I am finding it impossible to wrap my head around what all of  this would mean to our concept of life. In the meanwhile, I do know that everything is changing at breakneck speed, and in order to survive, we need to be cognizant of things that can impact our lives – as individuals, and as organisations.  I have deliberately avoided the word ‘disruption’ because it gives me a sense of suddenness and it is a furiously debated topic these days. Rather, to quote John Green (said in another context) I think we’re in the first state of “Slowly, and then all at once”.  This, is my take on ‘Change’.

(Thanks Nikhil for helping on a couple of alphabets and Amit for Unsplash, the source of many images used)

For now, I’ll let the talk do the talking!  (transcript below the ppt) Do comment with your thoughts!

Final Talk Points by manuscrypts

until next time, work it out

Facebook Live (via), a live video streaming facility, with features like a live feed, and ‘ask a question’. More interesting is the app that will allow regular Fan Page administrators to add this to their page and the embedding on other platforms – Twitter, Google Buzz etc. But what I’d really like is for Facebook to get into proper video distribution- create an app that will replicate what the Justin.tv and Ustream apps for Facebook achieve. So brands/organisations can stream everything from say, earning calls to new store openings to special brand ambassador promos and so on. Think of the engagement possibilities.

Notes. I have never found Notes very interesting at all – maybe because I blog a lot. So, except for the occasional note, or using it to get the blog feed into Facebook, my usage has been limited. For long, I’ve been asking why Facebook doesn’t allow me to tag Pages that I need not necessarily have ‘Like’d (in the Facebook way) , but would want to still tag in a status. So I couldn’t do say, “visited the @Wrangler store” as a status unless I ‘Like’ the Wrangler Page. I still can’t, but now I can do this in Notes, and I can add photos too. As ‘Location’ looms, it’ll be interesting to see how brands deal with this.

Even as the opportunities for brands to engage increase, I can’t help but feel that its also moving them to some inevitable levels of transparency. The good part about all this for brands, though Facebook may not be the ideal way to do it, is a certain accountability that it creates for people who create content and comment on the brand, thanks to identity.

A few weeks back, Surekha, Mahendra and I had a good commenting session over ‘The Age of Transparency‘ on Reader, an article that talks about the implications of transparency on individuals, society, government, companies. While we’re still far away from a stage when transparency is a default and ubiquitous feature for people, brands and organisations, it might well be a reality in a few years. Like Surekha mentioned in her comment, it wouldn’t do any good for a brand to engage only because it can’t afford not to, but then the question is, will brands/organisations see the trends in the evolution of these tools and more importantly society in general, and be objective enough to start rewiring themselves? Or maybe the ‘forced’ presence and the opportunities that new tools provide will act as a good catalyst for the required change.

until next time, anonymous comments are fine too

Bonus Read: Kapil Ohri’s well researched article on Indian brands on Facebook, (and my earlier post on social media and the scale of organisations)

While I’m not expert enough to look at the first part comprehensively and offer the soundest of opinions, I think the latter is everyone’s playground On that front, I don’t think corporate governance quite makes the cut. And that led me to keep searching for various models being discussed. I also brought into this search the perspective I’d shared earlier on a Dunbar’s number for brands/organisations, retaining the ‘soul of the brand’ (courtesy Chris Brogan) and scalability issues.

And that’s how I came across the ‘Platform Organisation’ concept. The presentation below approaches the need for this from a communication perspective

The larger organisational imperative can be read here. This worked for me because I thought it matched business and social needs.  The community would ensure the soul of the brand is intact and would also allow a ‘scaling up’ of the brand’s Dunbar number. But I did wonder whether this would work for large organisations that  have a legacy of systems and processes. Deciphering that would perhaps be the next logical step.

As I’ve always maintained, the business structures we have built have a huge impact on how we live and consume as a society, and the lives we lead as individuals,(an old and favourite read discovered via Dina) and hence the extended interest on this topic stream.

until next time, life’s work

PS: While on the subject, a related good read via @vijaysankaran “The Definitive Guide to Scaling Social Enterprise“

Tharoor’s boss commented that such issues ” should be sorted out within the four walls of the two ministries”. So there was a good debate online and offline on how, as an elected representative, his responsibility was to the public, and whether the government, like many private organisations, might have some sort of non-disclosure norms. Tharoor, while having to go by official policy, had a view on his own and was expressing it. It reminded me of communication policies in organisation and a post recently on gaping void titled “If your boss tells you ‘our brand must speak with one voice’, quit.” The point to note is that SM Krishna is not a stranger to Twitter, but his usage of it was as a platform during the elections. A bit like an organisation using social media as a broadcast platform with least strategic intent. Tharoor, on the other hand, uses it in a completely different manner, and uses it well, IMO.

I doubt that this is the last ‘Twitroversy’ that Tharoor will find himself in, because I sense his larger agenda in this – forcing transparency on a system which clearly lacks it. (Generalising) In some ways, the similarity (of the government’s functioning) with organisations is quite evident. So, you could say that Tharoor is a pioneer in India’s version of government 2.0. But the internet with rife with stories, usually with bad endings, of employees talking about their employer. Facebook and Twitter have contributed largely to  this too. No, that’s not a warning of any sorts, I think this trend will only increase, and the endings will have to change. Employees would have contractual obligations, but as organisations move towards social business design, the nature of these also would have to change. In India, where the net is yet to achieve (mass) maturity, a member of the government working towards transparency in what can be called ‘THE system’ is bound to have an effect on culture. The other effect of transparency I am looking forward to is accountability. As Seth Godin says ‘Put a name to it’. I think accountability will have a huge role to play in Social Business Design, and the faster organisations adopt it, as opposed to seeing employees as army ants following a diktat, the better it will be for all concerned.

I also saw a debate on Times Now, which, to me,  exposed the difference in the way bureaucrats and even old journalists see Twitter, as opposed to the users of the service, in this case represented ably by Prem Panicker. Someone commented on Twitter that the media creates these controversies around Tharoor because he has moved a layer between the government and public. I’d agree to a certain extent, because though India’s internet penetration is still in single digits, even media houses realise its the future. The media, print or television has seen itself as the ‘middle man’ and services like Twitter are just ripping away that fabric. Meanwhile, Vir Sanghvi (on Twitter) commented that “If Shashi Tharoor said same things to journos he would be hailed as frank. When he tweets he is called irresponsible” To me, this is another manifestation of the same sentiment.

Ironically, Tharoor, a few minutes before the controversy started had tweeted about the future of journalism – about the influence of stringers and bloggers, but the need for educated and knowledgeable editors as well. I read recently about the rise of TMZ, and the new form of reportage. The way I see it, along with transparency and accountability, there will be a variable trust factor in the reader’s mind for every source. The source might be an individual, a group, an organisation, a company, the trust factor and context will dictate the relationship. Even as individuals like Tharoor become ‘media’ in themselves thanks to (in this case) Twitter, newspapers and organisations will have to work out very quickly on how to adapt to this change in status quo.

until next time, mediators

PS. Shorter posts and an announcement – next week

PPS: True to style, Jyoti Basu virtually ‘died’ yesterday, on Twitter.

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

]]> https://www.manuprasad.com/2009/10/15/social-inside/feed/ 4 https://www.manuprasad.com/2009/03/26/sizing-up/ https://www.manuprasad.com/2009/03/26/sizing-up/#comments Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:03:04 +0000 https://manuscrypts.com/brants/?p=1209 Quite sometime back, Chris Brogan had written a small post on ‘Small is a weapon’ with its many advantages like the ability to experiment more and respond faster (than big companies).  Before going further, let me clarify that this is a broad generic view, and I’m sure there might be large companies that manage all this. But perhaps smaller companies have a better chance. The comments on the post reinforced these advantages – internally, a flat structure that makes effective decision making easier, a willingness to change, the importance given to ideas, and externally, faster turnaround for customer issues, a personal touch, and so on. These characteristics struck me as very important ones from the perspective of social media interactions.

Is social media a better tool in the hands of small companies? In a small organisation, would the qualitative metrics of social media be appreciated much more? Would the community – external and internal be connected because of the passion they share for what they’re building together? An idea, (via dina) which binds the audience?

As organisations become bigger, ideas become products/services and then become brands?  And as brands grow in stature, does this size dictate everything else? Is that why mass media seems appealing? Because somewhere along the line brands picked up larger audiences and found that one way communication to this audience was easier? Does the focus of the brand move on to marketing communication, monetisation of the audience etc, because the  brand cements itself in terms of its attributes and perceptions in the mind of people and all it wants to do then is reinforce?

Can larger organisations handle the expectations of social media users – both from an internal perspective (empowerment, for example) as well as from a customer standpoint – (speed, personal touch, conversation). Do they feel limited by  the number of interactions that can be handled? Are they too used to conveying the single brand message irrespective of context, and do they find ‘scalable intimacy‘ difficult to handle? Do they then try to dictate the kind of ‘official’ use that their employees find for social media? After reading Mashable’s post on a similar topic, I had another thought – would an international brand be able to make sure the cultural differences and sensibilities across geographies are handled in the right manner always, in a medium that’s not limited by geography?

Perhaps the solution is to move back from the narrow confines of the brand’s architecture to the original generic idea space, because there will be the old audience with new experiences who can help the brand connect with a new audience? New ideas would emerge leading to a new lifecycle?

I guess its not quite easy to answer since the phenomenon of social media has been making its presence felt only recently, and its difficult to figure out organisations that have been using it for a long time and also scaled up at the same time. Meanwhile, McKinsey Quarterly has a great read on 6 ways to make web 2.0 work. (for companies)

until next time, scale the walls

Amidst all the hoopla surrounding Facebook’s new design, and Twitter’s integrated search, Paul Worthington wrote a very interesting post on Mashable reminding brands not to lose their focus. From the post

The initial challenge is not to better understand and respond to the customer. The challenge is to start with better understanding who you are, what you truly believe in, and what you can realistically offer to your customer.

Because if all you focus on are what customers are telling you, you risk losing sight of who you are, what you believe in and what drives you forwards.

A purpose that is first bought into by their employees, before being presented to the consumer in a way that brings a natural self-confidence to that conversation.

While crowdsourcing has many advantages, and now has various platforms including Facebook, Twitter and more focused services like Get Satisfaction, and consumers also benefit from having big brands on these platforms, I completely agree with the thoughts shared above. This is what I’d consider as the middle path between adhering strictly to brand manuals only and plunging into social media without a clear objective/strategy and trying to please everyone in the crowd.

So, perhaps what brands should do first is search themselves (yes, without Google), understand what’s the real value that they offer to their consumers – potential and current, figure out whether the entire organisation is in aligned on this, then consider how new media can play a part in sharing and collaborating with the users as well as communicating to them what the brand stands for and what value it can deliver, ensure that they continue providing this value, keep listening to users to find what more they expect from the brand, figure out the feasibility of these expectations, tweak it further by bringing in the internal factors, and continue this process. For many organisations, internal democracy as well as complete internal transparency would themselves be a significant steps. But these are a must before aiming to engage with consumers, because in social media brand custodians are not the only ‘broadcast’ source, every employee is a potential source.(a wonderful presentation on the micro sociology of networks)

In essence, its not just a brand strategy shift, its an organisational culture transformation. As a brand, and as an organisation, it is important to be clear about the levels of transparency you can work with. The challenge then becomes that of creating and maintaining a harmonized balance between user needs and brand deliverables.

until next time, drawing the line and walking it

PS: A great story on how two fans made Coke the second most popular fanpage on Facebook, and Coke’s reaction.

My reply consisted of several parts, and some of it got me thinking on the concept of ‘measurement’.  Among other things,  I felt that, relatively speaking, it is more convenient to measure buzz (a social media search or even a Google search) than the ‘below the surface’ versions. You really can’t track what I speak with someone else on GTalk. But more importantly I felt that this love for measurement stems from a need for control.

So I looked back at the brand campaigns around, the media used and the measurement. Following is a rant.(and is quite India specific) Though its extremely relevant, I shall, for now, ignore brands’ following a ‘campaign strategy’ at the cost of brand strategy. Generally, the campaign would consist of Outdoor (billboards), Print, Television, Radio and *new* Internet. So, lets see the measurement criteria for these. Outdoor – you can’t go wrong with one on Brigade Road- Residency Road (that’s Bangalore) junction, everyone goes there. Print – XYZ has circulation and readership of …. Television – XYZ channel and the TRPs it delivers. Radio – say RAM and listenership. While there are numbers and numbers, there is really no way to figure out exactly how many people saw/heard the ad and responded (not even if you put call centre numbers/email ids/call ins).  The sales spike that happens on the day the ad is released is the indicator of its success in print. If ‘people’ saw/heard it, TV/Outdoor/Radio has worked. Yes, I’m generalising, and I do know what value market research can offer. And so Internet. Now the internet obviously needs to match up to the awesome quantitative measurement options that the other media provide.

And so the brand guys waited for the net to show some real numbers. And it did, as it was bound to. Depending on who you ask, this number could now vary anywhere over 28 million users. ComScore puts India’s net population at 32 million, and within that, the social networking population at 19 million, Orkut firmly leading with 12.8 million. The figure reminded me of the leading English daily’s readership – as per IRS R2 2008, it was 13.3 million.

And while the numbers rose, the digital sellers walked in with the stats and taught the brand guys CTR, CPC, CPM (no, that’s not political)  and to use banners and site takeovers and microsites on the net. The measurement criteria was made up of numbers. So, the internet with the amazing CPT (cost per thousand) it provides, is no longer an afterthought in a media plan (Thanks to R, who gave me her valuable thoughts on media planning). Pay for Performance was the mantra and its pillars were leads and clicks.Is that a problem? Not by itself, but when you consider the potential the medium offers, and how it can be used for measurable branding, its not a problem, its an injustice. To quote from this wonderful article on the subject

In fact it is precisely this cult of accountability that is getting in the way of the digital community progressing from clever marketing handymen to the architects of brand success….So long as the digital community clings to its obsession with accountability over effectiveness it will remain in the unedifying position of creating engaging brand fluff on the one hand and highly measurable but largely pointless direct response advertising on the other.

All these are not unknown issues. WATBlog’s panel discussion in Delhi covered much of this. And with all this playing in the background, arrives social media. And it won’t make sense because brands only use media on a campaign to campaign basis, and social media is about the brand’s strategy and a consistent presence- building an audience, listening to them, asking their views, collecting insights, making better products, and so on. It is not about statistics and definitely not a get in-bombard with ads- collect leads-get out deal. Besides, measurements are more qualitative!! The criteria that mass media provides for measurement are almost irrelevant here, and rightly so!! Because in social media, the crowd responds, they talk to each other, and if you don’t participate, and attempt to treat it like a broadcast medium (the way the measurement based web is being treated), someone is likely to have fun, most likely at your expense. And in social media, what a brand says is less important than what the brand’s consumers say.

Like the general web before it, it is only a matter of time  before the social web  reaches a scale which forces brands to use it. I hope they don’t use it like broadcast media, and instead learn to use it – not as a templated solution, but as a subjective, evolving mechanism.

until next time, cast away

Note: i have nothing against mass media. It has its uses. I have a problem with this social media measurement obsession, without the correct metrices and by involving it only from a communication perspective and not the other parts of the brand’s life cycle, and finally stating that it’s just fun and doesn’t work for brands.

I thought these posts and the issue of bloggers being paid to write posts about brands (which surfaces when we are sufficiently bored of doing this guy’s job of finding revenue models for social media) were two sides of the same coin. The issue of trust is being tackled from two sides.

In the case of brands being on Twitter, the argument is that faceless brands cannot be authentic or transparent like a real person. How can we trust such an entity? In the case of bloggers who are paid to write posts about brands, the argument is that if they are paid for it, how can we trust the veracity of what they’ve written?

In both the cases, the answer will emerge by itself, in time. If brands use this as a one way communication medium, to just broadcast, without having interesting conversations or adding value for the audience, the crowd will treat it as a broadcaster and move away, unless there is some really awesome content being shared all the while. If bloggers make up stuff about a brand, and transmit it to their readers, the crowd will remember not to trust them the next time.

A bit more on the topic of brands on Twitter, since its debatable whether the brand should be itself, or have a spokesperson who represents it. Its understood that behind every brand (not including spam accounts) on Twitter, is a human being, even he is one that first configured Twitterfeed to send out ‘auto tweets’. So, I am guessing that what would’ve happened more often than not, is that an individual came on to twitter, discovered how cool it was, and then decided that it was a great place for his organisation/brand to communicate to the outside world, which contains his consumers and potential consumers. A chance for the brand to talk about itself, and hear from consumers what they had to say.

The individual would already have an equity on Twitter, and would enjoy the trust of those who follow him. Considering how a blogger who writes a paid-for-post (even with disclosure) is almost crucified, it is understandable if he wouldn’t want to mix his own equity with that of the brand’s equity, especially when there is every chance that the organisation may not have a policy on social media, and he wouldn’t be getting paid like the celebrity blogger. Also he doesn’t even know how long he would be with the organisation. Lastly, by mixing a personal account with a brand, the person might be constrained to speak of things in context with what the organisation does.

Keeping all this in mind, I’d have liked to say that brands belong on Twitter, as brands. After all, we already have people building personal brands. In fact, organisations should perhaps look at multi functional teams which can communicate with consumers on different aspects with authority and domain knowledge, so that over a period of time, they can re-create the credibility they enjoy in the real world, in the digital world too. This post, however, gives some great points on why the logo should be replaced by a public face.

In summation, though, I’d have to say that as always with any strategy, it’d have to boil down to intent. As this wonderful post correctly says, “The beauty of Twitter is that it is what you make of it, and you can make so many things of it”. What do you think?

until next time, brands are limitless characters?

PS. … and in this season of giving, here are 2 good resources I’d like to share with you

• Peter Kim – Social Media predictions for 2009
• Gauravonomics –Social Media predictions for India for 2009

In return, i’d request you to give a few minutes of your time and participate in the Exchange4Media.com & Blogworks.in Blog & Social Media survey.

Merry Christmas everyone, have a great 2009, and I’ll see you next year .