The power of communities…and a new group blog
It is unquestionable that if done right, deploying communities in support of specific business processes can lead to game-changing benefits. To cite just a few examples:
- Ducati was able to fire their marketing department and replace it with a central customer community group responsible for all aspects of marketing - from product design and marketing communications, to creating the overall brand experience.
- In Germany, eBay was able to increase its revenue by 56% by getting existing eBay users to join customer communities.
- And through their “Connect and Develop” strategy - which involves employees, customers, prospects and even competitors, P&G is now able to derive 35% of their innovations and billions of dollars in revenue from the community it’s developed.
But it is also true that a majority of business community initiatives fail, and will continue to do so. Some companies focus too much on the technology architecture to support communities rather the social architecture - forgetting that some of the most successful communities are facilitated through email lists and discussion threads. Others are not investing enough in getting their communities up and running. And then, of course, you have those companies who try to exert too much control, not realizing that communities are like any complex system - you have too few rules and connections and the system disolves in chaos, too many and the system freezes up.
It is with these issues in mind that we are launching a new group blog on the Future of Communities. We have a terrific line up of contributors and hope that you will join the conversation.
[Tags: communities community management marketing plan community marketing]
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January 16th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Mike Hutcheson’s piece on Ducati is misleading; we might have fantasies about eliminating marketing departments, yet actually doing so creates a number of acute, real problems.
Marketing is a discipline; we study and practice it as a craft. And though we use open source marketing techniques to enable and activate our customer communities, planning and strategy is still a necessary component to long-term success.
Of course all employees should be focused on delivering value for their customers and, in a sense, this is marketing.
He asks, “Imagine a church having a religion department?” It does have a religion department: those individuals who, by choice and discipline, give an expert, learned voice to the order. They have perspective and share their knowledge with their brothers and the world.
It seems superfluous to quote Smith, but some minds and skill sets are more efficiently put towards tackling the mechanics of marketing, the same way some minds have the discipline to enjoy cloistered, ecumenical study.
Mr. Hutcheson’s vision is romantic: it would be great if all our marketing was a free-flowing confluence of customer ideas and creative imagination. Yet some tasks are simply not glamorous: orchestrating a cross-media, multi-discipline, global campaign in many languages and cultures takes hard work, discipline and professional craftsmanship. It is not for the amateur.
I predict Ducati will reinstate its marketing department - albeit in a different format, to be sure. After all, brand building is risky if left to indiscriminate chance.
January 20th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
David - thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog.
I am not sure that I fully agree with you though. Do we really need marketing as we have it now - as a separate department that is mostly disconnected from the rest of the market and in most cases disconnected from the rest of the company? True, some tasks like the campaign you describe are tedious and require hard work - but are they still worth the work? Are traditional campaigns still achieving their goals? Shouldn’t we be looking for radically new ways to reach prospects and customers alike?
I agree that this is probably a romantic notion - but I also believe that those who will find alternative ways to market and satisfy customers will reap game-changing rewards. This is not a level playing field…
January 21st, 2007 at 6:04 am
Hi Francois - thanks for the reply.
The best marketers build relationships. They connect with customers, suppliers, internal stakeholders and other key influencers (filters, facilitators, firecrackers and fanatics). I consider this a professional approach, if somewhat traditional.
And the tools they employ are varied. I call it Many-Levers Marketing: we push and pull on a number of levers — ranging from traditional to unconventional — to build and maintain these relationships.
The campaign approach may be valid in some cases; it is just one lever at our disposal. You and I might argue about its relative effectiveness — the Campaign isn’t quite dead yet methinks — but let’s not rule it out as an option.
I absolutely agree with you: we should harness the behaviour of our business ecosystem. It is a long-term investment, taking many forms, but it is one worth making. As I wrote in my previous post, the form and function of the Marketing Department is changing, the ‘disconnected’ team will cease to be relevant. Amen.
But we still need educated, trained marketers, those who can draft strategy and connect activities across a sea of collaborators, lifting the brand to fulfil its promise.
There is merit to some (not all) traditional marketing; I won’t dismiss the successes of my predecessors so callously. I suspect your beef is with the “conventional wisdom” approach, which is understandable. Let us, you and I, change this wisdom.
January 22nd, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I actually took a stab at how a marketing department might look like if it were community-based instead of traditional department-based (http://www.futureofcommunities.com/?p=17)