Regular readers of the JET blog will be aware that we are great believers in the power of Social Media. We recommend that Product Managers and Marketers get involved in Social Media even (or especially) for industrial products and not just photos of you kids, kitten or favorite film. See for example Social Media Revolutions
A couple of items caught my eye this month - The Daily Telegraph reported that Facebook contributes over 1Bn GBP to the UK economy and supports over 18K jobs, in the EU the estimated contribution is almost 13Bn GBP. The major beneficiaries are in the small and medium business. The study was performed by Deloittes and I guess their estimates are far from being a precise science, however, it does give some indication of the staggering reach and contribution that social media is making to business.
In a similar article The Times ( link is members only content) discussed why businesses try so hard to get you to LIKE them. The estimate is that each Like costs $1.07 in marketing costs - apparently for no immediate reward. On the other hand Facebook itself has 586M Likes and Coca Cola as the most liked product has around 36M Likes and needs to have its own internal Facebook management team.
Some marketeers regard a Like as the ultimate word of mouth - influencer recommendation.
Facebook claims research showing that customers who Like also spend more. The machinations of Facebook (and perhaps impending IPO) are out of scope of this article, but it does show how seriously some of the largest and most successful brands regard Facebook & we haven't even got started on Twitter, Google+, professional social networksand all the rest.....
Your product may not be consumer orientated and it may not be as bubbly as Coke, but, it still needs a home in social networks as way of getting the attention of your customers and influencers.
January 25, 2012
September 22, 2011
Social Media Comes of Age as an Advertising Platform
Social Media is a theme here at JET and we are great believers in the power of Social Media and think that Social Media is an important or rather a critical tool for businesses of all sizes.
Even in large organisations we think that product managers and marketeers should be out there engaging with the customers - talking to them but also listening and learning. It is an easy and significant way to be relevant to our customers and customer centric. It is no longer a secret that social media can drive revolutions and depose dictators and in this recent post on Social Revolution we looked at some fascinating work by Shirky - Here Comes Everyone about how we all play a part and engage and how Social Media gives us an accessible low cost platform to share information. We also looked at how Social Media allows us to recommend and find information to and from our social circle - a knowledge enabler perhaps on par to the invention of the printing press - See Social Media - Changing Society Forever
The next stage of Social Media is to use it as a direct advertising channel - and many companies do use the social media platforms in their ad mix. The platforms also provide some great on board tools that are useful, accessible and affordable even for very small businesses. In this fascinating article it seems that Social Media has now come of age and for the first time a mega company - British Airways will be launching their new campaign on Social Media rather than on the more traditional media and advertising channels.Yet at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell the advertising legend, questions the value of large brand social media advertising. He also makes the very valid point that social media is now the new letter - its the way that we talk to each other and so advertising in this context makes it the wrong channel. Sir Martin also believes that their should be a subsidy for quality journalism (Sir Martin's speech) - surely a sign that opinion, blogs and personal news sources are having an ever increasing impact.
Sir Martin is not a person to be taken lightly and many have commented on how difficult it is to get advertising right in a social media context. However, successful ads have always had the ability to engage our imagination and provoke discussion outside the delivery channel. There are a handful of ads that were popular on British TV 20 years ago where many of us still remember the slogan and joke about them today - ultimate success in brand recognition. Social media just makes it easier and more engaging to share and provoke the discussion. Many ads on social media will flop, but the clever ones will do exceedingly well - ultimately Social Media will be a channel that succeeds. I am sure that the BA ad in question cost a small fortune to produce - but the entry threshold for producing slick, clever and successful ads on social media platforms driving brand recognition and customer engagement is so low that even moderate success will make it compelling for many businesses. At a small business level we have found that relatively cheap and unsophisticated text based ads from Google are very effective at driving quality traffic to our Israel travel website.
Even in large organisations we think that product managers and marketeers should be out there engaging with the customers - talking to them but also listening and learning. It is an easy and significant way to be relevant to our customers and customer centric. It is no longer a secret that social media can drive revolutions and depose dictators and in this recent post on Social Revolution we looked at some fascinating work by Shirky - Here Comes Everyone about how we all play a part and engage and how Social Media gives us an accessible low cost platform to share information. We also looked at how Social Media allows us to recommend and find information to and from our social circle - a knowledge enabler perhaps on par to the invention of the printing press - See Social Media - Changing Society Forever
The next stage of Social Media is to use it as a direct advertising channel - and many companies do use the social media platforms in their ad mix. The platforms also provide some great on board tools that are useful, accessible and affordable even for very small businesses. In this fascinating article it seems that Social Media has now come of age and for the first time a mega company - British Airways will be launching their new campaign on Social Media rather than on the more traditional media and advertising channels.Yet at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell the advertising legend, questions the value of large brand social media advertising. He also makes the very valid point that social media is now the new letter - its the way that we talk to each other and so advertising in this context makes it the wrong channel. Sir Martin also believes that their should be a subsidy for quality journalism (Sir Martin's speech) - surely a sign that opinion, blogs and personal news sources are having an ever increasing impact.
Sir Martin is not a person to be taken lightly and many have commented on how difficult it is to get advertising right in a social media context. However, successful ads have always had the ability to engage our imagination and provoke discussion outside the delivery channel. There are a handful of ads that were popular on British TV 20 years ago where many of us still remember the slogan and joke about them today - ultimate success in brand recognition. Social media just makes it easier and more engaging to share and provoke the discussion. Many ads on social media will flop, but the clever ones will do exceedingly well - ultimately Social Media will be a channel that succeeds. I am sure that the BA ad in question cost a small fortune to produce - but the entry threshold for producing slick, clever and successful ads on social media platforms driving brand recognition and customer engagement is so low that even moderate success will make it compelling for many businesses. At a small business level we have found that relatively cheap and unsophisticated text based ads from Google are very effective at driving quality traffic to our Israel travel website.
August 16, 2011
Social Media - Changing Society Forever
I have recently discussed the power of Social Media where I argued that these are key tools that are generally off limits to most product market managers – which was a mistake because social media tools provide you with the ability to communicate with a large group of people, for the group to share information and to coordinate and organise very quickly all at almost zero cost – a marketer’s dream. I also discussed the fact that social media has the proved ability to provide the tools needed to organize a revolution – of citizens and consumers (See Social Media Strategies & Social Media Revolutions)
Sharing and discussing information with social media is incredibly powerful. It is without doubt apologetically subjective personal information. However, it is incredibly compelling information – cleverly presented and recommended by a friend. In many cases a discussion emerges among the social circle. We start of with small pieces of information or knowledge and refine and enhance it by sharing. This in my opinion is similar to the invention of the printing press – I have access to all the information and will generally glance (at the very least) at these recommended items – instant access to important or pre-selected information.
In this post I will reflect on the far reaching nature of social media and explain why it is therefore critical to the way that we converse with our customers.
One of the most far reaching changes in civilization was made by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439 when he invented the moveable type printing press – essentially enabling the economic mass production of books. This destroyed the market for manuscript copiers and more importantly allowed knowledge to be acquired by the masses and not just the privileged elite. This (the ultimate disruptive technology) invention changed the balance of power in civilizations forever.
I think that many of us would regard the Internet in general as being of similar importance as it provides almost everybody with access to limitless information. However, I think that the Internet is not the complete information revolution.
I think that the true Gutenberg style Internet revolution will be driven by two factors:
- The Kindle (& similar devices) as a reading book is of equal or greater significance – allowing people to simply build, access, annotate and store their personal library.
- Social media as a way of sharing pre-selected information that interests me; and is probably of at least mild interest to some of my friends and an economic way of sharing commenting and discussing this information.
Sharing and discussing information with social media is incredibly powerful. It is without doubt apologetically subjective personal information. However, it is incredibly compelling information – cleverly presented and recommended by a friend. In many cases a discussion emerges among the social circle. We start of with small pieces of information or knowledge and refine and enhance it by sharing. This in my opinion is similar to the invention of the printing press – I have access to all the information and will generally glance (at the very least) at these recommended items – instant access to important or pre-selected information.
This accessibility and relevance explains why we often see small localized businesses investing in Facebook and other social media. They know that they are not going to get thousands of followers – that is not the objective. Their objective is to be significant among their customers – to be part of the conversation and be part of the small instant information exchange. It is pure customer engagement and customer centric communications.
Equally so discussing what the business has done wrong is trivial and stunningly effective (see Social Media Revolutions) over social media. I believe that it is essential that we understand that society has changed with social media and that we need to embrace the new world – for the sake of our product and our customer engagement.
In my final comment (for now) on social media I would like to recommend this post from Jeff Cole discussing Google +.
Jeff makes some excellent points that are directly and indirectly relevant to product managers – in particular, I would like to reflect on the difficulty in being an expert in social media – and the very best never call themselves experts. This is often the case in many fields. My takeaway from Jeff’s article is that this is such a new and dynamic space there are many right and many wrong ways to do it. Think about what you want to achieve and the best way to do so – but most importantly get out there use the social media tools and do something – social media is enabling revolutions and it is changing society forever - your product and your customers can’t afford to be ignored.
August 8, 2011
Social Media Revolutions
In a recent post I discussed how Social Media has become an important marketing tool that is often missed or off limits to most product marketers in larger companies. Using them correctly, I believe can increase customer engagement and simplify product positioning.
Over recent months we have seen the power of social media to command people's attention and to motivate them to take part and be involved in activities. Many of these activities were previously well out side their normal comfort zone and in many cases caused them to endanger their lives. I am, of course referring to the Arab Spring and to a lesser extent to the on going Israeli Summer.
In the Arab Spring regimes were overthrown, or revolutions brutally suppressed. In the Israeli Summer on the other hand, we have mass demonstrations that are calling for a new social agenda and consumer price reform.
Both of these phenomena illustrate the power of social media – because they are both being organised and facilitated using combinations of Facebook, Twitter and other media.
The power of social media was discussed (and this year's revolutions foretold) by Clay Shirky in his book “Here Comes Everybody” (Penguin – 2008). To quote the back of the book “The next revolution will not be televised – it will be emailed, texted, blogged, wikied...”
Shirky discusses different case studies - from arrests for mass ice-cream eating in Minsk, to previous unrest in Cairo, to social stunts in Macy's store in New York, to protests against the attempt to hide abuse cases, and to commercial demonstrations against banks and airlines forcing them to reverse unfair commercial decisions. Shirky makes the point that social conversation and interaction follow a power law distribution from small groups with tight conversation, larger groups with loose conversation and then much larger groups that broadcast.
Shirky's message is that groups can organise themselves to collaborate on issues that they believe in or find sufficiently engaging. The critical element is the ability to share information and to coordinate and self organise at very low (negligible) cost – the enablers are social media tools. Speed is also of importance, it is hard to organise a large group of people using meetings, letters in the post etc. – sure it has been done but immediacy makes it so much easier.
The book discusses two almost identical protests a decade apart – the second of which achieved its aims, whilst the first did not. The conclusion reached is that (to a large extent) the availability of social media in the second was the key factor.
So the key advantages of social media are the ability to communicate with a large group of people, for the group to share information and to coordinate and organise very quickly all at almost zero cost. I would add that social media is still considered engaging and cool; and that in itself prompts people to take notice of a message that would be ignored if it were to be delivered by conventional means.
I am not arguing that on any given Wednesday afternoon product marketers or managers can start a worldwide revolution! I am, however, arguing that social media is extremely valuable to us. Consider the characteristics – immediate, low cost, information sharing, collaboration, engagement – these are the holy grails of product communication.
Using social media to interact with our customers we keep them involved, we can communicate messages when we want to without special effort, we engage them and allow them to share information with us that in turn help us to be more responsive to their needs and to better meet their expectations. This applies whether we have a business offering or a consumer offering. In a B2B situation we can help our customers succeed better at their job by sharing information about our product and our industry and it is easy to see how consumer products benefit from this interaction.
One of the apparent risks is that the competition will also join our group. This is true, but, then we have to share information prudently. We accept that every time we update the website, publish a white paper or interact with a customer then we have shared a secret with the public. In the meantime we have built the group chemistry around our product. Customers may share criticism of our product, but, surely they will do so anyway and it is better to hear about it and respond to it quickly (add an update to the next release and tell the world when it will be available.) Feedback is to our advantage, conversation drives our prestige.
The other idea that comes out of Shirky's work is that Social Media provides an easy tool for dissatisfied customers to organise and apply immense pressure on the organisation – it is much better that we also use the tools for our advantage.
Social Media is a low cost (mainly our time) way to regularly engage with our customers, to gain feedback, to help to shape our industry and to share information immediately.
It is hard to build a successful Social Media community – you need to choose the media (Facebook, Twitter, blog, wiki, special community etc.), to get people signed up and to start talking with the customers. Different businesses will use different tactics. By definition when we have a group we have conversation – conversation about our industry but mainly about our product. The conversation makes our entire approach, customer centric and drives our product decisions.
Whatever tactic we employ I believe we can all start our own small product revolutions and engage with our customers in a more meaningful way.
Over recent months we have seen the power of social media to command people's attention and to motivate them to take part and be involved in activities. Many of these activities were previously well out side their normal comfort zone and in many cases caused them to endanger their lives. I am, of course referring to the Arab Spring and to a lesser extent to the on going Israeli Summer.
In the Arab Spring regimes were overthrown, or revolutions brutally suppressed. In the Israeli Summer on the other hand, we have mass demonstrations that are calling for a new social agenda and consumer price reform.
Both of these phenomena illustrate the power of social media – because they are both being organised and facilitated using combinations of Facebook, Twitter and other media.
The power of social media was discussed (and this year's revolutions foretold) by Clay Shirky in his book “Here Comes Everybody” (Penguin – 2008). To quote the back of the book “The next revolution will not be televised – it will be emailed, texted, blogged, wikied...”
Shirky discusses different case studies - from arrests for mass ice-cream eating in Minsk, to previous unrest in Cairo, to social stunts in Macy's store in New York, to protests against the attempt to hide abuse cases, and to commercial demonstrations against banks and airlines forcing them to reverse unfair commercial decisions. Shirky makes the point that social conversation and interaction follow a power law distribution from small groups with tight conversation, larger groups with loose conversation and then much larger groups that broadcast.
Shirky's message is that groups can organise themselves to collaborate on issues that they believe in or find sufficiently engaging. The critical element is the ability to share information and to coordinate and self organise at very low (negligible) cost – the enablers are social media tools. Speed is also of importance, it is hard to organise a large group of people using meetings, letters in the post etc. – sure it has been done but immediacy makes it so much easier.
The book discusses two almost identical protests a decade apart – the second of which achieved its aims, whilst the first did not. The conclusion reached is that (to a large extent) the availability of social media in the second was the key factor.
So the key advantages of social media are the ability to communicate with a large group of people, for the group to share information and to coordinate and organise very quickly all at almost zero cost. I would add that social media is still considered engaging and cool; and that in itself prompts people to take notice of a message that would be ignored if it were to be delivered by conventional means.
I am not arguing that on any given Wednesday afternoon product marketers or managers can start a worldwide revolution! I am, however, arguing that social media is extremely valuable to us. Consider the characteristics – immediate, low cost, information sharing, collaboration, engagement – these are the holy grails of product communication.
Using social media to interact with our customers we keep them involved, we can communicate messages when we want to without special effort, we engage them and allow them to share information with us that in turn help us to be more responsive to their needs and to better meet their expectations. This applies whether we have a business offering or a consumer offering. In a B2B situation we can help our customers succeed better at their job by sharing information about our product and our industry and it is easy to see how consumer products benefit from this interaction.
One of the apparent risks is that the competition will also join our group. This is true, but, then we have to share information prudently. We accept that every time we update the website, publish a white paper or interact with a customer then we have shared a secret with the public. In the meantime we have built the group chemistry around our product. Customers may share criticism of our product, but, surely they will do so anyway and it is better to hear about it and respond to it quickly (add an update to the next release and tell the world when it will be available.) Feedback is to our advantage, conversation drives our prestige.
The other idea that comes out of Shirky's work is that Social Media provides an easy tool for dissatisfied customers to organise and apply immense pressure on the organisation – it is much better that we also use the tools for our advantage.
Social Media is a low cost (mainly our time) way to regularly engage with our customers, to gain feedback, to help to shape our industry and to share information immediately.
It is hard to build a successful Social Media community – you need to choose the media (Facebook, Twitter, blog, wiki, special community etc.), to get people signed up and to start talking with the customers. Different businesses will use different tactics. By definition when we have a group we have conversation – conversation about our industry but mainly about our product. The conversation makes our entire approach, customer centric and drives our product decisions.
Whatever tactic we employ I believe we can all start our own small product revolutions and engage with our customers in a more meaningful way.
July 19, 2011
Spotting Disruptive Technology - Timing is Everything!
In the first post in this mini series on Disruptive Technology I discussed why we need to expect the unexpected - in a nutshell most of us spend our working days involved in our daily routine trying to plan develop and market our product. Meanwhile, whilst we aren't looking or dreaming in other directions there are groups of people who have dedicated themselves to doing something completely different and destroying our product and our market. It's nothing personal - its just (to paraphrase) - all is fair in love, war and technology development. Its been happening for a long time - think of the canal owners who suddenly had a new competitor with a new bigger faster technology called the railway. Or carriage makers just before Mercedes, Benz and friends came along.
In this second post we will discuss the timing impact and various key questions that are really just questions of timing and product timing decisions.
In this second post we will discuss the timing impact and various key questions that are really just questions of timing and product timing decisions.
So we have made firm resolutions and have spotted some disruptive technology lurking somewhere away on the horizon - what's next?
Unfortunately, spotting these potential disruptions is only the tip of the iceberg, it is all to easy to be drawn in by the hype and buzz around these new areas. Firstly, curiosity is a strong human trait (and it is generally well developed in Product Team Members), the buzz can be more exciting than our regular work and in big organisations it can seem to be a way to stand out from the crowd (guru).
On the other hand, it seems that everybody is doing this. Remember, there are people out there who earn their salary creating this impression. Without being too cynical, the technology hype pays their bills.
For those of us who played team sports as kids remember how everybody used to chase the ball - didn't matter if you were defence or attack you ran after the ball. Later on we developed more discipline and strategy and stopped chasing the ball and started to play the game. That is one of the challenges of disruptive technology - to figure out when to chase and how to play the game.
So in analysing Disruptive Technology we must then exercise our judgement on the probability that the technologies will mature, that they will impact our area, and finally the hardest question of all - when? What is the relevant time frame?
Getting these factors wrong can ruin a perfectly good business or product strategy no less than ignoring or not spotting the technology. By way of example in the Telecom space around 2005 everybody was buzzing about IMS and how it was going to change the Telecom industry as we knew it. There were almost daily announcements of new products, initiatives and commitments. It seemed that overnight all our calls would be IMS based.
Looking back the objectives of were valid, the overall impact of IMS and IMS like technologies has been profound and are on going - but from a telecom's industry perspective "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" (Mark Twain). In summation without getting into a theological argument (IMS believers vs. IMS non believers) by 2011 we can say that IMS is not yet main stream and whilst it has impacted many businesses it has not (yet) fulfilled its hype of 2005.
Clearly, companies that assumed that IMS was the next best and greatest thing made the wrong call. Whether this was to develop new technology products based on IMS or to build consumer and business services over IMS they are probably somewhat disappointed. Equally so you could have made the decision to stop investing in current development (to favour IMS) and missed out on a lot of opportunities in the last 5 years or so.
The point of this post is not to analyse IMS in depth, but to use it as an example (from our own industry) of the dangers of incorrectly analysing the impact and the timing of the impact on a product space. Many companies made the wrong judgement call.
Looking back the single most important error was probably the lack of business case to justify such a large risk and technology change. (A reminder to always use business fundamentals.) There was huge hype and like the example of team sports earlier, everybody was chasing the IMS ball. There were only a few brave solitary voices in the wilderness calling out with a different message.
Overall IMS is a good example of a disruptive technology that many spotted, but very few managed to answer the key questions of the probability that the technology would mature, its impact on their industry and most critically on when it would impact. Ultimately, all these questions become a question of timing - when will it happen?
The product teams involved had to set their product requirements, make their product decisions and position their product based on their assumptions about the impact of this disruptive technology. Many errors were made.
Clearly it is key to our product and business strategy that we actively seek and successfully spot disruptive technologies. However, we also need to be able to stand back from the hype and think strategically and coldly analyse the likely impact and timing of the new technology.
The final posts of this series will discuss some practical ideas for systematically discovering and analysing new technologies.
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