SXSW Report

A bonus that was not on the agenda at the Tweet House today was the addition of Blendtec’s Tom Dickson.  He spoke a bit about how they started and got to be as successful as they’ve been with their “Will it Blend?” series on YouTube.  Here’s a brief video of his presentation.

If you’ve not heard of Square, it’s a device that allows anyone with a phone to accept a credit card payment. You plug it into your phone, start the app, put in the amount, and run the card. You can even have the person sign their name on your touchscreen. At the Chevy Tweet House, they were giving a ton of them away. I grabbed 5 for readers of this blog. The first 5 people to comment on this post will get the free Square devices.

Speakers: Evan Doll – Co-founder, Flipboard, William “Whurley” Hurley – Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Chaotic Moon Studios, Oren Jacob – CTO at Pixar, Executive Producer for Ready, Set, Bag., Moderator: Jason Preston

I was extremely impressed with the panel, which included the founder of Flipboard, a hot iPad app for aggregating social info, the CTO of Pixar and producer for the movie Ready, Set, Bag, and the CTO of an app development company. They discussed the challenges and insights they’ve gained in developing for tablet, including the iPad.

The most important, and unanimous, point made was considering the user experience when developing. Mobile/handhelds/tables are all about context – how are you using it? How are they going to access it? What situation is it in? People are frantic with their phones, you don’t see that with tablets, it’s a more deliberate use.

There’s a growing number of places to put this content, but the predominant feeling of the panel was that Apple may be the best choice to develop for. The feeling was that Apple has a large user base, they support their platform – ensuring quality, and help you monetize it. When it comes to monetization, the feeling was that the mobile environment is easier to monetize than the web because with mobile, you’re in the moment – more than likely, you’re at the point of purchase. At least the context is often much better than the web.

One frustration of the panelists was the common belief that you could design apps once and then port them over to different devices.  You need ton consider the context of each device, as well as the capabilities/advantages/disadvantages of each.  In fact, the one panelist – the Chief Technology Officer of Pixar had hired Chaotic Moon Studios to do his iPad app.  Despite his great knowledge of technology and design, he knew that he didn’t know best practices for the iPad.  So that’s why he hired these developers to do it for him.

Finally, if you’re going to enter into developing apps, know that it’s not a once and done thing.  Despite the fact that most apps aren’t very successful, if it is successful, you had better prepare to support it and change it as devices change and evolve.  One panelist compared it to Flash – when it came out, it was cool and everyone wanted it.  After a while, you had a bunch of old flash websites that never changed because they invested a lot of money initially into something that was cool.

As you’ve already seen, I’ve gotten a couple extra Delivering Happiness Books, as well as a couple copies of Eyeballs Out that I’m giving away here on the blog.  I’ve gotten a few more things here that I’m planning on giving away to readers of the blog.  Keep an eye out for a few more things to come!

Speakers: Mary Henige – Director, Social Media & Digital Communications at GM, Erika Brookes - Vice President, Marketing for Vitrue, Paull Young - Director of Digital Engagement and Fundraising, charity: water, Moderator: Steve Broback

I decided to spend the afternoon at the Tweet House, an intimate setting with some pretty good panels on social media.  This panel included folks from GM, charity: water, and Vitrue.  The discussion really covered managing communities and managing relationships and brands in the social media space.

All panelists agreed that one of the strengths of social media is the ability to tell an interesting story.  It gives brands a platform for storytelling.  In particular, Mary Henige from GM discussed how they’ve tried to use social media to humanize their brand.

“You can hate a brand, but it’s hard to truly hate a person if you get to know them.  You have to humanize your brand, and this provides a great venue to do that,” said Henige.  They’ve created a site called the Faces of GM - http://www.facesofgm.com – where they’re telling interesting stories and giving a behind the scenes look at the brand.

Getting people with passion for creating content is key, as Ericka Brookes from Vitrue illustrated.  While they have a blog owner, they’ve tried to get anyone who wants to participate involved – someone from engineering, marketing, etc.  People who are passionate about it will create content and will express their passion in their messages.

Of course any discussion of social media these days comes around to ROI and whether or not you’re being effective in this space.  As Henige said, “you can’t always measure ROI directly.  Sometimes you do something because it’s the right thing to do.”  Being in social media and interacting with customers is a relationship building activity and relationships can’t always be measured quantitatively.   However, all of the panelists agreed that you need to measure what you’re doing and estimate the impact it’s having.  One brand uses a customer happiness index which compiles interactions, mentions, and sentiment.  Whatever you choose to measure, you have to look at it as an indicator, not a direct measurement.

Henige also mentioned that there’s a tendency in the industry to focus to much on those who don’t like us, instead of spending time on/with brand advocates.  During the auto show, GM met with fans and interacted with them, giving a few of them a behind the scenes tour.  They’ve found them to be tremendous brand advocates, even helping other customers themselves in the social media space.

Charity Water had a kid who asked friends not to give him a 17th birthday gift, and instead donate$17 to charity water on his behalf.  He did it on his own and raised $50k in a couple days.  Paull Young from charity: water said that when he started they tried to focus on the 50% of site visitors who hadn’t donated.  He found it to be unsuccessful, so he has turned his focus on the 50% who do donate.  He’s found it to be much more successful.  Similarly, one of the most successful campaigns Brookes said she has seen was the release of Katy Perry’s new album.  Facebook fans were given a preview before anyone else, and these fans shared the content and had the feeling of being rewarded for their loyalty to Perry.

After getting a chance to see Josh Bernoff from Forrester speak at the Social Business Summit yesterday, we got a chance to sit down with him this morning to dig a little deeper into a few topics.  It was really a special opportunity to pick his brain about social media applications and organizational structures to deal with empowered consumers.  He shared some great insights and advice regarding the use of Facebook and organizing to be able to respond in real-time to consumers.

I was really interested in what could be done to collaborate in an environment which might be fractured into various silos with slightly overlapping responsibilities. We discussed the need to bring these groups together on a very regular basis to have discussions regarding monitoring, strategies, and execution. He brought forward a case study from Dell, mentioning how they bring together all of their social media folks for a weekly phone call to discuss these issues. Further, he mentioned the importance of challenging each other on these topics as well – making sure strategies are in place and metrics are being monitored. All areas need to be aware of what each other are seeing and doing in order to most effectively execute in this space.

Unfortunately, and understandably, he wasn’t very excited for me to video record parts of our meeting, but thanks again to Josh for taking the time out of his busy schedule to talk with us!

Presenters: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com

Zappos focus is on the customer experience, to an almost fanatical extent.  In pursuit of customer service, they’ve coined the term, “Delivering Happiness” to describe their mission.  Much like he describes in his book of the same name, Hsieh talked about how they focus on culture.  It’s their #1 priority, and he feels that if they can create the right culture and focus on customers, the results will follow.

Hsieh has done a lot of research in his own pursuit of happiness, and outlined a framework for happiness.  It requires these elements:

1. Perceived control
2. Perceived progress
3. Connectedness
4. Vision/meaning (being part of something bigger)

They use these concepts to select the right employees and focus on growing them from a job to a career, to eventually making it a calling.  Additionally, there are 3 types of happiness

1. Pleasure – chasing the next high (Rock star)
2. Engagement – time flies – flow
3. Meaning/higher purpose – being part of something bigger than yourself

Therefore, in order to build a great business, Hsieh focused on ensuring the culture provided employees with pleasure, passion, and purpose.  They hire for the culture and won’t hire someone who is great if they don’t fit in.  Many have heard of their $2000 offer, where they offer new employees a bonus for leaving the company after training if they don’t feel they are a fit.  Things like connecting employees with twitter have helped improve all of those areas, as well as a sense of connectedness.  Ultimately, the culture is about commitable core values.  It’s not just “a meaningless plaque on the wall,” it’s about being willing to hire and fire based on those values.  In fact, if you Google any one of Zappos core values, their site will appear #1 in the rankings.

Most of the presentation covered things he talked about in his book, Delivering Happiness.  At the end of the talk, Hsieh gave everyone a copy of his book.  Since I’ve already read the book  I’m giving away a copy of Delivering Happiness to 2 blog readers.  Simply click on the comments above and send us a note (be sure to include your email address), and we’ll select 2 winners to receive a copy of the book!

Also, don’t forget about my other book giveaway from the iMedia Brand Summit.

Presenter: Lee Bryant, Headshift

Social media is a new world, especially for corporate executives.  Bryant started by dispelling a few myths about leadership as it applies to social media within the business world.

Myth 1. Flat structures don’t need leaders
In fact, social business opens up new opportunities for traditional leadership strengths.  Those who have strengths in communication, strategy, planning, engaging people will naturally rise to the top.

Myth 2. Distributed leadership is based on distributing process, not passion
Passion works better than process control, such as Zappos – if they don’t see a connected purpose, they’re not going to do well.  Common purpose is more important than strategic planning.  He used an example of a military exercise in which the defense had no plan, but was able to pull off a victory repeatedly.  A famous quote - ”If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders… instead teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

The question is how can we actually do this and make it repeatable.  And what to do if you don’t have exceptional leaders?  What does social business have to offer?

Connected systems and social networks allow for intimacy & presence at scale.  In the past, good leaders “walked the floor” and had a physical presence with their employees.  Social networks now allow you to virtually walk the floor as a leader.  Social media also encourages personal quests and re-invention on the edges of the organization.  Essentially it helps like-minded folks organize, encourage each other, and share information.  Leaders should open the taps on internal social media to create feeds and flows of data.  Sharing of information internally improves performance and reduces friction.

Smart leaders don’t limit employees access to, or ability to hold conversations.  Real leaders thrive in open culture with feedback.  Typically they thrive on being challenged to solve problems and improve situations.  It takes moving beyond carrot and stick thinking to connect with peoples’ intrinsic motivation and sense of purpose – and then enabling them network.  You must provide them with the tools to do so.

Harness the power of open data to evolve.  Data gives you feedback, and you can use to adjust what you’re doing based on the needs of the customer (or employees).  A social business strategy and infrastructure create the conditions for buisnesses to evolve and succeed.

Ecosystems + passion + active listening = transformation

Presenter: Shiv Singh, PepsiCo
This was easily the best and most practical presentation of the day, providing a very clear outline for building a company structure to take advantage of a real-time environment.  The recent revolution in in Egypt highlighted the power of real-time communication and timeliness of information. Businesses can utilize social media for real time marketing, but there are six elements that need to be in place to execute effectively:

• Real-time Insights – It’s most important to be aware and know what your customers are thinking and doing in real-time.  The listening tools must be in place to provide a stream of updates.
• Real-Time Response – When you know what your customers are saying, you need to be in a place to act immediately.  A response only has meaning if it’s timely, so having staff who can respond in real-time provides an answer or response immediately.
• Real-Time Content Studio – Not only do you need to be able to respond immediately, but you need content and creative experts organize to be able to produce content in the moment.
• Real-Time co-creation - We can work together within the organization and with the consumer to develop the message and let it evolve.
• Real-Time Distribution – As a brand, the tools should be there to allow you to talk directly to consumers without having to go through your agency or a middle-man.
• Real-Time Engagement – Interacting and engaging with customers in real time creates engagement and trust.

All of this fits within a pop culture frame, meaning an awareness of the environment and what’s going on in the world at that moment.  The way we think and process information is changing, and new media technologies are literally addictive says psychologist Susan Weinschenk, fueling a “dopamine induced loop of seeking behavior and instantanious reward.”

There are 30 billion Facebook updates a month and a brand’s marketing message is competing for attention with all those status updates.  Therefore, brands need to think like a content company, regularly producing relevant content that cuts through the clutter.  During fashion week, Pepsi launched its new skinny can with a campaign called “Get the Skinny.”  During fashion week, they set up a content center for information on culture and fashion, essentially acting as a small news organization for the week.  It resulted in over 90,000 new Facebook fans and a large amount of engagement online with the brand.

Brands must be aware of culture and what the general public is thinking in order to take advantage of real-time opportunities.  During the BP disaster in the Gulf, Pepsi took the opportunity to expand the Pepsi Refresh Project.  They decided to give away and extra $1.3 million to fund reat ideas to help fund Gulf communities.  Because they were structured as outlined above, within a couple days, they got the idea, had it approved, and launched the site.  The next phase of the Pepsi Refresh Project will take advantage of consumer generated videos, allowing organizations who would like the grants to make a case to consumers via video.

Overall, in order to make this happen, Singh suggests that all of the following are needed to make it happen

1. Be able to ride “glocal” culture trends as they’re shaped by consumers.  Your company must be organized to communicate in real time, both on a global and local basis.
2. Target your brand loyalists and let them spread your message, but to do so you need to know who they are and have a relationship with them.
3. The ability to engage in real-time, meaningfully.  It’s about engagement, not just broadcasing your message, but if you’re able to do so, your message will be amplified by others.
4. Have a content studio to operate as a media organization in real-time.
5. Build your own distribution network.
6. Organize to be able to go from strategy to execution in seconds.
7. Don’t limit this to digital – make everything addressable, targeted, and instant.
8. Acknowledge real-time marketing has no geographic boundaries.

I got a question via twitter from @kellythul who asked what KPIs or metrics Singh utilizes for measuring success.  Singh suggested something he helped to develop while at Razorfish – the SIM Score.  The SIM Score for a brand is the ‘Net Sentiment’ for that brand in social media divided by ‘Net Sentiment’ for the industry.  Net Sentiment is defined by Razorfish as “Net Sentiment for the Brand = (Positive + Neutral Conversations – Negative Conversations) / Total Conversations for the Brand.”  He suggested looking at your real time score and comparing it to competitive brands within your industry.  He says that he has definitely seen a correlation with changes in SIM score and sales, mostly in CPG type industries.

Presenter: Philip Kaplan, Blippy
More than ever, we’re sharing private details of our lives on places like Twitter and Facebook.  Kaplan started a website called Blippy which takes the concept of sharing private information one step further.  The site  asks users to register their credit cards and then socializes your purchases from marketplaces such as iTunes, Amazon, Zappos and many more.  In essence, it tells your Blippy friends what you’ve bought, and allows them to get your feedback and review of the product.

Kaplan outright says, “the only people who care about privacy are old people.”  He goes on to show examples, such as the telephone.  When the telephone came out, there was a huge concern about lack of privacy – people could hear your calls, someone might listen in, etc.  Even more recently, as little as two years ago, people avoided Facebook, considering it “creepy.”  Today, there are over 600 million users of Facebook worldwide.

Kaplan’s feeling is that people have never shared this type of information simply because they have never been able to.  Today, over $1 million in purchases are shared every day on Blippy.  Kaplan feels that more people will share if they see value and a reason to do so.  Thus far, users of Blippy see value in knowing what their friends are purchasing, what they might endorse, if they like what they bought, or even seeing how they might be paying a different amount (like a gym membership) for the same service.

Ultimately, Kaplan feels that people will share if you give them a way to, and he feels that as “old people” move out of the space, a younger generation will be more comfortable – resulting in growth for Blippy.