At a broad level, both consumer facing social media and gamification are ways to interact with consumers and engage them better. But though a single function in the organisation might be handling this interface (I think the vast majority of organisations have not evolved to the advanced social media frameworks), its effectiveness depends on coordination between functions.

I read JP Rangaswami’s excellent post on Gamification and the Enterprise, on how the consumer and  the enterprise are changing and that new problems require new approaches and advocates a look at game design to solve these. I also read a counter-post by Sigurd Rinde which argues that gamification, dashboard and search are signs of enterprise failure. The disagreement seemed more to be on semantics, if you check the comments on Sig’s post.

Both agree that extrinsic rewards based gamification is not the way to do it. Not that my agreement much in the debate, but I do agree. To me, extrinsic rewards seems like a way to reward a process for its own sake, but intrinsic rewards might significantly work better to ensure that the intent is the bigger focus.

Which brings me to implementation. Usually, social media outposts happen first and then organisations scramble to make processes and frameworks out of it. This is probably because the social networks enable customers to have a conversation about the brand anyway without its having any say in the matter. In the case of gamification, though, there is a requirement to build game dynamics, mechanics and aesthetics and it seems that this would have to be done by the brand. That leads to a choice.

So should an enterprise first use gamification on the consumer side, finding ways to marry customer intent and business objective and then attempt this in the enterprise to ensure that employees work towards achieving these ‘ways’? Or should they identify business objectives and gamify the enterprise to ensure they are met and then attempt this on the consumer side, so employees can work on making the ‘ways’ smoother to execute? Or build both in parallel? I am swinging towards the first option. You?

until next time, end game, for now

An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given human community. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior.

An organization is a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, controls its own performance, and has a boundary separating it from its environment. ..There are a variety of legal types of organizations, including: corporations, governments, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, armed forces, charities, not-for-profit corporations, partnerships, cooperatives, and universities.

I think somewhere between the two lies the organisation of the future – where the collective intent of the workforce is more than the sum of the parts. I liked the ‘social purpose’ part of the institution which to me, made it superior to the organisation that has a boundary that separates it from the environment. I felt that this boundary had become an increasingly impervious wall, something that affected intent, culture and even ideas. But I’m not so sure of the ‘permanence’ of the institution.  Is it just the idea that’s permanent or the manifestations too?

Let’s quickly bring back that ‘where is this going’ thought into a brand perspective. When i wrote about appification and multiple platforms a fortnight back, I wondered what was the structure that could hold the identity of a brand together. Logos, mission statements, and even the experience – all of which have been used to define ‘brand’ seemed unworthy. Even my favourite – ‘promise to the consumer’ seemed barely there.

The bad news – I don’t have an answer yet. The good news – out there, (at least) a couple of razor sharp brains,  armed with much more experience and knowledge, are piecing together the principles that would guide the functioning of the enterprise. The organisation is after all, a means to an end, and the brand is one of those means. So from that, I’m sure, clarity will emerge for brands too.

until next time, to boldly go where no enterprise has gone before

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKCdexz5RQ8

While the video does generalise and could cause some heartburn among some who work on social media and do good work, the reason I found it funny was because I see around me, a lot of what is shown in there – a preoccupation with the tools/platforms in vogue, and the lack of something as basic as an objective. As always, the tools are less important than the philosophy of sharing, collaborating, and 2 way communication that’s happening not just on social media sites, but across the web, though the former, because of their inherent nature, have taken it to a different level altogether. The combination of a client who has decided his brand needs to be on twitter, thanks to some article he read somewhere (or an even more vague reason) and the social media guru whose answer to any client is a templated Facebook page + twitter account + you tube, is quite lethal – to two sets of people – the agencies/individuals who are doing/interested in some genuinely useful work on the social media platforms and the brands who decide not to take the plunge basis the results of the poorly thought through/executed programs of other brands. It doesn’t help that the medium is still in its nascent stages and everyone is still learning.

While social media practices and practitioners might be fewer in India, as compared to the US, the challenges faced show very little such skew. I read two posts recently on the subject. Karthik wrote about ‘selling social media engagement in India‘, where, with the experience of working in a PR firm and pitching social media, he looks at the changes he’s seen in the acceptance of social media among clients over the last couple of years, and the key attributes for making the sale. He mentions how an existing communications partner has a ‘door opener’ advantage as compared to say, an exclusive social media agency, which helps them get the right  people from the client side involved in the pitch, and the need for proper articulation and simple guides which could be used by the client team to sell to their bosses.

In another extremely interesting post, Sanjay writes about “Advertising Agencies and Social Media: The Challenges“. He notes fundamental differences in the way an advertising agency looks at communication, and how communication actually happens in social media. The observations on ‘campaign’ focus, the obsession with perfection (copy), the mechanics of how communication is rolled out, are all spot on, and something that I too have experienced several times while dealing with creative agencies. He ends by mentioning that in the current scenario, agencies keep treating these platforms as broadcast media. That last thought is something I keep deploring regularly here, so I completely agree.

Now the thing is, while these are all perfectly valid points, I was looking at it from a different perspective. I wonder if, in the entire spiel, social media’s proximity to marketing/communication/brand as a function completely overshadows the cultural transition required by the client organisation. Does it get discussed at all? Even in my post rant some time back, I had only emphasised the usage of social media in the PR, research, advertising disciplines and the different stages of the product life cycle – including sales, customer care etc, and barely mentioned the culture change.

The subject of a shift in culture is something I have written about in several contexts – from basic thoughts on transparency in organisations and controlling employee communication internally and with the outside world, to the need for organisations to understand themselves and the value they provide before going overboard with listening and acting on consumer feedback, to whether the size and scale of the organisation dictates its culture and its internal and external communication processes,  and the necessity to tackle business problems and look at it as something that needs to be addressed at an enterprise level too and not just at a brand level. The Dachis Group presentation – ‘Social Business by Design‘ illustrates this extremely well.

I examined it further in the framework of the Awesomeness manifesto, which i regard as an excellent set of fundamentals for organisations, if they want to operate profitably in the evolving business scenario, and in all four of its pillars, I could see the need for a more holistic approach to social media. Its obviously easier said than done. It involves a vision, the zeal and guts to translate that into internal and external business practices- from environment to employee friendliness, training of personnel, readjustment of business goals, hiring people who understand this new design – like say, P&G’s technopologist, who can operate across functions to evangelise it and help apply it in different contexts. And that’s just a few things. Look at an application of this across your organisation, and you’ll see how massive an endeavor it is. Maybe only a few organisations are thinking about it now, but I think it might become an imperative very soon, decided by external forces beyond the organisation’s control. Whether this is spearheaded by the organisations themselves or an external agency would be a decision based on several subjective parameters. Maybe then, organisations will be able to figure out the ‘gurus’ better.

So while, it is good to see great social media efforts from brands, I wonder whether more needs to be done to integrate it more fundamentally within the organisation.

until next time, social nirvana

Bonus Reads:

Customer Twervice by Social Media Explorer (10 examples of companies using social media for customer service)

Social Media Policy Database (Via Six Pixels of Separation)

Why its time to do away with the Brand Manager

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