I get asked this question by CEO audiences a great deal. It seems that somehow many CEOs have been told that Twitter is big so they had better get on Twitter. In my informal survey of CEOs that I know, most cannot name one valuable benefit they have gained from being on Twitter other than being able to brag about their hipness to their YPO, TEC or PEO group.

So what advice do I give?

For CEO’s of large firms:

• Most CEO’s of $100 million+ organizations do not need to get on Twitter themselves. Twitter represents a powerful new social phenomenon that is part of the whole user-generated content revolution (also called Web 2.0) but you can read about that here without wasting your time joining Twitter and then racking your brain every day for something to post that your General Counsel won’t freak out about.
• You should be blogging before you get on Twitter, either to an internal audience to help with vision casting or to an external audience for thought-leadership.  If you use Twitter as a way to share your blog posts externally then fine but do it in that order.
• You should ask a marketing savvy thought-leader in your organization who is 1) under 35 and 2) already on Twitter to come back to you with a recommendation on how your organization could use Twitter to grow its business. There is probably a subject-matter expert or thought-leader within your organization who could command an audience on Twitter but in all but a few cases that’s probably not you, the CEO.

For CEO’s of small firms and sole proprietors:

• Sure – get on Twitter – but don’t waste a lot of time on it. Twitter can be effectively used to grow your digital footprint. Make sure you fill out the short bio section CAREFULLY!! It’s what will show up in a google search. This is test for people who can’t articulate their value proposition in a succinct way.
• Focus on getting yourself a large network of potential customers and influential referers on LinkedIn and Facebook first. Then figure out how to use the status updates on Linked In and Facebook to position yourself to your network the way you’d like to be seen, without annoying or alienating them.  Then get yourself a blog and learn to use it. And then you can add Twitter to the mix as a way to repeat your status updates to another audience or to point to your blog posts. But do it in that order.
• Make sure you figure out how to write posts and status updates that accomplish what you want them to. Try role playing being a person reading you on Twitter, or via your LinkedIn or Facebook status updates. What will the reader want to read? What will they find useful? What will cause them to think of you as the __________ person? You get to fill in that blank with what ever brand you hope to own. Take a look at this humorous list of the “12 most annoying types of Facebookers” before you start.
• Use tools like ping.fm and friendfeed to automate your posting to multiple networks to save you time.

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I am hoping to be one of the lucky ones to get a google Wave invitation in the next few days from a friend (one of the special 100,000.) From my experience with google so far I am eager to see what they have put together here. I am hopeful that it will be the game-changing collaboration application that some are speculating it will be.

If you are trying to figure out what it is then this video from MG Siegler at TechCrunch might help.

http://g4tv.com/videos/41821/Google-Wave-Makes-Waves/

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

Since February 2009 I have had the privilege of speaking to over 75 CEOs of Canadian firms through the Presidents of Enterprising Organizations network, the CEO Global Network and the Women Presidents Organization (WPO) on the subject of Web 2.0. The companies whose executives have seen the presentation include Lyreco, Energizer, McMillan, Toronto Board of Trade, Consumer Impact Marketing,  Melitta, Tree of Life, Kids Help Phone, Tyco/DSC, Swiss Natural Sources/Swiss Herbal, Wardrop Engineering, Jan Kelley Marketing, Marsulex, Kinectrics, Progistix Solutions/SCI Group, Peerless Electric, Pathway Communications, Glenway Golf & Country Club, Junior Achievement, the College of Massage Therapists of Ontario, RHR Canada, Triumph, Summerlea Office Solutions, LaserNetworks, Soft Care Corp, HostMySite.com, Aseco Integrated Systems, Greenblue Systems, Skyway Wind Energy Group, Torino Drywall, 360 Visibility, StaffClick Personnel, Blazing Design, Amer.com, Beneplan, Blake Jarrett & Company, NCI Marketing, Maracle Press, Melmart Distributors, Freedom 9, National Logistics Services, Industrial Thermo Polymers, Nealanders International, The Climate Change Infrastructure Corp. and The DOUG Agency.

Most CEO’s have heard of web 2.0 but they don’t really know what it is. When I ask them they say “it’s Facebook and Twitter and all those kind of web programs my teenagers use.” At the start of every meeting I ask them to share how Web 2.0 makes them feel.  From younger groups (CEOs in their 40s) I hear “exciting, opportunities, possibilities, connections.” From older CEOs (50+) I hear “it’s weird, my kids are into it but I don’t get it, an invasion of my privacy, I feel left behind, I feel a loss of control, I feel overexposed, it’s a big waste of time.”

The big idea I share with CEOs is that Web 2.0 is fundamentally about the shift from publisher generated content to user generated content. Leveraging web 2.0 for your business means harnessing the incredible power of user generated content. But it requires a huge paradigm shift and many companies are getting left behind.

In a July 2009 global survey of 1,700 executives on Web 2.0 by McKinsey & Company “69 percent of respondents report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits [from Web 2.0], including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.” Click on the chart to the right to see the details of this.

I quickly realized that the technology aspect of Web 2.0 is of secondary importance and it’s rarely why the implementations fail. The primary issue is always people and their work processes or online habits. The introduction of internally facing web 2.0 technologies into a workplace is fundamentally about changing people’s work processes, the way they get their work done. And if it it’s not planned around and integrated into the way users currently get their work done, then you have a sure recipe for failure.

The other observation I made is that internal web 2.0 applications are often brought on by the IT department to solve a particular problem and are rarely considered in the broader context of the firms business model: how they are organized and how they make money.  Yet when you consider how you might leverage the power of user generated content in the context of a firm’s business model you open up the potential to enable significant profit growth by making strategic changes to the actual business model.

Because of these realizations I have partnered with John Sutherland, a business model design and innovation expert and together we have put together a Web 2.0 consulting offering that is being very well received. We have begun consulting engagements with a number of the firms whose CEO’s saw the Web 2.0 presentation and wanted to go to the next step.

Today most small and mid-sized firms will be able to find ASP/SaaS (ready made) solutions for their Web 2.0 needs. We have spent time researching and engaging with the top ASP/SaaS solution providers for implementations for 5 users all the way up to enterprise installations for thousands of users so we can recommend the best solution for your specific needs. We have also researched the best technology partners for customized solutions if you want to build off your existing Microsoft Sharepoint platform and get more functionality than the ASP solutions provide.

Companies that are finding our services most useful are $10-500 million Canadian companies where the leaders are aware of web 2.0 but don’t understand the opportunities it presents or how to move forward to capitalize on them. Our particular specialty is guiding management teams through the discovery, decision and implementation phases built on a mutual understanding of the firm’s business model.

If you know anyone who fits this description we’d be happy to have a chat with them.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

We recently launched a Facebook application to support Campbell Canada’s Help Hunger Disappear™ campaign. As of July 27th the app has 12,846 users.

Deliverables:

1. We developed a custom Facebook application to allow users to give their friends virtual cans of Campbell Soup. Campbell Canada will then donate a matching real can for every can given and accepted on Facebook. We focused on making the application simple to use and easy to spread virally.
2. We built Campbell a professionally designed, custom website through which visitors could explore all the parts of the Help Hunger Disappear™ campaign, and be directed to the Facebook application.

Execution:

Click here to go to the application’s homepage on Facebook. You need to be logged in to Facebook for the link to work.

Visit the www.helphungerdisappear.com website.

The Facebook Application:

The www.helphungerdisappear website

Commentary:

Facebook users have not reacted that positively to overtly branded applications. Brian Morrissey mentions a few of the high profile brand failures in this article from ADWEEK. As I wondered as to why this might be (and how to avoid becoming another statistic) I hypothesized the following:

• Facebook users care most about how their network perceives them. Social status is the currency of Facebook.
• Most actions on Facebook are done by users to enhance how their network feels about them. i.e. they send their friends a funny video, a photo or a fun game so they can be seen as the source of humour. They post photos of the hot guy kissing the new girl at the party so that they can be seen as the source of news, gossip etc. See the graph from McKinsey & Company below.

• Activities that allow the user to increase their social status are likely to do well.
• On judgment, I thought that many Facebook users would think that being seen donating to the foodbank was good for their social status as long as the application did not look like purely a shameless sales pitch.

In 3 weeks the app reached over 8,100 users starting from two people and spreading virally. The app has reach 12,846 users as of July 27th.

We’d appreciate any comments or feedback you may have on the application.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com

I spent the last 2 days at SES Toronto 2009, a global conference on Search Engine Marketing. Aside from catching up with friends and old colleagues, I enjoyed meeting Emanuel Rosen, the author of The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited and his was by far the best session. I liked it so much I bought his book and I swore I would not buy any more books until I had read the 5 beside my bed. Sound bite: 73% of buzz (viral sharing about brands) is in person, 17% by phone and 10% online. The top category people talk about is …… Food! Three meals a day… I guess it makes sense.

Most of the booths (other than Microsoft, Google and Yahoo) were small tech startups providing incredibly niche services that most of my CEO clients would be hard pressed to understand.  And there is so much hype in this space. If you are not careful you can start to feel like you are a total loser because you didn’t name your kids based on the available domain names and google keyword bid estimates. Everywhere you turn someone is taking a photo with their iPhone and posting to Twitpic and Facebook. I had to send someone into the bathroom ahead of me to make sure the coast was clear.

Microsoft has a nice big booth promoting their new search engine bing.ca. Bing looks interesting and I’ll give it a try. I like competition – it keeps everyone on their game.

I came away with several good ideas on how to develop more successful social media campaigns for CPG clients – which is one of the biggest challenges out there. Here are some other random things I learned:

My big learnings from the SES Toronto 2009 conference:

1. You must stimulate your happy customers to talk in order to overcome the 30% of brand buzz that is negative and comes from people who have never used your brand.
2. We imitate some people and we distance ourselves from others. Fairly key ☺
3. If you want buzz you must give people something to talk about. There must be a good story.  Check out “Will it blend iPhone” on YouTube below this list or Tom’s Shoes.
4. Dispersion matters. People are clustered into social silos and you must get buzz from across a diverse group of people, including across different social clusters, to predict success.
5. You have to prepared to do 10 social media initiatives to get 2 winners. Paraphrased from Jim McDowell of BMW.
6. Mobclix is a great tool for iPhone app developers. Great stats on best apps by category.

I often see a new person on a marketing team get invited to a creative presentation from an agency that’s presenting work started before they joined the team. The most common thing on their mind as they walk in is, “how will I comment on this when the agency, or my boss, asks me what I think?” Generally they just respond with some comments about whether the ads look nice or not – which is really just a waste of air in most cases.

So what should they do? Well, the most important piece of feedback the client needs to give the agency is whether or not the creative is on strategy or not, followed by whether or not it is well executed (and therefore elicits the desired emotion and response from the viewer).  In order to comment on the strategy, you need to have it written down somewhere. So the first thing you should ask if you are the new person who gets asked to sit in on the creative presentation is, “where is the creative brief?” You can only assess if the creative is on or off strategy if you have something to compare it to.

Here’s how to respond to a creative presentation:

1. If you have a strong gut reaction, give it, but perhaps not as your first comment.
2. Even if you have lots of negative comments, try to start with something positive. Creative people need encouragement.
3. MOST IMPORTANT – Compare what you see to the Creative Brief and especially to the Advertising Strategy (Benefit, Brand Character, Design Theme). You have to have an Advertising Strategy to do this and it should have been in the Creative Brief. Your most important assessment and feedback is: is this ON STRATEGY or OFF STRATEGY.
4. Either send a follow-up email after the meeting summarizing your comments and requested changes or ask the agency to send you a follow-up email containing that.

For more perspective on why to take the time to write a good creative brief, check out this post.

You can purchase a detailed Creative Brief template with notes and explanations by clicking here.

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The Situation:

My client is a new safety training firm and they required ground-up brand development and marketing to be able to present themselves professionally and generate awareness of their services.

Objective:

1. Develop a compelling brand identity for a small safety training company.
2. Acquire new clients for Insight Safety Services by making prospective clients aware of them and their services.

Strategy:

1. Start with developing a compelling brand identity integrating the concept of “people” as the object of the training and a contemporary design that communicates up-to-date expertise.
2. Build Insight Safety Services a professionally designed, custom website through which visitors from the ad campaigns can explore the company and its services and be encouraged to call or email for more information.
3. Add to the website an easy to use Wordpress blog with a CSS template that matches the existing site. Teach the principal of Insight Safety Systems to use the blog to post articles and expert advice on safety training. Use our favorite Wordpress Plugins to 1) automatically optimize posts for SEO and publish new blog posts to google and Yahoo, and 2) send the blog post content via RSS to Feedburner and other blog sites to drive additional exposure on the web.
4. Use locally targeted google adwords and facebook ad campaigns to drive targeted traffic based on keyword searches and content placement to the new ISS website. Also register the company with Google for visibility on Google Maps.

Execution:

Logo & Brand Identity:

Business Cards:

Brand Guidelines:

We created an 8 page set of Brand Guidelines to ensure continuity of the brand over time and different executions. Some example pages are shown here.

Website:

The website is live at www.insightsafety.com

Google AdWords Campaign:

Facebook Ad Campaign:

Other Print Collateral:

We also developed:

• Printed letterhead and envelope artwork
• Printed desk cards for training sessions
• An HTML email template
• A Word document letterhead template
• A Powerpoint template for presentations

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When you hire an agency to make a marketing piece for you, do you take the time upfront to write out a detailed Creative Brief? Most people don’t, but great marketers do. As an Assistant Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble my Brand Manager always insisted that I write one. I often resented the time it took, just like I resented much of the process P&G forced me to follow as a new hire there. I was a young punk right out of business school and I knew everything. I just wanted to call the agency and tell them over the phone that I needed a direct mail piece made. But then I eventually became a Brand Manager and I too insisted that my staff take the time to write a creative brief before every project that involved contracting an outside agency. So what happened to me?

Well other than becoming Proctorized, I became convinced that the upfront time invested in a Creative Brief pays out in spades versus the “just call the agency and then add new requests every few days for the next month” method.

The purpose of writing a creative brief is to clarify our thinking upfront and to force us to make decisions at the beginning of the project so that the agency can start working on it with a complete picture of what we want. This process allows the design and production process to happen efficiently and therefore less expensively. People who don’t take the time to write a creative brief frequently end up making many changes to the requirements of the project during the project and this causes rework and ultimately leads to missed deadlines, higher costs and frustrated designers and agencies. A good creative brief should be so complete that if we handed it over to the agency and disappeared for the duration of the project, the end result should be pretty close to what we wanted.

Objection: If I spell all this out then why I am I paying my agency so much? Isn’t this their job.

No it’s not. The client owns the “strategy” (the content of the Creative Brief) and the agency owns bringing that strategy to life creatively. They are very different skills. Strategy is primarily about research, numbers, analytics, decision making models, and ultimately making clear choices. (In a small organization it is often just knowledge we have about our organization and stakeholders that we can’t expect the agency to know combined with some careful thought around the options and a sense of where we want to go in the future.) The creative process is about taking dry, sterile words and miraculously turning them into ideas and eventually executions that resonate, and produce emotion and action from the target audience.

Good agencies need the information in a Creative Brief in order to produce creative material that is “on strategy” for your brand. If we don’t give them a Communication Strategy then we are expecting them to create one for us out of thin air and that’s not their job. Their job is to take our Communication Strategy and bring it to life creatively in the elements we have asked for.

When we see their creative concepts or executions we should compare them back to the Creative Brief and ask, does their creative version communicate the message we asked for, even if in different words? If yes, then their creative is said to be “on strategy”, which it needs to be. If no, then their creative is “off strategy” and needs to be revised.

You can purchase a detailed 20 page Creative Brief template with notes and explanations by clicking here.

Thank you for visiting www.strategycube.com