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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
Trust is not a new thing in marketing and communications. The most trusted name in news, is the most hackneyed phrase on TV. I believe trusted means you transfer your brain space for figuring stuff out to others, you transfer your emotional defense mechanisms to another entity. Like, I trust this pilot to land this plane, or OK Guy Fieri, I’ll trust this place that’s a real dive.
One of the most awaited studies in the PR world is the annual Edelman Public Relations Trust Barometer. Apparently, people like you are trusted by you more than institutions and we’ll see if that changes because more of you are sharing your trust online.
Trust in social media is now at the individual level. Those that have been involved in social media for years probably know of Chris Brogan. His blog is an excellent body of work in the strategy and tactics of being social. He is noted for his candor and the open discussion of issues, and that includes sponsored posts. For that length of service to the community he is trusted.
His journey over several years to build this trust is the foundation of his new book with Julien Smith Trust Agents. In it he describes for two audiences, companies and individuals, the impact of individual trust networks on companies, and how individuals can launch their own journey into building a trusting audience.
Trust like relationships can be fragile, and require lots and lots of work. The more personal, the relationship, the more work. Marketers have never had it as difficult as today, because we have narrowed our marketing down to individual relationships. Those individuals with a trusted following can navigate a company through these uncharted waters, but also have a little learning to do themselves. Brogan is a living example of this and his audiences and clients have benefited. We discuss how trusted individuals with a following also make a living?
I could have made this post be a “How to”, but there are plenty of good social media examples in Trust Agents of how the trust economy can work. What this interview with Chris Brogan gets into in part one is the meaning of trust and the relationship between trust and earning your keep.
If nothing else, if you are an anti-social company, you should build a monitor and react plan.
Trust Agents – The Book Drawing
Send me an email at marketingedge AT providentpartners dot net – put the word trust in the subject line, we’ll put your name in the book drawing contest. No, no you don’t get a drawing of the book, we’ll draw a person’s name and send them a copy of the book, how’s that?
I hope that revenue generation and market awareness/demand morphs from interruption and manipulation into support and association. An example is this, interruption – my blog post about toys is paid for by Mattel and is about Mattel. This Mattel toy is terrific, my kids use it all the time, yada, yada, yada. Clearly something I’d label AD (advertisement).
An example of support – my blog editorial content is about kids and learning. I am able to focus on kids and learning because Mattel gives me a portion of what I need to pay my mortgage every month. I don’t say good or bad things about Mattel based on their check. I just focus on my editorial content and my readers. Something I’d label SP (sponsor)
Another wonderful example of support and association is the SETEPS program in St. Paul, MN at the University of St. Thomas. STEPS stands for the Science Technology, and Engineering Preview Summer camp. My daughter benefited from this experience just last week by learning about aerodynamics, building a model plane and flying it, all for free, because these companies funded the STEPS program. Will I buy from them or invest in them? Yes. Is this form of product/company awareness better than a commercial that attempts to convince me I’m lacking something in my life?
Social media is about having a stake in each other. That doesn’t mean social media is not a place to market. It’s a place to make an investment in, a place to unify across a like-minded community. This concept is not new, organizations do this all the time today in giving back to the community. Social media allows this “feel good” form of marketing to have greater impact and be a more accountable source of direct revenue and other measurable business objectives for a company that fully embraces the concept, the technologies and the communities.
I have thought for a long time that for society to gain the maximum benefits from social media many current cultures in a typical corporate structure would need to change. From legal to finance, HR to PR, the ways of the last 100 years would need to change if transparency is to be rewarded, and improvement was to be an accepted continuing process.
I also believe that social media is more a movement than a marketplace. Not just a tool for someone to exploit, but an opportunity to engage in more of our shared humanity. Today, the actions of one courageous healthcare leader solidified that belief.
Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, has been a prolific blog writer since October 2006. Levy’s blog is called Running a Hospital.
On it he has had an open discussion about his hospital, its work, and his own performance. This openness about successes and failures has received acclaim in the press, praise from many and murmurs of dubious wonder from others. I know from speaking with many in healthcare during presentations and meetings there are some who wonder how Levy can get away with being so transparent.
It’s simple, he is about improving, every day, throughout his hospital, profession and life. He is also, it seems, sincere about caring for people, both those in the care of BIDMC and those employees who are on the frontlines of healthcare delivery. This has infected the other cultures around him so that they too are committed to a cause of caring in an environment that rewards improvement.
Paul Levy, President and CEO Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
credit Globestaff/Pat Greenhouse
This however, is not a rose colored glasses story about how social media is improving medicine, while it maybe true, this story is about how social media is making better people of us. It is a story about the human desire to be a part of something larger, to be acknowledged as of value and connecting to each other.
Levy doesn’t use corporate speak; his writing is about real situations, from surgery procedures to improving the use of protective equipment, from the joys of a moonlit backyard to numerous stories of hospital employees.
It is with this foundation of candor, this unprecedented transparency that Paul Levy stood at the front of an auditorium full of employees who came to hear his decision about laying off workers during difficult economic times.
Instead of an announcement, he asked for their opinion of a potential solution that may avoid layoffs. Levy travels his hospital corridors plenty, enough to know how many people it takes to deliver quality care. To keep the level of personnel that he believes necessary to deliver quality care, he asked the following as reported by Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe.
“I’d like to do what we can to protect the lower-wage earners – the transporters, the housekeepers, the food service people. A lot of these people work really hard, and I don’t want to put an additional burden on them. “Now, if we protect these workers, it means the rest of us will have to make a bigger sacrifice,” he continued. “It means that others will have to give up more of their salary or benefits.”
The reaction according to Cullen was “Thunderous, heartfelt, sustained applause. “
The seeds of this applause were sown in the many places and people that Levy has touched. A fertile field for all to see is his blog with hundreds of posts. I believe this body of work, the hundreds of comments, and the dialogue he has participated in with patients, employees, supporters and critics are a measure of the man.
Which brings me to the cultures that need to change, for transparency to work in an organization, there needs to be a mutual respect and a commitment to improve. In reading the comments submitted to the blog from the Boston Globe story, listening is a major quality of Paul Levy. It’s not a coincidence that listening is also an important quality to have in a successful relationship and I believe social media is merely a channel for relationships.
Much of America has a very long way to go to eliminate the culture of “gotcha,” of confrontation, a culture of “keep the info, keep the power.” All these insecurities and tactics of greed will hinder the benefits of what social media can bring to an organization and our society. With each blog post, each honest answer to a criticism, each good idea raised and implemented, the organization becomes stronger.
This defining moment is an example of how powerful social media can be in the hands of people who are committed to make things better. Thank you Paul Levy and the wonderful people of BIDMC.
This post was inspired by Jeremiah Owyang on the topic of personal brands within a corporate community. In some ways, this is more an issue of individual popularity rather than a personal brand, but I’ll use the term personal brand because it is commonly accepted.
The issue of personal brands clashing with corporate brands is something I’ve commented in the past. BusinessWeek reporter Stephen Baker, @stevebaker on Twitter, asked, “How will social media impact business and change our careers?,” to which I responded:
“Hell, everyone is their own profit and loss center. How will companies deal with personal brands that outstrip the company, that’s an issue, who actually owns the information gathered when working for a company will be a battle ground in the coming years. If a person is able to develop a personal brand while also being paid by a company and decides to cash in on the brand, should the company have an equity stake in that personal brand? Ouch, that’s a tough one.”
There are a couple of factors involving personal brands: First, the global economy and multinational companies focus more on the numbers, not on the people. This is not a criticism, although some people would say it is a short-sightedness on the part of companies, but that’s not a dog in this commentary. The point is the 30-year career at one company is extinct. No more gold watches.
Second, institutional failures: Today’s auto bailout is one failure in a long list of institutions that were perceived at one point to be invincible. One could argue that the perception was wrong, that every institution is vulnerable, Senate seats were always for sale in Illinois and elsewhere, that companies always fudge numbers, only Enron, et al, got caught, but again that is a different argument.
The point is today, the consensus among individuals is that they hold the key to their job security, not the entity that happens to pay them for their work that week. In this “I’m responsible for my job security and my skill set” world, attention is given to personal skills and promotion. Some do it better than others.
The Founding Fathers of Blogging
The key people to thank for the explosion personal brands are, Mr. Rogers and Thomas Jefferson with an assist to James Madison.
Jefferson was a strong advocate for free speech and persuaded Madison to include it in the Bill of Rights. Mr. Rogers told generations that each one of us is special and unique.
Enter Web 2.0, and we all have access to express our freedom and uniqueness.
The Social Media Dilemma
Social media claims to be able to put a human face on an entity, a business. If it is done through one individual employee and this face gets too popular then, some say, it can overshadow the business. This is nothing new. In the past it was usually the CEO.
Take Lee Iacocca. For millions he will be forever associated with Chrysler, even though he was president of Ford at one point in his career. The same is true for Jack Welch with GE, a hell of a personal brand that took root and flourished at GE. Welch turned that brand into the Welch Way.
Today many, many more personalities throughout a company have the ability to gain notoriety to a much wider audience than in the past. Thirty years ago the headhunters knew who the top players were in an industry. Today one can forge a brand while working for a company, however, the question is to what end: individual gain, greater value to the company or, the more likely scenario, both.
A case playing out before us is Scott Monty and Ford. Monty had a strong brand while at the agency Crayon. Ford realized the value of social media and the rest is the present. And in this present moment, Monty and Ford are making great strides together. It is an example of how personal brands can relate.
The Clock Watchers and Good Management
A danger of personal brands is how do you judge time spent on developing a personal brand in conjunction with company goals. Can it be measured in time and type of information disclosed? Consider an employee who discusses faults about the company that may be detrimental to the company but can enhance the employee’s “personal brand.” (Please don’t tell me that every fault, every wart, every mistake needs to lay bare on the Web for the company to be transparent. If you believe that, a.k.a. Bob, then let’s start with you. Sorry that may be a bit harsh, but done for affect I think it works, no?)
Discretion, whether offline (“Honey, do I look fat in this dress?”) or online (“Sorry about the nimrods in customer service. If it were up to me I would have given you back your $576.87”), is a valuable quality to possess.
Trust is the critical characteristic in a world that has this ease of access to information and others. Trust is a two-way street. Why? Because it’s about relationships, whether an online relationship or someone you manage and evaluate as their “boss” (I dislike that word).
Owyang has written about four ways companies are addressing the issue of personal brands and social media. Jeremiah, I hope you don’t mind me quoting you directly here to keep the flow going, thanks. Owyang writes:
“How companies respond
Brands respond to these risks in a number of ways, I’ve categorized them based on level of sophistication.
First Reaction: Keep marketing faceless: Lean on traditional marketing, avoid human voices to come through.
Second Reaction: Approach with team or hybrid approach:Rather than encourage personal brands, you may instead see corporate team blogs that have an equal weighting to employees. Another example is with Dell and Oracle employees who fuse their name with their employer –it’s both personal and professional.
Third Reaction: Let the customers be the product face: Perhaps the most sophisticated way to market a product isn’t to put your employees on the product blog, but instead, your customers. I don’t see too many examples of this currently, but you can expect this to be an approach in the future.
Fourth Reaction: Allow personal brands to proliferate: Some companies allow for employees to create their own blogs, generate revenue on their blogs, and be who and what they want.”
Regardless of a company’s blogging policy, people are free to blog. (You are not the boss of me.) If they are blogging about work-related topics, then their work life provides them information useful to their blogging and perhaps their personal brand. Even if they don’t mention a thing about their company, by working they simply gain knowledge about the industry, trends, other companies, etc. It’s just part of work.
There will be situations where either side, company or employee, will need to enforce their policy or their liberty by terminating the employment. Those circumstances, I trust, will become more rare as the corporate culture accepts the reality of Rogers and Jefferson and the blogging culture who wish to blog about their work accept the responsibility of their role in achieving business objectives.
The foundation for each party is trust, the prerequisite for each party is communication with each other, the reward for each party is the knowledge gained from the social community.
Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, Seth Godin author of Meatball Sundae, and Steve Mann head of social media for SAP doing a webcast at noon central today. http://tinyurl.com/yutq4b I’ll live blog it here. Just the highlights please, OK
Owyang outline to consider and approach social media POST = People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology. Bottom line point – think it through for the long term. Jeremiah’s blog is http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/
Mann – excellent point about the correllation between those who engage in the community or your discussion early will be more likely to convert as the sales cycle moves forward.
Godin – Classic Godin line, you can’t be like that brother-in-law life insurance salesman at parties who only goes to hit you up for insurance. Remember that this holiday season.
Owyang refers to Lego community to embrace customers to help build new products http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/community/default.asp – He is very clear that this is not about giving away product ideas, no it’s about getting product ideas. And the pay off for them is to be a part of an inside group that then become advocates. Passion is the result of asking for opinions (that last one is my line, so if you don’t like it don’t blame Jeremiah)
Mann makes excellent point again – not every conversation is going to be positive or rosey. However, there can be positive that comes from that, whether its improvement to the product or customer service. It is so refreshing to here someone like Steve who answers to a corporate structure speak like this. It is both a reflection on him as a leader and on the management of SAP.
Godin – Social media is not for every company. I have said this for awhile (listen to Great Blog Debate November 2006) The issue for me is that some companies need to evolve into social media as opposed to “Using Social Media to Grow Your Business” which is the title of this webcast.
You gotta love this one from Owyang – An eye opener ready?
So it used to be that sales managers would take a win/loss report and marketers would pull out the wins to put in their communications. Enter social media, and buyers are taking about the every same things that are in your win/loss reports in the open. Agh! imagine that. Now what?
Lastly the panel was asked in a couple of words what advice would you give to companies about considering social media (I paraphrasing here on the question) And they said
Owyang – Let Go
Mann – Evolution not revolution
Godin – Be remarkable
Anyone commenting on this post we’ll have a drawing for Seth’s new book Meatball Sundae, Those of you who don’t feel lucky can get it here http://www.squidoo.com/meatballsundae
A word about trust on in the blogosphere and social media in general:
There is considerable discussion about how businesses can tap into these conversations. Another angle is the practice of paying bloggers, which some say is no different than paying ghostwriters of a book.
All of the above will be tested during the next couple of years as society continues to use social networks and other sites that have “word of mouth”-like components. A key to figuring out how business can use social media is to understand why social media is different than any other media.
Social media is a movement. Social media is a people place, not a market place.
The blogosphere has had millions participate because of a need to be recognized, even by just one other person. Social media has taken hold in equal numbers because of the need to be a part of a group, the need to connect. These are basic human needs, not driven by economics.
There is also a cynicism in the U.S. that I believe has contributed to the rejection of most forms of advertising, a growing distrust of corporations and a political system viewed as destined to be at odds for the foreseeable future.
The major structures of our society — financial, legal, and political — have their roots deep in the last century of ridged, industrial growth and are not yet capable of appreciating or assimilating a more open discussion created by social media.
If you are a marketer, a business, and look at social media from the perspective of it being a movement, it will change the way you approach social media. You will be a participant rather than a party-crasher, a thoughtful listener rather than a loud bore, and a valuable contributor rather than a self-serving taker.
Blogs that contributed to my thinking on this were:
What’s your take? Make a choice: Is social media more movement or marketplace? Remember, every comment we get we will contribute a food item to a St. Paul food shelter.
The top issue in 2007 for marketers is trust. The confluence of social media, aggressive marketers and the community of the blogsphere is creating a whirlpool of contentious issues. The bottom line here is trust, and whether marketing will taint the blogsphere, which people are increasingly using to exchange information and ultimately, make buying decisions.
This podcast highlights how social media are going through a phase where marketers are going to be challenged to use tactics that do not harm the objective nature of individuals communicating. We’ve seen several instances of flogs (fake blogs, or commercial blogs that are posted as if they were from truly objective, unattached people/employees) being publicly criticized for trying to come off as an unsponsored forum, Edelman and Wal-Mart being perhaps the most infamous. (Blogger Constantin Basturea has a wonderful chronology.) There will be further concern about whether companies should blog and how they should do it.
In this podcast, Nora Paul, director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota, outlines how the area between promotion and program are now one large shade of gray. However, she says this is no different than the expansion and contraction the Web has seen before.
Ben Popken, editor of The Consumerist, a cutting-edge blog on consumer complaints and praise (subtitled “Shoppers bite back”), sheds light on how some leading companies can capitalize on trust. His take: If companies can take a little public criticism, then they will get back trust ten-fold.
Also, I’ll be speaking at the New Communications Forum in Las Vegas, March 7-9, and one lucky marketer will win a trip to attend the Forum for free. Visit www.providentpartners.net/forum for details and to enter your name to win airfare, hotel and event registration.
Show notes:
1:00-2:15: New Communications Forum trip drawing information
2:20-8:00: The issue of trust – the gray area between promotion and programming. Why marketers should care about the erosion of trust and how to prevent it using social media. Interview with Nora Paul of the University of Minnesota’s Institute for New Media Studies.
8:00-9:15: Consumers hold more power than they realize. How companies can tap into this power and leverage it will be tested throughout this year. Ben Popken of consumerist.com explains how those companies can give up some message control and gain a major differentiator by using blogs.
9:15-10:52: More information about the New Communications Forum. Each comment we receive by any means – on the blog, by phone at 651-695-0174, e-mail marketingedge@providentpartners.net – we will donate a food item to a local food bank. Social media for the greater good!
Agents. In it he describes for two audiences, companies and individuals, the impact of individual trust networks on companies, and how individuals can launch their own journey into building a trusting audience. 
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