I wasn't really paying attention to all this Jay Leno prime-time stuff until I stumbled across a blog post by Brian Stelter on the NYTimes.com website (a version of his post was published in the New York print edition of the Times). Brian's article essentially walks through NBC's reasoning for moving Leno into the 10pm time-slot.

The article outlines how the 10pm time-slot is dead because viewers are recording programs on their DVRs at 8pm and 9pm, then watching them at 10pm. Shows like "Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost" are the programs referenced in the article that draw potential 10pm viewers to their TiVo (or equivalent).
[DVR Time from O Pish Posh on flickr] Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment is claiming that Leno at 10 is "totally DVR-proof" (according to Stelter's article). This article, and the claims of the NBC executives, really got me thinking about some issues that need to be addressed.

First, I don't have the data, but is the audience drawn to Jay Leno the same people watching "Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost?" I'm thinking the viewers of these sci-fi dramas are more of the Letterman/O'Brien types. Additionally, is the audience that Leno draws in line with DVR usage? Granted, I'm not a TV expert, but the issues of audience alignment weren't addressed in the article. BusinessWeek did address it in this article.

Second, these dramas ("Fringe," "Heroes," and "Lost") are intense programs with intriguing and complex story lines. Naturally, this exaggerates the viewers disdain for disruptive advertisements, which is probably why everyone records the program to watch later (that's what I do).

This just feels like a helpless attempt at attacking a problem (DVR usage) with the wrong solution (prime-time Leno). I wish Leno success, this isn't an attack on him at all. This is, however, an attack on business as usual for marketing and advertising. Many people from these disciplines attend conferences and read articles about how traditional advertising doesn't work. Everyone nods their heads in agreement. But when it's time to go back to the office, all of the old behaviors kick in. Value is still determined by impressions (eyeballs); tactics and strategy still focus on disruption (TV ads, banner ads), and; education programs still teach these methods. The entire marketing and advertising ecosystem depends on antiquated and failing approaches to gaining and retaining customers.

Something seriously needs to change, but don't pile that on Leno's back.

So many companies have ventured into social media (and more will continue to) — Pete's already documented the efforts. But one of the biggest problems we see is that companies implement an initiative and watch to see what happens. And it simply doesn't work very well.

Think about what you would look like if you behaved like a brand. Imagine a party with a group of people standing together talking. You walk up, introduce yourself, and make a statement like, "Barack Obama has no right being our president." Then you walk away. Now, you don't know the political persuasions of the people you just uttered that statement to, but you can't just drop a bomb on a conversation like that and walk away.

Or imagine that you invite a bunch of people you know (some well, some not so well) over to your house for a party. When people show up the door is open, the lights are on, there are music and refreshments inside, but you are nowhere to be found. People might wander in to party anyway, but it just isn't the same.

It just happened recently. Pete's already on top of this Motrin situation, and David Armano has documented the the lack of response (or the default to an older channel to do so).

One of the core components of a social media strategy is to understand that brands are people too. Brands have to respond back and participate in the conversation. Employees will take the actions and interact, but that rolls up as an embodiment of the brand.

I think there are several key elements that dictate how brands must behave that defines their personification within a community. The relationships between brands and customers must be:

1. Enduring — Social interactions aren't campaigns, these are relationships.
    
   
2. Empathetic — Brands need to relate to, acknowledge, and react to its friends' needs.
    
   
3. Mutalistic — This is a symbiotic relationship; both parties must benefit, not one at the expense of the other.
    
   
4. Growing — The relationship must evlove over time, becoming something different and better.
    
   
5. Understanding — You will disagree at times, but you must reconcile and learn from your differences and mistakes.
    
   
6. Active — Conversations need to be frequent so you know what each other is experiencing (and so you can help each other).
    
   

My colleagues have already been talking about similar things. As Kate so aptly pointed out, I wonder what kind of identity crisis this will invoke. And I'll let Pete decide how this impacts the Ego Trap.

I was recently doing some research for work and I stumbled upon the 12 step programs, particularly that of Alcoholics Anonymous. As I read through the steps I started thinking about where marketing is today. Marketing has a problem, and perhaps the best first step is admitting it. So in the spirit of the AA 12 step program, here's a version for marketers.

1. We admit that we are powerless over our customers — our traditional tactics of control and interruption simply no longer work — nor should they ever have.
    
   
2. We accept that speaking with, not at, our customers is the only way to succeed going forward.
    
   
3. Made a decision to open conversations with our customers so we can learn from each other.
    
   
4. Will change the way we behave so we can appropriately respond to customers needs.
    
   
5. Admitted to our customers the nature of our failed approach and promised them we will change our ways.
    
   
6. Our leaders have accepted this approach and are advocates for conversations with our customers.
    
   
7. We are prepared to make significant change within our marketing department and abandon failed tactics.
    
   
8. We are committed to understanding our customers and learning about their needs.
    
   
9. Will do our best to provide a venue for these conversations, and/or participate in third party venues if our customers prefer.
    
   
10. We are committed to being transparent about our efforts going forward, even when we make mistakes.
     
    
11. We will established processes for engaging in dialogue with our customers and studying those conversations to learn and grow our organization — for our benefit and for the benefit of our customers.
     
    
12. Having had an awakening to this new way of communicating, we have become advocates for this approach and try diligently to incorporate it into all of our customer communications.
     
    

I'll refine this going forward, but I would imagine that a marketer who could answer affirmatively to all these questions would be in pretty good shape (or at least headed in the right direction). I guess that makes us consultants 'sponsors' now.

Note: All credit for the AA 12 Step program goes to A. A. World Services.

In my last post I talked about how all media is social. Before I get to my examples in the next few days, I want to talk about the implications of these changes on institutions. Essentially, the process goes like this:

1. Institutions emerge, develop, become successful (or at least sustainable), and eventually become complacent.

    

2. Progressive and resourceful people develop new tools and methods to fulfill needs in an innovative way and do so outside the mainstream institutions and bureaucracy.

    

3. Constituent needs evolve and, eventually, institutions increasingly fail to fulfill those needs.

    

4. Some of those tools and methods evolve and are built upon until sophisticated constituents adopt them.

    

5. Popularity of these new constituent actions reaches a mass audience and institutions recoil in fear because their way of doing things is threatened by the new actions.

    

6. Constituents don't wait for institutions to catch up and continue to push forward.

    

7. Institutions make several failed attempts to change.

    

8. Eventually the change happens, albeit in a slow and painful way.

    

9. Constituents eventually adopt the institutions' solution, possibly with an unexpected player.

    

10. The process starts over again (see step 1).

     

When institutions try and fail to meet the new constituent needs, we witness a deceptive width of the chasm between the current state and the emerging state. In reality, the chasm isn't that wide. The real obstacle is the process and philosophical shift required to operate in an entirely new way.

As my colleague, Pete Kim, so eloquently said it, "many brands secretly fear that connecting with the community will lead to dilution and destruction."

So the real challenge is changing the organization, not meeting the new needs. We see the distance between these types of events get shorter every year, especially in recent years. The 'new organization' must embrace change as part of it's DNA — it's underlying structure must embrace an operating paradigm that enables ease of adaptation.

We've spent a good 6+ years talking about "social media" and how it's an amazing new phenomenon. How the Internet is abound with new behaviors: posting personal videos on the web for all to see; sharing personal information with strangers on social networking sites; using blogs to voice our opinion; etc. It's the topic of many conferences, articles, and conversations across many fields (marketing, IT, business, policy).

However, in reality, none of these behaviors are new. If you think about all of the social tools and behaviors happening today, in almost every case there is an equivalent comparison to activities in the past.

These are the typical behaviors we perceive as new:

• Sharing — Current activities include uploading videos, photos, or other media as well as sharing music playlists with friends. However, people have long had the ability and desire to share with one another such as gifting, commerce/barter, courting, and goodwill.

   

• Connecting — Current activities include creating and maintaining a social network profile and connecting to others (family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances) on social networks, posting messages on friends social network profile, etc. However, people have always connected with one another such as love, mating, friendship, alliance, collaboration, and career advancement.

   

• Opining — Current activities include rating or reviewing products, voting on peer-submitted content (Digg, Dell Idea Storm), or commenting on blog posts. However, people have always had opinions, and channels to voice them such as complaining to friends (WOM), customer service call, letter to editor, or being featured on local or national news.

   

• Broadcasting — Current activities include posting thoughts on a blog, creating podcasts (audio or video), posting thoughts on Twitter, etc. However, people have long broadcasted to others their likes, dislikes, style, and thoughts such as fashion style, product selection and use, blasting a boom box in the park, or telling everyone at a party your thoughts on the upcoming election.

   

• Creating — Current activities include creating videos, altering photos, creating mashups, etc. However, people have been creating things for a long time such as jewelry for sale at a craft faire, home movies, and other craft related activities.

   

As you can see, none of those behaviors are new. But there are several characteristics of today's technologies and behaviors that set them apart from the past, and this is what we really observe as 'new' behaviors. They are:

• Reach — Historically, audiences for the common person have been limited: a tribe, family, friends, neighbors, or the local community. Today's technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.

   

• Accessibility — The means of production for most media used to lie in the hands of enterprises with unlimited resources (financial or human). Today's technologies for media creation are available to anyone at little or no cost.

   

• Usability — The means of production typically required specialized skills and training, both technically and creatively. Today's technologies simplify those processes, or in some cases reinvent them, so anyone can create and operate the means of production.

   

• Transparency — People, especially Americans, historically kept personal information to themselves and had a general distrust of authority (enterprises, government, etc.). Today, people are willing to share anything about themselves (interests, location, family situations, health condition, etc.) in a public venue, and today's technologies make that both possible and purposeful.

   

• Recency — When people did have the means of production and distribution in the past (albeit limited), the time lag between communications was typically long (days, weeks, or even months). It was a limitation of the technology or system in which it operated. Today's technologies enable instantaneous responses and dialog where only the participant determines the delay in response.

   

I'll follow up with several examples soon. In the meantime, what do you think?

How should a company participate in social media?

It's one of the most perplexing issues facing companies today. The trends are clear: people increasingly interact with one another online, amplified by social technologies. But once a company steps in, bad things typically happen. The problem? Firms always place their own needs ahead of their own and they can only think about their product as the subject matter. It's this egoistic approach that turns people off.

We've all me this person. Self-absorbed, always talking about themselves, but never there to listen to what you have to say. They love to hang out with you when you're doing something they enjoy, regardless of your wishes. This is how companies behave. They want a community of people to talk about how the product is--no other subjects allowed. If you're Harley Davidson, Apple, a move studio, a video game maker, or a toy manufacturer, maybe it will happen. But people aren't going to join your social network because they're huge fans of mortgages or toilet paper. This approach diminishes your company's credibility, calls into question your intentions, and basically makes people think you're a prick — just like that person I mentioned above.

So how do you find that level of participation that's just right? It's all about the context of use. Context of use is the situation or scenario in which your product gets used. It's the overarching goal your customer is trying to achieve, of which your product is only a part. So the context is not the mortgage, it's home buying. And it's that context in which a brand can participate. The objective is to create, or facilitate the creation of, content that helps that customer achieve their goal. Don't assume or expect people to just talk about your product--it's the context that matters and it's the context where opportunity is ripe for the picking.

The design approach always begins here — identifying what people are trying to accomplish and then developing a solution that helps them do so. That's why designers use or conduct ethnographic research, participatory design, and eventually usability testing. This situation is no different. Companies need to take a few steps back and look at how they can help their customers. The responsibility lies on the company to identify the need, provide the solution, and then figure out how to make money — you have the resources to do that, not your customer. And when it comes to measurement, I've already talked a lot about how to do that (and I even have new research out that goes into more detail).

This is why a design thinking approach works around the inadequacies of most marketing organizations. It's about meeting customer needs — design will soon be the key differentiator.

Finally, there's a video excerpt of my keynote speech for Forrester's Marketing Forum in Los Angeles (April 8-9, 2008). The theme of the entire conference was based on my report, Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement. I was the opening keynote on the first day of the conference. The title of my speech was Engagement: A New Approach To Understanding Your Customers.

It was pretty exciting once I got on stage, but it certainly was stressful in the preparation and rehearsal phase. It's admittedly difficult to find time with all of the other analyst responsibilities on my plate. Regardless, the keynote was a hit.

I opened with a fascinating story about Jen, an IKEA fan from Ohio. I told her story about attempting to encourage IKEA to open a store near her in Cincinnati. She did this using her fan blog, OHIKEA.com.

Then I debunked the marketing funnel (one of my favorite things to do), introduced my Engagement framework, and aligned it with the buying process. Then I told a story of Laura, who is an engaged user of Glaxo Smith Klein Consumer Healthcare's alli weight loss product. My good friends at Communispace were kind enough to connect me with Laura and share the sucesses of their online community for GSK.

I closed by recommending how to measure engagement. I'll follow up with another post including the details of my speech, but overall the experience was fantastic, I received lots of positive feedback, and it was certainly fun. Kerry was the keynote on day two, discussing Designing For Engagement — and she rocked it as well.

Marketing is too short term. People demand more control over their interactions (with each other, with brands, and with media), and for the most part they get what they ask for. But to effectively engage people, especially in an environment socially charged by technology, the only way companies can realistically communicate with individuals is to do so over a longer time frame. But that significantly changes how agencies and marketers use their staff and keep the creative juices flowing. Everything is geared to the campaign — a set of marketing activities created to achieve a goal within a specified (often short) period of time, and then the activities cease.

Having past experience with ethnographic research, I certainly can attest to the unbelievable value you get from observing people. I'm shocked more companies don't do more of this, but I guess everyone is still bogged down in quantitative data. The problem is, quantitative data tells you 'what' is happening (assuming that you ask the right questions or know what to look for), but what it doesn't do is tell you 'why' people are behaving that way. A deep contextual dive can deliver insights you'd never find elsewhere.

There are a couple new kids on the block that add some interesting flavors to the qualitative research pie. I call it automated ethnography because these techniques enable a constant flow of insight from a larger sample size than you would get from traditional in situ observation.

First, there are recruited online communities. Companies like Communispace or Hive Live recruit several hundred people to join a closed community focused on a brand or subject. The service provider has staff members to maintain the community and administer tasks to learn specific things relevant to the host company. Additionally, the community members can carry on without intervention. According to Communispace, members of their communities are more active that those of open communities.

The second is a category often called Brand Monitoring. Firms include Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Cymfony (TNS Media), MotiveQuest, Umbria, Brandimensions, Visible Technoligies, and Biz360 (interactive agency VML also has a related service called SEER). These services scour online communities, forums, blogs, and other social venues to track conversations about a brand or subject. In some cases, these service providers can detect sentiment (positive, neutral, or negative) or even emotional attributes discovered through text analysis.

I'm in no way advocating that these services replace the need for good old, get your hands dirty, ethnography. On the contrary, I actually feel like they are a fantastic compliment to contextual research. What's unfortunate is that so many companies haven't been enlightened by the insights that can some from this type of research.

We've seen the music industry suffer at the business end of disruptive services like P2P file sharing and the shattering of a business model at the hands of Apple's superior media experience and ecosystem. And, Apple recently took the mobile phone experience and turned it on it's head, leaving the device manufacturers left scratching their heads and the carriers' panties in a wod. The travel industry suffers from transparency thanks to a little site called TripAdvisor. To a lesser degree, the media business has seen some pain and been forced to think hard about their business models, operations, and relevancy. But financial services has gone largely untouched, until now.

I've been paying attention to a number of new players in the financial services space. What sets them apart is that they have little or no affiliation with big financial institutions. What's cool about them is that they use a lot of the new social media technologies and leverage emerging social behaviors — and in many cases they deliver a far superior experience to their elder brethren. There are a handful of them doing different things so I've lumped them into 5 categories.

1. Peer-To-Peer Lending. These services allow people to put up money for loans to other individuals--no banks involved. Default rates are apparently pretty low. Examples include Virgin Money (formerly Circle Lending), Zopa, Prosper, and Kiva
2. Peer-To-Peer Equity (Home). Similar to the P2P lending above, these services allow people to put up a share of the money required to purchase a home, and the actual home buyer borrows from the peer lenders. Examples include Home Equity Share and Shared Spaces (UK).
3. Aggregated Money Management. These bring a new twist to online banking. Essentially they pull in your account information from all of the financial institutions you work with — then they do smart things to help you understand where your money is going. It's very different that than the banking services that only look at the financial products you have from that institution — and the interface/interaction is significantly better in some cases. Examples include expensr, Buxfer, Wesabe, and Mint.
4. Social Investing. This category is a bit more diverse, but essentially they are leveraging social interactions online for investment research or they offer powerful interfaces to online investing &mdash making for a better experience. Examples include bullpoo and Zecco.
5. Micropayments. Last but not least, the ever ellusive micropayment. Financial institutions couldn't figure it out, PayPal didn't quite nail it. Those who have tried typically make the process far too clunky. And many who have tried were left in the wake of complexity. But one new service makes it simple — TipJoy (full disclosure, the founders are good friends of mine and I've been helping them out in a limited way).

I think the most compelling features here are that these services call into question everything we know about how to interact with Financial Services firms. Banks et. al. are used to maintaining control and exclusivity that is bound in complexity, inflexibility, and poor experience. The services I describe above are simple, open, institution agnostic, and delightful experiences. Financial institutions could learn a thing or two — if they're around long enough... ;-)

Expanding on my previous research on engagement (Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement, 06 August 2007 - Forrester Research), I'm kicking off a new research plan to publish an updated report that get's into more of the nitty gritty. The first report developed the working framework for understanding and measuring engagement (involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence). Unfortunately, many people think engagement is time spent on a site. That's just boring, narrow, and just plain lame. There's more to it than that. Surprise, people not only exist in the digital world, but in the physical world too.

So, I've enlisted my colleague, Suresh Vittal, to join me in this quest. He'll co-author the report with me and we'll approach the research together, which is a good thing because he's the heavy hitter when it comes to the technology and analytics.

Show some real corporate responsibility. I'm working on other research (at Forrester) in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility, Green Marketing, and Green Design. My research associate, Evadne Cokeh, will be working on this with me and she's already contributed some great ideas so I'm excited to get this project moving. With all the talk of environmental issues and fair labor treatment, companies really need to think of a way to be a good corporate citizen and not destroy their ecosystem (environmental and economical ecosystems) in their journey to profitability. We're looking forward to contributing to the breadth of work in this space and help companies find ways to be more responsible and still remain economically sustainable.

If you know of any good articles, company examples, or experts in the space whoa re worth talking to, please let us know.

I recently published a Forrester report titled Marketing's New Key Metric: Engagement (more detail here on the Forrester Marketing blog). One interesting aspect of this research was presenting the idea that the marketing funnel is more complex than we may think. I initially presented to my fellow marketing analysts an idea that suggest the funnel was dead. That didn't go over so well, which demonstrates how sacrosanct the funnel is to marketers. However, they also presented a good point that the current funnel (awareness, consideration, preference, purchase, loyalty) is meant to provide a framework for marketers to understand all buying decisions at a meta level. With that, I proposed, and published, that the funnel is more complex, not necessarily dead. The point here (see graphic below) is that the center of the funnel is a lot more complex now. There are a lot of addition factors impact a person's decision making process.

[Click to view the full size image.]

Another insight here is that we need to think differently about what a 'valued customer' is. Traditionally, we think a person that buys a lot from us (at a profitable price point and not necessarily at discount) is a good customer. We through in other factors like frequency and dollar value of purchase, but overall it's about buying. However, one of the ideas I present about engagement is that someone that contributes content that influences others to buy (even if that creator doesn't actually spend much with you) could be extremely valuable. If someone only buys from you once a month, but every time they buy they write an extensive product review that increases the likelihood that readers of that review will buy — that's a valuable person too.

[Thanks to Critical Massers Scott Weisbrod and David Armano as well as Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies for helping carry on the conversation. I'll come back to this idea here very soon.]

Companies are having a real tough time dealing with the uncontrollable exposure they receive at the hands of social media. At Forrester, I cover emerging channels and help companies figure out what’s going on and how they can use these technologies and channels. I constantly get calls from clients asking how to deal with feedback that is outside their control (positive or negative). But control is a big issue for firms, that’s largely what the PR department does — spin messages in the company’s favor and make bad news disappear. Those tactics just don’t work any more. All of this activity is forcing brands to be more transparent. Back in March, Wired published a great article on the subject (The See-through CEO — 15.04).

It boils down to the fact that companies must be more open about their flaws, and that’s really hard for companies to do. But think about it. The exposure is already happening and it’s not going away. Companies that try to hide it and get caught suffer even more ridicule. For example, Wal-Mart was exposed for not properly disclosing (note: full article for subs only) the relationships of the authors of it’s Walmarting Across America blog. Sony suffered a similar problem for it’s attempt at a fake blog authored by teens about the PSP. While companies have a lot to learn, I still give Wal-Mart (and Edelman) some credit for trying to blog. This is just uncharted territory and someone had to make the first mistake. Now we have a better idea where the boundaries are.

From a design thinking perspective, I think there’s a lot of opportunity to use design as the method of communication rather than the marketing approach. Designers create solutions that communicate values all the time. Maybe marketers should work more closely with designers to craft that outreach strategy. Or, what if designers became the new marketers…?