We believe in living simply and adventurously.

February 18 2013,

Picture doesn't relate to article very much... it's just nice.

This rather wonderful organisational manifesto is from Sidcot School - a small Quaker school on the edge of the Mendips - and is one of the most succinct and powerful I've seen. The Society of Friends have long been beacons of ethical business standards and with the odd tweak, it could be (and should be) adopted by any business that aims to give a damn.

Our Values

Truth and Integrity:  we cherish the truth which enables our young people to develop integrity in what they do and what they think, helping them to build meaningful, lasting relationships.

Equality and Community:  we believe all people are of equal worth and aim to build a truly international community that values all individuals and answers the good in everyone.

Peace:  we encourage our young people to adopt peaceful methods of dealing with conflict in all its forms, taking both individual and collective responsibility in resolving differences.

Simplicity:  we believe in living simply and adventurously, placing charity and concern for others at the centre of what we do.

Sustainability:  we believe it is our responsibility to protect the Earth and to teach our young people to treasure and preserve it across the generations.

http://www.sidcot.org.uk/our-vision/

Post a pebble, post a tomato and watch them grow.

February 7 2013,

Nearly eighteen months ago, a small cardboard box landed on my desk.  In it was a carefully chosen granite coloured beach pebble, the size of a plum, and a note from a local PR company that simply said  “we’re only a stone’s throw away. Give us a call”.   Sadly I didn’t need a PR company at the time, but I loved it and I did drop them an email to say ‘nice moves’.

Late last year another, larger, box arrived in the post; this time it contained a white phone. A real landline phone - the kind no one has anymore.  The note said “now you have no reason not to give us a call”. Natch.  It was cute. Almost too cute.  When a bag of sweeties arrived just after Christmas I knew who had sent it without having to look.  I remembered their name well and today I was really happy to hire them.  Hell, if they had worked that hard to get my attention....

I think my fondness for sending things in the post comes from a friend at school, who used to test the post office’s tolerance and tenacity by sending his brother a succession of ever-stranger objects without packaging; unboxed and in the raw.  This was the late eighties when the Royal Mail was super sharp, but amongst other things he stamped and addressed an apple with an arrow through it - delivered intact in two days; a marmite sandwich - varnished for rigidity, but delivered overnight; and four Matchbox cars - posted together but delivered individually on four consecutive days (bravo Postie, that showed elan).  They drew the line at the full-sized surfboard no matter how many stamps it had.

When I started working for a PR company in the early nineties I was delighted, obviously, to discover that innovative attention-grabbing postal campaigns were de rigueur.  One of my favourites was to invite notoriously hard to reach magazine beauty editors (Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire etc) to the Department of Health’s first ever Sun-sense skin cancer  awareness campaign launch.  We found a company that would pack small items into air-filled transparent bags and in small, see-though pillows, sent them one whole, blemish-free tomato and in another a sun-dried tomato with the invite.  Nearly all of them turned up.

I love the crazy power and limitless reach of digital communication but now more than ever, it’s very hard to jump out of my inbox and really get my attention. I get up to 80 unsolicited emails a day but may be only one or two bits of post a week.   This isn’t a piece in praise of direct marketing, junk mail and postal spam - Royal Mail carpet bombing is a crime against the doormats of humanity.   This is a piece about sending the right thing, to the right person at the right time.  This is about thinking inside the box.  Thinking hard about the real human at the other end you’re trying to hook and sending something tactile, thought provoking and memorable. Bravo @NapierPR.

Before you let an algorithm digitise and automate it, ask what would a human do?

January 24 2013

Humans like vinyl records because they use natural wavy vibrations at intimate and delicate frequencies that your whole body picks up, and reacts to, in primal and inexplicable ways. Digital recordings are compressed in to binary data – bejillions of angular ones and zeros – that not only crush the fragile vibes but also leave no room for the pure heart and soul of the music.   IPods are awesome but the crackle and whump of dropping a needle on a record beats the click-wheel every time. Which, as any fule kno, is why specialist vinyl record stores are thriving while HMV has died.

We don’t expect full AI apps yet, but the holy grail of every digital tool is to be able to mimic and better the natural equivalent and it’s uncanny how good they’re getting.   At a conferencey-thing today, I was made to feel very far from the bleeding edge and way behind the leaders (a marketer’s mortal fear) because I wasn’t planning to use automated marketing apps.  I am a huge fan of digital innovation and like to think of myself as a social media maven, but often it feels like naturally human and personal communications are being crushed by their digital replacements.

I was sitting with some good friends the other day talking about the onslaught of ads on Facebook’s  mobile app. “Look” I said to Katie waving my phone at her, “it says here you recommend Hotels.com to me.”  “No I don’t. I’ve never used them,” she said nonplussed.  An algorithm chose her to flog me holidays.  A human, looking at our many neighbourly interactions wouldn’t have risked the fib.  It would have been clear that we would have rumbled the deceit.

Last week I got a hand-written letter in the post asking for a small assistance from my company.  I was charmed and replied ‘yes, of course we can. Do you need anything more?’ A human had inked a bit of soul on to a nice-feeling bit of Conqueror – it was analogue and tactile and the thick paper quivered in my hand.

At the other extreme: I got a tweet linked to a blog post about content marketing, cloyingly begging for feedback and comment, on Christmas day. Both tweet and post may have been written by a human but they weren’t really about anything more than cheap SEO and were posted by an ill-timed app that killed any credibility the author may have had.  A festive unfollow.

My company is a business IT supplier with a powerful e-commerce website that turns over tens of millions, but last year we grew over 70% in the direct sales part of the business.  That’s the bit where ambitious sales humans call put-upon IT managing humans and together they banter and haggle and bitch and moan and share stories of goals, stroppy wives, fast cars, missing shipments, excellent service and deals are done.  The sales team use digital tools like email, IM, social media and website monitoring to oil the wheels of commerce and to fan the flames, but the real deals are cut between people.  Mano y mano.

We send prospects shiny brochures printed on quality paper, in the post, partly because to throw them away you have to hold them first.  And partly because in that moment you might just feel the heft and sheen and realise that a human made a decision to try and tell you a personal story of quality and care and hopefully you’ll remember the logo.  Maybe you’ll flick through it and even if you don’t read the stories, you’ll catch the headlines with words like ‘support, trust, quality and value’ and before it hits the trash you’ll have noticed that there are no pictures of gleaming shiny products – just pictures of people making them.  And people helping people.

Less than 20% of our workforce actually makes our products, all the other 80% in some way look after the customers - the humans.  And of course most of those humans prefer the waves of a voice, the wobbles of handwriting and the vibes of music.  In our rush to use these wonderful, empowering, globe-straddling digital tools it helps to remember that.

Banalities and cats - Small businesses need to be real on social media

October 22 2012 -

Originally appeared in the Portsmouth News Business magazine. 1st November 2012

Is the benefit of social media for business the most over-hyped concept in a generation?

According to a report by the digital marketing group E-consultancy: “A quarter of UK small businesses (24%) use Facebook to market their organisations, but more than a third of them (37%) say it hasn’t helped their business in any way.”  

At the risk of channelling Vic Reeves (“82.7% of statistics are made up on the spot”), the report shows that over 80% of small UK businesses are getting no perceptible financial benefit from the social media revolution.  There’s ample evidence that the benefit of social media to small businesses is one of the most over-hyped and mis-sold concepts in a generation.  

Nevertheless, the clamour for businesses to invest marketing time and money into this medium grows every day.  And if that sounds like a massive contradiction, welcome to the difficult position senior finance and marketing managers find themselves in.  Are we missing an opportunity or just wasting our time and money?  Here’s the simple truth: unless you’re a global brand, social media is not a promotional tool and it’s not an advertising platform. It doesn’t work like that - so if your plan is based on using social media to do either of those things, be prepared to be disappointed.  

So, aye, there's the rub.  But why are so many wise heads spending so much time and effort developing Facebook and Twitter strategies?  The best social media campaigns understand that at its essence, it is just friends sharing things of mutual interest with no commercial agenda whatsoever. The key is not to see it as a  marketing tool,  but as an unique and powerful communications device that gives you unrivalled insight into people’s passions and opinions - often stated when they’re at their most unguarded.   

Try thinking of social media as a pub - lots of people with loose connections or similar interests, sharing stories and trivialities in a relaxed informal place.  The last thing they want when they’re having fun with their friends is for some stranger to interrupt and start trying to flog things to them.  Far too many companies act like the pub bore, braying loudly about themselves without listening to what anyone else is talking about.  The popular ones are those that are clearly deep in happy conversation with their followers.

Companies who use it well spend a lot of time talking banalities; talking problems; even talking issues totally unrelated to their core business.  They’ll post pictures of cats and will ‘engage’ with people in an informal manner, regardless of their station or position.  At Novatech, even though our core markets are the serious IT Business and Education sectors, we spend our time on Facebook and Twitter being deliberately puerile with young gamers.   This is partly because as a high performance tech company we have always been gaming experts, but mainly because the vast majority of these self-confessed geeks are the IT Directors of tomorrow.

We very specifically keep product promotions to an absolute minimum and usually let the audience dictate the conversation.  Mostly they want to discuss internet fads and the performance of PCs but sometimes they want to talk about poor service or disappointments.   This is uncomfortable territory.

Traditional wisdom has it that corporate PR is about ‘controlling the message’ - ensuring that only your voice and only your opinion is heard, but social media is the opposite.  Giving your
customers control of how your brand is perceived is a scary position for marketing managers.  Someone described it on Twitter as leaving the curtains open, ‘they’ll see you in your pyjamas – it’s raw and sometimes embarrassing, but REAL – and that’s very likeable.’  And you can’t buy that with an ad.

The thing that marketing types love and finance types hate is that it is ephemeral, vague and impossible to quantify.  The best results are often the ones you’ll never know about - an offline recommendation or a change in perception for the better.  But you can catch some.  Last month Novatech sold a large server to a young IT services company in Bristol. What was remarkable about that is that I can track that sale from his first conversation with us on Twitter, three years ago.  He asked about a graphics card’s gaming capabilities.  We were nice to him and responded in his preferred channel.  We chatted a lot to him and encouraged him as he set up his own business.  No salesman called until he asked for a chat with someone about server prices, but I’m pretty sure he will always be a loyal customer and a very powerful advocate for our services.

So your company’s social media should be your pub.  The kind of pub that reflects you and your employees’ passions and interests for sure, but one that your customers will feel happy to relax in. And it doesn’t matter if they don’t buy your products in there.  It doesn’t matter if they don’t even discuss you products.  As long as they’re having a good time, they’ll reflect happily on their time with you and your brand, and the positive associations will be invaluable.  

The influential blogger Jeff Bulas published a list of 15 Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing, and whilst they are all good, the last mistake was perhaps the best: ‘Communication = Talking without Listening’.   To paraphrase the post it said that, ‘sharing information without listening is social suicide. Start listening (and responding) and slowly and eventually you will get the exposure and ROI you desire.’  And his most valuable bit of advice - “Remember also, it helps to enjoy the ride.”  Look like you love what you do and others may too.

Sources

http://www.fastcompany.com/section/rules-social-media

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/08/07/15-common-mistakes-in-social-media-marketing/#6TeqFm2qMlKO5Sjq.99

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/10478-37-of-

Marketing is not maths. It's stories and hyperbole which are beautifully immeasurable.

October 10 2012

The social media marketing bandwagon is based on the not unreasonable premise that you are more likely to buy stuff recommended by a friend - or even just stuff that a friend likes... or mentions in passing.  This is old wisdom and Don Draper’s predecessors knew it well.  But what if you could actually measure that friendly influence and, better yet, capture it digitally and then put it to work marketing more and different stuff?  That’s what PeerIndex and Klout are trying to do.  

I’ve dabbled with both these sites, but I am always left nonplussed and feeling like I've missed something.  So I asked Twitter, "Does anyone take any notice of Peerindex and Klout? What do they use them for?"  I got a swift reply from Azeem Azhar, the CEO of PeerIndex offering to help with my marketing.  He drew my attention to an article he'd written for Wired entitled, "It's not the size of a person's network that matters; it's what they do with it.”  And this is the first paragraph.

“Marketing is maths and always has been. Ever since the first shopkeeper realised that a sign on the side of his building would drive more sales than it cost to erect then the mathematics of promotion and consumption have been in place. The sums have become more complicated, with search marketing now more akin to a science than an art, but the core cost/benefit calculation remains the same.”

I think that is arse. An accountant’s view of the truth maybe, but still arse. Marketing is not maths. It's stories and urges and persuasion and hyperbole; all of which are beautifully immeasurable.     Yes, you can and absolutely must count the number of stories you get and plot the peaks of site visits when the story hits fever pitch, but that’s measuring the thing, not the actual essence of the thing.   

I like the fact that despite the best work of some of the brightest minds, it is still impossible to quantify the most powerful aspects of how people relate to brands and why they choose them over others.   I can measure what you bought, but really why you bought it and what you were feeling is the most important and yet most ephemeral bit of data. Which is great because that’s the difference between science and art.   Proven facts versus smoke and mirrors.  

Azeem is a super-bright guy and far more successful than me but re-reading the arc of his argument it feels like he’s missing the beating heart of marketing.   And it’s not that I disagree with what he says  - a précis is that we have a more varied influence over our friends and colleagues than we previously thought and his company will turn that influence into digital data that you can ‘leverage’ to sell your shizzle.  

Except I think that, at the highest and most important level, the ‘what were you feeling’, bit can’t be measured and won't fit neatly into a spread-sheet.   You have to have an instinct for it. This is an art of the gut feeling.  A good brand strategist judges another person’s clout and peer influence instinctively, by reading their work and noting (mentally) who retweets their tweets and likes their posts.  If I had to make a list of my top ten most influential twitter accounts, I could do it off the top of my head in great detail.

Judgement and art appreciation can be taught and learned (I spend a lot of time teaching sales teams how to really understand their customers so they can send the right material, at the right time to the right people.), but in the end it is not a binary task - Marketing is a very human measure of what feels right, emotive and, yes, influential.

Every Finance Director wants to catch the smoke and measure the mirror, but any good salesman will tell you that empathy with the customer is the best way to unlock their wallet.  And that’s an artist’s gift, not a scientist’s.  I do understand the necessity of counting the cost and efficacy but you don’t need to digitise something to harness its power. Wind turbine anyone?

Footnote:

Azeem of PeerIndex was the only respondent to my twitter question. No one else I could find used either service beyond a curiosity.  And my Klout score is 50. Is that good? No one can tell me.

The golden rule for companies’ social media - back your own judgement

Originally written for Valuable Content, November 2012,

October 29 2012,

“At times like this I wish I’d listened to what my mother told me.”

“Why what did she say?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t listen…” 

Douglas Adams of course.

The best bit of maternal advice I’ve ever received was on how to raise our new-born son. “Listen to all the advice and then do whatever you feel is right,” said mum.  It’s a great maxim for life in general, but it’s particularly apposite when it comes to using social media for business.

Ignore anyone demanding that you use it as the ultimate brand engagement tool. Sure, if you can afford to pay for a nutter to jump out of balloon in the stratosphere then do it (oh wait... that may have been done). But what would your customers (and staff) think if you started shelling-out for sky-diving spacemen?   

Is not a marketing tool; it’s a human contact device.

One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make when planning their social media strategy is to introduce a sales performance element. How do you measure the performance and efficiency of the person who answers your phones or greets customers in your store?  How do you judge their impact on sales and the bottom line?  Nowadays those tasks are usually just parts of a bigger role, but they are the essentials to how your customers first perceive your company.  

If they are greeted with a smile, engaged with good conversation, and pointed accurately to the thing that they’re looking for, then social media has done its job for your company.  The gentle personal touch trumps aggressive product-led marketing.  That might sound unambitious but advertising, PR and direct sales are still very effective so allow social media to just give human warmth to some otherwise cold digital exchanges.

Be yourself. People like it better that way.

You know your business and you know your customers better than any agency so have confidence and talk to them on social media the way you would in person.   Remember who they are; imagine that they’re all smart and funny and then talk to the highest common denominator.    Be confident that if people are interacting with you on social media, you’ve already got a high level of their interest so yes, show your best side, but be always yourselves.

Choose the people to run you social media carefully, assuming that they may well not be in the marketing team, but they’ll be the people that exemplify your values and highest standards. And they’ll be garrulous and chatty and prone to fun not only because well-thought-out tomfoolery is very endearing, but also because people have a lot of affection for companies that let you see the characters behind the scenes.  

So allow your social media operators to be frank, honest and approachable.  It’s vital that you let them be themselves and back their judgement too.

Talk to them regularly and ask why they are posting certain things, but be ready to be very pleased when they say, “because it feels right”.  You have to trust your intuition to judge if they’re having a positive impact on the company’s image and performance but your customers will be quick to tell you if they don’t like something, and especially if they do.

Start with low expectations and don’t expect a massive sales spike, then soon you’ll be collecting positive anecdotes of transformed perceptions, and will start to appreciate the immense power and value of a tweet from a customer that says ‘ha! love it. lol.’

We’re all off our heads on Facetwitt

(I wrote this originally for The Business magazine - published July 2012) Thebusinessmag.co.uk

October 9 2012)

The last edition of The Business had an opinion piece by a local legal firm titled “Is social media an unwelcome cost to business – like drug abuse or alcoholism?”

The agitated article concluded that indeed it was and that the work-shy junior employees of the nation’s professional services companies were all out of their minds on Facebook and off their heads on Twitter.

Social media is not a drug. That‘s a silly, scare-mongering and very un-lawyerly thing to say.   That’s like saying heavy metal music encourages violent Satanic murder.  It is not only just plain wrong, but also misunderstands nearly everything about social media which are just forums to talk friends or to people with similar interests.  They have, for many, replaced the water-cooler, canteen, pub or market square as the place to catch up with friends, to exchange news and gossip, and even to do business.

There are two angles here: what your staff are doing and what you as a company are doing, and it’s important that you don’t get them confused.  Yes, if you let your staff spend all their time chatting to their friends or their fellow Morris dancers /philatelists /oenophiles, then productivity may well dip.  But that’s not social media’s fault that’s down to your task and time management.   

Here are two useful metaphors:  Firstly, think of social media as a pub.  It’s a great place to get together, to chat and to swap stories and even to network. It is, however, fair to say that it’s inappropriate to spend time in the pub when you’re being paid to work.  Pop in for a shandy and a sandwich at lunchtime but be back at your desk ready to go at 2pm.  You, as an employer have to educate your employees what you expect of them on your time.

As a company you must also decide if people want to hear you trying to flog your services while they’re in the social media pub with their friends.  Far too many companies just sound like the pub bore, shouting their opinions regardless if anyone has asked for them or is even listening.  If you are amongst friends and the chat turns to how to find great legal advice, it’s a good time to say, “well actually I work for a great firm. Have a look here…”  So it is wise to be a discreet friendly drinker in your customers’ local, who can chip in when socially appropriate.  It’s also a golden opportunity to listen to what your customers and staff are saying at their most unguarded and relaxed.  Listen carefully and you might learn something valuable.

Secondly, think of social media as a phone. Most people under 25 see email as a dated and sluggish means of communication and prefer social media’s immediacy, and phone calls aren’t free like Twitter.  So who answers the new phone in your office and are they equipped to deal with customer enquiries? Would you let you phone calls go unanswered or man the lines with untrained staff?    Is a valuable customer calling your new number?  Unlike the phone, social media leaves a written trail that can be very useful for training and customer services.  Again, by listening in – which is perfectly acceptable on social media - you can learn an awful lot about what is important to your target market.  And don’t forget that today’s idle twittering youth are tomorrow’s business leaders.

Just as it’s unthinkable to not have a web and email address on your stationary, not having an internal and external social media policy is now a rather telling sign that a company isn’t really listening to either their employees or to their customers.