Has SEM arrived? Well, search engine marketing, absolutely.

What I’m referring to here is what Accenture - in the elegant codex of consultant speak - is calling Social Ecosystem Marketing. Basically, applying Gladwellian effect principals to advocates and peer groups, and amplifying your message to the most active and influential segment authorities. A blend of eCRM and oCRM (organic).

While I enthusiastically agree with moving from a mass, single segment approach to marketing in advocacy layers, especially for consumer package and household technology goods, what concerned me was a recent article in Adweek attempting – poorly – to demonstrate the power of this methodology (oh, and the impressively convoluted designation: Social Ecosystem Marketing – these people slay me).

The article cites a program Sprint and Unilever coauthored to target moms and, seemingly, their extended network of peers. Users were asked to log in and write shorts scripts about their days, with the crowd pleasing-est to be recorded by a cast that includes Leah Remini.

However, the piece cites as success 3,000 entries and 50,000 votes. So this is what constitutes the validation of Social Ecosystem Marketing? The story goes on to report that the program, “by definition” hit extroverted mothers who would invariably talk about Suave (the brand in play) to their girlfriends. But, in no way does the piece dig deeper into how the marketers know that the participants were extroverts, or if they extended the message at all to their net promoter sphere. Less an ecosystem, more like a bowl full of guppies.

Hilariously, the article goes on to tout the program as a way to gather consumer insights and ethnographic data through what users submitted. A new research paradigm: from declared behavior, to observed behavior, to self selected fictional  manners. Excellent.

Finally, about the name (if it sounds sorta like social science, it must be social science - but let’s play along): Two things an ecosystem relies on for sustainability are biodiversity – the more diverse a population, the more the system can absorb negative or high impact events; and stochastic phenomenon (basically, chance happenings). We hope that our marketing efforts don’t rely on chance, and marketing to Moms more likely means you’re hitting a far less diverse pocket of population than more (have you ever been to the local Outback Steaks during margarita night?).

Maybe I’m nitpicking. But if I think about the cost of just hiring Leah Remini for this program, forgetting everything else, don’t you think it would have been more cost effective to send 1 bottle of Suave to 5,000 local PTA presidents along with a packet of coupons for peer distribution?

Sampling…great. What’s elegant about that?

Who said that Microsoft isn’t doing anything cool these days? Oh wait, that was probably me. In light of the iPhone and absolutely everything Google does, who could blame me? But I was wrong! If you haven’t seen this product, check out their new Photosynth technology. In the words of our own Dan Dooley, it’s just sick.

Photosynth is a product of Microsoft’s Live Labs. On the Live Labs site they claim to “believe that the Internet is as important as the Industrial Revolution or the Renaissance. Our mission is to help realize this vision by advancing the state-of-the-art in Internet products and technology. We are scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs with a passion for building and understanding complex things, but with an eye towards simplicity. And above all else, we aspire to bring together the online community to make the world a better place.” Or, if I may paraphrase, they try to “be more like Google.” Or maybe to be tongue-in-cheek, to “do less evil”. Dang, I’m doing it again.

The Photosynth product essentially takes photos of something (object, place, Chevy Chase, whatever) and analyzes them for common traits and similarities and then makes a 3D-ish view of that object. It’s really one of those things you have to check out to really “get”. So good for you Microsoft, now make Outlook 2007 actually work and I’ll stop sending you all that hate mail.

* Thanks to our friend Jason @ Target for letting me know about this!

Art Hall is currently a management consultant at Alvarez & Marsal, President of the Atlanta Chapter of the CRM Association and was recognized as a 2007 Customer Champion by 1tot1 Magazine where he was the VP of Sales & Customer Care at NetBank in Alpharetta, GA. He’s also someone that each fantasy football season attempts to compete against me and each season fails miserably at that I recently had the opportunity to ask Art a few questions about his thoughts on CRM.

Art, CRM seems to have many meanings depending on who you ask. How do you define it?

I define CRM as an organization’s responsibility to “proactively” manage a customer relationship on a one-to-one basis. I use the word “proactively” because the three customer value levers are for an organization to “know them”, “hear them” and to “help them.” While the basis of the relationship may start off reactive (i.e. collecting the initial understanding of the customer) over time an organization should have the customer intelligence, visibility, insight and agility to predict customer behavior over the course of a customer lifecycle. Conspicuously absent from my definition is any reference to technology though technology is an enabler for organizations to achieve such agility.

I like that you kept technology out of the definition of CRM. Obviously technology has had some impact on CRM initiatives, in your opinion what has been the biggest change that technology has made in CRM?

This is a tough question Jeff because I think there are several “big” changes that technology has made in CRM. For one, we are seeing off-premise and “hybrid” CRM models come into play as an alternative for organizations that do not want to invest in an “on-premise” model. We are also seeing the rise of on-demand CRM which Salesforce.com is recognized as a market leader. Now, we are seeing Open Source CRM models which allow the CRM software and its source code under an open source license to study, change and improve its design. SugarCRM, for example, is a CRM solution provider that is making huge waves in the CRM space and providing a flexible alternative for many organizations looking to deploy a CRM application. So, I guess the biggest change that technology has made in CRM is flexibility.

Many people say that email is the web’s killer app. Would you say it’s the killer app of CRM or is there something else in your mind that fits that moniker better?

I don’t know if I would say email is the web’s killer app. It is only the killer app if an organization is taking the results of email campaigns and feeding it back to a central data warehouse and the organization is taking the results to learn and improve regarding which email campaigns work with each customer segment or personas. Email is certainly cheaper, but with SPAM control nowadays I wonder how effective the marketing reach is on an aggregate basis.

Which companies seem to do the best job overall with customer relations?

In my experience, I love the Ritz-Carlton. I was blown away how they knew my name and I never stayed at the hotel before until this past February. Wachovia has done a nice job in customer relations over the years; it will be interesting to see how their customer satisfaction holds up on the heels of their announcement of off shoring a lot of their customer facing components to India. Wachovia seems pretty confident they can deliver.

Now I get to put you on the spot, which companies seem to do a very poor job with customer relations?

Ok Jeff, you are really pushing it. I HATE DELTA’S SPEECH ENABLED IVR!!!!! I don’t like the BP Gas station on the corner of I-77 East & Gateway Corporate Boulevard in Columbia, SC. I was going to drop kick an employee there last year for bad service. I have mixed feelings towards Apple. I used to hold them in high regard for customer relations but encountered an experience recently where I felt like they were trying to get me to move to a new version of an iPod instead of fixing the one that I had.

Design and usability are to many “form and function” - the chocolate and peanut butter, and also the difference between an amazing product and a soon to be forgotten one.

I would like this blog post to be Round 1 of the debate over the design interface, the overall product design and its usability among the public. What this is not is a place to complain about Apples’ battery life issues from previous technologies or how Apple will be creating yet another design movement that will effect everything from toasters to toilets. (see iMac)

(Enter and exit Ring Girls and the sound of the bell)

iPhone Advertisement (use in action)

Product Shots:

One of my roles at Spunlogic (and a personal passion) is to review emerging technologies and new innovative concepts. Over the last several months I’ve been on various Beta teams, reviewing what I think are very exciting concepts to our industry that I’d like to share with the masses.

Coghead (http://www.coghead.com/)
Coghead is probably one of the most exciting concepts that is actually becoming a reality. I joined the Beta team about 9 months ago, and am excited to say the product just got released a few weeks ago. Coghead, in essence, is a do-it-yourself web application platform. It allows business users to build complex applications using logic and business components through a user interface “wizard”. No coding language or database knowledge is needed. You can search for applications other users have shared (free or buy), copy them and modify the logic/data structure as needed. It can create multiple access rights for various users and essentially replace enterprise level software if done right. I like Coghead for many reasons, but most of all it allows me to play with concept applications very easily to determine the logic I’ll need, the data structure and the interface screens that make sense without having to involve development in any way. For example, I’ve been playing around to create an asset management system, as well as a robust employee records system. The future is end-less for this on-demand service, and large software companies need to take a serious look at how this type of product could impact them.

Joost (http://www.joost.com/)
What can I say? I LOVE Joost. It’s my new way of watching TV and sharing what I like in a community. I finally got into the Beta team about 7 months ago. To be honest, the performance of the product/service wasn’t great;  but, as they improved the software I started to experience what they were talking about. Live High Definition TV on my laptop, with great controls and features. I was recently allowed to share Joost with a limited number of friends, and I’m curious to see their feedback. Prior to Joost I’d been using BitTorrent (http://www.bittorrent.com/). And, in my opinion, Joost kicks the Torrent concept and is going to be the new wave of how we watch TV, at least on our Laptops, etc.

Fotowoosh (http://www.fotowoosh.com/)
I recently came across fotowoosh and thought the concept and practical reality was amazing. Having just joined the Beta team I don’t have a great deal to report. The product has a long way to go before it’s ready for commercial use, but essentially fotowoosh uses complex mathematical algorithms to construct a 3D rendering from a digital photo (2D). What!!!??? How!!!??? In very basic terms, the software determines the ground, sky, vertical and horizontal surfaces, and building structure, etc. and applies learned knowledge from training images in order to construct the 3D model. So, basically, some really complex geometry and logic! The possibilities are endless, as you can imagine; historical reconstruction, real-estate, architecture firms, mapping, etc. Think about it, even virtual worlds like Second Life (http://www.secondlife.com/) would one day use this rendering technology to have a real-life experience. As I mentioned this software is really at its infancy, and has a long way to go. But I’ll keep you posted during the beta phase.

I’d love to know your thoughts, and even other tools/software your all keeping an eye out for.

Can you develop Frito-Lay’s brand and produce their “Mockumentory” ad campaign? Of course you can! With the power of social-media and a bold “hot dog” flavor, you can not only do these things, you also have the chance to be one of the lucky winners to have a year’s supply of Doritos . . .

So why my sarcasm? Other than the fact that social media is by far the tastiest spice currently being traded in the marketing world, I believe that social should be social. Can you still taste that “social” football-flavor left over from the Doritos’ SuperBowl campaign? Do you think that engagement with your community/customers betters your brand online?

The one great thing that Frito-Lay has done is understanding that the online channel is a viable one, and that consumers have no problem going from offline to online. Now let’s see if they will really ever get social.

Check out the Dorito’s X-13D Website.

During a recent emerging media roundtable we held, one of our key clients raised the point that, as marketers generally, but digital marketers specifically, if we simply eliminate the 50-100 stupidest and simplest to resolve mistakes, we would be 1000% times more successful. It’s knowing what those mistakes are that is the rube.
During dinner, we also talked about what conferences are the best and most informative. Two seemingly unrelated topics, right?

I recently read an interesting book called The Black Swan, which may help to explain part of this blindness phenomenon. Basically the title refers to the first time Australians, who had only ever seen white swans, saw their first black one. The author tries to explain why (really how) this discovery was so surprising, and extends his hypothesis to everything from economic models to consumer’s ability to be persuaded by advertising.

Human’s have an innate need to create order from random occurrences, and our ability to build patterns (and the assumption that those patterns will go on, ad infinitum) lets us believe that we can see what’s coming. However, this is a dangerous belief, and one that distracts us from the highly unlikely and causes us to overvalue the impact of the improbable but spend on skills sets that hone the comfortably regular.

When I think about YouTube, I think about a black swan – it’s a swan we’ve certainly seen before (TV, Video, and even user-generated content: America’s Funniest Home Video, anyone) - but I think we are completely over-reaching in what we believe to be its impact on our daily lives, if our daily lives consist of anything more than simply being entertained. It’s a black swan because we assign to it an extraordinary amount of benefit and wonder, now, but we also assume it will eventually impact our lives proportionally to anything else that’s remotely similar. 

Who knows, but it’s this random occurrence, much more luck than skill, that brought us YouTube and MySpace, and trying to guess what the next killer app is going to be - but based on conventions we already know - won’t actually deliver us that thing any time sooner.  And it certainly doesn’t mean the next big thing will impact our lives as much as we will initially assume it will, or that it will live up to the unrealistically strong hold it will have on our imagination. What we do know, is the mathematical notion of ergodicity – that over time, we really can’t predict what something will become at all.

So, getting back to the question at the round table – how do we identify and eliminate the stupidest mistakes we make. Although the author doesn’t explicitly advize this for this reason, I’m reinterpreting:  attend conferences and forums that have NOTHING to do with your field, that no one else is attending.  Visit the Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference. Check out to Robocup 2007. Any one up for North America’s No.1 event for 3PL executives & 3PL users?

I really believe that you will get more from hearing about the logistics world’s latest black swan than you will reading another story about how YouTube will elect the next president, or how mobile marketing is where the action is. You will see patterns that can be applied to your assumptions as a marketer, as well as note the subtle connections improbable events or products have with each other.

We’re sometimes blind (and stupid) because we chalk up every major event to a pattern. Sometimes it’s actually just dumb luck. But either way, you’re more likely to get lucky and find inspiration in an environment you’re unfamiliar with as you are competing with 2,000 other eMarketing wonks at iMedia talking about the same things. Over and over, and over.

Ken Bernhardt is the Regents’ Professor of Marketing and Assistant Dean for Corporate Relations for Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. Ken is a personal friend, sits on our advisory board and is overall one of the smartest people I know. He is also a frequent contributer to the Atlanta Business Chronicle and you can find some of his most recent articles here. I spent some time with him recently and asked him to share his thoughts on a few subjects.

What role do you see interactive marketing playing in the overall marketing mix over the next few years?

As the traditional marketing media continue to slowly lose impact, interactive media will become much more important. A number of major consumer marketing companies are already reallocating their media budgets away from traditional media, and many others are exploring alternatives to the way they have been advertising. Interactive marketing should be the big winner in this reallocation due to its many advantages over current mass media vehicles.

What do you make of the recent acquisitions by Microsoft and Google to get deeper into the online media/advertising space?

These are two companies that everyone pays attention to as industry leaders. They have both been positioning themselves to take advantage of the trend away from traditional media vehicles and toward interactive media. As my old track coach used to say, “the speed of the leader is the speed of the pack.” Thus their activity should accelerate the trends already happening.

What are your thoughts on the ability of large corporations to embrace social media?

Large companies are often the least able to respond to trends in the market place. They tend to be conservative, with many layers of approval for major shifts in strategy. Thus, I expect them to be followers rather than leaders in responding to the increase in usage of social media. There are always exceptions to this observation, and companies who have target markets that are younger and more innovative will be the early adopters of this new medium.

Let’s talk about the “green” movement that many companies are embracing. Why do you think this is such a hot topic for corporations?

Companies tend to respond to those things their target market customers are interested in, and there is no doubt that consumers are more interested in being seen as green. The surprise hit of the Al Gore movie is just one example illustrating consumers’ interest in environmental issues. The increase in availability of hybrid cars has enabled consumers to make a statement about their concern for the environment. We have seen an increase in environmental concern, not only attitudinally, but behaviorally as well. The key is to make the products without negatives for the consumer. For example, many consumers are concerned with healthy eating, but they are not willing to trade off taste. The same is true for environmentally favorable products - - they can’t have disadvantages vs. less environmentally friendly alternatives. that’s the biggest reason why people didn’t buy phosphate free detergent a few years ago - - it didn’t get the clothes as clean as the brands they had been using. The hybrid car market has demonstrated that consumers will pay a little more to help the environment but won’t give up comfort, style, etc. I think a lot of research is being conducted today by companies trying to determine how to appeal to environmentally concerned consumers.

Have you seen any companies that are doing a really good job of marketing their green efforts?

UPS has invested big dollars in making their fleet more environmentally friendly. Home Depot has added many products to the offerings that are green and have put up signage informing consumers of these alternatives. Some of the fast food companies are reevaluating their packaging, especially with respect to things like foam cups. And certainly Toyota has been on top of this trend, recently stating that they plan to produce 1 million hybrid cars a year in the very near future.

In advertising, as well as in User Experience, there’s a concept of memorability. In the case of advertising, it’s more about whether the viewer remembers your brand (as opposed to UE where’s it’s whether they remember how to use or do something). Back in the day, one of the most successful campaigns was for Charmin. You remember Mr. Whipple? He was the grocer who chastised patrons with “Please don’t squeeze the Charmin!” How about the old lady at Wendy’s asking “Where’s the Beef?” More recently, there has been “HEAD ON. Apply directly to the forehead. HEAD ON.” All annoying, yet effective, no?

Well, there seems to be a new trend – ‘Brand cheerleading’ and psychological trickery. Interestingly enough, the campaigns in question are both for meat. The first campaign is for Hillshire Farms – a very effective one since I remembered immediately what the brand was. One ad in this campaign shows a woman at her desk preparing a salad with meat on it. Her coworkers come out of nowhere – one chanting “go meat, meat – go meat, meat” while another chimes in with a cheer “That salad rocks, the best….” And another continues with “that’s crazy girl, I swear, there is so much STUFF in THERE”. Silly, yet cheerful. We all know why cheerleading exists whether we’re used to seeing applied to lunch meat or not. At the end of the commercial the whole office gang (sitting together) cheers “cuz you hungry. you hungry. you’re mama say you hungry! — you say Hillshire, I say Farm. Hillshire. Farm. (pause) GO MEAT!” WHOO HOO – I’m going out and getting me a salad (with meat on it)!

The second product is also a lunch meat product. This time, Oscar Meyer is pitching their Deli-Creation lunches with the same type of commercial - though with more of a psychological twist. Two guys driving the wiener-mobile show up in an office cube-farm with sandwiches and a microwave/backpack (complete with extension cord to the wiener-mobile). The catchy tune (Muzak version of what sounds like ‘we’re having a heat wave’) prompts the lunch-bringers to march while nodding their heads up and down to the beat. The office workers start nodding… I start nodding.  “Yes,”  I say to myself while nodding.  “Oscar Meyer microwavable sandwiches are good.”   In an apparent stroke of good timing, I had just come across an article on how shaking your head up and down while performing a task can increase your conviction that your opinion about that task is correct. SO, if you’re inclined to eat a nice, hot, turkey and cheese sandwich made by Oscar Meyer, your conviction that Oscar Meyer lunch meat is good might be increased. Of course, the study is about YOU nodding your head - not the guys on the commercial - but I dare you to watch it and NOT have the urge to do so.

So now you get the ‘Go Meat’ portion of this post… why the “thank you?” This is another part of an ad I saw that sticks with me and definitely works as far as brand recognition goes. Driving to work one day I saw a billboard for The Closer with Kyra Sedwick. It had a picture of her, the words “The Closer, New Season, TNT, Monday June 18, 9p/8c, THANK YOU.” Thank you? Hmmmm - I don’t get it. Polite, yes… Are they thanking me for reading their ad?? Ok. You’re welcome? Actually, it turns out that the main character (the Closer) says this throughout the show - it’s her ‘tag line’. Of course, I didn’t know this (nor did several people I asked). So if TNT is trying to talk to their current audience, fine. They’ll understand. However, for those of us who are Closer-clueless, this ad is annoying. It IS memorable - but not in a good way. Therefore, I’m not watching the show.

I think I’ll have myself a sandwich instead. GO MEAT! Thank you.

This week, Apple has released a beta version of Safari for Windows. Wow — that means Safari is now available for the Mac, PC and the soon to be released and highly hyped iPhone. Now like all smart technologists, I downloaded and installed it as soon as possible. But, within a day I realized that Safari is no reasonable substitute for Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Here are 6 reason reasons why you may want to think twice before switching:

1. Control + Enter shortcut doesn’t exist. Folks that are getting things done already know this little trick saves a few keystrokes by automatically appending the “www” and “.com” to any word (just type in yahoo and then press Control + Enter to see it in action). Without it, I have to waste more time typing in the complete web address – yuck!

2. Refitting the browser window to the desktop is challenging. While you can click and drag on the border of almost any Windows application to adjust how it fits into the screen, these controls in Safari are limited to the bottom right hand corner.

3. Plug-in support is non-existent. Plug-in developers are not considering Safari yet because Safari has only a 4.7% market share as of 1/07. That means that you’ll likely “run for the hills” if you’re accustomed to using Firefox add-ons such as IE View (which easily let’s you switch between Firefox and IE) or Web Developer (which puts web development powertools at your fingertips).

4. Your website and application won’t look/work correctly. While developers these days are paying more attention to how their favorite website and applications are working in Safari, there have been several instances where highly-visited websites did look right (for example, the headlines on the popular The Register website did not display correctly earlier this week).

5. Importing bookmarks not a part of the installation process. While Safari imports all of your browser bookmarks, it does it secretly and puts in a special place called a “bookmark folder” [which is accessible via a special icon in the Bookmarks Bar]. (Addition: While Safari for PC tries to make it easy, it is a shame that the process is not more apparent — that could be accomplished by including an informational screen during the installation process). This process lowers the average user’s awareness of how to get to your favorites.

6. Another reason I can’t justify buying a Mac. Until this week, web developers had an air-tight excuse for needing a Mac Mini or Mac Book – they needed to ensure that their web site or application was compatible on that “other” platform and Safari was only available on OS X. Damn you Apple!

For a company that’s known for exceptional user interface, design and innovation, Apple has let us down with this release of Safari for PC. Let’s hope that before Apple goes alpha to a public release with Safari that they fix some of these issues and give us “Windows lovers” another reason to switch back to the Mac!