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Should Corporations Fire Personal Brands?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Earlier this week I posted When Personal and Corporate Brands Collide, in which I outlined a case study of corporate egotism rearing its ugly head in the face of an employee’s personal brand and public recognition.

The “personal brand” phenomenon is quickly becoming problematic for c-suite executives, marketing, PR and human resource departments alike. Neither the business’ size nor its industry negates the influence of this force on the business’ overall branding efforts and potentially, their bottom line. Every business is (or will soon be) dealing with this issue and so the pertinent question really is: can a corporate brand coexists with a personal brand?

The real issue for business managers is that personal brands are not always calculated employee campaigns designed to elevate their public personas. We can’t simply weed out social influencers and social personalities because not all are seeking to increase their popularity at the expense of – or on the backs of – the corporate brand and payroll. Many are truly uncalculated or well-intentioned and frankly, benefit the employer.

Technically, a personal brand is instantly created whenever an employee sets up a public profile in any social network or begins blogging. It becomes a matter of degree.

An unlikely social media star is born

Many employees wade into the social stream solely for their personal entertainment or simply for curiosity’s sake while others choose to engage socially for their personal education and information. Some use social networking as means to keep in touch with friends and yet others do so to keep abreast of local and world news. The point is, not everyone begins a “social existence” under the guise of personal brand building. And in most cases these profiles were established or existed in some form before they joined their current employers. Along the way, for one reason or another, their engagement style, content or point of view strikes a chord with a large audience and they become “famous”.

The vast majority of employees have what I call low-impact personal brands, meaning they’re either not high-profile enough to interfere with their employer’s corporate branding efforts or there’s no discernible connection between the individual and their employer. It’s those in the minority, with high-profile personal brands that are a cause for corporate concern.

For the sake of argument, let’s agree that businesses should embrace these individuals and even encourage them to continue on their social popularity trajectory. Is this a sustainable business model for the enterprise? Some may argue that doing so retains top talent, builds employee loyalty and creates a ‘social business’ culture that increases efficiency and productivity across the board.

A case for killing the personal-brand within the organization

I’m not convinced one way or the other that corporations should embrace or encourage high-profile personal brands but for the purposes of this post, I’d like to put forth this argument. Consider:

1. Employees are not permanent
We no longer expect “lifer” employees who spend their working career climbing the ranks of one business as the Traditionalists and many Boomers cohorts did. Investing in the coordination and education required to keep these high-profile personal brands “on message” is simply not a sustainable model.

2. People are not predictable
We can’t control individuals the way we control our marketing and PR strategy and spin. Business already has to deal with the unpredictability of consumers’ reaction or response to social engagements that throwing in individuals personalities is simply too high a corporate risk.

3. People are selfish
While not necessarily a bad thing, people are selfish. We all want what’s best for ourselves and our families. We want to earn a good living and enjoy “the American Dream” of more, more and…oh yes, more. Accepting or encouraging high-profile personal brands within the ranks is simply advertising top talent to your competition.

4. Individual aspirations
Let’s face it, individual aspirations don’t align with corporate aspirations. Leadership strategists claim that successful business endeavor to align employee goals with that of the business but how often is this really achieved in the workplace? People have different pressures and realities than their corporate employers. Business doesn’t have the emotional baggage that weighs employees down so real alignment is just a myth that if perpetuated, only serves to distract the business from real progress.

5. Individuality is divisive
While every strong business requires leaders and followers, too many leaders in the kitchen spoil the proverbial broth. There’s no limit to the number of high-impact personal brands a business can adopt or have imposed on it and frankly, there’s no way to regulate it. Eventually, the individuality of the personas will divide and conquer the brand’s efforts and negatively sway forward momentum.

6. Cross-silo collaboration is a fairy-tale
If we’re to accept a value in retaining high-impact personal brands as employees, we must look past the how of managing them to who is managing them? Corporate-personal brand conflicts in the enterprise’s social streams necessitates greater collaboration and group decision making across multiple departments within the organization from the C-Suite to Marketing to Sales to PR to Human Resources, which we know is a near impossibility in larger corporations.

Is the corporate risk of embracing high-impact personal brands simply too high? Is it even possible to sustain a corporate brand with multiple high-profile personal brands within the organization? What say you? Join the conversation below while I prepare an argument for acquiring and developing high-impact personal brands in my next post.

Related: Part 1 in this series: When Personal and Corporate Brands Collide

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The #bizforum Twitter debate will challenge business leaders to argue the pros and cons of this very issue this Wed Jun 20^th, 2012 between 8 and 9 PM Eastern. Join us by following #bizforum in your Twitter steam or by following www.tweetchat.com/room/bizforum.

When Personal and Corporate Brands Collide

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This past week I was introduced to another case of personal branding colliding with corporate egotism; an increasingly common fender-bender in our over-connected world where the line between personal and corporate personas are becoming thinner and thinner.

Last week Dave Reynolds, an extremely popular DJ at 99.7 The River in Campbell River, British Columbia (a Vista-owned radio station) was nominated and received a “Coastie” award (Campaign of the Year). It was awarded in recognition of Mr. Reynold's personal social media campaign to leverage his social graph to draw attention and donations to his employer's Christmas Food Drive. Now the station has little-to-no social presence and apparently, no social media strategy. His personal efforts drew global support and attention, which aided the campaign to surpass the Food Drive’s goals AND generated an amazing about of earned media for the local radio station.

Win/Win right?

However, on the day of the award ceremony, 99.7 The River’s parent company issued a cease and desist letter to the award committee demanding they change the nomination and award from Mr. Reynold’s name to that of the radio station. Upon his return to work after accepting the re-named award, Mr. Reynolds was terminated “with just cause” and little other information Read more here.

My personal disgust for the corporate egotism displayed aside, this post is really about a question that has been bubbling under the surface of many conversations I’ve had with executives planning “social business infrastructures”: can personal and corporate brands coexist?

The Rise of Personal Brands

From the day of the first business incorporation, “corporate branding” has been a priority for marketing departments and corporate executives. Corporate Branding by its strictest definition is the practice of using a company's name, logo or other visuals as a product brand name. Then there’s Individual Product Branding where each product has a unique brand name and the corporate name is not promoted to the consumer. With each, the general goal is to create an emotional connection through instant recognition of the business or product names and their associated iconography or personel. In some cases, brands hire spokespeople or chose individuals within the company that they elevate to brand spokesperson. Key point: each is in the control of the business.

Modern social media channels and their fervent adoption globally have now given rise to a third brand that businesses are being forced to deal with: the personal brand. But first they must first learn to understand it and more importantly, to not fear it.

Individuals, without the marketing and brand strategists afforded big businesses have seen their personal brands evolve simply by engaging in social communications with their family, friends and colleagues. By design or by accident, personal brands can become bigger than life – and certainly bigger than many of their employer’s brands, which in my opinion was the case with Mr. Reynolds.

The Corporate-Personal Brand Conflict

Through various social streams, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Dave and, along with his hordes of followers can attest to the unselfish nature of his fame. His popularity has risen as a result of his honest desire to be friendly and engage with others on a personal level unlike many other media celebrities who engage in calculated social conversations for the purposes of elevating their status and persona. Should such honest engagement or even a little self-promotion to be celebrated within a brand when it ultimately drives the exact result that the corporate brand strategy is striving to achieve?

While all the details surrounding the dismissal of Mr. Reynolds from 99.7 may never be released, the one public fact remains: he was fired on his first day back to work after receiving a personal social media award earned for a personal campaign to support a business fundraising effort…an award that his employer forced the awards committee to change from a personal award to one in their name. It begs the question: can a strong personal brand coexist with its employer’s brand? Or is the corporate ego simply too fragile?

If the employer’s brand is weak, can it or should it support strong personal brands from within its ranks? If an employer does not have strong social media awareness or presences, should it support or quash personal social media efforts? Is this an HR issue or Corporare Risk issue?

Question: Can a personal brand coexist within a corporate brand? Should corporate brands actively discourage and punish them, “manage” them to subordinate positions, or actively promote them?

Related: Read part two of this series: Should Corporations Fire Personal Brands?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Brand Communities - Your Sandbox or Mine?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 10 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Community: a term that has been given new life in our vocabulary of late. The common connotation today is a collective of enthusiastic people organized around the lifestyle, activities and/or ethos of a brand in an online channel(s).

The term “community” has been anointed with a multitude of mystical powers thanks to Web 2.0 and Social Networking. For Brands, communities have become a new ecosystem to cultivate for both customer acquisition and customer development campaigns. For individuals, communities are represented by one’s personal “social graph”.

These communities have created the necessity for corporate community mangers and fuelled blog content from the Rules of Community Management to proper etiquette within them. Yet, there’s one fundamental question that seems to have been mostly overlooked in favor of technology and rules.

My Sandbox or Yours?

Brands create communities where customers, employees and other stakeholders are encouraged to engage the brand and each other. The promise is that these connections will provide crowdsourcing for new product ideas, increase brand awareness or cultivate loyalty. Whether they admit it or not, most executives look to these channels to become prime hunting grounds for sales opportunities.

So is creating a brand community the best strategy? Consider:

1. The Development Costs & Effort

A community isn’t built over night and with the wave of a magic wand. It requires investment of time and money to develop the communication strategy, the infrastructure and marketing efforts to attract members.

2. The Maintenance

Once developed and critical mass is achieved, you have to maintain interest and participation. For every successful brand community, there are dozens that fizzled out soon after their launch because they could not sustain interest or provide ongoing value to their members.

Big investment. Big Risk. And possibly long-lasting brand damage since a community with little-to-no engagement is a black eye on brands.

The alternative? Instead of creating an ecosystem to which you pull customers, create a strategy that allows you to connect to – and through – your customers’ individual communities. Allow your message to surf the customers' social graphs, which have existing, well-formed connections, built-in trust and don’t require your effort to maintain. If successful, this approach has the possibility of dramatically increasing your reach through their online and offline pathways; a spider web of instant connections.

The rewards earned by this strategy are tenfold; however, creating it requires true marketing innovation and possibly a complete rethink of your marketing strategy. It requires the courage to put the customer at the center of your communication ecosystem as opposed to your own properties.

Watch for an upcoming post where we'll outline some of the strategies and tactics.

What say you? Wishful thinking? Or the future of community outreach?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

When Bold Isn’t BOLD Enough

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Ok, so your business is no longer the industry leader. You’ve lost your market dominance. You’ve lost the support of your core audience and supporters. Your sales have plummeted beyond even the worst predictions. Your product has become a laughing stock.

What do you do? Well, I can tell you what you don’t do. You DON’T Wake Up Bold!

Research In Motion (RIM) recently staged a mock protest outside of an Apple Store in Sydney, Australia with the chant: Walk Up Bold! The campaign is now supported by a web site (if you wanna call it that) that presents a sort of manifesto that includes the lines:

“For those of us with our eyes wide open, we need to realize there's only one device that means business…The brand that's been in business from the very beginning. Wake Up. Be Bold. BlackBerry.”

Well, I guess a lousy war cry is appropriate when you have to hire actors to create a fake protest.

Bold isn’t enough. Be Radical.

Last month I wrote a series on Brand Ideology in the Age of Disruption, which outlined my realization that given an even playing field a business cannot win by simply completing to be the best. anymore. They have to completely change the Rules of Engagement. And RIM’s most recent attempt at competing with the company that has stolen its market share is the perfect example of how NOT to change the rules of engagement.

Simply making “bold” statements like “It’s time to mean business” or “The brand that’s been in business from the very beginning”…isn’t enough. Frankly, it's incredibly lame period. The only effort that will reverse RIM’s fortunes now is to radically reinvent the mobile phone or the way we use mobile devices, like it did when it first introduced the Blackberry to the world.

The “Wake Up” campaign challenges people to remember that Blackberry “does business”. Yes, they did business so well that it allowed Apple and Android-run devices to completely trample on their market dominance while their executives were sleeping (or on some golf course trying to figure out how to bring another professional hockey franchise to Southern Ontario).

I’m not writing this criticism to crap on RIM. I want them to succeed. I’ve been a Blackberry user for almost 10 years. But I want more. I NEED RIM to show me more. Why spend money on hiring fake protesters? Why not try to earn fervent loyalty from real customers by giving them something to be passionate about? Radical, I know.

So to the executives and marketers at RIM: I did wake up. Can you now do the same? Please?

Sam Fiorella - Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Related articles: The Seven Deadly Sins of Market Leaders

Brand Ideology in the Age of Disruption

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The latest posts here on Sensei Blogs have been inspired by our insights into businesses that have been living through the age of disruption, which references the interruption of a business’ outbound communications (branding, public relations, marketing and brand messaging) by consumer messages.

In this series:
The Courage of Passion Brands and Leaders
Stop Measuring Customer Service
Changing the Rules of Engagement

Where savvy marketers used to be able to dictate consumer preferences and create a brand's image through recency (reach and frequency) of media placement, today these attributes are formulated by the wisdom of crowds.

More worrisome to business executives is the fact that this phenomenon, beyond the disruption in marketing and PR messaging, has disrupted their ability to dictate the public's perceived value in their brands. They understand the power in perceived value and are taking notice that it's not as easily manipulated as it once was.

Democratization of Brands

Social technologies have led the way in this power shift. Some argue that “social media” has inspired consumers to take a stand but that is an oversimplification. It has given a bigger voice to existing public opinions previously limited to those in one’s personal proximity and ensured those opinions are shared and viewed for a longer period of time. This alone has changed the dynamics in the power-struggle between marketers and consumers.

What social technologies have really created is a next-level bandwagonims. Opinions shared socially seem to congeal into blobs and form new entities of their own. Advertising has been usurped by community dialogue and so a brand is now elevated or dismissed, empowered or disenfranchised by the prevalent group-think paradigm, not by the marketers pen and wit. And public opinion is fickle.

How much your brand is liked is the new barometer of how much advocacy it will generate. The new rules of social SEO are co-conspirators in this new social-world order by elevating (or not) a brand's listings by contextual, social commentary within your social graph. This doesn't render the quality of your product irrelevant but it can't be relied on soley for business success.

Business products and services can no longer be “just a little better”. Because of the momentum that is carried through socially-charged bandwagonism, brands must strive for radical changes in their products as a way to stand out from the crowd. Truly an upward battle in an increasingly competitive and fluid marketplace.

The Rise of Brand Ideology

Successful businesses must now stand for a great idea, not just a great product. Products, no matter how great they may be, are commodities. The need for a product or the value it has in the consumer’s life is too easily dictated by public opinion – to its benefit or its detriment. Business leaders looking for an edge must create another point of differentiation: the brand’s ideology.

Brand Ideology is that almost mystical association a product or business has with the aspirations, beliefs and lifestyle of its target market. It sparks the imagination of the public instead of simply providing a utilitarian tool. Religion and politics have learned to harness this power; a lesson that business can learn from.

Where a product or message can be easily commoditized or disrupted by the public and competitors, ideology is more sticky…it elicits a passion that even great products simply cannot match. Brand ideology creates Passion Brands, which attract the strongest, most loyal and most active advocates.

Businesses can reverse their fortunes in spite of the brand disruption. Instead of having their product strategy enslaved by “wisdom of crowds", create an ideology association that can surf the media to build advocacy. Make advocacy your business strategy.

Share your thoughts - pros or con in the comments below. Are affiliations more powerful in the public eye than accomplishments? Is advocacy a business strategy?

Sam Fiorella - Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Join us tonight on Twitter for the #bizforum weekly debate where you can join your colleagues debate the merits of a “brand ideology” business strategy over traditional product marketing. #bizforum occurs every Wednesday night from 8 to 9 PM Eastern Standard Time.

The Courage of Passion Brands and Leaders

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

In my last post: Changing the Rules of Engagement, I challenged readers with the notion that business can no longer grow and thrive by simply being the best at their game as they once could. Today, winning requires the ability (and courage) to change the rules of the game completely. Innovation must be so radical that the competition is left scratching their heads.

Understanding the premise and delivering on it are two different things however. Radical innovation and game-changing shifts in how businesses operate requires radical action and game-changing shifts within the organization; action that many leaders, stakeholders and employees simply don’t have the courage to implement.

This is the first in a new series of posts that will set forth challenges for businesses looking to change the rules of the game in their industries. However, before any discussion of tactical changes in business functions can be had, we must look at changing an underlying business philosophy; one so critical to the process that if you cannot muster the courage to change it, you might as well forget the rest.

Stop focusing on profit

Yes, you read that right. Stop focusing on profit. A singular focus on profit generation, the underlying practice in most enterprises today (heck, since the beginning of time really), creates a myopic view of the playing field, thus making it impossible to truly change.

Those of you who have heard my rants about “profit not being a four-letter word” in social media marketing know I’m a firm believer in the concept of profit, so why the apparent turnaround? Well, it’s not really a contradiction but a rethinking of the path to achieving it.

Profit is – and will always be – the main reason for a business however, in practice achieving it can be less linear. Social and technological changes, as well as increasing competition from a shrinking global marketplace have made innovation almost a commodity. Product innovation is not enough anymore.

Focus on the generation of profit leads leaders to work within industry standards, leverage past experiences, use formulaic relationship management practices. In short, very logical, one-plus-one=two thinking. Rules are logical so changing the rules of a game inherently requires non-logical thinking. Non-logical thinking requires a business to think with its heart and not its mind.

Become a Passion Brand

It’s about transforming your brand from a product or service provider to a brand of passion. Change the “why” in why people choose your product. Do you choose clothing to keep warm or to make a statement about your mood, your style or your personality? Clothing certain ly has utilitarian (logical) functions (such as the need to keep warm) but you have choices in the items you choose to keep you warm. Your choice – consciously or subconsciously - then becomes about your emotional needs.

A passion brand is one that transcends the utilitarian use of its product(s) and becomes part of the customers’ lifestyle. Emotionally, your brand must become synonymous with how the public perceives their personality…how they wish to enjoy their lives. It must appeal to all their senses, not just their logical needs.

The Smells, Sights and Sounds...of a Bank?

One of the best case studies I’ve come across is Umpqua Bank, based in Portland Oregon. A regional bank, it sought to change its fortunes by transforming itself into a passion brand like Apple or Starbucks. So it asked itself: what does a bank smell like? What should it sound like? What taste should it have? Clearly, non-logical questions to ask of a bank yet required thinking for those wishing to change the rules of the game. And in so doing, it went on to completely transform what a bank means to a community.

Art directors have created mini-museums in each bank to showcase and sell artwork from local artisans.
Umpqua’s Music Director curates local indie-artist’s music through the banks public speakers and gives their customers the chance pick their favorite music at in-branch kiosks (top vote-getters become part of the bank’s year end compilation CD)
Each teller is equipped with a personal cappuccino machine featuring Costa Rica, fair trade sourced Umpqua-branded coffee
Employees hand each customer a box of Umpqua chocolates after each transaction add to the complete sensory experience of banking.
Each night, the bank reopens for a few hours to serve as a community center for book clubs, civic groups, etc.

Smell, Sound, Touch, Taste. It’s not banking, it’s personal.

Each tactic is an expense to the business; contrary to focus-on-profit thinking, which creates a “where do we cut costs” mentality instead of a “how do we improve the customer experience” mentality. In choosing a non-logical path to profit, they reinvent the banking rules.

Umpqua Bank changed the public’s perception of what a bank is. It made the bank a part of the customers’ lifestyles not just their bill payments.

Being directed by customer experience instead of profits made them a profitable bank. The once regional bank has actively expanded its market to include Vancouver, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco and many other cities across North America.

Becoming a passion brand requires the courage to risk profit in order focus on the customer experience and change the rules of engagement. Do you have that courage?

Let me know your thoughts on this concept. Is passion fleeting? Are such cases exceptions or the new reality of business success?

Sam Fiorella - Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Changing the Rules of Engagement

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This post is inspired by the book: Practically Radical by former Harvard Business Review Editor and Fast Company co-founder William C. Taylor. The premise of his book is that for businesses, being good at everything isn’t good enough. Simply being good at anything isn't enough for that matter. You have to be radically unique and innovative at one thing in order to stand out - in fact survive - in an increasingly hyper-competitive, connected and shrinking marketplace.

He argues that you can be: “the most elegant, the simplest, the most exclusive, the most affordable, the most intensely local, the most seamlessly global…” but you have to pick one. Each business and industry is different and so there are different choices each must make when determining what that one thing is but you have to pick just one.

Middle of the Road is a Road to Nowhere

The problem with many business strategies is that they adhere to industry best practices and frankly, you can’t truly innovate when working within predefined parameters. Even those who claim to be change agents and “out of the box thinkers” (oh, how I hate that expression) are subconsciously burdened with the rules they’ve learned in their MBA courses or the baggage they’ve accumulated through years of industry seminars and consultant analysis.

Breaking free of the pack requires a business to do more than be the better than their competitors at their game. They have to change the rules of the game.

To illustrate the point, Mr. Taylor references the new Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital in Detroit, Michigan.When approval was received to rebuild the hospital, the board of directors challenged themselves to not only rethink the hospital’s design but to rethink the role of the hospital in the lives of its patients and within its community. To achieve this goal, they looked outside their industry to find a CEO from a complimentary yet completely different industry. They found it from the executive ranks of the Carlton Ritz Hotel chain.

The radical rethink resulted in a hospital that is not only designed but operates like a resort or a boutique hotel rather than a traditional healthcare facility for the sick. For example:

“Guests” check in before coming to the hospital and are greeted by a concierge upon arrival who walks them to their suite
The physical building is designed to look like a resort lodge instead of sterile open spaces and hallways
The concierge works with guests to understand and accommodate their needs such a how children will get from school to the hospital to visit their parents
High-tea is offered every day at 4 PM with a tea sommelier who teaches the health benefits of herbal teas
An open area farmers market is held once a week
They operate a top restaurant-quality kitchen and food service

Re-imagining how a hospital operates within a community vs. simply striving for industry best practices has created an award-winning market leader in a state that’s been suffering 30 years of economic hardships.

Having already met industry best practices for healthcare they had to change the game's rules to innovate. They changed their focus to hospitality. Their goal was to cure the sick but they achieved it by not considering visitors as patients but as valued guests.

#bizforum debate

How do leaders break conventional wisdom and unload the baggage they’ve accumulated through education, industry experience and business pressures in order to change the rules? That is the focus of the #bizforum debate on Twitter tonight at 8PM eastern standard time. Resolutions open for debate will challenge strategic leadership tactics, paradigms and practices.

A teaser:

Industry standards are inherently problematic to business growth. Agree/Disagree/Why?
Hiring a CEO from outside your industry is best strategy for business growth. Agree/Disagree/Why?
The best business strategy is a corporate culture. Your culture is your strategy. Agree/Disagree/Why?
Employees, not leaders and products, are the biggest barrier to brand differentiation. Agree/Disagree/Why?

Additional posts in this series:

The Courage of Passion Brands & Leaders
Stop Meauring Customer Service

Sam Fiorella - Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Do Social Media Sensibilities Impact Your Brand’s Reputation?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last evening’s #bizforum Twitter debate focused on the impact of social media-powered customer service on the business. We saw an excellent exchange on both sides of the various resolutions that were being debated but one had the community divided more than others: how does a brand close the Twitter-loop on a customer service issue?

The assertion was most businesses who respond to customer complaints on Twitter do so with the standard: “we hear you…we’re sorry…call us and we’ll take care of it for you” message. We’ll assume for a moment that most of these issues are resolved satisfactorily offline, yet how many customers then take to the Twitter stream to publicly acknowledge their satisfaction? A quick survey revealed the answer: very few and even fewer indicated that the businesses solicited or encouraged positive commentary online after said resolutions.

As outlined in my last post The Short Sightedness of Customer Service, the resulting online paper trail only tells half the story: customer complaints and your acknowledgement of their complaint. What about the resolutions? Without them, what’s the lasting impression of your efforts? How do you show competency – both in your customer service efforts AND your brand’s products/services through online customer service engagements?

Some participants argued that broadcasting your accomplishments in satisfying customers’ complaints is contrary to accepted social media etiquette, which dictates you don’t promote or brag – you focus on the customer and what’s important to them.

And while I agree with the premise, don’t such social media niceties ultimately impact the brand negatively by portraying only half the engagement? If customers are free to comment & complain about our products and services online, surely businesses must be allowed to promote successful resolutions in those same channels when the customer fails to do so?

Is it not the customer service, marketing or PR team’s role to create a positive impression about the brand and its competency?

What do you think? Is this a true catch 22...damned if you do, damned if you don’t? What are the available options? Share your thoughts and experiences below.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed The Community, Not Your Ego

Does your Brand have Social Momentum?

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 00:00:00 GMT

Social Momentum is the public perception that a brand is up-and-coming, exciting, and a must-be-followed. By contrast, a legacy brand is seen as having achieved its full potential; nothing new or exciting is expected from this company. Today’s fickle, over-stimulated consumers are more interested in companies – and their products – that have social momentum.

B2B customers, classified as “brand advocates” (those highly active in using and promoting a single brand over others) in a Sensei Marketing Study listed the brand characteristics of the companies they were more likely to purchase from as “Dynamic”, “Up and Coming” and “Leading Edge”. Of note: the brands they considered as having social momentum were not only startups but firms such as Google, Apple, Honda and Nike.

On the other side, the survey demonstrated that those businesses that customers liked – but were less likely to purchase from – were categorized as “Traditional”, “Legacy”, “Boring”. These included Motorola, AOL, Nokia, and Caterpillar.

Further, the study discovered that brands with perceived positive social momentum exceeded average industry sales by at least 13%.

Perceived Momentum Creates the Conditions for Further Momentum

Social Moment is not an exclusive trait of business start-ups. In fact, I’d argue that its not about the brand itself but the consumer’s perception of the brand. Many believe that in social media channels the “fake it till you make it” principle is the best advice for those seeking this momentum; that it’s less about having a set of solid products and services but creating the illusion that they are the next big thing and buzz-worthy. Building the anticipation and publicity is just as important, in the short term anyway, as having the products to back up the hype.

The argument being that momentum is built during a period of anticipation, not when the product is being actively used. It’s about attracting early adopters, who tend to be the most vocal about products and brands. They’re always looking for the next big thing and it’s these early adopters that become the brand’s biggest advocates and that others will look to for direction.

Consider the recent launch of the Google+ network. Google has a well-documented history of negative social network attempts, yet Google+ was one the most highly-anticipated and successful launches in recent history with the very audience that knew of their past failed attempts. They were successful in creating buzz around the product and playing on the needs and vanity of early adopters by creating a very public, invite-only beta test. Those who were “lucky enough” to be let in behind the velvet rope went out of their way to blog and tweet about their experiences in order to position themselves as “in the know”. It didn’t matter if their experiences were positive or negative; the anticipation that Google and its early adopters built up among the public was so strong everyone was clamouring for an invite.

Creating Social Momentum

So it’s not necessarily about being a new brand but teaching old dogs new tricks. Yet brands seeking to create social momentum will find it’s not as easy and they might think. Customers are increasingly fickle and the competition for their attention (channels and messages) increases by the minute. The industry has proven that simply posting a video to YouTube does not make an Internet sensation. There is still and undefined “magic mix” of right message at the right time in the right channel…with a dash of luck and sprinkle of lightening.

The one constant: today’s category leaders never let their brand’s momentum stand still. They are constantly re-inventing and reaching out to top influencers in multiple social media platforms in order to generate interest and demand for their products, elevate their brand’s status and create a sense of “can’t wait to see what’s next”.

We’re debating social momentum during this week’s special LIVE broadcast of the #BizForum Twitter Debate with fellow Social Media Master: Deb Weinstein, president of Strategic Objectives, a leading Public Relations firm. The following four themes will be debated:

1: Building Social Momentum has become more important than building a solid product.
Understandably a short term strategy, the modern audience is increasingly social and has developed “Look-a-Squirrel!” syndrome. Anticipation has become more important to selling a product than launching with a great product. The product can be improved through crowdsourcing and beta-testing, but without anticipation & buzz you'll not have the critical mass to crowdsource to. Agree/Disagree/Why?

2. Social Momentum becomes increasingly harder to achieve the older a business is.
The bigger a business gets, the less flexible and open it becomes yet the characteristics of a business building and maintaining social momentum include the willingness to embrace crowdsourcing & new technologies such as mobile, constant re-invention, openness and empowering employees to engage in social communications. Agree/Disagree/Why?

3. The concept of “momentum” can only be achieved in the modern era through social channels.
We can all agree that online channels are part of the overall marketing communication mix for most businesses and should not be embraced in isolation; however, given the increasing adoption of social communications, is the social channel not the only way to capture the imagination of early adopters and build this momentum? Agree/Disagree/Why?

4. Social Momentum is required in our modern social-economy to “stay on top”.
No business will survive long-term without a great product or service along with the ability to earn a profit. Yet leading an industry and beating the competition in our modern era can only be achieved through building and maintaining social momentum. Agree/Disagree/Why?

Please join in on October 5, 2011 from 8 to 9 PM Eastern by following Tweetchat or monitor the #bizforum hashtag on your favorite Twitter client. This week's debate will also be LiveCast on Ustream where Twitter participants can watch/listen to the BizForum team debate these issues live. Deb will also be joining me as a presenter at the upcoming Social Media Masters conference on Social Business in Toronto Friday October 7th, 2011.

What is your position on these topics? Agree? Disagree? Share your experiences and opinion below!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow on Twitter

Image courtesy of Footloosity, licensed via Creative Commons

The Twitter House of Cards

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 00:00:00 GMT

In the early days of the Internet and e-commerce, the Web was touted as the savior of small businesses because it enabled them to “compete with larger competitors on an even playing field”. The belief was that even a home-based business could present themselves as a national business by creating a virtual brand presence that was bigger and more professional that its physical counterpart.

And there were a few rags-to-riches success stories that have been attributed to this tactic. These were the businesses who built web sites that created the illusion of a company with larger staff, greater resources, a broader range of services and deeper experience than it actually possesses…and got away with it.

In those early days of the Internet, creating a larger-than-reality business persona required a fair amount of work. Web site development needed greater time, budget and resources than they do today, not to mention marketing dollars to attract new visitors. Yet it was worthwhile for those who invested because the audience, less sophisticated than they may be today, bought it up.

Today, Social Media has removed many of those barriers for smaller businesses through free networks within which they can create, expand and market inflated company or personal business acumen. And many are taking advantage, especially individuals. Inventing and propagating a personal brand online has become a sport. See how far you can push the limits of reality and how much will people accept before you’re called out.

If enough people say it, it must be true right?

I’ve often cited the “Wisdom of Crowds” in this blog, referencing Social Media’s ability to “create truths” from the consistent posting of untruths by a large enough collective. If enough people say it, it must be true right? All that seems to be required by small businesses to compete with their larger competitors is a savvy social marketing team that can successfully build and shepherd a large enough community to say it’s bigger, more experienced and more valuable that it may be.

Building trust seems to have moved from the credentials and positive personal customer experiences with the brand to the court of public opinion, which can easily be managed by social media spin masters.

And consumers seem willing participants in this rouse; they’re eager to drink from the Social Media fountain. The vast majority of consumers don’t seem to want decisions to be work. They want to be told what to think. For example:

We blindly trust gamified influence scores and make assumptions about a professional’s capabilities or make business decisions based on them.
We choose products based on the public’s average rating rather than test-driving the product ourselves.
We rely on Wikis, FAQs and online forums to gather decision-making information instead of picking up the phone to question live support teams or visit in person.

While pundits may call out inaccurate influence measures or self-proclaimed experts, the reality is our audience, for the most part is buying it. Social Media, like Reality-TV, creates instant celebrities; these self-proclaimed experts who are famous for being famous rather than for their body of work. The Twitterverse is brimming with incredibly accomplished, effective marketers who have low Klout scores or mass-public awareness and celebrities/authors with high influence scores but few-to-no case studies to back up their social media prose.

Twitter House of Cards

This is the wannabe expert’s Achilles’ heel: their lack of proven credentials.

The bright lights shined on celebrity are difficult to overcome with truth and experience, but at the end of the day, social celebrities rely on the audience’s blind trust. Corporations must look to reverse this trend by removing the spot light from these social celebrities and focus it on experience, proven case studies and “working knowledge” over inflated Klout scores and book covers.

A flock of sheep seems to expand easily; each one blindly following the other. However, in social media, these pseudo experts/experienced businesses have built that blind trust on a house of cards, carefully constructed yet easily destroyed.

Just redirect the spot light and watch it come tumbling down.

Post by: Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego
Follow on Twitter