I understand why it’s difficult to enter into this space: some brands aren’t ready to face the consumer head on… one to one…in conversation. This is not a medium that befits a corporate PR guy, willing and ready to pull together approved responses espousing the view of the corporation to the masses. No one in the social arena pays heed to any of the corporate speak. They just want to talk and they want to be heard.

For those brands who hesitate and fear the medium, here’s what I have to say:

• Start-ups have been engaging in social media for years and have benefited greatly. They were not endowed with huge marketing budgets so they’ve had to resort to more efficient roll-up-your-sleeves-type approaches to succeed. The key to building strong and enduring brand: do it one satisfied customer at a time!
• People want to talk to you and they want you to listen to them. Be warned that you will hear the good and the negative. The key is learning from it and understanding its implications.
• Confront your detractors. They are the key to making you greater. One of my clients continues to engage with the complainers, as well as the rally-the-troops-and-boycott-the-company type misfits. And they’re tackling it one issue at a time. The company has a long way to go to earn respect and confidence from its customers but the very act of engaging has mitigated consumer churn. It has also provided a NEW avenue for customers to provide their views and suggestions and feel like they’re being listened to. Once you satisfy a detractor, he will be your most avid supporter. And be ready to open the doors to a flood of new business.
• And engage as a person. You don’t need the veil of an organized, PR-approved response — that goes nowhere in this space. It’s akin to meeting new people at a Christmas party: Introduce yourself. Tell the other person about you. Then ask about the other person. Stop and listen and understand. Remember, the corporate voice needs a human voice to be accessible and to engage in meaningful dialogue.
• It’s not easy. It takes a lot of work. But the effort produces strong relationships that are lasting. And the money….it’ll be there as well…guaranteed!

Good luck!

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Columbia House was a traditional direct mail company, whose strong foundation of measurability, attribution and ROI were key pillars that drove its success for many years. Technology and industry changes ie the decline of music CD consumption…Apple’s introduction of the iPod… and the subsequent move to cheaper MP3 downloads, left the music industry scrambling to monetize artists and their music. This, in turn, necessitated Columbia House to focus more efforts on movie sales. Despite its long tenure and strong presence in the movie entertainment distribution business, it had also met with criticism from users in areas regarding claims of negative option, unfair shipping charges, and challenging customer service issues.

So a new company was started in Canada –> with a new business model that responded to many of these consumer claims in hopes of starting fresh, recruiting a new support base and migrating its loyal customer base. The new company launched November 2008 and its positioning has been evident on their website to this day: “CH Canada.com Welcome to the NEW Columbia House..You spoke, we listened…No more unwanted shipments..”

Initial social insights were conducted around the brand and its competitors in the weeks before launch to validate the new business model. What CHCanada discovered was a wealth of passionate conversation both positive and negative about the very topics (…and then some) that instigated the business change. Unlike traditional research, the comments were in social media spaces for the world to see… and remained unchalleged and unresponded. The company noticed, at the same time, the number strong advocate discussions that had gone unleveraged. What CH had realized was that a comment posted many months ago could strongly influence those who had seen the discussion for the very first time. These strong conversations could very well hamper a successful launch of the new business model. In addition, as is the plight of most Canadian subsidiaries, any strong changes implemented locally were still “blips” in the overall map and did little to positively impact the overall Columbia House brand…the US parent that still retained the original business model.

The key to ensuring a successful launch of CHCanada.com was to provide voice in the social sphere and prove to its customers that it had truly changed before it could hope to acquire new customers. So CHCanada began engaging in conversation. We quickly identified three forums where strong discourse existed about Columbia House. The most difficult efforts included confronting its detractors. Honesty, transparency, and humility were the order of the day. Applying this strategy has allowed forum members to welcome CHCanada to the thread. By letting forum members understand what CH had done to change, and by openly asking people for their honest opinions and questions, CH has been able to eventually build trust as evidenced by the length and tenure of each CHCanada.com thread—> all of them with a range of 700 - 1200 posts starting from as early as January 2009. Along the way, not all forum members were not so quick to welcome CHCanada with open arms. It’s not surprising they “googled” each of our names to validate who we were and what we were saying. From time to time we have been met with accusations of SPAM and have been banned from sites. But overall, our presence in key forums has made an incredible impact on CHCanada’s reputation, its organic search listings, and has resulted in ever increasing positive sentiment in favour of CHCanada vs. its US parent. The topic cloud below is indicative of the positive perception CH’s customers attributed to the brand.

Within a short period of time, CHCanada was able to translate its participation into strong business results. Rob Weatherall, Marketing Manager of CHCanada has indicated, “Entering into the realm of social networking I knew this was something that needed to be done but was quite skeptical what impact it would have on my business. Within a couple of months of launching our program with Isobar, I clearly saw the positive impact this media was going to have. Social networking not only provided an open line of communication with customers, it also provided a product/offer testing arena, an ever-ready focus group, a source of testimonials, and for this business – our highest value customers.”

Highest value customers –>traditionally resulting from strong customer relationship management but developed over a long period of time. Now imagine applying the same principles to social media and experiencing the same effects in half, or even a quarter of the time! Who would ever have thought that by talking to customers, marketers would be able to take out the guess-work of their initiatives or implications of their analytics reports . Ask the customers what they want and give it to them! It’s that simple. And they will come…..And they came in droves. CHCanada initiated a free-shipping promotion in September because its customers asked for it. The result: The company witnessed the highest single sales of the year, with sales equivalent to half the month of August.

And the success continues. Twtpoll surveys have become a strong crowdsourcing vehicle to gauge consumer preferences. Responses for surveys have been strong with momentum starting from the moment of posting. Social media has allowed CH Canada a very inexpensive test-and-learn vehicle for promotions. Varying test components has allowed CH to pull off another successful FREE shipping promotion of late: resulting in the second highest sales day of the year.

Rob Weatherall summed up his experience this way: “The best form of advertising is word-of-mouth – what better way to get your message out than through social networking. Without the knowledge, expertise and passion Isobar brought to the table, this business would most likely have continued to avoid, out of ignorance, what has turned out to be an extremely smart business move”.

Taking a quote from one of the fourm members, “while i haven’t ordered from chcanada in quite some time, i still frequent the thread and certainly appreciate the comments and inititiave shown by the chcanada staff. when is the last time you saw an amazon or futureshop/BB rep come in and ask us what we like? NEVER!! “
Another one says, “ I’m amazed at how much they try to make everyone happy & take in their input. They’re doing a great job at trying to get everything right.”

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As a marketer, it’s very important to maintain transparency while engaging in social media.

For the first time since the 80’s the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) is revising policies regarding testimonials and endorsements. Today, more marketers are utilizing social media so the FTC is attempting to enforce stricter policies regarding social media and transparency. The goal is to hold marketers responsible for false claims and penalize them for not identifying their motives in the social media arena. I’m sure here in Canada policies are also being revised I was unable to find any Canadian articles addressing the issue.

Don’t wait for regulations to mimic how you interact with your target, remember what marketing in the social media space means. It involves searching out the target and asking permission to engage with them. It’s not like traditional media where you shout and hope they listen, for this honesty is always the best policy. If you don’t identity yourself it will likely come out later and result in distrust with brand.

I currently comment, post and Twitter for a variety of different clients. In all cases I’ve made it clear I represent a particular brand with motives of engaging with consumers and potential purchasers. Before jumping in I make a point of familiarizing myself with the discussion. It helps me find the right moment to introduce myself. Commenting on something already being discussed will increase chances that forum readers are more likely to read and engage rather than scroll over my message like they do most spam messages.

In my introduction post I always inform every one of my name, my company and the client I am working with. In most cases forum readers were pleased to see their brand reaching out to them. I’ve received a lot of very insightful feedback from consumers regarding the brand. I’ve made connections and am certain that in the future if I need any consumer insights for a category I will have these relationships to draw from. I trust their feedback and I hope they feel they can trust me.

In closing I’d like to reiterate my point - in the world of social media honesty is currency to build a relationship between customers and your brand.

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For years marketers like me have believed that advertising had the strength to influence consumer attitudes and behaviour. Advertising had more power when ad vehicles were few. As consumers, we were easy to get a hold of – we read the same papers, listened to the same radio programs, and watched the same television shows as everyone we knew. Marketers had it easy…but it was rare for consumers to see an ad that was relevant to them. That was ok for marketers because 2% response rate or a break-even ROI was all they required to deem a campaign successful.

These days, technology has made it increasingly difficult to reach consumers. Media has become fragmented. Access profileration has allowed the consumer to be in multiple devices simultaneously including: access from radio, TV, mobile, MP3s, search, print, billboards, videogames, IM, email, video consoles etc. Overlay the incredible explosion of the number of radio and TV channels, magazines, newspapers. This pace of change is making it increasingly difficult to pin target consumers down with a relevant message at the right place and right time.

It’s become increasingly apparent that the difficulty in reaching the consumer has been compounded over time. Access proliferation has put the consumer in control of how, when and what media they consume. At the same time these same channels are giving the tools to communicate to many people at a much faster pace. Universal McCann’s Worldwide Comparative Study on Social Media Trends, April 2008 indicates the growth of social media since 2006. Some highlights include:

• 73% of active online users have read a blog
• 45% have started their own blog
• there are over 184 million bloggers worldwide, with approx. 1/4 from China
• 57% have joined a social network
• 34% post opinions about products/brands on their site/blog

People are talking about brands to each other and surprisingly many brands are oblivious to this; or if they are aware, they don’t realize the enormous impact it has to their reputation as a company. The power shift from the corporation to the consumer is apparent. Advertising messages do not influence as effectively as marketers have always believed.

The very medium that divides the brand from the consumer also has the ability to bring them together. Consider this stat from the Universal McCann Study: 36% of active online consumers think more positively about companies that have a blog. Start-ups have easily figured this out and from day one are leveraging the conversation with the consumers to help shape and evolve their businesses. They have figured out that unless they listen and respond to the market needs, there will be no market for their product or service offering. Coming from a start-up, the lack of big marketing budgets forced me as a marketer to really understand social media if I was to effectively drive reach:

• Use the networks to bring awareness of your offering.
• Engage with relevant target groups to help you fix the current bugs and improve your product over time.
• Take it on the chin and be willing to accept the good with the bad.
• Continually engage your consumers for feedback. Develop relationships and nurture them over time. Do NOT bail on your community.

Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” provides the best illustration of the power of conversation. He points out, ” I’m convinced that ideas …. move through a population very much like a disease does….Ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is.” It doesn’t take much effort to pass along a cool idea but the very nature of one idea being passed along from person to person can result in an epidemic. “The virtue of an epidemic, after all, is that just a little input is enough to get it started, and it can spread very, very quickly.” In this way, the effectiveness of word of mouth begins to produce a clear picture of the power of the individual:

Dell found out the hard way how consumer opinion could negatively impact their business. Now, the emergence of Ideastorm, and Twitter engagement has catapulted the company into social media success and has effectively put their Dell Hell days behind them.

Customers talking about brands are making it clear what they want, how they want to be serviced, and what they consider good value for their dollar. The great thing for marketers is that engaging in these discussions limits the guessing game. Companies can now provide a product or service that the customer wants….what a concept!

Other top brands are getting on the band wagon and they are capitalizing as early adopters:

• Starbucks Coffee created a site that allows users to submit suggestions to be voted on by Starbucks consumers, and the most popular suggestions are highlighted and reviewed. Their heavy presence on Twitter has also helped the company to disseminate information and gauge consumer opinion in real time.

• Zappos and CEO Tony Hsieh have become known for embracing Twitter as an essential tool for exceptional customer service. Tony, himself, through his Twitter account has become accessible and has helped personify Zappos as a company who is friendly, trustworthy and helpful. Twitter is engrained in the company culture..so much so in fact that the Zappos site aggregates the Twitter streams.

• Ford Motor Company and its head of social media, Scott Monty have used the channel as a way to inform the public in real time of company happenings especially during periods of volatility. It was this kind of transparency in communication that helped quell much negative public opinion and, in my view, has helped elevate Ford’s brand presence above GM and Chrysler during the government bailout period.

So, for those brands that are afraid to dip their toe in this new conversation, who are afraid to engage with consumers, it will only be to their detriment. Consumers will continue to speak about your company and your brand(s) with or without you. Social media is not a fad. It will continue to grow and evolve and as new devices are invented, conversation will multiply at alarming rates. The opportunity for big brands and businesses is enormous. Begin to engage in discussions at a peer level…listen and understand…develop important relationships…and build strong brand advocacy and a sustainable model in the meantime.

Credits for this thesis go to P Furey and A Wong for some really cool slides I used from their presentations.

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In school I concentrated on furthering the efforts of academic OA, but often researched both sides of creative issue including designs, photos, videos etc. Much like the academic research (though a bit less complicated politically), creative work has been in the centre of a heavily polarized debate on whether everything should be copyrighted or left to influence of public domain and freedom.

While this debate is too lengthy  to tackle in one entry, I found a great example of social media as a venue for a  shift towards a community-centric model with a flexible copyright under Creative Commons License on Flickr. I was surprised at the amount of assets that users were sharing for public use.

Below is a link to check out the Creative Commons page on Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

If you are not familiar with the licensing terms Attribution, Nonderivative, Noncommercial, Sharealike, check out the Creative Commons site:

http://creativecommons.org/

It’s a really interesting issue that is relevant to our sphere and most importantly our times. While ideas of open access software and publishing have been around for a long time and are at the root of CC, never has there been so much momentum in proliferation of the initiative. In my opinion it is a combination of technology and new thinking that I am always looking to coin with a sort of umbrella term - ethical, socially inclined, cause-centered, etc.

Well, I may need Karen King’s (Copywriter at Mindblossom)  help finding the term to describe this mentality but CC movement is a worthy of keeping an eye on.

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The goal was to develop an iPhone application for an existing client that would utilize unexploited opportunities. Employees were allowed to form their own groups of threes that could consist of any department. Teams brainstormed ideas and assembled a preliminary pitch deck that included initial design compositions. Later each group presented their concept and final designs to the MindBlossom Senior Leadership Team. The competition inspired some truly original great ideas.

The winner’s concept will be polished and pitched to the client. They also won a new iPod Touch, not too shabby for a friendly in-office competition. The winning team consisted of Cassie McDaniel, design, Mark Kosokovits, development and Oila Krivtchoun, information architecture. Their outstanding idea may have never been realized if MindBlossom only encouraged creatives to think creatively.

Without naming clients I’ll just briefly describe two of the ideas MindBlossom teams came up with.

Pizzeria- This team created an iPhone application that offered ordering capabilities, locate the nearest restaurant and games. The game allowed users to create their own pizza by adding topping and putting it into the oven.

Airline- This team created an application that offered tools and information to use to both plan and experience a vacation. The application would continuously provide travelers with upcoming and ongoing vacation deals. Once booked, the application would help with the planning of itinerary and other details.

When clients work with MindBlossom they get the creativity of the entire company not just one department. This approach allows MindBlossom to successfully create original and ingenious concepts that achieve results.

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Here’s how we did it:

1. We used Amazon EC2 to host a Windows 2003 server in the cloud. I customized the instance with tools we needed and created our own personal AMI (Reuseable System Image).

2. We used the Microsoft Web Stress Tool to record and run our stress tests. This is a free tool that we have used many times in the past. It is simple,  mature (published in 2002) and reliable.  The tools allows you to record a user session on a website and play it back as many times as you like. We we’re able to execute 100,000 requests from a single machine in an hour. The application simply captures all the HTTP GET and POST requests happening on the TCP socket. It’s a very simple yet effective approach.

3. We uploaded the scripts to several EC2 Windows servers and let them run. The web stress tool uses a lot of resources depending on the number of threads and sockets you configure the script for. The more simultaneous requests you want to make the more resources you will need on your host machine. We had good luck with a basic, medium size 32 bit windows instance.

This is one of the best uses of cloud computing I’ve come across so far. People often load test using machines on the same core network as their web servers. This approach usually bypasses the firewalls, switches and routers that your internet traffic would normally encounter.  Obviously this is not a true test of your infrastructure. Using servers on the cloud outside of your network lets you simulate true load on your infrastructure. For our tests we used servers in different regions of the US and Europe.

My total amazon costs were about $10 USD. Unless you have access to stacks of idle windows machines this is the most cost effective way of spinning up Windows servers for short term use.

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• Every radio station, newscaster, broadcast media has a Twitter account. My late night TV news station uses it as a crowd-sourcing mechanism to gauge immediate opinion on key news issues;
• Charities/causes are popping up and its organizers are wising up to the fact that they can raise awareness and donations within hours of launching their campaign;
• The newspaper industry is dying as consumers increasingly look online to find their news and information for free. As a result, a large scale shift in ad spend is expected in 2009 away from traditional print and broadcast to online. eMarketer verifies this transformation:

• Marketers have been told that this channel not only offers true measurability but it results in strong customer engagement and sustainability;

For someone like me, whose marketing roots have evolved from traditional mass to direct and database; then to online display, search and now social media –> my profound learning comes in understanding that it is a medium that continues to evolve and has yet to establish standards for marketers. I continue to hear that no one should have the right to call themselves “social media experts” and while I believe that is absolutely true, I will place my bets with those marketers and organizations who are using this medium everyday to establish their brand, and create a true understanding of their customers. These guys practice what they preach. Other industry notables have gotten their names because they’ve seemingly held the answers to a space that was virtually untravelled by the mainstream. But I have yet to see any validation of their preachings.

Could it be that the new US President Barack Obama will be known as a key instigator in bringing this whole notion to the masses by his very acknowledgement of the pervasiveness and influence of technology and its ability to shape consumer perception and build incredible momentum? The strength of Obama’s campaign and his revolutionary move into office are based on the ideals set by the Founding Fathers: Election for The People and By the People…. and NOT by the lobbyists or constituents who have traditionally influenced policy and government spend. He has seemingly abolished this practice and has brought on a new idealism of transparency (as per the video: White House 2.0: Social Media and Government Transparency)

As I evolve Ammo Marketing in Canada, the social media space is exciting and yet daunting. I have been able to convince some clients that traditional research does not compare to the unfiltered, unmoderated insights they will get from social media. The very research has opened clients’ eyes who become keenly aware of the honest commentary on their brands: the good..the bad…and the ugly. This immediately creates a sense of urgency to jump into the conversation and clarify misperceptions and diffuse detractor comments. Little by little, participation in this new media is slowly revealing its true worth: as a true engagement device that leads to a sustained dialogue and eventual impact on revenue.

One of my staff came to me today and was so excited to be in a ground-breaking and evolutionary space. As someone who supports client initiatives by participating in relevant discussions, she is delightfully surprised by the willingness of people to embrace corporate presence and engage with them peer to peer with no strings attached. It’s amazing how much people are willing to tell you if you give them the platform to speak. The results we’ve seen have been immediate. But be warned, it will take some time to fulfill that ROI. Effort must be consistent and committed. Consumers will become your advocates if you continue to maintain that connection and you openly respond to their concerns.

Christopher Barger, Director of Social Media, General Motors (http://twitter.com/cbarger) said it best: Look for the return on conversation…not immediately…but when it comes it will sustain itself long-term.

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Mindblossom is a premier, established web studio in the heart of downtown Toronto’s Fashion district (Richmond and Spadina). Our company is design driven and has experienced exponential growth in the past three years, striving to be an employer of choice and offering challenging and exciting opportunities to our employees.
Our clients include:
•    Pizza Hut
•    Taco Bell
•    KFC
•    Citibank
•    eBay
•    Sleeman
•    Reebok
•    Suzuki
See more of our work here: http://www.mindblossom.com

We are owned by Aegis Media and are part of Isobar, the world’s largest digital marketing network. Isobar now has 3015 people working in a global network of 104 offices in 38 markets. It has a unique structure and culture with Isobar providing the network structure to many of the world’s leading digital agencies, all of whom are fully owned but all of them retaining what makes them special; their own identity, their culture and their specialization or local relevance.

Position Summary
We are looking for a passionate web hosting engineer who has experience running a small to mid-sized enterprise web hosting environment. This individual will work closely with the Dev, QA and IT teams to stage, launch and manage web sites for various clients. We need someone who is innovative and able to take us to the next level.

Applicatants must have experience managing web servers and web hosting environment.

This role requires the employee to carry a blackberry and respond to off-hours high urgency issues and deployments. We offer flexible hours and the ability to work from home,

We offer a flexible work environment with the ability to work remotely when required.

Key Responsibilities
•    Ensure production Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and Web Hosting Services are maintained.
•    Monitor servers and websites ensuring that they are up and available to the Internet.
•    Facilitate the movement of software between Dev, QA, Stage and Production environments.
•    Manage development, staging, QA and production physical environments.
•    Manage souce control environments.
•    Work with QA and Development leads to define policies for production control, information security and source control.
•    Act as information security steward and ensure that software projects meet information security standards.
•    Work with Regional IT manager to ensure production web hosting environments conform to corporate standards.
•    Work with dev team to evaluate and deploy software frameworks, platforms and web application servers.
•    Respond to and manage production and web hosting issues on and off hours.
•    Research and implement technology tools and platforms.
Required Skills
•    Experience deploying and managing virtual machines using VMWare ESX server.
•    Experience managing and configuring Apache, Jetty, Tomcat, Weblogic and .NET servers.
•    Experience managing CVS and Subversion.
•    Experience managing Linux operating systems.
•    Experience managing, mySQL, SQL Server database systems.
•    A strong sense of responsibility and initiative
•    A strong desire to learn and improve
•    Excellent deductive reasoning and problem solving skills
•    An ability to complete tasks carefully and accurately
•    Excellent interpersonal/communication skills
•    An ability to work independently and as part of a team

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