Case studies


“Think outside the office” video promotes new economy

Jul 10th

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I’m a judge on the International Economic Development Council’s annual website competition this month and I’ll be featuring some of the amazing best practices I’m witnessing in some future posts.

I’ve been impressed with some of things Calgary, Canada has been doing for some time and I really love this new marketing angle they’ve developed for their city — positioning their community as place that enables the new economy by making it easy for people to work from home.

Although working from home isn’t a new concept, making it part of a city’s brand is … and I thought this upbeat video treatment gets the unique  point across nicely. Calgary has done done also done a beautiful job with their “Live in Calgary” website.”

Did Mashable cross a line?

Jun 29th

36 comments

Yesterday, something happened on Mashable which illustrates one of the biggest threats to the social web, to business, and maybe even democracy.  I’m really interested to see what you have to say about this incident.  Let’s start with the lead paragraph from their post:

The Italian Windows website “Windowsette” somehow managed to get a hold of a super-secret, highly confidential PowerPoint presentation outlining many of Microsoft’s goals and plans for Windows 8. Apparently this sensitive data (complete with UNDER NDA watermarks) was just found sitting around the Internet.

If you haven’t been around the corporate world, NDA stands for “non-disclosure agreement.”  This means that whoever had these slides had signed a legal document to keep them secret.

The Windowsette site said it learned of this leak from “Andrea Martinelli.” I have no idea who that is but it seems unlikely she just found secret internal Microsoft documents “sitting around the Internet.”

So here are the questions I have for you:

  • Mashable has become the journal of record for the social web. Maybe they’ve been trained as journalists, maybe they’re not.  Does that make a difference?
  • Is it ethical for them to publish a “super-secret, highly confidential” internal document that could be extremely damaging to Microsoft?
  • Is it responsible to report on a document whose source was a single associate of an obscure website in Italy?  How can we even know these slides are real? Isn’t it easy to create official-looking PowerPoint slides?
  • The Mashable post was tweeted almost 1,000 times and included in about 500 Facebook sites.  For many people, this article has become “the news.” What are the implications when non-journalists create the news?

I’ll tip my hand here and say that my undergrad was in journalism and I believe this institution is essential to democracy.  What’s going on in most blogs today is not journalism.  Usually that’s OK.  But with the dramatic decline of the traditional press, whatever we have left on blogs is going to become our de facto news of record. Like Mashable.

In the end, this incident will have a shelf life of about one day and it’s easy to let a big company like Microsoft be our target. But what if this unsubstantiated piece of news was about your secret new product development?  Your company? Your congressman? A terrorist threat in your community?

What if it was about you?

A fascinating B2B social media success story

Jun 20th

54 comments

With many companies now engaged in social media marketing strategies for nearly two years or more, success stories are starting to emerge, even in the difficult marketing world of industrial B2B.  I discovered a great success story to share with you through a masters thesis being developed by Haakon Jenson of Norway.

The case exemplifies an integrated approach to CRM, customer research, SEO, web design, content development, and social media marketing that I think you’ll enjoy!

BACKGROUND

ShipServ is a leading e-marketplace in the maritime industry providing a portfolio of software, services and hosted applications designed to enable efficient global shipping.   Their core product TradeNet, an e-commerce platform connecting industry buyers and suppliers. Currently ShipServ serves 150 shipping companies managing 5,000 ships and approximately 30,000 suppliers. In 2008 the company turned to the social web to help them through several marketing challenges:

  • Image of being an impersonal software company.
  • Limited marketing budget and employee resources
  • Increase awareness of using eCommerce as a shipping solution — a big change for traditional customers
  • Customer base not early technology adopters. A survey showed 65% regarded the social web as a “distracting waste of time”

OBJECTIVES OF THE MARKETING PROGRAM

  • Drive 50% more traffic to website in three months
  • Raise awareness of brand throughout global shipping industry
  • Attract new sales leads through relevant content
  • Change focus from “shouting” at customers to “listening, engaging and inspiring”

STRATEGY

The company began with research to find out where customers were receiving their information, their participation in the social web, information needs and the current “state of the conversation” for the ShipServ brand. Key discoveries included that there were very few online communities for their industry and that the mention of their brand was rare. Despite the fact that their historical customer base largely did not use the social web, they saw an opportunity to seize the lead and become a thought leader in their marketplace.

ShipServ partnered with an outside marketing firm and their CRM vendor to create an integrated social media plan that focused on leading the creation of an online community, developing outstanding content and using social media channels to drive new sales leads through their website.

ACTIONS

> Conducted research to determine customer information needs and keyword themes.

> Revamped website to be more customer and content driven — New design was more easy-going and personal. Developed custom landing pages for groups of keywords used to find the company and specific calls to action based on individual customer needs.

> Created a blog that frequently featured their customers. They also used the blog as a way to establish conversations in the industry.

> Established “scorecard” through their CRM system to track lead nurturing progress. All reactions and visitor behavior was examined for possible sales leads.

> Developed quarterly content plan based on themes established from research. Content was leveraged and re-purposed in various ways across all the social media sites.

> Promoted original content through variety of social media channels, which were used as “beacons” to drive traffic back to the main website. These channels included:blog, e-newsletter, Twitter, light-hearted videos, podcasts, Facebook and LinkedIn.

> A series of valuable white papers (like 10 Essentials of Online Marketing in the Shipping Industry) were created and promoted through the social channels, website and newsletter, resulting in 1,000 downloads in seven months.

> Established online industry community by creating a group on LinkedIn. The company introduced this forum to both shipping company suppliers and procurement professionals and had 863 members as of last week.  Content for the community was developed based on the initial research of user needs and included research, surveys, and of course content re-purposed from other sources.

> Search engine optimization campaign, including keyword content planning.

RESULTS

Website

  • Website visitors increased by 59 %
  • Pageviews increased by 70 %
  • Average time on site increased by 25 %
  • Generated over 1,000 downloads of a white paper

Community

  • 378 members in the ShipServ Maritime Network group on LinkedIn
  • 300 visitors to the blog
  • Over 600 views of the company videos
  • LinkedIn and Twitter have gone from zero to the top 20 traffic sources

Business statistics

  • Increased contact-to-lead (landing page contact) conversion by 150%
  • Increased lead-to-opportunity conversion by 50%
  • Decreased campaign management costs by 80%
  • Increased the number of sales-ready leads by 400%
  • Measurable increase in brand awareness

Break-even on the $30,000 social marketing media investment was achieved in three months. The company estimated the results they achieved would have cost $150,000 through traditional media.

What are your thoughts on ShipServ’s project?

When parody becomes a corporate PR disaster

May 26th

26 comments

When does online parody cross a line?

By now you’ve probably become aware of the “fake” BP global public relations account on Twitter spewing humorous observations such as:

“We feel terrible about spilling oil in American waters, we’ll make sure the next spill happens where the terrorists live. #bpcares”

“Just wrapped up a meeting with the EPA. Terry kept farting out loud at all the right moments. Not sure how he does it, but it’s SO FUNNY!”

“Oh man, this whole time we’ve been trying to stop SEAWATER from gushing into our OIL. Stupid Terry was holding the diagram upside down.”

According to Ad Age, the account started last Wednesday afternoon with this tweet: “We regretfully admit that something has happened off of the Gulf Coast. More to Come.”

Fewer than 50 tweets later, the feed had nearly 13,000 followers — compared to the 5,000 or so at the “real” @BP_America — and as of today, the account had about 40,000 followers.  Its humorous blasts have been re-tweeted by everyone from filmmaker Michael Moore to singer Michelle Branch.

Toby Odone, a spokesman at BP, told Ad Age: “I’m not aware of whether BP has made any calls to have it taken down or addressed. People are entitled to their views on what we’re doing and we have to live with those. We are doing the best we can to deal with the current situation and to try to stop the oil from flowing and to then clean it up.”

While there have been plenty of fake Twitter accounts before, perhaps none has spread so rapidly or gained this kind of momentum. The timing is right, the content is superb, and people are eager to connect emotionally to anyone poking fun at the easy target.

Let’s take a look at some of the realities and implications of this development for our own businesses.

1) Is it legal?

According to Twitter’s guidelines, it is perfectly acceptable to set up accounts that parody real companies, celebrities, etc. as long as it is clear that it is a parody. Their rule states:

The bio should include a statement to distinguish it from the real identity, such as “This is a parody,” “This is a fan page,” “Parody Account,” “Fan Account” or “This is not affiliated with…”

The account should not, through private or public communication with other users, try to deceive or mislead others about your identity. For example, if operating a fan account, do not direct message other users implying you are the actual subject (i.e., person, band, sports team, etc.) of the fan account.

As of today, the fake account bio reads: “This page exists to get BP’s message and mission statement out into the twitterverse!”

So no, it is not an account that meets Twitter’s standards. Further, it is causing a lot of confusion because many people are actually taking this as a serious BP account.

2) What should BP do?

BP has much bigger PR problems than a rogue Twitter account.  And making an issue of it and spoiling the fun would probably just heighten negativity against the company.

However, if I were working for BP right now <shudder> I would at least approach Twitter and ask it to enforce its own rules and declare clearly that this is a parody site.  Given the number of people who actually think this is a real account, there is a high probability that quotes from this parody site could start showing up as legitimate quotes from the company and stress the PR department further.

Really, BP’s only real option is to withstand the public fury and and eliminate the core problem — the root cause — at the source deep in the ocean and spreading across our shores. And that is going to take years.

3) What should YOU do?

The social web has imparted a whole new sense of meaning and urgency to PR planning, monitoring and response.  How have the rules changed? Or have they? What are your thoughts?

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