If You're Wondering What Not To Do When It Comes to Social Media, Learn From BCS

To the RichCustomerExperience Community, I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving! With the holiday shopping season upon us, I know there will be many companies who will deliver you a rich customer experience. I am even more confident there will be companies who will leave you disappointed. Please share your stories with us...

In the meantime, I wanted to share this good article that reinforces an important lesson regarding how to use, and how not to use, social media.

The BCS might not be your favorite institution, but it has kindly spent the last week creating a useful case study in how not to use social media...but it made the classic mistake—at least initially—of treating these social-media platforms like propaganda broadcast tools, rather than a way of finding out what, exactly, fans want.

If You're Wondering What Not To Do When It Comes to Social Media, Learn From BCS
http://adage.com/article?article_id=140754

Behind Coca-Cola's Biggest Social-Media Push Yet

This is a real interesting article on how Coca-Cola is gearing up for its largest social-media project ever, one that will test its own internal flexibility and force a number of its global markets into the digital and social-media space. Although I am not convinced that this project will really sell more Cokes, I do applaud their aggressive move into social media and inserting this new channel, that is becoming pervasive in many peoples' everyday lives, into their marketing machine toolkit.

http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=140591

My Rich Experience at Springsteen Concert

Much has been written about companies needing to deliver a "rich customer experience" built around their products and services and all aspects of their brand to their consumers. The other night I was enjoying myself at yet another Bruce Springsteen concert and came to the realization on something I guess I had always known as a loyal fan...he delivers a great experience, everytime. Performers should be held up to as high a standard when it comes to delivering on a memorable, satisfying and enjoyable experience. If they don't, they face the same consequences as the retailer or the airline does...growing customer discontent, less loyalty, fewer purchases, poor word-of-mouth, declining profits...

Anyways, back to The Boss. Throughout his long career, he has always been known for delivering marathon-length concerts packed with his non-stop energy, emotion and responsiveness to his fans. Even now at the age of 60 years-young, his fans comes first.

On this tour, he is playing certain albums in their entirety among the 3-hour set-list. This night, he played Born to Run. As he noted on stage, this was the first album to start a real “conversation” between himself and his now-rabid fan base. More than 30 years after its release, this album still touches a powerful chord among the Springsteen faithful. He also takes requests from the crowd. There were hundreds of homemade signs with names of songs on them, and sometimes even a special message. "Living Proof" was a request the Band wasn't prepared to play. A sign with a photo of an infant, "future Boss fan," born two weeks ago Sunday night, prompted Springsteen to tackle the song. It took a while for him to get everyone together. It was like a glimpse of a rehearsal, but they got it right. That moment gave a feeling of intimacy, not sloppiness. He also went into the crowd multiple times, even at one time "body-surfing" the crowd from half-way back on the floor, trusting his faithful would get him back where he belongs on stage.

At times, it was hard to tell who was enjoying the concert more, the crowd or Springsteen. Truly a rich customer experience. Can't wait until the next show!

Marketing Needs a CMO: Why It's Time to Restore Marketing's Credibility by Driving Growth

Here's an interesting article that offers a perspective on the credibility, relevance and importance of marketing today... along with a good discussion that follows
http://adage.com/cmostrategy/article?article_id=140520

2009 State of Marketing Study: The Shift

Prophet recently released results of it's latest survey, 2009 State of Marketing Study: The Shift, conducted in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers. The goal of their research was to understand how marketers are shifting their roles from supporting business growth to being in the driver's seat and leading the growth agenda. Elevating marketing to a higher level requires both mindset and cultural shifts that start with, but are by no means limited to, marketing leadership. This study uncovered that while marketers from all walks and at all levels understand the need to effect such shifts, they’re further away from its realization than they think. See an executive summary of survey results here

http://www.prophet.com/downloads/whitepapers/shift-survey-2009.pdf

Southwest Airlines and Case-Mate on Leveraging Social Media to Gather Customer Feedback by Steve Latham

Southwest Airlines and Case-Mate on Leveraging Social Media to Gather Customer Feedback by Steve Latham