Hand on heart I am not an Apple purist or revitalized fan boy.  My apologies then for all the hate mail and scorn this post may elicit amongst readers. In fairness because you number in the low 100’s, my mailbox is unlikely to be flooded with suspicious ticking objects.

On an emotional level I wish Steve a full recovery from the cancer that has likely precipitated his resignation. If possible, I wish him a full return to health as soon as possible.

On a business level, the popular press has certainly garnered him with enough praise in the past 24 hours for you to think he is one step away from canonization by the Vatican.

In AdAge this morning Ken Wheaton was brave enough to offer a contrarian view of the mythology of Steve Jobs.  The deluge of vitriolic  feedback has been quite amusing to read – perhaps not by Ken who’s likely packing a bag under the watchful eye of the cop from Witness Protection. They’ve all missed IMHO Ken’s simple point. Steve Jobs is a mere mortal. He’s made mistakes, we all have. Respect him, sure. Admire him, definitely. Suggest that he’s the 2^nd coming, c’mon now. His business impact has been immense but lets temper it a bit folks.

Personally, here’s what I do respect him for;

Sticking to his guns : Many companies vacillate  about their direction, purpose and goals (ask Palm, Microsoft, HP) while Apple has always been religiously committed to being a spectacularly well-designed intuitive piece of kit. Even in their darkest days, Apple didn’t follow the prevailing wisdom or wind. No mean feat.

Apple’s stuff works : No other company has been able to artfully integrate systems, devices and ecosystems like Apple. My laptop, MP3, Phone, TV manage to talk to each other with limited swearing, praying and furniture-throwing on my part. I like that. If I’d waited for Microsoft or Nokia to deliver a similar suite of products…

Passion : Ironically Steve managed to move from the iconoclastic purist and outsider to being validated as the person who saw the future before the rest of us peons. Most folks, including myself, would say that is because he’s never lost his passion. Others might say passion is merely another definition for pig-headed obstinacy.  Tomato, Tomato.

Steve, if you’re reading this, I hope you lick your cancer once and for all. I hope you return to Apple and inspire more entrepreneurs. I hope you continue to set a new benchmark for design-centric organizations. I also hope you are able to remain humble in light of all your recent press.

Over breakfast in New York recently a former colleague boldly declared that he thought no professional services company should ever be publically traded. No shareholders, no Wall Street performance tickers to keep an eye on. Having spent time in many of the marketing services networks myself, I was intrigued.

A passionate debate ensued. His basic premise was, if you’re concerned about your stock price how can you deliver a truly objective opinion to your clients? Or, more simply, how can you tell clients uncomfortable, troubling or disconcerting news if you’re perpetually worried about getting fired?

His perspective was that getting fired is very likely; even inevitable. How you choose to conduct yourself prior to that point lies entirely with you as an individual, as an organization.

Sure many of our services have a low “Get Fired” risk but, if we’re true to our supposed calling, we should all be prepared to tell our clients our objective, unvarnished opinion. Everytime.

Imagine for a second if your Doctor chose to not tell you to stop smoking and lose weight because he was fearful you’d seek a second opinion? If your Accountant didn’t fully disclose new government legislation because it might cause you to go elsewhere? Why should our professional opinion be any more filtered?

Know too that I’m making a very real delineation between “content” and “delivery” here. There is no benefit in telling the truth and insulting your client. You can achieve the former without the latter. And delivering the latter without the former should get you fired.

So ask yourself, am I prepared to tell my clients the truth regardless of the consequences? What is holding me back? What does it say about you, or your organization, if telling the truth is not boldly encouraged?

After all what else do we have to offer?

It strikes as somewhat ironic – or self-centred perhaps – that every time you engage somebody in our industry about “the future” or “keeping up”, their typical response is “the industry is changing too fast to keep up”. I’ve been hearing that for as long as I’ve been in the industry so it does feel a little passé.

Recently though, I’ve been confronted by a few situations which did suggest there was more merit to their response than I’d previously given them credit for.

So, here’s some thoughts and pointers looking ahead;

Stop trying to do everything : Repeat after me, the integrated, full-service, channel-agnostic, through-the-line agency is a pipe dream and no longer credible. In past lives, I’ve had clients ask me how one organization can purport to have the most amazing talent in every single discipline. We can’t. Today’s multiplicity of technologies, emerging platforms and dizzying consumer and business trends makes being an expert in all of them ever more impossible. Stop doing it.

Be a partnership polygamist : To the point above, find partners who are experts, who care deeply and obsess about niche areas of the communication spectrum. Have an alignment around passion, values and success but let them bring their true expert thinking to the mix, you bring yours. Ban the “Jack of all Trades” solution set from your vocabulary. You’re both more credible playing to your collective strengths than trying to do it all alone.

Create ideas…and products : Thirty seconds of film still has its place but the emerging demi-gods are the folks building actual stuff. “Did you see that cool shit” is now more likely to be about something on your phone than the ad that just ran on TV. Ergo, customers and clients increasingly need folks who can do more than just spout an idea but can actually build the tangible (and tactile) part of it too. You got folks who can do that?

 Get creative with your revenue streams : We’ve always struggled with fee and retainer agreements and the joy of staff utilization. We’ve moaned and complained about pay-per-performance models being ground in success metrics we can’t always control or affect. Totally fair. New paradigms exist though. Licensing models for software or applications your agency produces and your client uses. Revenue sharing of downloads from the App Store. All feasible if you’re prepared to redefine the way your clients actually pay you.

Be creative consultants beyond communications : Design thinking is a relatively new ethos in business culture. About time some would argue. Essentially many of tomorrow’s business ideas need disruptive thinkers to spawn them. Those used to generating ideas ground in strong conceptual design. Sound familiar. Consider ways you might take the design thinkers in your agency to tackle client problems beyond their advertising, website, packaging and in-store displays. Your ECD might not relish thinking about supply-chain hurdles but, in a design-centric way, she may just bring a fresh perspective to it.

One last thought. An old favourite. Not new at all.

Be agile : We still take too friggin long (massive sweeping statement) to do what our clients pay us for. Too long to ideate. Too long to scope. Too long to budget. Too long to execute.  We have to find ways to strip that stuff away. Product cycles, and consumer trends, move too quickly for us to play the way we’ve done for the past 5 decades. As creative thinkers we gotta be able to get these ideas out faster. Our customers demand it, our clients deserve it.

What do you think? Is any of this really futuristic or just table stakes? What’s your agency doing to stay ahead of the curve and be more lean-forward? I’d love to hear about it.

This post previously appeared in iMedia Connections

I’ve been watching social media become an increasingly larger part of my daily media consumption. A little Twitter here, a little Flipbook there, a dash of Groupon just in case I’m missing out. Sprinkle in my LinkedIn Answers obsession. Don’t forget my FourSquare death battle either. Those are just personal consumption patterns. Never mind the numerous other Canadian and US start-ups I follow via Techcrunch, Mashable et al as I try, in my professional life, to keep up with the next Big Thing (like a LinkedIn IPO for example)

I do like the personalization that comes with increased participation. Whatever the algorithm wizards at Facebook and Google are doing seems to be paying off. Certainly fewer Viagra or Cialis ads (a few years from now that’s okay) and the recommendations do seem to be getting tighter to stuff I actually like…or might try. For a voracious, and schizophrenic, reader like myself I always struggled with the Amazon Recommendation engine’s belief that because I’d read one book on a subject that I suddenly wanted to become the world expert on the subject. One data point does not a trend make.

But is all this personalization actually making me dumber?

I pride myself on keeping up but as my information sources get more closely defined by who, or what, I’ve interacted with previously, where is the sense of discovery? Isn’t that a concern if Google determines that because I went to X and Y that Z is a logical place to send me to next? Where’s the new stuff that previously might’ve caught my eye in the corner of a newspaper or the new idea next to the article I bought the magazine for?

There are obvious exceptions like the death of OBL, and the social phenomenon now euphemistically called “the tweet heard across the world”, but what about information with less global import? How do you remain aware of important events in your city if your networks aren’t tapped into those circles…or your previous activity doesn’t tell Google to push you there? For example, on my doorstep here in Toronto, what’s going on with “minor” issues like Homelessness (municipal spending down),  teen substance abuse (on the rise for ecstasy, marijuana and prescription drugs) or petty crime statistics (down according to Toronto Police Services albeit with many caveats) – I know that I’m not personally searching for this stuff, my networks aint tapped into it and my media is increasingly “personalizing” that stuff off my radar.

Sure Hilton but why don’t you add all these topics into a RSS-reader if you care so much? Fair question but my point being that previously these topics would’ve floated across my non-personalized media consumption radar.

This entire notion was expertly articulated by Eli Pariser in his new book “The Filter Bubble. What the internet is hiding from you”. Eli’s point being is that randomly associated connections, made by the Facebook or Google algorithms and almost every other site out there that want to “personalize” our experiences, ultimately feed you a meal of junk food versus the more balanced meal available previously. That scares the heck outta me.

Having lived in the UK and Canada, the diagram above is a not-so-subtle dig at the ignorance of many Americans on matters relating to Europe – its not that far off conversations I’ve had myself. My fear is that all this personalization quickly becomes a bubble. A bubble that shields me from stuff I should be aware of, or need to be aware of. A bubble that makes me ignorant.

Do you have similar concerns? Is the concern outweighed by the benefits of sites and experiences crafted exactly to you? Where do you stand?

I’ve found myself thinking a tremendous amount about the notion of trust this week. <insert random digs about lost weekends in Las Vegas etc> Seriously though, a couple of disparate things crossed my desk that got the ol’ spidey-senses tingling.

One, I helped set up a Facebook account for my 75-year old parents. Now these are people with a passing acquaintance with the internet, let alone a high comfort level with tagging photos of their last tea and biscuits party. However, having recently emmigrated to the UK (did I mention how brave they are??) the desire to remain “connected” meant that they had to embrace the world of Skype (Scarp according to my Dad) and Facebook. Try explaining Facebook is free and holds all this deep information to a man who is used to looking a bank manager in the eye when making a withdrawal.

Two, we’ve been drafting an industry white paper on the topical US subject of personal data, privacy and privacy legislation. Whilst for many Europeans this legislation is rather antiquated – ask the Germans and Swiss about opt-in and opt-out – its still a huge burning platform for digital marketers especially those relying on search and behavioural targeting.

Three, my favourite brain candy mag Fast Company released an awesome infographic on “The Business of Facebook” which had some truly scary, amazing, terrifying numbers. Facebook now has the profile for 1 out of every 11 people on the planet. WTF?? 1 in 11. I’m sure the NSA (or the INS for that matter) would kill for that kinda profiling. Exclude my parents but that’s the global equivalent of the Book of Mormon which is the genealogy list for the entire Mormon faith.   

Finally, Martin Lindstrom’s great article on the powerful impact of fear in buying behavior. In it he talks about why condom and gun sales go up in a recessionary environment. In short, smartphones, GPS and Netflix notwithstanding, we’re still quite simple id-driven beings. When under pressure we revert down Maslow’s hierarchy and look for security, warmth, sex etc. We instinctivally go back to basics we can see, touch and feel because they restore our trust in the world.

Independently, all interesting topics – especially my Dad and the Book of Faces which is the content for another 10 blog posts – but all fundamentally about trust and the trust we have in brands and business.

I know for me how fragile the notion of trust is. You trust Coke will always deliver that real cola taste. That Southwest will offer me the cheapest domestic flights. IBM is making the world smarter. And so on. Yet what happens when you get a flat, no-fizzy Coke at the movies, Southwest is out-priced by Jet Blue and the fastest supercomputer in the world is Chinese? That trust erodes just a little. In that trust-based world I philosophically struggle most with so much residing on a free platform like Facebook (or should I say SkyNet?) and then I balance that against the genuine amazing utility their platform gives me. Even more of a struggle when I have to imagine every hacker on the planet is trying to get inside that particular Pandora’s box.

A perhaps not-so-surprising generational attitude arose when, for the white paper I mentioned earlier, we surveyed a number of people on data security and privacy. Many “digital natives” were not particularly concerned because they overtly took personal responsibility for their data on-line, enabled all the relevant tools to prevent being cookied and, ultimately gravitated towards brands they trusted. They certainly weren’t blaise, they were just prepared to give more latitude to brands who had earned their trust.

I certainly don’t have the answer on whether that balance sits. Ultimately thats a very individual decision. Personally, my primordial brain shudders at the often flippant way we give highly sensitive information to companies like our banks, our insurance, our HMO’s, our social networks. We just assume they’re a safe haven. My highly-evolved (sans Las Vegas of course) brain can’t imagine today’s world where I wouldn’t freely give them information like that.

How do you balance this notion of trust? Do you believe we trust brands and business too much? How much are you prepared to entrust them with? What do you expect in return?

I have a mortal enemy. We’ve been engaged in an ongoing battle for over a month now and there is no end in sight to this particular conflict. What saddens me is that we’re old friends, we used to visit each other’s homes and our wives are fond of each other too. Regardless I now track his every move, try to outflank him with moves of my own and keep a running tally each day.

The demise of this friendship?

We’ve both fallen for 4Square, the most popular of the increasing number of location-based services available on smartphones. 4Square operates on several levels of addiction. For many the “check-ins” allow them to keep a real-time map of where their social circle is, meaning that a rendezvous is no longer a dizzying amount of logistics and text messages. For others, mayorship, badges and the proliferation of retail deals is reason enough to play. I’m way lower in Maslow’s hierarchy. I’m only in it for the points that accrue with every check-in and the rush that comes from being at the top of the weekly leaderboard. Sad? You betcha. To the rising chorus of readers shouting “Get a life”, I respond with “Sod off, I need to steal a mayorship or check-in to a place none of my friends have ever been too as they’re both worth 5 points”

Why all the hoopla?

Location-based services (or LBS) is not a recent phenomenon. In addition to 4Square, you’re likely aware of services like SCVNGR, BrightKite, Whrrl or Gowalla. Each has their die-hard fans, unique interface and game mechanics but in recent months 4Square has quickly become the 700-pound gorilla of the pack. Deals with American Express, launched at this years’ SXSW, catapulted 4Square into the ionosphere. The service has grown from 500K to seven million in the past year, includes over 15 million venues, has driven over half-a-billion check-ins and, with the release of version 3.0 and a stronger “recommendation engine”,  4Square is likely to retain their dominant position.   

 So why do I see a bright future for LBS for many of my clients?

• It inherently motivates loyalty behaviour : Mayorships aren’t earned. They are hard fought for and savagely defended. I should know. During a recent trip to rural England to visit my parents, I checked-in to the local fish and chip shop in a town of 10,000 numerous times. Over the course of a week I lost and re-won my mayorship 3 times. Each quest to retain my mayorship necessitated another visit to the friggin shop. Perhaps not traditional loyalty but I did buy a shed-load of cod and chips.
• It promotes switching behaviour : Check-in at a busy mall and see the proliferation of “Special Nearby” pop-ups you get – typically from competing retailers. Not a bad way to get folks over to your store if they’re shopping nearby.
• It promotes customer traffic : “Specials” are also great for drawing attention to a new feature, like a refurbished bar or new restaurant, and using LBS as a kind of smartphone lighthouse.
• Credit-card integration deepens the benefit of playing : American Express is the first of many integrations that allow 4Square to actually drive transactions, deepening the value of the “Specials” to both retailer and consumer.

To many marketers, LBS still lacks the type of broad adoption that would make it a de-facto requirement in their plans. Users are still predominantly young males <28 years old and if the largest service only has seven million users, is it worth the investment?

To my mind, Yes. All the principal LBS providers allow access to their API because they want to help spread the proliferation, and integration, of their platform. The game play is a stroke of genius because it makes the services highly addictive but also gives them tremendous utility – wanna see how great a restaurant really is? I checked into Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at Heathrow and 25 helpful 4Squarers (is that a term?) provided a wealth of great tips. Couldn’t beat that.

Regardless, I’m still locked in this battle with my former mate Chad. Two hours ago I stole a local neighbourhood mayorship and the ensuing points took me back to the top of the leaderboard. Mmmmmm…Perhaps a late night stroll and a few more check-ins might keep me ahead until tomorrow? See ya…

First off, I don’t typically do this. Rant about a particular organization or brand. However, when their service is so consistently poor, and the low opinion of them is held by a fairly broad number of my friends and colleagues, then I’d suggest they’re fair game.

I’m talking about Canadian loyalty program Aeroplan, the program associated with flag carrier Air Canada but run as an independent business unit. For the non-Canadians reading this, Aeroplan is probably (I’ve no data to back this up) the 2^nd largest loyalty program outside of Air Miles which is very similar to Nectar in the UK.

So how did they manage to anger me to such a degree? Let me tell a little story.

My father fell ill in the UK recently (he’s doing much better thanks for asking) so I needed to jump on a plane asafp. With several 100,000 miles earned on Aeroplan that was my first stop. Here’s how the story unfolded.

• I find a flight leaving at an appropriate time, costing 61K miles to redeem and with seat availability.
• Enter credit card and the site is unable to process it.
• Call online customer service, tell them the problem. They attempt to walk me, literally, through the 7 steps I just went through. This despite me telling them I’ve already cleared my cache, rebooted, understand a bit about websites blah, blah. Nope, we spend 15 minutes doing this all again. Net result – they can’t make it work I must call the live service and book through them.
• Call the live service. They can’t find my flight at all. They then tell me that its going to cost up to twice as many miles versus the 61K I just saw. Additionally I will pay extra for the live service to process the order. Frustrated I hang up.
• I refresh my browser. Go to the site again. See ticket availability. Book flight for 61K.  

All in, a frustrating experience? Definitely.

Now here’s where it gets interesting…

• I call customer service back to complain. I’m told two interesting things.
  • The web and the call centre are entirely different platforms with different information and access. The reason? Supposedly it was too “hard” to integrated the two platforms and the integration project was mothballed.
  • All customer complaint calls are recorded and reviewed. Yes…ALL calls.

NOW…I immediately write an email to a very senior executive I know at the Aeroplan organization. He’s wicked smart, a great genuine guy and someone I believe should know about this poor service. He responds quickly and sincerely (he really is a good guy) and tells me my email has been sent to the appropriate people at Aeroplan.

That was 18 days ago.

Ranting aside, here’s my simple marketing 101 perspective

1. Fix your website. The Aeroplan website is notoriously slow and buggy. Failure to authorize my card is not unusual. However, it’s the principal channel by which people connect with you and use your product. Sort it out.
2. A tiered cost structure is arcane. I get that a call center costs more to operate than a website but I shouldn’t have to pay more for a booking – especially if the cheaper alternative is always bust.
3. Manage expectations. If the call center and the website operate off different platforms, then tell me that. Otherwise I’ve no idea or patience for paying twice as much for exactly the same product. I still don’t have any patience but at least I might just understand why there is a difference.
4. Review your customer service procedures. Having dealt with three levels of customer service personnel – and had an unsatisfactory experience every time – wouldn’t you attempt some form of outbound communication to me? If you’ve a recording of my growing frustration across three different “touchpoints”, wouldn’t some kind of response seem necessary?

In closing, here’s my biggest beef and the reason I’ve broadcast this blog post on both my LinkedIn and Facebook profiles;

It has been 18 days since my call to customer service was recorded “for accuracy and training purposes”

16 days since an Executive sent a note internally

I ‘ve had NO RESPONSE from Aeroplan at all. None. Nothing. Da nada.

To my mind this says one of two things about Aeroplan

1. They have too many customer complaints they can’t process them fast enough.
2. Or, they don’t care.

As a marketer and, more importantly, a customer of theirs I’m not sure which concerns me the most.

(For the direct marketers out there evaluating this on things like LTV etc. I’m no George “Up in the Air” Clooney but I’ve been an Aeroplan member for over a decade and in the past 30 weeks, I’ve traveled 27 of them. Might suggest, by whatever segmentation criteria, that I’m a member that requires nurturing)

If you’re like most marketers today chances are content creation is becoming an increasingly important part of your marketing activities. As social media has exploded, the need for compelling, intriguing, relevant and sharable content has exploded too. And as quickly as that content demand has risen, the half-life of content freshness seems to have diminished.

So how do you ensure all the content you’re slavishly creating is actually doing the job? How do you marry all the great stuff you’re creating within your organization with the UGC that you’re expecting your legion of devoted fans to provide you?

Honestly, I don’t know. But, what I do know is that if your content falls into any of the categories below it is going to fail. No doubt in my mind. Just guaranteed failure.

You’re still writing for everyone : Wrong. The days of one size fits all generic content is over. Niche and even micro-niche content is the level of detail you need to be thinking about. Sure Facebook may give you the impression that hundreds of thousands of Fans are following your every post but appearing in their Newsfeed and being content they actively engage with are two entirely different things. You gotta get more targeted.

Your content has no editorial calendar : Sure everyone needs the flexibility to react to changes in the mood of the market or their customers but content with no set calendar is a real rookie error. At a minimum you should have planned content for at least a 90-day period. A calendar that you know, ahead of time, how frequently you’ll be posting, where you’ll be driving interested readers to, which products you’re supporting. Spontaneity is great, just not when you’re talking content.

 You’re not curating your content : Making your content work harder means actively curating it. Ensuring content is tagged, edited, parsed and filtered effectively. Your audience has precious little time to filter. Increasingly their expectation is that you’ll do that for them. Users, especially those in the niche audiences mentioned earlier, can’t and won’t stand for content that is marginally relevant. You gotta be curating it if you want to ensure maximum relevance and engagement.

 You have too many goals for your content : Content can do a lot of things for your business, it just can’t do everything. The same piece of content can’t deepen a relationship, market a new product, increase loyalty, turn a prospect into a sale. If you set too many goals for your content, its gonna fail at all of them. Singleminded. Now. Always.

Your content is static : If you’re not creating content that is malleable, that can be augmented by your audience, then you’re missing a trick. Content that doesn’t change, evolve gets old real fast. You need to be thinking how you can let your users add layers to your content to keep it fresh.

Your content isn’t device-centric : Shockingly the number of companies that merely port the same content from laptop to tablet to mobile phone, with no discernible difference, is astounding. Content needs to be relevant for the situation in which its consumed. Users with 45 minutes over lunch at their desk need content served differently than those on a 20 minute commute on a bus with their iPhone. Why do so few companies get that?

Your content is one-dimensional : Definitely advice I need to follow myself but content is more compelling when it crosses formats. Text is fine for certain situations. Video or audio better for others. 140 characters can be too little or just enough. Regardless, if your content favours one content type at the exclusion of all others you’re gonna miss the boat. Not all content is consumed equally, give your users the option of the content format that’s best suited for them.

None of this stuff is rocket science guys. Considering the volumes of blogs (many better written than this one) devoted to this stuff I remain incredulous at how many basic steps are still missed.

If you’re still creating content that falls directly into the categories above, your efforts are gonna fail. No ifs or buts. Make the change. Start now.

 This post recently appeared in iMediaConnections

 Its likely we all have a seminal book that sticks in your mind as “THE” book that transformed your perspective on marketing. As an Ogilvy alumni I’d likely be burnt at the stake if I didn’t reference “Ogilvy on Advertising” Others that always bubble to the top include all the classic tomes; “Built to Last”, “Pursuit of Excellence”, “Being Direct” or more recently “Made to Stick”, “Hoopla”, “Groundswell” or “Trust Agents”. While there’s no denying that each and every one of those did have an impact, for me the book that shook up the ol’ grey matter most profoundly was Peter Schwartz’s brilliant book “The Art of the Long View”. In it Peter covered the alchemy and wizardry known as Scenario Planning and, quite literally, knocked me on my ass.

Derived from classic military tacticians, Scenario Planning came into vogue when Royal Dutch/Shell started using it as a core strategic development tool for the entire organization. As the name suggests, Scenario Planning involves creating business and statistical models to try and anticipate future scenarios. In essence using current data, some future projections and a bunch of wicked smart thinking to build out what the future might look like. By building out “Best Case” and “Worst Case” scenarios based on data like projected oil prices in 20 years, political stability in oil-producing countries and general demographic information, Scenario Planning allowed Shell to determine if their long-term strategy was to drill more wells in the North Sea or to do further land-based exploration into barren areas like Northern Russia. That likely made shareholders feel more comfortable than the CEO wandering off to the local fairground for a peek into a crystal ball.

While that is all well and good for the Pentagon and the Fortune 100 companies, what possible application might that have for us poor souls in marketing communications?

Firstly, I concede that most marketing firms probably don’t have a bank of statisticians on staff and aren’t tackling global scenarios of quite the same import, but the exercise of considering “Best Case” and “Worst Case” scenarios probably has three practical applications today;

Your Social Campaigns

How often do you scenario plan for a social campaign? Do you consider, and proactively resource or create for, “Worst Case” scenarios when launching a campaign? Do you consider how easy it is for social channels to be hijacked or “brandjacked” in these channels? Unlike the Egyptian government its unlikely you’ll be able to switch off social channels if you don’t like the direction a conversation is going. For example, I wonder if the Gap had done any scenario planning when they decided to crowdsource their new logo. In hindsight it probably would’ve been time well spent.

Your Client Relationships

Every agency I’ve ever worked at has suffered the blow of a client resignation. It is as inevitable as the sun rising in the east. Relationships blossom, then sour. The client who loved your last campaign leaves and is replaced by some young Turk with his pet agency in tow. What surprises me though is how often a client resignation catches the agency flat-footed. Annual account planning often focuses on how to grow the business, the areas of the clients’ business we don’t have but should go after but seldom on factors that might cause the client to resign the agency. Some elementary scenario planning in the past 5 years would’ve suggested that automotive agency relationships were going to take a sharp turn as the recession deepened. Arguably agencies in financial services could’ve read the global tea leaves and seen that a huge consumer backlash against easy loans, housing price bubbles then foreclosures was inevitable.

Again, Scenario Planning isn’t a panacea but it does force you to take a really hard look at your clients. Are there potential minefields you’re seeing in the road ahead that together you may want to plan for? Or, if the “Worse Case” for them is unavoidable, should your agency be considering looking at other clients?

Your Business Development Pipeline

At its core scenario planning is an attempt to use current data, with a healthy dose of hypothesis, to create different interpretations of the future. Imagine how that type of thinking might drive your new business pipeline? I can almost guarantee that no agency is currently nurturing an understanding of genome mapping, space travel or nanotechnology – or thinking that their next million dollar client will be in those categories. Scenario Planning might be the way to determine the categories that will be the automotive, packaged goods and pharma clients of the next decade. What might that kind of first mover advantage mean to your agency?

 Scenario Planning isn’t an exact science. If it were scenario planners would be barred from buying lottery tickets. What it does offer is a filter for looking at the world and theorizing “what if” scenarios. It also isn’t an exercise in intellectual navel-gazing and management stroky-beard meetings. Scenario Planning requires discipline but it also requires real commitment.

Done right, I can promise you one thing. It beats that dusty Magic 8-ball in the corner of your office.

This article orginally appeared in Mashable: http://mashable.com/2011/01/25/hiring-community-manager/

Social media has quickly become the de facto for interaction and communication, emerging as the new gateway for consumer influence.  With social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook giving consumers the power to directly impact a brand’s performance, businesses are hiring a new member of the marketing team to not only monitor these channels, but also interact with consumers.  Commonly referred to as the Community Manager, these brand ambassadors are a company’s direct link to its customers, owning the critical responsibility to grow, shape and respond to online conversations happening around that brand.

Determining whether your brand needs a community manager comes down to efficiencies, trust and skill.  One of the biggest reasons companies need a manager is when they are looking to humanize their brand and create a closer connection to consumers. Community managers provide an excellent way to not only monitor online communities, but to also support and engage in new conversations around the brand. As a human voice of the company, community managers are critical in establishing a level of trust with consumers that keeps them coming back.

Another factor to consider is the type of brand (or campaign) you’re marketing—is your brand involved in awkward, sensitive or taboo subjects that should be addressed via open dialogue? Or is your campaign focused on educating consumers? If so, a community manager can be hugely beneficial.  Community managers can jump-start and create online conversations to show members that they are not alone.  At the same time, by answering questions and providing information, they establish themselves as experts and a trusted resource for information. This is particularly valuable for those brands that have an element of education or advocacy.  A great example of this is Kimberly-Clark’s (K-C) U by Kotex campaign.  As the company looked to break down the taboos around feminine hygiene and educate young women on these sensitive issues, they hired a community manager to oversee social media conversations on feminine health, act as a liaison to teen girls and to inject valuable insights when appropriate. If a young woman posts a relevant question on Yahoo! Answers, for example, the community manager answers the question and leaves a direct call to action to visit the U by Kotex website. As a result, the community manager helped ignite an instantaneous dialogue among consumers, bloggers and traditional media who praised Kimberly-Clark for building advocacy with hundreds of women sharing their personal experiences and thanking U by Kotex for driving a long overdue conversation about feminine health.

Once you decide that your brand needs a community manager, the next step is determining how to hire the right person for the job. While many companies choose to utilize existing employees to act as campaign managers, some have seen great success in hiring members of the public who are passionate brand advocates to fill this important role.  While the role of the community manager is not new, the biggest mistake businesses make is hiring them at the wrong time and not equipping them with the support they need.

To start, community managers must possess a diverse skill set that includes creative, strategic and analytics capabilities while still being able to support consumer conversations…not driving them. An over-enthusiastic community manager can drive consumers away if they do not manage how, and when, they join the conversation. It is not a 9-5 job, as online conversations are happening around the clock—this is especially important for brands that target the teen demographic, whose conversations largely take place at night. In addition, brands should look for a person that understands the needs of both the company and the campaign. Social media guidelines are increasingly commonplace but, in fairness to the community manager, these should be tailored to the requirements of their individual assignment too.

Having a community manager on the team at the right time is also crucial. Getting them on board just before a campaign launch is not effective—they don’t know enough about the campaign objectives and are inserted into the process too late. They need time to define a role within the campaign that will help them move consumer conversations toward the desired objectives. They also need to remain involved with the broader marketing team as the program continues. The speed with which social conversations evolve means that community managers are often the first to encounter changes in the public’s opinion of a brand or product. They can provide invaluable, time-sensitive feedback if utilized correctly.

Lastly, conduct solid planning up front and establish a good balance of preparedness before hiring a community manager. Take a look at how this person is supported, create a ‘decision tree’ and identify the tools – and access – they will need to succeed.  

Community managers must understand that it is not their goal to drive conversations; rather, it is to build an environment in which conversations happen naturally. Failure to meet this goal can make or break a social campaign, damage their online following as well as the brand’s online and offline reputation.  However, when used correctly, community managers can tap into conversations – both positive and negative – and nurture relationships between a brand and its consumers in new and exciting ways. It has become  an increasingly pivotal role within organizations and the hiring of those who take on that responsibility shouldn’t be taken lightly.