Sometimes, it just amazes me that so many companies are old school, and not in the good Will Ferrell movie sort of way. I’m talking about the “we don’t care about our customers because they have no place to go” kind of way. I’m talking about the companies that:

• don’t do what you pay them to do
• don’t acknowledge when they’ve made a mistake or caused you an inconvenience
• make you call interminable 1-800 numbers and explain the situation again and again
• don’t fix the problem after you wait for them to come by to do just that
• don’t apologize for the inconvenience
• don’t offer to do the right thing by way of a credit or some other accommodation

Background

A few months ago, I railed against Comcast for what incredibly poor performance for Internet and VOIP service. After many phone calls and tweets, at least Comcast finally responded. While the problems have persisted to some extent over the last few months, at least the company has tried to do the right things. I received a number of credits to my account (equivalent to a few free months), multiple apologies, and calls from supervisors.

Well, at the risk of sounding like Dennis Miller, Verizon makes Comcast look like Zappos. (So the reference isn’t completely lost on you, Zappos is a company renowned for its customer service.)

I’ll spare you as many of the irritating details of this exchange as possible. For the last few months, I’ve had problems with my land line. Verizon ostensibly fixed the problem last week but, as I’ve told their reps on the phone multiple times (not that they can hear me), the problem remains. A supervisor offered me a credit of $4 for my trouble. That’s $4 American.

No, I’m not making this up.

I’ve been assured from the not-so-soothing recorded messages that a Verizon robot leaves in my voice mail that “they’re aware of the problem and are working on it.” Needless to say, after listening to these messages, I have to call a 1-800 number to talk to someone and get on a queue. Evidently, a call from a human being is out of the question. Again, old school.

After having no success with them on the phone (can someone say “irony”?), I took my plight to the web, as I am prone to do. I finally received a response on Twitter. My favorite tweet is listed below, along with my response:

@VerizonSupport – @philsimon2 ok, what number can I reach you?

Me: @VerizonSupport – I can’t direct message you because you are not following me and I won’t advertise my number to the world.

Note that I didn’t use my main Twitter handle (@philsimon) because I doubt that anyone cares about my phone issues.

The problem remains and I’m already looking into dropping these wizards. There’s a reason that Verizon Sucks and VerizaRape exist.

Feedback

Forget Verizon. Forget my relatively insignificant phone issue. In the whole scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter to anyone but me. But I want to know how companies can continue to operate in this manner? There are so many alternatives for phones these days. In fact, I’m a bit of a dinosaur by even having a land line; many of my friends only use cell phones. With the exception of my energy company, I can’t think of a single vendor that I absolutely have to use.

My message to anyone who cares at Verizon: Get with the program. The consumer is king now. Your halcyon days are over. I am in the processing of switching back to Comcast for VOIP as I am write this. As bad as Comcast is, you’re worse. Much, much worse.

What do you think?

Old School: Companies That Still Just Don’t Get It is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Pink Floyd, Seinfeld, and Extremes in Customer Service
2. My Social Media Experiment
3. Trust Agents

I recently did a guest post micro debate on my friend Jay Miletsky’s site. Here’s an excerpt:

Can marketers be too friendly and familiar? Can they pose as friends when they’re trying to sell us products and services?

In a word, yes. All too often I receive “friendly” emails from financial advisors. While these messages are rife with ostensibly valuable information, they’re thinly veiled attempts to obtain my business. Also, I recently had to remove an affiliate from my web site because of repeated reminders of the “benefits” of taking our relationship to the next level.

To read the entire debate, click here.

Can Brands Be Too Social? is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Jay Baer on Social Media’s Internal Impact
2. Does Social Media Mean that Traditional Marketing is Obsolete?
3. Communication, Social Networks, and Railroads

Jay Miletsky wears many hats and, quite frankly, I wonder if he ever sleeps. For one, he is the CEO, Executive Creative Director at Mango! Marketing, working with clients such as Hershey’s, Kraft, JVC, Washington Mutual, StreetGlow, United Health, and others. He’s also an accomplished author of ten books (making me feel lazy), contributor to my second book,  friend of mine, and fan of Porcupine Tree.

In this guest post, Jason discusses the relationship between traditional marketing and social media. The floor is now his.

Introduction

I wish I had been alive when TV began to infiltrate the American home and take its place as the entertainment center around which friends and family congregated.  I wish I were there to measure the sentiment of marketers at the time, and see if the general belief was that this new technology–this new media–would ultimately banish the radio into oblivion, and cause printing presses to shut down and rust over.  If that was the sentiment back then, it didn’t last very long. Inevitably it became clear that, rather than replace print and radio, TV would become an integral component of a larger media mix that and a more powerful means for brands to reach their consumers.

Today, all of these methods, now lumped together into a general category called “traditional marketing,” are once again fighting off a new potential threat to their relevance.  Judging by the behavior of many anxious marketers, it would seem as though the rise of social media precludes the fall of all other efforts, as though the entire marketing industry is on a see-saw, with social media on one side and traditional marketing on the other.

Evolution vs. Revolution

But in all of the (completely warranted) excitement over social media, what many marketers haven’t realized yet is that it’s not an evolution of marketing: it’s an entirely new method.  In order to qualify as an “evolution,” a new technology has to do all the following:

• Accomplish the tasks of its predecessor
• Accomplish these tasks in a way that’s cheaper, more efficient or provides better results
• Dramatically reduce or fully eliminate the relevance of its predecessor

We don’t use sundials any longer because mechanical clocks replaced them as the more efficient tool for tracking time.  Similarly, the computer replaced the typewriter, programs like Photoshop and AutoCAD replaced the drafting table, and digital cameras replaced film cameras.  In each of these instances, new technology has made their predecessor obsolete because they achieved the same or better results, quicker, easier, and/or faster.

So why doesn’t the same hold true in marketing? Because in this case, social media hasn’t in any way made traditional marketing obsolete.  It does not accomplish the same tasks as traditional outlets, nor does it reduce the marketers’ need to consider traditional outlets in their marketing strategies.  Instead, social media provides an additional avenue in which to reach consumers, but not in a way that’s mutually exclusive of traditional efforts.

Social Media as a Marketing Supplement

In fact, social media is profoundly different in its methods and accomplishments. As such, it can be a useful and necessary partner to traditional strategies, rather than a replacement for them.  Traditional efforts reach consumers by maximizing impressions–traditional marketing or PR campaigns are funded, launched, and received by consumers via TV, radio, print, or other such methods in ways that don’t allow for two-way communication.  The objective is to increase the number of impressions. More impressions means the following:

• the more people receive the message
• the more likely the consumer will be to make a purchase
• the greater the success of the campaign

Eventually, the message loses its effect, or the campaign budget runs dry, and the number of impressions falls until the next campaign.

Social media, on the other hand, is not an impression-based communications platform.  While marketers want their tweets and online messages to be seen by as many people as possible, the primary thrust of these efforts is to maintain ongoing communication or active engagement with audiences through two-way conversation. Social media is more active and ongoing, steadily growing through regular non-campaign specific communication that reaches beyond marketing to include PR and even customer service.  It provides consumers with a voice, and can create long-lasting, close-knit bonds between brands and their markets.

Engagement, therefore, is not a replacement for impression-based marketing, but an adjunct to it.  As marketers begin to realize that traditional and social media can live an work together, their strategies (and their brands) will reap the rewards not of a new evolution, but of a powerful new hybrid marketing approach whose sum is far greater than its parts.

Feedback

What do you think of Jason’s perspective?

Does Social Media Mean that Traditional Marketing is Obsolete? is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Social Media: The Tension between Collaboration and Ownership
2. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part I – Measuring is Easy; Evaluation is Hard.
3. Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan

Today’s topic is social media for educational institutions.  I’m joined by two distinguished folks:

• Jim Harris, the blogger in chief of Obsessive Compulsive Data Quality. Jim writes and speaks extensively on social media
• Andrew Gossen is the Senior Director for Social Media Strategy, Alumni Affairs & Development at Cornell University

In this 32 minute podcast, we talk about many topics, including the following:

• Social media ROI
• The cost of not doing social media
• The role of the community manager
• Quality content vs. plain old content

To listen to the podcast, click here or visit iTunes.

Technology Today, #21: Social Media in Academia is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Technology Today #10: A Podcast with Mitch Joel on Social Media
2. Social Media Cartoons
3. Social Media Resistance: Déjà Vu All Over Again

“This is like déjà vu all over again.”

- Yogi Berra

Last week, I railed against sites that appeared to be stuck in the 1990s. In my view, many sites lack a compelling reason (read: content) for people to ever come back. It’s something that I’ve discussed with quite a few people lately.

Against this backdrop, I recently read an interesting post detailing the six reasons that companies are resisting social media. I’m a little surprised that more organizations haven’t gotten with the program. According to some numbers I’ve seen, something like 80% of organizations don’t use social media at all. What’s more, according to a Robert Half International study (admittedly a whopping seven months old), 54% of companies ban their employees from using social media at work.

Haven’t we been here before?

Does anyone else remember the discussions that took place in many business circles in the mid- to late-1990s? I have vivid recollections of many senior people doubting that their organizations even needed a web presence. Period.

Fast forward to today. I can’t help but think of the following questions:

• Have you heard anyone make the “websites don’t matter” argument (sans intoxicants) in the last five years?
• Do you see any parallels between that period and the inception of social media?
• Is everything old new again?

Photo by Cwithe , used under the Creative Commons license.

Social Media Resistance: Déjà Vu All Over Again is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Social Media: The Great Equalizer?
2. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part II – Leaps of Faith?
3. Social Media Cartoons

I recently did an interview with Jay Baer of Convince and Convert in which I discuss the impact of social media and networking within organizations.

Here’s an excerpt:

Jay Baer: There is of course relentless chatter about social media ROI and success metrics. Measuring social media is viable, but not obvious. Is the same true in adoption of new technologies? How should companies evaluate success?

Phil Simon: Great question. The ROI of many Enterprise 2.0 technologies can be relatively easily derived. For example, an organization that would have spent $5M over ten years on a traditional ERP or CRM application (bought from an on-premise vendor) may spend $1M on a SaaS alternative such as Workday or salesforce.com. Alternatively, an organization may use the open source LAMP stack and OpenOffice and save a great deal on software licenses. Note that open source does not mean free, however.

For other technologies, the ROI is a bit tougher to quantify. How does one easily put a value on better data management via MDM? What is the precise ROI of being able to understand your customer base better via business intelligence (BI) applications?

While ROI is important, a discussion of evaluating success and benefits is remiss without considering risks—that’s why there’s a chapter on enterprise risk management. Any new major enterprise technology endeavor introduces risk. However, many times not doing something is actually the bigger risk.

You can read the entire interview by clicking here.

Interview with Jay Baer on Social Media’s Internal Impact is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Interview with Debbie Hemley on The Next Wave
2. Interview with Sue Collier
3. Interview with Andrew Filev of Wrike on Enterprise 2.0 Project Management

I’ll be the first to admit that this post isn’t rocket science or particularly innovative. You can probably find thousands of similar posts that cover the same ground. Some of them are probably even pretty well written. At the same time, though, I felt the need to write it for one reason: Quite frankly, there are quite a few people and organizations stuck in the technological ice ages.

Let me explain what I mean.

A few weeks ago, I joined a local Chamber of Commerce with the typical expectations: to network and meet potential partners and clients. As is the norm at networking events, I exchange handshakes and business cards with established business owners from many different industries. After I return home, invariably I’ll go to these companies’ sites and give them a quick once-over. To be sure, some organizations’ sites are more visually appealing and social media-friendly than others. At their worst, I have seen some sites that are completely non-interactive relics of the mid-1990s. For the purposes of this post, let’s call them 90s Sites.

90s Sites

You know the type of sites that I’m talking about. They all have the standard pages:

• Home
• About
• Products and/or Services
• Contact
• Testimonials

Now, there’s nothing wrong with 90s Sites per se. It’s just that they could be more. So much more. Anyone can quickly scan 90s Sites within two minutes. Most important, there’s no reason for coming back. Ever. 90s Sites are essentially glorified brochures.

Think about it. As Chris Brogan points out in this video for ABC news, you don’t buy magazines for the ads. You don’t watch TV for the commercials.

Deficiencies

What specifically are 90s Sites lacking? Forget aesthetics for a moment. Give me a bare bones site with valuable content over a pretty brochure any day of the week and twice on Sunday. My friend Jim Harris’ site is the antithesis of the term “cluttered”, but it’s easy to navigate and devoid of superfluous “stuff.” I like to think that my own site strikes that balance as well.

These days, whether your organization does mortgages or legal services, it needs to have the following items on its site:

• An integrated blog within the main site. Why you’d send someone away from your main site to a separate blog is beyond me.
• Meaningful and well-written posts. You don’t have to blog every day, but to me once per month is simply not enough.
• Social media icons for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter and other ways to connect and share information.
• Ways to subscribe to content (which is a bit irrelevant since 90s Sites really provide no reason to subscribe).
• Multimedia content such as videos or podcasts.

This doesn’t mean that a lawyer divulges the specifics of her case on her blog. Nor should a mortgage company explain specifically why they rejected me. I’m talking about general tips, pieces of advice, or articles rife with valuable information. In a phrase: meaningful content coupled with common sense.

Benefits

Again, in all likelihood, if you’re reading this post, I’m probably preaching to the choir here. For those skeptics, however, “getting with the program” will result in the following:

• Increased Alexa and Google Page ranks
• Increased traffic and, quite possibly, inquires for products and services
• Increased information about your customer base
• Increased stickiness and time on site
• Increased “buzz”
• Decreased bounce rate
• Increased probability of additional business. Note that I’ll never make the cause-effect argument here.

I could go on, but to me the pros outweigh the cons here by an order of magnitude. My fundamental question is, “Would you go to your site and stick around?”

Common Excuses

So, in keeping with one of my new year’s resolutions to “get out from behind the computer” more, I’ve had coffee with a number of these folks. Over the course of the discussion, we’ll talk about social media, the Internet, and blogging.

So, what’s preventing these organizations from making the jump? The usual suspects are:

• I don’t understand social media.
• Social media is a waste of time.
• Social media is fad.
• I don’t have the time.
• I wouldn’t know where to start.
• It’s not my job to do social media.
• It probably costs a great deal of money to redo a website.

I can’t refute every objection here but, suffice it to so, it’s not that hard to blog once in a while and add social media integration. Content management systems such as WordPress are not terribly difficult to install and manage.

Simon Says

If you think that the web is going to revert to an erstwhile time, then I have some beepers that I’d like to sell you. I’m a big believer that, if you believe that something is valuable, then you’ll find the time and resources to do it.

What’s stopping you?

Photo by J.Down, used under Creative Commons license.

90s Sites and Stickiness is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Five Sites I Can’t Live Without
2. Web Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
3. Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan

I had the pleasure of going to the Social Media Meet-Up this week. This is my second post covering the event.

Jim Lavoie, Chief Executive Officer, Rite–Solutions

Phil’s note: I had a bit of a problem with some of the sentiments expressed, as you’ll see below.

• Key in a knowledge economy: solving relationship puzzle
• We live in a social world, expect when we conduct business.
• In military model, hierarchy reigned supreme.
• Change from command and control; less about “do what I say” and more about “what should we do.”
• Organizations need to do more than provide a paycheck; employees need to feel a sense of purpose.
• Old management tips (read: treating people decently) is still key.
• Five new competencies: honesty, parity, “humbition”, transparency, appreciate the power of relevance
• survival, safety and security, socially suited, suitable stroked, relevant
• Younger folks want to be relevant even if they don’t know the problem.
• Is technology helping us or getting away? Technology is an enabler but too much is a hard sale. “No matter what technology you pick, it will be wrong.”

Phil’s note: Maybe Jim should read my new book.

Francois Gossieaux, author of the forthcoming book The Hyper-Social Organization.

Phil’s note: Interesting topics and I’ll have to check out Francois’ book.

• As companies became big, they became less social.
• SM provides us with a massive platform for participation.
• Reciprocity is a reflex
• Social and market contracts; tapping only the second has its limitations.
• Think tribes, not market segments
  • e.g., women-owned small businesses
  • find the leaders of these tribes
• Think knowledge network, not information channel
  • 60% of all buying decisions are taking place sans information about the company (source: McKinsey)
  • Content has to travel through knowledge networks
• Think human-centricity, not product- or company-centricity
• Think emergent messiness, not hierarchical fixed processes
  • Use existing hierarchies to handle “messiness.”
• Successful companies turn all business processes into social ones
  • They don’t just run “traditional” programs in social media
  • Example: product development
  • Why? – scale, increased quality, increased passion, increased word of mouth (WOM)
  • Only example not found – “social” financing.
• Customer acquired through WOM is likely to have twice the value to organizations than those acquired through traditional marketing means.
• Many companies stay in “permanent pilot” states
• There’s an enhanced need for cross-functional teams; things don’t fall neatly into only one category anymore.
• Intuit has a center for excellence paid based on results by each department.

Greg Matthews, Director of Consumer Innovation at Humana

Phil’s note: This guy is wicked smart and he had one of the best responses from the group of all the speakers. I only wish that all speakers watched this very dynamic guy.

• The social enterprise hasn’t been created yet, but we are moving in that direction.
• We’re not going to make people come to us; we will go to them.
• New demands
  • Control reality
  • Information security
  • Workforce culture
  • Intellectual property
• It’s not about forming committees, building websites, establishing a charter, etc.
• Humana used Twitter for customer service pilot for the last three months, trying to get tweets into the regular customer service queue.
• Created social media policy at Humana via crowdsourcing; ratified by executive committee.
• Next step, possible business development
• Moving towards quantification, better business decisions
• Using geo-tools to improve social media usage/understanding
• Measuring who knows what about what will enable better employee productivity; structure organization around the real way that work gets done.
• There are many different ways to engage people; some are less obtrusive than others.
• How do we connect with healthy behaviors? Don’t just focus on sick people.
• They looked at fitness communities; they didn’t bill their own. Twit2Fit (an existing Ning network) served their needs and had an established user base.

Phil’s note – this is a key point. Sometimes, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel.

• Would using an elite athlete increase the engagement? Humana used a professional runner. Answer to question: Yes, by over 300%. Small experiments have shown promise.
• Key point: Humana did not even mention that they were behind this to the general public. Again, it’s critical to use subtle ways to promote/marketing.
• Social gaming is huge, as many have noted. Leverage the power of the social interaction. Which group of kids will walk around the world first? This game has actually turned into a revenue-generating product.
• Mobility is also enormous for social media/networking.
• The biggest contribution that Humana has made is getting out of the way.
• They have some basic measurements but they’re essentially statistics at this point. True “drivers of effectiveness” aren’t really available yet.
• Business ownership is essential.
• He had to focus this on a full-time basis; it wouldn’t have worked “in his spare time.”
• Executive sponsorship is not necessarily required; at a minimum, though, they can’t oppose it.
  • Business unit leadership may be enough at least to start.
• Find the people internally with a passion is critical; it makes up for different deficiencies.
• They have used Yammer for internal communication; if execs don’t like the fact that Yammer is the tool of choice, then they are forced to introduce alternatives with comparable functionality.
• Legal team has to take a bit of a leap of faith; long-term value must exceed short-term risk.

Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part II – Leaps of Faith? is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part I – Measuring is Easy; Evaluation is Hard.
2. Social Media Resistance: Déjà Vu All Over Again
3. Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan

I had the pleasure of attending the Social Media Meet-Up this week. In general, it was a very informative day with a good deal of content from dynamic speakers. I took copious notes and figured that I’d impart some knowledge to my readers. I have to justify my complimentary media pass somehow, right?

Panel on Social Media ROI

The attendees eagerly awaited this discussion, as this topic has been getting a great deal of play these days. Robin Carey did a great job of moderating the panel and handling questions.

Christopher J. Frank, VP of Global Marketplace Insights at American Express

Phil’s note: Great presentation from a wicked smart guy. Note below how Christopher focuses on what really matters with respect to social media. I spoke to Christopher for a bit after his talk and could tell that we had a great deal in common in how we approached consulting and issues in general.

• Measuring social media is easy. Counting is also easy. Evaluating is hard.
• Analytics isn’t as important as decision making.
• We don’t lack social media data; we lack insight.
• It’s not about the data; it’s about the questions.
  • What are you trying to achieve?
  • What’s your time frame?
• Ratios are more important than “volume-based metrics”
  • Rather than ask, “How many posts did this commercial/campaign spark”, it’s better to ask “How many of these posts are serviceable?”
• Social media is not new; it’s an extension of previous marketing and engagement efforts.
• Current social media ROI has too many means, not enough ends.
  • Buzz is fine, but does it lead to anything?
• Focus on Ins (intent, input, investment) to get to Outs (output, outtake, outcome)

Andrew Meurer from P&G and Steve Kerho from Organic

Phil’s note: At the risk of being totally immodest, I had probably the funniest line of the day. Read on and this will make more sense.

• Case study on social media and tampons (yes, tampons) for Kotex.
• Recent study – done only three weeks ago.
• Start by knowing your audience; it all starts with the idea.
• Brands are out of touch with today’s consumer.
• When you don’t talk about stuff (like feminine hygiene) leads to a suppression of related issues.
• Goal: to reinvent the category.
• Take a low interest category and make it of interest to the target market (girls/women aged 14-22)
• Brand is growing; campaign is successful.
• Three buckets:
  • Who’s talking about it?
  • How much conversation is happening?
  • What are they saying?
• You don’t really know where a campaign is going to go until it gets there.
• Velocity and acceleration of a SM campaign – use first and second derivatives from calculus to determine each. (Yes, the same one from college. And you thought that you were done with that!)

My 15 Seconds of Fame

OK…now to my fifteen seconds of fame. With microphone in hand I said, “This has to be the only presentation in the history of the world that has combined calculus and tampons. You know what kind of odds I could have gotten on that prior to the event? I could be near retirement if I had thrown down $100.”

This is easily the funniest thing that I’ve said in public this year. OK…back to the notes.

• Acceleration is highly correlated with fan growth.
• Positive relationship exists between number of tweets and number of sample requests received.
• Huge spike in tweets during ads on Tyra Banks’ show.
• Why does this matter? It allows for increased accuracy vis-à-vis forecasting. You won’t have to wait until the end of the campaigns anymore.
• It also allows for new optimization opportunities.
• Looking heavily at sentiment analysis, attempting to learn more about the impacts of “mentions” and other types of communication.
• They worked closely with Facebook (shared a great deal of data.)
• The tool required to analyze the data hinges on what they’re attempting to accomplish.
• Social media is still underfunded, but that’s alright because we still have to learn more about it.

Finally, I met two authors:

• Erik Qualman, Author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business.
• Larry Weber, Author of Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business.

Smart guys. I suspect that I’ll be reviewing their books or doing a podcast with them soon.

That’s it. There were some other speakers and I’ll try to get around to posting my notes.

Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part I – Measuring is Easy; Evaluation is Hard. is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part II – Leaps of Faith?
2. Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan
3. Does Social Media Mean that Traditional Marketing is Obsolete?

This week I attended the third BRITE conference in New York City. In this post, I’ll convey many of the things that I learned during the second session of day one. To read yesterday’s post about part one of day one, click here.

The first speaker was Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, Innocentive. His company helps companies find innovative solutions to business problems by crowdsourcing innovation challenges to its member community. Among his points:

• Innovation is a function of employees, customers, vendors, supplies
• In easily my favorite quote of the day, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Extremely well put.
• Brands are going to go open as well.
• On the US health care system, a US doctor told him recently, “If you can explain it to me, I can fix it.”
• For innovation to happen, it’s critical to get people involved at an early stage.
• Organizations are notoriously bad at asking questions and solving problems on their own.
• Engaging communities is important, as is understanding how to ask questions.
• Companies should not filter their own communities; all communities should work on all problems. Problems are often “six disciplines” away and diversity is key.

Next up was Robin Chase, Founder and former CEO of Zipcar. She now consults on innovative methods to merge wireless technologies with transportation needs to promote economic development. Among her points:

• “2.0″ is about content from end users. She cited sites like CouchSurfing as an example of groups creating networks that quickly surpassed traditional “private” ones.
• Many problems are solved by “Mommy PhD’s”–i.e., those that have left the workforce and have “excess capacity” to contribute.
• Everyone can be part of the problem solving process.
• Open standards allow maximum participation from others.
• Open devices, platforms, networks, and software also add to this communal ethos of people organizing to get things done.

Next up was David Rogers, the host of BRITE and Executive Director of the Center on Global Brand Leadership at Columbia Business School. His next book is The Network is Your Customer: 5 Strategies to Thrive in a Digital Age. Among his points:

• There are five strategies to customer networks: engage, access, customize, connect, and collaborate.
• Virgin Airlines has wireless and 76% of those polled indicate that they’d consider flying Virgin because of this. Talk about differentiation.
• IBM is using games (yes, games) such as Innov8 to generate leads. Think it isn’t working? Think again. It’s the company’s number one lead generation tool.
• Pandora is creating a “music genome”, allowing people to create digital DNA of individual songs. This will help people discover new songs easier. This is just sick.
• Ford is about as “old school” as companies can be, yet is still using social media in interesting ways. Check out this bit on the Fiesta. It achieved 28% brand awareness in six months by giving the car to a select group of influential Gen Yers.
• Intuit is collaborating with its customers in creating searchable online FAQs and databases. Talk about harnessing the power of its customers!

Ending the second session was was John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer at Young & Rubicam. John is author of  the highly-acclaimed The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How To Avoid It. Among his points:

• The Great Recession is profoundly impacting the American consumer (a term that he is trying to purge from his vocabulary). Despite the fallout, there’s good reason for hope and optimism.
• Values are redefining consumerism. We are moving from mindless to mindful consumption.
• We are shifting from what we carry to how we carry ourselves.
• People are now happier being “more liquid”, preferring a simpler life compared to three years ago.
• There’s been a 50% erosion in overall brand trust in the past three years.
• Many sites are capitalizing on this, including Cow-Pooling, alice.com, and groupon.com.
• We are moving from “cheap chic” to slower consumption.
• Social media is more than mere tools; it’s about becoming part of the culture/brand.
• Sunrun is an example of pooling resources, in this case to create a communal electricity source.
• We are moving from consumption to production, from a consumer of quantity to a producer of quantity.

Again, this was an excellent conference.

Lessons from The BRITE ‘10 Conference, Part 2: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch is a post from: Phil Simon

©2010 Phil Simon. All Rights Reserved.

Related posts:

1. Lessons from The BRITE ’10 Conference, Part 1
2. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part II – Leaps of Faith?
3. Lessons from Social Media Meet-Up, Part I – Measuring is Easy; Evaluation is Hard.