So what can businesses do in response? Corporate Social Responsibility is one answer. However, as no consistency is guaranteed in the way it is manifested, its impact is much less than it could be. As we are living in an age of internet enabled tranparency (wherein it is difficult for businesses to hide negative impacts and easy for consumers empowered with online tools to organise protests), perhaps the time for real change has come.

The slides below were prepared and delivered as part of a lecture at Greenwich University’s Business School and attempt to scope out the anti-consumerist agenda and business responses in the age of radical transparency. In my view, business considerations must go beyond PR tactics to be fully embedded into core business purpose and practices. In this season of over-consumption, I’m pleased that this presentation has been featured on the homepage of Slideshare.net today.

Happy Christimas everyone.

Leila Chirayath Janah gave an inspiring speach about the work of the organisation recently as part of Linked In’s speakers series.

Linked In encourages every employee to volunteer one day a month (“InDay”) to help good causes. It might be worth considering how your organisation could work with Samasource organisations. I can see opportunities for out-sourcing data analysis related to social media monitoring with my company, however our finance team would need to investigate and make the necessary changes to work with international suppliers.

Such effort could be worthwhile on several different levels - such projects could be completed more cost effectively -  whilst saving time and  creating new employment opportunities for some of the worlds’ poorest people.

Facebook itself is articulating this case through its ‘The New Word of Mouth’ video. It claims businesses can benefit directly from word of mouth recommendations propagated through its 500M fans’ social graphs  - earned media supercharged by the reach of paid for media and its socially enabled ads.

Yet in spite of this potential,  many brands  set up a profile in Facebook with woolly objectives shying away from hard core outcomes like sales. It would seem they are still afraid that people don’t want them to be there, when the evidence suggest otherwise. Millions of people happily engage with brands on a daily basis making recommendations, sharing product information and also demanding better customer service.

In this regard, ASOS (As Seen on Screen) — the UK online fashion retailer is one to watch.  It has a  popular page — with c. 550K fans (at the time of writing) holding competitions to keep its fans engaged –  but it went a step further than most UK retailers by trying to move fans from ‘liking’ to ‘buying’ launching a fully transactional shop application within Facebook earlier this year.

The evidence suggests social commerce is gaining momentum — look at Farmville (where social gamers purchase currency to enrich their game experience) and Groupon enabling friends to get better value by making purchases together. Facebook is already preparing for this next wave with its new ‘Deals’ designed to challenge Groupon and take social commerce to a new level (fcommerce).

Whilst ASOS is making every effort to lead the way in the UK for social commerce, a complimentary example from across the Atlantic comes in the form of the University of Kentucky.

Its ‘See Blue’ campaign attracted a record number of admission applications by letting new students to get to know the campus via the shared experiences of existing students using Facebook Places. The programme was promoted using guerrilla marketing techniques situating Facebook Places icons by campus landmarks as well as a modest online spend. With this approach, buzz spread quickly across the campus and beyond with all levels of the organisation including the University President taking part.

University of Kentucky - See Blue

Not only has the University page achieved an impressive 193K fans (far higher than any of my alma maters), it resulted in a record breaking number of applications to the university.

Brands need to move beyond the now requisite presence on Facebook to create compelling reasons to buy within online social environments. Those brands gaining commercial experience there now will be well placed to benefit from what will likely become mainstream tomorrow.

The World Is Obsessed With Facebook from Alex Trimpe on Vimeo.

Brands need to refrain from rushing to set up their profiles by considering what benefits they can bring to people in social spaces as well as what kinds of problems they might face.

Whilst people might like to hear about products they like, they usually require other stimulous. Equally the rise of social commerce brings important opportunities for brands to consider beyond just keeping in touch.

So  what are the secret ingredients to success for brands in one of the world’s most popular social networks?  Examples to follow.

“Shoelaborations™” is a recently launched open innovation programme enabling talented artists and designers to collaborate with Nine West. Through this process, Nine West aims to bring fresh visions to their customers globally.

The first collection developed in partnership with CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner Sophie Theallet tells the story of “Sophie from Paris Takes a Trip to NYC” and includes uniquely designed pieces.

Autumn 2011 will see the launch of the “ Giles Deaconfor Nine West” collection. British Designer Giles Deacon is best known for his avant-garde designs with a pop culture influence.  His collection promises to be be cutting-edge in its incorporation of technology.

Whist Nine West’s initiative is noteworthy,  John Fluevog remains the fashion industry’s primary collaborative innovator. Not only does he provide an open source footwear platform, he is now inviting designers to create Fluevog ads.

2010 was the year when being active in social spaces moved from being an option for a brand, to becoming a necessity.

These brands­­–whether they be FMCGs, retailers, or financial services–are evolving their communication strategies so they can engage and add value in a challenging medium. It is imperative to monitor and engage in environments where messages can be undermined and subverted, to stop them spinning out of control. A good case in point is Nestlé: earlier this year Greenpeace’s campaign against Nestlé’s role in damaging Orang-utan habitats caused damage to brand perceptions; however, it also showed that transformation is possible through proactive engagement with communities of interest. After being attacked by Greenpeace, Nestlé turned things around by changing its palm oil sourcing policy via a partnership with The Forest Trust. In so doing they turned a brand threat into a corporate social opportunity.

Smart brands demand real-time data, engagement platforms and workflow tools to manage their social presence.

Early warning systems enable brands to spot potential problems and respond with appropriate communications, products or policy changes before situations escalate and tarnish their halos. This places a premium on instantaneous access to consumer generated content. Buzz monitoring providers now need to improve real-time data and engagement platforms, and those that do will flourish in 2011. Access to Twitter’s ‘fire hose’ will become a critical success factor for these providers as the premier micro-blogging service is now the top source of buzz for most brands.

Service brands need to focus on customer service first before progressing to greater innovation.

Brands such as BT, Vodafone, Specsavers and LBG understand that by providing effective customer services online (leveraging the power of social media), detractors can be turned into visible and influential advocates paving the way for more innovative forms of engagement. Given the negativity that surrounds financial services due to the state of the economy, Lloyds Banking Group in the UK deserves recognition as the first UK high street bank to provide customer service via Twitter in spite of security and other difficulties. As they now build out to branded YouTube channels and the Local Hero initiative on Facebook and other social platforms, they show how savvy brands can tackle the challenges of social brand engagement as a market opportunity.

]]> http://annlongley.net/2010-being-social-review-predictions/feed/ http://annlongley.net/will-eric-cantona%e2%80%99s-stop-banque-bank-run-succeed/ http://annlongley.net/will-eric-cantona%e2%80%99s-stop-banque-bank-run-succeed/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 10:50:49 +0000 Ann http://annlongley.net/?p=228

Eric Cantona’s recent challenge to ‘Kill the Banks’ has quickly spread around the world thanks to social propagation on the internet and the chord stuck by this celebrity.  In an attempt to destroy the system, he is calling for everyone to withdraw money from banks in France and elsewhere on Dec. 7^th,  2010.

The story broke here in the UK on Sun Nov 21^st in The Guardian, and within five days, a number of campaign hubs were set up. His video on YouTube had received close to 200K views on YouTube and 15K shares on Facebook.

The story is being covered and commented upon on mainstream news sites and amplified frequently on Twitter. On Facebook,  22K attendees have already accepted to participate in the event in France. Whilst monitoring the spread of information using automated listening tools can give us a good idea as to the scale of exposure, they have yet to provide information as to how many people are indicating they will actually take part in the protest.

In spite of these uncertainties, the ability to monitor the reach of the story as well as analyse the comments made in relation to it, gives financial services brands more information about possible attacks than has ever been available before.  If acted upon quickly, this information can help brands prepare for possible events, if not predict actual outcomes.

Whether or not Cantona’s campaign is successful, the mood it reflects highlights the need for change. Not only do financial services need to continue to rebuild trust with their stakeholders, buzz monitoring providers need to ramp up their offerings to create more intelligent predictive systems by gathering data from a wider range of sources and providing contextual analysis by way of more diverse metrics.

In this case, they need to  provide information not only about what people are saying, but also  behaviorial information (e.g.  about whether or not they are opting in to attend events). A considerable amount of analyst time is still required to put all the pieces together manually as was the case with the information presented above.

In  a letter to Greenpeace, Nestlé chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe highlighted how the two organisations could work together to address the problem of rainforest destruction and joined the Coalition on Palm Oil. Great to see Nestlé finally listened and is now no doubt more activey managing its social profiles and reputation. The spotlight is now on the financial services sector, in particular the HSBC.

By investing in Sinar Mas, Greenpeace claims the bank is supporting a destructive industry contradicting  claims made in its sustainability statements on its website. As companies make their sustainable development positions more widely available online they must be prepared to be more closely scrutinised.

Brands taking sustainable development seriously can gain credibility and support by joining organisations such as the Global Reporting Initiative designed to help multinationals standardise their sustainability reporting and practices through industry wide guidelines.

Greenpeace got a great result with Nestlé but the best result for a brand is to be ahead of the environmentalists. By embracing sustainability driven innovation, they have a chance to lead rather than react. As the Nestle versus Greenpeace story shows the currency and relevancy of this term, coined by Arthur D. Little consultants in 2005, is only increasing  as time passes.

Andrey Ternovskiy, the 17 year old high school student from Moscow, who created Chat Roulette could have a massive hit on his hands given the  novelty of the concept and the impressive numbers it has reached in such a short amount of time.

At this stage, it covers some of its costs through Google Adsense but to scale up and attract big brands,  it would need to address its edginess. It is simply too risque except for the bravest of brands or those too cheap to invest in a more serious engagement strategy, although, the approach depicted below works quite nicely for Harley Davidson.

Perhaps a licensing model will emerge whereby brands can offer access to a white labeled version of the software to its members. This method could work particularly well for online dating agencies although monitoring behaviour could prove to be a challenge.  It could also be an innovative tool for market researchers, sociologists and anthropologists wishing to connect with vast random samples of humanity assuming  it maintains its  current popularity trajectory.

Fascinating  to see where technology leads us when put in the hands of a  precocious  teenager and also how Chat Roulette might be applied in the future.

In trying to suppress Greenpeace’s campaign, Nestle has presented itself as naive and also draconian. The critical feedback it has received on it’s Facebook page and across the web proves it. Just what the people behind the brand were trying to achieve remains unclear,  although it is unlikely they set out to demonstrate their fundamental misunderstanding of the medium.

A more positive outcome can be still achieved if Nestle adapt their approach quickly. It would appear like many brands they jumped on the social media bandwagon without understanding the inherent power shift that underpins the social web.

It is now time for Nestle to listen and learn. Only by assessing the key concerns of their online audience can they devise an appropriate strategy. If they don’t want (or are not prepared) to have real engagement and dialogue with their stakeholders, they should not have set up shop in a social space or tried to mess around with democracy. Trying to control the uncontrollable is never going to work and establishing a social presence without an appropriate value proposition has opened them up to serious reputation damage and potentially diminished sales.

A sensible move would now be to use their Facebook page to start talking about what they are doing to address Greenpeace and others’ concerns about their social and environmental impacts.

Greenpeace has a history of digital campaigning including its CoalFinger campaign designed to raise awareness and encourage action against the coal industry. Whilst it puts a lot of energy and resource into its digital campaigns, Greenpeace could improve their effectiveness through a more sustained approach.