I know American Apparel founder DovCharney’s in no position to get pissed (let alone struggle to locate the moral high ground) over an apparel company’s ad campaign — just ask WoodyAllen — but I think he might actually be justified if he’s got his skimpy knickers in a twist over the style and format of Gap Inc.’s new “Born to Fit” campaign:
As we begin the final day of CRM Evolution 2009 here at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square, we’ve heard a lot about the changing customer. Namely, how businesses will have to start playing on the consumers’ terms rather than the other way around. A large part of that, according to virtually any keynote or session here, will have to do with embracing Web 2.0 tools and social media.
This also means the government — at all levels. In my March feature on government and CRM, one source explained that we could expect to see great movement in Web 2.0 due to — at that time — newly elected President Barack Obama’s call for transparency.
While some time has passed since I wrote that piece, it seems that government agencies are getting the message loud and clear. On the first day, Brian Komar, director of strategic outreach for the Center for American Progress (CAP), talked about his work with Salesforce.com and Eloqua to bring structure, analytics, and a clear view into his business in order to further its mission of striving to improve the lives of Americans. He explained that as CRM continues to evolve, we will begin to see the line blur between non-profit and for-profit organizations.
He had three key takeaways:
We may be a non-profit but we are not that different from you, as both public and private sector organizations are generally concerned with products and customers.
We are a non profit, and we are a little different from you with regard to what success looks like. He noted the business community is usually about maximizing profits, but for CAP, it can be about exerting influence, and metrics aren’t quite as clear.
As CRM becomes more social in nature, non-profits and businesses have more to learn from one another. Komar said the business community is good at maximizing return on investment, while non-profits are good at building communities and soliciting volunteers.
Building upon the work non-profits are doing, yesterday’s session, “Web 2.0 Tools in Federal and State Governments Drive Participation, Transparency, and Citizen Empowerment,” looked even further at just how far government entities have come — and will go.
Casey Coleman, chief information officer of the General Services Administration (GSA) talked about the revolution, not evolution, of how government is interacting with citizens. “This isn’t your father’s federal government … it’s changing,” she said. “The bottom line is government serves the public better when it makes decisions based on citizen input. Everything we do must enable citizens to be part of the process, and Web 2.0 helps us to make that happen.”
She noted the GSA’s use of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, and other burgeoning social media sites as evidence that the government is continuing to go to where the people are increasingly flocking in order to provide them the information they need in the form in which they prefer. “Government has a lot to offer,” she said. “The public is hungry for information, and they want to participate and be involved in the dialogue.”
Robert Greenberg, chief executive officer of G&H International Services, gave attendees a sneak peek into what social CRM can — and is starting to – deliver for the public sector, namely in homeland security. “There’s a significant challenge in homeland security because of who the stakeholders are and how they’re organized,” he said. “The first thing to understand is that everything starts on the local level before moving to state and federal. It’s also an incredibly fragmented community, as there are approximately 55,000 different agencies in terms of police, fire, and emergency medical.”
Combine all of these different audiences with billions of dollars spent in local infrastructure that cannot be ripped and replaced as well as incredibly difficult to get to connect and integrate with one another — and there is a real problem. No one wants another Hurricane Katrina. “The lack of seamless information sharing is what made Katrina that much worse,” he recalled. “In reality, all states that wanted to help out had no easy way of doing so.”
There is hope though, as Greenberg pointed to two projects of government being used as a platform: Virtual Alabama and VIPER.
“At the end of the day, homeland security is about having a capability so when you are under stress from a political, social, or economic standpoint, you can bounce back as rapidly as possible,” Greenberg said. “The key is making information actionable. Without that, what are you going to do?”
It can be argued that is the same problem facing private sector businesses today. Connecting with customers (or citizens) and being able to take the information culled from them and make it actionable, both for the business and for consumers themselves. Are you finding a change in how you can access information from government, regardless of municipality? Do you think that federal government can even be overhauled in these terms, or is it too big to change?
Well, the airline industry has yet again found itself at the painful receiving end of viral video mania.
The latest in a long line of videographed customer service nightmares, this one involves United Airlines. Unlike the infamous video of a Delta Airlines flight stuck on the tarmac for hours, United had the misfortune to dissatisfy a passenger who happens to be a professional musician. Putting his skills to work, the musician has turned his saga not only into a song, but a full-fledged music video, with high-quality production values:
The musician, Dave Carroll, also posted a prose recounting of the experience on his blog. The L.A. Times does a nice job of telling the tale over the past two days, including United’s reaction (which includes an airline spokesperson’s too-punny-to-be-accidental response that Carroll’s guitar tale “has struck a chord with us”).
Unfortunately (for United), the Times’ coverage also makes clear that the airline’s efforts to make amends with Carroll may fall under the heading of “too little, too late”:
But be advised, United. The second part of [Carroll's] trilogy, already written, will come out in mid-August. It focuses on his relationship with a customer service representative named Ms. Irlweg, he says, and it’s the first song he’s ever written with a tuba in it.
Carroll notes in his blogpost that, in addition to that second act, a third song remains, as yet, unwritten. But this first ditty may be enough. The lyrics quote a fellow passenger alerting Carroll to the violence on the tarmac: “My God! They’re throwing guitars out there!”
(I’m immediately reminded of the line “My God! It’s full of stars!” from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Granted, that’s because I’m a [film and technology] geek of a particularly high order, but any connection between United and the HAL 9000 is hardly doing the airline any favors.)
Anyway, I think “My God! They’re throwing guitars out there!” will haunt me for a while.
But “I alerted three employees, who showed complete indifference towards me” may haunt United far longer.
“This attitude of yours must go,” Carroll says in his lyrics. I couldn’t agree with him more.
[EDITORS' NOTE: This is part of a series of posts that began here, dissecting a two-page chart that appeared in CRM magazine's June 2009 issue on social media. The digital edition of that issue can be found here, and a standalone image of the chart itself can be seen here. (Click on the “View Full Size” button at the top right of that page.) To view all posts in the series, please add this RSS feed to your RSS reader.]
JUNE 4, 2009 — The most recent IDC primary research shows that 64 percent of full-time working adults worldwide have participated in an online community on social networking services in the past year (for personal and/or professional use). Social media can now be considered mainstream, with more working adults in their 30s and 40s joining and participating.
Real-time status updates on Twitter and Facebook mean that people are frequently commenting about all aspects of their day – what they’re doing or how they’re feeling. Chances are good that one of your customers is commenting online about an experience with your brand.
For example, consider this tweet I discovered by searching “JetBlue” on Twitter this past March:
Marc Pitman complains on Twitter, “I’ve tried at least 6 times to book my flight to SLC on JetBlue. It’s not going through. And the phone support is a 25 MINUTE wait + $15.”
Once @JetBlue responds to Mr. Pitman on Twitter, the company grabs an opportunity to turn his complaint into a message of appreciation.
Customers just want to be heard.
Social media makes this possible and they know it. Does your company have a process to respond to comments like this one from Mr. Pitman, in order to have a voice in the online conversation(s) about your brand?
Notice that I said voice in the conversation, not control of the conversation. The power of your company to control the messages about its brand is diminishing with the rise of social media. Your customers will comment and complain about your services on social media no matter what. That’s what creates so much anxiety for businesses today. Yes, this is hard work. If your company uses social media to broadcast messages but doesn’t listen or respond to customer questions or complaints, the strategy will backfire and your company will look fake.
Notice how Mr. Pitman above compares @JetBlue to @comcastcares in one of his comments. Luckily, @JetBlue did get ‘on it,” thereby exceeding his expectations.
To be fair, I recognize JetBlue as being one of the first organizations to establish a Twitter account in order to respond to customer complaints like the one above. Here’s a recent interview with Morgan Johnston, who manages the @JetBlue Twitter account (courtesy of @CoTweet on Twitter):
outline operational changes (including a “Customer Bill of Rights”) the company would implement to prevent any reoccurrence of such an unfortunate event.
JetBlue Customer Bill of Rights
Here’s Neeleman’s February 2007 video:
So this is not a post to pick on JetBlue, but to illustrate that even highly regarded customer brands that are savvy in social media have somewhat-delayed responses to customers who are complaining about their services online.
Any delayed response is a product of the random feedback and siloed transactional data of social media today (see the lower right quadrant of CRM magazine’sSocial Media Maturity Model).
In addition, JetBlue has someone from the corporate communications team monitoring Twitter and then routing any customer complaints to the customer service team. This reflects the current state of manual and reactive processes of social CRM. It’s the reason why so many social media managers are currently overwhelmed.
The good news is that we expect response times to improve with future technologies that automate, filter, and centralize customer feedback from wherever it is posted on the Web. These feedback management tools will allow organizations to be more proactive. At the same time, the enterprise will have had more time and experience to establish structure, support and processes around social CRM once we leave this experimental phase to enter a more mature phase of social CRM in the next few years.
Caroline Dangson (@CarolineDangson on Twitter) is a research analyst at IDC who tracks the enterprise social media market. In this role, Ms. Dangson advises clients on how to leverage social media to effectively communicate and collaborate with target customers and business partners based on actionable research.
According to a blog post on The New York Times’ Bits, YouTube and Universal Music Group have come to an agreement about how to provide online access to music videos.
This is a follow-up to a post I wrote earlier this year about how UMG was muting all of its music videos on YouTube (see: The Day The Music Died). Since then, videos have been removed from YouTube.
The brainchild of this dispute is a new music site called Vevo, which will bring better content, and hopefully, more revenue from advertising.
Universal Music Group explains its plan for Vevo:
“VEVO will be a premium online music video hub built for consumers, advertisers and content owners that will blend UMG’s broad catalog of top artists and content with YouTube’s leading edge video technology and user community. YouTube will provide the technology infrastructure that will power VEVO and host UMG’s extensive library of professionally-created music videos on the new site. On YouTube, this content will be exclusively available through VEVO.com and a new VEVO channel through a special VEVO branded embedded player.”
In addition to what music labels hope to be a better advertising model, there are also plans to eventually offer merchandise and concert tickets on Vevo.
So I’ve currently been obsessed with Yazoo’s (aka, Yaz for “you Americans, too old to have Wikipedia at your disposal” –editor, who is one such American) 1982 hit “Only You.” Not only have I been playing it on repeat, but I wanted to share it with the world (i.e., my gChat – Google Talk? – buddy list).
Two days ago, we learned that videos are now embedded directly into your chat window. Today, my editor clicked on the YouTube link in my status to the video for “Only You” and realized there was no sound. After checking all his sound controls, we finally uncovered the mystery. Can you find the culprit?
Hint: it’s right here ^.
Apparently, after disputes with Warner Music Group, YouTube has had to enforce this policy for over a week, but I was just listening to this song yesterday!
In other related news, the on-going debate between rising royalty prices for Internet radio continues to exacerbate the concerns around our ability to listen to music for free. I got a cursory explanation of the situation from a Pandora executive, but I will be following up with the company’s CEO Joe Kennedy sometime soon. In any case, the executive I spoke to assured me that Pandora was not going out of business (phewf) due to reports of its inability to afford the royalty fees; in fact, the company had increased 50 percent in revenue last year.
I’m not sure what the right solution is, but for now, watch and listen while you can!
Update: Surprise, Surprise.
I’m not the only one that feels this way. YouTube Users Lash Out At Warner Music (And Google) With Protest Videos http://twurl.nl/cdxha6
On Tuesday, we ran a news story about how marketers/businesses who have invested in online marketing and Web analytics are going to continue doing so. This, according to Jim Sterne, author of the report and founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit (eMOS), is a testament to the fact that those who are using these tools are seeing results and standing by them.
The Association of National Advertisers concluded its “Masters of Marketing” conference two weeks ago (Oct. 16-19) and it, too, launched a survey to its attendees. Though this one captured a much wider audience (approx. 1,400 attendees comprised of marketers, analysts, and agencies), results still point to a similar conclusion — marketing budgets, in general, aren’t plummeting as much as everyone had feared, as long as they’re showing the numbers (and the money). In fact, BtoB magazine will be hosting a Webcast tomorrow where Stefan Tournquist, Research Director at MarketingSherpa, “explains why cutting budgets in a tight economy may be a shortsighted approach.”
Check out the survey and results after the jump, as well as a few words from Barbara Bacci Mirque, executive vice president at the ANA.
[I tried posting the iMeem player here, but I failed. Instead, you get the clickable link.] [UPDATE, 10/1/08, 10a: Now you've got the clickable link and the iMeem player. Yes, the phrase "live and learn" comes to mind.]
So not only did a week of Oracle OpenWorld pretty much max me out, but now we’re heading into production week on CRM’s November print issue. Another cycle goes by, and another opportunity to improve our offerings slides away with it. So I’m left to console myself with the knowledge that
(a) there’s always next month (these cycles are called cycles for a reason);
(2) we’re making strides (we’re better now than we were, and as long as that continues to be the case, I’ll count myself lucky if not satisfied); and
(iii) we’re working to offer the CRM community the very best content we can, delivered in the best and most sophisticated context possible.
And then I’m reminded that others often are there ahead of us. To get at what I’m getting at, check after the break…
In a fast-paced presentation here at the Gartner Web Innovation Summit in LA, marketing analyst Andrew Frank lead a fast-paced session about Brands in Social Media.
“I think you need to think of social media as a truly global phenomenon that’s applicable against different groups,” Frank says. He affirms that companies need to participate in social media — whether they want to or not.
As Phillip Britt reported for destinationCRM.com last week, new research shows that the majority of a company’s marketing budget is now spent towards online efforts. Frank echoes the research, sharing the fact that GM now spends 50 percent of its marketing budget on the Web. He says that businesses market in three areas on the Web:
Search and performance [i.e: Google]
Media brands [ex: Fox or Espn.com]
Virally [Facebook or YouTube]
Frank shares five goals of branded viral content:
1. Get awareness: Frank uses Burger King’s Subservient Chicken to demonstrate. (If you haven’t seen this already, please visit and request “The Worm.”) 2. Engage people with the brand: A perfect example is creating your own M&M representation. 3. Collect data: Sephora.com often does instant polling of its site visitors, gaining both market research and customer data. 4. Extend a service: Providing value through widgets is a great way to do so. (“Widgets are the glue or the content that pulsates through social networks and creates these experiences,” Frank says.) Betty Crocker, for instance, provides a daily recipe gadget for iGoogle.
And the ultimate goal remains to….
5. Foster community loyalty: Nike+ not only allows you to monitor your training, but also lets you connect to a community of users who might be participating in the same events as you or are engaging in the same type of training.
“These devices will represent 70 percent of all phones sold in the us by 2012. That is a huge change in thinking.”
Bajarin goes on, saying that generation Y will not even consider using a regular cell phone anymore. A phone without a text keyboard? Forget about it.
Mobile CRM makes sense. CRM is not an industry that ties its employees to desks. Sales and marketing people are often traveling and doing business whenever and wherever. Recently, I had the privilege to have dinner with a several CRM vendors, one of whom sells mobile CRM solutions for BlackBerry. At one point during the evening, the man next to him turned and said, “I need you.” He shared that all through the day at the destinationCRM exhibit hall, he was meeting people, making contacts, and taking business cards. He was frantically writing down information on the back of the business cards so that when he goes back and enters the contacts into his CRM system, he will hopefully be able to put a face to the name. However, as he told the mobile CRM guy, if he would have been able to pull up the CRM database on his BlackBerry, it could have been done in seconds.
I recently purchased a smartphone, mostly because I wanted to be able to check email on the road. I won’t share which kind of phone it is, but I will tell you that it’s not an iPhone or a BlackBerry. I have found myself, even after having the phone for about six months now, discovering new features and using it in new ways. Perhaps my favorite application is the quick access to Google Maps. [It means I don't have to bring my old fold-out map with me when trekking through new areas of the city. Basically, it allows me to still look "cool" in New York, even when I am incredibly lost and confused.]
Talks of mobile CRM has seemed to have taken conferences — and headlines — by storm. In the words of my dear colleague, Jessica Tsai, “Dude, I’m so relevant.”
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Universal Music Group explains its plan for Vevo:
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