Articles from: Conversation

As a warm up to a BT show and tell, we decided to go back to the time of tapes and answer phones. To celebrate the ‘I’m not here speak after the beep’ message that was once a mainstay of every boozy bachelor pad that has now been replaced by that annoying voice from your network operator.

Cue a challenge; create an answer phone message for 3 celebrities, picked at random. Somehow we managed to select the recently departed Michael Jackson, the entertainer Boris Johnson and that annoying band Raygun, who had their own viral pulled by their record company. And yes on reflection we could have picked a better selection.

Michael Jackson
Night creatures call, your butt is mine, your talk is cheap
Something whispers in my ear and no message could be clear-er
I’m bad
Answer right now
If you don’t like what I’m saying just beat it!
It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white
Whoo hoo!
You’re out of time

Raygun
Sorry we can’t get to the phone right now, we’re probably drinking cocktails in the morning or something equally outrageous so please leave a message and we’ll get back to you
To leave a hate message, dial 1
To return a recently bought album, dial 2
If you’re our annoyed record label boss dial 3
Or hold and our manager will be with you shortly

Boris Johnson
I can’t get to the phone right now as I’m probably relaxing in my new summer house enjoying a drink with my best mate Dave, laughing at the former mayors expense…
[ Crashing sound of shed being demolished ]
This number is no longer available hahahaha [in the voice of Ken Livingstone]

So not content with being in this week’s OK Magazine (yes, really), the CRM team have been busy sharing their thoughts on segmentation and the like with NMA in last week’s Customer Relationship Management special.

It’s an interesting article that looks at the (relatively) long established discipline of CRM with a fresh pair of eyes and asks “what’s more important to customer relationships: triggers or Twitter?” It discusses a view shared by the CRM team here - that ‘traditional’ CRM needs to evolve and make use of new, social communication methods, media and technologies.

“CRM 2.0″ or “social CRM”, as some are calling it, is about engaging with consumers on their own terms - joining their conversation. It means talking and listening to your customers at times and in places and in a way that they are comfortable with. From this perspective, the underlying principles of CRM remain true; ensuring relevant and meaningful conversations and interactions (”the right ‘message’ at the right time in the right place”). The proliferation of channels and media just make this a tad more complex!

This new approach to CRM is not just about ‘adding in a few more channels’ - its fundamentally challenging traditional CRM practices (i.e. segmentation and communication strategy) and technologies (i.e. multi-channel campaign management and marketing automation) - requiring them to evolve to accommodate the need to respond to real-time experiences and conversation that consumers expect through interactive channels.

There’s no doubt social media and technologies present real opportunities to better connect and build relationships with customers. Whilst a lot of attention is being paid to the marketing part of CRM, perhaps the greatest potential for improving and advancing relationships is through the service channel. For example, sites like getsatisfaction.com are turning customer service on its head: with customer support evolving into a community conversation between users and the brand.

Read more “Expert Views” on innovations shaping CRM, including my two-penneth! Enjoy!

Pipa

With lots of work to show we decided to adopt a pecha kucha style presentation and crack through 7 projects in super quick time. For those that don’t know - pecha kucha format is 20 slides with 20 seconds a slide. To make sure we ran to time, all the slides were set to autoplay every 20 seconds. Bound to be fun.

We got hear to about:

• - Our work with BT, including BT Business, BT Retail and BT Tradespace.
• - The story behind our Marks in Time showcase.
• - The work on launching Electrolux in France through the Art Home project.
• - A sneak peak of an upcoming project with M&S launching 17th September (watch this space).
• - The latest on our work for Garanti - Turkey’s favourite bank.
• - A summary of the work we’ve done for UMG, including a number of artist sites and some hefty strategy.
• - A preview of the soon to be released Barratt Homes Prestige work and recent campaign activity.

The gods of Pecha Kucha did strike as one of our presentors attempted to move the slide on ahead of schedule, resulting on Powerpoint getting rather confused and moving two slides ahead completely wrong footed the flow. The rules are there to be heeded - attempts to break the 20 second rule will bite you back.

We also had three special guests in the audience from Lost Boys - our Amsterdam office. They were gracious enough to share some of their work for Vodafone with us, including a lovely story explaining how ‘Make the most of now‘ has to be meant not just said.

Pecha kucha is a registered Trademark and all rights rest with it’s creators

So my slightly battered iPhone 3G can now be a tethered modem for my laptop. That’s something I actually find quite appealing for the occasions I’m out and about with no wireless access. What I don’t find appealing is the price of £15 per month. That’s an amount I’d rather not spend - especially given the few times I’d need it. ¹

There’s no doubt the iPhone has been a success for O2 - it’s the phone of choice amongst my peer group - a quite astonishing fact. With so many things I love about my iphone I’m already lusting after a new 3GS for the better camera, faster processor and video capability. Having it supply on-the-go access for my laptop would be brilliant.

Looking at O2’s decision it seems wierd that they would charge a customer the same as a mobile broadband user - especially when you already have the hardware. Moreover isn’t the iPhone supposed to come with unlimited data traffic? ²

So doesn’t this decision mean O2 are effectively charging users that tether for something they already own are entitled for? I can’t see how this thinking is living up to ‘We’re better, connected‘.

You’re back to the old tricks of charging me twice, how is this better?

Ok, so there are several arguments for charging (see footnote), but using this heavy handed monthly contract is going to drive users to crack their phones and use them anyway. For those wanting to crack it - a simple search on Google will tell you the details.

Come on O2 don’t be stupid. Let iPhone customers get a comparable access when they need it - how about you text when you need to activate for a day - then pay £1 for that day’s usage. This is capped to match the the monthly mobile broadband rate.

Fair and easy. And better, connected.

1. Using a tethered laptop would push up data use. Although 3G web speeds are a bit lame on the phone, research shows this perceived browsing speed is actually a function of the browser render speed and less about connection speed. Previous tethering speed tests show decent browsing speeds when using the phone.
2. Although the iPhone has unlimited data on it’s handset - this was a climbdown from the first releases. Originally marketed as unlimited the small print said provided a fairly measly data cap made it far from unlimited. Public pressure brought a clarification where unlimited started to mean unlimited. Any unlimited tariff is of course subject to a fair use policy. With it’s wi-fi support it’s easy to see how the iPhone actually uses less 3G than you might expect. Many of us have wi-fi at home, work, on the train and in urban areas, reducing the demand on O2’s 3G data network. Having a tethered phone changes our usage model and thus is likely to push up data usage.

I’m moved to Blog about Rory Sutherland’s inaugural speech as IPA President. It’s a fine piece of oratory as you’d expect from a fellow cravat wearer (though I’ve always thought mine to be more the mod-style silk scarf).

What’s interesting in his speech is the way Rory articulates the importance of “Social Value” created by brands in the coming age of scarcity. A lot of what he says chimes closely with our own ideas about Building Believable Brands. It’s clear from his speech that the “traditional” world is waking up to the notion that ideas without media spend behind them, creativity with media thinking inherently linked, and ideas of value exchange are going to be the salvation of the communications business.

It’s also clear that Rory understands advertising to be a small component of the picture. So we can look forward to a President keen to engage with digital businesses.

The other thing I got from the speech was this brilliant articulation of what agencies are here to do:

“We create ideas that turn human understanding into business value for our clients”

This is true whether you work in digital, direct, advertising, media or in any of the other unhelpful discipline distinctions we burden ourselves with.

Creativity is often misunderstood by those who are suspicious of it’s aims, as something antithetical to business, making money, selling stuff. This is absolutely not the case and any creative who thinks it is, should go and live in a garret making art.  Creatives in commercial businesses are concerned with understanding why somebody should care about a product or service and then amplifying that feeling, if possible making them love it, and at the very least, buy it.

(Peter Steiner, page 61 of July 5, 1993 issue of The New Yorker, (Vol.69 (LXIX) no. 20)

The above cartoon, the oldest and most reproduced comment about online anonymity you’re likely to find, sums up another local problem we’re having with our critics. As with the phantom Tweeter (Twunt? Twit? Twat?) a few weeks ago, someone has a pop from within the invisible cloak of anonymity, leaving us chasing shadows when we go to respond and engage in some constructive dialogue.

In this case, the initial critical comment, in response to the announcement of LBi’s new Customer Interaction Department on Brand Republic  was taken down fairly promptly because it used banned language - language we’re ok with at LBiQ, crude though it be, so we’ll reproduce the initial comment here, in full:

“woohoo…. way late to the party and already pushing the typical agency shite that says absolutely nothing about anything — a cracking start!”  - Down Low

(I now find that a second comment from our invisible frenemy Down Low, in which she or he criticised Brand Republic for removing his/her original post, has also been removed - presumably for being facile rather than offensive.)

Two things about this:

1) ’shite’ aside, the initial post offers opinions (one we don’t agree with, obviously) about the quality (’shite’) and timeliness (’way late to the party’) of the announcement; but also a statement about the content of the release, which is indisuptably wrong: the release says plenty: names, date, positioning, services to be offered, all in the context of CRM-enabled social/conversation marketing, packed as customer interaction. Read more closely next time please, Down Low!

2) If you look up Down Low’s profile on Brand Republic you find that ‘no biography is available’. Of the five other posts Down Low has made, three have been deleted (including the two about this particular announcement) and of the other two, one reads ‘really weak to eliminate my comment’. Go figure.

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Indeed, to quote ourselves  (pp56-57, in ‘No can has meaning’), on the internet ’we also don’t know whether the person or machine with which we’re communicating is a financial ally or a fraudster, a friend or a foe, a threat or an opportunity, a potential lover or a predatory rapist’.

But what we do know is that entirely critical, non-constructive comments from  anonymous posters do indicate qualities of cowardice, spite, mean-spiritedness and lack of interest in having a public conversation about how we - the online population - work together to improve things - this last being the very thing that Down Low criticises Brand Republic for not demonstrating.

Not very credible, Down Low, but do feel free to comment here if you’re willing to have a sensible and constructive conversation about how you think our new Customer Interaction Department could be improved.

Judging Dubai Lynx has been an experience. Some great judges to spend time with and one or two really interesting pieces of work even if the standard overall is low. But one thing really did take my breath away. Anyone know what to make of this? It’s a quit smoking campaign targeting smokers at Ramadan and looks like it was made by disturbed people at an art therapy class. We have old Coke bottles, we have sand and fag butts and we have un-smoked cigarettes fashioned to look like fireworks. We also have the agency’s name on the front. Bizarre.

We got Twatted on Friday, if that’s the correct usage for being nobbled by rogue Twitterers. Tweetjacked? Twunted?
 
Whatever, a former employee - one has to assume - created a Twitter account in the name of LBi UK and started tweeting negatively about the agency.
 
How did we guess it was a former employee? Well, for a start, the Profile (description of account holder) read ‘a really shit employer’, which kind of gave us an inkling that someone had had a negative experience here.

And then there were a couple of negative comments that showed some inside knowledge about the agency - a particular irritation with the new brand positioning around ‘believability’ was evident.
 
The links to negative/ambiguous press were fair enough - here they are again, for the avoidance of any doubt or wish to hide them - the Margin story and the ePR story. We don’t necessarily agree with the deductions of the ‘margin’/'headcount’ story (and see also here for the whole story on LBi’s strong performance globally in 2008, especially in the UK); but we’re quite proud of the PR announcement.
 
For reasons not fully articulated - quite hard at 140 characters, admittedly - ‘LBiUK’ didn’t like it, though it appeared to be more on grounds of bad journalism than any particular problem with this fast-growing part of the New Marketing landscape.
 
So what did we do about our Twunting friend/enemy? Well, we blogged about it here, for one. We started talking about whether we need to claim our own formal Twitter identity and start using it - we do.
 
And reluctantly - but unavoidably, given shareholder responsibility, etc. - we requested Twitter close the account on grounds of defamation and misrepresentation. There were issues with illegal use of company logo and other assets too.
 
But it was reluctantly, because we haven’t got anything to hide, and also, there’s always quite a lot of appetite for a forceful and forthright discussion at LBi - especially about LBi. The important thing, I think, for everyone here, was that we didn’t try and hush it up and quietly ‘dispose of the problem’.
 
I was quite impressed when I found that ‘LBiUK’ had already disappeared on Saturday morning, since there’s been a fair bit of publicly voiced concern about Twitter’s inability to police itself in real time, and we were told it might be six weeks before anything could be done…

Then again, I now note that Twitter are not taking any responsibility for this and the request hasn’t been dealt with yet - so maybe ‘LBiUK’ has merely slipped back into the shadows, pending another ‘attack’…
 
The most disappointing thing for me was that this could have been done a lot better - funnier, sharper, less petty. ‘LBi UK is a shit employer’? Hardly sparkling repartee, is it?

And ‘LBiUK’, if you’re reading this, please: if you want to have a pop at LBi because you didn’t enjoy working here and think we don’t do things right and hate our new positioning - bring it on, basically. We welcome constructive criticism, always. Only be a mensch, wouldja, and do it in your own name like a grown-up, not in ours, like a child, yeah?
 
By hiding behind LBi branding and identity, you’re doing nothing but the equivalent of shouting rude names from a safe distance and then running away sniggering, like a guilty 12-year-old. This is just a little unbecoming, a bit facile - mildly amusing, but not particularly damaging to us, advantageous to you, or demonstrative of much wit or savvy.

Back in Spring we were lucky enough to get to hang out with the guys at LBi Syrup in NYC. A great time was had by all, (naturally), but the highlight was being there just after the team had launched Hope.Act.Change.com

We looked briefly at the project back in LBiQ 2, but the recap (if you’re unaware of it) goes a little like this: inspired by Obama, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas put out the “yeswecansong“, (part of what Jeff Howe referred to the other night as the first ‘crowdsourcing’ of a presidential candidate).

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