Mediameme

Just got back from a great summer road trip with my family. It was quick, memorable and fun. As we drove home, the parallels between planning an outstanding road trip and creating a successful social media program are very striking. Here’s an easy to remember approach:

Where Are We Headed?
Select a place that everyone is excited about and make sure everyone is on board.  If the social media program is designed for inspiring facebook fans of the brand, but it’s not a unanimous decision, keep talking. One dissenter can lead to indifference or worse, impatience, when things go wrong.

Take your Time
In addition to the major destination, plan lots of pit stops leveraging influential long-tail communities to pick up new fans and meet enthusiasts. The pit stops should be based on the insights derived from a listening platform but also peppered with opportunities to connect with brandividuals — brand influencers who are well-connected via social media. It’s also helpful to take bathroom breaks once in awhile and check your online research with people in real life at the rest stop.

Make sure your plan is flexible enough to accommodate new insights without torturing your team or brand fans.  A road trip and social media are both as much about the experience as getting to the destination. If your priority is getting there quickly, be prepared to spend lots of money.

Do Your Homework

Just as  your car needs to be serviced and running well, so does your social media team. If  your plan rests on a popular site, already be woven into their social community so when you reach out to their sales folks, you can focus on your destination instead of spray and pray (spray your messages all over the map and pray it all works).

Be sure to keep all the members of your team — not just those on the same payroll as you — on the same page via collaboration tools. Check in with the team regularly — at least daily.  Just like you would secure your home before the trip, have a scenario planning meeting or two with folks who are responsible for the product or service at the heart of your program. If you’re uncertain about what may happen when the program launches or some of the places you may find your content being posted, familiarize yourself with the horror stories, including how the brand or company recovered.

Pack Smart
Pack with your brain, and your heart. Most brand managers and marketers are tempted to throw everything ‘out there’, but that only creates more noise and confusion. Less is more.  Don’t force your brand fans to sit between a cooler and a tent — let them pack the proverbial car through content they love to create. Remember — you’re the driver and navigator.

Bring Music, Video, Games and More
Don’t forget the entertainment!  Stop ‘selling’ and start entertaining with games, video, and music. Let the community create a ‘road trip’ soundtrack or movie for your brand.

Road trips, like social media programs, are a lot of fun when they’re rockin’, but they are also a lot of detail-oriented, roll-up-your-sleeves, “thinking and doing” kinds of hard work.With big payoffs for people and the companies they work for.  Instead of telling a travel agent (agency) to ‘book the flight and a car’, travelers do the heavy lifting themselves. The road trippers have to participate in social media communities to understand how they work and know what kinds of sites and tools are better for which kinds of tasks. There’s much more upfront planning time and people needed.

The payoff?

1. Social media programs cost a lot less hard cash in total (than paid media programs, for example, when a new product is launched),

2. The company gains access to and education from a variety of people with different skills and life experiences

3. Cross-functional employees get to know each other and customers a lot better.

4. Deeper loyalty from brandvocates

And just like a real road trip: those involved in the social media program share the memories and experience of the adventure together. Forever.

Flickr Credits: chartno3; Usonian; mahalie; Torri 479; eyetwist

I’ve been awake since Wednesday chasing 65-year old divorced Grandmas around Las Vegas casinos.

Odd as that sounds, it’s part of an original approach to understanding consumer behavior.  I’m working through a fascinating experience called Camp Organic as both observer and participant in the surreal surroundings of Las Vegas.  Exceptional experiences are grounded in understanding the decision-making process and psychological baggage each of us has acquired through our lifetime.  Camp Organic is a a three-day ethnographic exercise to help people truly understand and experience customer empathy firsthand.  Will post more on the process and debrief after I’ve completed them later on today.

Grab a copy of your company’s organizational structure. I don’t care if there is one employee or 100,000 — are customers even noted on it?

If they are, where does their ‘box’ appear? At the bottom of the page? At the top? How about in the middle — where the entire organization can focus on them?

Think about it — if your company isn’t in the business of meeting the needs of your customers, you don’t have a business. Or you won’t for much longer. Because that is the new reality for institutions when they collide with social media.

Right now I am suffering through one of the worst service experiences an American consumer can face: travel. From the moment I checked in online using Northwest’s (Northworst) system, which will only let me confirm seating for the trip within 24 hours, but not the return trip scheduled for later in the week, to the boring looong flight where I was asked to pay for my food and not even offered the option of entertainment for a 4 1/2 hour flight to the 45-minute wait for my luggage which seems to be the defacto time in any airport in the US, to the 30-minute wait in the scorching hot desert sun while I waited for a cab that reeked of smoke that drove way too fast to the hotel where check-in that stole another 30 minutes from my life. Then I was summarily told that the room wouldn’t be ready for at least 4-5 hours…and this is normally what we all experience whenever we travel. Now think about how much a typical business trip or vacation costs and compare it to other experiences that cost much less money yet deliver far greater satisfaction.

There are millions of message boards, forums, blog posts and comments that all support the singular fact that there is a substantial problem here, yet no company is rushing to fix it. Because they are still working with the old organization chart model in mind that doesn’t wave red flags and tell them they have a problem. But for a nimble competitor with a service-based mentality, this situation represents a game-changing opportunity and deliver a truly exceptional experience for consumers.

Thinking about exceptional experiences, I am drawn to the companies who are the proverbial ‘poster children’ for delivering on their brand promise: Apple, Nordstrom, Whole Foods, Google and BMW.

Like many people, I am a blend of logic and emotion when it comes to the buying experience. I want value for money but also something that I can get excited about and look forward to experiencing, particularly if I’m paying a premium for that product or service or brand association. So how to define my experience with their brand that was truly exceptional? And were there other examples I was overlooking? I went “old school” to the SERVQUAL dimensions developed nearly 20 years ago by Valerie Zeithaml and associates:

1. Understanding. The company needs to do their homework and understand what consumers (will) want before designing a product or service. Who knew we needed another device to play our music on-the-go before Apple launched the i-pod?

2. Communication. Listening, clarifying consumer needs and setting reasonable expectations for delivery. And then exceeding the communicated objectives in a delightful way, demonstrating the company implicitly understands the first criteria: understanding of what the consumer wants.

3. Accessibility. Whether it is the web site that is easy to navigate, a store that is open during hours convenient to customers (rather than a balance sheet) or a brand representative who is approachable, knowledgeable and trustworthy, being accessible is an important part of any exceptional experience.

4. Security. Maslow had to enter into this somewhere. Providing freedom from danger, risk, fear or doubt. Consider it conversely: could an experience be exceptional without this dimension?  Whole Foods understands the significance of this particular dimension.  Through education, it is waging advocacy campaigns warning consumers about the dangers of genetically-modified food, demanding all milk products be labeled if they contain r(BGH) and promoting locally-grown products.

5. Credibility. Do I trust this brand? Was the experience honest? Believable? Authentic?  Google is a terrific example of this important dimension.

6. Respect. Anyone who knows me  IRL, knows this is perhaps THE most important dimension to me. Are the representatives friendly? Courteous? Considerate? Does their copy (user manual, web site, print advertising) help or hinder the user experience with their brand?

7. Competence. ‘Nuf said.

8. Responsiveness. Prompt service. Calls are returned. Problems are dealt with as a priority until they are fixed to the customer’s satisfaction.  Nordstrom wrote the book on this subject.

9. Reliability. Does the service or product perform the promised service dependably and accurately?  Gotta pick BMW as the classic example here.

10. Product or Environment. What is their store environment like? Is their product well-designed and user-friendly? Does it put a smile on your face to interact with the brand?  Apple.  Again.

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Does this model work for you to determine an exceptional experience? Why or why not? What is your example of an exceptional experience?