The reason for the share price melt down at Rentokil was covered in the Times Online today by Patrick Hosking.

If only the senior management team understood how to use the blogosphere to do a 'health check' on company brand reputation and customer satisfaction much of this could have been avoided...

This is a copy of the e-mail I sent to the journalist...

Patrick,

Pity the management did not have their service department or marketing team monitoring the blogosphere or they would have known immediately what was happening.

 As you say….

Rentokil’s failure to understand what was going on appears to be a serious indictment of its systems. It casts doubt on the quality of both its management information arrangements and its reporting lines.

How long does it take senior management to type its own company name into Google Alerts and see customer woes? How long does it take to contact a few of the disgruntled customers and get their stories first hand? How long does it take senior management to ask the City Link operations team for an explanation?

 No need to pay expensive marketing agencies to survey customers months after the fact. Read the full facts – praises and brickbats – from the ‘front line’ customers…

 To see where it was all going wrong they could have read these examples….read and weep as the very processes the management team set up to ‘improve service’ undermine it!

http://nathanmakan.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/city-link/

 http://forums.cclonline.com/showthread.php?t=8923

 http://www.angier.co.uk/david/2008-01-04-city-link-customer-service

 http://www.fsb.org.uk/discuss/forum_posts.asp?TID=490&PID=5043#5043

Great example of a multi-media site from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced yesterday which integrates podcasts, Forums/feedback loops and blogs.

As from their press release:

The multimedia portal is EPA’s one-stop location for environmental video, audio/podcasts, and photography.

The portal also includes interactive features such as “Ask EPA” and the Deputy Administrator's blog, “Flow of the River”. Another feature called "EPA in Action" goes behind-the-scenes; following the diverse jobs performed by the EPA workforce and examines some of the most pressing environmental issues facing our nation today.

Viewing video is integrated into the site using flash player, while photos of events and EPA work will be posted in a series of online galleries. Users may also subscribe to several podcast series or select from a number of individual podcasts featuring EPA experts and senior officials.

This new multimedia portal is an important resource for the public, journalists, academia, local governments and the environmental community. The portal will help increase awareness of important news items through an intuitive, media-rich focus, rather than through traditional electronic print.

From AdAge - Kimberley Clark has reduced ad spending by almost 50% in the last 3 years. Digital online and social marketing spending is increasing.

Most large advertisers are serving notice that the 'blast all channels media plan' is in decline. Higher production values and lower numbers of spots mean a re-adjustment of agency fee income. Making commission on media placements will have to be replaced by production and project management fees. This is why forward thinking ad agencies are investing in specialist digital marketing agencies and 'community or social network marketing' agencies.

Latest update on the BBC iPlayer viewer figures from Informitv.

Really interesting usage rates:

'...In January, more than 2.2 million people used the BBC iPlayer, streaming or downloading around 11 million programmes, reaching up to half a million shows in a single day. In addition, there were nearly 16 million radio downloads in the same month...'

While these figures are a fraction of the viewing figures of normal TV they are growing fast.

Interesting data on video consumption in the USA in December. (Thanks to B Iverson for link)

• 77.6 million viewers watched 3.2 billion videos on YouTube.com (41.6 videos per viewer
• 40.5 million viewers watched 334 million videos on MySpace.com (8.2 videos per viewer)
• Online viewers watched an average of 3.4 hours (203 minutes) of online video during the month (a 34-percent gain from 2007)
• The average online video duration was 2.8 minutes

The Unicom conference on 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaberative Tools to Business' is happening next week in London on 5th and 6th March.

Over 2 days a number of speakers will talk about their experiences of using social media. I will be presenting a case study on Poundland (a UK retailer with 164 stores) on behalf of their PR agency, BOTTLE, and the ongoing project using blogs, social networking and Forums to help retail sales volumes.

The speakers are:

• Lee Bryant - Headshift
• John Davis - BT
• Will Wynne - Arena Flowers
• Ed Michell - iShed
• Claire Reddington - iShed
• Crispin O'Brien - KPMG
• Ian Hughes - IBM
• Joyce Lewis - Southampton University
• Tom Ilube - Garlik
• Ian McNairn - IBM

The conference is chaired by Dave Gurteen of Gurteen and Associates.

All the speakers have given interviews on what their presentations on Web 2.0 and/or social media will cover.

All presentations at the conferences will be recorded and made available shortly after it ends.

To listen to last years conference visit this page

Focus Business Communications have recorded all the pre-interviews and will also record all the conference presentations as they did last year.

(Disclosure: I work for BOTTLE PR and Focus)

Jeremiha Owyang at Forrester Research has just blogged about a research report he has completed into Online Community Best Practices.

Here is the extract from the Executive Summary:

Online Community Best Practices
Communities Are A Powerful Tool, As Long As You Put Members’ Needs First

“An online community is an interactive group of people joined together by a common interest. It’s also one of the most powerful tools a marketer can deploy for customer retention, word of mouth, and customer insight. To host a successful community, think of it as you would product development: Start by focusing on objectives, chart a road map, assemble the right team, and plan to be flexible. Then build your success by launching the community with the backing of your most enthusiastic customers and staying engaged as the community grows. Above all, remember that control is in the hands of the members, so put their needs first, build trust, and become an active part of the community.”

Jeremiha was previously Community Marketing Manager at Hitachi and Social Media Consultant at PodTech before starting his role at Forrester. As such he has experience both from the corporate and research side. His report has drawn lots of comments - all worth reading. Check out his blog to see his summary and the comments of other consultants and practioners both from marketing agencies and companies.

Lloyd Davis has a new blog for the Tuttle Club. Check out the blog and video podcast if you want to learn about social networking in action. See also my earlier post of the Social Media Cafe meeting in London on 15th February.

NBC Digital/NBC Universal have announced that they will be making their back catalogue of classic series available via online TV (Thanks to Podcasting News for link).

Content will be distributed via NBC online channels - NBC.com, Scifi.com, Chillertv.com and Sleuthchannel.com. Programmes being offered include the A Team, Miami Vice, Buck Rogers, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Kojak.

CBS has announced it will be making its large library of TV programmes available for free (using ad revenues to support it) via the internet.

Full length programmes initially available will be Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Macgyver, Hawaii Five-O and Melrose Place with more being added in the coming months. The offerings are being made under the banner of 'Classics' so suggesting the target is an older generation.

It will make them available via the 300+ CBS Audience Network. The network is made up of CBS's own web sites plus companies like AOL, Microsoft, CNET Networks, Comcast, Joost, Bebo, Netvibes, Sling and Veoh as well as social application partners like Automattic, Brightcove, Clearspring, DAVE Networks, Goowy Media, meebo, MeeVee, Musestorm, Ning, Slide and VideoEgg.

The availability of high quality content can only help speed up the adoption of online video. Without doubt free iTV (internet based TV) is a real challenge to satelite TV.

What is particularly interesting is the emergence of iPod and other portable video players with connections to TV's and data projectors. This allows people to consume content both when mobile and when connected to a base station.

For marketing people looking to target specific communities the use of contextual based ads opens up new possibilities for sophisticated media planning. 

NOTE: When working for 3M in the 1970's video recording machines and video tape was so expensive that not every TV programme could be recorded. Many of the early Z-Cars programmes and other series went out live never to be seen again. In fact some programmes that were recorded were 'lost' by over-recording other shows because the tape was so valuable.

Intel announced last year that it would be following customers online and shifting budget away from traditional marketing. They were applying this to 3rd party co-op programmes too.

It appears that this year upto 80% of above the line ad money will be going online.

I have just discovered that the Waitrose MD, Mark Price has started a blog called 'The Grocer's Blog: Not So Chubby' charting his diet and general business information. It is a great read.

This is how he introduces it on the Waitrose web site...

' I am passionate about quality food and, like all the Partners in Waitrose, I am passionate about my job as a Grocer. Through this blog, I hope to share my thoughts, expectations and experiences as I journey from 'chubby' to 'not so chubby'. I’d love to know what you think too.'

I talk to a lot of senior managers in companies about blogging and social media. Many worry about allowing blogging by employees let alone considering they personally should do so! 

Maybe they should read Marks blog postings and see what comments he is getting back from customers and the public generally. They maybe pleasantly suprised.

I was only talking to Mike Butcher of TechCruch UK about entrepreneurs getting started in Europe at the Social Media Cafe last Friday.

Then Loic Le Meur posts this about his success at raising venture capital for his new product - Seesmic. (See TechCrunch US comments). As someone who already has a track record of launching successful companies in Europe this is what he had to say in part of his post...

'...(I) started thinking about launching the company. It was back in May and I of course remembered the several startups I launched before Seesmic. What I really wanted with Seesmic, is a global conversation, involving people from as many countries as possible. What my previous companies taught me is that it is very difficult to build a global company in Paris. Just because the center of the Internet is Silicon Valley and will remain, because if you are in Paris you tend to focus on France or Europe naturally. There are exceptions like the dating site Meetic who managed to become #1 in Europe and reach a size that can compete with Match.com, but it is rare (disclosure, I am a board member at Meetic). During the same dinner with Niklas, I decided with my wife Geraldine to move to San Francisco with our three kids to give Seesmic the highest possible chances of becoming a global conversation from day 1...'

He also says...

'...If you asked me to name only one difference between Europe and the US it would be the positive attitude that floats constantly around here. It is the "how can I help" by default. Trust is by default. You can probably lose it fast but you have it much faster than in Europe where the attitude is more suspicious, more negative. Each time I launched something in Europe I started by getting the criticism and listening people who would explain me why I would fail. Here I have troubles counting how many people offer their help....'

Found this link to a great video on TeacherTube. Thought provoking statistics about the rate of change of technology and how the 'Internet Revolution' could change the current 'world order' just as dramatically as the industrial revolution did. The statistic that 25% of US kids have posted content online was interesting.

Marshall McLuhan wrote in the 1960's that the world was becoming a global village. He was refering to the development of the TV and radio and the way they could manipulate time, space and physical locations without necessarily being Dr Who.

I wonder what he would have made of the internet? He saw TV and radio as becoming potential tools of totalitarian thought and messages. A sort of '1984'. Unlike radio and TV which both need substantial investment in the methods of production (studios, transmitters, licences etc) and has access to programming controlled by a few the internet is essentially 'free to air'. With a low cost audio and video recorder anyone can become a content developer and online publisher.

(Thanks to JoAnn for the link to the video)

A great session at the Social Media Café yesterday in London. (Flickr pictures) It was fun to catch up with Lloyd Davis (the driving force behind the concept) and others and see how the idea of the Cafe and Tutle Club is coming to fruition.

  Lloyd Davis - photo copyright Adam Tinworth via Flickr.

Being based out in the Shires it is not always easy for me to get up to these meetings as often as I like but when I do I always realise what I have been missing.

So what about yesterday?

It was a mix of academics, consultants, educators, developers, marketing and PR types (30+ strong) who all share an interest in social media and creating a working space to work, share ideas and co-operate. Rather than try and explain the idea why not read Joshua March’s blog posting. Joshua was at the meeting (thanks to Twitter - nice to see the technology in action) and has recently formed a marketing agency/consultancy focussing on social networking and media.

  Joshua March

While at the Café I had a chat with Mike Butcher of TechCrunch UK about a project he is involved with and cares passionately about. I recorded our chat and will get that online next week. It is fascinating project called Web Mission ’08 where a group of entrepreneurs are being taken out to Silicon Valley to look at how they do things out there as well as showcase great European talent and products. This is a subject close to my heart having been involved in the foundation of what was to become the European software industry in the early 1980’s. (Next year is the 25^th Anniversary of the founding of Lotus Europe – I headed up one of the two software development teams and looked after Symphony in Europe so that ages me!)

  Mike Butcher

I also met and interviewed David Jennings the author of a new book looking at how social networks help the discovery and commercial success of music. David is an expert in online learning. I will get that interview up online next week. David and I had a great chat with Mitch McAlister, Product Development Director at MySpace Europe. Mitch is a great guy and is from the US music scene. MySpace just launched the developers platform API. A lot of what he was talking about reminded me of the early stage business building we went through at Lotus in the mid 1980’s where we wanted to court developers who would take the marcro command language and build custom applications for clients around 1-2-3.

  David Jennings          Mitch McAlister

Finally I did an interview with Lloyd himself where we talked about his thoughts about the Café concept. As always Lloyd is a great facilitator practicing what he preaches. He has no pre-conceived notions or a hidden agenda on what the Café should be – he will go with the flow and join in the conversation. A café in constant beta with minimal house rules so providing the best environment for creativity and mutual co-operation and sharing to evolve.

If you are interested in coming to the next one check Lloyd out. There is a group on Facebook.

I am often challenged by marketing people over this.

Is Web 2.0 useful or a distraction? Should we bother? How much should we spend?

From my experience of working with clients leveraging Web 2.0 tools and techniques certainly does work and is worth every penny.

But you would expect me to say that!

So it is always nice to have some independent academic research on the power of Web 2.0 and online crowd buzz/conversations. Thanks to Podcasting News for highlighting this research.

To quote from the academic paper overview...

'...the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet, and how looking at interactions among them could provide predictive value beyond viewing them in isolation. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.'

What they found was that

• The volume of blog posts about an album is positively correlated with future sales 
• Greater increases in an artist’s Myspace friends week over week have a weaker correlation to higher future sales
• Traditional factors are still relevant – albums released by major labels and albums with a number of reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone also tended to have higher future sales.

The 'take-away' for marketing and PR people is

• Join in the blogosphere and online conversations
• Use social media networks BUT
• Don't ignore traditional marketing and PR

OK but how much to spend?

My suggestion. Take 5% of your marketing budget, 5% of your web site development budget and 5% of your PR budget and try a 6 month campaign.

Test and be flexible. Be open and listen. Monitor and react. All the most successful campaigns I have been involved in have been adaptable.

I posted last year about Lego's strategy of engaging with its customers and using beta programmes for feedback. Here is a great update (thanks to Charlene Li of Forrester Research).

Notice how company counter-culture and 'wisdom of the crowds' is now paying big dividends.

The message is simple. Use the size and interconnectiveness of the internet to get a 'buzz' going by engaging in conversations. What is great news is you do not need the budgets or global brand of a Coke or MacDonalds to participate. Look at the most watched video of all time - Star Wars Kid - estimated by some to have been seen by over 700m people. Made as a personal video, uploaded and them 'mashed-up' hundreds of times until it became a cult.

Research in the USA from AdAge shows women are rapidly catching up to men when it comes to accessing content online. The report also considers how and what content they are accessing.

A great post by Shel Israel of an interview he has just done with Michael Dell of Dell computers.

Dell suffered a blogosphere 'firestorm' over poor service a couple of years ago. That combined with other issues led to a drop in revenue and market share and reduction in share price. Dell reviewed the situation and entered the social media scene with a blog and user forums. It llater also started a financial analysis blog - one of the few large Fortune 500's to do so.

It is interesting to see what value a CEO sees in blogging and social media.

A discussion I have had with friends in the past is whether Jesus would have used podcasts to help gets his message across? Whilst that maybe an academic discussion it does have relevance today.

With declining (and ageing) congregations many Churches have to look at outreach programmes not only to engage with potential new members but also keep in touch with those who are less mobile and physically unable to attend services.

Some members of the Church are now using podcasts to help deliver their message.

(Image from http://spiritlessons.com)

MySpace is opening its platform to developers. They are also putting in place an ad sharing plan.

This offers companies even greater opportunities to undertake customised and targeted marketing.

VentureBeat have analysed what is happening in the USA with the top 10 social networking sites.

Facebook is growing faster than MySpace but MySpace is still 4 times larger in terms of share of visitors. These top 2 have 88% of the total numbers of visitors between them. the next 8 are not even half of Facebook visitor total.

The picture in Europe will not be exactly the same but companies planning a social networking campaign can rest assured by focussing on Facebook and MySapce they will have covered a large segment of the market.

Great article on Investor.com dealing with the impact on reputation of negative stories online. (Thanks to David Wilson for the link to the story.)

It details what happened to a US microwave popcorn manufacturer, Pop Weaver, and the reaction of their PR agency to address the issue. It also includes details of other companies – many of them who have not handled it as well as Pop Weaver. The damage to those who fail to act can be huge.

All saw their reputation tarnished as well as negative impact on their share price and revenue. In some cases this amounted to tens and millions of $.

A heavy price to pay due to poor online brand management.

So what can an in-house or agency PR team do to minimise such risks?

Monitor online blogs for posts and comments

I am constantly amazed at the number of companies that do not systematically monitor what is being said about them and by whom online. One way of looking at it is to consider it a free customer satisfaction mechanism. You would pay a lot of money to find out what customers and prospects think about your company, its products and services. Or you could monitor blogs, comments, forums and fan-sites to see what the state is.  

React fast to any negative comments – ‘firestorms’ can start quickly

The blogosphere is a 24/365 environment. As blogs are subscribed to, cross-linked and ‘trackbacked’ negative comments can quickly gain momentum. Newspapers and broadcasters may have tight deadlines but they are not ‘always on’ like the internet. Traditionally a company would have had some time to prepare its story to meet a crisis or deal with an issue. The reality is that most customer service issues are still handled via legacy support systems where each customer could be treated as an individual. With the internet dissatisfied people can ‘swarm’ around an issue and gain momentum and visibility very quickly. A negative post needs an immediate response via comments on that blog and through other bloggers and forums. Without this the counter-balancing response will not be seen by people. You want a negative blog to carry your side of the story. An explanation. The old adage a ‘Stitch in time is better than nine’ holds very true here.

Blogs have a long shelf life – don’t hide in the vain hope they go away

Often in crisis management it feels like a strategy of avoiding comment and hoping it would go away is being employed. After all it is often said ‘Today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper’ (now that ages me!) In the online world this is just not true. Posts can last almost ‘forever’. With more and more views, links and trackbacks they can climb the search engine listings staying live for many months. This is why it is critical that immediate action is taken to join in the online conversation. Some companies have found it takes many months to turn the tide of negative feelings. The sooner you start the better.

Traditional media is watching and waiting

Research has shown that increasingly journalists are using blogs. Recently one report said almost 1/5^th had their own blogs. Almost 80% said they read blogs to get a source for a story and 76% said they regularly read them to get an idea of the tone and buzz on subject matter. Blog firestorms get picked up by traditional media and reported on. This in effect adds fuel to the fire as even more people are then aware of the negative blogs and many will go to read them so increasing the search engine rankings and overall negative pressure.

Time and an integrated approach to online and offline media and brand management is called for.

Be open and honest – don’t try and ‘spoof’ the blogosphere

A number of companies have tried to ‘spoof’ positive PR campaigns. The same with comments on a negative posting. Malcolm Gladwell postulated in his book, Blink, people can be very perceptive. To ‘spin’ a story or press release means you risk the blogosphere finding out thant something does not ‘add up’. There is a phenomenon called the ‘wisdom of the crowds’. The old adage ‘Two heads are better than one’ springs to mind. With so many people likely following the ‘firestorm’ you have a large number of people watching what is happening and able to spot when something is just not right.

If you are caught out trying to blind-side the blogosphere they will turn on you. Your reputation will then be damaged even worse.

Always be honest. Be open. Do not hide behind ‘ghosted’ positive articles, blogs or comments as a counter to negative perceptions.  

AdWeek is reporting CondeNet (part of Conde Nast) is 'repositioning' its social networking site Flip into a series of applications on 'main-stream' social networking sites like Facebook.

When it first launched Flip it thought that it could create an online community based upon the readership of its popular teen targeted magazines. It's miscalculation was how much time teenagers would have to invest in multiple social networks. Most people tend to gravitate to where other people are hanging out. 

Some interesting research by Rubber Republic on the use of YouTube for 'viral' videos. As to be expected the 80:20 + 1 metric applies.

20% of videos get 500+ views in the first month

80% get less that (majority will be less than 100 I would guess)

1% get 500,000+

What is not discussed is how this overlays to the campaign objectives. For example if the target was to have the FTSE 250 CxOs watch then a viewing number of 20 or 50 would be considered brilliant (I would of course question if YouTube was the right medium to deliver the video anyway). If your target was all teenagers then such numbers would be a disaster!

Interesting interview with Chris Spencer, CEO of podcasting network Wizzard Media and Elisabeth McLaury Lewin of Podcasting News.

Wizard generates media by hosting podcasts. In 2007 they delivered over 1 billion podcast downloads. As with any new industry it is a tough sell convincing media buyers to place clients ads on a podcast compared to using traditional broadcast media. Analysts are forecasting downloads will double in the next two years.

The above number is of course only for one podcast media hosting company and does not include all the independently produced and distributed podcasts. The global numbers consuming podcast content is huge.

The UK retail chain is expanding its marketing communication programmes to include social networking capabilities. They will be adding pages to Facebook and other social networking sites. They currently use PR and 'word of mouth' as their marketing vehicles. They also say they are using web video of snowboarding and mountain biking and have a Forum on their site.

Whilst I can find a place to sign up for newsletters I cannot find where the video feeds are.

Nor can I see an RSS feed enabled anywhere obvious on the front page. That is a simple way to help customers keep up to date with the latest company and product information.

Unicom are holding a conference in London on March 5th and 6th. It is called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business Problems.' They have a great line up of speakers. 

Focus Business Communications are again recording all the presenters for later podcasting. They have also interviewed a number of the speakers before the event and asked them what they would be presenting.

(Disclosure: I am speaking at the conference. I will be presenting a case study of a B2C blog/social networking communication campaign for UK High Street retailer. I have a financial interest in FBC)