Buzz Canuck

The Mismatch Between Company Motive and Customer Want

From IBM's Institute of Business Value, some interesting paradoxes between the two players in this dance of communities and social. On one hand, a company that believes customers want to get more closer to them, maybe grab some info and do some minimal engagement and the customer who desperately wants the freebie.

The caveat here is the people that do want to join a community and feel a deeper sense of connection are like gold and ideally should be the minority - I wouldn't concern myself with their percentage being so low.

The necessity here is that we should be mindful that - good feelings and soft lullabies are only so good in creating lasting social brand currency, the people want stuff too.

Don't underestimate the power of an unexpected piece of swag or exclusive offer and proposal.

We talk about the 27 different incentives people have in deciding whether they want to join a community, cause or brand-sponsored effort in our book Wikibrands - have a look in chapter 8. 

Maslow's Hierarchy of MO

For those 400,000+ people who become Mo Bros and MoSistas this year and the millions more that follow them, you may pass through the 8 stages of MO to become a truly self-actualized Mo. 

Where are you on this scale...

Stage 1 - Aware - 100% of us, you know about and you revel in knowing what Movember is all about

Stage 2 - Participating - 70% - you have advocated the cause at some point over the 30 days

Stage 3 - Involved - 50% - you have publicly declared interest with your profile and wallet

Stage 4 - Committed - 35% - you`re not on the sidelines, you`ve publicly shown your advocacy by growing a handsome or not so handsome Mo (or supported others madly who did - MoSistas)

Stage 5 - Engaged -20%  - you`ve built a team, became a change agent and enthusiastically rallied to troops to follow you into the cauldron of Mo-dom

Stage 6 - Champion - 10% -it wasn`t enough to build a fundraising sect, you`ve gone out of your comfort zone and hosted an event, stunt or something beyond your known circle of friends

Stage 7 - Captain - 3% - your passion has been recognized and you`ve become a bit of a local cause celebré for your Mo creativity, conviction and commitment

Stage 8 - Fanatic - 1% - consider this your full time job - likely you have a `stache tattooed permanently and have devoted 20+ hours per week to the Mo Cause before, during and after these 30 days

Wherever it is you are on this scale, we salute you!

The Movember Digital Challenge - Start Your Mos!

Tackle prostate cancer globally, but Mo locally.

That's our motto for this year's runup to the highly buzzable and causeworthy Movember 2010 campaign. We've had the privilege of pulling together a rag tag crew of passionate Movember digital team captains and assistant captains from across Canada. 

Their mission is to spread the good word about Movember (it would appear their efforts are already working as we are well ahead of our fundraising goals and Movember was trending for a number of hours yesterday) and involve themselves in a little Mo-opetition, fundraising through their various local, digital and social media outlets. They are the front row of a much larger crew of 2,000 digital influencers we are engaging across Canada. 

So if you are looking for a team of digital peeps? and want to join our cause - here's where you can find us:

@MovemberVIC - Victoria B.C.      

Team Link:  http://ca.movember.com/mospace/582742/

Captain - Chris Burdge  @b_West   

Assistant Captains - Rod Phillips @rod_phillips and Juhli Selby @JUHLiSELBy

@MovemberYVR - Vancouver, B.C.    

Team YVR Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/619810/

Captain  James Sherrett @sherrett 

Assistant Captains - Darren Barefoot @dbarefoot Monique Trottier @somisguided Adrian Eden @adrianeden

@MovemberYEG - Edmonton

Team YEG Link : http://ca.movember.com/mospace/558020/

Alberta Captain - Jason Darrah @jasdarrah 

Assistant Captains -Jerry Aulenbach @zoomjer and Brittney Leblanc @britl

@MovemberYYC   - Calgary,Alberta     

Team YYC Link:  http://ca.movember.com/mospace/539136/

Captain - Sarah Blue @superblue 

Assistant Captains - James Bull @jimbones

@MovemberYQR  - Regina, Saskatchewan  

TEAM YQR Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/516288/

Captain - David Bellerive  @stupidinregina

Assistant Captains - Lisa merle @lisamerle and Jeff Maystruck @fraserstrategy

@MovemberLDN  - London, Ontario 

TEAM LDN Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/745714/

Co-Captains - Matt Bergmann @creativematt and Ali Webb @ali_webb

Assistant Captains - Andrew Amos @andrew-amos and Karl Allen-Muncey @cutegecko

@MovemberTO - Toronto, Ontario 

Team TO Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/533546/

Captain - Jeremy Wright @jeremywright

Assistant Captains - Melissa Smich @smichm  Michael Nus @michaelnus

@MovemberYOW - Ottawa, Ontario  

Team YOW Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/515608/

Captain - Allan Isfan  @isfan

Assistant Captains - Claudia Petrilli @claudiapetrilli and Dave Hale @davechale

@MovemberYUL - Montreal, Quebec 

Team YUL Link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/525926/

Co-Captains - Eric Robillard @clownonfire and Sara Lomas @drawnin

Assistant Captains - Colleen Gainey @ColleenTG JS Chouinard @jschouinard

@MovemberYHZ - Halifax, Nova Scotia  

Team YHZ link: http://ca.movember.com/mospace/391178/

Captain: Ryan Joseph @famousfolks

Assistant Captains - Matt Whitman @matlantivex Emily Mong @emilymong and @Daniel Couto @coutodaniel

@MOChampions - Canada's digital Mo Ambassadors

MOChampions Team Link:  http://ca.movember.com/mospace/157367/

Sean Moffitt @MovemberSean and Nadia Rushdi @MovemberNad

@MoCupcakes - The Quest for the Manliest Cupcakes

Bakers in crime:  Marie Chidiac @mareechidiac  Sandra Brunner @wallabina  Tiffy @tiffykt  Julia Cameron @juliacameron Adjea Duncan @prettysweetlife Sophie Biefield @sophiebifield

Our US Contingent:

Benevolent US Ringleader Mike Schneider @schneidermike  (located in Boston)

TeamAUS  - Austin,  Texas - Aaron Strout @aaronstrout

TeamBOS  - Boston, Mass. - Graham Nelson @grahamnelson

TeamDFW - Dallas, Texas - Kris Morrison@KMO_Chirp

TeamLAX - Los Angeles, California - Brian Aucoin

TeamSLC  - Salt Lake City, Utah -  DJ Waldow @djwaldow

TeamNYC - New York City, NY - Lisa Kolodny  @kolodsoffun

TeamSEA - Seattle, Wash. - Damon Cortesi @dacort

TeamSAN - San Diego, Calfornia - BJ Cook @bj

TeamRDU - Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina - Gregory Ng @gregoryng

Movember and this A-team of Mos are ready, are you?

The Top 30 Group Buying Deal Programs - Rated

From the ashes of the meltdown of the 2008 and 2009 world economy comes a number of group and local deal services targeting local-based retailers and the people that shop there. It is truly the marriage between three rising trends - e-commerce, localization and social networking - wrapped up in a discount envelope. I've had no fewer than ten people ask me about the comparative strength of these services - apparently many of their sales teams are pitching superiority in their proposals.

I'm of two minds here. On one side, this is a heck of a lot better than targeting discounts and coupons through newspaper from an effectiveness, from a tracking and from a pay-for-performance standpoint. As a client interested in ROI or a retailer counting their pennies, this type of service gets a lot closer to knowing which part of your marketing spend is effective. 

On the other side, I see a nation of retailers, from high end boutiques to low end discounters, training their clientele to shop based on price and ceding over their customer lists to others in the process. Is this just a better more contemporary, socialized version of the coupon that allows more real estate to promote your offering or is this the Walmartization of local merchant economy?

That economic and moral question aside, we have reviewed and rated 30 of the top deal services based on the following criteria:

        - User Experience (20 pts)

        - Quality of Deal (20 pts)

        - Differentiation of Offering (15 pts)

        - Design (15 pts)

        - Socialness (10 pts)

        - Breadth of Deals (10 pts)

        - Number of Cities/Places (10 pts)

We'll release our ratings next week but hopefully give their founders and executive staff a chance to provide additional thoughts and highlight their strengths on their group wares. I'll individually evaluate each site in follow up posts.

In the interim, here is our preliminary rating of their Twitter presence. Twitter IQ scores were given based on number of followers, quality and frequency of posts, depth of engagement and smart Twitter behaviour (response/promote ratios, central and city-based pages):

Company	Location	Lead Account	Following	Followers	Listed	Tweets	Twitter IQ Score
Gilt	NYC	@giltgroupe	2499	11851	825	660	19
Living Social	Washington	@livingsocial	3042	7516	480	2577	19
TeamBuy	Toronto	@teambuy_toronto	1876	1704	81	793	16
Scoutmob	Atlanta	@scoutmob	4143	6077	305	2214	16
Red Flag Deals	Toronto	@redflagdeals	21	5904	246	6077	14
GroupOn	Chicago	@groupon	3	5225	359	114	14
My Daily Thread	Atlanta	@mydailythread	2001	1404	81	1312	14
Grooster	Vancouver	@groostervan	1446	1233	77	220	13
Webpiggy	Toronto	@webpiggy	2001	1073	62	1189	12
Social Buy	Los Angeles	@social_buy	931	788	42	1111	10
Scoop St.	NYC	@scoopst	363	671	60	2341	10
TippR	Seattle	@tippr	58	921	44	160	9
Twongo	North Carolina	@teamtwongo	1463	769	42	509	9
WagJag	Toronto	@wagjag	1976	1010	43	193	8
YipIt	NYC	@yipit	460	594	44	336	8
Pricebunch	Chicago	@pricebunchchi	802	297	19	63	6
DealOn	NYC	@dealonnyc	138	205	10	196	6
TownHog	San Francisco	@townhog	359	154	14	72	3
At Cost	Los Angeles	@atcostLA	266	85	10	22	3
Bloomspot	Mountain View, CA	@bloomspot	0	72	5	202	2
Home Run	San Francisco	@homerun_com	0	28	4	0	1
Adility	San Francisco	@adility	0	26	4	10	1

Congrats Gilt Groupe, Living Social, Team Buy and ScoutMob for passing our Twitter test with flying colours. Unfortunately Twitter socialness likely only counts for 3% of our total evaluation. For those who work at these companies, we'd love to evaluate your strengths firsthand, so drop us a line or leave a comment below.

We've also left 8 spots open for additions, so please provide us your best other group buying networks/websites for our total evaluation. Happy deals.

The Three Headed Digital Business - The Corporate Website, The Online Community and The Social Networks

I came to a fork in the road, so I took it. Yogi Berra

A topic of much rancorous debate over the last few weeks in the office and on a few pitches has been the comparative appeal, need for and roles of these three very different e-beasts:

- the corporate site

- the online brand community and

- the social network extensions

(we could add blog if we wanted a fourth).

Some late adopting companies have questioned whether they need to even open themselves to the latter two more socially-oriented  digital arenas. I liken them to the sentries trying to hold onto the last outskirts of the Roman Empire; I hope they have a better fate, but I fear not

Other aloof companies believe a bit of social media monitoring and a Facebook page is all you need to be social. I have a great deal on "pork belly" futures for you too if you subscribe to this school of thought.

Meanwhile, a number of high profile Cluetrain advocates have suggested that leading companies in the future may not even need to own their own hubs and that there business will be taken care of ably by their Facebook platforms, Twitter profiles, Google apps and iPhone apps. Calling all patrol cars, we're looking for the web insane - they've escaped their cells again.

All of these positions are horribly wrong and missing the key axiom on the role of web in building value for business - be everywhere, to all people with a balance of environments, content, benefit and control.

In an effort to presumedly control costs and complexity, companies are hunkering down and believing they need to choose one direction and stick to it. This is a cardinal sin - unfortunately also one being furthered by self-interested groups: boutique agencies who favour gorgeous looking standalone sites, ecommerce/technology companies pushing security tight enterprise infrastructures, Silicon Valley who are pushing white label, company-owned collaborative environments and ad platforms and social nets who are peddling third party platforms.

Why choose? After all, each serves a valuable purpose and if you look at the best engaged brands - they have a healthy participation and integration in all camps.

The chart below suggests why each has a role to play and how chopping a head off, eliminates access to a big part of the digital value chain.

So as much as you'd like to cut off the some of the limbs, arms and noggins from the three headed digital hydra - you'd be foolish to. You might be able to control your assets better but as a wise manager once told me "you can always manage failure, much tougher to manage success."

Social Influence Marketing - The Big Picture

A picture says a thousand things, doesn't it.

The CMO League - An Executive Network of Marketing Chiefs

 



We have scored a virtual coup. That's right a coup. Here's what I'm talking about.

Next Monday, we are hosting our first boutique event inviting some senior Canadian marketers for a league of their own. They've expressed a need - we're filling it.

Even more exciting is who's appearing, check this roster:

Grant McCracken is making a Toronto appearance - he's been one of my favourite bloggers since 2004 - his postsactually make you think. He is launching his book "Chief Culture Officer" - recommended by Business Week as one of the best books of 2009...and an idea and subject that marketers need to wrap their minds around...NOW.

In our second half, we will have Ted Graham from Interbrand present their Top Brands report - I was invited to an executive breakfast a couple of months ago where they presented the findings and I found the valuation interesting, summary brilliant and implications clear and provocative.

Great influential company, a great venue (the Spoke Club) and a copy of the book and report. If you are a head of a client marketing group, don't pass up the opportunity to get connected, informed and excited about 2010.

If you are a CMO or our a change agent who want to influence their CMO to change their culture and approach to their customers, come join us on Monday, January 11th.

The Arcs of Community - Affiliated vs. Built Communities - which path to take?

Hopefully once and for all, we can put the age-old 2.0 argument to rest - "do you build your own online community or connect on others?".

The essential need is to do both - if you hear advice to the contrary, the people you are talking to really don't know what they are talking about.

Think about a bike wheel - the built community is your hub - you control it and host the conversation inviting the world into your party, it powers what your business does...the affiliated communities (and there potentially many - see our social media octopus)  are the spokes - extending your good stuff into the microcosms of the web and getting your content unchained, loose and fancy free.

Here's the key reason why you need the hub and spokes to your community bike - if you look at the 6 key requirements of building effective community (there are a few others - but these are the day to day operating essentials), a built community (i.e. Dell Ideastorm) vs. an affiliated community (i.e. a user forum or a Facebook page) perform much differently on these steps.

Outreach - for most prospective communities - the people you need to find and recruit are "out there" not "in here" - last time I checked finding 1.1 billion people in social networks, 350 million people on Facebook, 50 million LinkedIners and 20 million early adopting Twitterites then dropping a phone call to your very best friends - Advantage- Affiliated Communities

Seeding - identifying the right group of users to be your front row of testers, collaborators, users and ambassadors - takes a mix of scale - having a lot of people enter the candidate funnel and knowing what they are doing and saying in the world out there but on the other side, also understanding intimately the people that are already related to you and their intensity of commitment and interest - Advantage - A Tie

Engagement - competing with 150,000 Facebook pages and 100,000 iPhone apps are way too difficult, to create any type of meaningful engagement, the user experience in these arenas is to graze and sip not to settle into one space and go deep - on top of that, all of the meaningful metrics, insights and opportunity to build a relationship belong to the platform not the sponsoring party - you are at their whim - finally, any customization requirements are the mercy of what the social network platform or user forum allows you to do...it simply pays to build your own community to engage  people on a deeper basis Advantage - Built Communities

Collaboration - oftentimes in a community you want to hive off a discussion, a project, an idea, a group and get a subset of engaged and informed people to rally around it away from your general mainstream group - once again, tough as nails to create that interaction on the popular social networks - you are just another subway stop on a user's very long train tracks of their web social and content life - creating this sense of commitment, affinity and collective interest happens in built communities enhanced by the ability to control and design your world your way consistent with community user's core needs Advantage - Built Communities

Affiliation - people join and buy into communities for three reasons - intrinsically - they buy into the values of what you're doing, extrinsically - they will appear better to their peers and explicitly - they get something for their time and effort - whereas built communities may reinforce a sense of intrinsic "we're all in this together" value better, affiliated communities allow for an expanded broadcast of your reputation driving extrinsic value - then it's a battle between the built communities ability to reward anybody at any time more easily vs. affiliated communities ease of effort and ability to recruit and be noticed be others doing good stuff Advantage - Tie

Rebroadcast - good content usually rises to level of its quality - and the good stuff usually goes "viral" in social networks and user forums not within the confines of the built community itself, check out the New York Times as well as most established media and grassroots blogs and the majority of their web traffic comes through links from affiliated networks (i.e. Twitter feeds) than specific destination visitors - their good content gets marginalized if not for the eyes of the affiliated community worlds this also supports search engine rankings Advantage -  Affiliated communities

The short argument is that affiliated communities help build scale and the built communities help build engagement. Worth further exploration as a future blog post...but in the interim, when two online communities fork in the woods - take both paths.

The 11Cs of Community - #2 - Competition

Beyond being one of the sexiest brand communities, Nike Plus has tapped into intuitively what its target audience loves to do - compete.

To compete against each other, to compete as teams, to compete against themselves. Most Nike runners would not stop for a picket line, parade or nudist protest - they are just that committed to their run.

In fact, marketers and businesses don't get a lot of the finer points of building and managing communities, getting people to compete is not one of them (think promotions, contests and sweepstakes - we sometimes view our consumers as willing lemmings to do almost anything for a tshotcke) ...just Nike does it better.

As you can see my Nike Plus' community (pictured above), there are so many platforms of competition on their web 2.0 portal to the world. Rivalry, challenges and leaderboards all stoke people's need for participation and help build tribal reputation.

Specific features on Nike's site:

Personal Challenges - the ability to select an adversary/friendly partner and create a competitive distance or pace challenge and also get in on the nastier public forum TrashTalk

Team Challenges - pull together a gaggle of joggers and wage a competition against another set of short shorts-wearing individuals

Community Goals - have a group compete in pursuit of a common distance goal

Personal Resolutions -get people to come back again and again to see how they are faring against their monthly or annual targets

Leaderboard - a world run, rankings chart of the top people who have run by week, by month and ever (top member in the world has run 24,000+ kilometres ... impressive!) sortable by duration, distance and pace and gender, age and geography, very cool

Distance Club - see members and give props to those who have met their distance milestones - 250km, 1000km, 2000km, 4000km and 6000km

Widgets - very robust downloadable desktop widgets for your challenges and performance

My only feedback for the Nike team would be to do four things:

1) Profile the top performing or most interesting people on their community - highlight their efforts in a much deeper way and create a better level of personalization and grassroots connectedness than currently available on their site (as they had to a certain degree with their 2008 Human Race blog) ..also I'd love to know if there are any explicit incentives (free shoes, customized merchandise or exclusive experiences) for performance beyond the call

2) Allow more runner-generated activity to bubble up to the front page - yes, they do have a really well designed tracker of recent stuff on the front page and a clutter free, almost perfect design, I'd just love to see a leaderboard and more populated front page of the wealth of activity coming in from their 1.2 million community members and 72,000 runs tracked in the alst 24 hours

3) Extending their presence out in the social media universe - how difficult would it to integrate Facebook, Twitter and other globally relevant sites in addition to providing a supportive blog

4) Allow links - based on its flash based set up, all parts of the site point to the same url - having areas that bloggers, Facebookers and Twitterers could easily link to would be helpful

But this is quibbling - for competition reasons and sexy looks, you'd be hardpressed to find a community better than Nike Plus. Now attack....

Let me know if you've run across other communities with competitive features. And stay tuned here for #3 in our continuing series of Community features - Customization - gold standard features that enhance member personalization (please provide thoughts in advance here).

The 11Cs of Community - #1 Communication/Content

In an 11 part series, I'll be breaking down the essential components and tools of great online brand community sites.

The first 4 are "table stakes" - a high percentage of communities are aware of them and do them, they just need to do them well (communication, competition, customization and conversation).

The next 4 are "take 'em or leave 'em" practiced by 1/2 the communities we run across (connection, community, categorization and collective wisdom). The last 3 are rarely practiced or practiced well but truly harness the potential of an army of enthusiasts when executed correctly (co-creation/ collaboration, contextrual extesnions and culture-building).

On to #1 - Communication & Content.

Like any website, communities have to deliver communication effectively, efficiently and provocatively. In communities, the ability to convey a lot of multimedia information in an inherently uncontrolled environment presents some challenges. Given that most communities "seed past" were built around pioneering yet really clumsy looking sites from the 90's like "The Well", good web design and "pleasing on the eyes" user experience is sacrificed at the altar of functionality and good web practice. 

So when you run across a community-based website that works good, feels good and looks good. You sit back and admire. I had a number of sites that present their photos, blogs, information, video, user gen content, albums, news and updates well but we settled on American Express' Open Forum (screen shot pictured above).

What do I like about Open Forum?

- a clear purpose statement

- a great secondary top menu, getting you to the key interaction areas - business stories, forums, blogs and member wall

- a smart menu breakdown of the 5 constituent areas of the site

- a video flash based area where the most important content bubbles up

- a prominent login and call to action for current and new members

- countdown clocks, countdown clocks - I love the conveyal of "something important coming this way"

- a secondary flash based area that covers off top leading content with transparent bacground messaging

- a tag based menu architecture to allow for random surfing and top subjects of interest

- shining the light on cardmembers and highlighting their contributions through their "insight area"

- video, news and content in clean 3 column interface

- branding - a good secondary balance and support for more explicitly American Express branding and benefits - the sponsorship of the site is clear that it is American Express-driven (in fact, they could have heightened the brand presence even more without giving it a salesy look and feel)

- a search area to easily sort for content and people

- a bottom menu that is loaded but not overbearing

- a member signup area that is straightforward and presents other members who have already joined - also uses intelligent dropdwons that speeds up the signup experience

- an RSS feed on content, added subtly to the front page

- a colour coded, well integrated forum that looks like it was built with readability not technical ability in mind

- a well presented blog with highlights on affiliated subject matter experts

- the use of community guidelines which takes legalease and good intuition and puts it into a nicely packaged 12 clause statement

- a privacy policy that has a parent menu followed by all the legalease

My only four issues with Open Forum are:

1) not allowing the user generated side of the site to surface beyond certain areas and the ability for these same people to join groups, connect and create their own mini-communities. The site is great partly based on the funds American Express has put in to buy or broker interesting content. Perhaps what's in the works for their relaunch is to take the same design credos and apply it to their open and networked member side of the fence.

2) the ability and incentive to refer others, from a simple "tell-a-friend" functionality to sophisticated social network integration - simple builds could increase referral at little expense, effort or design compromise.

3) The site did not feel well-integrated within the social web - no perceived integration with other sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Flickr, although there was an RSS feed and a tweet tracking widget on their blog posts. Maybe intentional to keep the exclusivity of their audience but may be undermining the traffic funnel they could create (currently the site has 13,000+ regsitered members).

4) granted the cardmember/small business audience may appreciate this or find this comfortable, but the site can look too corporate in some areas, and not enough "taking off the tie and shoes" content areas. Perhaps nit picky - but that much pale blue, grey and black sets me off sometimes.

Overall though, a well planned, well-designed and well-executed communication/content/community site for a well-targeted community of people.

Next Online Community Tool C post - Competition