I have mentioned before that brands shouldn’t try to engage with their customers before engaging with their employees. This calls for vertical integration.

Equally important is horizontal integration. In many companies – especially old economy – the caste system is still very much alive: There’s the R&D crowd, the guys from production, sales people, marketing people, finance people and so on. Sooner or later many different ‘esprit de corps’ develop.

For example the production guys will insist that they obviously do a great job, but R&D always wants fancy solutions, HR doesn’t give them enough people, finance doesn’t give them enough budget, purchasing doesn’t give them the best parts, sales wants the product yesterday and marketing insists on USP’s. Depending on the perspective, other divisions will argue in a similar way.

The system is held together by the good old hierarchy. Board members from all divisions usually meet once a week, but what about the rest? They only meet when working on a common project, which usually doesn’t involve all divisions. It is difficult and time-consuming to develop positive relations and common understanding under these conditions. Some employees, which are more proactive than others, develop their own ‘private’ and ‘personal’ networks. But this is not the solution.

Customers don’t differentiate between divisions – for them there is only one brand. Companies are well advised to break down the caste system and facilitate horizontal and vertical integration. It improves the relations: inside and outside.

What’s your view?

Brands are defined by their customers. Not only by what they say about the brand, but also by how they use it. This obviously depends on how public the usage is. Cars are a great example. On the German Autobahn – parts of which still don’t have a speed limit – some brands tend to spend more time in the left lane than others. I know, because I used to work for one of those brands

Driving behavior directly influences the brand perception by other users of the Autobahn. After all, the only thing they can see at high speeds is the car and the brand, but they can’t identify the driver. Some people consider fast driving to be aggressive, therefore the brand they saw will get an aggressive image. Many potential customers can be lost that way.

What can the brand do? Traditional broadcasting of other brand values will not be credible. After all, the above mentioned experience was authentic. People won’t trust statements that are contrary to what they have experienced personally. The personal conversation is the only solution. But how can the brand identify those that have a negative opinion, when it is not even aware of the incident that caused it? Social networks are a good place to start looking and listening.

Another learning from this example is that your most loyal fans are not necessarily your best brand ambassadors.

What’s your opinion!

In 1999 Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger wrote ‘the cluetrain manifesto’, announcing ‘the end of business as usual’. Where do we stand 10 years later? Has everything changed? To be honest, I’m a bit disappointed.

Mahatma Gandhi said ‘You must be the change, you want to see in the world’ and that is exactly the point. I believe that we – the human race – are actually the major obstacle to fundamental change.

The technology is available and affordable. Are we exploiting the potential of the social web, are we leaving our comfort zone, are we liberating ourselves and really putting the pressure on? The answer is ‘no’. Many of us are happy to hitchhike down evolution alley.

2000 years ago, the Roman empire was built on several principles, one of which was ‘bread and games’. That still works for many of us today. Have you ever noticed that the party is always organized by the same people? The majority is waiting for the invitation and is happy to participate. The majority of the human race is not proactive. We wait for somebody to lead the way and take the decisions for us. This behavior has the added benefit that we always have somebody else to blame. We blame the politicians (who don’t usually elect themselves in democracies) and we blame the brands (who don’t usually force us to buy their products). Do we blame ourselves – of course not. We may change leaders and directions, but we’re happy to follow.

When asking people, why they are so passive, I usually hear ‘one person can’t make a difference’. People forget that ‘we’ is the sum of many I’s.

What are we waiting for?

Numerous reasons have been put forward recently as to why brands are slow in embracing social media: productivity concerns, security concerns, lack of adequate metrics etc. But ‘who’ is thinking that? Corporate management in most companies is still a man’s world. Could that be the real reason?

Numerous surveys have shown that women are more social than men. They favor building relations, whereas men love to broadcast. As a logical consequence they outnumber men in social networks.

Would more women in corporate management facilitate an authentic corporate engagement with consumers in social media and elsewhere? Would more women in corporate management enable the necessary restoration of trust?

The population in the Western world is almost evenly distributed, meaning that there are as many female consumers as there are male consumers. Of course this varies depending on the product category. Looking at the car industry where I used to work, one could argue that 50% of the cars are bought by women and the other 50% are bought to impress women! In other words, the influence of the female consumer is much higher than the gender ratio would suggest.

One more reason for brands to reassess their hiring practices.

What do you think?

‘Father knows best’ was a very successful US sitcom in the 50s. As the name suggests, moms were moms, kids were kids and father knew best. It reflected the paternalistic attitude that fathers – the kings of the respective castles – were wiser than mothers and kids. This empowered fathers to make decisions on their behalf, presumably for their own good. It resulted in the authority of the powerful over the less powerful, responsibility was not shared. Communication relied on commands and instructions rather than on conversation.

Many brands still have that attitude today: Consumers are consumers and brands know best. Social media have effectively proven that brands don’t know best, which is why many brands have a problem. They have to change their attitude, not just apply some new tools and technologies.

‘Father knows best’ was successful in the 50s and 60s. Times have changed dramatically since then. Brands are well advised to realize that. Prisoners of the past will not win their freedom in the future.

Who knows best?

For starters, social media are, at least according to the traditional definition, not a medium. Wikipedia defines media in communication as the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data – clearly social ‘media’ is more than that.

Social ‘media’ is still experiencing staggering growth rates with people from all over the world joining. Are all of these people active users ? Of course not. According to Forrester there are ‘authors’, ‘critics’, ‘collectors’, ‘members’, ‘viewers’ and ‘inactives’. Admittedly the number of ‘inactives’ is decreasing and the other groups are growing.

Social ‘media’ are not popular for one single reason. Some people are looking to add value and share insights, they are the new leaders. Many are happy to follow and consume what is being offered. They were driven to join by curiosity and a need of belonging. This is normal. Just because hammers are available for everybody, doesn’t mean that we all go out to get nails!

Social ‘media’ are, at least partly, a ‘gift economy’, where goods and services (recommendations, information, insights, news etc.) are shared for free – reciprocal altruism if you will. That is noteworthy and causes brands, living in market economies, headaches.

Social ‘media’ must have more self-proclaimed experts/mavens/specialists/gurus per user than any other medium worldwide. Despite that, many brands are still struggling to develop a business model that works for them and the users in social ‘media’. The traditional marketing-aspirin doesn’t work, the headaches mentioned above become worse.

Social ‘media’ are here to stay. It is imperative to develop a model that adds value for consumers and brands, because they are interdependent. Is it possible to combine the benefits of a gift economy with those of a market economy? Exciting question.

May be not such an ironic look after all – what do you think?

Guest post by Jennifer Leggio

viaSocial media consultants: A call to action.

A lot has been written about the social web and its rules of conduct already. I decided to write this post to add my personal experiences and recommendations for brands thinking about establishing a presence in the social web.

Be prepared to be surprised, as your brand is most probably already there, effectively being managed by fans and customers!

- There is no meeting atmosphere with an agenda waiting for you.
- There is no microphone waiting for you.
- There is no reserved seat waiting for you.
- There is no on-off switch allowing you to control things.
- Actually nobody is desperately waiting for you.

Look at it it as a get-together and you are late. So what should you do?

- Introduce yourself and remember that you only have one chance to leave a first impression.
- Be unbiased, listen and show respect, since you’re the newcomer.
- Add value and don’t try to harvest what you didn’t seed.
- Know your stuff, be authentic.
- Be available 24/7/365. In the social web prime-time is all the time.
- Be spontaneous, flexible and entertaining, since this is live.
- Be consistent across all channels, reliable and transparent.
- Take your time and build personal relationships.

Many of these suggestions will sound very familiar, because they apply in your private social life. Remember the Golden Rule: Treat others as you want to be treated. That holds true for people as well as brands.

What do you think?

Many brands think that due to the relevance of social media, they need a strategy to deal with it. I personally don’t think that this is the solution.

Brands and their on- and offline-activities are under constant observation by interested consumers, who inform a global audience via the social web about everything they see and hear. Containment strategies don’t work for anymore. In this connected world the credibility of brands depends, more than ever, on consistency across all channels globally. A brand promise made in one country is expected to be kept everywhere. If not, somebody somewhere will blow the whistle.

The social web and the availability of free and credible information from multiple sources have led consumers to become more sophisticated and less ‘obedient’. Integrating them in the architecture of value creation would therefore be a smart move for brands. This changes their business model with implications for all divisions of a company: R&D, production, HR, finance, purchasing, sales and of course marketing.

New rules, new and old participants with different roles and new judges have led to a new game for the brand, which requires a new overall brand strategy, rather than ‘just’ a social media strategy.

What’s your strategic assessment?

Trust, as defined by Wikipedia, is a relationship of reliance. Trusting others means that we believe they will keep a previous given promise. It is an investment, because we give it before we get something in return. Trust is social capital and as far as I am concerned, it is not the only investment that is becoming riskier every day.

According to a recent survey carried through in Europe and North America by the German institute GfK (Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung) only 18% trusted politicians, 28% trusted advertising managers, 33% trusted bosses and 41% journalists. Devastating results in my opinion. Is behavior – because that is what it is all about – changing fundamentally as a consequence? At present I don’t have the impression that it is, at least not on a large scale. This is unfortunate, because we have the tools, i.e. the social web, to make ourselves heard and to initiate change. The social web aggregates and distributes dissatisfaction and mistrust just like any other information.

What is holding us back? I hear all the time that one individual experience and/or opinion doesn’t make a difference? It is true when everybody believes it, because many individual opinions will remain solitary. Using the multiplier effect of the social web has the potential to change that, but won’t do the job for us. We have to stand up and take an active part. We have to push the process and initiate the change we want to happen. Joining social networks but remaining passive and waiting for a personal miracle doesn’t work and will only increase our personal level of frustration. We need determination and stamina. One negative post on an unsatisfactory product and/or service won’t instantaneously and automatically lead to millions of followers.

Our would-be ‘true’ followers in the social web have to ‘know’ us before they trust us. There is no app for it. Authenticity, transparency, honesty, expertise, reliability and value similarity drive trust in the social web like everywhere else. Word-of-mouth and the fact that they are fellow consumers without a primary commercial interest accelerates the trust-building process. Still trust remains an investment, can’t be bought and must be earned – whether you are online or offline.

So, who do you trust?