Category: Reality Check

Yet Another Social Solution

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Last week, yet another social media solution was announced. This time, it came from the Internet giant Google, and it is called Google Buzz. In my opinion, Google Buzz is a mixture of FriendFeed, Facebook, and Twitter.  It resembles FriendFeed in the sense that it can aggregate your activities across multiple social networks and display those to your followers in one place. It resembles Facebook in the sense that it has a status update and commenting function similar to Facebook status update.  And it resembles Twitter in terms of its follower structure and also its status update functionality. The one key difference with Google Buzz, however, is its integration with email, where you see all the buzzes within your Gmail account.

Frankly, I am not impressed. With so many social media solutions already out to “revolutionize” the way we communicate, I am starting to feel indifferent.  Just count the sheer number of social networks out there, and we see how fragmented online social networking has become. While I am a strong believer in the value of social media, the number of competing solutions is suggesting that this market is getting to a more mature stage.  Just like the hundreds of car brands in the earlier part of the last century, we are bound to see a shakeup of this marketplace, and the ones that eventually survive will be the ones that offer differentiation that appeal to a large enough network of consumers.

Doll

So with this idea of differentiation, I thought of doing an exercise.  In market research, there is a technique called brand personification which is used to explore in-depth a brand’s meaning to consumers.  The technique asks consumers to imagine a brand as a person and to describe what this person would be like.  Here I took the liberty and brand personifies some of the best known or “buzzed” social networks we see today.

  • Facebook: A child prodigy who won the heart of America almost overnight. But now at a mature adult age, he has not quite found who he is and who he wants to be. As a result, he does face lift or nip/tuck every so often, and he is hopelessly addicted to Farmville, Cafe World, Happy Aquarium, and the like.
  • Twitter: A geek with an entrepreneurial soul.  He is fun loving, quick to act, and can get really passionate about a topic. But because of interest in a large number of topics, he also shows symptoms of ADD and can have a fairly short attention span.
  • LinkedIn: A businessman dressed in a suit and tie. He is ready to do a sales pitch at any time, and he always carries with him a briefcase no matter where he goes.  In that briefcase, he never forgets to bring with him a copy of his resume in case some better job becomes available.
  • foursquare: An overly social person who thrives on attention to such an extent that he literally lives in the public’s eyes.  His smartphone is his prized possession that indulges his need for constant connection to the outer world.
  • Google Buzz: Someone in his 40’s or possibly 50’s.  He has gotten onto the Internet late, after his son, daughter, and friends have enjoyed it for quite a while.  Once online, he cautiously explores around and finds email as a safe haven for staying connected. He hangs out with @mashable often, who admires him for his infinite wisdom.

Not hard to see that I am a little cynical in almost all of these.  Perhaps we haven’t found the winning formula yet?  Or perhaps I am just an outlier in the sample.  If I were to pick one from this list as my friend, I would choose the geeky Twitter, which is also the service that I find myself gravitate toward the most nowadays.  What would your choice be?

Trends to Watch in 2010

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New Year is a great time to look forward and to anticipate and prepare for what is to come.  So I thought I would use this blog to discuss a few important trends that I believe will impact the way we do business in the future.  This originated from a question asked of me on a fellowship application: “What do you think are the 3 most important trends affecting business, technology & communications?”  Below is my response.

2010 New Year

1. Emergence of “Individual” Corporate Identity

As social media give companies an opportunity to step closer to their end customers, this new strategy also puts individual faces onto what used to be a collective corporate identity.  Two cases in point: Peter Cashmore for Mashable, Scott Monty for Ford, to name just a few.  While such corporate spokespersons have existed before, now they have a much more personal face that interact with consumers day in and day out. This new corporate “individual” identity can have important implications for corporate branding and even companies’ hiring practices.

2. Mobilization of communication via geo-enabled services and mobile devices

Foursquare, need I say more?  Undoubtedly this represents great business opportunities for many companies. But more than that, this finally arriving mobile market is going to create new consumer privacy concerns and will require new types of policy to regulate how consumers’ geographic information can be used and protected.  Coupled with the buzz on real-time search and interaction, business practice and public policy in this area can be complicated.

3. Real-time verbal and textual translation

Google recently added a real-time translation service that can be integrated into an online chat session or used via its new Google Wave service.  When the precision of this type of services improves, its impact on cross-cultural communication will be tremendous. With the help of the Internet and social media, individuals already collaborate in many areas such as R&D, open source applications, and cause advocacy.  Now only imagine magnifying this many times to a global scale.

In the spirit of this blog, I’d also like to refer my interested readers to the predictions made by a few other web and social media experts:

What about you?  What do you expect to see in 2010? Whether you agree or disagree with all these predictions, I hope everyone has a happy and productive year!

Best Practices — Engaging Customers at ING Direct

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Established about about nine years ago, ING Direct (the US subsidiary of the Netherlands-originated ING Group) has quickly become a popular bank among tech-savvy and savings-oriented customers.  Much of its success can be contributed to the way it engages and empowers consumers, as described in the book The Orange Code coauthored by ING Direct’s founder & CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann and the branding expert Bruce Philip.

Start with the Brand
As a brand, ING Direct stands out with its distinctive orange dot logo, like the way Apple stands out with its half-eaten apple logo. The color came from its parent company ING Group’s logo — an orange lion.  Considered the most “edible” color, the warm tone of orange conveys a sense of energy and caring. The dot further adds the touch of fun and rebellion.  Together, the orange dot is a significant departure from the usual uptight image of suit and a tie associated with most banks.  This is perfect for ING Direct’s target audience of younger and tech-savvy consumers.

ING Direct Facebook

Social Media Engagement

ING Direct’s social media portfolio consists of a fairly standard set of tools: Facebook page, Twitter, Flicker, YouTube, and a blog called “We, the Savers“.  While any company can establish a presence on these social networking sites, not everyone is able to build them into interactive channels that truly engage the customer. I am especially impressed with ING Direct’s Facebook page (see the screenshot above).  Here are a few things that I think they are doing particularly well:

1. A clear mission: consumers. Instead of trying to sell their financial products, the page has a clear mission: to serve “We, the Saver”.  As the little blurb in the left side bar puts it concisely: “Proud to be a Saver? You’ve come to the right place. It’s where we inspire our fellow Americans to save their money.” This goal of “inspiring” rather than “selling” brings consumers much closer to the company, uniting the savers into one big family. In today’s economic environment, this likely resonates with a lot of consumers.

2. Content from third-party sources that has nothing directly to do with the bank but very relevant to consumers. For example, a recent post on the page is an article from the website getrichslowly.org on how to use a flowchart to evaluate potential purchases. This is information that savers would really be interested in reading. ING Direct then adds a little personal touch to the content by adding in the comment: “We learned about flow charts in 7th grade English class. This is the first practical use we’ve seen since then:” This again reflects a consumer-centered approach and comes cross to consumers neither as pushy nor condescending as one might expect from a commercial bank.

3. Plenty of opportunities for interaction. Oftentimes ING Direct posts little fun questions to consumers on the page (and via Twitter).  Here are a few questions asked recently: (1) “The library, visiting a pumpkin farm & going to the park are three great free fall activities. What are your favorite fall must dos?” (2) “Our favorite “money” movie quote may be from Swingers- ‘You’re so money and you don’t even know it!’ What’s yours?” (3) “Simple tips from everyday people on how to save money on everyday expenses: Got any others?” (4) “Will your next car be new, or pre-owned?”  These questions are things that consumers can easily relate to and answer, which motivate them to participate in the conversation.  I always see at least a dozen responses and comments on such posts, which also translates into potential better understanding of consumers by the company.

Take Away for Marketing Practitioners

Social media give power to people, and to win in this arena, focusing on the people is a must. Traditional mindset of selling is not going to work in this setting. If your business does not have the courage and culture to adapt to this new collaborative environment, it may be worse to pretend to be a social media participant when nothing you do is “social”. The end results will be skeptical consumers and wasted resources. ING Direct’s social media strategy offers good ideas on how to do this properly. For those who want further guidance, I recommend this Smashing Magazine article: “Social Network Design: Examples and Best Practices“. You may also find this report on the top 100 brands’ customer engagement level and its business impact useful.

Take Away for Marketing Academics

While customer relationship management and relationship marketing have gained strong hold in the academic marketing discipline, I think there has not been enough attention paid to customer engagement, especially through the use of social media.  I suggest a few research questions below that I believe are relevant to both marketing theory and practice.

  • How do we properly gauge customer engagement?  Is this a state of mind?  Or is this measured by the number of conversations and/or followers?
  • How should models of persuasion in traditional advertising being modified in the context of customer engagement?
  • Do consumers undergo different processes to form their attitude and satisfaction judgment when they are engaged with the brand vs. when they are not?
  • What metrics should be used to measure the outcome/ROI of customer engagement?
  • With these metrics in place, can we show that customer engagement does lead to visible business benefits?

What are your thoughts about customer engagement?  I’d love to hear your stories and questions about customer engagement.