Archive for November, 2009

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Bank Mashup

9 November, 2009

I was looking for mashups of google maps by financial services – beyond location of ATMs and I found this one by Standard Bank, it neatly displays deals, accolades, and news from around the world for the company. Clicking on the “thumbtack” opens a call out with a short explanation and an invitation “let’s get the conversation going”.

Picture 1Which is where it starts to fall down in my view. When you click on that you are taken to a standard web form and told “tell us who you are and we will contact you”. I’m not sure what I expected but this wasn’t it.

That’s the tricky thing with corporates adopting Web 2.0, we’re not really naturally equipped to take it on, and it tends to either languish in a web team or be taken up by a facebook fanatic in marketing.

Really effective use of Web 2.0 requires more than that, Harvard Business Review identifies five areas that businesses need to consider when establishing social media programmes; Integration, Governance, Culture, HR, Measurement & ROI.

I would add Risk and Technology as issues for large companies.

Effective use of social media requires clear policies around its development and use internally. It requires technology teams that understand and create solutions that deliver to business – rather than shaking their heads and pointing to risk. And risk teams that understand the technology and the business benefits. The organisation also has to support a culture of openness and knowledge sharing. Any move into social media also needs to consider the impact on business – does inviting people to a conversation imply a direct connection to chat? Who will be on the other end, and what do they need to know?

I think there are several reasons big corporations aren’t quick to adopt social media, and the biggest is probably the cost and difficulty of integrating strong social media programmes into the business.

It’s understandable, but not sustainable. Businesses have to figure this out – be smart and start small.

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The Customer is Always Right

6 November, 2009
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So it doesn't come with a box?

This is, as you might expect, something of an American saying. It was probably started by Marshall Field in the early 20th century, as his philosophy in running department store in Chicago. It’s true that Selfridge (of Selfridge’s fame) had a similar philisophy and Cesar Ritz declared that the customer was never wrong. So the sentiment was not unknown in Europe, however it’s the American service industry that has taken this expression to extremes.

It was probably meant as a way to empower employees to treat customers well, but in some cases it’s become a mantra empowering customers to behave badly.

For example the famous video of the woman who missed her flight at Hong Kong airport, she’s a customer so, according to this slogan, it’s right that she behaves like child and throws a major tantrum? I don’t think so. I get that she was upset but an adult throwing a tantrum? And the staff had to deal with that!

Not all employers are buying into this slogan any more, there has been a rash of “fire your customer” mentality but that’s going too far the other way. Although there’s a lovely, and possibly apocyphal story of Herb Keller of South West Airlines doing just that.

The story goes that when a customer wrote one too many letters of complaint and stumped the customer service team who work hard to answer every enquiry they pushed the letter, and the folder of previous letters up to Herb Keller, then CEO. He answered it in three words “we will miss you”. (read the story here, scroll down).

Whether the story is true or not it does indicate that we recognise a line across which the customer is not right – or at least perhaps those of us who’ve worked in customer service, and genuinely tried to serve customers, know that it cannot always be true.

image from teamstickergiant via flickr

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Social Media Metrics

4 November, 2009

I’ve had some difficult discussions about how to measure the value of our web presence, and some even more difficult discussions on how we should measure the value of social media.

I don’t think visitor traffic says that much, our peak traffic days in the last year have coincided with announcements related to the current financial crisis. We’ve had assistance from the Dutch Government, a new CEO, and most recently an announcement that we will be splitting the company. On those days our web traffic soared even if our shareprice didn’t so clearly traffic does not equal value to the company.

For me there are two ways a site can generate value for a company; reduce costs or increase revenue. Social media programmes need to show the same kind of benefits, and there are plenty of examples out there, the DellOutlet twitter is perhaps the clearest example – where followers can benefit from offers from the dell outlet store that otherwise wouldn’t get much publicity.

I’m not the only one lamenting the lack of sensible thought within companies on measurment and ROI for web/social media; Jay Baer points out that we might be “cherishing the wrong trophy” when we chase facebook fans and twitter followers. David Meerman Scott dislikes ROI (like any good marketer) but still pushed for thinking about “creating buzz” and business impact in a recent presentation.

But the hands-down best, winner-takes-all explanation of why and how ROI matters in social media comes from Olivier Blanchard in this presentation.

Two items that particularly pleased me;

  1. the acknowledgement that it will take time, as in months, to realise the financial impact of social media (slides 28 & 60)
  2. the reference to those easy-to-get web metrics as “non-financial impact” (slide 34)

Aside from that there’s a certain genius in the use of images in this presentation – it’s worth a look for that alone.

Posted in Marketing, social media | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

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Dusty collection to revenue stream

2 November, 2009

To date the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has never had a photographic exhibition, and yet their collection of photos has become a revenue stream. How?

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Images in the Tyrell Collection go back to 1850, and show life in different eras.

Well first of all they started loading the Tyrell Collection – a set of more than 7000 glass plate images known to be free from copyright – to flickr under a creative commons licence. In other words they put the images into public space, in effect they gave them away. So again how did that become a revenue stream?

Before setting up the flickr account the powerhouse had some of the Tyrell collection on their site, and were fairly happy with their 30,000+ visitors per year. In the first two weeks of putting the collection onto flickr saw more than 40,000 visitors.

Visitor interest has been really high, with visitors helping to identify where some of the collection is shot, and actively commenting on some of the images. The museum has also picked up on a mashup of their images, google maps and google streetview to allow a then and now comparison, the mashup was developed not by the employees of the museum, but by a fan. Other fans have made a more lowtech comparison, using images from the Tyrell collection in the foreground of a photo of the current environment.

Some photobuffs have gone to even more trouble creating remixed versions of the images.

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The original plate glass image in the Tyrell Collection

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A remixed version entitled "Madame Pooch"

The museum works hard to load up the collection, to produce a “photo of the day” blog, and to collect images on flickr into the Tyrell today group on flickr (and link them to their historical equivalents. It’s a lot of work, but it’s paying dividends. It’s all been successful enough for the Powerhouse to create a book – published on demand – of the best of their flickr experience called “Then and Now“.

Their once dusty collection has become a revenue stream with uses and orders of their photos increasing year on year. The collection has become an asset, maybe one day it will even earn itself its very own exhibition.

Posted in Business, Innovation, Marketing | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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