Customer engagement – at your convenience!

It’s nice to travel and meet people occasionally.

Most folk think I spend 100% of my time working virtually and wearing pyjamas all day but in fact it’s only 99% of the time and the night attire can change according to what mood I’m in….

So, it’s always nice to dig the suit out, find it still fits, and accept the challenge to travel to some place I don’t know, speak a foreign language and achieve the desired result(maybe 50% of the time at least).

Last week I went to meet a longstanding client at a conference they were attending in Nice. This neccesitated flying from Bristol airport (great airport but the most apalling road access to any I can readily think of – save possibly for that edge-of-cliff airport in the Himalayas).

Having managed to avoid the check-in queue courtesy of my self-printed, online boarding pass, I then spent 30 minutes standing in line waiting to get half undresssed to go through the scanner. Jacket, belt and shoes all came off, laptop, handluggage, and several other trays of my stuff followed me dutifully on the conveyor belt and then it took another ten minutes to remember what belonged to me,  get dressed again and decant all my mini-toiletry bottles into a re-sealable plastic bag and which was then placed back in my wash bag (still haven’t worked out what the point was of putting them in the plastic bag and then back into the washbag but never mind).

After all this I felt that I needed a trip to the Gents.

These days, going to the loo is a major advertising experience.

These cunning ad types have long realised that for at least 30 seconds they have a captive audience  gazing at an otherwise blank wall and so what better than to provide you with your own, in-yer-face, personal ad (watch this space for the next generation of TFT panel which delivers multiple, ‘personalised’  video ads as a result of your geo-locationally-aware boarding card which passsed on your interests and preferences to the building management system when it was scanned at security…..) .

So, in an effort to avoid captivation, the alternative is to look down (left or right can get you into serious trouble and behind is not an option for most…) .

BUT looking down revealed yet another marketing innovation – the invitation to contact the company that makes the perforated rubber mats that in the good old days would have stopped cigarette ends from blocking the outflow but these days are mostly for decoration only. Printed on the edge was the number of their ‘customer hotline’.

I have to say that I was mesmerised by the concept and was extremely tempted to phone and have a good natter. The main problem was that I didn’t have my phone in hands-free mode at the time and couldn’t quite overcome  the self-concious aspect of writing down the number in public and delaying others whose need was much greater than mine. 

I  do know however that if I had done then we could have had a long and productive SWOT analysis discussion culminating in the idea that it would be great to be able to try out some competitor product so that you could well and truly say that you’d xxxxxx all over them.

Social Media – Finding The Angle

Social-ability
Some businesses and brands lend themselves better to identifying social media opportunities than others.

These are typically those with existing strong and medium-long term customer relationships such as banks, building societies, loan, finance and insurance companies. Regular repeat customers of various FMCG brands are also good news (think tomato sauce and toothpaste). These examples offer pretty good ready-made bases for developing social communities around their product or service.
 
Car brands also have good ‘social’ potential as there are always plenty of Jeremy Clarksons out there ready, willing and able to publish their considered opinions and join in alpha male car stuff debates.

On the other hand, the property sector appears to be a bit more difficult as the relationship between seller, agent and purchaser or tenant is typically short-lived and not oft repeated and housebuilders, second-hand sellers and agents are all notoriously ‘sensitive’ when it comes to possible negative comment about their product.

Social and real estate
And yet the property market is actually ripe for ‘social’ with plenty of opportunity for housebuilders and commercial developers to establish ongoing early relationships with potential customers and e.g. solicit feedback on new proposed designs, specs and features. The secondhand market and your average estate agency re-seller might struggle a bit more difficult to find an opportunity for ‘social’ however.

(I’ll be blogging in more detail about social and real estate in the near future…)

Social and traditional
Even more of a challenge are products that traditionally don’t appear to have much in the way of an obvious direct B2C interface and where the traditional relationship is e.g. solely between producer and supplier – at least in terms of the supply chain. And yet these are some of the ones I find most enjoyable to analyse and look for innovative angles.

I’ve always had a seeming natural disposition towards wondering what goes on behind the scenes with products. As a sad child, I was always drawn to product labels on the back of things like shampoo bottles which typically had the name of Jane someone-or-other to write to in the consumer department and then there was Tom Champagne and his prize draws (‘Oooh vicar!’) at Readers Digest – great name – but did he or Jane ever really exist I wondered? I’ve always since thought of these people a bit like ‘Room 101’ or ‘The Cones Hotline’ – just sitting in some dark and dusty room hoping noone would actually phone.

Now, it’s social media and it supporting desktop, mobile and ‘pad’ technologies that are making true B2C and B2B community dialogue possible.

Social – enabling novel engagement
I guess, in a way, that in a B2C capacity this is really rather like an extranet and I do like the idea of being able to look for interesting angles in relation to engaging end customers with product originators and using social media to educate, enlighten and entertain by e.g. providing YouTube video clips that document and track the product journey through it’s various stages.

Only last night in fact I was watching a TV programme about Eddie Stobart and at one point one of their truck drivers was attempting to negotiate an extremely narrow lane to pick-up strawberries from a fruit farm and then deliver them to a Tesco depot – and because of the contract with Tesco there was only a half hour window for delivery.

The stop-go trials and tribulations of the transport leg of the journey made for compelling viewing and at one point caused the driver to remark on the fact that little did Wimbledon goers appreciate the complexities and difficulties in relation to the strawberry-to-bowl process. But they would if they had also seen the same programme or – more importantly and pertinently –  were able to access the clip via YouTube as part of a social media campaign and then discuss it on Facebook – and maybe then be offered a special promotion via their mobile for a Tesco strawberry discount or a visit to an ‘Eddie’ depot (of which there are 40 apparently and a truck fleet of 2000 – all which have female names – blimey I didn’t know there even were 2000 female names…..)

Find the angle and implement
Brand identity, acquisition, engagement, conversion, retention and cross-selling (and the rest) are all now able to be bolstered, supported and elevated by social media. There is probably no business or organisation that could not benefit from social media.

The real challenge is finding the appropriate angle and implementing it.

Friday 13th: The mobile web slayer cometh – ‘Apps’ beware!

Today,  the latest edition of ‘New Media Age’ landed on the mat. 

Increasingly, the last few weekly editions have only served to re-enforce my views on early-adopter enthusiasm and exuberance clouding sensible business judgement but, today, it’s apparent that ‘Apps’ are not proving to be quite the advertising and marketing meal-ticket previously perceived…..

‘Pop-Ups! Pop-Ups!’
Coming from a ‘web’ background, as I do, I must admit that I’ve found the notion of ‘apps’ and their exultation immensely irritating of late. I’m actually reminded of some long-since gone TV ad featuring Jennifer Saunders sitting in an internet cafe having some kind of crisis after being deluged with pop-ups. ‘Apps’ have kind of had the same effect on me.

Now, in fact, I can well see that there is a time and place for everything – and time and place are in fact extremely good variables for use in ‘Apps’ as they can do good things by interfacing with mobile GPS and stuff to provide location-aware information etc.  and do genuinely software-y kind of things that you can’t really do with even the most sophisticated web application.

However, why so many businesses have fallen for the idea of having an ‘App’ which restricts them to a particular handset audience when they could have achieved far more with a decent mobile website has baffled and irritated me for quite a while.

Anyhow, lo and behold in this week’s NMA there is a whole clutch of snippets and items about the shortcomings of ‘Apps’ and the rise in interest concerning the true mobile web. Hurrah! Long live the King! Down with the Emperor! (There’s also a really good piece about not fixing what ain’t broken when it comes to revamping your existing website but I digress….)

Surely not? – ‘Hype’ is used in same sentence as ‘Apps’!
First, on page 4, there’s a subheadline ‘Brands warned mobile apps are not reaching as many users as hype suggests’ . Horror of horrors! Sacre bleu! How can this be?  

Apparently, a recent study by ComScore has revealed that only 31% of UK mobile users have downloaded an ‘App’ whilst over 37% regularly access the mobile internet. Now that can’t be a result of apps being expensive and that there’s a war on – sorry I mean recession. Even I can afford an app or two at £1.50 or whatever they are – if I forego my weekly ice cream of course.

Even more interesting, James Tagg, head of mobile at Starcom MediaVest said “Many advertisers are getting caught up in the hype about apps but there is a growing realisation that the mobile web will soon have to be thought about more seriously”. 

And then on P8 the headline says: Smartphone boom creates division for mobile advertisers’. This alludes to the fact that advertisers are waking up to the realisation that to advertise via ‘Apps’  requires multiple investment, multiple adverts and all the associated double-handling, duplication of effort and attendant management and technical headaches. It’s just not efficient and cost-effective. No wonder then that further down in the same item it says ‘…the polarisation could lead to an increased focus on web activity….’.   ‘Could’? Surely ‘should’ and ‘must’.  It’s really a simple matter of horses for courses. ‘Apps’ are essentially embedded mini-software programmes that can only work with a particular mobile operating system. As such, they need to be sourced, downloaded and installed.

Whilst ‘Apps’ may well have some degree of live connection to the mobile internet so that e.g. up-to-date advertisements can be displayed and interacted with in real-time this is not the same as having an advertisement running on the mobile web and which can be seen and interacted with by anyone with any handset just via their pre-installed web browser on any internet capable handset be it iPhone, Android, Windows, Nokia, Samsung, LG, Blackberry etc., etc.

Personally, I believe this is just matter of time and education.

The tempting Apple
It’s a bit like the ‘dotcom’ goldrush. Everyone has piled in to ‘Apps’ because Apple has led the way in terms of making mobile sexy and fun and other handset manufacturers have had to follow suit. Consumers have only really had ‘Apps’ pushed at them – not as yet the true mobile web.   Advertisers have therefore had to try to reach the initial mobile market via shoe-horning ads into ‘App’s but of course that’s far from ideal in terms of the business case which ideally needs to reach the whole market with  single creative, technical and managerial approach – which only the mobile web can ultimately provide.

Eventually, things will settle and stabilise. ‘Apps’ will continue to have their rightful place as embedded software gadgets doing useful specific stuff whilst mobile web will be the primary medium for true universal access to online information, advertising and multimedia resources (think ‘iTunes’).

Whilst there will be always be good reason for some businesses to have a dual ‘Apps’ and mobile web strategy, most businesses will be focused on mobile web – and especially as HTML5 takes hold.