Sensei Blogs

3 Ways to Manage Risk in Social Environments

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last week I argued that social media is creating bad customers. The post was designed to open people’s minds to the reality that social media channels create high degrees of risk for brands based on a number of factors. It detailed how social media enables poor customer behavior as easily as it enables good customer behavior.

For those that delved a bit deeper, you realized I was using bad customers as an example of risk within social channels. Bad customers will always exist and always try to game the system. Good companies will manage them effectively while poor companies will struggle. Such is life.

Social Risk and Uncertainty

Not many people are familiar with the concept of uncertainty in business, particularly its relationship to risk. If you’ve ever studied military history, you would recognize that uncertainty creates and/or amplifies risk. I will give you a simple example.

You can plan the hell out of an outdoor event, managing all the obvious risks such as theme, food quality and quantity, timing, supplier readiness and delivery, entertainment and A/V, invitations and registration along with the hundred other details that are managed by a good team and good plan. But you can never be certain of the weather, not even a week before. It will always retain a level of uncertainty adding that element of risk to the event. Do you get the big tent? Is parking going to turn to mud? How will rain impact attendance?

In this simple example, the weather uncertainty creates risk; risk that jeopardizes the event’s success and how you may choose to plan it. If it rains heavily attendance could be low. If it’s beautiful and sunny, attendance will be high.

So how is risk identified?

There are two forms of risk within social channels every marketer needs to be aware of and plan for.

Calculated Risk: Calculated risk is risk we can see, touch and smell. It can be identified, analyzed and planned for. We can see it coming but standard engagement policies are good enough to manage it. This is the stuff that our project planning typically takes into account and a good organization usually deal with this type of risk easily.
Risk Due to Uncertainty: Due to the public’s growing presence in the social space, risk created and/or amplified by uncertainty has become more prevalent. Uncertainty in social media is constantly present and can come from anywhere, at anytime and from any source. It is highly unpredictable and therefore capable of creating risk. Being difficult to spot or predict, it requires vigilance and a solid early warning system (excellent escalation process and good technology framework) to manage it.

Methods for Managing Risk in Social Channels

These three key tactics will aid you in identifying and reducing social media uncertainty and thus improving your ability to mitigate business risk.

A. Curate Knowledge from Other Parts of the Enterprise

I cannot stress enough how much insight and value can be gained from sharing knowledge across the enterprise. Sales, customer service, tech support, finance, HR, operations, product development, etc. all have knowledge of the customer and the market that will help you reduce uncertainty and manage risk. But you can’t rely on others to do it for you however; you must be willing to take a leadership role and curate this knowledge otherwise it simply will not get done.

B. Identify Trends and Patterns

The danger today is directly related to Big Data – or the likelihood we’re getting tangled up in it. We are so focused on what has transpired, we miss what’s coming. We need to stop looking at data for data sake. This is an intuition play, it’s about looking for emerging trends and patterns that produce uncertainty and amplify risk. Social data in particular can deliver some big insights if we look for greater patterns rather than focusing solely on sentiment around our brand.

C. Build a Defensible Position in the Social World

I advise all of my clients to take this three-pronged approach to social. Combined, they create an adaptable structure to identify and manage risk before it becomes a big issue.

Internal readiness: develop and build a work force comfortable with social and how to manage it effectively for your company. This requires an internal support network and enabled, outwardly connected employees.
Customer Communities: separate customers from the Great Unwashed Masses (GUM), engage, recognize and enable them. Customers will become one of your greatest early warning systems for impending risk as well as valuable allies in managing it.
Public Presence: Keep your social presence simple and focused on easily actionable measures that channel customers quickly to other parts of the enterprise – sales, service, support, HR, PR, etc. The public presence is about expedited service, not just saying thanks.

The Best Approach is the Strategic Approach

In the end, everything boils down to how well you have developed your strategy and how adaptable your organization is at managing risk. What is certain is that without a strategy in place you have eliminated your ability to reduce uncertainty and manage risk. The inevitable result will be a social program mired in issues that delivers little value to anyone.

Is your strategy designed to identify uncertainty? Do you have a risk management component to your social strategy?

Jeff Wilson - Sensei

Social Media is Creating Bad Customers

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Do you remember the disaster called #McDStories? The now famous story of how McDonalds was hijacked on Twitter by people tweeting negative stories on their hashtag. Poor planning combined with outright naivety about the their own brand perception quickly attracted a growing, “angry” mob of real customers and trolls who completely derailed the whole McDStories campaign.

Now, I’m not a big believer in social media on the best of days and this type of story adds more weight to my argument – Social Media is Creating Bad Customers. Why? It’s simple… because people deep down are bullies or at the very least indifferent to bullying. Add to this how easily the social media public is influenced by a mob mentality and you get recipes for McDStory after McDStory.

Social Media provides the average person with 4 factors empowering bad behavior, particularly against companies.

No Guilt. There is no remorse about bullying a brand. It’s much easier to do because no one gets “hurt”.
The Mob. Lots of other people are doing it. Whether they are the instigator with a real story or a troll making them up, its easy to find others who will join you.
Relative Anonymity. Anonymity strips many people of fear. “No one will know if I say this” is the common feeling and easily overwhelms any feelings of restraint a person might normally have.
No Accountability. Probably the most significant factor is the sheer lack of accountability in anything said in social media. Without accountability as a “natural check” on actions, you get an environment devoid of any punishment.

Proceed with Caution

My first two questions to companies that ask me about social media are:

What are the risks?
What is the compelling reason for you to use social media? (And please don’t say because my competitors are…)

For me, it always boils back to risk. The more risk you have the less likely you are to succeed. Most organizations are ill prepared for customers they already have let alone a new group of social media empowered customers. Social media creates risk even in a docile customer base because it can change the natural state of behavior in a single person or group of people. A social media environment provides fertile ground for unrest and poor behavior.

More McDStories are waiting to happen. Are you one of them?
How will you manage the bad customer social media is creating?

Jeff Wilson- Sensei

Competing With Your Employee for Consumer Loyalty

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

This week I’ve been exploring the conflict between employee and corporate brands here on Sensei Blogs and during our weekly Twitter debate. The discussion has taken many twists and turns touching on HR policies, corporate risk, brand strategies and even customer service; however, during this week’s #bizforum chat there was one issue that really captured my imagination. It’s the question: at what point does the brand begin to compete with the individual employee for customer loyalty?

Many marketers are working towards humanizing their brands, which has included allowing employees to actively engage with the public through social streams. In many businesses this is a group of people rather than an individual including community managers, customer service reps, marketers and/or executives. Some firms ride the coat-tails of of media-savvy personnel they acquire to represent them and whose personal brands becomes that much more influential as a result. More often than not, an employee becomes “socially-famous” while engaging the public on behalf of their employer. Whichever scenario built up the reputation of these individuals, there’s an inherent threat in their brand-sanctioned social activism.

Question: When does an employee’s brand become too powerful for the employer?
Answer: when customers become more loyal to the personality than the business or its product.

Allowing employees to shine on your business’ behalf demonstrates that you only recruit and support top talent, which in turn, reflects on your brand and values. The corporate brand benefits from association and the earned media garnered through their social engagement. Some even argue that it promotes employee loyalty and retention. So it’s a win/win right?

The Loyalty Tipping Point

Not so fast; as Stan Reeser argued this week during the #bizforum debate: a strong employee brand is antithetical to a corporate brand. Successful corporations demand loyalty to the brand or product not the employee; employees are agents for the business. They’re hired to assist the business achieve its goals. A business’ goal is to operate profitably today and establish a foundation for continued profitable operations into the future. Yes, a successful business ensures that the employee’s goals are aligned in the achievement of the corporate goal, but never forget which one is on top of the food chain.

When an employee’s performance, service or even personal habits become a hindrance to that corporate mission, corrective action must be taken. When such efforts yield no change, the individual must be terminated. When customers become more loyal to an individual than the brand, the employee becomes a potentially disruptive force to the future of the business and its ability to meet future profit goals. The risk is that the employee accepts higher remuneration or position with a competitor, causing customers loyal to them to also move the competitor.

You can argue that this was the case before social media and so there’s no real difference but there is.

1. Social Media’s intensification (maybe surprisingly) engenders greater trust and loyalty with the social personality than in the traditional employee-customer relationship. Call it the celebrity-factor; Social Media popularity broaches star-status, which is more powerful than admiration within smaller personal circles.

2. Social Media’s amplification creates loyalty in non-customers by delivering human-like connections and trust. Non-customer loyalty is evidenced when customers who would have purchased your product, end up buying from the competition because the personality they trust are representing them now.

Brand Trust Is Transferable

Kenny Rose argued this week that this is a problem of integrity, not branding. While this may be true, as he stated himself: “there’s no template” for a solution. The threat goes beyond employee integrity. It’s not even about the greed of employees. The most genuine and well-intentioned employee has personnel conflicts with their superiors, gets bored or experiences life/family changes; any of which are reasons for jumping ship. And even the most honorable person can’t stop loyal customers from following them. In fact, they seem to earn the most loyal followers.

Brand Trust – a factor decreed critical to customer acquisition and retention – is transferable when trust is given to an employee and not your brand. Trust follows its target not the brand that employed him or her.

Businesses cannot ignore Social Media engagement, so what’s the solution? They cannot encourage employees to perform poorly in order to regulate the loyalty they earn. Further, to remain competitive businesses require a good measure of such employee advocates and influencers to propel their brand.

It might be as simple as redesigning customer development strategies to safeguard brand loyalty by ensuring high-profile social employees create emotional connections between the consumer and the product - not themselves. Social Media is channel that promotes vanity. The lights and fanfare directed towards those who have earned celebrity status is blinding. Customer development strategies must be reinvented to leverage these social personalities and not be held hostage by them.

My recommendation for business strategists: focus on creating a unified customer experience across all touch points of the business. By generating fanaticism for the experience of using the product, paying their bills, receiving customer support, engaging in your community and so forth, loyalty to an individual – regardless of how durable it is – becomes just one of many equally solid connections between the customer and your brand. The risk of competing with your employee for customer loyalty is mitigated when this customer experience balance is established across your customer touch-points and you’re free to embrace social-celebrity employees.

What tactics can be deployed to mitigate the risk of socially-powerful employees stealing your customer’s loyalty?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

BizForum Debate #58 - The Collision of Personal and Corporate Brands

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

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

The Uncomfortable Age of Transparency

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Gone are the days of the stand-alone customer loyalty card (or just plain loyalty for that matter) – we’re now seeing a range of new data, social media feeds and smart phones that are changing the way organisations engage with their clients. We’re in a generational and philosophical struggle between older, closed systems and the new, open culture of the Internet.

The open internet culture has proven to be at odds with both corporate cultures and political regimes.In fact it's open season on corporations. It’s become a war of wills between the over-connected public with free and instant access to publish and consume information and the traditionally private and secretive enterprise.

Egyptian filmmaker Amr Salama offered this warning: “Businesses now really need to understand something that governments, dictators didn’t understand. Someday you’ll be busted. Anything you do will be known. Social media’s gonna get you, and if you’re lying we’re gonna know.” While we've certainly seen this accountablity in the world of politics (See Mashable.com's list of the 9 Social Media Uprisings that Sought to Change the World in 2011), this phenomena is now taking hold in the global corporate marketplace.

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.” —Hunter S. Thompson.

Through blog and social networks, the public have become an army waging war on corporate irresponsibility, which is forcing the need for brand transparency. In a twist of fate, social media propelled the demise of media giant: The News of the World. The scandal saw employees accused of engaging in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of publishing stories.

When the news hit, the public honesty-police took up the call and microbloggers like Andy Dawson took to the Twitterverse to push known News of the World advertisers like Ford to drop their support of the newspaper. “Within about 90 minutes, it had started to snowball, and my timeline was filled with people tweeting at various companies,” reported Mr. Dawson.

The reaction speed of advertisers to the public outcry that eventually led to the closing of this over century old publication led many pundits to call it “Britain’s Arab Spring”. Rory Cellan-Jones, a technology correspondent for BBC Mobile summarized it best when he quipped: “a random collection of loosely organised people with no one leader have come together to deal a blow to the finances of a powerful media organization.”

The uncomfortable age of transparency

What does transparency means to business? According to the Business Dictionary, transparency is the “minimum degree of disclosure to which agreements, dealings, practices, and transactions are open to all for verification.” I’m betting that corporate executives & financial stakeholders have a completely different interpretation of this than their customers.

Where corporate executives saw investigative reporters as problematic, they now see the public as enemies in the war over brand control. It has forced many analysts to argue for greater transparency from brands yet most don’t know what transparency looks like or how to assess whether or not their companies are, in fact, being transparent. Many see corporate transparency as “grand gestures” (Deb Shultz) or clever marketing and PR tactics.

In my last post, I discussed the challenge to McDonald’s Corp. by consumer watchdog Corporate Accountability International to: "issue a report within six months of the 2012 annual meeting assessing the company's policy responses to growing evidence of linkages between fast food and childhood obesity, diet-related diseases and other impacts on children's health”, which was overwhelming rejected by McDonald’s stakeholders.

Should McDonald’s have taken that challenge? Should they have done it before being asked? What’s the risk of not doing so? Disclosure is now an element of transparency where companies no longer attempt to conceal their inner workings. They must figure out how to be “open” to sharing their activities and the impact of those activities with the outside world.

Patrick Doyle, President of Dominos USA said: “there is nothing more import or sacred to us than our customer’s trust” in his video response to the now infamous viral YouTube video of two staff members doing unspeakable things to Pizzas that were apparently served to customers. Trust is a constant theme in corporate marketing but that does it take to really gain that trust? Is it possible for a corporation to be truly open and still maintain their structural integrity? When it being open too much?

Join us this Wed, May 30^th, 2012 between 8 and 9 PM for the #bizforum Twitter debate where the community will be exploring this very issue.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

McDonald's Choose Risk Mitigation Over Customer Development Innovation

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Fri, 25 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It was reported today (see here) that McDonald's Corp voted down a proposal to assess its impact on public health, particularly childhood obesity. The proposal was brought by consumer watchdog group: Corporate Accountability International.

The group requested that the McDonald's board "issue a report within six months of the 2012 annual meeting assessing the company's policy responses to growing evidence of linkages between fast food and childhood obesity, diet-related diseases and other impacts on children's health," according to the McDonald's proxy statement.

The proposal was voted down; only 6.4% voted in favor.

Problem or Opportunity?

Many of us groan when we see yet another blog post on the importance of public accountability and the increased power of the consumer due to social media. It’s certainly a worn out theme. Yet, this message seems to be falling on deaf ears when it comes to most corporations who choose to stare down the public and draw a line in the sand.

McDonald’s responded with this statement: "while these are global issues that require actions that go well beyond what our company or any other provider of prepared foods can take on its own, we are committed to being part of the effort to address the relevant issues underlying these concerns."

In other words, it’s not our problem.

Imagine the impact of McDonald’s accepting the offer. Imagine that the results illustrated childhood obesity was strongly linked to their marketing practices and their menu. If we’re to believe the social media marketing mavens, this would be the perfect opportunity to be “open”, “transparent”, “authentic” and every other overused buzz word they claim is required to become a market leader in our socially-connected world.

Yet, McDonald’s plays the shell shuffle game and hides behind well-crafted PR spin. Mr. Skinner pontificated about the company's improved sustainability tactics and operational improvements such as store remodels in his response. Look! A squirrel!

What are they afraid of? That the results will in fact implicate them as chief culprits in the child obesity pandemic? That their “Happy Meal” marketing and toy incentives are subliminally changing the way kids want to eat? Or is it the fear of implicating themselves in future law suits?

Depending on the results of the survey, each of these fears might have been realized but what an opportunity to take a leadership position with an honest “mea culpa” and demonstration that it would remodel its menu and marketing practices to help care for our children.

The public is incredibly forgiving of honest leaders who own up to their mistakes; Nine-times-out-of-ten they will rally behind such businesses with unprecedented loyalty and advocacy. Customer development is not about covering your ass-ets but doing what’s right for your customers. Yet this take courage from leaders and a corporate culture that encouages genuine concern for customer. Something McDonald's and its executive clearly lack in spades.

What are your thoughts? Is the risk too great? Was this the opportunity for McDonald’s to radically change the fast food game and cement itself as the untouchable leader in the industry?

Get in on the debate. Post your thoughts below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The 7 Deadly Sins of Market Leaders.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I responded to the recent news of the resignation of RIM’s Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with mixed emotions. As a Blackberry user and fan, it signals a possible change in direction to what I saw as an arrogant disregard for my patronage and loyalty. On the other hand, after reading some of the comments from the newly appointed CEO, Mr. Thorsten Heins I am saddened because it seems my love affair with this Canadian institution may just come to an end. Mr. Heins' sentiment that he will mostly follow the path set by his predecessors is disheartening and does not give me confidence in the future of this once global market leader.

I don’t believe you have to hold an International MBA in business to understand that for an incoming CEO to follow his predecessors when they were semi-forced to resign from their positions is a flawed strategy. Mr. Heins, have you not been paying attention? RIM, credited for inventing the smart phone industry, was once the most valuable company in Canada and essentially owned the world’s smart phone market share. Today RIM is losing market share (down to approx. 10%), losing value quickly (89% since 2008) and been plagued with system outages, delayed product launches, terrible customer service, horrible PR and marketing and a complete and utter lack of innovation.

Even its original and most loyal customer base: businessmen and bankers are feeling neglected and let down. In a note to investors the BlackBerry was called “a secular loser to Apple and Android devices,” by Ittai Kidron, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York.

Doing more of the same yields, well, more of the same. And given RIM’s shameful loss of market share and stock value, the “same” is not something the new CEO should be striving for. Be Warned. RIM and your predecessors are guilty of committing the 7 Deadly Sins of Market Leaders.

1. Greed

We all want success. And we love winners. It’s the famed “American Way”. And in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with that. However, market leaders can make strategic missteps when they try to overreach their success.

After dominating the North American smart phone market, RIM turned its sights to the international market where their networks were well suited for the Blackberry. On the surface this was a smart move; however, while the company’s resources were being funnelled to growth in those markets, the US market migrated to high-end mobile computing on the 4G platform and RIMs products were simply not ready for it. In their global domination efforts, they lost sight of what was happening at home and with their core market…and fell behind.

2. Distraction

After achieving market dominance, when the money and fame starts rolling in it’s not uncommon for an owner/CEO to take advantage and play out their fantasies. You can hardly blame them after all, they’ve earned it. However, history is proving that every product and business has a lifecycle and the corporation cannot maintain a market leader roll without constant re-invention. And this requires a singular focus. The late Mr. Jobs and Apple are the poster children for this rule and the resulting benefits. If you cannot live this rule, step aside and let someone else do it before you’ve lost too much ground.

During the last few years, most of the news reported here at home about RIM’s Mr. Balsille was his battle to win a NHL hockey franchise when maybe he should have been focusing more on where market and consumer demand was evolving and innovating new products to meet those demands?

3. Pride

When a business becomes about the executive’s ego and not the company, market leading businesses quickly lose their position. Today, even a publicly traded business must be seen to be more about its customers’ wants and needs than those of its executives.

The contributions of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis to RIM’s initial success are unquestionable but their efforts to hold on to their titles (and presumably: pays, perks and notoriety) blinded them to what was going on around them. They rarely left their ivory towers to engage their loyal customers and the results speak for themselves. Ego will not only cost you market share, it will kill the business completely.

4. Arrogance

The social world we live in has made every person – customer or not – as impactful to the business’ bottom line as the people who work for the company itself. Through social media, the power of the pen is so much more powerful than ever before and so no executive of a market-leading company can rest on their laurels and become aloof to the trials & tribulation of their customers. Keeping customers and even non-customers happy and engaged with your brand is critical.

The fall of RIM is as much about arrogance as it is about its lack of innovation. A series of critical outages to RIM’s formerly well-regarded network was met with practical silence from the company’s executives: little in the way of updates and little in the way of heartfelt apologies. Adding insult to injury was a feeble attempt to offer old, ill-working apps at no charge, which were received with distain from loyal customers. In the absence of personal, well-intended communication we were made to feel that we should be lucky that RIM allows us the privilege of owning a Blackberry and so we should stop complaining.

5. Becoming Boring

Today a product and its business must be more than product’s quality and utility. It must have personality. In the era of social media, reality TV and instant-celebrity, people are more interested leaders who are comfortable being themselves and having a clear and definable message. Case in point: Richard Branson or Steve Jobs.

Can anyone tell me what RIM’s Jim Balsillie or Mike Lazaridis look like? Stand for? What they preach? What their vision is? Exactly.

6. Losing Sight of a Vision

It’s possible for a market-leading business to have multiple products in multiple markets but it must always communicate a central principle and vision. Further, it must demonstrate that in every action they take, not just in the communications they push out through PR firms. Consider companies like Coke, Starbucks or 3M as an example.

At RIM, the company's leaders have been notoriously inconsistent and confusing about their vision and future plans. When asked what makes RIM unique, Mr. Balsillie told Bloomberg BusinessWeek: "We've taken two fundamentally different approaches in their casualness. It's a causal difference, not just nuance." What?!

Founder Mr. Laziridis is even more famous for his incoherency about the business. Reactions to his presentations at industry conferences are usually quite comical with phrases like: "Sorry, can't follow what he's saying" and "He isn't making any sense at all. Quite literally, we don't know what Mike is talking about right now."

7. Believing your own hype

A business executive can spin so much hype that it becomes ingrained into his psyche, which prevents him from seeing what the trend currents are predicting: what the public’s perception is and how their needs are changing. The public is fickle and their loyalty is even more fickle. A market leader can never believe its own hype.

Case in point: RIM built an industry around a smart phone for business, which could also help personal communication and productivity. It was lauded for this innovation and it played on this premise so much that it didn’t see what was coming.

Apple (and more recently Google, Android and now even Microsoft) understood that the public would rather see the smart phone as a personal device on which they could also conduct business needs. They understood that the smart phone was becoming integral with our daily lives; almost another human appendage. Plus, there are more people out there than Blackberry’s beloved CIOs for whom RIM has relied on to build a business.

Eventually, the lack of personal apps, speed and ease of use – and dare I say: sexiness – of the Blackberry in the face of Apple and Google’s products rallied enough workers to push their CIOs to reconsider their allegiance.

If RIM’s new CEO follows in the path of his predecessors and continues to commit these 7 deadly sins of market leaders, he will be writing the business’ epitaph. Do you agree that these deadly sins were committed by Blackberry’s leadership during their rein as market leaders?

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

Managing Crisis? Think Mobile.

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 00:00:00 GMT

With Hurricane Irene affecting the Eastern US over the weekend emergency response and crisis management and communications will be foremost in the minds of many companies and public agencies.

I spent two years researching and consulting creating emergency preparedness plans around the eventuality of an Avian Flu Pandemic. What I learned during that time is that the best planning and preparation fails if there is no ability to communicate effectively reliably and quickly during a crisis.

At a time where every minute feels like an hour, it’s a chance for companies and public organizations to stand out with service and stem what could easily lead to wide spread public panic.

Think of crisis communications as a lifeline tethering a scared and emotional distraught consumer to your brand. It is appreciated beyond measure and the trust it builds is enormous.

The Common Challenge to Crisis Communication

From utilities to telcos - public works to emergency response, customer service departments and municipal call centers will be overwhelmed with calls and inquiries for assistance and information.

The challenge is threefold…

An Emotional Hurricane: Consumer and public fear builds well before an actual hurricane hits land. This means negative emotions are incredibly high, while patience is increasingly short. These emotional states are contagious as well and will travel from family member to family member and friend to friend; all amplified by media. When the storm does hit we are faced with a situation where the longer communication takes the more the emotional hurricane builds in intensity.

Stressed Infrastructure: Natural disasters destroy and wreak havoc on infrastructure. Roads become difficult to pass; power goes out; phone service goes down, basic necessities and communication are put at risk. The more intense and widespread the devastation the longer it takes to come back online. This stress to the infrastructure creates tremendous challenge on delivering even the basic services and communication to the public.

Leadership Gaps: In a time of crisis, people look for leadership; leadership from the companies they rely on and from municipal/community leaders. While public sector and emergency services do an excellent job, many companies fail to lead their customers effectively through the crisis; primarily in the area of communication relying too heavily on automated systems delivering vague answers. These gaps serve to reinforce doubt and anxiety.

Why Mobile is Perfect for Crisis Communications

I have always believed that as companies our actions in times of stress and chaos are what people most remember. Did we leave our customers to fend for themselves or did we do everything we could to ease their anxiety?

The one thing that remains relatively intact during a natural disaster is mobile service. By its very nature, it represents the best and most reliable medium for communication with the customer during a crisis. Power goes out? Mobile is still on.

Case after case, mobile has been an overwhelming help to emergency personnel and the public in times of great disaster. But the companies that have used it effectively are few and far between.

With a mobile saturation rate of over 223 million U.S. mobile phone users over the age of 13 according and an estimated 120mil of those using mobile web according to 2010 figures from a Neilson study, the chances are that a vast majority of your customers are mobile.

As for creating a Mobile-based Crisis Management program. Here are some simple, effective ways to keep customer “in the know” during an emergency:

- Create a mobile status page for your company’s live crisis updates

- Allow it to localize the updates by zip/postal code.

- Add to the ability to text updates to customers automatically

- Integrate the service with field teams so that when they roll into an area, customers know.

- Hook it into your social accounts so overly concerned customers can communicate with someone.

- Let them share it with others easily. Enable your customers to help you manage the crisis and disseminate official news and updates.

Why you need to be on Mobile for Crisis Management

Simply put - whether you are there or not, your customers are.

Do you want them getting news on your service from other sources? Perhaps sharing in the most emotional of ways how its taking too long to restore service or that they can’t get any useful information from you?

Mobile provides a live window to the world and is your best opportunity to achieve two things:

Manage crisis by effectively communicating status, outages and repairs to your customers. Keeping them in the loop is critical to managing anxiety and negative press.
Delivering a positive customer experience that lets them know you were there when they needed you.

We know customers are going to tell stories about us after the crisis is over. What stories do you want them sharing?

Join Us!

Wed August 31st, 2011 from 8 to 9 PM Eastern for the #bizforum Twitter debate where we'll be discussing the use of Mobile in the enterprise. Our guest is Social Media Master: Brandon Eley. Learn more about Social Media Masters Advanced Marketing Tour: Click here.