Media'ZBiz!

I’m still amazed to see that social media still can’t get enough respect in the workplace… and still many multinationals don’t get it.

They always invoke the same reasons:

- security

- performance & ROI

- not a priority

- for young consumers

- for B2C, we are in B2B.

While it’s certain that most companies’ executives I’ve met think they should do something about it…most, don’t have enough arguments to push it internally and make it happen. Here are some:

SECURITY

Paul Proctor, a Gartner VP argued:

Computing security, too, is changing. IT security staff should think carefully before exercising a reflex to prevent employees from communicating with Facebook’s e-mail or Skype’s Internet telephony.

You cannot protect yourself from everything. You must learn to balance risk and performance. The cloud and software as a service have appeal, but they introduce a huge shift in how technology is managed and controlled. Software for intrusion detection, antivirus, and firewall protection is still essential, but there are limits to what’s practical.

China’s incoming firewall revealed that while it’s possible to block some incoming information, it’s not practical to block the widespread outbound flow of information.

Don’t try to shut down the two-way flow of information, because you can’t stop it. Transparency is in.

What I generally recommend is for companies to educate users on the risks and responsibilities of online reputation management and to tell employees that corporate conduct rules apply online, too!

The following presentation about ‘The Future of Work’ is interesting, as gives us some insight about how some foresee work in few years from now.

Another good article I recommend to read is Enterprises Must Get Control of Their Avatars.

PERFORMANCE & ROI

Businesses are increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter for marketing purposes, but those same companies don’t want employees logging on during work hours. For a majority of companies still, an employee wasting time on social media is a performance problem.

Productive employees are too busy with their work to spend lots of time in social media having personal conversations. Instead, they use social media as a mean to get their work done. This is true in any sector of the company, being marketing, PR, HR, R&D, NPD or CRM. Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, employee and users activities can be easily quantified.

Watch this video and read my blog post on ‘How To: Calculate Social Media ROI‘.

In fact, business has not changed. Social Media has just shifted the way business is done. Hard and
 Soft Metrics still apply. Hard metrics for the financial impact: Cost Reduction and Revenue Generation. Soft metrics, the transactional precursors: Brand & Product Mentions, View & Click throughs
 and Traffic
 Impressions.

NOT A PRIORITY

While I might possibly agree that for small companies, with very local business, social media is not their immediate priority, it cannot be the case for companies with consumers spread across markets in one or several continents.

FOR YOUNG CONSUMERS

Let’s take a look at some of the numbers behind the top social networks in order to get a clearer picture of network engagement and user demographics. As Brian Solis had added:

Remember, it’s how you interpret these numbers combined with an understanding of the real world needs and experiences of the people you’re attempting to engage that determines the success or failure of your social media program.

Those numbers clearly show that the 25 – 54 age range represent an average of 42% of total social networks users.

Having said that, what really matters is that with social media, people of all ages are more than ever ‘connected’. They search, discover, comment, dialog, discuss, blog, create, and share all these on social media. At 90:10 Group, which I head for France and Italy, we say ‘a business that operates without a comment box, operates broken’. So get ready.

For B2C, we are in B2B

Traditional B2B marketers resist social media because it doesn’t work when they use it as another outbound marketing channel. They will often say: “We’re a B2B operation! We don’t have social-savvy customers like B2C companies.”

Instead of thinking B2B vs B2C, just think “human” said Chris Brogan.

I can recommend reading B2C vs B2B Social Media – any difference?, as well as The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers by Brian Solis.

To conclude, I recommend business to start looking ahead and transform their enterprise into an ‘Enterprise 2.0‘, for efficient collaboration and knowledge exchange, even if this mean ‘chaos’ for most managers. Enterprise 2.0 changes the traditional structured information flow and order. Information flows laterally as well as up and down, cutting the chains that hold back collaboration in a traditional office environment. But when done right, this chaos boosts overall productivity.

In my previous post ‘Media Social = Etoile de Mer‘ (in French), I mentioned the example of Red Hat a company that has managed to succeed while participating in and contributing to internal and external communities through social networks. This open source model has thus demonstrated that it is entirely possible to design, develop and deliver successful products by using communities.

More and more brands are using the Internet crowd (some calling them tribes and other communities). But still several companies are asking why?

Well, mainly for two reasons:

the 1^st reason:

European consumers can be influenced. In Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, they cheerfully admitted to the agency Weber Shandwick, who wanted to know which channels play a role in purchasing decisions consumers.

Internet plays an important role through consumers’ reviews for 26% of respondents. (23% in France)

Friends and family coming second with an average of 20% of respondents who indicated that advice from this close circle played a major role in their choices. (The Germans have a greater propensity for this channel recommendation with 22% of average. Contradicting, we find the Spaniards to 17%).

Last “human” intermediary, the salesperson meets 13% of the vote.

The more traditional channels of communication shared the lowest scores: 12% for newspapers, 11% for brand sites, 9% for audiovisual media and advertising.

(an extract from the post ‘Europeans prefer the opinion of others to advertising‘ (in French) published on Le Figaro’s blog).

the 2^nd reason:

Consumers do not want anymore to be only at the receiver side … they want to participate and contribute to the development of products and services they buy, they consume. They don’t want anymore to be considered as a ‘homogeneous crowd’.

Marketing 2.0 signaled the end where brands’ marketing considered consumers as a single homogeneous mass. Marketing has evolved to take into account the peculiarities of each with the appearance several years ago of affinity marketing. But with the evolution of social media, it is especially crowdsourcing that knows a boom lately.

Crowdsourcing (or collaborative marketing) is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. This could include asking consumers to vote for a new flavor of food for a new product color or a slogan, a logo or a name of a new product.

The example of Vitamin Water (Coca Cola), which arrived in France a few months ago, is unprecedented. Instead of buying pages in the press and to be promoted in supermarkets, the new drink has used influence and word of mouth for its launch and become a fashionable drink. Some might be skeptical … but when you look closer at their US sales figures of over 650 million euros, you bow (as we say in French).

Vitamin Water has recently crowdsourced the name for its new product, with a 3,500 euros for the winner. The vote for the ‘best name’ has been submitted to Vitamin Water’s over 1 million fans on Facebook. Result: the name to be selected was ‘CONNECT’. Vitamin Water has even pushed its marketing further with the integration of the Facebook logo on its new product packaging to encourage more consumers to become a fan of the brand. This mention ‘Made by fans for fans on Facebook’ has as well been added. Wow!

Several other initiatives of the kind have seen the light in France during 2009.

Danone for example, has organized a big vote on the internet asking users to select the new Danette fragrance.

On ImagineTGV, customers’ contributions are made via their web site. The adoption of Wi-Fi in the TGV has emerged through this process.

Another company to encourage crowdsourcing via its online video platform is EYEKA. Through calls for creation, relayed to a community of over 30,000 Internet users, EYEKA allows brands to solicit quality contributions from the crowd, in a controlled  and clear legal framework. The best creators are rewarded by the brands.

Lately, Honda Auto France has chosen EYEKA for its ‘hybrid for all’ project (‘hybride pour tous’). They are interested to have and share the vision that Internet users have for the ‘hybrid’ in general, without limiting the crowd to the automotive environment. I’ve selected two creations I’ve liked:

Question. Will marketing become as well ‘hybrid’? …where consumers not only participate and contribute to brands’ projects, but also invest financially in it? … as already the case in the movie industry. The new released movie Le Siffleur (The Whistler) by Philippe Lefebvre with Thierry Lhermitte and François Berléand is an example, where 372 members via the social platform PeopleForCinema, were involved in the film and invested each between 20 and 5,000 €. Verdict in a few days, when the 1^st week box office figures are released.

A mix of researchers, planners, brand strategists and social media experts based in London, think that a hybrid model for open innovation can exist.

(post originally written in French)