Sensei Blogs

Stop your bitching; you're not paying for it!

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

By now you’ve probably heard that Instagram, which was purchased by Facebook three months ago, announced a rather dramatic change to its Terms of Service. As of January 16th, 2013, by using the popular photo sharing app you give Instagram perpetual rights to use and sell your photographs without payment or notification to you. That’s right, unless you cancel your subscription to this free service before that date, you will agree to have them market and sell your vacation photos, the dozens (no, hundreds) of pictures of your meals shared with friends and of course, all those cute pictures of your kids at play in local parks, parties and at home.

Who knows, your kid might be the next Gerber baby! That picture you took of your girlfriend on a Fort Lauderdale beach during spring break might be on the cover of the next Maxim magazine. How great is that, right?! “How much will I get paid?” you ask? Ah, see there’s the catch: you get paid nothing. You give them the right to “market and sell” your photographs AND give up the right to be compensated for such use. Still excited about your possible 15 minutes of pictorial fame?

Guess What? There’s No Santa Claus

Naturally, whenever some free social networking service tries to pay its electricity bill (so it can continue to offer you a free service) by selling advertisements, sharing your information or accessing the content you produce and willingly share across social platforms, everyone gets all riled up and turns to…you guessed it…the free internet to share their outrage. When a fee is placed on the use of – or access to – content, networking or images, most balk at the notion and move on. Place an advertisement in front of your content or before your video plays and everyone complains about how they’ve been inconvenienced.

Well guess what netizens, there is no Santa Claus. Facebook is a business, not a jolly man in red suit giving away candy canes and toys made by mystical elves. Who do you think pays for the servers, programmers, network engineers and bandwidth that allow you to share your silly memes, political rants and pictures of last night’s “most amazing sushi ever!”?

Culture of Entitlement

I want all of it, everything, all the time but I’m not prepared to pay for it and I
demand the best service – with a smile – on my terms.

Social media has created a culture of entitled, whiney crybabies who expect that everything will be given to them without compromise, fees or responsibility. We post pictures of ourselves drunk at bars and complain when they’re used against us at a job interview. We complain about our bosses and work environment on Twitter and seek legal advice when we’re fired for doing so. We blindly accept Terms of Service agreements without reading the fine print and then act all surprised and shocked that someone is collecting and sharing our information.

Culture of Opt-Out

As I’m writing this post, Danny Brown posted a great article called Instagram, Social Media and the Opt-Out Economy. He takes a unique look at the issue by calling out the fact Instagram is changing the rules of the game midstream, forcing you to opt out. Other services like Klout.com, who freely and without the requirement of an opt-in, track and analyse your online activity so they can build their business by selling product managers that information, require you to opt-in in order to opt-out. Nuts, right?

Certainly, the Internet has created an almost lawless Wild West-type world where everyone is trying to stake their claim to the gold in dem der hills.

Do I like the change Instagram is making to their Terms of Service? No.
Will I be opting out? Hell yes.
Do I agree with the new “opt-out mentality” that Internet firms are forcing down our throats? Not a chance.

However, I recognize that Instagram is free and so I say “stop your bitching or just stop using them.” It’s really that simple. Instagram is telling you it has to pay its bills and instead of charging you for access, it’s collecting revenue by selling your pictures. Don’t like the cost? Don’t buy it. Just don’t act so shocked that there’s a fee for services in life.

YOU'VE ALREADY AGREED TO LICENSE YOUR PHOTOS

Unregister yourself from Instagram and start using another network that you’ll not read the ToS for either. Those of you complaining clearly don't read them since you most likely have a Facebook account and so you've already given up the same rights Instagram is now asking for. From Facebook's terms of service: "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us ... a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post."

< /endrant >

Agree? Has social media created a culture of entitlement? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Stop Pandering to Loyalty Programs – A Rant

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Got points? Perks? Discounts? Of course you do. We all do.

Is your 11th coffee free? Do you get a 15% discount on a $7.99 shirt cleaning bill after you’ve invested $100 in the dry-cleaner’s business? Yes?

Yes, we all have. And we’re all “loyal” to these businesses who have trained us to be so when a reward is teased in our face. We happily jump up on our hind legs, tongue wagging and we beg for more.

Until we don’t.

Loyalty programs should be the ones trained to play dead, not us. Businesses have the capacity to understand every personal need and desire. In fact, there is enough data being collected that can accurately predict when we’ll have such needs and desires. Be it for lack of budget or willingness to invest, if the business does not possess such widely available technology, they merely have to ask customers for that information. Or simply listen; customers are feverishly sharing this information across social networks. The point: there’s no excuse to not know.

Focus on Relevance, Not Perks

Why then do I receive the same offer and perk from Delta Airline’s reward program (my favorite airline by the way) that all other Delta Platinum frequent flyers receive? If they understood me, they’d know that while I appreciate free flights, I’d gladly give up those free flight perks for better accessibility to airport lounges, improved access to seat upgrades or free onboard WiFi.

The reality is that every airline awards free flights when you purchase enough flights to justify their expense. So why do I choose to fly Delta? Because of their loyalty card and free flights? Certainly not.
I choose Delta because they have the greatest number of available flights – and options – when I’m stuck someplace because of a storm, a technical delay or simply because I slept in. I’m more likely to get to where I need to be – despite myself and “acts of God” – if I fly with Delta.

What does this teach us? I’m an individual. I have individual needs and priorities. I value speed, ability to work freely while I travel and access to more flights – not free flights. I’d give up those free flight awards if I’d receive more of the perks that I do value in exchange.

Loyalty Is About the Consumer, Not the Business

Imagine: a loyalty program that is about me and not the business; a loyalty program that is more focused on my needs and my preferences. A business that uses a loyalty program to retain customers and increase spend by truly rewarding individuals and not training us like dogs.

That relevance and customization in a loyalty program would cost the same to deliver in the long term, increase true loyalty and better still, increase advocacy. Imagine the improved customer experience they’d facilitate.

So why then are businesses still treating loyalty programs like a lead-acquisition program instead of a true customer development strategy? Because we’re up on our hind legs, tongue wagging and happily begging for more.

Isn’t it time we stop begging?

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The Business of Socially-Powered Boycotts

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve experienced, seen or at least heard of the many boycotts being waged against corporate brands. Currently, we’re in the throes of a campaign against Chick-fil-A, an Atlanta-based fast food restaurant for comments made by owner Dan T. Cathy that supported the “biblical definition of the family unit”…essentially speaking out against gay-marriage rights.

This came just off the heels of another social boycott campaign that erupted after Kraft Foods posted a Photoshopped advertisement of an Oero (“America’s Favorite Cookie”) stuffed with rainbow colored layers and the caption: “Proudly Support Love”. Both came on like unexpected tsunamis and quickly became the main topic of conversation across social media, television and newspapers as well as at both boardroom and kitchen tables across North America.

Boycotts are quickly becoming the weapon-of-choice for groups seeking to further their political or social agenda by targeting national companies who already have mass public attention. Social Media is simultaneously the fuel and the battleground for these wars and a new reality for businesses.

During the #bizforum Twitter debate on this subject last night, by referencing the granddaddy of all boycotts: the Boston tea party, Ric Dragon suggested that boycotts are not a new reality for business at all.

He’s right of course, boycotts are not new but they are certainly a strategy that has had new life breathed into it. Social Channels have facilitated boycott “Flash Mobs”, where almost overnight lines are drawn in the sand and tens of thousands of people line up on one side or the other. Worse, most jump on the bandwagon without any real fervent support for the cause but for peer-pressure or the entertainment value.

Today, more than ever business must anticipate the reaction to every nuance of every act, statement and belief of their employees as well as their companies. They must possess more intuitive insights into the political and cultural environment they, their government and their customers engage in or risk being on the wrong side of a social mob.

Businesses are just getting used to the idea and impact of a few public tweets about their brands and now they’re faced with the reality of socially-powered boycott threatening to take them down.

An Ounce of Prevention?

The reality is that most boycotts today are rooted in political or social beliefs and not direct opposition to the quality of a specific product or service offered by the company. Opposition to a product or service is easily managed.

Preventing political or socially-based boycotts is next to impossible unless you make it a policy to never speak or engage the public for fear of offending someone, somewhere. However, the congregation of people in communities through online social channels has forced businesses to engage these groups on social, political and emotional levels in exchange for their loyalty.

Aligning a business’ values with that of its customers is a sure fire way to generate diehard fanatics but also creates a volatile environment from which these Flash Mob boycotts can erupt.

Should businesses be taking these socially-charged boycotts seriously? Social media has become known for its short lifespan so is there any real long-term threat? Remember, cable news created the 24-hour news cycle, which social media turned into 24-minutes.

As Fred McClimans argued in last night’s debate, even if the boycott is short-lived the digital footprint of the event – and the impact on the brand’s reputation – Iives on.

Two Sides to Every ~~Debate~~ Boycott

The “same-sex kiss-in” created by activist Carly McGehee , which sparked the recent Chick-fil-A boycott was met with a “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day”, sponsored by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum joined the fray by rallying his 200,000 Twitter followers to support the chain.

When Kraft Foods posted its Oreo Cookie Gay Pride support advertisement on Facebook it garnered 157,000 likes with 40,000 shares. Yet of the20,000 comments many were negative and called for a boycott of the cookie.

Convention dictates a business avoids such controversies yet many national brands seem to court them. In honor of Pride month, Target launched a line of gay pride t-shirts and Ben & Jerry’s renamed it’s apple pie flavor “Apple-y Ever After” in the UK. Given the precedents set on Facebook and other social channels, why are these businesses not afraid of the Flash Mob boycotts? What do they know?

Is it possible that boycotts are not a punitive tactic used by the activists but a modern tactic used by savvy businesses to leverage political discord in hopes of solidifying fervent loyalty from “the other side”?

Are boycotts really a business strategy, not a political weapon?

I’m turning the debate over to you now. Should businesses ignore, avoid or embrace flash mob boycotts? Share your thoughts below. Also, check out a sampling of the arguements from last night's #bizforum debate on this issue.

Sam Fiorella - Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The YinYang of Customer Experience

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

Over the centuries, philosophers, scientists and poets alike have tried to capture the definition of an inexplicable force that governs much of our existence.

Via theory, formula, and verse, their attempts to give it some form we could all begin to understand took shape in powerful words that describe a natural force that affects kings and queens as equally as it affects us lowly peasants.

Whether you call it Karma, fortune, fate or Yin Yang – it purpose is to bring natural balance. Its definition is elegant, powerful and simple…

“Yin and Yang are not opposing forces (dualities), but complementary opposites that interact within a greater whole, as part of a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects as light cannot exist without darkness and vice-versa, but either of these aspects may manifest more strongly in particular objects, and may ebb or flow over time.” - Source Wikipedia

When we open our minds to the possibility that this force exists, we must also accept the notion that it is part of and affects everything. For the purposes of this article I want to suspend the notion of a moral dimension (good and bad) to Yin Yang and stick to the Taoist definition of natural balance.

Over the past fifteen years I have explored and mapped out this theory into a methodology. During this time I have discovered many sets of balancing forces that ebb and flow through the customer experience.

Take the following set of factors which affect how and what we engage with and what we measure within a customer experience.

Emotion and Logic – The most powerful balance of YinYang in any customer experience. As human beings, we are governed by these two factors in every single relationship and every single decision. Ultimately the resulting balance of these two factors dictates whether they become a customer.

Touch – How and when we engage is critical in the overall experience. The balance here is the situation that drives the customer to us and we have enabled them to access us.

Reference – How did they come to find about us is determined by a mix of personal experience and the experience of others; the foundation of Word of Mouth Marketing.

Measurement – How and what we measure is critical to improving the sustainability and potency of our customer experience. While numbers and scoring tell us much, it is only half the story.

While balance may seem easy to comprehend and at times implement, it is the combination of many sets of balancing factors that create a complex, multi-tiered customer experience. Some of the other sets of balancing factors are:

Adding to this complexity is the quotient of each at any given stage in a customer experience. For example, when is it best to invest heavily in emotion or logic within a customer experience? Weighted poorly you can drive a customer away, delay a decision indefinitely or even worse create vocal brand critics.

CX without Balance

So what happens when one of these factors, say a Yin is missing and we only have a Yang? We effectively create a gap in the customer experience, a weakness in the forces that govern the overall experience, determine actions or lack thereof.

Take an experience with no emotional design and high logic; a common occurrence for many B2B companies who believe they are selling to businesses rather than people. Without planned emotional design or the Yin of emotion, you have lost the ability to effectively guide your customer fully through the customer experience. Moreover you risk unplanned or negative emotional responses and the delivery of a poor experience.

Looking Forward

There is much still to discover and share on this methodology. I will be continuing to explore this methodology in a series of articles over the next several months. The next stages of our journey will delve into…

- The YinYang of emotion and logic in the CX and how we can design to promote faster decisions and higher conversion.
- The role of influence within the customer experience, including creating and managing the many influencing factors in and around the customer.
- The value of the employee experience and how it can ruin or create a high quality customer experience.

I hope you will join me as we continue to map out what it takes to create an exceptional and well balanced customer experience; one that can improve both conversion and value of the customer relationship as equally as it can establish the foundations of long term brand advocacy and improved share of wallet.

I look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Thanks for reading.

Jeff – Sensei

Does Social Influence Scoring Drive Value to Brands | #bizforum video debate

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 00:00:00 GMT

There’s been so much talk about the accuracy, value or benefit of social influence scoring tools this past year; most of it about you. What does it do for you? How does it impact you? How do you game it? What’s your score? And that’s how social influence businesses like Klout like it. Keep the focus on you.

Their game is to play on the vanities of individuals, which is fuel for their “service” and bank roll. The longer and harder you play their game the more money they can generate by selling access to you. Good ole American ingenuity. In fact, they also love those who claim to “not care” because by not caring (especially when you secretly do), you don’t opt out. And by not opting out, they will continue to use your online activity and persona to make money by selling them to advertisers.

But this post is not about you (I know, don’t be too upset). The debate I’m surprised no one is having is the value (or lack thereof) of the information collected, parsed and presented as real market data by Klout for Brands? Businesses are paying top dollar to access the real influencers, which Klout claims to be able to identify but are their clients getting their money’s worth?

The #bizforum video debate experiment continues at New York City’s Internet Media Labs by exploring this topic with Ric Dragon, the author of Social Marketology and Fred McClimans, Managing Director of the McClimans Group.

What are your thoughts? Do you believe Brands are getting their money’s worth by paying for access to the Klout-annointed? Businesses have been successful at influencer-outreach programs pre-Klout but the criteria, manpower and human intuition that went into these efforts seem to have given way to the short-cut of online measurement tools.

Is this just a short-term gimmick sucking ad dollars from brands or is it a legitimate customer acquisition strategy for marketers?

Agree/Disagree? Get in on the debate via the comments below.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Imagine If Corporations Had Courage

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

Imagine

Imagine: A gas retailer publicly admitting: North America is now flush with gas and we’re still charging too much. Status Quo is not good enough. We’re going to drop our prices. Imagine a gas retailer who does not inexplicably raise prices the morning of a long weekend or other holiday. Imagine a gas retailer that does more than build web sites and hire PR companies to justify why gas prices are so high but does something about the high prices.

Imagine: An airline acknowledging that they’ve “nickel and dimed” their customers with food, baggage and other extras because it’s the industry’s way of trying to cover their escalating costs. Imagine an airline or airport that admits creating taxes and ambiguous surcharges to maintain the illusion that their base fares are low or not increasing. Imagine an airline who admits the flying experience is horrible (and getting worse) and that they’ll improve that by charging a fair all-in-one price where they can make a reasonable profit but also cut out the slight-of-hand pricing tactics.

Imagine: A credit card company that doesn’t increase your limit when you approach it. Imagine receiving solid financial advice on budgeting instead of increasing your limit to amounts you really shouldn’t spend to. Imagine a credit card company that provides wealth generation and management advice instead of trying to dupe you with loyalty gimmicks and low-entry percentages to get you to spend more.

Imagine: A marketing firm that tells you they cannot really show a return on investment for a social media marketing campaign. Imagine a marketing firm that tells you they really can’t deliver a project for your available budget instead of accepting it with this knowledge and delivering poor results or issuing frequent change-controls till you’re forced to spend double your budget.

Imagine the courage.

Imagine a business that has the courage to buck industry standards or “go-to” marketing strategies and stands up for their customers by acknowledging the pain points in the customer experience.

Imagine a business with the courage to be responsive to customer needs before the needs of their investors.

Imagine a business having the courage to do something about it.

Imagine.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

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

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 #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.

Social Scoring, Misdirection and HR Recruiting

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You’re not active on Facebook? You may not be qualified to work as an Engineer.

Not Tweeting? Sorry, you can’t be hired in the Travel & Tourism industry.

No Pinterest board? You’re future as a Chef just hit a major roadblock.

To rational people such statements will seem ridiculous but in reality they’re not far from becoming factual accounts of real life job seekers if the alarming social influence measurement trend is not curbed quickly.

Gauging a person’s influence is nothing new in the marketing world and recently the socialverse has been turned on its ear with the hullabaloo over pseudo influence measurement tools such as Peerindex, Klout and Kred. Sadly, this trend is making its way into other areas of business including Human Resources. New tools such as Reppify, Identified and BranchOut are targeting HR executives with the promise of providing accurate insights into the personality and even qualifications of potential hires based on one’s social interactions.

Yes, you read that right. Analytics software is predicting your qualifications for any job type based on your social conversations. Reppify, for example is a new service that provides recruiters and HR teams an online dashboard that pulls data from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and even GitHub profiles. By scanning the job candidate’s resume and social connections it generates a “job fit score” for “reputation,” “influence,” “footprint,” and “overall candidacy .

To their credit, unlike flawed influence measurement tools like Klout.com, Reppify allows hiring managers to set some parameters with which to score candidates. However, the fact remains that your personal social engagements are being scanned to determine your fitness for a job that most likely has nothing to do with social engagement, like a network engineer or a quality assurance analyst.

There’s Reality and then there’s Reality.

Reppify representatives argue that their service, unlike Klout or PeerIndex, asks permission before it creates a score; however, that’s only half true. Reppify uses the email address and resume data you provide to a potential employer to match it with the public data it gathers from Google searches as well information from social network that don’t require a “friend-level connection”; in other words anything you post publicly on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Etc. So a score based on limited resources establishes an initial impression and metric about your job candidacy for HR managers who subscribe to the service.

Reppify notifies you that a potential employer generated this initial score and offers you the option to grant it access to your private social network connections and data so it may augment the initial score. If you accept, you’re granting a third party (and a potential employer) access to information you purposely didn’t share publicly. If you don’t accept, you’re essentially creating another impression of yourself. What do you have to hide? Without sharing that additional information with the potential employer using Reppify, you’re job application is labelled with a limited score.

Some, like the CEO of Reppify argue that there’s no need to worry about such scores since they are only one tool in a list of apps and measurements used to determine your job compatibility, but from personal experience I can tell you that overworked HR teams don’t exercise such sound judgement in these decisions. And mine is just one of many such stories. If you choose to opt-out altogether you’re required to shut off public access to all your personal information across all social sites. The onus is on you to do so. And once again, based on personal experience with Klout, "opting out" really means they can and will reinstate you at their leisure or when it suits them.

When did we lose the importance of human insights?

When an HR manager or potential employer chooses to do some research on you as a candidate and scans your LinkedIn profile or tweets on Twitter, he is forced to exercise some judgement through the context of the information he’s reading. Software doesn’t utilize such filters and, for example, may record comments you disagree with – but are posting to share with others – as your views.

“If I get a recruit who has only half a dozen connections on Twitter or LinkedIn, they are tainted with the belief that they are not connected and not up-to-date,” reports Human Capital Management Systems CEO Trevor Vas. Perception is reality and those perceptions are formed with lack of data as much as they are with thousands of data points. Never has this been truer than in our over-connected world where social engagement is given so much importance.

Where you have HR scoring systems based on social interactions, just like the marketing versions before them, you will see people gaming the system to mislead those they wish to impress, further poluting the metrics and diminishing the validity of the score's claim. And there's no end in sight. From marketing to HR and next: Customer Service. Via Salesforce.com interface, call centre operators now have access to a callers’ Klout score so they can respond with the appropriate amount of deference if someone has a complaint (be extra nice if they have a high Klout score...don't fret if they have a low score).

Again I find myself calling out businesses for their reliance on third party social scoring metrics as any form of guideline in making business decisions. The increasing volume of content being generated on the Web and through social channels (what some are calling “Big Data”) isn’t necessarily “Smart Data”. Proponents of these tools and services will claim that those who use them understand that they are limited and should be used as one of many factors in making business decisions. However, we understand the reality of tight budgets, short timelines and frankly, human nature. Where a short cut is available, the short cut is almost always used.

Am I the only one who is frightened at what the future holds as businesses continue to use pseudo-scientific analysis of people's social media engagement (or lack thereof) as indicators of real real-life substance or value? People thought Klout was harmless yet the trend is now permeating other areas of the business with reckless abandon. I pray that this trend will turn out to be a fad we'll all be laughing at 5 years from now, like bell-bottom pants or leg warmers. In the meantime, someone needs to give those executives relying on such tools a reality check.

Sam Fiorella – Sensei
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

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