Conversation Agent

Getting Things Done

With the new year now in full swing and the recent holidays already an almost distant memory, everyone is pushing to get things done.

The dozen calls with sales pitches I used to receive by mid-morning show the redoubled efforts - they are as many more.

There is an insistence, an urgency in the voices, the messages and the emails. Not quite desperation, but very close to it.

The type is bolder, the voice is more forceful. Everyone is shouting - pick me, buy my stuff, sign up here! The sense of urgency is good, the energy is misplaced.

Because what is louder than a shout? A whisper. Social media is a way to get next to your customer and speak only with them. Whispering is intimate. It's done up close. And it's closely related to listening.

Getting things done is good - but are they the right things?

With so much noise and so little signal these days, it's getting easier to tell what is not going to work - for those who are paying attention, who are dialed in it is quite obvious. Not so for the others. They are busy turning the volume up even louder and diminishing their returns with it.

There needs to be balance between getting things done and leading.

Whenever things swing one way, there can be a big backlash - too many leaders and nothing gets done. Too many people getting things done and nobody is leading. I included the magic quadrant up top. Feel free to use it as a reminder that it is within our control to care for the micro-interactions.

Micro-interactions become the context in which customers experience us. By customers I mean everyone you touch in a day. If we care to excel at executing the balance in small ways, we can scale to envelop entire businesses, and the marketing results that go with them.

We're human, we like to copy what others are doing - let's start by giving people the right things to copy.

Da Vinci was a Change Agent, Are You?

Leonardo da Vinci was a change agent. You probably know it already, it's worth repeating. At the time of birth, you are endowed with the same potential he had. Today, we need more than genius to make things happen though.

We need collaboration and co-creation at the highest levels. In the conceptual age, there is a lot of brain power at all levels in organizations, cities, and countries. Are we open to collaborating across such expanses? There were two readings that led me to make the connection between change and Da Vinci - they seem unrelated, but are they?

Let's take a look.

The editorial page of the January/February 2009 issue of Foreign Policy magazine is titled "our change, his (Obama) challenge". That gave me pause. I think a more apt title would have been - our challenge is change. If indeed the country voted for change, it would behoove everyone to align behind it. And that will be a challenge. We know the reality is much more complex. Individual interests, balance of power, and global relations will need careful navigating.

Everyone is looking for the magic wand in business - we probably got used to the nice returns. It's important to set a distinction between what we hope for and what we can actually execute. It's important especially to note that distinction when we think and talk about marketing and social media. It's no magic wand. You put an increasingly disciplined and scientific approach like marketing into an environment that facilitates the free form nature of humans and what do you have?

Science and art - rationality and emotion.

One would think economics rational, yet markets are so very emotional. With recent events, we also rediscovered that we're all connected. Yet those connections are welcomed only when we can make that choice on our own - who we interact with, where we buy, what we favor, follow, add, support.

Change is harder to do than it is to talk about

One year ago, Dell announced it was going to form a super agency choosing WPP as the holding company responsible to help create such venture. We talked about it here as a potential answer to the woes of client-agency relations. Casey Jones, Dell's VP of marketing, told PRWeek in 2007,

"I've been striving for integration for twenty years, and I've decided to give it up. Because integration means you're trying to glue things together that are not organically part of the same thing. We're looking for an agency relationship where PR, media, Web site analytics, creative, planning are all fixed on one objective - shareholder value for Dell."

Is dis-integration an option? Perfect-world scenarios meet real world challenges.

There is only way way I know of to face that - working through it. I'm not picking on Dell/WPP. They had a very ambitious and aggressive goal and no doubt many feathers got ruffled in the process. The change was too visible, too public to succeed. On the other hand, Dell's social media strategy is right on the money. It has grown from individual efforts and gestures. One conversation at a time.

Chapter two is how does social media revolutionize the business infrastructure?

I discussed how Dell was using social media to regain its mojo in September of 2007. From that post:

It’s 2004 you are Dell computers and you’re king of the world. But to be frank, you were also a bit boring. A year ago, Dells had the reputation as the cheap, utilitarian PC that you buy when price is everything. Dell was the ultimate commodity brand – serviceable, cost-effective, and a little dull. Along comes HP. In the course of a couple of years, HP using superior retail channels muscled past Dell to capture the number one position in the consumer PC marketplace.

So how does Dell react?

With a change in leadership – Michael Dell taking the reins of the company again and he is talking about taking a long term view of the business he helped launch. One response was to begin selling Dell through traditional retail channels. Another was to start listening to what customers are really saying about their products.

That’s when Dell turned to social media.

My conversation with Dell began after the publication of the Top Ten Reasons why your customer service fails in early July. Richard Binhammer in the corporate communications group at Dell sent me an email to volunteer his experience in using social media. [read the rest here]

The rest is the sum total of decisions that got Dell to being king of the social media execution. And I, too could be Richard @ Dell. A business needs to want to make that change for it to work. And for business I mean the people in it - at every level, collaborating and co-creating that change. That is a tougher proposition. And don't think that it's easier with services than it is with physical products. Can a company design a business through interactions?

Art and Science

Marketers are still looking for the definitive way to tie their work into business functions like market share and direct sales. The relationships between metrics, measurement and success are still quite undefined. Because now we must also start to ask - what are the right things to be measured? We are indeed all suffering from a glut of unrelated marketing messages - then again, unrelated may not be a bad thing with social media where experience is a-la-carte.

Our challenge is change. Whenever we consider writing anything, the hard part is coming up with the ideas, doing the writing is easy. Making things happen is quite the opposite - coming up with the ideas of what we don't like or want to change is fairly easy. It's the execution part that gives us pause. Yet the writing is on the wall.

In an interconnected world, it may turn out that getting change done is more art than science. It takes intuition and experience, the ability to broker - actually inspire - and attract relationships, along with superb unrelenting work. The art of conversation may just be the imperfect rescue the perfect world of expertise and science needs at the moment. 

Yes, economists will need to revise the models and methods unquestioned during the boom years. It will force them to produce new tools suited to a new era and reinvigorate their thinking by borrowing more intensively from other disciplines such as psychology and political science, writes Moises Naim, editor in chief of Foreign Policy in the closing article. 

Our marketing strategies and tactics are also bankrupt. We need not just fresh ideas to bail out the profession. We need marketers and communicators to lead the creation of what's next, not simply come up with solutions to patch what is now. We need to borrow from other disciplines and learn to be more like Da Vinci - inventors, scientists, change agents, opinion leaders. 

[Leonardo da Vinci 1515 AD depicted parabolic mirrors in his now famous cryptic diagrams]

Passion

Teams and communities are held together by the glue called passion.

This is the topic of a recent ChangeThis manifesto by Dr. Mani Sivasubramanian - a heart surgeon, Internet infopreneur, and social entrepreneur whose passion for helping children with congenital heart defects receive life-saving treatment resulted in building an online business that grows and thrives on its purpose.

Passion should be one of the 4 new P's of marketing, along with purpose. What do you think?

Product, Purpose, Passion, Performance

I've written about passion two years ago using Ferrari, the car made in my home town, as the metaphor of made in Italy: ignites passion and emotion. Which translates into high performance, by design.

The most amazing executions give us that kind of experience - or rather we infuse our own experience into them. Let's take another look at that list:

1. Vote for yourself –- know what you want and what you need and then go get it. Be confident in your skill even when you are tempted not to like what you see. We’re all kind of funny seen from the inside out.
2. Unleash your passion –- don’t let things you don’t know or don’t understand get in the way: learn them, join them. "But each time I seemed to be climbing into a roller coaster and finding myself coming through the downhill run with that sort of dazed feeling that we all know." [Enzo Ferrari]
3. Listen with one ear and forget with the other –- you are in the driver seat, you decide what makes sense keeping.
4. Stay soft on the people, including yourself –- on your way anywhere, you will meet mates and you’ll meet the other kind. To some people you’ll be but a blip on their radar, to some you’ll be a source of great inspiration. Know the difference, you are accountable for it. Remain human, don’t keep score, it bogs you down.
5. Develop stamina –- think of yourself as a marathon runner. Don’t look at the time, build on the distance. "Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines." [Enzo Ferrari]
6. Take risks –- invest in your vision, explore the opportunities. When you go for safety, you shop at that price. "As bend followed bend, I discovered his secret. Nuvolari entered the bend somewhat earlier than my driver's instinct would have told me to." [Enzo Ferrari]
7. Design your context –- chisel away all the marble and what you have is the masterpiece. Edit down as appropriate, sculpt your experience - you decide.
8. Have a “to be” list –- be interested, adaptable, and open to new ideas, including yours. Many call this attitude, I call it spirit (Lat. spiritus = breath).
9. Stage and experience –- and you will learn something new every time. This is not rehearsal, it’s the real deal. Go at it with gusto and panache. The verb perform is built into performance.
10. Be very clear that you will succeed –- and you will.

Performance is a highly emotional business. Emotion (Lat. ex = out + motio = movement) leads to action. Passion leads to performance.

Dr. Sivasubramanian says passion is energy, it shatters barriers, it hates apathy, it shakes you up, it's positive and it comes in flavors. Passion is more - it's contagious it fuels longevity and it's satisfying. From the manifesto:

Behind every successful operation, be it business or non-profit, personal or social, small or big,
there is a person or group fired by passion. A burning ambition to see change happen or results
achieved—and unwilling to let anything stand in their way. 

Passion keeps you going. No matter how long it takes. No matter how hard the path is. 
No matter how hopeless the outcome seems.

Here's another definition of passion I found in my early authoring days. What's yours?

Community and Service

When I write about customer conversations I hold the memory not just of my experiences, but those of the customer service professionals I've had the privilege of working with and meeting during my career. It's only fair to make the conversation balanced from the start. This is very personal.

In August 2000, a group of 101 passionate, vocal, curious, interested people gathered in Denver, Colorado for what is to this day the most remarkable community @ work experience I've ever had. Consider that my education was based on group-work from a very early age. It was the defining moment on community.

For me to explain on this blog how one creates a community - which I will do in the coming weeks - I need to start from this moment in time. What I'm about to share is probably the simplest and most influential manifesto on community I've read to date. It was penned by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, founding editors of Fast Company magazine.

Community.

Most magazines think of themselves as publications. We think of Fast Company as a movement. Most magazines think of their readers as customers. We think of Fast Company readers as members of a community. Most magazines aspire to nothing more than maximum circulation. Our main aspiration at Fast Company is simple: Serving as trusted agent, we want to help as many people as possible play and win in the new economy.

To do that we must be as inclusive as possible, as welcoming as possible, and as supportive as possible And ultimately, we must introduce as many like-minded people as possible to each other so that, as a community, we can help each other live smarter, better, and more-satisfying work lives. We must work with, talk with, and listen to the Company of Friends - one of the most amazing grassroots organizations in the history of publishing. CoF takes the promise of the new economy and the heart of Fast Company - and makes it real. Its slogan could easily be: "We're all friends here. We just haven't been introduced yet." By joining together in communities and companies around the world, the CoF spreads the ideas and practices that are the taproot of the new economy.

How will the new economy evolve?

How will CoF grow and change over time?

How can Fast Company continue to spark valuable, instructive, and important conversations among the members of this rapidly growing community?

Together we'll find out! And the movement will continue to spread.

The Company of Friends (CoF) was supposed to have broken the mold of business as usual in magazine publishing. In 2002, the community counted 165 local groups in 35 countries for a total of 42,000 members (some say 44,000, I prefer to be conservative on the numbers). Thanks to the ability to meet each other online and off line, CoF members over the years have:

• gotten jobs (in Philadelphia we still have a thriving Career Transitions group that meets regularly)
• found employees
• started companies together
• built a social network in record time when moving to a new city
• obtained publishing contracts
• even got married with people met through the network

But it wasn't just beneficial to members. The magazine benefited from the connections - often members brought their friends and colleagues at events who did not know about or read Fast Company, thus helping gain new subscribers and fans. Our events with Wharton Business School, LeBow College of Business, and Fox School of Business were attended by CEOs and executive vice presidents - they were at that level.

We had a good mix of in person events and online discussions. It does sound a lot like the conversations we're having on social media today, doesn't it? Pity that Fast Company ultimately decided it wanted to be a magazine, just when the rest of the world was starting to vote in favor of community.

Reclaiming that place and consideration after inattention and neglect is a hard task indeed. Especially since many of the curators and known community members have moved on to other communities - and, ironically, other publications.

This is very personal because I was there - in Denver, and in the capacity of community curator - and so were most of the Fast Company editorial teams and many of the people I consider mentors. Bill Strickland (also see this post), Mike Abrashoff, Craig Newmark, Amy Jo Kim, and Dan Hanson. It worked because the idea was to join together and make something happen.

Why wouldn't your service providers do that? Why wouldn't they learn to work together? This is the question we're exploring today at Fast Company expert blog. The companies that will figure out how to do that will be getting ahead even in tight economic times.

If there is one promise that can be fulfilled is that of people taking the time to speak with other people so they can solve customer problems and elevate the customer experience. Does your FriendFeed work with your Twitter, with your blog RSS, with your bookmarking services? The tools are there. Can the people get on board? What do you think?

To the Press Tribe: Your Content is a Product

Companies and businesses would do well by reading and understanding this post titled migration point for the press tribe by Jay Rosen [hat tip to Chuck Peters]. In it, Rosen describes how thanks to the rising of flourishing of people as content producers, expert sharers, and self-guided consumers, the professional news tribe finds itself in the midst of a great survival drama. He puts his finger on exactly what did not happen with the migration to the Internet.

The Web is not a way to re-purpose content from other platforms - it's a way to engage, a completely different way of understanding what people think about, what they want to say and do. One that moves to exponential results when the context is built with the community that wants to participate in mind.

It did not happen for mainstream media in exactly the same way as it's not happening for companies. Products and services are shared territory - experts and veterans can and must exercise their editorial voice. On the other hand, the grassroots peer groups who are good at participation, community formation, and locating intelligence anywhere in the network can contribute those strengths to the system.

The shared part is also where the customers' use makes the product either a success or an utter failure.

It's not a matter of having one system without the other - at this stage, it's necessary to have both. Strong and inspiring leaders and thriving communities - of employees, of customers. The balance in the conversation between them shall be reflected on the balance sheet. 

News was one-way traffic just like communications and information flows in organizations were only top-down. Business managers created it, compartmentalized it, had it aggregated, published and broadcast. Yes, water cooler conversations among employees have been going on for a while. Does this remind you of the carefully scripted brochures and marketing materials for customers?

Except for now we have better tools and knowledge to be distributors *and* creators. Imagine the power of having actual distribution and communication tools that allow those same people who used to be just on the receiving end to produce their own information and disseminate it through their informal networks. Peer networks tend to be stronger because dissent and questioning are (better) welcomed within a horizontal or open structure.  

In talking about why media gets community wrong, Adam Tinworth wrote - "Most media people don't realize that blogging is a community strategy. They think of it as a publishing process... They certainly don't think of it as a conversation."

If you have seen me draw those pyramids on white boards or notepads, you will recognize one of my biggest pet peeves about companies and their processes - they forget the people part. Companies are process-focused and not people-focused; traditional media is content-focused and not people-focused. Your content is a product. The true integration is between people - journalists and readers who are also publishers; in business overall it's all employees with customers.

Pat Sullivan, the creator of ACT! and SalesLogix said "last time I checked, there were no buyers at our corporate offices... so maybe we should figure out how to spend more time in the field with them, learning about what they need than we do here with us guessing!"

Community is an approach to better product and services. Tinworth concludes: "holding community apart from professional content only harms the professional content creators. It bars them from seeing and exploring the reaction from their customers to their work. It stops them developing relationships - friendships even - with those they ultimately work for."

A lesson for business if I ever so one so clear. Now can we stop talking about the tools and start thinking of community as a strategy?

Bonus link: the state of the news media 2008 - an annual report on American journalism.

[top online news sites ComScore, unique visitors]

Real Collaboration

Real collaboration to me is where there's no need to know who's up front. Everyone is working side by side. Given the fact that we are creatures of imitation, it helps when the tone is set from the highest levels - what do you want to change in the world? Change happens whether we like it or not. It happened in the last several years. We did not like it, today.

What are we going to do about it?

With collaboration we can make that change more expansive and at the same time better focused; more responsive and less cumbersome. Collaboration also leads to community. To build a community we need to be willing to educate and connect individuals, and have the desire to take action at the appropriate times.

Marketing needs a serious reboot. In its current form it's a broken, bankrupt nuisance afflicted with the myopia of the perennial short term gratification and now starving because of it. There is no sustainability in that - it's a bubble waiting to burst, and your brand with it.

Real collaboration needs contribution, commitment and championing. To be sustainable, it needs to be embedded in the core principles that move us to action. I was reading a well-written post by Joel Makower where he is pondering the sustainable consumption conundrum and wanted to highlight a couple of points he makes about the WBCSD's newest report with my annotations:

• Innovation — "Business processes for the development of new and improved products, services, and business models are shifting to incorporate provisions for delivering maximum societal value at minimum environmental cost," says the report. We are indeed beginning to see a less packaged, more efficient world.

What does innovation look like in marketing with collaboration? If we take contribution, commitment and championing as the model - I'm thinking co-creation, co-distribution, and co-marketing. What other ideas do you have?

• Choice Influencing — this is where it gets interesting. Creating sustainable marketing practices and business models by working in partnership with consumers and other key stakeholders. The goal is to demonstrate that these practices can deliver deliver superior results at the best prices, and to use marketing communications to make that connection with choice and behavior.

Is this too idealistic? We talk about influentials, yet the needle seems to be creeping to making real change from all that influence. Could it be because we do not yet understand how to do collaboration through community and networks of influence?

• Choice Editing — Eliminating unsustainable practices, tactics, processes, and business models in partnership with other actors, such as media channels. The challenge I see immediately with this point is that of scale. Can there be mass collaboration? Only when each individual self-interest is served through making that very same choice.

When I wrote about Twitter as a social network, I highlighted how it encourages and engages certain features of our nature that are essential to our social lives - the adaptive, the imitating and the cooperative. Would these characteristics conspire to help with collaborative editing?

Marketing is about understanding what customers want and helping deliver it. But delivering the relevant response might involve having to make fundamental changes in the way the business works. Often marketing does not have real influence inside a business - especially if that happens to be a B2B. So much so, that you'd have to break the glass in case of marketing.

Can real collaboration help with delivering better insights, better products, services and experiences? Real collaboration requires more of us. Are we willing to do things differently to test that? If you have done it, feel free to borrow that seal  but only if the credit goes to the whole team and especially if that team goes across departments to start.

Happy New Year 2009

Make everything simpler.

You may feel overwhelmed by all the promises of this brand new year. How to keep them all? The answer is right in front of you: simplify. Complexity slows you down.

Do more of less. Focus on what you know is important. Resist the temptation to fill your schedule to the brim. Instead, sip the sweet moments of chance and rest.

Carry yourself gracefully and professionally.

And you will find that your voice carries farther.

There is strength in restraint and there is a time for every purpose - in business and in life. Choose wisely. I prefer to be kind to being right.

Find meaning by giving meaning.

Many are probably feeling indigestion from all the social networking and marketing. Think more attraction and purpose, less vying for positions or seeking definitions.

Social media may not be an organization per se, however is it akin to an organism where both the projects and the people need to be fulfilled. We get the kind of network we deserve, after all.

Launch and learn.

Get your ideas done. Choose fewer of them and really go at it. Set standards and find a pace for yourself - then hold yourself to them. 

Don't fear mistakes, welcome them. They will help you become more resilient and flexible - in some cases even kinder. Nothing like the fresh breeze of reality to energize our purpose. Adapt your plan to circumstances and keep going.

Action speaks louder than words. Make it positive. Teach. Lead. Learn. Love.

Best Conversations of 2008

Even the most difficult endeavors begin by taking the first step. In business, as in life, "we may convince others by our own arguments, but we can only persuade them by their own." [Joseph Joubert] Marketing is business, communications is a technology that provides the lifeblood of thriving relationships, conversation is the opportunity to get out of our own way and see things from a different perspective.

If you have been watching the social media space from where you sit and are still unconvinced that it is here to stay - take the plunge.

2009 is the year of execution

Maybe you'll discover your "why" in one of these conversations (by month).

After spending countless hours in front of this screen, I am now more than ever convinced that social media is the modern version of the telephone. It still comes down to saying, doing, or producing something valuable for your customer. And customers are ready for those companies who want to talk with them about them. The marketing conversation was always that way; so forget influentials, in viral marketing context matters.

For companies used to setting the tone by controlling the message, these may seem uncertain times. When a press statement misses Target, the online community piles on. The era of talking past each other is over - and that is valid for you, too. How do you go about revealing yourself to others - how much is appropriate, is that really you online? Your work speaks louder than words, but can you be authentic?

There is no need to build new castles or ivory towers, leading brands lead - and, if you're willing to start over with one line of your business and build a new conversation with customers, 14 year olds may think you're cool. Think of online as a blank slate, do your homework and help your company execute marketing as context building - here are 5 ideas.

With the emergence and rise of mass social media, how a blog is born may inspire you to start one of your own.The top ten reasons why your customer service fails may provide you with an incentive to explore new ways to provide support and connect with your customers. What happens when you have joined the space though? Here are ten ideas for conversation.

You should know that there is power in collaboration as well as plenty of inspiration you can orchestrate for your customers and employees. But has Web 2.0 made you happier? It's a valid question, especially as we spend more and more time online. Part of that happiness lies in the reciprocation of kindness that others extend to us. Learn how to write a business recommendation and make more friends.

With all this talk of personalization and injecting a human voice in your communications, is it fair to ask - is your business lifestreaming? After all, interests feed relationships. You could also have "fragmentation innovation." Create new options through market reputation and authority, but there needs to be an evolution of business as markets and customers don't stand still. How do you go about taking the measure of marketing conversations?

You may ask yourself, what if I fail? How do you go about connecting the dots on social media and the future? How does a company dip its toes in the conversation? Is it true that we could be designing business through interactions? The answers to these questions are ours to give. Creating a totally immersive experience seems to be where it's at. If interactions are designed to be transformative experiences, then the business where the interactions occur, will be transformed.

Are you too accessible? Many ask that question and worry. Accessibility comes down to making choices that align with our purpose - in work and in life. We also learn to look at conversation as negotiation. After all, we buy, we join, we connect on the basis of emotion. The award for most emotionally-charged tool goes to Twitter. It's immediate, short, and can be fast. Learn business uses of Twitter and keep your nose clean.

Asking the right question makes a big difference - are you using your influence? Mentoring, sharing, highlighting good causes, helping power connections that extend beyond your self are all worthy ways to use influence. There are also times when plan B is better than plan A. Regardless of what plan you choose, behaving well will reflect on your credibility, especially when in a tough economy branding matters.

With all this talk of conversation and sharing, I do wonder if you have thought of the idea and practices as organic marketing. These people have and they are beginning to show us the way, a very different kind of behavior for business. Benefit from thinking that your logo is a symbol, your product can be a social object. This outreach by Pepsi via Edelman to 25 influential bloggers was the object of fascination by many. Why pick Conversation Agent? Some asked. Maybe this year-end recap will help you see why. ROI requires focus - on execution.

There are so many choices for November that I encourage you to dig deeper, if you're so inclined. Why start a blog and 25 ways to make it work was the most saved post on Delicious and the most linked ever - with 301 saves to date. Glad I could be of service. A topic that you may overlooked, but that will take center stage in the next couple of years is the light before the storm. Crisis communications is taking on a whole new dimension with community. One thing is for sure - companies need to learn how to talk with customers differently.

Lots of choices for December as well, so I will highlight a couple of important reminders. Change the conversation, change the game is an invitation to take a look at the opportunity that awaits you. But you need trust in order to do that and remember that the future is now.

I hope you will find this content useful and adaptable to your circumstances and ideas. There are many more ways to participate and engage, as many as there are professionals interested in doing so - I've done it my way. One last word of advice. This is not the whole universe of your customers. It's becoming more important and influential, yes. But it's not all there is - you need to get out more.

Happy New Year!

Thank you

Thank you, dear readers, for your time and attention. Without you, this wouldn't be as much fun. Thanks also go to all of you who comment and those who link, Stumble, Digg, Twit, and share in other ways. I know how challenging it is to have only so many hours in a day and I am grateful that you would spend some of those precious moments here.

Thanks also go to my Twitter listeners. I'd like to get to know you, and please do not feel offended if I have not added you. I am listening and I do care, one person at a time. Thanks also go to the "friends of friends" on FriendFeed - without you, Scoble wouldn't have such large discussions (all in good fun).

A special mention goes to Marketing Profs: Daily Fix (that Ann Handley is awesome), Social Media Today (Robin Carey in particular), Marketing 2.0, and Fast Company for allowing me to type even more words than you thought possible and publish them there.

I'd like to thank the members of the Academy... ... my agent, my producer, Michael Jackson, Mickey Schulhoff and my whole family at Sony Music... I'd like to thank my family, all of my friends who have stood by me... but especially... I'd like to thank Chris Brogan, without whom I never would have hit #57 on the List of Most Influential Marketers of 2008... thank you... thank you...

Chris is one of those rare people who never misses an opportunity to talk about others - and that is why so may are talking about him. My new very special discovery from this conversation is Shannon Paul.  She writes well, she has great sense of humor and makes sense of things. Thank you, Chris for highlighting her work and thank you Shannon for doing such good work.

Thanks go to Adam Singer, one of the most enthusiastic connectors I met via Twitter. Adam pairs me with someone and two who have given me more then enough material and ideas to chew on in his social media power users and influencers - part 4.

Now for the interesting part - those who made the time to meet me in person in 2008.

Thanks go to Mark Earls for a lovely conversation over dinner (that was just rated the best new restaurant in the city, by the way). I am very grateful to Luc Debaisieaux for clearing his schedule over a weekend to spend time catching up in Brussels. We had a great time together in Antwerp courtesy of Kris Hoet. 

Grazie tante to Micheal Walsh for spending a productive afternoon in Milano - don't be a stranger now - where I also met briefly Marco Montemagno (Italy's Internet guy), and Luca Conti who sat with me on the train in regular class instead of his first class seat for the Milano-Modena tract. It made for an instructive two-hour conversation. Grazie also to Sara Borghi for meeting me for coffee and to Gianluca Diegoli for meeting me for drinks in Modena. You ought to learn Italian just to read his work

Merci to Mark Goren for a fantastic conversation over breakfast and dinner (in that order), Mitch Joel for sharing lunch with me and showing me how you do a presentation (thank you also for the book), Pinny Gniwisch for being so hospitable, Adele McAlear for arranging dinner and Andy Nulman for picking up the tab. Montreal is a true jewel - plan to visit in the summer.

Thanks to Ann Handley again for allowing me to share what I know about Web sites at the B2B MarketingProfs Forum and meet Chris Brogan, Chris Penn, and Matthew Grant. And I am grateful to Tim Brunelle who invited me twice to speak at MIMA, where I met Lee Odden (we sort of met at the Philadelphia PRSA a year earlier), Katie Konrath, and Ze Frank, among others.

There are too many to mention, so honorable mention goes to CK, Drew McLennan and Lori Magno for pulling off Blogger Social 2008. Special mentions go to Paul Soldera, Anna Farmery, Mario Vellandi, Marilyn Pratt, Steve Woodruff, Seni Thomas, Gavin Heaton, Arun Rajagopal, and Sean Howard. Thank you for making the gathering even more social.

This year I haven't attended too many conferences, so I am especially grateful to those who made the time to meet me during my travels. This might not be innovative, but I do remember you, what you are interested in, what you hold dear, what you dream about - and I will gladly play supporting role in whatever pursuit or endeavor you choose. I believe that's where the real influence is.

[image courtesy of Bryan Dalton, Mistake the Beautiful]

How did You Get What You Wanted?

"Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it." [Peter Drucker]

Here's the tricky question for you - are you reasonable as to what you want as a customer? Do you check The Consumerist and track down company executives phone numbers?

More than one year ago, I wrote about how customer service is a mindset. In that post, I highlighted a database that allowed you to skip the recorded phone trees at companies and get to a human.

Clearly, when all is well and there is a good system or process in place for the company to be responsive to your customer service requests, you probably are like me and go through the channels. When things start going South, how likely and how quickly are you to escalate your request?

Today it should be fairly easy to track any company down through a representative online. Has that made it more obvious that customer service is a mindset? On the other hand, are you more objective in your demands once you have had the opportunity to talk with a representative of that company?

On Christmas Day I got on Skype to call my family in Italy. My account is set up to auto-recharge when it dips below a certain amount so that I do not need to worry about interrupting a call to recharge - and worse, having to wait until the transfer is approved. Why it takes so long to approve an electronic transfer on a pre-approved account still mystifies me. Anyway, there I was on the phone with my sister...

... and all of a sudden, not only the auto-recharge does not happen, but the manual recharge I apply frantically runs out before I can speak with my mother. Bummer. I put in a ticket with Skype through their regular channels. The next day Skype charged me twice, once for the auto-charge that had not worked and once the manual charge. Yet the moment was gone. Well, it is a holiday. Let them come back to me.

It turns out that PeteratSkype is on Twitter and somehow found out I was making inquiries there on Christmas Day. Peter contacts me to find out how he can help. I add him to my network on Twitter to follow through with his request, but it looks like he has not added me or Twitter is broken so I cannot DM him. In my response back to Peter, you will notice that I informed him that DM was not working.

I hear back the next day. Let me make it really clear to you PeteratSkype, Twitter and the immediacy of online marketing (because this is what it is to Skype in addition to customer service) are not a let-me-try-it thing - you either do it or you don't. If you are online and ask me how you can help, my expectation is that you take action at the moment of asking, not a few days later. Expectation needs to meet experience.

Meanwhile, the response to my ticket came - three days later. In the email, the rep told me to check my balance on Skype, which at that point was doubled given the two withdrawals from Skype, and to make sure I had the latest version of the software installed, which I do. PeteratSkype sends another message on Twitter to tell me he is tracking down what happened... should I expect an answer eventually? Maybe within the week? In the New Year?

You who are reading this might think that I enjoy talking about companies stumbling through this new age of connected customers. I most certainly do not. I continue to be willing to go through channels and give companies a chance. But hey, when you reach out to me in an immediate channel that is free to you, you've got to come through with the same degree of immediacy. Show me you have a sense of urgency.

I will vote with my wallet and find other options when those companies demonstrate gross negligence of care. I no longer wish to engage in lengthy and adversarial debates over who is right. What I want is a service that works. Period. Fix the service. Customer service is the new marketing.

This is a new era of customer conversation and companies will need to learn how to execute in it or be executed right out of customer conversations - and consideration. Customers will walk away never to come back.

It is no longer efficient or worth it to fight a company over service when one can easily find another company hungry and willing to take its place and deliver. Today at Fast Company Expert blog we talk about how your company can innovate its way out of this rut and put value back in the customer experience.

What about you? Do you have a story of when you had to escalate the issue? How did you get what you wanted? Would you do that again? 

[images are from an Xbox gamer's story that ran in Engaget.com earlier this year. Yes, that is Bill Gates and his team making things right.]

PR 2.0 is Free

It really isn't, but it is freely distributed. That is the benefit of it when intended as communications to all stakeholders. Good PR comes at a cost - research, the experience of knowing what's important, the relationships we build to offer content that people want to make part of their lives. New media helps do the rest - it helps reinforce the publics' decision to pay attention to you and your business.

Will public relations continue to become more high profile in the year to come?

In its most basic definition, public relations is about helping organizations and individuals communicate with the people who are interested in them. Is this the new audience? It makes me uncomfortable to assume that audience means the people I want to talk with, unless I have done my part in attracting them by providing value and showing integrity of purpose.

The role of connectors used to be played chiefly by mainstream media journalists and editors. The reality today is that we have nearly enough time to execute our work. We find time and attention to read trusted sources - the new connectors - which are more and more fragmented. I think new media have changed the way we consume information - they are not just a new mode of transportation, so to speak.

Scoble and Israel wrote about three phases of the Web:

1. The age of Surf (e.g. Yahoo web directory)
2. The age of Search (e.g. Google)
3. The age of Syndication (e.g. RSS, Internet Explorer 7)

We are moving into the stage where syndication and aggregation are taking new forms. FriendFeed, for example, is being used as both, plus as a micro blogging tool. What we consume is still directly related to what we care about and value, but today we are less uniform mass, more individuals with preferred listening channels.

Yet, I do not think this conversation is about technology at all. Not for the recipients on this end of the conversation, not in the least. However, I still think that PR practitioners have a little way to go on making their end of the attention/time commitment work for them and their customers.

From where I sit, many still do not know how to use email effectively - never mind FriendFeed, or Twitter. How can the pitch become more an invitation for a deeper conversation instead of a shotgun approach? Could PR professionals begin to leverage technology to their advantage? For example by building efficient data bases and mining them efficiently?

Today's press coverage may be more about Google search ranking than media placements; success comes when we discuss issues and trends more than product placements. It was never about the analysis of press clippings; good public relations has always been about attitudinal research.

More conversation, less persuasion. PR 2.0 may move freely through media, it most certainly requires thoughtful preparation and consideration for it to be a benefit to both its creators and its intended recipients. Agree/disagree? What am I missing?

Memo to Obama: Remake the Bully Pulpit

When asked what advice would you give the new President by Reader's Digest, Michael D. McCurry responded "remake the bully pulpit". McCurry, who was White House press secretary between 1995 and 1998 says:

Nothing will help your presidency or threaten its success more than how well you communicate with the American people. The "bully pulpit" of the presidency (as Theodore Roosevelt called it) needs a remake for the 21st century because we are still using communication techniques that date back to the first President Roosevelt.

He then proceeds to offer the following advice, which is also great advice for companies:

(1) abolish the practice of holding a single televised daily press briefing by the White House press secretary - instead, the presidential press secretary needs to orchestrate a great symphony of public information. More data and facts need to get out the door. Less spin and "message control."

Try this in your organization as well - let the experts comment on what they know best, explain to employees and customers your product and services with simplicity and immediacy. Quarterly CEO web casts are great but in this day and age they need to be supplemented with a robust diet of what is going on in the marketplace.

When you orchestrate a symphony of information with data, facts, stories from the trenches, you help all stakeholders see what is going on and make better decisions as supporting actors for the business.

(2) make the White House more like the West Wing - actually he recommends reality shows as a thought. More transparency will restore trust in government.

When I talk about transparency in business, I get the look, you know, that look that says, yeah, in your dreams - our competitors will copy us. There is no way they can do it better than you can. Here's why:

If you go ahead and copy what your competitors are doing without seeing what is behind their strategy, part of which is cultural, you will bomb. Aside from the fact that we know that trying to be something you are not is not such a good idea, your prospects already have your competitor in mind when they think of solving that particular problem. Go read Positioning by Al Ries & Jack Trout, it's a classic, it's still not being done by most.

(3) make sure other agencies of government and the other branches on Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court get equal time - get the media to focus on other places where critical work is happening in the name of the American people.

This means having many more competent communicators across the organization. I'm liking this one a lot as well. It may also mean that as a leader, you will need to connect that information, provide context and perspective, illuminate the issues and point to the actions.

What advice would you add for remaking the "bully pulpit"?

Bonus link: Steve Rubel points us to Obama's lessons for PR professionals and marketers - I would add for all business leaders.

The Art of Receiving

"Receiving isn’t easy. If it were, more of us would do it with grace and gratitude. Is there a way to change that? Can we learn to receive so we can be nourished and empowered? These are crucial questions, not just because the holiday season is a time when giving and receiving are part of our daily experience. The ability to receive is, in fact, essential to physical health, psychological ­balance and spiritual engagement." [Ode magazine, The Art of Receiving]

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” [Winston Churchill]

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have ... enough." [John Bogle, Enough]

[image of butter angels from FINI window in Modena, Italy]

7 Observations and a Challenge to Marketing Types

Seven is a prime number and the sum of the first four Fibonacci numbers. There are seven colors of the rainbow, seven days in the week, seven continents, and seven directions: north, south, east, west, up, down, center. The seven new wonders of the world voted online in what was said to be the largest poll ever included the Colosseum in Rome.

This is my response to the recent meme that has been making the rounds - thanks to Marc Meyers, Michael Haberman, Brian Branca, and Annie Hackenberger for thinking of me. You will forgive me, I tend not to follow the rules too closely.

Instead let's have a conversation about some observations on execution, which I do think will be the one must for 2009.

As we discussed yesterday, we are now using collective filtering tools and visualizations with teams and networks to discover patterns in large, complex systems faster - and trigger faster collective responses.
Twitter is just one example of how that works. There are plenty of other ways - online and off line.

1) Real depends on the point of view - for example, whether you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk or find Alfonso Cevola amazingly insightful and interesting, they are both wine guys and they both feel real. I connect better with the Italian Wine Guy, for many reasons. Do you know what's real for your customers? What's their point of view?

2) Right depends on context - we are not ready to be sold to until we're ready to buy. What's right then depends on timing and frame of mind. That's why relationships are so important and why you must have a different approach - the world is not waiting for your message anymore. It's looking for inspiration, education, engagement, connection (or dis-connection).

3) Respect is earned - why would anyone pay attention to you when you are not paying attention to them? The old ways of marketing are definitely on the decline. Respect is earned every day. People have long memories - your actions will follow you long after the troubles are gone. 

4) Truth depends on personal values - if we become better listeners, we will learn to embrace the truths of our customers and communities. Having values and beliefs of our own is important as long as we are not hardened around them or hold them as a weapon.

5) Patience is a virtue - especially if you're going to do things your way. Staying on purpose is more important than staying on message. People respond well to the former, not so readily to the latter. Better yet, make your purpose the message - it's like making the product your marketing.

6) Failure is not terminal - you might however feel like you're forever waiting at a terminal if you are so afraid to make a mistake that you're not even trying. Ask yourself: what is the worst that could happen? Nothing happens as a result of so many marketing programs. Try something different.

7) Criticism comes easier than craftsmanship - yes, even from those who tell you they "hate" people who criticize. Sweet irony, but we are terrible at taking our own advice. Craftsmanship takes time. How about all of those competitive ads? Use kind words or no words at all. Stand on your own merits.

My personal challenge to you marketing types (aren't we all in marketing these days anyway?) is:

How can we raise above the fray? How can we use our gifts and talents to lead instead of following?

How can we show respect to our customers (and each other - we are all different and bring something valuable to the table) so that we may be fully engaged and inspire engagement?

How can we work together to built a support grid for commerce and people to thrive? As Tom Peters puts so well, it's always "the people". How can we help create a better world? Not just sell one.

- Merry Christmas -

[image courtesy of Darwin Bell]

The Future is Now

And if that is the case, what's next? Extrapolating insights from what we can forecast about the future comes from experience. I never envisioned myself in research, but if I ever did make such move, I would work as strategist at a "think and do" tank. Two of my strongest characteristics are connecting and contextualizing. 

What you see here is an image of the 2008 Map of the Decade by the Institute of the Future. You may download your copy here. As the center itself explains:

The view this year is distinctly biological. Even in arenas more social than biological, new biological identities—and new understandings of biological connectedness—draw people into unexpected affiliations. We turn to face the decade with a naturalist’s eye: we’re looking for the intricate connections that form the webs of our evolving life as if our futures depend on it. Ah, but they do. They do.

There are five main stories that weave their ways with people, practices and tools -

1. diasporas - the new emerging economies
2. civil society - the evolution of civic infrastructure
3. food - the flashpoint
4. ecosystems - management in the context of life
5. amplified individuals - the extended human reality

If you wish to take an in depth look at the trends, download the paper on perspectives and the summary of signals. I am particularly interested in the fifth story around superhero organizations. We have been taking about personal brands. IFTF says:

as digital natives enter the workplace with superhero skills like ping quotient, mobbability, influency, and protovation, they will create supercharged organizations that see themselves as beta systems, constantly reinventing themselves through rapid prototyping.

It's worth reading the whole report. We may finally begin to simulate the future from the bottom up - that's where the changes begin and propagate, at the edges, in biology and in organizations. If your work involves any kind of planning, you might want to take a close look at the signals. I'm digging the cooperation radar, emergensight, and the longboarding - how about you?

I came across the Future Exploration Network because coincidences have it that their tagline closely resembles mine - we're both connecting ideas and people. Here, talk can change our lives, there, we're going to the edge of the future. They created a visualization of trends for 2009 that also resembles a biological system. It's a multi-tentacled hydra.

They list eleven trends - Global connectivity; Anxiety; Volatility; Uncertainty; Debt; Power shift; Eastwards; Ageing; GRIN technologies; Digitalisation; Climate change; and Sustainability weaved into eight sectors - Society; Technology; Economy; Environment; Politics; Business; Family; and Media.

If you're interested in the business of blogging and the future of social networks, you may find some interesting thoughts on What's Next current report.

Why do we care about the future? Isn't what happens now more important? 

My take on this is twofold:

1) by being attuned with what happens now, we can more accurately infer the consequences or results that await us in the future. If you've been online for a couple of years, you can already predict what people will be interested in, what will be popular and what will get you on top of the charts. Sure, it still takes work to do the work, but the foresight to insight is here.

2) shifting our focus to some of the current stories actually gives them more power. What is important to you gains greater attention and thus momentum and has a greater chance of happening. By allocating more resources and energy to something, we help it along to reality. This power of intention is why it's so important to remain positive and supportive.

Future of Agency

The future of the agency business to me is where we have true agents, people who are in action and instrumental to the operations of that business - more than just mere services authorized to act for others. This is an issue of clarity and confidence in quality.

If I were an agency today, I would seek those who have consistently demonstrated a hunger for learning, experimenting and doing throughout their career, putting their skin in the game and being fanatical about results. This was my prediction last December. Have we gotten there?

This is a good start. For some of these changes to take hold, the whole compensation model needs to be revisited, along with the role of media - new, old, any flavor you'd like. I'm seeing an interesting future for those who have already been putting skin in the game, even though they are few and far between.

Anomaly suggested there is a different way. According to this article by CNNMoney.com -  "They never even mentioned ads. They were telling us how we could make more money." Instead of just ad campaigns, Anomaly is selling an all-in-one package of services for advertising, product design, strategic consulting, and technology licensing.

Brooklyn Brothers was also because because they wanted to be an antidote to advertising in general and to large agencies in particular. [hat tip for both Alan Wolk]

My friend Michael Leis at Trellist also works with profit sharing. I'm sure there are more agencies that are beginning to use new models. Add yours in the comments, if that is the case and I will update this part of the post.

Future of the Company

The future of companies is where the interesting conversations begin - with the co-creation of value with their customers. There is action here as well. It's more than mere picking the color of your leather seats. However, there might need to be distributed quantity or collaborative alignment for quality to emerge.

That is happening also thanks to the increased use of social media by companies, as represented by their brands. Jesse Liebman pulled together a list of the ten brands to watch in social media for 2009.   [hat tip to Karl Long]

If you were still to doubt the power of one person with a genuine interest in making a difference, look no further than Scott Monty. We were just talking about putting skin in the game, and Scott does just that on behalf of his employer, Ford. I'm a long time passionate Toyota driver (one of the reasons why Scott DeYager is welcome to connect), another company on Jesse's list. Yet, after reading Scott's messages, especially those at his own blog, I am starting to take notice of Ford's work.

If I were you, Scott from Toyota, I would invite people like Matthew May as guest bloggers. He is the author of Elegant Solutions,Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation. Have you written posts about Prius being the official taxis in Vancouver Canada? Where are the stories at your blog?

If you're going to post a series of news items, how about making them come alive? My first Toyota Camry was a stick shift. I was driving about 118 miles each way on the New Jersey turnpike three times a week. Drove like a charm and the mileage was amazing. It was the only new car I ever owned. Let's put some people on that open road. Maybe as you spend more time on Twitter, you will start getting ideas to bring back to the team writing the blog.

I'm also a big fan of Nokia, have been for years, especially of their European models.

_________

These are some of my ideas. What are yours? What do you see in the future now? You probably noticed some new names in the report. Mash ups of existing words that take new meaning and bridge us into what's next.