PIXEL MAVERICK

If you work in advertising or any role where you are consulting with companies about some aspect of their ongoing relationship with customers — you may have come across the challenge of figuring out your client’s “Social Voice”.  Essentially it is the same thing as a brand voice & it refers to the type of personality and communication style your client’s brand has when engaging with customers.

You might think that Social Voice is a totally new thing attributed to the recent impact of social media, but that would be incorrect.  Successful brands have had a social voice for as long as there have been companies that sell goods and services to customers.  What social media has done, is shift the power to the customer and as a result the spotlight is now beaming down on a brand’s ability to engage with customers as a key success metric these days.

Initially most people who think about brand strategy all day thought that Social Voice should be some type of straight personification of the brand.  “If my brand were a person what type of person would he/she be …fun, serious, quirky, brash?  What does a quirky person talk like anyway?  Why would someone want to be friends with my brand?”.  I think this is the right direction, but this approach is not applicable for ALL brands.  I think this type of social voice works well for companies that have a strong and highly visible individual that regularly represents the brand — a CEO or primary spokesperson that is front and center in all marketing efforts or perhaps a small business where the owner IS the brand.  In these cases, I think having a single social voice that comes from the person at the center of the brand is the right way to go.  Clearly this person who represents your brand has an engaging personality that people like and think of when they think of your company (or you have bigger problems) so thier voice is the right social voice.

For the majority of companies, however, I do not think a single prescribed social voice is the right approach.  Most companies do not have a single person or spokesperson that exclusively represents the brand to the world.  In most situations, a company’s brand is represented by the hundreds or thousands of employees that engage with the customers on a daily basis.  In fact, even with companies that have a strong individual representative …the employees still are the most important aspect of the company delivering on it’s promises.  These employees ARE the brand.  In these cases, a single prescribed social voice would come off as totally fake and customers would punish the company for that.

(Imagine having a casual conversation with someone at a party …but whenever they spoke they were reading from a script.  Fun party.)

When the employees ARE the brand, the best approach for developing a social voice is to make sure the employees can be themselves.  I am not proposing a free-for-all with no brand direction, but rather a loose range that allows individual personalities to shine within.  I think the approach to develop this type of social voice range for a brand includes the following steps:

1. Do the whole brand personification exercise and figure out what type of person your brand is & how they would act/ talk/ behave
2. Once you have that single voice for your brand consider that your center point
3. Take the center point as the bulls-eye and establish an acceptable range of personality types and behavior that circles around it
4. Look for employees that have personalities that authentically live within this acceptable range
5. Let them be themselves, and directly represent the brand with their own style

This approach is definitely described at a high level, but I think it covers the main steps that should be taken to figure out what type of social voice range would be successful for a brand.  At the end of the day, people do not want to be talked to with no opportunity for two-way dialogue …nor do they want to hold a conversation with a person who clearly is faking it and not being themselves.  So, it is better to let the people that work directly with the customers be themselves than to give them scripts or worse to muzzle them.

What other approaches for brand voice and social voice do you know of?

One of my favorite blogs, Fresh Networks, has a recent post with a great video of Matt Rhodes presenting his thoughts on how to approach social media in Europe.  His overall point is that a multinational brand should not attempt to create one single global social media strategy and apply that to all countries.

I agree with Mr. Rhodes that you cannot take a single social media strategy and apply it globally with success.  Each country has it’s own mix of culture, social activity preferences, and social landscape — therefore each country should have it’s own social media strategy.

While I do agree with him that each country should develop an approach that is optimal to it’s mix, I do NOT think that means that a multinational brand should approach social media without some form of unified strategy.

Keeping Mr. Rhodes’ valid points in mind, I propose that a global brand should take a rational Fixed/ Flexible approach to developing their global social strategy.

Fixed (Global):

• Policies (What you can & cannot say, PR issue escalation, etc)
• Operation Protocols (Centralized CRM acquisition, Analytics, Naming conventions, etc)
• Social Voice (My approach to this is to personify the brand as a center point and create a halo range from that — various individual and country authentic personalities can live within that range)

Flexible (Per Country):

• Environments (FB, Twitter, YouTube, Ning, etc)
• Engagement Strategy (Q&As for Germany, Blogs for France, etc)
• Social CRM (Flex business rules for evolving relationships)

Finding the right Fixed/ Flexible ratio would take time and would constantly need to be monitored and revised to remain optimal, but I think if a multinational brand were to take this approach it would be successful.  They would be able to maximize their social media efforts per country while still ensuring that each country’s individual efforts was contributing to the brand and business goals for the global company.

What do you think?

What global brands are doing something like this (or a better model) well today?

I found a great Slideshare presentation today from Luckie that provides a nice look at how retail is using social by presenting 8 case study examples + some review commentary on each.

One of the strategist at Luckie, David Griner is the author of a blog called Social Path that is excellent.  It is one of my favorites in my blogroll and if you do not already follow it, I suggest you start.

How did I miss this awesome Dwight Schrute find on LinkedIn until now?

“How would I describe myself? Three words: hard working, alpha male, jackhammer, merciless, insatiable.” – Dwight Schrute

I doubt that this LinkedIn profile is authored and managed by Rainn Wilson considering he uses a twitter handle that is not Schrutenized.  So, this must have been setup by a motivated fan of Dwight and the show.

According to a quick search, there are quite a few Assistants to the Regional Manager/ Professional Beet Farmers in LinkedIn.

…Now that I think about it, the real Dwight Schrute probably would not ever use LinkedIn since that would indicate that he needed connections with other humans to further his career.

That is silly since it is common knowledge that all Schrute men have an extremely rare genetic pattern that is similar to that of the mighty lone wolf.

Yes, I did request a LinkedIn connection with Dwight and will be happy to have him as a professional connection.

(update to my original post)

Successful connection to Dwight.  My career success is practically gauranteed now.

A really great presentation by Arturo Joensuu that I found thanks to one of my favorite blogs Digital Buzz.

R.I.P. is probably a little strong, but not entirely inaccurate.  Social media, relationship marketing, converational marketing, transmedia, new devices like the iPad and the increasing adoption of mobile as the primary connection to the web ….all of these things are contributing to the devaluation of the original logic behind the mass media “yell the same message louder” old sales funnel.

The social web and the devices that we use to engage with it are changing the mindset of how people become aware, consider, and connect to brands.  I think that what this shift really represents is more of a reconciliation to how society connects as humans really, we just got used to the mass media approach to consuming information because that is all that was being offered.

I recently wrote the following piece for Ploked as a guest writer.  You can find the original post on Ploked here & if you enjoy reading about social media topics, you should check Ploked out and follow it regularly.

The implications of that question might be a little bold today, but not by much.

Think about your normal everyday habits online for a few minutes.

In case you haven’t noticed, your online behavior has changed drastically in just the last couple of years.  How much of your news and information online do you have to GO TO to consume, and how much of your news and information COMES TO YOU?

Yes, ...you ARE very lazy.

Now think about Facebook’s role in facilitating that “bring it to me” behavior.  How much of all that content being served up to you has Facebook’s fingerprints all over it (…on Facebook.com, on your mobile device, via an aggregation tool like TweetDeck)?

Now that we have established your semi-sad dependence on Mark Zuckerberg, what are some of the things supporting the argument that Facebook is becoming the new Internet?

What does Facebook dominate?

1) Scale

Unless you live in a cave, you are probably aware that Facebook is freaking enormous.

• More than 400 Million active users
• More than 50% active users log in every day
• The average user spends almost one hour per day on FB
• The average user has 130 friends
• More than 3 Million Pages (company, brand, etc.)
• 70% of active users are from outside the United States
• More than 100 Million active users access FB via mobile devices

2) Platform

Facebook can definitely play the role of destination site if you like it that way, but its real power is as a platform.

• More than 500,000 active applications
• More than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect
• More than 70 languages are supported and over 300,000 users help translate
• More than 60 Million users engage with Facebook Connect on external websites per month

3) Relevance

Facebook offers a degree of relevancy to YOUR content that is hard to match. Ask yourself this question – what is more important to you?

Information that is streamed to you without a filter other than keywords?

OR

Information that is streamed to you that you know is already pre-filtered by what you have chosen to receive along with  information that is shared from within your personal network?

This is about your personal preferences and trust.  Hands down the pre-filtered content will win your loyalty over the long term every time.  Facebook, 1 – Rest of the Internet, 0.

4) Laziness

We already established that you are a lazy person, but hey, perk up there webslack because apparently everyone else is, too. Go look at the stats above to feel better about yourself.

What does Facebook NOT dominate?

To be more specific, what activities or needs do you still have to rely on other providers/platforms for?  What points support the flipside of this argument that Facebook is not becoming the Internet?

1) Commerce Transactions

Facebook has become an undisputed major force throughout the sales funnel (awareness, research, etc.) due to the same preference and trust attributes mentioned above, but it is not the preferred platform for completing the actual transaction.  There are commerce transactions that occur on Facebook, but for the most part, all significant eCommerce transactions occur outside of the grasp of Facebook.  Rest of the Internet, 1 – Facebook 0 …for now.

2) Search

Real time search is great, but Twitter has Facebook’s number on that for now.  At the end of the day, both Facebook and Twitter are no match for Google.  When it comes to looking for a information about a particular topic in the vast sea of content available, there is no better solution than Google.

3) Sex

As open and free as Facebook is (…haters, insert the focus of your rage here), it does still control the content that is made available for consumption via its channels.  Facebook reserves the right to not allow content it deems questionable to be published on the site.  So, for now, you will still have to drag your lazy virtual self outside of the Facebook bubble and over to AssThumpers.com or ImaNeoNaziIdiot.com to get your freak or severe stupidity on.

Agree or Disagree?

I definitely do not consider myself a supreme expert on this subject, nor do I think that the points made are completely air-tight.  There are big holes in the details, but I feel that the general direction of the argument is sound.

If you disagree with me, call me out on my errors and explain where I went wrong.  If you agree with me, say so and drop your knowledge into the holes I left.

Every brand is trying to figure out Social Media right now, there are thousands of snake oil social media gurus popping up all over the place …as such there is no lack for presentations on Social Media out there on the Interwebs right now.

So, it makes it all the better when you stumble across a SMEDIA presentation that is from a brand (not a guru) that is spectacular in its simplicity.  Really wonderful presentation from Coke that I thought I would share.  In this case I “stumbled” across it on one of my favorite blogs to follow called Digital Buzz Blog — you should check them out if you do not already follow them.

I just saw an HILARIOUS new spot for Tums.

Ok, so there is a a guy at a tailgate party and he is eating a hot-wing, …well he is trying to eat a hot-wing before the hot-wing starts assaulting him with several bitch slaps to the facial region.  I think there is even another spot where a taco is giving someone a beat-down, ha ha.

No, really I swear it is funny — I am just not doing it justice with my storytelling.  Hold on a second and let me show you the commercial on YouTube.

…Well??  Hold on let me search again, I swear it is hilarious.  WTF?  Where is the commercial?

Way to go Tums, you missed a big opportunity for people to interact with your brand & with others by commenting.  You haven’t had a good commercial in years and when you finally do you fail to capitalize on it beyond the 30 second spot.  Whoops!

According to BrandWeek, the spot comes from Grey, NY …so I guess they share the blame for the missed opportunity.  Way to go Ad Agency.

Apparently I am not the only one who thought the new spot was great and wanted to share it.  One google search and I found that someone else was looking for the video too.

I love the answer this person got too, ha.  So, if someone took the time to ask about it on Yahoo Answers, my assumption is that there are probably several ad geeks and bloggers that wanted to post the video and say congratulations to Tums for a great spot.  Whoops again.

I recently wrote the following piece for Ploked as a guest writer.  You can find the original post on Ploked here & if you enjoy reading about social media topics, you should check Ploked out and follow it regularly.

The Request

If you work in advertising or PR, you have probably heard one of your clients fumble out a request statement regarding this title at some point during the last couple of years. If I had to guess, your marketing client (or his/her CEO boss) recently read an article about how social media is changing the game and how brands need to join today or die tomorrow.

The Response

Upon hearing this request, you paused for a second out of fear that your inner laughter might slip out…then you responded with a confident “We can do it! We’ll get back to you with a SMEDIA plan next week that will blow you away,“ or something to that effect.

The Boozy Laughter

You and your colleagues left the meeting and headed to the hotel bar (this fictitious meeting is out of town, by the way) where you all had a good laugh about what just happened — oh, those silly clients, ha ha. You expense the tab several drinks later to your client, and hit the sack.

The Reality

When you woke up the next morning, the reality of it hit you. “Shit! How the heck do we create a SMEDIA plan?”

The Guidelines

Not that I have ever found myself in this position, mind you (pause…), but I have found that the following simple guidelines are helpful to overcoming your “Oh, shit!” dilemma about developing a sound SMEDIA plan for a brand:

1) Answer the Obvious First – Before you waste a week, make sure you ask yourself whether the brand should even be doing anything in social media. Unless the brand is Depends, the answer is probably yes.

2) Establish a Brand Voice – When you get back to your agency, go find the planner and the copywriter for the brand and tell them to personify the brand (you should have already done this anyway, slacker). What would this brand sound like if it were having a conversation with someone? Write a statement of voice and several scenarios on how your brand (he or she) would respond to hypothetical “what ifs” to establish a platform.

3) Go Find Your Audience – Guess what? Your brand’s target audience is already heavily addicted to social media. Do some digging and figure out what their online social habits are. If you are lazy, Facebook is probably a safe guess, but after that, it gets tricky; you can’t just make assumptions about Twitter, Foursquare (no, not the game from school), or blogs.

4) Know Your Social Circle – There is nothing worse than a brand that hops into Facebook or Twitter and clearly does not get it (“Hello Facebookers — be my friend? Buy my crap now?”). Chances are that you yourself are a heavy social media user, so take off your advertising goon hat for a second and think like you do when you’re not working. What features do you use, what do you ignore, what makes you instantly think lame!, and what habits have you formed?

5) Be able to Answer the “Why Should I Care?” Question – Your brand probably already has some sort of Value Proposition that has been analyzed and presented in no less than 20 presentation decks at your disposal. That’s great. Now go find the one slide that from all that BS that will provide you some insight into why a person would want to follow or have a conversation with your brand in a social setting.  Is it because your brand is cool and they want to be cool, too? Is your brand controversial or related to something that spurs conversation or debate? Do people want to stay updated on the latest news OR just be connected in order to get discounts? All of these are good reasons for why they should care, and you need to pinpoint the “WSIC” for your brand.

6) Call Legal and Set Some Protocols — Chances are your client’s legal department is not prepared for how to handle the lack of control that goes along with social media. Their immediate response will be to try and roadblock everything into a tiny space between Weak & Boring. Get your marketing client to help you fight this fight, but understand where the legal department’s fear is coming from. They don’t want a fiasco à la Domino’s Pizza to happen to them. Work with them to prepare some pre-set rules and an escalation plan with assigned stakeholders for how to identify and deal with a crisis.

7) Make a Splash and Learn as You Go – You will need to have some sort of acquisition strategy for your entry into your selected social media environments. A contest, or an awareness campaign of some sort, are the usual suspects here depending on your brand. Leverage the analytic information that Facebook offers for free (and, eventually, academic data) about this to find out what other brands have done successfully. After you get your brand’s social media campaign kicked off, be prepared to continually monitor/learn/change in order to engage your audience. Go ahead and set your client’s expectations on this ongoing evolution as well and save yourself the future grief. Social media engagement is a relationship that takes time, not a 30 second spot one night stand.

Wrap it Up and Bring it to the Client

After spending a week or two going through the guidelines listed above, you should have a good base of information to prepare a plan. This part should be easy since creating pretty presentation decks is something even out-of-touch agencies do well. The good news is that this deck will finally have a solid social media strategy as the foundation.

Wrap up all of the aforementioned details, take it to the client, pitch it, and win it!  Then it’s back to the hotel for more drinks and laughter.

There is an impressive new site called Social Mention that you should check out.  It offers a good analytic report of the real time buzz associated with a keyword(s) submission.  It is a very simple 1-step keyword submit to get the result of a set of buzz metrics such as Strength, Sentiment, Reach, and Passion.  It has some other key metrics as well as an aggregation of blog posts and articles that match the keyword.

I think the interface for the input as well as for the analysis/report is top notch and it is a site worth your time if you need some basic reporting tool for WOM or Social Media.

Bottom line — it is not an analytics tool that is going to blow you away with concrete ROI data about WOM or Social Media, but let’s be honest that level of concrete ROI analysis does not really exist for WOM and Social yet because nobody has really figured it out (…and it is FREE so please no whining from the data nerd herd).