Monthly Archive for August, 2006

Customer Experience Consultant - Atlanta

Published
by
Karl
on August 9, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

Who are We?

When it comes to Customer Experience Consulting, we literally wrote the book!

Led by Customer Experience Guru Colin Shaw, Beyond Philosophy is an advisory, consulting organization that focuses solely on Building Great Customer Experiences for our clients. Established in 2001 in the United Kingdom, we have worked with leading global organizations on both sides of the Atlantic and are recognized thought leaders in the Customer Experience marketplace.

In January 2006, Beyond Philosophy, Inc., established a permanent presence in the United States by opening a new office in Atlanta, GA. We have already won exciting assignments with Fortune 100 companies.

What does a Customer Experience Consultant Do?

We are seeking a high-energy, quality-oriented individual with project management experience in the customer management field. You will be responsible for leading and managing the analysis, design and delivery of high quality, innovative and effective client solutions. This will involve:

  • Conducting strategic analysis, business modeling and planning, organizational and customer journey reviews, change management and (limited) business process re-engineering
  • Ensuring that projects are delivered on time, within budget
  • Identifying and resolving issues and problems highlighted by the client

Who is our ideal candidate?

You will have a Bachelor’s degree and 3 - 5 years of management consulting to include experience in a customer relationship management business area. Your CRM background should include leadership responsibility for workstream/small project delivery. You must also have excellent interpersonal & communication skills; good analytical and design capabilities; the proven ability to coach clients in new ideas, methods and concepts and facilitate joint team / group work sessions. Preferred is experience in facilitation of change management and organizational development relating to contemporary customer satisfaction practices. This position is global in nature and will require domestic and some international travel.

What else can we tell you?

At Beyond Philosophy, Inc., we pride ourselves on good communication, adding value, knowledge sharing, trust and empathy. At this company, a ‘can do’ attitude prevails.

This is a ground floor opportunity to work with world renowned thought leaders in the Customer Experience field. We offer a competitive base salary along with performance bonuses and benefits.

Click HERE or visit our recruiting web site at http://www.onsiterecruit.com

Web 2.0 CEO Quotes From TechCrunch Video

Published
by
Karl
on August 9, 2006
in Marketing
. 6 Comments

bolt_com_ceoTechCrunch recently posted a 29 minute video of an interview with a bunch of Web 2.0 CEO’s about what they thought Web 2.0 was, trends, etc. First off I was surprised how measured most of the comments were, especially around what Web 2.0 is, and what leapt out for me was how much Web 2.0 is actually about how technology connects and empowers people. Web 2.0 may not be social media, but it is the fundamental infrastructure. Anyway, here are some select quotes from the video, that can be found here on techcruch in a very 1.0 video format embedded in a webpage with no way to share it or navigate it, just 29 sequential minutes (ever heard of Veo tagging), anyway:

Auren Hoffman (Rapleaf)

We (the community) have time to create linux, which is amazing, we have time to create wikipedia, we have time to put reviews on yelp, and read and write blogs. We just have way to much time on our hands, maybe that was all time we were doing passive things watching TV, now all that passive time has become active time and we are creating stuff

David Sifry (Technorati)

This artificial distinction between a consumer and a producer is disolving, I call it the participant economy
Web 2.0 is about people
From a traditional media companies perspective the best kind of consumer is one that is strapped to his chair, fed content and craps cash

Jeremy Verba (Piczo)

this generation of 10 to 20 year old is claiming this medium as their own

Aaron Cohen (Bolt)

bolt, myspace, youtube are the equivalent of ‘the republic’ in the star wars universe, and the Empire is of course network television” “The web site is controled by the people that use the page
User generated media movement”

Michael Tanne (Wink)

Viral marketing used to be a nice to have, now it’s essential. Word of Net is far faster than Word of Mouth

Gautam Godhwani (Simply Hired)

more and more people are coming online, and enough of our network is online to help us make decisions

Steven Marder (Eurekster)

Opening up the content and allowing users to come in and manipulate and interact with the information… leveraging the collective wizdom of the community

Scott Milener and Steven Lurie (Browster)

Users are learning how to communicate with other users

Mike Arrington (TechCrunch)

In a user generated world what role does a publisher have?
60% of my readers have their own blogs

Random quotes:
“User generate content”
“Anyone can publish, anyone can communicate”

Biggest WTF quote comes from Mike Arrington - “If a company isn’t involved in removing friction from the process then it probably isn’t a web 2.0 company for me” - Come to think of it AJAX is a pretty good brand name for a lubricant. Joking aside, Trust has often been revered to as the lubricant of cooperation, maybe web 2.0 extends that metaphor.

Aggregate quote - Publishers are moving from being in control of the entire process to being curators or stewards of content from an infinite number of sources

Interestingly, no mention of SecondLife or Avatars, so maybe SecondLife and the metaverse is actually Web 3.0.

Finally I’m a Pundit :-)

Published
by
Karl
on August 9, 2006
in Marketing
. 2 Comments
As the week went on, a vocal minority cropped up to declare Agency.com’s polarizing video ingenious—even subversive. “Today’s marketing and advertising environment is totally turned on its head, and now is the time for experimentation and prototyping,” wrote Karl Long, a blogger who runs Web marketing firm Local Zing.

Ad Week

The video ignited immediate response, most of it negative, as industry blogs such as Adfreak called it “uninspired,” and “highly unfunny,” and Adrants pleaded that ad agencies “DO NOT DO THIS,” writes Adweek. Karl Long wrote on his blog ExperienceCurve, however, that the agency deserves “massive kudos.”

Media Buyer Planner

I wish they’d linked to my blog :-( Thanks to everyone who participated in the conversation, I personally think the comments were better than the posts.

Why Podcasting Matters to Your Business

Published
by
Karl
on August 8, 2006
in Marketing
. 3 Comments

Ralston360 has created a video/podcast that is a really good primer for anyone wondering why podcasts would matter to their business.

Podcast360

podcastingdefined

Overall the content is professional, informative, clear, and not salesy. They provide some great demographic information in the “who listens to podcasts”. They also provide some great examples of how podcasts are being used in the “why should marketers care” section, and offer some great examples of big companies sponsoring podcasts like Lexas, and Gatorade

My only critique is they beat the ipod interface metaphor to death :-) except for the all important “fast forward”. From the standpoint of social media there are no comments on the page, no trackback, and no navigation beyond the ipod interface.

The Top Ten List of Top Ten Blog Lists

Published
by
Karl
on August 8, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

Top Ten Cliches In Stock Photography from FortyMedia.com

Top ten actionable things that Ozgur did to become a top 100 digg user from Marketallica

Top ten types of blogger from the Viral Garden

Top ten strangest Lego creations from Tech Blog

Top ten unintentionally bad company URL’s from Independent Sources

Top 10 things that aren’t Web 2.0 from 37signals

10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic (guess what, one of them is top 10 lists) from SEOMOZ.org

Ten tips for improving your podcasts from Oreilly

Top 11 blogs about word of mouth from Buzz Canuck

Top Ten of Top Ten Lists from Konquest Online (no I’m not the first)

Web 2.0 Bubble or Social Media Revolution - Where Venture Capitalists Are Betting

Published
by
Karl
on August 7, 2006
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

IMHO the one category that is missing here is the “social media agency” because companies are going to desperately need some help figuring out how to engage with customers via this stuff.

– Social Networking: 21 companies, total: $95.8 million, 8 undisclosed
– Business Social Networking: 3 companies; total: $21 million, 1 undisclosed
– Video Sharing: 14 companies; total: $60.2 million, 5 undisclosed
– Photo Sharing: 8 companies; total: $68.26 million, none undisclosed
– Avatars: 6 companies; total: $52.73 million, none undisclosed
– Gaming/Role-Playing: 2 companies; total: $16 million, none undisclosed
– Personal Media/P2P Management and Sharing: 5 companies; total: $17.5 million, 2 undisclosed
– Entertainment Content: 4 companies; total: $28.5 million; one undisclosed
– Collaborative & Social Search: 4 companies; total: $7.3 million; two undisclosed
– Listings/Review/Events/Recommendations: 7 companies; total: $20.7 million; one undisclosed
– Music Related: 6 companies; total: $16.7 million; 2 undisclosed
– P2P: 3; total: $11.75 million; one undisclosed
– Citizen-Blog Journalism: 9 companies; total: $22.9 million; 5 undisclosed
– RSS Tools and Services: 8 companies; total: $13.5 million; 5 undisclosed
– News Personalization & Sharing: 4 companies; total: $43.3 million; one undisclosed
– Podcasting: 4 companies; total: $14 million; 2 undisclosed
– Blogs Tools & Services: 5 companies; total: $26.1 million; one undisclosed
– Wikis: 3 companies; total: $10.15 million; none undisclosed
– China: 8 companies; total: $47.3 million; one undisclosed
– Physical Media: 2 companies; total: $17 million; none undisclosed
– IM: 1 company; $3.5 million
– Mobile Social Media: 13 companies; total: $67.35 million; 2 undisclosed

From the Paid Content Social Media Deals Report

UPDATE: You can also go and buy the The Social Media Deals Report (Covering Last One Year) from PaidContent.org here

Friday Fun - What IS Consumer Generated Content

Published
by
Karl
on August 4, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

This clip had me in stitches, and it’s an amazing bit of editing: Darth Vader Being A Smart Ass

One interesting aspect of the clip is it did not add any content, it just creatively edited an existing clip, I’ve been having an interesting conversation with Asi about what is “consumer generated content” and he recently posted to a group blog we are on called vcritic, So what is User Generated Content? it’s an interesting question.

Karl

Five Implications for The Social Media Agency - Inspired From Agency.com Youtube Pitch

Published
by
Karl
on August 4, 2006
in Marketing
. 10 Comments

1. Interactive Agency business models are subverted by social media

Generally Interactive Agency bread and butter is in “big bang” marketing and implementation, expensive expensive web sites, experience “orgy” microsites, big spend banner campaigns and intersticials, basically mass marketing on the web. The more expensive it is to implement the more money the agency makes. Succeeding in Social Media turns that model on its head as implementation tools are generally very cheap in comparison with traditional interactive projects, it’s the ideas that are valuable. This can be likened to the advertising agency problem of if your revenue is tied to advertising spend then how can you move into advertising that costs a 100 or a 1,000 times less? Agency.com didn’t create this video because it’s business is doing well, it did it because it sees the writing on the wall, look at their hiring page, a dozen open positions in a global company?

agency_hireing

Lets say the Ford Bold Moves site, and The Coke Show are examples of “big agency” social media, and the office promo competition on youtube was the very cheap “social media” way to do it. What’s the result? The Coke Show, which is actually the coke.com homepage has 10 entries (it launched with 14 at the beginning of july), the office promo has 400.

2. Failure is not just acceptable, it should be encouraged

Cultural fear of failure in agencies will stifle creativity, and needs to be encouraged, honored and recognized. In fact this doesn’t just go for agencies, all companies need to realize that interacting, engaging and creating in social media involves experimentation and failure needs to be recognized as part of the growth. Many see the Agency.com video as a total failure, but if Agency.com get to learn more about social media from that then surely they are the winner over the long term.

3. In Social Media Everyone is a Critic

Put your flame proof trousers on folks because you are not in Kansas anymore. Social Media is full of real people, with real opinions, and real swear words. Be prepared, and make sure any of your sensitive artists understand this :-)

“So what if people are talking about this? You can drop your pants at a party and shit in the punch bowl and people will talk. (Which is basically what you did.) This isn’t funny, original, creative, insightful, or entertaining. You guys should keep those Subway jobs because you have no future in advertising. You hacks are the reason 95% of ads suck.”
boring as hell. subway will probably love it.
I had no idea facial hair was such an important part of the advertising industry.”
Let’s agree that it’s not a positive if 20,000 people watch something and 18,000 of them decide you’re a bunch of total wankers

4. Experimenting Meaningless Without Measurement

Social Media tools are great for tracking what happens, technorati, log files, delicous, blogpulse

agency_vs_coudal_vs_avenuea_rasorfish
(notice Coudal.com got a bigger bump than Agency.com :-)
It is also important to note that measurement in Social Media should take into account the 1% rule, or the idea that only 1% to 10% of a population will actively create, comment and amplify, so just measuring “views” misses the real value creators in social media, the mavens and the connecters as Malcolm Gladwell would say.

5. Viral Stewardship - Virals Are Unpredictable So Pay Attention

If something takes off in Social Media be prepared to participate, or at least steward the conversation. Agency did a great job of actively tracking the conversation, and responding quickly to the direction it was taking. Viral, and social media marketing are incredibly dynamic, and in many ways you have no control over the direction its going to go so pay attention.

As it turned out the community totally lampooned the “fist bump” and the phrase “when we roll we roll big”, and 3 days into the arc of this campaign Agency.com registered “whenwerollwerollbig.com”

Domain Name: WHENWEROLLWEROLLBIG.COM
Administrative Contact , Technical Contact :
AGENCY.COM
hostmaster@agency.com
488 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
US
Phone: 212 358 2600

Record expires on 02-Aug-2008
Record created on 02-Aug-2006

And even created a logo:
use_this_we_roll_big

Why The Agency.com Youtube Subway Pitch Ruled

Published
by
Karl
on August 3, 2006
in Marketing
. 12 Comments

Steve Rubel thinks its lame and in fact accuses Agency.com of holding the subway brand hostage, Steve Hall says don’t do it and especially don’t say “dude”, Bjoern at Site-9 calls it part of the cluelesstrain and readers here are split down the middle, as are some other bloggers, like Scott at Experience Planner and even podcaster jumped into the fray at PostBubble.com.

Holding a brand hostage? Seriously the subway brand has got way more problems than the Agency pitch, Jared for one, and the sandwiches second. I actually think Coudal should get the job because they demonstrated some brand insight when they choked on the subway sandwich and said “man, this sucks”. Anyway, I think what Agency.com did was a very smart move. The online advertising environment is changing, and the web is still stuck on banners, intersticials and flash orgies that are more appealing to marketers than actual customers. In many ways I think your opinion on the Agency.com bit will have much to do with how you see the health of interactive agencies businesses. If you think interactive agencies are on the totally wrong track, then you probably think the pitch was overall a good idea, if you think interactive agencies have a good thing going and can keep doing what they’re doing then you probably think the pitch was a terrible idea. Let me ask you, where did flickr, youtube, yelp, myspace etc all come from? Big agencies?

Let me give you some insight why i think this is a big win, no matter what the fall out. In a world where agencies shit their pants at the idea of failure they tend to be more conservative than the companies that hire them. They cave to clients cost constraints, and totally skip the important “creative” bit at the beginning and then waste a tonne of money on the execution. That being the case Agency.com just did an experiment in the “fuzzy front end”, no money on the line, no deadline, just some ideas and some playtime.

Todays marketing and advertising environment is totally turned on its head, and now is the time for experimentation and prototyping, and measureing what happens. To succeed every agency needs to have about half a dozen cheap, experimental projects like that running all the time, and many need to fail, and fail fast. If you are not experimenting with social media then you are an observer and you will get fucked if your business is to understand it better.

Now i’m sure they do just have a couple of execs to deal with on a deal level, but what is the impact on the franchise system? It is one of the biggest franchises in the US so they have an awful lot of stakeholders, I wonder if a viral pitch is a way to gain recognition by an incredibly wide audience? If the two execs hated it but 20,000 franchise owners were all a “buzz” with it, would it sway opinion? A subversive pitch?

But is it viral? I agree you can’t create something and dub it viral, in face agency.com previously fell at the first post with their non-viral “don’t read” campaign for Audible.com, (BTW we need a catchy name for things that aren’t viral, benign advertising? inoculated campaigns?). Anyway, it is viral, it’s viral because people are talking about, sending it around, and watching it 20,000 views since july 31st, that’s 10,000 yesterday since I posted. Agency has even started it’s own blog about the phenomonom, it’s called WhenWeRollWeRollBig hat tip Logic & Emotion

razorfishvsorganic_aarf_01

You’ve seen the movie, now buy the tshirt

How Agency.com Pitched Subway Via YouTube

Published
by
Karl
on August 2, 2006
in Marketing
. 26 Comments

Agency.com get’s my vote of “agency of the month” for what they have done here. This is a viral video of Agency.com pitching subway.

It’s been viewed almost 10,000 times in the last 3 days here’s the location on youtube

For all the snark that bloggers send agencies way, this one deserves massive kudos, and I mean huge. They’re not claiming to know everything, but they are experimenting at the edges, and guess what, that’s what agencies should be doing. Talk about transparency, they even have outtakes posted.

UPDATE:
a hysterical response from Coudal Partners, not on youtube but you can watch the video on their site:

coudal_respond

Now there’s a T-shirt inspired by the spot, wtf?

we roll big

Big Tip of The Hat - ExperiencePlanner