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February 27, 2007
Buying a car in Belgium...
There is an interesting article in Reveries about an American expat's experience in buying a car in Belgium. He found what he wanted, did not have to "negotiate," and the sales rep became most friendly and helpful after the purchase...
Which experience is better for the customer? Which one is better for the dealership? And which one do you think is better for the automobile manufacturer?
Posted by francois at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 26, 2007
IP related issues with communities
This afternoon at 4pm EST/1pm PST we will have a public conference call to discuss IP issues that arise when a company starts to integrate outside audiences within their business processes.
The call will be led by “blawger” and long time Corante Contributor Denise Howell and Michael Madison, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who blogs here.
Dial-in information is as follows:
From SKYPE - dial +990008275785861
From a regular phone:
Calling from the US call # 1-605-475-8590
(long distance costs apply).
In Europe, call:
Belgium 070 35 9989
France 0826 100 277
Germany 01805 00 7649
Ireland 0818 270 034
Italy 0848 390 175
Switzerland 0848 560 195
UK 0870 738 0763
The conference is free but national rate charges will apply to these calls.
We hope to see you then!
Posted by francois at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
IP related issues with communities
This afternoon at 4pm EST/1pm PST we will have a public conference call to discuss IP issues that arise when a company starts to integrate outside audiences within their business processes.
The call will be led by “blawger” and long time Corante Contributor Denise Howell and Michael Madison, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who blogs here.
Dial-in information is as follows:
From SKYPE - dial +990008275785861
From a regular phone:
Calling from the US call # 1-605-475-8590
(long distance costs apply).
In Europe, call:
Belgium 070 35 9989
France 0826 100 277
Germany 01805 00 7649
Ireland 0818 270 034
Italy 0848 390 175
Switzerland 0848 560 195
UK 0870 738 0763
The conference is free but national rate charges will apply to these calls.
We hope to see you then!
Posted by francois at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 20, 2007
Wrong link for the Social Browsing on Flickr paper
The link to the paper on Social Browsing on Flickr should have been this one.
I posted the paper on the Future of Communities blog, along with another interesting paper on Digg by one of the co-authors.
Posted by francois at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 17, 2007
links for 2007-02-17
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Interesting crowdsourcing model - flirt model of crowdsourcing
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Interesting paper on how more people search flickr through people than through tags
Posted by delicious at 3:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 16, 2007
Time shifting and skipping ads on DVR's is not as prevalent as previously believed
While data from Tivo showed that 70% of what TiVo owners watch is time shifted and that TiVo owners tend to fast forward about 70% of the ads when viewing pre-recorded content (see also Thomas Hawk for written report on the iMedia podcast where a Tivo representative discloses that data), new data released by Nielsen now shows that people who own DVR's still watch 2/3 of the ads and that 50% of them watch their shows in real time.
That is quite a shift in less than one year...or could it just be that Tivo owners are more geeky than other DVR owners so that their data is skewed compared to the market averages?
Posted by francois at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 15, 2007
You can no longer hold on to your brands...
Last week I moderated a webinar panel on the role of communities in B2B marketing with Rob Leavitt from ITSMA and also with Mike Smith from BMC Software (recording can be found here - requires registration). It was a great conversation with good lessons learned from BMC Software.
As part of my opening comments I harped on one of my favorite topics again - that the field of marketing is undergoing tectonic shifts and that the old rules no longer apply. The old techniques of interrupt marketing that involved interrupting people to show them product or company messages or as Alan Moore, one of the co-authors of Communities Dominate Brands, calls it - the just in case marketing techniques - do not work anymore!
You can no longer broadcast messages to individuals and hope that they will get it and retell your story. Funding traditional communication programs like that is like pouring water into a sinking ship. Not only are people fed up with it, you are also competing with an exponentially growing number of companies who are trying to reach the same people. Plus you now compete across multiple media - many of them always-on and where prime time is between 9-5.
As a marketer you really need to solve the ambient findability problem - be there when people need you and where they need you. Madison Avenue calls it "engagement" - although most agencies are very confused about what engagement means. No it does not mean engagement with the ad...
One way of solving this riddle is to engage with communities who are already communicating amongst themselves about topics that you want to talk about. If your message resonates with them then it will automatically get amplified within the community before being "retold" outside the community. In some cases they may not like your message, but still like what you do and simply replace your message with something else before retelling the story. And then there will always be the case where they really don't like what your doing, will reject your message and talk back and in the process expose flaws with your company or product in public.
This is of course the end of control. This will happen whether you like it or not. You have to give up your brand to your communities to succeed. And if you do it right you will once again reach your customers and do it with budgets that are dramatically lower than what you are spending today.
[Tags: communities community management marketing community marketing]
Posted by francois at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 14, 2007
Upcoming Community 2.0 Conference
As I mentioned on this blog earlier, I agreed to be the chair for the upcoming Community 2.0 Conference. If you plan on attending the conference, which is shaping up rather nicely, remember to use the Corante Discount code - which provides you with a $600 discount off the list price. You can register through the conference's web site and get the discount by using the code FWMIH00.
We hope to see you there!
Posted by francois at 2:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
New Real Beauty Campaign by Dove
This one from the UK...(via 50 plus marketing)
Link here for RSS subscribers.
Posted by francois at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
How much would you pay for a latte while playing XBox or PS3 games?
That is exactly the model at the Seattle Terra Bite Lounge. There is no price list anywhere - customers decide whether to pay one dollar or three dollars for their coffee, or indeed nothing.
It is fascinating to watch what happens when more traditional bricks and mortar companies start experimenting with business models that have their roots in software open source movement.
(via Reveries)
Posted by francois at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 13, 2007
Blogging ethics
Yesterday Nate Ritter posted a comment on my story about Alaska Airlines - bringing up a good point about whether bloggers with a certain audience should refrain from lambasting companies with which they have had bad experiences.
Journalists have a clear code of ethics - as maintained by the Society of Professional Journalists. The code of ethics is built around the basic premise that journalists should "Seek Truth and Report It." One section of the code says "Distinguish between advocacy and news reporting. Analysis and commentary should be labeled and not misrepresent fact or context."
But isn't that what a blog is by definition? This is not a news site. It is a stream of personal commentaries on marketing and sometimes personal experiences.
I am very aware of the power of the blog and its ability to harm in Google searches and the like - and that makes me pause when I have a bad experience with a company. But when the experience goes as far as costing someone $900 out of their own pocket, and when the experience is representative of a whole industry-segment's trend of disintegrating customer service - does that not give an individual the right to use his or her personal journal to retell the story?
[Tags: ethics blogging customer service worse practices airlines]
Posted by francois at 6:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
links for 2007-02-13
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InformationWeek article on the FASTforward blog
Posted by delicious at 3:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 12, 2007
FASTforward '07 recap
FASTforward '07 - a project we were paid to support, and where we spent most of last week - was a great success. The FASTforward Blog, which we origianlly launched as a companion blog to the conference, but which quickly evolved into a central repository for thinking around Enterprise 2.0, has some great interviews with some of the speakers who presented at the conference.
Interviews by David Weinberger, in no particular order:
- Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and author of "The Long Tail"
- John Battelle, author, blogger, editor, media entrepreneur
- Jeanette Borzo of the Economist Intelligence Unit
- Matthew Brown, a senior analyst at Forrester Research
- John Markus Lervik, founder and CEO of Fast
- Carl Frappaolo of the Delphi Group
- Stephen Gallagher, Senior Director at Accenture
- Susan Feldman, IDC
- Dorothea Herrey of Dow Jones Consumer Media Group
- Bill Inmon of Inmon Data Systems
- Dan Keldsen of the Delphi Group
- Zia Zaman, Fast
- Lydia Loizides, former exec of techn and emerging media at Interpublic Media
- Andrew McAfee of Harvard Business School
- Tom Mandel of ConnectBeam
- Kathleen Gilroy, Otter Group
- Hadley Reynolds, Fast
- Jim McGee of the Huron Consulting Group
- Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Media
- James Robertson of Step Two Designs
- Michael Schrage, MIT
- Euan Semple, consultant, formerly of BBC
- Sandeep Swadia, Fast
- David Watson, Digital Media at Disney/ABC
Interviews by Kathleen Gilroy:
- "The meaning of search"
- a montage of statements by conference participants on the meaning and future of search
- Tim O'Reilly:
- Web 2.0 is defined by building systems that get better as much people use them. This means asymmetric competition in the information business. But there are opportunities to work in the global information commons. O'Reilly hosted a panel where he interviewed the search person from Reed and the head of business development for Fast. They discussed producing more contextual search and looking at federated search where the data coming from multiple customers was combined and made available.
- Andrew McAfee:
- Enterprise 2.0 is about new forms of collaboration and unlike previous enterprise computing efforts, e20 enables the expression and capture of judgement.
- E20 will not happen just by building new technologies and expecting people to use them. It is hard to get e20 to become part of the DNA of a company and it will require sustained management and leadership through coaching, rewards and incentives, leadership, and building a culture that is attuned to the benefits of working in this new way.
- E20 is very different from groupware (Notes, Sharepoint) in that it is very unstructured. Groupware often failed because it demanded too many rules and the terms of interaction were defined from the start.
- Ray Lane on the "interpersonal enterprise"
Related posts:
Andrew McAfee - FastForwarding to a Better Understanding, part 1
Rod Boothby - Message From FASTForward: Search Changes Everything
Posted by francois at 1:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
Alaska Airlines Sucks! (WARNING: DO NOT FLY!)
Last Friday afternoon I was supposed to fly from San Diego to San Francisco on Alaska Airlines. We all know that the airline industry as a whole has gone down the tubes lately, but the 7 hour ordeal I went through was just a little over the top - talk about a business that could not care less about their customers.
It first started with weather and air traffic control delays - a problem which seemed unique to them as 3 United Airlines flights for San Francisco left with no problems. They then boarded us and announced that we had one additional delay. When our time to leave came up they told us that one of the air-conditioning packs was on the fritz - even though I could swear that we were still getting fresh air through the vents. When that was fixed, a circuit breaker tripped, and we all had to deplane. We each got a $6 meal voucher which got you a small pizza with no toppings and no drink - pepperoni or anything else had to be paid for by the customer.
We were then told/lied to that we would leave on an airplane that was parked at the gate next door with the same crew except for a new pilot. In the meantime I noticed that they had changed the flight number at the gate with the supposedly broken plane to a later San Fran flight.
When we finally boarded our flight one guy from the later flight tried to get on ours and was told that his flight would board momentarily at the gate next door. Knowing that the plane was broken, and having been lied to all night, I felt bad for him - thinking he would not see San Fran that night.
Our new plane had no power, since power could only be turned on by the pilot who had not yet arrived - a new twist in the story as I was led to believe that we had a new pilot who was already in the San Diego airport. No power means that it really gets hot, and it also means that the toilets do not flush, so it really gets stinky too. After being in there for awhile we saw the other airplane - the one we were on originally - take off for San Francisco! Once that flight was gone we were told that our pilot had arrived but that he was so ill that he had to be taken away by paramedics...so they cancelled the flight.
Couldn't they come up with a better story?
Obviously they decided that since we were so delayed already they were better off canceling our flight and having the next flight be an on-time departure. Instead of telling us that, they kept us at the airport for another few unnecessary hours and then made us board an empty plane so that we would not rebel when the later flight took off...
...of course, there was no budget for overnight accommodations...you were on your own - they would not even make suggestions on where to stay. There was an Alaska Airlines manager at the airport but he was not available to speak with customers - I bet he was fearing for his safety at that point.
When I tried to leave for San Francisco the next day, the only thing they could do for me was to get me there by 10:30pm through Portland. When I asked if they could put me on another airline they rudely told me that they could not do that and that I had to buy another ticket from another airline directly if I wanted to see San Francisco before 10:30 that night...
Note to self - never even think of flying Alaska Air again. They are rude and they don't even try to pretend that they are not lying to their customers.
[Tags: Alaska Air Alaska Airlines customer service worse practices airlines]
Posted by francois at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 8, 2007
links for 2007-02-08
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Cool article by Jeremiah Owyang on web marketing techniques available to marketers
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Strange alliances in the making...unfortunately it is not just about the tools...hopefully the traditional ad people will get that
Posted by delicious at 3:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 5, 2007
links for 2007-02-05
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Great paper on adoption and crossing the chasm
Posted by delicious at 3:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 4, 2007
links for 2007-02-04
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open scientific paper repository
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open source scientific research
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Environment Defense Fund's Scorecard - an aggregation portal for everything related to polution
Posted by delicious at 3:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
February 2, 2007
A day in the life of a product manager
The Pragmatic Marketer recently released their 2006 Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey (hmmm...maybe they should have called it the 2007 survey...)
Some interesting findings include:
- on average companies have 5 developers for each product manager
- about 10% of PM spend more than one day a week blogging
- more than 80% of PM spend less than 1 hour a week measuring marketing programs
- 19% work in product management, 21% in marketing, and 10% in development
I wish I could get my hands on the names of the 7% companies where product management works in sales. That would make for some good stocks to short!
[Tags: product management marketing]
Posted by francois at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack | Bookmark This | Linking Posts
