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It seems I’ve been nominated for a cool little event called the Best of 604. It’s a best of list for Vancouver based blogs, and since I’m based in Vancouver, I qualify for this cool little award.
I spent the weekend working on a Christmas gift for our families. Photos were edited, accounts created and by Sunday afternoon, I was ready to start doing the layout for my Blurb book.
It didn’t really take me too long before I got frustrated, mainly with myself and the software and our interaction. I tweeted my annoyance and then promptly went out to run a few errands. An hour or so later, around 430 or 5 pm, my phone trilled with a message
“@colleencoplick what are you trying to do? i’m blurb’s marketing director - maybe i can help.”
On a Sunday afternoon. Of the US Thanksgiving long weekend.
I was floored.
I got home, and replied to Mike, who pretty much immediately hopped onto GTalk with me and helped me through my software troubles, got me set on the right path, AND offered me $50 off my order with a personalized discount code. I was amazed and delighted that he was so responsive.
Turns out that Mike has a daily Twitter search that he runs to see what’s being said out in the world, and he saw my frustrated tweet. Talk about utilizing social media tools the right way! He’s tweeting as himself, but is there to help the community in any way he can.
It’s amazing when you run into a company using social media the right way, but combines that with outstanding customer service! Blurb should definitely hang onto Mike, he’s pretty fantastic!
While all of my US counterparts are recovering from their Turkey hangover, I’m sitting in rainy Vancouver, BC and thinking about the year to come. Predictions are starting to pop up all over the web, but one struck me as particularly poignant, and gave me enough pause that I felt compelled to comment.
Max discusses the need for businesses to trim back their strategies in 2009, and focus more on their purpose. I couldn’t agree more. People are ready for change, and not just in your President Elect.
The advertising industry is experiencing budget cuts, partially due to the economy, but I can’t help but think that it has something to do with this age of transparency and honesty. People are tired of the spin being pushed at them, and anytime a company isn’t completely honest with their consumers, they get called to the mat, loudly and publicly.
2009 is going to signal change in many industries and businesses need to change the way they function if they’re going to survive and succeed. So, what are the fundamental pieces your business needs to focus on in the upcoming year?
Pare back your strategies. Business does not have to be complicated. You don’t have to have a complicated strategy in order to reach your customers.
Increase your purpose. What is the point of your business? Can you, or better yet, your employees explain accurately what it is you do and why others should join your company or purchase your product or service? Why do you exist?
Come back to your core values. What were the values you upheld when you began your business? Are you still true to them today or have you let them slide in the face of striving to succeed?
Increase your social media interaction, or - god forbid - if you’re not involved in social media yet, get there, and get there now. The advertising industry has changed dramatically. The PR industry isn’t the same, and media is in a constant state of flux and change. Your competition will leave you in a cloud of honesty, transparency, and brilliant, yet subtle, salesmanship.
What are your plans/predictions for business in the coming year? Add your thoughts in the comments and I’ll add them to my list and credit you.
Vancouver is home to the 2010 Olympics, as much of the world is aware (and those who aren’t aware have more important things on their minds). The city is enveloped in a flurry of activity, getting everything from buildings, athlete’s villages, and ski jumps ready for the onslaught of tourists, athletes and media that will descend onto our fair city.
Recently, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (aka VANOC - you know, the bigwigs in charge of all of the Olympic everythings in Vancouver) began a four-day “World Press Briefing” for more than 250 visiting journalists and media managers. There was some serious debate about how media coverage of the Olympics is changing dramatically due to new and emerging media.
DaveO, ever the eloquent one, says, “In brief, we’d like to have a conversation about how to allow fans and amateur media makers to document their Olympic experience…”.
“We are aware of your obligations to media rights holders and are seeking to provide an entirely different sort of coverage than the accredited media provide,” he wrote. “We are not looking to cover events per se but are instead interested in covering the cultural stories, athletes’ families’ stories, and stories from fans who saved and travelled from around the world for this experience. In other words, we plan to encourage and aggregate fan coverage of the individual’s on the street experience of the Games.”
Between the three of them, Scales, Krug and Olsen have covered Beijing 2008, Torino 2006, SLC 2002, and Nagano 1998, all unaccredited and on various forms of media.
DaveO goes on to explain that, in order to facilitate more citizen journalism, Raincity Studios will be “… hosting an independent, international media centre at our Gastown loft office. As part of this, we’ll organize events like photo walks and aggregate fan-made content for the enjoyment of a worldwide audience.”
This is going to happen with or without the mighty blessing of VANOC, but as DaveO pointed out, “We’d [all] like to work with you to do this for mutual benefit.”
To date, all that I know is that the spokeswoman for VANOC told Jeff Lee, the Vancouver Sun Olympic Reporter that “The IOC is the ultimate arbiter on the representation on the press commission, and each country’s National Olympic Committee determines which media get accredited for the Games.”
She goes on to say that, “As the organizing committee, we can and will encourage both entities to recognize and facilitate the immense growth of online media, however ultimately decisions for press commission membership and Games accreditation lie with them. We have not yet responded to the open letter from the social media group but will do so in the coming days.”
So, Dave, Kris, Robert, where do we stand on this? Has VANOC gotten back to you? Have we come to any sort of conclusion here?
Hein Gerber is speaking at the Institute of Corporate Directors breakfast about what social media and networking actually is, and how corporations can use social media to their benefit.
We’re talking at the moment about what social media is, how it works, and what some examples of social media are. Hein dares people in the room to type “company name” and “facebook” in google and see what comes up. He says that many corporations don’t know they’re even on Facebook.
I constantly forget that corporations aren’t up to speed on social media - that we really are early adopters.
The main drivers of social networking: uptake and exponential growth, changing workplace demographics, and enabling technology.
The proof is in the numbers:
In January 2008, Facebook there were 64 million and now, 11 months later, there are 124 million users. Companies are starting to realize that social networking and the requirement to spend money on these services and to invest in social networking in order to recruit and retain employees.
The examples that hein is using to explain the kinds of corporations that are using to describe social networking:
Delta, Boeing. BC Government, Nike, Nortel (on Twitter) TELUS… I’m surprised that we’re not talking about some of the really big players in the social media world - sure all these companies are using these tools, but what about Mortrin, Southwest Airlines, and some of the other really big players?
Wow. We’re talking about Second Life, and Telus’s virtual store … he’s using 15 million registered users as the figure to explain how “important” Second Life is, but this is telling me that the corporate world is really very behind on the actual social media world - there’s really not many people who are actually using Second Life anymore.
Now we’re getting into the risks. This is what I’m really interested in - I want to see what the corporations think of as the major risk factors in business.
One of the major ones is from an individual perspective: that an employee can put some of the confidential information out on the web; they think that there will be a slow down in corporate infrastructure if people are streaming videos; malware, viruses etc; damage to the brand (oh hai Mortrin), corporate espionage, performance degradation and productivity loss.
Ahh, now we’re getting into Mortin. Hein thinks that it was a good move to pull the ad, that Motrin was acting in the companies’ best interest, and yet, Ad Age makes a good case for the fact that Johnson & Johnson moved way too fast. Just because a few people were rather, ahem, vocal, doesn’t mean that it’s the view of the majority of your users.
Some of the questions that Hein says companies should ask include:
What is your organization’s approach and commitment to Web 2.0?
How will your organization benefit from embracing Web 2.0?
Does your business strategy consider the impact of Web 2.0?
Has your organization conducted a risk assessment of internal and external implications of Web 2.0?
Is your infrastructure secure enough?
Will your organization be able to measure the impact and benefits of Web 2.0?
Can your infrastructure support Web 2.0?
Does your organization’s policies address the use of Web 2.0 technologies?
Does your IT portfolio include an inventory of Web 2.0 applications and initiatives?
Is your organization actively monitoring public Web 2.0?
Some of the advice that’s being given this morning is really concerning me - blogs won’t just “be viral”. People won’t just “learn about it” even if you have good content. It’s not a “Build it and they will come” matter. yes, you have to have a goal for having a blog - you can’t just put it up there and hope that people will find it, but you also can’t use traditional media to tell people that you have a blog.
You’d have to have been either on vacation on a tiny island with no internet access at all or be living under a rock not to know about the web’s latest love-fest, The Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.
People have complained about losing all productivity after finding out about the puppies - people stopped working almost entirely to watch the puppies sleep. I know at least an hour or two of my own productivity got sucked away by the little, adorable furballs, even if they were just sleeping.
You know something has become popular, or dare I say it, even an overnight sensation when it starts to get spoofed. First, Rob Cottingham of Noise to Signal released this:
and now, there’s a YouTube video as well:
We really should just band together and stop watching these damn dog…… awwww! They’re playing!!!!
Motrin. Exxon. American Airlines. These are just a few of the great big giant brands which have been “twitter-jacked” in the past year, and that doesn’t count the sheer volume of “fake” celebrities, politicians and others who have had their names co-opted. Anyone remember Sarah Silverman??
Like I discussed in Personal Brand or Reputation, if you don’t already own your Twitter name, your domain name, your facebook name - you name it - you run the serious risk of your name being taken over by someone with less than virtuous ambitions.
Take Shaquille O’Neal. he recently took back his own Twitter account because someone had registered ShaquilleONeal and was impersonating him. Through some savvy communications management, and Shaq creating The_Real_Shaq on the heels of discovering the impostor.
On the flip side of that was the whole Vancouver mayoral politics twitter debacle, that got exposed in the local paper, and blew up all over the local blogs and Twitter streams.
@Motrin is just yet one more in a long series of brand jackings. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - go out now and register or buy all of the iterations of your name, your brand, the misspellings, and the negative connotations of each.
BIGfrontier Communications Group in Chicago just released the results of their recent study about whether or not PR can help a start up get funding faster than if they don’t engage in a PR campaign. Apparently, companies are 30% more successful in getting funding within 1-3 months than their counterparts who don’t look at PR.
“Those entrepreneurs understand that anything they can do to get them an advantage to get limited or finite funding is something they should avail themselves of, especially now,” said Steve Lundin, founder of BIGfrontier. The boutque firm specializes in PR for startups, tech and consumer companies, and law firms. [source]
The study spoke with 300 start ups, none of which were BIGfrontier clients (which was my first thought, so I was glad to hear that they weren’t talking to their own clients), and only 18% of them even had a PR in place during the funding process.
Overall, this doesn’t surprise me in the least, and certainly was a bit of a no brainer. Companies can only be helped by a positive PR campaign.
I’m in complete agreement with the study, not that this should surprise anyone, but I’m a firm believer that PR and social media strategies are two of the best ways to get your company noticed, to raise it’s profile in certain communities and among specific stakeholders. Why would you even consider not engaging in a PR campaign?
If you’ve been paying any attention to the interwebs at all over the weekend, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I mention the Motrin debacle. Before I get into my own personal opinion about this whole mess, let’s quickly recap the situation to date.
First, Motrin put out the following ad:
And then, the world blew up. Seriously pissed off moms alllllll over Twitter and on blogs, everywhere, railed against the commercial, against the company and against the product. They all took offense at the idea that Motrin was trying to use something they all loved (baby wearing) to sell a pain reliever.
Ok. Wait. Stop. Everyone needs to calm the hell down first.
I’m not even going to get into the whole baby wearing thing, because I’m not a mom, have no intention of becoming a mom and therefore have no opinion. Do what you want, for whatever reason you want. As long as it works for you, great. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.
My problem is a more basic one that the one the moms got all up in arms about, and that is: People picked on the fact that Motrin talked about the practice of baby wearing, not about the fact that there was a misstep in their social media strategy (does Motrin even have a social media strategy?) and the fact that they didn’t pay attention to the conversation on the internet.
That’s the big problem. Who cares what they choose to be the kind of pain that people face? Maybe some people do experience discomfort in using a baby sling - we don’t know for sure, because we are not every person in the world. No, Motrin’s big problem was that they came out of the gate with an ad, before listening to the chatter on the internet.
In Motrin’s defense, they did act fast when they saw the kerfuffle and put up the following message:
For a huge pharmaceutical giant, that kind of speed (this was up first thing Monday morning) is unprecedented. Seriously impressive Motrin.
This is just one example of the wildfire way that opinion and news can spread about your company without you even knowing it. If you don’t already have a social media strategy in place, you better get one, and quickly.
The truth of the matter is, even though moms on social networking sites are vocal, any community can be vocal online. One of the blogs I read about this said “this is one group you don’t want to piss off” but really, do you want to piss off any of your consumers online? Are you ok with not pissing off the moms, but maybe alienating all of the single women online? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
Jerry Yang, cofounder of Yahoo, will be stepping down as CEO once the Board of Directors has appointed his successor. Yang will go back to being Chief Yahoo, which… um…. does, what exactly? Stuff. Do you like stuff?
Last June, Yang assumed the CEO role because the Board requested it. Ok, so… what’s happening now?
Well, no one actually knows.
In a statement by Chairman Roy Bostock said that, “Over the past year and a half, despite extraordinary challenges and distractions, Jerry Yang has led the repositioning of Yahoo on an open platform model as well as the improved alignment of costs and revenues.” [source]
Yang was the one behind the Microsoft deal… which, we all know how well that ended. The collapse of Yahoo’s ad partnership with Google made us all wonder what next…
Now, with Yang stepping down, or being forced to step down, either way, what will happen with Yahoo next?? (Image source: CC Wikimedia Commons)
Like I discussed in 
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