Serving is the new selling

trendwatching.com's April 2010 Trend Briefing covering "BRAND BUTLERS": "For consumers, time, convenience, control and independence are the new currencies: this need requires B2C brands to turn many of their 'campaigns' if not all interactions with their customers into broader services. In short: a shift from 'broadcasting' to assisting."
Very inspiring trend briefing: it explains how a content marketing strategy (e.g. how-to videos, "friendly experts"), mobile applications and online/offline events can be part of an effictive, integrated and consumer-centric brand strategy.
I would, however, rather not use the butler image: it still implies an arm length's distance and a very business-like, formal relationship between companies/brands and their customers/consumers. Maybe bar tender is a more useful image. What do you think?

Social Media in Product Management /cc @spatially

Great slideshow by John Gatrell, especially interesting for slide 19: Social Media in Product Management (mainly as a feedback loop).

No Such Thing As Social Products

View more presentations from Jon Gatrell.

I'm not sure what to think of the title, No Such Thing As Social Products. Of course, social is all about people (as opposed to networks, tools, channels, etc). But there must be products that either fascinate or irritate people so much that they are the starting point of many conversations online. I've been in Marketing for the last five or six years or so, with the last 1,5 years unable to touch/change/create the "product". A frustrating experience, because no super social media/ad campaign can "fix" a product that doesn't make people talk about it, let alone recommend it.

Only in Japan

There's much more to Japan than bonsai, kabuki, sumo, sadou, origami, and kimonos. This video explains what Japanese girls are obsessed with, why Tokyo is so crowded, how tons of food are wasted every day, and the role of robots in daily life.

Japan-The Strange Country (English ver.) from Kenichi on Vimeo.

David Lynch on the importance of music while creating HT @nozap

This Is David Lynch from Mashed in Plastic on Vimeo.

David Lynch: "Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity"
Angelo Badalamenti: "Shelly" (from "Twin Peaks: Season Two")

From the album Mashed in Plastic mashedinplastic.co.uk
Mashup by Neiltomo atomixextendedcuts.blogspot.com/
Video by The Reborn Identity rebornidentity.com

A social organization requires social business planning

Social Media Is Dead: Long Live Common Sense.

View more presentations from David Armano.

I especially like David Armano's view on the impact of social media strategies on an organisation. In his view, Corporate Marketing/Communication drives the different marketing/comm channels:

• TM Traditional Marketing
• DM Digital Marketing
• SM Social Media
• PR Public Relations

He sees two types of Conversation Managers:

1. Social Media Manager for customer engagement
2. social Media Manager for employee engagement

Bot report to a Social Media Director, who reports to what I'm guessing would be the CMO of the company, and is held accountable to a Social Media Executive Committee.

10 cool Belgians to follow on Google Buzz

I'm finally starting to "get" Google Buzz and how it relates to my Google profile. For me, it's a delicious killer. I order to be able to add interesting sites to my Google Reader Shared Items, I use a little bookmarklet for Firefox.
Now I use Google Reader as my public bookmark sharing tool, but one that works both ways: ever since I've started following more Google Reader users back, I've come across really interesting sites to put in my feed. I guess that's where the fun part (Buzz) starts. Need a good headstart? Add these ten Belgians for more, and often daily, inspiration:

1. DJ Kabout aka @boskabout
2. Christophe Gesché aka @Moosh_be
3. Zoltán Jánosi aka @janosizoltan
4. Kevin De Mulder aka @clopin (by the way, it's his birthday today and it shows on his profile!)
5. Wim Lockefeer aka @sparehed
6. Alexander Koprivnicanec aka @kaosproject
7. Lamazone aka @lamazone
8. Jan Debonnet aka @dubtje
9. Litrik De Roy aka @litrik
10. Nils Geylen aka @nilsgeylen

Who are your favourite Buzzers?

Bad ads make kittens cry

A short film about what the future of advertising might look like.

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

Speaker slides at 140 Character Conference Brussels

Catching A Lead In Mid-Air

View more presentations from Clo Willaerts.

An unexpected pleasure

Unexpected, colourful and cool - like a multi flavoured ice cream on a hot summer day.

Tales of the Unexpected from More Soon on Vimeo.

Are you a good dancer? /cc @CharlesBesondy

Interesting graph at Hee-Haw Marketing: Where do conversations come from?.
It's true that many companies don't spend enough time and money on making the customer experience worth talking about. This goes for anything before (initial consideration set, active evaluation) and after (postpurchase experience) the moment of purchase. Most time and money goes to the pre-purchase trigger (convincing people with advertising campaigns that they need a certain product or service, and that they should buy it now). And once a consumer is driven into the sales funnel, the deal is done.
First of all: it's not a funnel, it's a dance. And secondly: the dance continues after the sales. Depending on his experience with the product or service, the customer could turn either into a loyal customer or a rager. In both cases his reviews will drive conversations. And, if you're a good dancer, it will drive conversions as well.
More later on the whole dance thing. And thank you @CharlesBesondy for putting me on the right track. Twitter is great for testing your ideas with thought leaders. I take the conversations to a place a bit more quiet, like my blog, because sometimes ideas need a bit more time. And many of my sparring partners live in a different time zone, which adds a lot of lag time.
Hope you don't mind.

The virtual knitting club

There's an interview with me in the current edition of dmix (formerly: iAct), the bimonthly magazine for direct marketeers and bdma members. Other interviewees are a.o. Rosette van Rossem (la petite grande dame indeed), Joke Claesen (strategic director at TEQUILA), Griet Verhaert (Ugent), Muriel Scherre (la fille d'0r), Karin De Bruyn (@blissbohemian), and Ingrid Walry (CEO of Sebeco).

Great work by Trix the Company. More scans on Trix Facebook pictures.

The power of customer reviews

YouTube - GOOD Transparency: Modern Retail: "More and more of our shopping is happening online. And in the digital marketplace, shoppers write and read millions of reviews each year, transforming the way we make buying decisions—and how companies make their products. Welcome to the information-saturated world of internet retail."

Baby makes an iPhone app talk /cc @recordmakers

Record Makers is a French independent label celebrating 10 years of activity. For the occasion, artists Mrzyk & Moriceau have created a surrealistic iPhone game in which you can create random art by swiping different parts of the drawing.
Why am I telling you this? Because they're advertising this game with a hypnotizing little Vimeo animation movie that will make you sit through four minutes of staring at a long-haired girl's moving derrière.

Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

This is, of course, another proof of my theory that in advertising sex no longer sells. At best, it temporarily distracts the viewer but the effect on sales... -

Wait, you still there?

Is your social media activity breaking the law?

From the excellent User generated content and the law, a free guide from moderation company Tempero:

1. Marketers should not falsely claim or imply that they are acting as consumers or for purposes outside their trade, business, craft or profession.
2. Falsely representing a consumer in social media is illegal under the 2008 UK Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations.
3. Astroturfing is when a campaign is run online, with the intention of influencing consumers or politicians by appearing to be a genuine "grassroots" movement. Astroturfing is illegal in the UK.
4. Excessive bias when moderating comments, to favour your brand and remove negative remarks, could be construed as false advertising, especially if you give users the impression your platform is for free and fair comment.

This is, of course, based on UK legislation. Anyone knows what the situation in e.g. Belgium is?

I'm a character!

The #140conf events, conferences provide a platform for the worldwide twitter community to: listen, connect, share and engage with each other, while collectively exploring the effects of the emerging real-time internet on business. So far they have taken place in: New York City, Los Angeles, London and Tel Aviv.
But since this morning, the 1st #140conf BXL Brussels is a fact. On Wednesday the 17th of March I'm one of the speakers. The others are:

• Misae Richwoods (@minxymoggy): Entrepreneur, tech freak, revolutionary, investor, fashionista, fighter, fruitarian and general fruitcake from London
• Béate Vervaecke (@beatever): Online marketing and communication specialist

Others to be confirmed !

Penguins in Heaven beautiful 3D animation

Just a little 3D animation to cheer you up. I bet ZERO-X Airlines is a Richard Branson initiative.

Penguins in Heaven from Federico Costa on Vimeo.

Congrats Van Os-Sonnevelt: you have passionate customers

I'm a bit messy sometimes. Late this afternoon, I realised I still had to get some chairs and tables for the Zappybaby.be booth at the Babyboom.be event later this week. I launched this on Twitter:

Looking for a Belgian company that rents fair furniture. Need some chairs and tables by Thu, for rent until Sun night. Any recommendations?

Within the hour, I got no less than 28 leads for 21 different rental companies. 22 of these leads were through public Twitter reply, 4 were recommended through Twitter DM, and 2 reacted via Linkedin (where my Tweets are reposted).
The results? The most recommended rental company is Van Os-Sonnevelt. Honourable mentions for Schoeters, Femat, Festarent, Levi and Rentevent. Guys, you have customers who love what you do. More details in this Google Spreadsheet.
I'm going to make some phonecalls first thing in the morning. Might be able to borrow Vitra chairs from a friend, too.
I love it when a plan comes together.

Six years of blogging

This day six years ago I started blogging here with a quote from T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland - V. What the Thunder Said". Looking back I think there are worse ways to start a blog :-)

I had been publishing at e.g. a Telenet business blog (thanks to Tom De Bruyne) and a group blog called Toink (thanks to John Baeyens) but eventually I started my own more or less by accident. There was a Mozilla bookmarklet called "blogthis" that allowed you to publish by highlighting a text, then pushing the "publish" button. This simple technique helped me avoid one of the Big Questions back then: which blog platform should I pick? There were literally thirty of forty to choose from back then. BlogThis automatically posted to Blogger/Blogspot, the Google blogging platform. Couldn't be easier.
Another Big Question for wannabe bloggers back in 2004 was: What should I blog about? I had no clue, and to be honest I still don't have a real focus, but when I saw how then-Yahoo employee Jeremy Zadowny was doing it (blogging about whatever came across his mind), I thought to myself: I could do exactly the same. Just dump links, quote other posts, gradually add images as the Blogger/Blogspot platform evolved, and after a few years my bnox.be domain didn't point to my corporate website, but to my blog and not much more.

And now my blog is helping me gather my thoughts for what might become a book about the impact of social media and cloud computing on business processes. I'm using the tag "conversity" to organise them. I'm not sure if it will actually end up publishing this book but it's nice to have some kind of a public archive of all the stuff I come across. Twitter Search kills its own archive after 1,5 days or so, meaning everything you say on Twitter is dust in the wind. Facebook is a) not public and b) automatically owns everything you upload to their platform - and I'm a bit uncomfortable with that.
But I always get far more feedback on both Twitter and Facebook so since a couple of weeks my blog posts are relayed to Twitter (using Google Feedburner) and to my Facebook profile (using Facebook's Notes feature). We'll see where all this thinking aloud and archiving in public gets me. The important thing is: I still enjoy blogging. After six years I'm finally starting to find my own voice.

By the way, my two initial blogging triggers are still around:

• What is BlogThis! ? at Google Blogger help
• Jeremy Zadwowny's blog, recently moved to Wordpress, now works for Craigslist.

Launch and leave /cc @gerrymcgovern

Web satisfaction specialist Gerry McGovern just published a piece about how cloud computing and virtualization reflect a general movement driven by the Web: a shift towards a more service-driven economy. From Giraffe Forum - The shift to service:

A service-driven economy will be different from a product-driven economy. Why? Because the most important thing will be the service. [...] That changes how you think about what you’re getting.

Most organizations are structured around a launch and leave project-based culture of products, marketing and communication campaigns. The reward is for producing things (products, websites, brochures, videos, advertising campaigns). In a service-driven economy, the reward-structure will be based on how happy the customer is with your service.

[...]In service-driven economies people are locked in by trust and satisfaction, not by the fact that they have made a major investment in a product and must stick with it."

I actually took notes while reading that blog post: this shift from a product focused economy to a service focused one could explain why classic advertising (product launches, new features, new name, ...) is claimed to be less and less effective. And why consumers perceive these classic forms of marketing as false and fake.

The shift is not just from products to service, from shops or boxes to the cloud, but also from one-offs to long term relationships between customers and suppliers. It also means a shift from "hit and run" selling to a series of transactions, starting with e.g. informing, over the moment of purchase, to customer care without specific expiry date.

If this is true, the role of advertising agencies will have to change. They are used to making a lot of money with delivering product ideas, websites, brochures, videos and advertising campaigns to their customers, the advertisers. The question is, of course: what will be their new business model?

Your thoughts?

Listening to Jimi Hendrix: Valleys of Neptune

By February 1969, 26 year old James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix knew exactly what he wanted his songs to sound like. And if you listen to the right tracks on the just released posthumous compilation Valleys of Neptune, and if you do so in the right order, you get a pretty good idea of how during barely six months, his musical genius evolved. All you have to do is reorganise the album’s playlist a little :

1. Sit down and listen to the moody, almost 5 minutes long Crying Blue Rain, by far my favourite Hendrix song on this compilation. Recorded in February 1969 in between a European Tour and two concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. If you downloaded only one song from the album, it would have to be this one.
2. From that same studio session, pick Lover Man, another previously unreleased recording, and the instrumental Cream cover Sunshine Of Your Love.
3. The next day, the band recorded alternate takes of older Hendrix songs Fire and Red House. Interesting only for the sake of completion. Hendrix biographer John McDermott mentions in the booklet that Hendrix was growing increasinly unhappy with bass player Noel Redding’s performance, so I couldn’t help myself and tried to find evidence of that in these versions.
4. Two months later, back in New York, the band (still including Noel Redding) recorded Hear my train a comin in one take. You should listen to this one because the version most of us know was an overdubbed 1975 one with tracks from session musicians Hendrix had never even met.
5. Lullaby for the Summer was recorded on that same day in April and for reasons no one really knows was previously unreleased. Something about a lost tape, I’m not sure.
6. Ships Passing Through the Night is another one of those tracks that mysteriously went missing. It was one of the last recordings that still had Noel Reddings on the bass.
7. The Elmore James cover Bleeding Heart is another interesting one. Recorded ten days after « Ships Passing », with Hendrix’ old Army buddy Billy Cox on the bass.
8. And then the famous Summer of 69 happened. Hendrix performed at the Woodstock music festival. A year later he died in London, in mysterious and possibly drug related circumstances. He was only 27.

You will notice I left out three songs from the playlist.

1. Mr. Bad Luck may be previously unreleased, but Hendrix later reworked it to other songs. And I particularly don’t like the fact that Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell upgraded their original bass and drum parts in 1987. If Mr Hendrix wasn’t happy with the 1967 version, they shouldn’t have redone it without him 17 years after his death. That’s just… a bit lame.
2. Stone Free, in a version of May 1969, may be an iconic Hendrix song, but this is a not much more than an alternate take. I like the older versions better even if they may sound a little bit more rough, or even rushed.
3. Valleys of Neptune was also previously unreleased and the song this compilation was named after. The recordings were made in September ’69 (right after Woodstock) and then again in May 1970. But for some reason I like to think of Hendrix’ music genius as something that reached its peak at Woodstock. After that, he lost a lot of energy in more fights with musicians, producers, lawyers, record company and tax people.

Released by Sony Legacy in conjunction with Experience Hendrix, the company that oversees the guitarist’s estate, “Valleys” will no doubt be criticized as a "cash in".
This compilation, however, is a unique opportunity to witness one of the most interesting periods in Jimi Hendrix’ musical career – the period between the European Tour in February 1969, up until Woodstock in August later that year. Hendrix was working hard to develop his own style, experimenting with amplifiers and what the author of his Wikipedia entry calls Hendrix’ typical feedback, wah-wah and fuzz-laden soloing. Even if you're not a die-hard Hendrix fan or collectionist, witnessing how one of the best guitarists ever finds the perfect riff is a true privilege.

I hope there's more from whatever dustry drawer this came from.

Watering holes for buying intentions cc/ @johnbattelle @cliqology

A couple of days ago I had an inspiring conversation with Cliqology's Scott Hoffman, the author of Status Updates Are the Window to Your Soul. He spoke about Consumer intent through social media at Webtrends Engage event last month in New Orleans and I watched the YouTube video of his talk about three times in a row.
According to Scott Hoffman, The Challenge to Search will come in the form of a Status Update but I might add the opportunity for sales will come in the form of status updates - which is why any company looking for more value should find and monitor their customers and prospects' key channels (or watering holes as they are called in Altimeter Group's report Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management).

But what are today's online watering holes for consumers' buying intentions? Part of the answer is in John Battelle's rudimentary chart:

He is right: the database of intentions is far larger than everybody previously thought. It's also increasingly more realtime - which makes it a lot harder to track.

I'm still not convinced that location status updates are a "crowning declaration of intent" - I see the gowalla and foursquare users in my social network mainly bringing their babies to day care, arriving at work or at home, or buying charcuterie at the local butcher's. These are mainly based on routine patterns; stuff they do every day or every week. Personally I think that the biggest selling opportunity happens when something changes in people's routines, like when they get a new job, make a baby, or when their car breaks down unexpectedly. I'm still thinking these buying triggers over a bit and will write more about it in a separate post.

But in the meanwhile: what do you think of John Batelle's chart?

Tools to catch a lead in mid-air, by @rwang0 and @jowyang

From Altimeter Group's report Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management:

Rapid adoption of social networking enables users to connect with individuals and communities who share mutual interests, increasingly leaving organizations out of the conversation. Simply hiring more people to keep up with social marketing, sales, and support will not be sufficient, as consumers and their new channels will always outnumber employees. As a result, companies need an organized approach using enterprise software that connects business units to the social web – giving them the opportunity to respond in near-real time, and in a coordinated fashion.

In a previous post, I stated that hiring a Conversation Manager to keep up with social marketing and support is not enough - in 2010, businesses need to focus on social sales. Altimeter's report is already beyond the companies should: it offers a reference guide to real-world entry points for Social CRM projects. The problem is, however, that Altimeter proposes different vendors for the 5 M's (Measurement, Middleware, Management, Mapping and Monitoring) in the process. That's going to be a very expensive and complex ecosystem. And isn't the whole idea to optimise and improve the way businesses are making money?

I was particularly interested in the part about Proactive Social Lead Generation (monitoring key channels for sales opportunities). The report mentions "a sales representative at a medical technology company" who intercepted a conversation in a chat group about a prospect’s concern. She jumped in and shared best practices with the prospect. How this story ends? "Impressed by her professionalism, the prospect awarded a multimillion dollar deal to a company they had never even shortlisted."
I'd like to find (or create?) a more specific and documented example of this Conversations to Conversions mechanic. Can you help?

Also interesting: according to the report, Vendors to watch in this space are Sales 2.0 appInsideView, Social Business Software vendor Jive Software, Social CRM and Community Solutions company Lithium Technologies, and enterprise online collaboration and community software vendor Telligent. Anyone worked with any of these before? Does the software force consumers to use it, or is it used to improve existing business processes?

The importance of straightforwardness /cc @satisfaction

Company-Customer Pact: "Customers expect honest, straightforward interactions where their voices are heard, before, during, and between purchases. Companies work to inspire customer satisfaction and brand loyalty by constantly improving the products and services they offer.
It is evident that we all have a crucial stake – and responsibility – in transforming the adversarial tone that all too often dominates the customer experience. If we work together and share the responsibility of furthering effective conversation, we can build mutually respectful long-term relationships."
I'm still thinking about my Conversations to Conversions piece and the concept of being straightforward is crucial. Straightforwardness works both ways: companies should communicate as directly as possible about what they're trying to sell, and customers or potential customers should be straightforward about their expectations from the products or services they're thinking of buying.
In the first case: why is it that "selling" has become a dirty word? Why is advertising often beating about the bush, teasing and wooing? And in the second case: Why aren't customers more vocal about what they're really expecting from companies? Because maybe they're misinformed and expecting the impossible. Or maybe, if the expectations and the actual quality of the product or service don't match, they can be part of the company's process to make the service better.

What do you think? I'm using the conversity tag to keep track of my posts. Not sure if I will use this word but it's short and unique enough to use as a tag.

By the way: if you're interested in customer communities, the benefits of transparency, principles of hospitality, and the Company-Customer Pact, the Get Satisfaction Blog is a great place to start.

Web surrealist @Om_Sun

LARRY CARLSON: "G4Tech TV called him 'The Salvador Dali of the Next Century', and High Times magazine labeled him an 'artistic mastermind. Through his art, he presents us with the mystical dimensions of consciousness, coaxing us into sweet spiritualized epiphanies one moment then plunging us into completely bizarre surreal frenzies the next. His work is more than just eye candy for stoners. In the tradition of arch-surrealists like Miro and Magritte, Carlson at his best gives us a kind of disjointed representation of the slippery nature of the unconscious mind, driven to Dionysian extremes. Carlson's work fuses together aspects of the occult and mysticism with surrealism , psychedelic with pop and kitsch, and naturalism with the technological, resulting in sublime juxtapositions that totally bend one's perception."

CONTACT THE STAR PEOPLE from Larry Carlson on Vimeo.

Illuminatus in love

Tokyo/Glow HD from Nathan Johnston on Vimeo.

Tokyo/Glow "follows the nighttime journey of an illuminated man from a crosswalk sign as he embarks on an adventure through the streets of Tokyo. [...] To achieve the striking effect of the illuminated man, an original light suit was constructed using hundreds of feet of high-voltage LED rope lights and a translucent nylon outer shell."
By the way, did you know that the East German little traffic light man actually has a female equivalent: she's called the Ampelfrau.

Conversations, yes, but what about conversions? /cc @Steven_InSites

Yesterday I was one in the crowd at the launch event of InSites' Steven Van Belleghem's book The Conversation Manager.

Steven is a great speaker but personally I think that his idea of hiring a dedicated Conversation Manager or even Chief Social Officer doesn't go far enough.

Don't get me wrong: it's really great that some companies already have FTE's dedicated to joining and influencing the conversation. Check out the Linkedin Profiles and Twitter bios of Dirk Dewulf / @__xiii__ and Philippe Borremans / @horationelson for two great examples of companies taking the lead there.
But lately I'm obsessed with the role of social media in the full buying decision cycle of consumers. Thanks to social media, we can hear consumers think aloud not just when they have bought a certain product (and are vocal about being a happy or an unhappy customer) - you can also see them ask advice about which products or brands they should consider long before the actual moment of purchase and they actually take into account their peers' opinions a lot more than traditional advertising. Or as McKinsey state it: "the explosion of product choices and digital channels, coupled with the emergence of an increasingly discerning, well-informed consumer."
A typical succesful conversation manager is very good at putting the public back in public relations and putting the care back in customer care but what kind of "dedicated social media employee" would it take to actually monitor and guide the consumer decision journey before the moment of purchase? Why are there only dotted lines between social media and the actual sales act?

I have a couple of theories in my head (besides the obvious search engines and content marketing strategies), but have to test them first. As soon as they hatch, you'll be the first to know. Even got a book title for it, too: From conversations to conversions. And a subtitle with social sales or something in it. What do you think?

Women Are Heroes

JR / Exposition Paris 2009 - Ile Saint Louis
door JR

In September 2009, French artist JR covered walls and bridges in Paris with 70 immense photos of women to whom he wanted to pay a tribute - women photographed during wars. After a few weeks, the photos detoriated and where removed.

Found via Wooster Collective.

Frito Lay Dips Vimeo Ad Got Sauce

“And Then There Was Salsa” on Vimeo: "Welcome to the world of Tostitos Restaurant Style Salsa. A land of luscious tomato trees, spicy jalapeño cacti and canopies of fresh cilantro where anything is possible."

Awesome example of progressive webvideo advertising, found via Adverblog.