Category Archives: Social Media

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
$499 Innovation and Transformation Consulting

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

$499 Innovation and Transformation Consulting

$999 Innovation and Transformation Consulting

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

$499 Innovation and Transformation Consulting

On-Site Innovation and Transformation Consulting

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

On-Site Innovation and Transformation Consulting

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

  1. Getting Started with Innovation
  2. Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation
  3. 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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Another Value-Driven Social Media Example

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Another Value-Driven Social Media Example

I wanted to share another value-driven social media example:

Wisk’s facebook application called WiskIt.

“We thought perhaps we could take our stain-fighting heritage, and take it online to Facebook,” according to Elisa Gurevich, Brand Manager for Wisk.

It’s a great comment from the brand manager, and it is the way that every marketer should be thinking.

What value could we deliver to customers online that is consistent with our brand and our marketing strategy?

After all, despite what most people think, you don’t really need a social media strategy that stands apart from your marketing strategy.

Though your approach to social media might be different than other communication channels, social media isn’t this separate thing with mystical powers.

Social media should be an integrated part of your overall marketing strategy and something that every marketer has already educated themselves on how to use properly. Though it is never too late to learn!

What other examples of well-executed social media campaigns would people like to share?

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Twitter in the Classroom

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During Clayton Christensen’s talk at the World Innovation Forum about innovation in education and healthcare, Dr. Christensen made a point about how technology will move more of education out of the classroom and onto the Internet.

He was mostly speaking about augmenting home schooling, but also about school leavers earning their equivalency online, and online advanced placement courses for kids at schools who might not have the resources to provide these courses.

This sparked some humorous debate amongst those in the Bloggers Hub at the World Innovation forum about the possibility of teaching kids 140 characters at a time via Twitter.

Well, teachers are not exactly doing that, but they have been using Twitter in the classroom since at least January 2008.

At the University of Texas at Dallas, History Professor, Monica Rankin has been using hashtags for classroom discussion in the hopes that it would lead to increased student involvement. Here is a video made by film students at the university about the experiment:

Meanwhile, the University of Minnesota has been partnering with Roosevelt High School to integrate Twitter and other social media tools into the curriculum to successfully increase student engagement. Here is a video that the University of Minnesota put together about their experiment:

Out here in Seattle, National Public Radio (NPR) recently did a segment on how a local private school is using Twitter to facilitate improved communications between students and parents about what is going on in the classroom. As a parent, this is probably my favorite example of using Twitter in the classroom. You can hear the four minute audio story here (sorry, link broken) and see examples of The Meridian School‘s classroom tweets above.

For teachers considering the use of Twitter in the classroom, you should also check out this blog article on thirteen ways to use Twitter in academia (sorry, link broken).

So, does Twitter have a place in the classroom?

I think so. What do you think?

Braden (@innovate on Twitter)

Build a Common Language of Innovation

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