Shifting control in big business
I’ve once again been extremely lucky to attend the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) festival in Austin, Texas. The festival has been running for several years now as a hub of convergence between the film, music and interactive industries. Everyone from top Hollywood producers like Brian Grazer (known for his work with Ron Howard through Imagine Entertainment) to thought-leaders like best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell meet up to discuss everything from capturing people’s attention to harnessing digital platforms to deliver content. In fact, I passed Gladwell and Grazer having dinner in a local Austin restaurant (I was too shy to request a selfie though) so there is definitely a strong spirit of discussion and collaboration here. Many startups, independent films and bands have found their beginnings here at SXSW (or Southby as people tend to affectionately refer to the festival), and from my visit here last year I’ve seen companies like Splash (a platform to help organisers mount and manage events as well as build custom websites) and bands like The Griswolds (who I totally love) go on to great recognition and new fans.
This year’s festival was definitely a continuation for me on themes which had emerged last year, which I could broadly put into the categories of the emerging role of social media, content marketing, overall engagement with customers and employees (through advocacy programmes) and how these topics converge in the new company of tomorrow (which is already here today in many SME’s and major corporations).
A big theme that has resonated for me is the role of the social media professional, particularly those embedded in organisations (though there are a growing number of freelance social media “gurus” offering their services as agencies or consultants). Like developers changed the landscape of companies years ago by adding automation and discovering both strengths and weaknesses in their businesses through the need to change the way the businesses operated, social media people are finding themselves in a similar position as major change agents within their organisations. After all, there has never been a role or department with more direct feedback from customers on not only the problems they face (or great experiences they have), but also how customers feel about brands and their values. This is information that companies have never had before (or spent millions to acquire through market research) and with the tools available today there is one place to get measurable and accurate metrics of exactly where a company stands with its customers, competitors and even their employees. Brian Fanzo, a well-known brand strategist, said “data is the new oil” and like we refined oil, mining and analysing data has created central role for social media.
But it’s more than that. While traditionally businesses create formal channels for each stage of the customer purchase journey, things are changing with new business. Ten years ago a marketing or brand department would generate leads through brand awareness and hand these over to sales. Sales would close the sale and hand the client over to client service or support. Depending on the service or product, this would either be the end of the journey, or the client would then be looked after by a retention or loyalty department to try to up-sell or cross-sell to that client (and the cycle started all over again). But today you have social media engagement that is authentic and personal and you generally find clients engaging more readily through the platform of their choice throughout the cycle, from purchase to retention and even through to cancellation where they have had a poor experience. Social media agents are finding themselves looking after the complete experience and need to position themselves at the centre of their companies in order to be effective (which does not always please those more comfortable in traditional structures). Kaila Garrison, a product marketer from Oracle, believes that the next logical step
will be intelligent, one on one marketing directly to individual consumers.
A great example came out in a panel discussion with Sanjay Dholakia the marketing head of Marketo, a sales and engagement platform. Ten years ago, if you bought a car, you had to go to a dealership and speak to a salesman, who was the custodian of all the information and pretty much held all the keys. Generally, this was a process of several hours while the salesman ran through stats, features, price negotiation and the buyer weighed up their choice. For the buyer, there was a period of stress immediately before and after the purchase - after all you just spent a lot of money. Did you get the best price? Did you get the best product? Today, the process is completely different. Buyers research online. Buyers talk to each other on social media and compare products. By the time the buyer arrives at a dealership he (or she) knows exactly what they want, how long they can expect to wait for it and exactly how much they are willing to pay. Salesmen probably have a much easier job, but they also have to change from shaping the buyer’s position to meeting the buyer’s demands. Also, the important thing to remember is that if companies are only reaching out to potential customers at that stage, the purchase has already effectively happened. So it’s become more important than ever for brands to reach out long before a decision is made or even contemplated and start building relationships with new or potential customers, so that when they start thinking in the direction of a new purchase or new company, they already have a relationship and conversation in place (and most importantly, with a source they can trust).
As social media people sit in the centre of all of this, there is a pressing need to find ways to keep existing customers engaged and to attract new customers (whether they are looking at a purchase or not) and the latest thinking is to attract people with content. Entertaining, informative and useful content is how many brands are starting to re-invent themselves. Companies are also pushing more budget into fuelling engagement, direct conversations with customers over social platforms, over traditional advertisements that create brand awareness. This is a major shift in the thinking of how many companies think about marketing, but there is certainly a shift happening with the top CEO’s.
However, as brands scramble to shout the loudest in an increasingly crowded digital space, many are learning that it’s not enough to be cute or clever (although it really helps). It’s almost impossible to measure engagement through impressions or even whether a piece of content moved the reader. However, it is possible to share a company’s culture and values and make sure that customers who are aligned with a company’s way of thinking about the world understand why they are in business. Companies are having to go back to their people, and ask themselves this question and this makes them review why they are in business in the first place, what their values are and what changes need to be made to ensure that everything they do (from how they treat their employees, how they communicate with their customers and how they behave in the greater society) measures up to their values. It’s not enough to print fancy slogans and clichés on a wall. If a company is not living their values, this is shared and talked about over social media and a brand can lose their customers as quickly as it takes to share a video or click send on a blog post. Starbuck’s recent ill-fated “Race Together” campaign (to create a conversation around race) is a great example of a brand being called out on social media for a campaign not consistent with their identity or audience.
Customers have never been more in control than ever before, which means that the people in most direct contact with customers (to hear their feelings, demands and future wants) are best positioned to drive the companies into the future and leverage the new technology and economy of the internet. Linda Boff, Director of Brand Marketing for General Electric summed it up best when she said “We have to stop behaving like the marketers of yesterday and start behaving like the programmers of tomorrow”.