Articles from: Social

Marcelo Calbucci worked for Microsoft as a development manager for 7 years when he decided to leave to start up his own company. In March 2005 after securing $1.3M fundings from VCs he started Sampa.com a ‘personal homepage service’ which allowed you to upload photos, video etc with the idea of sharing it with your friends and family. Now, unfortunately for Marcelo there were a couple of other similar startups on the horison namely Facebook and MySpace and last month after battling for 4 years Sampa.com folded.

Now Marcelo has written a series of 8 short blogs about his experience at Sampa.com where he details his good and bad decisions (http://blog.calbucci.com/marcelo-calbucci/brave-tech-world/Anything-and-Everything-About-Sa.htm). It makes for interesting reading and alot of it is very relevent to us as we help our clients breathe life into new propositions.Here is a small sample of the type of insights he relays:

For about 6-9 months into Sampa I was very much in love with the code and the platform I’ve built. But after the first Alpha and getting users asking some basic “how do I do this?” kind of question I quickly learned that your consumers and your partners couldn’t care less about your code. They didn’t care if it had 10,000 or 300,000 lines of code, if it was open source, if it complied w/ XHTML standards, if it used Tables or not on the HTML. They didn’t give a shit. No one gives a shit about this except developers. But we pat ourselves on the back every time we write well-documented, well-architectured and standard-compliant code.

So after that 6-9 months I just abandon my code and focused on how can I do feature X in the most efficient manner and please users. That takes a 90-degree turn in your thinking. When you care about users, you stop thinking like a geek and you start thinking about short and long term value. Don’t take me the wrong way, I still wrote shared libraries and well-compartmentalized code when I felt we would reuse it in a short period of time, otherwise I would just make the thing work. Later I learned that a lot of those concepts are called “Agile Development”.

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

Through the great team in EPR we launched the 2009 campaign for Red Cross in support of Refugee Week this week.
The Red Cross is asking everyone to look beyond the label of “refugee” often placed on people,a label that’s so damaging and impersonal – and to see refugees for who they really are and what they contribute to the UK.

Not content with resting on our 2008 award-winning laurels in terms of creating PR for the event, we’ve gone bigger and better this year. We’ve created a short film (in conjunction with the brilliant Agenda Collective) starring Mission Impossible 2 and Desperate Housewives star Dougray Scott, highlighting the plight of refugees in the UK and surfacing some of their stories.

Look beyond the label from British Red Cross on Vimeo.

But the real meat of the campaign we’ve created is an online movement to allow individuals to show support for the cause by participating in grass-roots action:

The idea couldn’t be simpler: we’re asking people to change their online status on the 15th June (the start of Refugee Week). To ‘look beyond the label’ by replacing their profile pictures and status, tweeting about it, blogging about it and adding the call to action to their email signatures to encourage the viral spread of the action. We’re hoping to create something a little like an Earth Hour movement here (not as big, but then Earth Hour started off small at first too).

You can check out the site and all the ways you can help here: http://www.lookbeyondthelabel.org/

The success of the campaign depends on its viral reach, so we’re asking everyone we know to please contribute where you can. Changing your email signature over the next 3 weeks to incorporate the message is a good first step (full instructions here: http://www.lookbeyondthelabel.org/email.html); but please take a minute out of your day on the 15th or before to change your Facebook/Twitter profile pics, change your status, and make a visible show of support for the Red Cross through all your social networks. The video is on vimeo which you can link and embed into your blogs etc too.

Its amazing what a little bit of seeding even just from friends will accomplish in getting it out there.

(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.

Came across this delightful documentary/wireless intervention done by an RCA student here in London. This has put more of a smile on my face than the sun coming out today! Its fantastic to hear the diverse range of opinions, conversations, and thoughts (especially about network security) from these suddenly seen neighbours!

Thankyou Anab Jain for keeping the faith.

It reminds me a lot of the underground loungeroom restaurant movement that seems to be gathering momentum at the moment - it seems to be tapping into the same DIY attitude, and delight in making new connections and bringing everything down to the personal, micro-level.

So you’re a “Key Online Influencer“, and you’re off to visit one of you biggest clients to talk about social media.  Upon landing in the client’s home town you fire off a Twitter post stating how much the client’s home town sucks.  Client is subscriber to your Twitter stream.  Client calls you out.  You’re an idiot.

Isn’t the whole point of digital marketing, that it takes the side of the consumer and gives people something valuable? Aren’t we stepping forward into a brave new world of empowered consumers and brands who know how to bring joy into people’s lives. A shame them that something like this is out there. Negative, culturally idiotic, arrogant. Burger King have been smart with the web before, but not this time I fear.

I confess to nicking this post from Ian Tait’s excellent crackunit. But I had to put it up here. We’re always interested in what makes content popular on You Tube. Is this the recipe? Simple idea, well executed and lots of repetition? Kiddy Crack as Mr Tait says. I also can’t help wondering if the MASSIVE global phenomenon of Harry Potter has anything to do with it. I guess in the end, there’s no formula for a phenomenon. Although apparently is one for a fart. Hmmm. The web can be so childish.

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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So, to London’s trendy Hoxton for the party to celebrate the relaunch of Revolution Magazine, complete with free booze courtesy of the guys at Eyeconomy.

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