Category: Our thoughts

Relationship Marketing

There’s a great piece that’s been percolating around the Enterprise/Social space right now, based around ‘Why Every Company Needs a Robert Scoble‘ –

With free sexy infographic!

Written by Mark Fidelman, Social Business Strategist over on SeekOmega, he talks about brand evangelists and how awesome they are at –

‘…creating exceptional buzz around their brands that was once the domain of the world’s largest media powerhouses’.

He’s not wrong.

But, like everything else in the fast-moving world of digital and social, this too shall pass. Scoble is a purple cow in this area, a unique being amongst others who’s clout klout alone can help make or break a business. At least, you’d hope so. One only has to look at his immense activity on new web darling ‘Quora‘ to see the kind of dedication he puts into something he likes. One would imagine that he also quite likes his employer, Rackspace.

And it’s here that we find the rub.

This morning things got even more interesting when renowned analyst and commenter Dennis Howlett weighed in with his well thought out analysis over on ZDNet. CFO and investor commentary aside, Dennis’ experience in this area is second to none and he provides some excellent counter-points to Fidelman’s post.

However, when talking about Rackspace and their rather fantastic reputation in the Enterprise space, this quote in particular stood out for me:

“Whenever I have discussions with customers about their IT landscape and data center thoughts, Rackspace’s name is never very far from the conversation. Why? The company has established a solid reputation that customers are happy to talk about. As we have all known in this industry for a very long time, relationships drive enterprise sales harder than anything else. Get customers talking to one another and you’re off to the races. Tick them off and you are in deep trouble.”

I’ve bolded the bit I’m really focusing on here. Howlett has been writing about enterprise software for the best part of 20 years and provides some great extra analysis on top of Mark’s initial conjectural piece around the value of a true, brand evangelist. Seriously, go read it.

The point he makes above is neither new thinking or any kind of rocket science, but what it is is exactly what we, as word of mouth practitioners believe in through and through; if you have a kick-ass service and can deliver on your promises – then get your customers talking. It’s that simple.

The brand evangelist can help facilitate those conversations but, as Dennis quite rightly points out, that is only one piece of a much larger marketing pie*.

Scoble himself is naturally self-depreciating (and completely on point) –

Shouting about a product is easy. Creating meaningful relationships over a sustained period of time which consistently deliver against fundamental key business critical metrics? Well, that’s something else entirely.

Relationships. Matter.

It’s that simple.


When are we again?

We’re fresh out of the Noughties (or not, as the case may be), and – as is our wont as humans desperately in search of figuring out the names of things – we were wondering this morning what nomenclature we should be applying to the decade ahead (that is if you believe that a new decade started this year, not last).

So far suggestions are as follows:

The Tenties – via @Pockless, @chrisbell and @kiphakes – (currently in the lead)

Miss @Lorna_Wall suggests that The Tweenies might be a suitable name (although these guys may have a problem with that)

‘Elevensies‘ – via the the rather comedic ex’head, @_EISwann

Mark Errett suggests that while ‘Tennies‘ might be a good name, he’s fairly sure that the people of 1910 never had this problem (he could be right).

‘The Lost Decade‘ is an interesting entry from one Mr Alan Hind, although we’d like to see some more reasoning behind this choice – i.e.: where will it be lost? Is there an island? Etc.

Finally, a late entry from one Benjamin Crime; THE FUTURE!

New Years (and new decades) always seem to get us talking; tomorrow? Resolutions.

Until then:

WHAT ARE YOU CALLING THIS DECADE THAT WE’RE IN?

Personalisation can be good

Following on from last week’s post, it was with great interest that I read this post, by Transmedia-guru Dan Light over the weekend. Entitled ‘The Post-Old-Spice-Hall-of-Fame’ he draws attention to that campaign, the personalised nature of the YouTube responses and the effect it will have on marketeers in the future –

“Following on from the smattering of ill-advised hangers-on clinging to the coat-tails of the meme itself, we’re moving into the phase where agencies have had time to look on admiringly, schedule a meeting with their client, pitch a similar idea, rush it into production, write the press release and bring it to life.”

“What next?” he said, Orange’s ‘The Feed‘ with their ‘singingtweetagrams‘, that’s what.

To an extent, he has a point.

This level of personalisation is nothing new. In fact I doubt there are many reading this right now who will disagree with me when I say that the Old Spice campaign was just so impactful you’d be forgiven for thinking that they invented it.

However, what it actually succeeded in doing (on top of dramatically increasing sales, mass awareness and no doubt going on to win a bajillion awards in the new year), was highlighting the potential benefits of harnessing social media in this way. A – dare I say it – old and staid brand throwing themselves at social in such a left field and disruptive manner is going to win brownie points for sheer bravery alone.

Tippex is another great example here.

But what about the #singingtweetagram? Inventive, yes. Fun, also. But this re-iteration and personalisation of tweets, again, is nothing new. When I first saw it hit I thought ‘Genius! It’s an audio version of IrkaFirka!’

For those of you not in the know, to be ‘firked’ is to have one’s tweet taken, turned into art and tweeted right back at you.

It is a wonderful thing.

The Feed’s elevator pitch? Hashtag your tweet ‘#singingtweetagram’ and they’ll pass it on to the Rockabellas back in the studio who’ll sing it and again, send it back to you.

It worked too. We sent this –

And we got this back!

http://boos.audioboo.fm/swf/fullsize_player.swf

Great right? Right.

A few things –

  1. What is the objective? How does singing tweets to *anyone* have any direct correlation with brand values, product launches, campaign assets… Who knows.
  2. You heard the audio up there through Audioboo. For some reason The Feed didn’t think to add an option to embed the MP3 on my own site; share it through Twitter? Yes. Download and keep? Also. But no embedding for you.
  3. I’ve never seen @FrankG laugh so much in my life. He loved this and he smiled. A lot. What else? When giving the ‘premiere’ of the clip to the rest of the office, they all laughed too. Wonderful stuff.

Number two is an oversight but one and three cancel out each other quite nicely. If your brand or your client can simply make someone smile and laugh, then who cares about the campaign objectives?

Right? 😉

Personal vs Personalised

Testing

This is stuck on the wall next to my desk.

I look at it from time to time and, on occasion, point wildly at it whilst making some word of mouth-related point about something or other.

The best way to illustrate this? Spam is personalised. Post-it notes are personal.

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been sending out our #WhatisWOM infographic posters to all and sundry* and every single one of them went with a hand-written, personal note saying ‘thank you and enjoy’.

This is important.

Relationships are important.

People are important.

And that, dear readers, underpins everything we do.

—

*Including Scott Gould who picked up on this yesterday and prompted me to write this post 🙂

#NewTwitter – what now?

New Twitter is here! Hurrah!

Not for all of us, admittedly, but it’s getting there…

So what’s new about it?

Listing all the awesome new features that are now available to some of its users is too easy and to be honest, a lot of people have done that already.

Where can we add value?

Here at 1000heads, we like to help people.

Be that through offering real world shops easier ways to talk about their social selves or even just recommending best practice for that most unused of social spaces; the twitter background.

We’ve done this before.

However, what with #NewTwitter on the scene, all that hard work and stunning imagery we advised back in January is going to waste; it’s now suddenly hidden behind Twitter’s brand new, super-slick and super-fast web interface.

Damn.

This means change. But do not fear, change is GOOD! 🙂

Example:

Our old background, on #NewTwitter, looked like this –

No. Neither can we. Rubbish right? Agreed. Which is why we’ve changed it.

Now it looks like this –

Ta-dah!

What do you think?

We’re off to tell our friends and clients to make use of this window ASAP and to get to work on changing their Twitter background sharpish.

Perhaps you should too 🙂

_____________________

EDIT 1:

If you want to create your own, then we recommend graphic that has a 20pixel gap at the top and a 48pixel width for the side. We’d also recommend, for now at least, that you create something that works on both #newtwitter and old.

EDIT 2:

If you’ve updated your background because of this post, then please do leave a comment with a link. We’d love to know who’s not only benefited from this blog but also – more importantly – exactly how creative our readers can get with such limited space!

Best of luck 🙂

1000heads: Ones to watch

That’s what the super-smart bods over at New Media Age have said we are anyway –

NMA

Each year, NMA release their ‘Top 100 Interactive Agencies’ league table and, although we’re not in the overall rankings, we have been given the rather prestigious nod in the ‘Ones to Watch’ section.

As they say themselves –

“‘This section in the guide lists agencies the publication believes has done some exciting work over the past 12 months and has really tried to be innovative in their approach to digital.”

Thank you very much New Media Age, we’re honoured to be included.

🙂

We've got some packing to do

You may remember that to celebrate our birthday last month we pulled together this rather tasty ‘What is WOM?’ infographic –

You might also remember that we also promised posters to anyone who wanted one too…

Well, they’re here.

If you want one (and are yet to sign up) please go right ahead and leave a comment on this post and we’ll add your name to the list

🙂

Getting to know… the staff :)

We’re into week two of our month-long 10th birthday celebrations and this week we’re celebrating the people that really make things happen; our staff.

Before we start waxing lyrical about how freakin’ awesome they all are (they are, really) and generally start going to town on just how stupidly and ridiculously hard they all work (really, they do), I thought it would be best to try and find out a little bit about them.

Not all of them mind, just a few – i.e.: the ones that were still around when I ran around asking for blog names and addresses before I left the office!

There’ll be more to follow (at some point) I’m sure, but for now, here’s a teeny, tiny snapshot into just some of the friendly faces who drive us forward –

Tom is @tom_messett on twitter and http://www.tomsideas.wordpress.com is where he writes about, you guessed it, some of his own ideas 🙂 Currently musing about BP & Social Media…

If you’re a regular reader here then you’ve no doubt heard about our very own @mollyflatt. Molly writes her own blog at http://www.mollyflatt.com, where you can also find links to her stuff on The Guardian, Finch’s Quarterly Review and so on. Molly sasy: “Be warned. It’s all very me.”

This is Sam. He doesn’t exactly run a blog but he has asked me to tell you that he runs his own website and forum here – http://forevermanutd.com and here http://fmuforum.com. “It is not the most popular theme however – being Man Utd.” – No comment Sam ;) 

Straight and to the point Ricc lists his details as: “My Personal blog: http://riccwebb.posterous.com. Slightly more serious blog: http://adinspiration.posterous.com. Twitter @RiccWebb“ – Thanks Ricc

When pressed for some online details Jacqui ran away and hid for a little while, only later emailing me to say: “I feel decidedly bad about my lack of online content: I do have a blog: www.jacquihill.com and a Twitter account @JacquiHill… But I’m not going to lie, last entry on blog was in January (hides face in shame).”

“Hi I’m Paul, I’m nonsensical and when I’m not sending spaghetti to people – http://chroniclesofspaghetti.tumblr.com – I like to write Acid Fiction – Which by the way I have a lot more written than is up on the blog at the moment ^_^ http://blog.acidfiction.com“ – Paul’s spaghetti blog is possibly the best thing on the internet. Probably.

Resident skateboarder Matt – “My own twitter is @lngbrder888 and also run www.longboardsource.co.uk which includes a technical blog (http://bit.ly/biHbs3) and a ‘Scene’ blog (http://bit.ly/ccetCb). There is also some shamefully ephemeral tweeting on @longboardsource.”

Oh.. and I nearly forgot –

Ahem. You can find me on twitter as @whatleydude and, when I’m not writing here at 1000heads, I blog about the other things in my head over at my happy place. Sometimes, just sometimes, I find the time to write about mobile too. I save that stuff for http://thereallymobileproject.com.

…………

Like I said, that’s definitely not everybody (in fact – we could make this a recurring feature!), but hopefully you can see we’re a passionate bunch who not only extol the virtues of blogging and tweeting at every possible moment, but also practice what we preach too.

We love our staff. They rock.

🙂

1000heads: If it's broken, fix it!

“This is the story of four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. Consequently, it wound up that Nobody told Anybody, so Everybody blamed Somebody.”

Recently, in a piece for Reputation Online, Steve Waddington from Speed Communications said that “corporate blogging is broken.”

..

..

While admitting this is indeed an over-statement, he still goes on to make some valid points as to why in the UK at least, corporate blogging has yet to take off.

Citing ownership, authenticity and human vs corporate communication as the three main reasons as to why, @wadds goes on to say that while these issues continue to throttle bloggging on a corporate level, there are some excellent examples out there of people doing it well.

I agree with Steve, there are some great examples of corporate blogs out there – you’re reading one right now 😉 – but what his post doesn’t do is explain how to address the issues that he raises.

Let’s try and do that shall we?

1) Ownership

Steve says:

“Should a blog be the pet project of a senior executive or fall within the communications or PR team, product marketing, customer relations or human resources? And legal will almost certainly want to get involved and pass judgement on blog posts and comments.”

We say:

It depends on your objective.

Time and time again when it comes to corporate blogging, brands just throw a single blog post up and expect it to change the world. I once actually had a conversation with someone (who shall remain nameless) where they said: “Well we had a MySpace, but it didn’t do anything. So we closed it.” – Amazing. This rule doesn’t just apply to corporate blogging, obviously. The same can be said for any business activity.

What is your goal? Paint a target, then go for it.

In this instance if your blog is to just put a human face onto some of your PR messages then this falls to your PR department. If you want to address a few customer service issues, then liaise with your customer service department. If it’s a combination of both, then speak to both.

As a side note, if it comes to your legal department, keep them in the loop the whole time. Work with them to develop a set of guidelines that you both agree on and stick to them.

It really isn’t rocket science.

2) Human communication vs corporate communication

Steve says:

“There are fundamental differences between how people communicate and how companies communicate – and very few corporate organisations have managed to bridge that gap.”

We say:

Agreed! Totally!

But how do we address this?

Once you’ve been through point 1 (setting your objectives and appointing ownership), your next step is to find the right voice. Seeking out and finding your very own brand evangelist/community manager might not be easy, but if you close your eyes and think hard you could probably come up with one maybe two people in your company that truly live and breathe your brand or product. If you can’t, then the chances are that it’s you.

You are a human being.

Guess what? So is the person you’re thinking of. Admittedly this is a very simple way of looking at things, but by truly embracing and trusting in your community manager, you will find your voice. Talk to each other, compare notes. Embrace social communications and don’t be afraid of people.

3) Authenticity

Steve says:

“Finally there is the issue of the generation of authentic content. It’s the only way to attract and stimulate an audience yet organisations see it as time consuming and requiring the constant input of senior management.”

We say:

If you stick to the points above, this third and final point should not be an issue. At 1000heads we talk about the anthropomorphism of brands and the importance of PEOPLE being able to talk to PEOPLE. There are people behind the brand, just like there are brands behind products.

Trust in your people, trust in yourself and most of all, remember that you are a human being.

Keep it real.
Keep it simple.
Keep it honest.


In summary; know your objective, be a human being and ultimately, use your corporate blog to delight and excite the people that matter most to your business. With any problem the first half of the battle is identifying what needs fixing. The next step is the how.

Hopefully we’ve gone some way to help out in that respect.

Please, leave a comment if you have any questions or opinions.
We’d love to help.