The Social Customer Manifesto

No, Really. Put The Customer In Charge.

Guy Kawasaki* cranks out a top-10 list on "The Art Of Customer Service." My favorite of the lot:

Put the customer in control. The best kind of customer service happens when management enables employees to put the customer in control. This require two leaps of faith: first, that management trusts customers not take advantage of the situation; second, that management trust employees with this empowerment. If you can make these leaps, then the quality of your customer service will zoom; if not, there is nothing more frustrating than companies copping the attitude that something is “against company policy.”

The other nine are just as solid.

(By the way, if you want to really put the customer in control, this is a good place to start. Then again, I'm biased.)

* - "His name is synonymous with evangelism as a secular business technique, and motorcycles." Still one of the best lines in a book jacket biography, ever.

Chevy Careens Out Of Control (Or Do They?): A Roundup Of The Tahoe / Apprentice Ad Flap

The writing has been fast-and-furious over the weekend, with opinions flying on whether Chevy royally screwed the pooch with their current ad campaign for the Chevy Tahoe, a tie-in (somehow) with the TV show The Apprentice. To summarize: Chevy has set up a site where anyone can create his or her own commercial, splicing together a number of video clips and background music supplied by Chevy. More importantly, these user-generated commercials can have text floating over the images of the creator's choosing. Therein lies the rub. It's no surprise (to anyone with an IQ above room temperature) that this has unleashed the creative juices of a number of folks who have found the perfect platform for their messages.

A couple of examples that C|Net has archived can be found here. (Go ahead, check them out if you haven't seen them. We'll be here when you get back.)

Thoughts on the situation so far:

Tara Hunt: "[Chevy] should taking advantage of the valuable (even if it is vitriolic) feedback that they are getting and use this as an opportunity to change direction and survive into the future of this community-driven market."

Doc: "Watch."

B. L. Ochman: "Proving that execs at big companies, and their agencies, don't monitor what's being said online over the weekend, Chevy left thousands of anti-Chevy consumer-made ads on the Chevy Apprentice make-your-own-commercial site this weekend."

Seth Godin: "Chevy is learning this the hard way with their Tahoe campaign... in which the best commercials are the ones that say, 'Don't buy me!'"

TechDirt: "It seems like perhaps GM understood what would happen a lot more than the so-called 'experts' give them credit for. In this day, anyone opening up such a contest has to know that it'll be used for 'anti' ads. It's happened so often that they must have expected it. In fact, by then being open about it, GM is getting even more mileage from this campaign, and making it appear that they are more open to listening to those who disagree with them...So, it's questionable as to whether or not GM was 'slow to react' or if they are simply doing everything according to plan."

AdRants: "Negative things will always be said about a brand. Understanding and accepting opposing views does far more for a brand's mojo than killing off divergent opinion. Let's hope this is what's happening at Chevy and not that the ads are still up because it's the weekend and big companies don't work weekends."

Carl: "I don't understand how otherwise rational people look at this campaign as a positive. It would be like letting people create print ads for McDonalds, and publishing all of the ads that talk about cholesterol, fat, calories, carbohydrates and fat kids. And then patting themselves on the back for letting people 'speak their mind' and for 'understanding social networking.' This campaign can only damage the brand by reinforcing the negatives. Isn't this marketing 101? The best GM can hope for is to convince all of the people who already hate the product that GM is a cool company with products they hate."

And a whole bunch more.

I think there are a few things to think about here. One perspective that that this is, in some ways, akin to the LA Times wikitorial fiasco. If that's the case...the GM didn't consider the possibility that people would create ads that were not in line with GM's vision of what should be done...then shame on GM. Any opportunity for "user-generated" media in any topic where there are strong feelings will generate the same spectrum of responses. If that's the case, GM was simply Not Thinking. Any subject that evokes passionate responses will naturally have this outcome.

A thought: Perhaps a worthwhile tactic to take in these types of situations is to proactively set up areas/categories for the primary viewpoints that are likely to emerge. In the LA Times case, setting up two wikitorials (one "pro-war" and one "anti-war") may have radically changed the outcome of their experiment. In Chevy's case, allowing the "directors" of the videos to classify them as "pro-SUV" and "anti-SUV" would have been one way to proactively address the problem. It's what Scoble did here ("Let The Venom Flow!"), and it's a very effective tactic in cases where this type of activity is likely to occur. It's going to happen. Might as well embrace it.

So, it seems from my vantage point that there are three "standard" things that Chevy could do. The options...

• Option 1: Pull the negative ads
• Option 2: Leave the negative ads, do nothing (It's the Marc Canter approach: "I don't give a damn about what anyone says about me, just spell my name right.")
• Option 3: Leave the negative ads, engage

Option 1 is the Bad option. If they go down that road, they'll get crucified.

Option 2 is an OK option. They may be called "clueless," but they'll still be getting some buzz out of the campaign. (And, pragmatically, the folks who are creating the negative ads -- as well as the individuals who find that the negative ads resonate with them -- probably aren't going to be buying an SUV anytime soon, anyway.)

Option 3 is a Pretty Good option. In addition to leaving the ads up, trying to understand what the negative-ad-creators are attempting to communicate and putting some plans in place to ACTUALLY address the concerns could rocket GM forward in this regard, if they are able to make some commitments and meet them. There's some upside here, if they get their act together.

What do you think GM should do, if anything?

UPDATE:

Chevy responds in the NYTimes (registration or bugmenot req'd). The money quote, from Chevy representative Melisa Tezanos:

"We anticipated that there would be critical submissions. You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space." (via Adrants)

So, it's at least Option 2. Wanna trade that and go for door #3, Melisa?

--

As a footnote, it's worth noting that not all the ads are anti-Chevy or anti-SUV. Some are chuckleworthy. Examples:

Snakes On An SUV! (not advised for those with an aversion to profanity)
Badgerbadgerbadger (disclosure: we did this one, inspired by this)
Way too Emo (for Kathy Sierra, apparently)

They've Been Bad, Very Bad. Now It's Time To Straighten Them Out.

Does your company's sales team need to go to Sales Reform School?

(They probably do.)

--

bonus link: the halo effect

(graphic adapted from Boys Reformatory, 1939)

Gratuitous Metablogging

I usually try to avoid the whole "blogging about blogging" path, but there are a couple of good items that have popped through in the last couple of days that may be worth a look, if you're into that sort of thing:

Mike Sansone: "Some web (under)developers think blogging is a fad. Frankly, I think they're worried about their jobs."

Jeremiah Owyang, #49 & #50: "Don't hire any firms to help you with a blog strategy that are not blogging themselves" and "Don't hire any firms to help you that suggest the reason to blog is 'because blogging is hot right now'."

Hugh Macleod: "If you think this is just a game of bubbles, bandwagons, favoritism and knowing the right people, as opposed to having good ideas and plain old hard work- Fine, go ahead and believe it. Nobody cares."

Robert Scoble: "I’ve been blogging for more than five years now and the “blogging is a fad” meme is one that consistently is reborn every five months."

The Forrester "Social Computing" Paradox

Charlene Li gives an overview of Forrester's new "Social Computing" report. Key "tenets of social computing" outlined by Charlene:

• innovation will shfit from top-down to bottom-up
• value will shift from ownership to experience
• power will shift from institutions to communities

The third point is the one that caught my eye in particular, as it seems to be another point of validation on the idea that we are moving down this path:

Transactions => Conversations => Relationships => Communities (much more behind the link)

And then we get to the heart of the matter. Charlene:

"As I often stress, it's not about the technologies but about the new relationships that users will form. Technologies will come and go, but the power built on the relationships created by social computing will endure.

To fully appreciate the value of social computing, companies have to let go of control. That means letting customers control the brand if you're a marketer, and it means enabling new enterprise tools that IT can't easily control to attract and support employees with high social computing needs. In many ways, this is the source of the great distress that I routinely hear from corporate managers." (emphasis added)

Now the paradox...the report is only available to Forrester clients. If anyone has a copy, I'd love to see it.

The Social Customer Manifesto Podcast 15FEB2006

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Summary: Christopher Carfi and Leif Chastaine review the American Marketing Association Hot Topic series, give an update on the state of the blogosphere via Jupiter Research, Pew, and Technorati, and shine a light on "Charter Street," the new blog from Paul McNamara and Greg Olsen. (37:42)

Show notes for February 15, 2006

The audio file is available here (MP3, 34MB), or subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically have future shows downloaded to your MP3 player.

00:00 - Intro

01:00 - American Marketing Association Hot Topic overview : podcasting, video blogging, word of mouth marketing, RSS, interactive social networking, Bill Flitter (Pheedo), Dave Evans (Digital Voodoo), Willow Baum Lundgren (Umbria), Randy Moss (ACS), Napoleon Dynamite, Vote for Pedro

06:00 - Jupiter Research, online demographic study, teen influencers, patterns of online/offline usage

11:15 - Pew Internet and American Life, online usage (men and women), difference in online usage by boomers (note: PDF doc)

18:00 - State of the Blogosphere (Dave Sifry, Technorati, Part 1, Part 2), 27.2 million blogs online. 75,000 new blogs per day, Comparison of blogs and mainstream media reach (e.g. NYTimes), Huffington Post, Instapundit

31:30 Importance of tagging as a component of search

32:00 Charter Street blog launched, Versai Technology; SGI; Red Hat; El Dorado Ventures; Paul McNamara & Greg Olsen, startups, virtual companies, and "going bedouin"

37:05 - Wrapup

Blogging Power Law Dynamics

Great article on blogs and power law dynamics that showed up on my desk this morning, from New York magazine.

"When [Clay] Shirky compiled his analysis of links, he saw that the smaller bloggers’ fears were perfectly correct: There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links—the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them. When Shirky sorted the 433 blogs from most linked to least linked and lined them up on a chart, the curve began up high, with the lucky few. But then it quickly fell into a steep dive, flattening off into the distance, where the vast majority of ignored blogs reside. The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences—and the advertising revenue they bring—go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity.

Economists and network scientists have a name for Shirky’s curve: a “power-law distribution.” Power laws are not limited to the Web; in fact, they’re common to many social systems. If you chart the world’s wealth, it forms a power-law curve: A tiny number of rich people possess most of the world’s capital, while almost everyone else has little or none. The employment of movie actors follows the curve, too, because a small group appears in dozens of films while the rest are chronically underemployed. The pattern even emerges in studies of sexual activity in urban areas: A small minority bed-hop, while the rest of us are mostly monogamous.

The power law is dominant because of a quirk of human behavior: When we are asked to decide among a dizzying array of options, we do not act like dispassionate decision-makers, weighing each option on its own merits. Movie producers pick stars who have already been employed by other producers. Investors give money to entrepreneurs who are already loaded with cash. Popularity breeds popularity."

That being said, there are a couple of implications.

If being an A-lister matters to you, you need to write quality, and write it often. And then, make sure that others can find it. As inequitable as it is, the best way to do that is get the notice of the A-listers by linking. It's an artifact of the way PageRank, etc. works. As I've said before, a link is a blunt instrument and the crudest of social gestures. But it's what we have for right now.

If writing for and serving a particular focused market is the thing that matters, just write, write often, and write on-topic. The search engines will find you.

On the other hand, notice from the above that while the "short head" gets the big traffic, the real numbers are in the long tail. Providing a way to connect those individuals en masse opens up another route to success. More on this soon.

Update: Hugh weighs in as well.

Is Nvidia Exploring The Dark Side Of Viral Marketing?

Consumerist and BoingBoing are indicating that Nvidia may (note: speculation) be working with firm AEG to create faux online personnas to develop positive reputations in online communities to pitch Nvidia products. Consumerist's unsubstantiated indictment:

"About a week ago, The Consumerist stumbled upon claims made by various gaming websites that graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia, in cooperation with the Arbuthnot Entertainment Group (AEG), had seeded various gaming and PC hardware enthusiast sites with pro-Nvidia shills. That is to say, that AEG would hire employees to create ‘personas’ in various gaming communities, slowly building up the trust of other members by frequent posting unrelated to Nvidia, to later cash in that trust with message board postings talking up the positive qualities of Nvidia’s products."

Now, one of AEG's self-proclaimed skills is in:

"Strategic seeding [of] viral assets to ensure they are spread far and wide"

Ok, fair enough. And this post posits that:

"AEG, on behalf of NVIDIA, monitors a number of public hardware enthusiast communities and forums, seeking out some of the more well-respected members of these communities, those that they feel will hold sway among their peers when it comes to discussing product purchase decisions and the like.

These individuals are then approached regarding their interest in joining NVIDIA's community outreach programme. Those that register said interest are then provided with a free NVIDIA product (graphics cards generally speaking, although as NVIDIA has noted this campaign has been diversified into other product areas) in return for these users providing feedback to NVIDIA for the product they have been given, as well as hopefully evangelising the product to other members of their community. Thus, good word of mouth about the product is spread by a highly valued member of a community among his peers, who then take his sentiments on-board, spread them on to other communities, users, friends etc, and so on - The 'good news' spreads quickly, acting as a perfect form of viral marketing."

If the process above is being followed, and true enthusiasts who happen to be key members of a community are being given samples of product, with no strings or expectations attached, that is good aggressive (and smart) marketing, and is above board. (The recipients do have an obligation, in my opinion, to disclose the freebies, however. One approach is the one that Nokia is following that is covered here, here, here and here.) Now, on the other hand, if shills are being compensated to talk up Nvidia in online forums without disclosing their interests or, even worse, are being compensated to create multiple personalities to astroturf the gaming world, that is an entirely different kettle of fish altogether, and reeks of the issues that have been covered previously in this space and over at Brand Autopsy.

Nvidia, however, horribly flubbed their first attempt to publicly address the situation. After some badgering, Consumerist has received the following email from Nvidia PR Director Derek Perez:

"Hey Joel.

Boy - read your article - you couldn’t have gotten it more wrong.

Do you really not know what AEG does? Did you go to their website? Do you understand their business?

Seems before you write an editorial article on this you would educate yourself.

AEG helps us to manage the online community - we engage with some NV fans to help educate people on the web.

They are NOT hired actors!

They are NOT “shils”!

Happy to answer more questions - but it seems as if you need to do some research first.

Cheers Derek"

This is certainly not the best piece of outreach that's ever occurred. If Nvidia is NOT engaging in below-board practices, Nvidia would be better served by coming out with a flat, unambiguous statement to that effect. The Perez response is weak and defensive, and not at all what one would expect if they were trying to address the situation in a straightforward and truthful manner. Not good.

Neville, Shel, Steve...what would you advise Nvidia to do in this situation?

(Also of note: the AEG blog is silent on this at the current time.)

Update: Email conversation between Derek Perez and Thomas Hawk on the situation. Hawk:

"I just got off the phone with Derek Perez, Director of NVidia PR, according to Perez, while NVidia has in fact hired third party marketing firm Arbuthnot Entertainment Group (AEG) to market on their behalf, Perez has denied any allegations that either NVidia, or AEG on NVidia's behalf, has paid money to individuals for posting positive marketing news about NVidia in forums. While Perez has confirmed that NVidia has in fact given hardware to individuals in the mainstream press as well as enthusiasts in online communities, they deny that any cash has been paid to individuals for promoting their products by them or AEG to the best of their knowledge."

The Social Customer Manifesto Podcast 3FEB2006

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Summary: Leif Chastaine and Christopher Carfi discuss Yahoo's strategy, Google's censorship, the remix culture and customer "co-creation" of products, the American Marketing Association's "Ahead of the Curve" session in Scottsdale, and this week's RIM/BlackBerry update. (33:06)

Show notes for February 3, 2006

The audio file is available here (MP3, 32MB), or subscribe to our RSS feed to automatically have future shows downloaded to your MP3 player.

00:00 : Intro

01:04 : Yahoo "quits" the search race? Or do they?

09:08 : Google image censorship and strategy

16:30 : The importance of customer "co-creation" of products

27:30 : RIM: "Non-final" judgement regarding BlackBerry is just that

31:45 : Social Networking: Ahead of the Curve (Scottsdale)

32:23 : Wrapup

Links:
Dave Taylor ("What do Yahoo, Apple and Ferrari have in common?"), Yahoo quits, Yahoo gives up, Yahoo content to be Google's footstool, Yahoo gives up race with Google, Steve Rubel, Google image censorship, Paul Greenberg, BPT Partners, customer co-creation, NTP="No Tenable Patents?", RIM patent dispute, AMA High Tech Trends in Marketing

NYTimes: RSS Is Like An Email Newsletter

A timely article in the travel section of today's Times, entitled "There's a Popular New Code for Deals: RSS," (grab it before it rolls behind the registration wall) shows how travel company marketers are using RSS to supplement their existing email newsletter campaigns with RSS feeds.

The interesting thing about this article is that it introduces yet another metaphor for RSS : "it's like an email newsletter." (We were just talking about "better" metaphors for RSS here.) While this utterly trivializes the technical aspects and capabilities of the technology, it's a neccesary step to enable "true" mass adoption of the technology. The intricacies can be explained later, when needed.

It's certainly a better turn-of-phrase than "RSS is like an API for content," which is another contender.

Their elevator pitch:

"[T]hose willing to spend a few minutes to create a personalized home page on Yahoo, MSN, Google or other sites now have a useful alternative. Recently, these sites began allowing consumers to populate their home pages with similar information they'd find in e-mail newsletters, with two added benefits: all the relevant information from multiple sites appears on one page, instead of multiple e-mails, and the information is often considerably fresher, with several updates a week - or even a day.

What's more, the most recent information is there whenever you're in the mood to check it, not when your e-mail tells you to."

Read the Times article if you have the time to do so. After the headline, it has to invest seven paragraphs of background before being able to make first reference of "RSS." That's way too long. We need to keep making this easier, and this characterization is a good start.