Two New Perspectives for Business
Time 29:43
A couple of observations about how last century’s business structure needs to change to benefit from the changes in the market brought about by the social web.
1) Coopetition to Community
Coopetition is the word coined for companies that decide to share expenses for in which areas they do not have competitive advantages or perhaps will jointly provide specific and not overlapping functions for a project.
Social media exposes all kinds of talent online, plus a public discussion of the issues. Now competitors readily learn, copy, share, and engage each other. Or course there is still competition, but now more than I’ve seen in the last century, there is a greater concern for the community as a whole. Companies are shaping their business models to be flexible to address customer needs. Examples of this are the Social Media Breakfast , Social Media Club, and the Unsummit Conference.
Observation – No matter the size of your company, be flexible enough to meet customer happiness, sometimes you have the answer and sometimes not.
2) Customer Participation
The hierarchical nature of old style corporate marketing is transforming to something in which the customer is a participant. In the last century marketing was the four Ps, product, price, promotion, and placement. Today I’d say marketing is about,
Incompleteness – it’s acceptable and beneficial to ask a community to finish a product eg. Ford Fiesta.
Responsiveness – this can be a simple acknowledgement on a blog post or a full fledged policy change as a result of conversations
Joint Ownership – creativity is when programs are absorbed by a community and then turned into something of their creation.
Recognition – when companies are paying attention to their online champions, it’s best to recognize them, a tweet, a coupon, an invitation; it’s good in a relationship to be appreciative.
In this podcast I get into these issues more deeply. I chat with Jennifer Milano, Jet Blue frequent flyer who was excited by the Jet Blue All You Can Jet Pass. So excited she created the blog Where We Jet which attracted Jet Blue customers taking advantage of this program that allowed passengers to jet anywhere the airline flew for $599 from September 8 through October 8
Jet Blue corporate remained hands off, but certainly supportive of the effort and the quickly growing number of customers using the site to learn about places to fly, meeting up with other travel fans and to share stories and pictures throughout the period.
In an appropriate side story, Jennifer’s efforts were acknowledged in many media outlets and the travel site Kayak astutely made Jennifer an offer to lead their social media strategy. All’s right with the world because Jennifer aspired to work at Kayak, a site she frequently used and admired of the company.
Good things happen to good people.
Twitterville Winner
Gerard Tannam of the branding firm Island Bridge in Dublin, Ireland is the winner of the Shel Israel book Twitterville. We did a couple of podcasts with Shel in September. Part 1 and Part 2 It’s on the way Gerard, be on the lookout, thanks for listening. Enjoy.
Tags: community, coopetition, new marketing rules
This entry was posted on Sunday, October 11th, 2009 at 9:28 pm and is filed under community marketing, management, marketing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Jeepers, you asked for it. Exciting times we live in my friend. Good or bad, we’re def. not bored.
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:40 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Cust Participation as force for existing turn-over (more oppty) it really is a revolution for existing biz– join or die.
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:41 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Increased, direct customer participation (Twitter, web, blogs, SM) has spurred entreprenuerialism. Barriers to entry lower.
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Absolutely agree with customer participation. (whether you ask or not) Flattened a lot of marketing research (test marketing)
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October 14th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Whew, coopetition to community is on a continum, which has moved closer to community. Having personal experience right now.
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October 14th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi will post comment later
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October 14th, 2009 at 8:49 am
Twitter Comment
@AlbertMaruggi Well @inquisix is going through the pt #1 and #2 — been thinking about it for a while.
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October 19th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Minnesota Monday – Communications Bloggers Posts From Last Week…
Interesting posts from Minnesota commmunications bloggers for the week ending 10/18/09.
……
November 4th, 2009 at 6:58 am
Albert,
As I started to walk over London Bridge your voice was speaking to me. You were doing a long introduction to one of your podcasts. Thinking out loud or broadcasting out loud might be the right label for what you were doing. You said it was an idea that you were still pondering.
At some point you mentioned that in the evolution towards more open conversations (social media in action) individuals or companies were referring people to a competitor rather than keeping the customer captive with a sub-optimal solution. As an example you reminded the listeners (US listeners?) of the scene in the Miracle on 34th St where Macy’s Santa Claus refers people to Gimbals.
The comment struct a cord with me. Going back to my days as a software developer in Silicon Valley we discuss about ‘first fit, vs. bet fit’. In many circumstances you can match two things but it might not be the best match. Good enough but not great. Should a company ship software that meets the spec of should the company do it right? Microsoft vs. Apple is an example in my mind.
Social media tools allow businesses to engage in healthy coopetition. Focusing on finding the right solution for the customer and building brand loyalty rather than just selling what seems to be good enough. The customer can also engage in the process so they are more satisfied with the result
Nordstrom operates in a similar fashion. They will buy in an item from a competitor in the mall if that is the right item for the Nordstrom customer.
As best as I can remember that is what was going thru my head crossing London Bridge with a voice in my ear.
Keep up the stimulating conversations…
-John