, today’s skilled presenters welcome this feedback in real time. Eliason offered, “it’s fun to respond to a tweet when I am on stage and it personalizes the interaction with the audience.” JetBlue’s Dervin finds these tweets helpful as well, “I go back in the stream to see what landed, based on how many people tweeted the same quote—it’s an instant evaluation of my key messages.”

7. When All Else Fails, Surprise the Audience with Honesty
Bringing this article back full circle, Jon Bond perplexed the Pivot crowd with his admission of not liking Twitter. While this honesty may have cost him some street cred with a Twitter-loving crowd, I recently saw another speaker use honesty to extraordinary advantage. Ray Kerins, VP of Corporate Communications at Pfizer, transfixed a BDI crowd with tales of a crisis that had befallen ChapStick on Facebook the day before. By admitting that Pfizer’s social media activities were a “work in progress,” Kerins earned credibility that reverberated through the Twitterverse.

Final Note
All of those quoted above are very effective speakers, and though each has their own distinctive style, there are a few other commonalities I’d also like to point out. First, none of them depend on word-laden PowerPoint presentations. Second, most are good storytellers and use humor, often self-deprecating, to connect with their audiences. Finally, each of them manages to keep their presentations short enough to allow time for a healthy Q&A. And speaking of healthy Q&A’s, you can find my complete interviews with Dervin, Havens, Eliason and Jarvis right here on TheDrewBlog.com.

Cultivating Customer Communities

Posted on by Drew Neisser

One of the disadvantages of writing an article like 8 Bold Resolutions for Marketers is that you simply can’t go into detail on each of the topics covered.  The 5th resolution, “I will carefully cultivate my customer community,” was based on my extensive interview (below) with Mark Yolton, SVP of Marketing at SAP.  Mark is in charge of the extraordinarily successful SAP Community Network and not surprisingly, can and does make a great case why other marketers should cultivate their own customer communities.

DN: What do you think have been the keys to SAP’s success with the SCN to-date?
First, we began with a targeted audience and a focused mission: to help developers achieve success with SAP’s platforms and solutions. Only after we had critical mass in that audience did we expand to include a broader base, with the expansion of the target audience driven by the community itself, and features and functionality prioritized based on what our target community members wanted or needed.  Essentially, we were pulled along by serving them, rather than pushing them into new directions we thought interesting, with the success of our community members always as our guide.  Over time, we expended from the base of developers, to sysadmins and IT professionals more broadly, then to business process experts and project managers who straddle IT and lines of business, to business analysts and dashboard designers, and then to include university students and professors – all drawn by community member and market needs.  We moved from basic discussion forums which were appropriate for basic Q&A, to longer-form blogs, to a wiki which is more flexible for projects and work groups… and included aspects of gamification, a career center with job board when the economy took a downturn, to an outside-in innovation crowdsourcing space. Constant evolution through monthly updates and larger advances, based on active listening and responsiveness to community feedback.

DN: What are the real advantages of having a user community?

The advantages depend on your vantage point…

Our individual members report that they are more productive, finding answers and solutions faster, and of higher quality, by being able to consult with other customer and partner members of the 2 million-plus SAP community.  Individually, they elevate their expertise, and put it on display where the quality of ideas – rather than other factors – helps people rise to the top and get positive attention.  Their careers accelerate, their professional horizons expand beyond their city, or country, or industry.  On a more visceral level, there’s also an energy that comes with connectedness; members are energized by each other, the back-and-forth of interaction, the excitement and enthusiasm, and the feeling of being part of something bigger and more important than each of us individually … it’s a contagious excitement and an immeasurable but palpable sense of belonging and shared value.

Our SAP customer companies who have employees participating in the SAP community gain open access to subject matter experts for fast implementation and issue resolution so their projects are completed faster, and with higher quality, which helps them reduce their  operations costs and total cost of operations.  From the connectedness across industries and across global commerce, they are able to increase their business and technical knowledge and insight, make business connections within the vast SAP ecosystem to expand their market influence, and have an easier time discovering, evaluating, and accessing SAP and our partner solutions for more advanced implementations. They even have a greater ability to keep up with emerging trends, and to influence SAP and its ecosystem through participation and connections.  And prospective customers in the solution evaluation cycle have the ability to interact with active SAP customers to get their unfettered feedback and advice – and to get a sense of the extraordinary value and unique benefit the SAP community provides.

SAP partners have the opportunity to establish themselves as subject matter experts, and to gain access to the entire global universe of more than 170,000 customer accounts in our installed base for more fine-tuned market insight as a way to focus their solution offerings, and to keep an eye out for sales opportunities.  They can forge relationships with other SAP partners for solution co-development and joint go-to-market, and even post-sale they can call upon a wider set of experts to help speed problem resolution.   We can also demonstrate SAP’s unusually strong commitment to the SAP partner ecosystem through all of these efforts, as well as our work and investments to generate and pass along leads to partners – it strengthens those partner ties with SAP and the value of partnering with SAP, so we gain more of the best partners to augment and extend SAP’s core.

For SAP as the host of the community, we gain faster adoption and ramp-up whenever we introduce new or upgraded products and services to the market, since our reach and influence are huge and immediate.  As a company, we gain speed, agility, better decision making, and reduce our risk because we gain rich insights into what our customers really want and value, gleaned through our direct connections and fluid feedback loops and listening posts.  We can improve  product and solution quality through our customers’ direct outside-in feedback on our products, services, processes, and  customer experiences.  We reduce the cost, complexity, and time to provide core support while maintaining high quality – and can plow those savings back into better community mechanisms and product innovation.  Those and other forms of interaction lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty, better customer retention, up-sell and cross-sell opportunities on the top line, and efficiencies through cost savings on the bottom line.

DN: Would it be as useful (to you or your members) if it wasn’t so large?
There’s a certain critical mass that needs to be built in order for a community to be vibrant, diverse, distributed, and valuable.  If we had a very simple product or a homogenous market, we could deliver benefits with a small member base.  But SAP is a global company, with a vast array of products and solutions, operating in nearly every country and territory on the planet, every industry, serving every aspect of global commerce.  In order to serve our diverse market, we need a very large member base to gain access to experts in everything from Finance to HR lines of business, banking to mining to consumer-goods industries, in Europe and South America and Asia, and across every solution and sub-module of SAP’s portfolio.  We hit the tipping point at about a million individual members several years ago, and we continue to grow at about 40,000 new members each month.  Those kinds of member numbers give us depth and diversity of expertise in just about any relevant topic of interest to our SAP community.

DN: If you were advising a fellow CMO who was thinking of setting up a community today, what would tell him/her? Any shortcuts?
Without hesitation, I would advise any other CMO to lean forward and start building their community without delay, because the value far outweighs the cost, and it is the future.  However, it’s not easy, simple, or inexpensive, and it’s not something that you can build, launch, and then let go.  Community is part science – the platforms, plumbing, apps, and underlying infrastructure – and part art – the policies, practices, programs, and people-oriented components.  It’s uncharted territory, so you’ll need to navigate areas of company rules, emerging legal precedents, daily new learnings, and plenty of antibodies.  It’s not something that you can short-cut; authenticity and transparency and long-term relationships and commitments are key. Get an expert on board who has experience, form a core team to execute, and be personally involved.

DN:  Lots of communities are started (like LinkedIn groups) but very few gain traction.  Why do you think that is?
Communities take work over the long-term, and it’s clear that not everyone who starts one is expecting, anticipating, or willing to put in the time and effort to make them work.  There are hunters and farmers, and communities require aspects of both … hunters to undertake and execute big but limited-time and scope projects, launch them, and move on … short bursts of energy, big pay-offs, motivated by the adrenaline rush of achievement and covering alot of new ground fast; farmers who will toil day-after-day, pruning, nudging, nurturing over the long-term… almost imperceptibly small moves but with staying power, persistence, and timeframes of months and years.  I believe that some communities fail because they don’t take the longer-term view, expect results too fast, and don’t deliver enough value to their target audiences to warrant their members’ continued attention and deep engagement.

DN:  How do you see communities evolving in the next few years?
The platforms and tools have evolved, now, to the point where almost anyone can participate; you don’t need to be a tech guru to participate.  This means that for companies like SAP, we can move from technologist-based communities, to business-oriented communities, right on to communities of c-level members.  We will see both public and private areas where open discussions can occur, whether shared with the world or with a select group of trusted members.  We will see more companies hosting communities of their customers and partners, where those groups really set the agendas, guide the company to build products or to set standards that better suit the needs of the customers.  We will come to expect, as consumers and customers, that the brands we do business with provide the benefits to us of online communities.  And companies will see that the benefits of hosting customer communities will differentiate them, and then will be an expected way of doing business, with tremendous value to everyone who participates.

How to Bring CSR and Social Media Together for Good

Posted on by Drew Neisser

I had the pleasure of meeting Elisabeth Charles at The CMO Club Summit in LA this October.  As CMO of Petco she has orchestrated a number of innovative marketing programs to actively engage pet owners.  Learning that Elisabeth was on the board of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative, I thought she would be a great person to discuss how companies can do well be doing good and extended these activities through social media.  Turns out, this time, I was barking up the right tree.

DN: Do you think being recognized as a good corporate citizen is increasingly important to a brand like yours? Why?
Good corporate citizenship is very important to Petco – it’s built into the fabric of our entire business. Everything we do is guided by our vision for Healthier Pets.  Happier People.  Better World.

We established our non-profit organization, the Petco Foundation, in 1999 and have since raised more than $80 million in support of some 7,500 local animal welfare partners across the country. Each year, we also help save the lives of more than 250,000 animals through adoption events in our stores.  Through the Petco Foundation, we also support spay and neuter efforts, animal-assisted therapy programs and humane education. Working hand-in-hand with the Foundation, our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores serve as the first and largest national pet food bank in the country. Designated collection bins located in each of our stores allow customers to donate pet food that directly benefits pet parents in need in their local community.

As a company, we’re also increasingly adopting more sustainable business practices. We strongly believe that if it’s good for the planet, it’s good for pets and people, too.  Earlier this year, Petco became one of the only non-grocery store retailers to be recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as an Energy Star Leader for reducing our energy consumption by more than 10 percent across our entire business. Additionally, our Planet Petco line of products offers pet parents the ability to choose high-quality, more sustainable products that utilize recycled and reclaimed materials and renewable resources. These are just a few examples of what we do as a company today. It’s an ongoing process and we’re always striving to do more in this important area of corporate social responsibility.

DN: Is there a fine line between “doing good” as a company and talking about it so much that is seems insincere?
You absolutely have to be sincere and authentic in what you are doing and saying, and you must also be fully committed, rather than doing something only half way. A company’s goodwill efforts should be far more than just a marketing campaign. For Petco, all of our “do-gooding” is centered around what we believe is the right thing to do. The programs we create and support reflect our company’s values and the passion our associates have for people and pets.

DN: Is there a particular Petco goodwill/charitable program that you are particularly proud of?
There are many charitable programs that we get involved in, so it is hard to name just one.  A newer program that really took off this year was our National Pet Food Bank program and our National Pet Food Drive. Just in the program’s second year, this year’s drive ran for two weeks (late October-mid November) in all of our Petco and Unleashed by Petco stores. During the national drive, we encourage customers to pick up an extra bag or can of pet food during their shopping trip, or bring unopened food from home, and donate it via the collection bins in our stores. Also for the second year, Hill’s Science Diet supported our efforts by matching 100,000 pounds of donated food during the drive. In just two weeks, we collected nearly 350,000 pounds of pet food – a more than 60 percent increase over last year – to help financially strapped pet parents feed their pets during the holiday season. The Petco Foundation Pet Food Bank is a year-round program, but it’s very exciting to see how generous our customers are during the national drive leading into the holiday season.

DN: I noticed you personally are working with an organization called HABRI.  Can you talk what and why you are doing this?
Petco is excited and proud to be a founding sponsor of HABRI, the Human-Animal Bond Research Initiative. Other founding sponsors are the American Pet Products Association and Pfizer Animal Health.  We got involved because we passionately believe that pets enrich our lives and we want to help generate formal, widespread scientific recognition of the positive role pets play in our lives.  HABRI’s mission is to support research, education and other charitable activities that validate the positive impact the human-animal bond can have on the integrated health of families and communities, by consolidating, organizing and sharing existing scientific research into the human-animal bond in partnership with Purdue University.

DN: Goodwill activities seem to translate well into social media.  Have you found this to be case and/or how do you see good will programs evolving next year?
Absolutely.  We actively use social media (especially Facebook) to engage our fan base, which is now nearing 600,000 likes, to support our charitable causes.  In general, we find that goodwill posts and campaigns featuring authentic stories perform very well in social media.  Positive campaigns with an altruistic call to action perform remarkably better (up to 100 percent more feedback) in user interaction on social properties than promotional campaigns or transactional posts. Human interest stories and, of course, anything to do with pets, are the second most shared and clicked upon posts/tweets/videos.

In October, we hosted our first ever National Adoption Reunion Weekend. Fans online were asked to submit stories about how their adopted pets had changed their lives and were given the opportunity to raise funds for the Petco Foundation through Foursquare check-ins. The social portion of the campaign performed very well, driving the most organic Twitter growth and retweets for a campaign we  have seen to date, the most views on a non-commercial video on YouTube, more than 57,000 photos uploaded on Flickr and more than 3,000 likes across three blog posts. Needless to say, we were very pleased with the results.

DN: I’m a big fan of Pedigree’s “dogs rule” campaign and their pet adoption program.  Have you partnered on “good will” programs with any of the brands that you carry and if so, what are the advantages of this approach?
Every month, we host a National Adoption Weekend when adoption events are held in all of our stores across the country. Each monthly weekend event is sponsored by one of our vendor partners.  We’ve also joined forces with several of our vendor partners for in-store fundraisers to support mutual charitable interests, including Blue Buffalo for Pet Cancer Awareness and Natural Balance for National Guide Dog Month.   I think programs like this are a huge win-win when we are able to work together to help improve the lives of pets and pet parents, and when we all know the funds raised are going to important work that we mutually care about.

CMO Insights: How To Make the Most of Marketing Partnerships

Posted on by Drew Neisser

After the initial success of Small Business Saturday in 2010, American Express elected to open up the program in 2011 to other companies who supported small businesses.  Designed to create a Black Friday-like effect for Small Businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, one of the brands that joined in the fun was Optimum Business, the B2B arm of Cablevision.  Here is my interview with Stephanie Anderson, Vice President, Marketing & Advertising, Commercial Markets at Cablevision, with some great advice on how to make the most out of marketing partnerships.

DN: What is the best case scenario for a marketing partnership?
The best case scenario for a marketing partnership is a having a common customer, goal and market. It is also important that money never change hands between partners – no referral fees, no reseller incentives.  Partners do not write partners checks.

DN: The Optimum Business Benefits program seems like a win/win/win for your brand, your partners and your customers. Are there any risk or downsides to marketing partnerships?
The Optimum Business Benefits program is a win for our brand, partners and customers.  It is important to choose your partners wisely because they become an extension of your brand so you need to be very sure before you agree to partner and market that partnership.

Risks tend to come if you haven’t chosen a partner carefully or your goals are misaligned. That’s why it’s crucial to consider: Can they offer something unique to your customers? Do they stand for the same things as your company and program?  Do they have the same values?  You need to remember that if your customer has a bad experience with one of your partners, it reflects on your company.

DN: Are there any tricks to making the most of a marketing partnership? Why do some work better than others?
Yes!  Making the most of any partnership requires clearly identifying common goals from the outset, measuring success consistently and holding each other accountable. You must regularly communicate with your partner about progress, challenges and next steps. Leave out this necessary component and the partnership simply won’t work.

It’s also important to know your partners well. You should understand where they fit both within their corporation and the industry as a whole.  From a broader perspective, you might be able to provide additional value through the creation of a partner advisory network to give them a collective voice and solicit new ideas.  This will come in handy when there are challenges to overcome. Never meet a customer or a partner for the first time under difficult circumstances – know your partners personally.

DN: Would you recommend that other marketers consider joining this kind of multi-brand program and if so, what should they do to get the most out of it?
Companies interested in joining a multi-brand program should be vocal and outgoing in terms of marketing support for the program.  The best part about multi-brand programs is that you can align with, not only the lead brand, but other companies involved and create new opportunities, offers and messages.  We have seen some of our biggest successes from grassroots activities and campaigns and recommend that all of the participating companies really engage to get the benefits.  Get in the field, get your sales people to understand the value from the beginning and make it a part of their sales training and their sales programs.  And, of course, it is important to check in, measure and build relationships.

CMO Insights: Short-Term to Long-Term Successes

Posted on by Drew Neisser

While doing homework for another article, I ran across a recent study by IBM called “From Stretched to Strengthened” that offers insights into the challenges facing CMO’s around the world.  The study is well worth reading, especially if you are a CMO, and stresses a number of important themes including the needs to:

  • Deliver value to empowered customers
  • Foster lasting connections
  • Capture value, measure results

After reading the study, I reached out to IBM with some follow up questions and got in touch with Yuchan Lee, General Manager of IBM’s Enterprise Marketing Management business.  I think you will agree that Mr. Lee has smart things to say about measuring ROI, using social media for research, the importance of having a clear “corporate character” and finally, the need to think long-term when it comes to customer relationship building.

DN: Is ROI the right metric for CMOs or just one of many important metrics?
It is the most important, as reflected by our CMO Study. Other than a metric based on reflecting customer up-take (e.g., revenue, satisfaction level), which most companies already measure, marketing ROI is essentially the highest level scorecard for an organization’s ability to efficiently and effectively allocate its resource to hit marketing goals.

DN: Why do you think so many CMOs struggle to demonstrate ROI?
The heart of the challenge is the nature to which marketing activities influence buying behavior, and how behavior manifest itself over time. Measuring ROI in marketing involves sifting through tons of noise in the data to connect all the pieces of evidence that influenced the purchase behavior.  This is an inexact, statistically-based science that, until recently, was too hard to tackle.

DN: Why do you think marketers have been so slow to embrace research via social channels? (i.e. only 14% mine blogs)
Before a company embraces a social channel, it must first believe it has to.  This requires a shift in strategy based on the realization that consumers are more in control and the company is losing its grip on branding.  In my experience, this shift is scary to many companies and many are slow to realize it and to turn this realization into action.  Furthermore, even if one is ready to take action, the newness of engaging social networks makes it challenging to know where to begin.

DN: Why should marketers expand their research horizons beyond traditional channels to things like blogs?
We believe traditional marketers need to expand not just research but all areas of market and customer engagement as well as demand generation to the social channels.  That’s where the center of influence for purchase decisions is and will continue to be. That’s where detailed, real-time, and unfiltered market feedback data can be best gathered and analyzed, and ultimately where the brand of a company will truly be reflected in the future (if not already!).

DN: What’s in it for the more proactive marketers who are mining new digital data sources?
Additional data, if incorporated properly, allows a company to know what is relevant to its customers — potentially down to the individual customer level.  We believe the ability of a company to deliver relevant communication in sales/marketing/services is the basic ingredient to a successful customer relationship and a prerequisite to staying in business.

DN: A lot of marketers pay lip-service to their corporate values.  Will developing a clear ‘corporate character’ really deliver competitive advantage?
Having clarity on a company’s corporate character is a necessary but not sufficient element of success.  It must be followed by execution by the organization, every day, delivering a consistent customer experience that is aligned with the corporate character.  The true reflection of the corporate character will come out quickly, most likely in social media.

DN: Your report emphasizes the need to “foster lasting connections.”  Is this goal in conflict with the typically pressing need to deliver short-term revenue?
No.  In our experience, being relevant and adding value to the customer in every communication and interaction is the common denominator for forging a lasting connection with the customer AND the ability to drive successful short-term revenue.  After all, long-term success is made up of series of short term successes!

‘Tis the Season to Do Well by Doing Good

Posted on by Drew Neisser

‘Tis the season that people and brands start to think about doing a little good for others.  Lynley Sides, CEO of a philanthropically-oriented start-up called The Glue Network, has a plan to help brands do well by doing good all year round. She makes a compelling case for CSR programs noting that, “People are nearly twice as likely to buy or recommend a product if it’s affiliated with a cause they care about.” Here’s my interview with Lynley.  I think she is on to something really good!

DN: What are your goals for The Glue Network?
The Glue Network is the first to elegantly combine giving with digital media to deliver bottom line results for companies (greater return on marketing spend or greater return on company giving) and to be a catalyst for good in the world. Our two primary goals are:

  • Deliver business results for companies. Today, corporate giving groups are under tremendous pressure to deliver business results beyond goodwill — we deliver that.  Marketing groups are seeking authentic (non-gimmicky) ways of engaging with their consumers and stakeholders that not only deliver more clicks but deeper relationships and a positive image — we deliver that.  Small companies are especially challenged to accomplish these things due to limited resources — the Glue automated platform delivers the same results for a company / program of any size.
  • Be a catalyst for good:  Success with #1 means companies will spend more this way — more results for them + more good for the world.  Also, as individuals are engaged in giving at younger ages, they give more over the course of their lives and influence more giving from others.  Through the individuals a company engages with their Glue program, we encourage future good (giving, volunteering, social entrepreneurship).

DN: Do you think a lot of brands are looking to do well by doing good right now given the challenging economy?
Yes, this is absolutely a hot topic for business right now because there are 2 competing factors at work.  Despite the challenging economy, companies (not just big ones) face higher expectations from consumers/stakeholders for social responsibility and the lowest levels of satisfaction in history.  But also (as supported by a recent study by The Conference Board), as these economic pressures persist, what doesn’t improve the bottom line is in the end not sustainable.  So, if companies don’t figure out how to give back and have that giving drive value beyond goodwill or a golden halo, it will cease to be justifiable — which would be a missed opportunity for business and a massive loss for the world.

Companies that aren’t feeling the pain of this challenge are either the few that are far ahead of the curve, with social responsibility deeply engrained in their businesses in ways that create value, or have not yet faced this reality because they continue to look at marketing and giving separately.

DN: There are so many ways for brands to “do good,” why should they align with The Glue Network?
Glue does more than they can do otherwise and we make it far easier for them.  People are nearly twice as likely to buy or recommend a product if it’s affiliated with a cause they care about.  However, when a company makes a charitable gift, the nonprofit may fit with their brand and help a good cause — but necessarily, it’s not the one most of that brand’s customers would have chosen.  To drive greater business value, companies need to create cause-based experiences that allow consumer choice and provide rich, social experiences.  Voting campaigns by brands like Pepsi, Chase, Gap, Target and more take a step toward this but could do more to deliver engaging experiences and tie the experience back to direct direct business results.  And they aren’t feasible for smaller companies to pull off.

Glue’s automated, closed loop platform enables cause-based social marketing programs of any size that create deep engagement, multi-point brand/cause associations, high sharing rates and a closed loop brands can use to drive new customers and rich data.  This is a unique and powerful combination.

DN: What makes you confident that the “goodwill” generated by TGN will translate into ‘good’ revenue?
Companies don’t need Glue to create goodwill.  But when individuals are given rich options and the power to choose (not just vote but choose), they become personally attached to their choice and to the company that enabled them to make it — and more inspired to share the experience with their friends and support the company in the future.  That’s not just our opinion.  Our user data blows away industry average rates for sharing and clicks — meaning we’re inspiring the users (the company’s customers), giving the company access to those customers’ friends and colleagues (highly attractive targets), and enabling them to directly drive new customers and revenue from that base PLUS develop new customer data which all companies know to have value.

The Glue platform is flexible enough to fulfill numerous business objectives spanning customers, partners, and employees.  But for any audience, a Glue program delivers significantly higher business value for the cost than comparable traditional digital media, loyalty, or giving programs.

DN: What kind of commitment are you looking for from brands?
Very little.  We’re committed to making robust Social Cause Marketing feasible and justifiable (through business results) for every company.  We’re like a Salesforce.com <http://Salesforce.com>  (sophisticated CRM for all) or Eventbrite (anyone can be an event organizer) — this December, businesses from small local startups to one of the largest tech companies are creating greater value from the same holiday gift spending through Glue.  For brands that want to create larger programs with a more integrated, branded experience, we can do that too.

This ease and flexibility is made possible by the robust platform we’ve developed with an extensive back-end that enables campaign and non-profit project management.

DN: What can companies do quickly to harness the spirit of the holidays to increase customer loyalty and attract new customers while doing good?
Companies of all sizes spend on gifts and branded merchandise (a $17 billion industry), many of which wind up in landfills and few of which the recipient finds meaningful or worthy of telling people about.  Instead of mugs or gift baskets, give a Glue gift which has meaning for the recipient, does good in the world, and generates free PR for the business in the form of social media recommendations — for the same cost and minimal effort. Contact info@thegluenetwork.com

Final note:  Lynley Sides is CEO of The Glue Network and has spent her career bringing groundbreaking new products to market. She’s passionate about digital media, social ventures, running, skiing and the fight for global human freedom. You can follow her @LynleySides.