Category Archives: Social Media

Dumping Facebook Ads the Obvious Choice for GM

The twittersphere erupted with news of GM’s announcement that it was refusing to pay for 2013 Super Bowl advertisements and $10 Million worth of advertising on Facebook.

Much of the popular press and self-proclaimed social media experts are jumping on the bandwagon and calling GM “idiots” for ending their advertising of Facebook and talking about how GM “doesn’t get” social media. If you listen to the amount of noise out there you would think that there was consensus that GM was wrong in making these moves.

I disagree. GM is making the right move.

Companies need to re-think how they spend money on marketing and advertising to make money in the showroom. Traditional advertising is becoming more expensive all the time and as the saying goes “I know I’m wasting half of the money I spend on advertising, only I don’t know which half.” The key here is that with advertising you pay to blast everyone that sees it with a single message – including people who just bought what you sell and those who will never buy what you sell just to hit the people who are considering a purchase of what you sell. As a result it is expensive and nearly impossible to place the right message with the right people at the time (and only those people). So I am not surprised at all that GM is re-evaluating its advertising spend, possibly investing more (not less) in the future in social media. Done well, you can be more impactful with pull marketing and social media than you can with push marketing and advertising.

So, personally it seems odd to me that so-called social media experts are in favor of a company spending money advertising on social networks. Wouldn’t it be smarter for them to advocate that GM spend money on build an interactive, engagement-driving social media campaign instead of spending money on advertising?

Something like the Chevy Game Time App?

Wait a minute, did the same company that doesn’t “get social media” launch an app built by hometown company – Detroit Labs – before Super Bowl 2012 that rocketed into the Top 10 free apps for the iPhone on Apple’s App Store (a top 10 that included Facebook and Instagram)?

“For all intents and purposes, all of the expectations that we had and that GM had were far exceeded… in a positive way!”

– Henry Balanon, Detroit Labs Co-Founder

Hmmmm…

First let’s be clear. Social networks and social media are two separate things, but people talk about them as is if they were one thing.

A social network is a place where people connect online and interact, whereas social media is content that is created to be shared. But, many so-called social media experts confuse the two, and confuse advertising with social media too. Advertising on a social network is not a social media strategy – it’s still advertising. Identifying the content that you should place on your Facebook page or other digital destination and creating a reason for people to tell others that they should come to that digital destination, well that’s a social media strategy.

Now, I must disclose that I specialize in helping companies creating pull marketing strategies to drive an increase in inbound sales leads by researching the customer purchasing journey online and then helping them attract and engage customers, partners, or employees by placing the right content in the right places at the right time. Part of this is achieved by using my proprietary single content input, multiple content output methodology and yes, that sometimes includes using social media. But social media is a tool not a religion, and it needs to be used only when appropriate.

I think GM made the right call in ceasing to advertise on the Super Bowl and Facebook and here’s why:

Super Bowl advertisements are expensive and for GM much of the cost is allocated against people who will probably NEVER buy a GM car

Facebook advertising is not very prominent or engaging

Their Chevy Game Time App experience should have given GM an idea that next year they can drive huge engagement during the Super Bowl (without advertising)

If GM is so clueless at social media, then why does the Facebook page for Chevrolet look so much better than the Facebook page for Ford or Toyota or Dodge. Honda is the only one I looked at amongst the car companies that had a more social feel at first glance, oh and Honda has the most likes of these companies too – go figure. But the engagement of people on Facebook around these brands is tiny in comparison to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Harley-Davidson – both in terms of the numbers of likes and the number of people talking about them.

So, yes GM still has things to learn about engaging on social media (and about building better products too), but then so does every company. Social media and pull marketing are two new tools in the toolbox for every CMO, brand manager, and product marketer, but as long as we all continue to instrument for learning, as marketers we will continue to get better at utilizing these new tools to attract, engage, and retain the people who will love our products and services as much as we do.

Keep innovating!

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Effective Conversational Marketing

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A few years ago I published a white paper on “Effective Conversational Marketing” and it is still relevant today as my service offering evolves to a B2B Pull Marketing focus.

Here is an excerpt:

“Introduction

What is conversational marketing?

Conversational marketing is relationship marketing for the social media age. Thinking about your marketing efforts in terms of a conversation changes the approach and better integrates social media. Relationships are something that are formed, but conversations are ongoing and evolving and require both sides to participate.

How Social Media Fits In

It seems like I can’t get through a day right now without hearing somebody in the media or on the street talking about social media. I think it is great that social media has captured people’s attention, but will having more communication channels improve conversational marketing?

Only if properly integrated into the conversations between consumers and companies.

To do this, social media must be established both as part of your on-going conversational marketing programs (on-boarding, loyalty, retention, etc.) and also integrated into your ad hoc or seasonal marketing campaigns.”

Download the complete “Effective Conversational Marketing” white paper in PDF form.

One thing is for sure. Effective conversational marketing is central to successful pull marketing strategy and your overall marketing investments.

Contact us if you’d like to hire me to create thought leadership for you to help increase your inbound sales leads, or to create a pull marketing strategy to increase your revenue.

Image Credit – NoLifeBeforeCoffee

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Who is in Your Social Media Band?

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It used to be that when you formed a rock band to seek fame and fortune, all you had to do was find a lead singer, a guitarist, a bass player, a drummer, and maybe another guitarist or a keyboard player if you wanted a richer sound. But the digital age presents a level of complexity and opportunity that John, Paul, and Ringo never had to deal with.

If video killed the radio star, or tried to, then YouTube will certainly finish the job.

In the old days (come on, rock music is less than 100 years old), bands played at their local high school, then maybe the local club circuit, recorded a demo and sent off demo tapes, and finally if they were lucky they were ‘discovered’ by a record exec and signed to a record deal.

In the digital age, aspiring rock stars need to consider the social media and marketing skills of potential band mates as much as they scrutinize their skill with a particular musical instrument. In the digital age your skills with YouTube are almost more likely to make you a rock star then your skills with a guitar.

Just look at Pomplamoose – nearly 80 million video views and 340,000 subscribers. They have more YouTube subscribers than mega-stars Coldplay.

If we look at a new song as an invention and at my Innovation is All About Value framework through a music lens, you will quickly see why social media and creativity are so important in the music business and why new singers and bands can seemingly come from nowhere on the Internet.

1. Value Creation

A new song (Is the song any good?)

2. Value Access

How easy do you make it for people to find this new song, listen to it and buy it?

3. Value Translation

Do you do a good job of making people want to add the song to their playlists and to share the song with others? Do you engage them and make the song a part of them?

The power of #3 is magnified on the Internet (both if you do it well or poorly). Just look at the fact that Gotye created an AWESOME song ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’ and the video for it has received 600,000 page views, but a little known Canadian band Walk Off The Earth released a YouTube video covering the song and their cover has generated 83 million page views and an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

Why?

More passion, and a better, more engaging story (ultimately better value translation that was worth sharing).

So all you teenyboppers out there putting together the next great rock band, beware. In this new digital reality we all live in, you can’t think just about guitar, vocals, bass, drums, and keyboards. You must also think about who in the band you are considering putting together (unless you actually have money to pay someone) will make you look awesome on:

1. YouTube
2. MySpace Music
3. Twitter
4. Facebook
5. Band Web Site
6. Other places (Spotify, iTunes, etc.)

Yes, I said MySpace. The site remains incredibly relevant despite being eclipsed by Facebook thanks to its understanding of how to help bands create valuable pages for fans. Facebook still sucks at this. If I were Google and didn’t want Google+ to die a slow death, I would buy MySpace and incorporate the Music capabilities into Google+. It would make a great pairing with YouTube. They might want to buy Spotify while they are at it to bolster their unfortunately pathetic Google Play offering.

One other interesting contrast to draw between the successful bands spawned by YouTube versus the successful bands spawned by the old guard. YouTube successes tend to be very human and engaging in their approach, while old guard bands tend to be very aloof, distant, and well-packaged.

What kind of musical band and social media band will you be?

Here are the two different ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’ videos, starting with the original by Gotye:

Followed by the Walk Off the Earth cover:

Image Credit: Foxhound Studio

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Guest Innovation Blogger in the Language of Your Choice

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Are you looking for a way to increase the innovation knowledge in your organization?

Looking for a way to begin installing a common innovation language in your organization?

Well then, why not have me (Braden Kelley) as a guest blogger on your site or otherwise republish any of my own personal stash of 650+ articles from Human-Centered Change & Innovation directly as articles onto your web site or enterprise portal, you are more than welcome to do so as long you preserve proper attribution using this HTML snippet at the bottom of the article:

Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Braden has been advising companies since 1996, while living and working in England, Germany, and the United States. Braden is a US Navy veteran and earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Go ahead, integrate some of my 650+ articles into your corporate portal, innovation management system, or open innovation community and I’m sure you will experience not only more informed conversations and contributions, but also possibly greater innovation success.

Happy innovating!

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How Not to Do Social Media

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Despite the fact that Twitter has been around since 2006 and Facebook has been around since 2004, social media is still the bright shiny object in the room (it’s still the current marketing fad). People still think they are being innovative if they use it, and unfortunately many people still approach it as something separate and scary instead of treating it as just one tool in the toolbox of anyone working in marketing or innovation. Yes, I linked social media to innovation in the last sentence and that’s because in the same way that social media is a tool that all marketers must learn how to use as part of an integrated marketing campaign, innovation managers must also learn how to use social media properly as part of their innovation efforts.

So let’s get to our latest case study of how not to do social media by taking a look at a poorly run Facebook contest.

Back in July I wrote an article about the effect of social media on contests called – Does Social Media Corrupt Contests?

This article was written from an outsider’s perspective looking in. Well, in December I decided to dive into the Facebook contesting world and enter a contest for an energy-efficient big screen television hosted by the NEEA in hopes of winning a 55″ Samsung LED TV. Here is a quote from their Energy Efficient Electronics micro-site about what they do:

The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) is a private non-profit organization funded by Northwest utilities, the Energy Trust of Oregon and the Bonneville Power Administration. NEEA works in collaboration with its stakeholders and strategic market partners to accelerate the sustained market adoption of energy-efficient products, technologies and practices. NEEA’s market transformation efforts address energy efficiency in homes, businesses and industry. Its mission is to mobilize the Northwest to become increasingly energy efficient for a sustainable future.

My local utility, Puget Sound Energy, is a member of this organization.

Now let’s get to why my experience with this contest makes this an example of how not to do social media.

Background: The contest organizers – MartketShift Strategies (on behalf of NEEA) – operated the contest on Facebook. It was only open to people living in a handful of states and involved submitting captions for up to five photos provided by the contest organizers for public voting and judging of the finalists. Five televisions were up for grabs as prizes. There were two example captioned pictures – one using humor, and one focused on energy-efficiency. I decided to focus on humor. The rules stated that the five entries for each picture receiving the most votes would then be considered the finalists and would be judged, and that nobody could win more than one prize.

Here is a quick chronology of my experience highlighting some of the strategic failure points:

I never saw the contest mentioned anywhere – including in my utility bill – a friend of mine who enters contests as a hobby suggested that I enter – so I did

In order to enter the contest I had to “like” the Energy Forward page (and allow the contest app access to my Facebook account) – which I was hesitant to do

Anyone who I asked to vote for my entries would have to also “like” the Energy Forward page and then also allow the contest app access to THEIR Facebook account. This is a big hurdle, and in fact most contest entries ended up with ZERO votes or one vote – including some of the ultimate ‘winners’ – but more on that later.

I’m assuming the contest was run to support of some sort of educational goal or action goal around some televisions being more energy efficient than others, but the benefits of one TV over another were not immediately clear or integrated into the contest

My wife and I each voted for my entries ONCE PER DAY and I picked up a few votes from other people. Meanwhile, apparently there was a hole in the application that allowed some individuals to cheat and vote for themselves lots of times per day by refreshing the page and voting again or whatever. The end result was that on the leaderboard you could clearly see that most of the leaders had many more ‘votes’ than ‘views’ (a legitimate vote registered both a view and a vote while a page refresh vote did not increment the view counter).

When the votes versus views issue was brought to the attention of the contest organizers, instead of disqualifying the offending entries they chose to hide the number of votes entries had received

Tweets to @nwalliance with concerns about the contest went unanswered

The gaming behavior was allowed to stand and so three of my entries did not qualify as finalists, but even with the gaming behavior two of my entries did qualify as finalists

The contest organizers then chose to not even follow their own rules, and when the winners were announced there were two ‘winners’ who were not even finalists – in fact one of the ‘winners’ was not even in the Top 14 vote getters – meaning that their entry probably did not even receive any votes (most entries had zero votes). This of course caused a huge uproar.

Then probably most shockingly, the contest organizers in response to the public outcry responded “NEEA has full discretion…to change the rules at any time if needed for the best interests of the Contest and the participants.”

In the end the contest organizers decided to award two more televisions, but ended up awarding them to people who gamed the contest (more votes than views), so the end result was that of the seven televisions awarded, five went to people who gamed the system (more votes than views) and two to non-finalists.

So what can we learn?

The most important thing to learn from this example of how not to do social media is that when utilizing social media as a tool to help you achieve your innovation or marketing campaign goals, you must keep those goals front and center in everything you do and ask if each campaign component supports your goals and your strategy. This is also a great example of how lots of people will tell you they are social media experts, and not really know the first thing about how to utilize the tools properly to support innovation or marketing campaign goals.

You can also see from this example that contests can be a hornets nest and that more often than not people try to game the system. This is why some people who provide idea management software solutions have chosen not to have badges and other similar elements (or to allow for those components to be turned off). This is also why if you choose to have any kind of voting component, particularly where any kind of prize is involved, that you set very clear guidelines for voting and do so in a way that maximizes the chance that the voting ends up being about the quality of the submission and not about the size of the entrants’ network.

‘Viral’ doesn’t come for free. Social media experts will try and convince you to use the tool to go ‘viral’ and get the crowd involved, but when you choose get the crowd involved and let them vote, you need to be ready and willing to let their votes count, otherwise you’ll destroy trust (and even brand equity). If you choose to engage the crowd in a public way you need to use their input, otherwise you’ll suffer very public consequences. If you’re looking for a higher level of quality in your submissions from a large number of people, consider using a more expert crowd instead (Innocentive, Hypios, Idea Connection, Nine Sigma, 99 Designs, TopCoder, etc.).

And last, but probably most important in my mind is that you need to walk the experience and look for potholes. The Marketshift Strategies folks definitely fell down on the job here. There were far too many barriers to participation in this contest, very little strategic integration, they should have anticipated the gaming of the system and written the rules better, and they should have actually followed their rules and the spirit of the contest a little better so that the people who didn’t game the contest and instead legitimately gathered votes were rewarded. The good thing is that without examples to dissect of how not to do social media, we wouldn’t all be able to learn how to use this powerful but dangerous tool in our innovator’s and marketer’s toolbox.

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A YouTube and Google+ Innovation

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Thanks to some of the people in my Google+ feed, I came across a little hidden innovation that YouTube and Google+ have brought to the social media party – social video watching.

In real life, when people want to watch a show together they either invite them over for a TV night or maybe they hang on the line on their telephone through the whole show chattering away about it.

But now Google+ and YouTube have teamed up to try and recreate the value of watching television, movies, or other video with friends and family.

They’ve made it so that friends can hangout and watch the same YouTube videos at the same time while connected to each other by Google+, and at the same time have created a potential killer app that will drive adoption of Google+ that builds upon the size and strength of the YouTube fan base.

If you don’t know how to do social video watching with YouTube and Google+, it is pretty easy. You go to YouTube find a video you like, then click the share button to expose all of the sharing options. There you will see a new option that says:

“Watch with your friends. Start a Google+ Hangout”

Where will things go from here? Hard to say, but I do know that this feature will raise the bar for Facebook, MySpace, Windows Live, Twitter, and the other social networks out there. And, this feature should start a lot of chatter on the web, and eventually probably also make it onto the mass media as well, but only time will tell what kind of takeup this gets. It should be a fun, and social ride. Buckle up! Google+ is about to take off.

Bonus Insight

Mark Ritson, one of my Marketing professors during my MBA course at London Business School, did a study that showed that people tend to leave the room during the commercial breaks when watching television alone, but were more likely stay in the room and watch and discuss the advertisements when watching television with other people. Will this behavior carry over to social online video watching? Does this insight from the off-line world present opportunities for advertisers in the on-line world? What do you think?

Special Bonus

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

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Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on Twitter

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#innochat this Thursday with author Braden Kelley

On Thursday, November 18, 2010 at Noon EST I will be participating in a twitter chat at #innochat (6PM in Europe, 9AM on the west coast). One great way to follow along is to use this URL:

http://tweetchat.com/room/innochat

I will be discussing some of the topics in my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, especially the role and importance of innovation vision, strategy, and goals. The book is being very warmly received so far and the content of the book appears to be resonating with people, both in terms of the early reviews and interviews, but also through sold out events like the recent one in Toronto. The book is very accessible and is focused on helping organizations identify and remove barriers to innovation. To find out more about what we’ll be covering in the hour, please see:

http://innochat.com/innochats/date/2010-11-18/nov-18-innochat-stoking-your-innovation-bonfire-guest-braden-kelley

I’d like to invite you all to attend this session free of charge – and hope that you’ll enjoy the typically very informative, energetic and lively discussion and debate for which #innochat is known for.

If you’ve never attended one of these type of debates on twitter – the process is simple: At the prescribed time (#innochat meets every Thursday at Noon EST (-5:00 GMT) ) – login to your twitter application of choice (Tweetchat is popular), and do a search for posts with “#innochat” in them. By making sure that all posts have “#innochat” in their contributions, participants are able to have a mass live discussion on great topics like innovation.

I look forward to chatting with you about the book on Thursday!

Win a Signed Copy of ‘Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire’

To add a little fun to the mix, at the end of this chat I will give away a signed copy of my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire to the most interesting tweet during the #innochat. Everyone else interested can download a sample chapter from the book. I hope you enjoy it and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the hard work that goes into this blog.

Download the sample chapter

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Introducing Snack-Sized Innovation Consulting

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As many of you know, Human-Centered Change & Innovation is a sideline for me, and a way of giving back by bringing together the best human-centered innovation, change, transformation, design thinking and experience insights I can get access to and then make them accessible for the greater good.

To pay the bills and keep Human-Centered Change & Innovation going, I do consulting, speaking and writing.

In recognition of the changing economic realities and the increasingly global market for our services, we are pleased to offer snack-sized innovation and marketing consulting services by Skype video conference as well as traditional on-site consulting. Now you can rent Braden’s brain for even the smallest need or budget. Here are our three main packages:

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Skype video call
Up to 90 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Skype video call
Up to 180 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Travel expenses
Custom on-site consulting solution
Purchased by the day or week
Scheduled in advance

Business Strategy Innovation delivers workshops and consulting services that focus on three areas:

Getting Started with Innovation
Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation
Building Stronger Customer and Employee Relationships

Founded by Braden Kelley, Business Strategy Innovation has been advising companies since 1996 in industries ranging from medical equipment, software, and internet advertising to real estate, retail, defense, and more.

Based in Seattle, Washington we are just a short flight away from anywhere in the United States and available to work with companies in Europe, Asia, and beyond. But, now with these new snack-size consulting options, you don’t have to have a budget big enough to bring us to you, and can instead get some really good feedback or advice on the issues you are wrestling with at a much lower cost.

I look forward to helping out however I can.

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Joy is BMW – Marketing Innovation or Marketing Failure?

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I came across the following video of a BMW advertising installation thanks to a tweet from Blogging Innovation contributor @RowanGibson and I think it serves as a perfect case study of how one firm – in this case BMW – can succeed and fail in utilizing some of the modern incremental innovations in the traditional marketing methods (including social media) to bond itself to an emotion – in this case ‘joy’.

First, watch the video, then we’ll examine where BMW has done well and where they have failed to harness the power of social media in creating the perception that ‘Joy is BMW’.

Successes:

1. BMW attempts to stake a claim to an emotion (joy) that no other car company is pursuing
2. The video has already had 115,000 views in one week
3. Lots of people are re-tweeting the video and including ‘BMW’ and ‘joy’ in their tweets on Twitter

Failures:

1. If you do a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! for “joy” – BMW is not in the top ten search results
2. Compounding this failure is that BMW is not doing any search engine marketing on the term “joy”
3. The startup video was herky-jerky after waiting a long time for it to load on the Joy is BMW page
4. The ‘Joy is BMW’ page is boring, not search engine friendly, and not social – there is no way for people to participate – no real value to the page
5. The 3D building projection event from Singapore is not featured on the ‘Joy is BMW’ page
6. There is no way for people to have conversations about the video (other than on YouTube)
7. BMW is not active on Twitter and makes no mention of Singapore event or ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign
8. No videos or photos related to ‘Joy is BMW’ on Facebook or mention of it by any of their 679,000+ fans
9. http://www.joyisbmw.com not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign
10. http://www.miseryisbmw.com also not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign

Unfortunately the failures list could be much longer, but I will stop here in the interest of brevity. The really sad thing about the ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign is that people want to be more social with BMW, they crave it, but they are not really being provided the opportunity.

To be honest, after watching the video of the experiential event I was expecting BMW to have created this forward-thinking integrated conversational marketing campaign to go with it, so imagine my surprise when the emperor’s new clothes fell off when I started looking around the social media universe.

BMW, there is still time to save the campaign. If you need some help (which it looks like you do), let me know and I’ll be happy to jump in, line up some great creative teams around the world, and knock out a great conversational marketing strategy to salvage the campaign.

What do you think? Has BMW blown a golden opportunity to go social with ‘Joy is BMW’?

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