Brian Solis's Blog, page 105

Skully Systems is About to Change How We Drive

Skully Systems changed my life and I don’t say that lightly. I’m a motorcycle enthusiast. I’m also a father. Most of the time my bikes stand proudly in my garage showcasing their beauty for an audience of one. I ride on occasion, usually an exceptional opportunity that manifests in the form of weather, stress and guilt. But even then, as I get older, the rides become less frequent, shorter and less ambitious. With the AR-1, Skully is going to change that now and over the years to come as it evolves in capability and prominence.

Yes, the AR-1 is a helmet. And yes, it may seem that talking about a helmet in such a way is frivolous. But, I believe this helmet will change the motorcycle world and the transportation industry at large.

What is the AR-1?

It is by far the most advanced motorcycle helmet every developed.

I believe everything is ripe for disruption. Helmets and the entire motorcycle industry is overdue. While we’ve seen advancements in  electric bikes such as Harley Davidson’s Project LiveWire  and electric motorcycles that deliver a car-like experience such as the Lit C-1, helmets and motorcycle accessories in general have gone without any notable advancements in decades. That’s all about to to change however.

The AR-1 is the brainchild, and literally dream, of Dr. Marcus Weller, a young, enterprising entrepreneur who dreamed up this new idea following an unfortunate motorcycle accident in Barcelona. If you envision a first-person perspective of Iron Man inside of a gorgeous DOT certified helmet you’d have the premise of the AR-1. We are all Tony Stark.

At the center of the user experience is a heads up display (HUD) that provides an intuitive Google Glass-like view inside the helmet. Add to that a rear-facing 180-degree camera, bluetooth connectivity, embedded battery and speakers among many other features, and the AR-1 starts to take shape. More so, it’s what hasn’t been debuted or invented yet that truly holds the promise for the future of riding and transportation in general. Imagine embedded sensors that talk to “smart” cars on the road to prevent drivers from swiping, clipping or intercepting riders or their way path.

Essentially, the helmet becomes a platform for innovation on the bike, surrounding cars and also in traffic engineering.

I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Marcus Weller, someone whom I admire and also someone I’m proud to call a friend. I invited him to share the stage with me at LeWeb in Paris to share Skully’s story and also what lies ahead for the company and innovation in transportation.

Please watch the video below for the story of Skully…

Here’s a picture of Marcus and me before hitting the main stage!

Order the AR-1 here.

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The 6 Pillars of Social Commerce [VIDEO]

In April 2012, I wrote a piece that explored online social behavior and its impact on commerce and decision-making. The work was inspired by a series of studies based on the work of Robert Cialdini that identified six universal heuristics that shoppers use to make decisions.

The importance of social psychology can not be overstated. This branch of psychology deals with how people think about influence and how individuals relate to one another. The social economy is shaped by how people earn and spend social capital. Based on the commerce of actions, words, and intentions, individuals contribute to their value not only within these new connected societies, but also among those networks of people to whom they’re connected. The same is true for organizations. You earn the relationships and the resulting stature that you deserve. Thus engagement must be thoughtful and nurturing.

I refer to the concept of social and online architecture as the A.R.T. of Engagement where actions, reactions, and transactions become the fabric of holistic and connected experiences. It must be design and it must work together to link information, destinations and native behaviors with intent with goals and outcomes.

This work was fleshed out in my latest book, What’s the Future of Business: Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences (or WTF for short)

Skeleton Productions, a very cool video production company based in London, worked with me to lift this work from the printed page and turn it into a short but insightful online video. It’s pretty cool…(embedded below)

 The Six Pillars of Social Commerce

1: Social Proof – follow the crowd

2: Authority – the guiding light

3: Scarcity- less is more

4: Like – builds bonds and trust

5: Consistency

6: Reciprocity – pay it forward

If ignorance is bliss, awareness is awakening. The psychology of social commerce reveals the emotional elements that stimulate the human network. It is the understanding of the 6 pillars of social commerce that facilitates the development of a more cohesive and connected online experience for customers. More importantly, by investing in the value, productivity and efficiency of consumer decision making and not just the outcome, businesses can not only earn reciprocity and goodwill, but also earn social capital as a result…and, that’s priceless.

The future of business is shaping desirable, meaningful and shareable experiences. And, it starts at the intersection where UX meets CX.

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Employees are as or More Important Than Customers: Why Ignoring Employee Engagement Hurts Business

In a late 2013 study, Gallup found that only 13% of workers actually feel engaged at their jobs.  What’s worse is that 63% of the workforce is not engaged at all. But wait, the news gets even more disheartening. An astounding 24%, one-quarter of the global workforce, is actively disengaged right now. Essentially we have a significant number of workers doing their best impression of corporate zombies who go through the everyday motions to collect a paycheck.

So are employees to blame?

Nope.

This incredible set of findings falls squarely on management or the lack thereof. What’s missing? Employee leadership and engagement.

The economic impact of passive engagement and complete disengagement is potentially devastating on the horizon. And right now, it’s only building momentum, reducing profitability and eroding morale every day. While I’ve not researched the expected losses businesses should expect as a result of this shocking news, I have researched the benefits of actively engaging employees. Believe it or not, doing so carries a notable impact on relationships and the bottom line. That data is available here.

I partnered with LinkedIn to lead a research project that could put weight behind dedicated employee engagement programs while also demonstrating the business upside in doing so. In 2013 and 2014, along with LinkedIn, we surveyed thousands of workers about their company’s employee engagement practices. The study was also informed by another project we worked on together during this time that examined the top 100 “socially engaged” companies that use the LinkedIn platform successfully for engaging employees and employee prospects. The list of “The Top 25 Socially Engaged Companies” was published earlier this year by LinkedIn.

To better understand the benefits of employee engagement, we hosted both qualitative and quantitative studies with employees of socially engaged companies and also those that were further down the list or not on the list at all. Our goal was to learn what the most socially engaged companies on LinkedIn did differently and also how employees felt about current engagement programs and their resulting benefits. We also surveyed employees outside of the control group to compare responses.

The result was a telling report, Relationship Economics: How genuine communication and engagement in social media helps businesses grow relationships with employees and customers while improving the bottom line. At a minimum we found that active employee engagement works. But you already knew that right?

While it might seem logical or even commonsensical, Gallup’s numbers demonstrate that businesses are missing or ignoring potentially costly opportunities right now.

In our research, we learned right away that socially engaged companies are more likely to drive greater lead generation, cultivate innovation, and yield top talent.

For example, we found that 57% of socially engaged companies are more likely to attract great talent (41% of the target group vs. 26% of the control group). And 40% are more likely to believe their company is more competitive. That’s not all however. In a war for top talent, socially engaged companies are 58% more likely to attract ideal candidates.

The benefits don’t end there however. Employees at socially engaged companies are more likely to be inspired and optimistic about their company.

In a time when culture eats strategy for breakfast, employees at socially engaged companies are also 20% more likely to feel inspired at their job. More so, 27% are more likely to be optimistic about the future of their organization.

The numbers only continue to reinforce the obvious; employee engagement is the foundation for leadership and business success.

What we took away from this research is that the most socially engaged businesses are learning that intentional communication, social content and community strategies work. They do so by informing and empowering internal and external stakeholders by creating productive communities where like-minded professionals connect to share information, collaborate, solve problems and also create opportunities.

This isn’t about using social media platforms, which so many companies are doing. This is about what you do with those platforms. Socially engaged companies are genuinely more open, communicative, and also open to listening and learning in real time. They are leading the way for a new social era of business transformation, where trust becomes a metric and relationships offer economic value.

To do so however, takes intention and an infrastructure for active social engagement and communication. As they say, a happy employee makes a happy customer. With one quarter of employees actively disengaged, we can only do better. But, we have to want to improve employee morale and confidence and that starts with admitting there’s a problem today.

Download the report here.

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Digital Transformation: A Year in Review

When I published the first in a new series of reports exploring the state and future of Digital Transformation, it was almost the antithesis of a typical technology report.  It didn’t talk about tech trends for automated marketing. It mentioned zero platforms, software or apps for improving processes, manufacturing or customer or employee engagement. It also didn’t talk about the latest enterprise cloud services to improve marketing or CRM or process big data and the like. Instead, I, along with my Altimeter Group colleagues Jaimy Szymanski and Charlene Li, offered a behind the scenes glimpse to learn about the people who are bringing about change inside of companies and how technology serves an enabler for digital transformation.

As the series of reports were launching, I was interviewed for TechCrunch. Although it did not publish, I did want to share it with you here.  I’ve also assembled links to each of the reports.

“Digital Transformation: Why and How Companies are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences” – download.

“The State of Digital Transformation: 2014: How Companies are Investing in the Digital Customer Experience (DCX)” – download.

“The State of Digital Transformation: Infographic” – download

What is Digital Transformation and why is important to startups and businesses?

Digital transformation sounds like one of those buzzwords that might come out of HBO’s Silicon Valley show. Digital Transformation is an emerging, but well-studied movement where companies thoughtfully invest in new technologies and also new processes and business models to compete in a digital age.

Times change and there are many factors influencing how we work and live. Among them, the acceleration of disruptive technologies are impact markets, models and equally affecting behavior. Understanding how and why is only going to help tomorrow’s startups, existing and new enterprise philosophies and operations as well as those struggling today to better excel in these shifting markets. Small and large businesses too need to understand how decision-making is changing, where and what are the new touchpoints, what people value and how it’s different than the past. These insights inform investments and also affect value propositions and everything that supports selling to, catering and supporting a much more connected, and discerning, customer.

It’s part technology but also part social science. Technology is a catalyst for change and also a means for establishing relevance in new markets, but technology alone is not a solution. It reminds me of a quote from Steve Jobs, “…technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing and nowhere is that more true than in these post-PC devices.”

What makes digital transformation so important now?

Social, mobile, real-time, and other disruptive technologies are aligning like never before to necessitate big changes within organizations, forcing them to adapt in order to maintain relevancy. Digital transformation is significant because it is finally driving real change within businesses; they’re developing new models, team structures, and customer-centered philosophies along the way.

Looking beyond post-PC devices, what digital transformation is really about is the impact of new devices, networks, apps, pervasive internet, et al on you and me, how we knowingly or unknowingly change and what companies need to do to get in front of it. When you take a look at some of the most disruptive and promising technology trends out there right now, you realize just how far we’ve come but also how much more things will change in the next 5,10 years and 20 years ahead.

 

You’ve studied digital influence and social business in the past, why the move to digital transformation?

Yes. I’ve long studied digital influence, the evolution of social business, among other key trends. At the end of the last social business report I wrote, “The Evolution of Social Business: Six Stages of Social Media Transformation,” I learned that at the far right of business evolution was a state that we referred to as “Converged,” one where previously disparate groups were starting to work with one another to consolidate and optimize customer engagement at every stage of the lifecycle beyond social. It was just the beginning of what many refer to as digital transformation.

Obviously social was just part of the driving force behind change. The real catalyst was behavior. I was fascinated by how the future of business was taking shape right now.

Capgemini, IBM, Econsultancy, among others have published excellent research on the subject. In fact, their research already connects digital transformation with increases in business performance and scale. The more I spoke with the people leading digital transformation, the more I realized that there were processes and strategies for rallying others, especially executives, together around the need to change and how to bring it about.

It all starts with a renewed focus on the customer, the human side of business. This led us to a narrowed focus on digital transformation.

As such, for the purpose of the new report, we defined it as: The re-alignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital consumers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.

Our research over the last five years have found that disruption affects customer actions, expectations and values, basically the entire customer journey. Yet, businesses are still making investments in places that are losing alignment with how things are progressing. We’re seeing this play out now in the sharing and maker economies today as governments and incumbent organizations attempt to regulate or squash new competitors. In the end, customers wield great power. Their preferences are merely unlocked or enabled by better services, experiences and real-time technology.

The question is, in the face of disruption from not only new competition, but also customer behavior, what do businesses do differently moving forward?

Are you saying that companies are out of touch with digital customers?

Yes. Even though companies are boosting technology budgets, they’re doing so based on assumptions and not from data or research into the new customer journey. More so, brands don’t yet have the infrastructure to support next-generation marketing efforts. But, there is hope!

We also learned that brands are creating a sense of urgency by using insights stemming from the new digital customer experience (DCX) as the catalyst for internal digital transformation.’

It starts by asking “what would my digital customer do” and then compare that research to investments around the traditional customer of today (or I should say yesterday). Then, digital transformation represents the quest to understand how disruptive technology affects the digital customer experience.

Earlier you said that the people inside these companies inspired you to think differently about digital transformation. Wrap us up by telling us how and why…

Very rarely did we see businesses where senior leadership said, “let’s change to win the digital customer!”

In most cases, digital transformation takes an internal change agent to spark a sense of urgency, gain support, and pave the way for a more formal, collaborative approach to change.

The human side of all of this is about the people in different parts of the company who are pushing for change. They’re fighting politics, egos, skepticism, and uncertainty. They’re on the front lines, in the hallways, in the conference rooms, bringing people together to find ways to not only collaborate but solve for problems and opportunities.

It’s people like Adam Brotman at Starbucks, Bridget Dolan at Sephora, Perry Hewitt at Harvard, Grant Ferguson at Motorola Solutions and Lars Silberbauer at LEGO, among others, who are paving the way forward for digital transformation.

In fact, Lars shared advice for change agents that I wanted to share with you here, “It’s about finding those people in different departments who are willing to risk things to be a lead within the company. There are a lot of people who want to take a company forward.”

Digital transformation isn’t an end goal; it’s a continuous journey. It’s the result of learning more about the relationship between technology and customer behavior to ultimately earn relevance among them.

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Community is Much More Than Belonging to Something; It’s About Doing Something Together That Makes Belonging Matter

Viginia Coutinho is a dear friend who just released a new book (in Portuguese) that helps strategists think differently about social media. She is also the organizer of Upload Lisboa, a fantastic event in Portugal that focuses on innovation and disruptive technologies. Earlier in the year, she surprised me by asking if I would consider writing the foreword. Even though I don’t write much about social media these days, I couldn’t let her down.  Now that her book is available, I wanted to share the English version of the foreword with you here.

I hope it helps or makes a difference…

Foreword

Maybe we’re antisocial with our approach to social media today.

Social media is one of the most profound technological and societal advancements of our time. . It is this generation’s telephone, television, and in many ways, its printing press, democratizing information and elevating and uniting the people who create and share it. The socialization of media has connected billions of people around the world, thrust humankind into a real-time world, and forever changed how we communicate, discover, share and work.

This human network has evolved into one of the most efficient, expeditious, expansive, and approachable media networks to date. But we still have a lot to learn as users learning to balance these newfound platforms between accidental narcissism and individual empowerment. We also have much to learn as professionals seeking new ways to connect, learn and grow in a transparent and much more human era.

Yet with these advancements, with the pervasiveness of social media in many lives, with the rise of entirely new categories of everyday influencers and decision-makers, executives and social media strategies still largely see only channels and not the people, cultures and norms that define them.

Facebook

Twitter

Youtube

Pinterest

Vine

Instagram

SnapChat

LinkedIn

Tumblr

Flickr

Foursquare

Ello

Google Plus

Myspace

Trendiness trumps relevance. Quantity eclipses quality. Executive agendas upstage consumer expectations and needs.

Unfortunately many see it for its novelty and not for the revolution it feeds. They bring to it a legacy mindset and expect these new networks and the communities they foster to regress rather than progress. Said another way, we do not change to earn relevance in new paradigms we expect them to change for us.

Unacceptable.

Welcome to the EGOsystem

These social networks and the communities of human beings they support have not only connected information and people, they have forged new connected societies where people band together based on interests and passions. Indeed, there are real people on the other side of those screen. We too, are real people who forget that our needs as individuals are willfully forgotten when we become the strategists who market to ourselves.

Real people form tribes. They build relationships. But more importantly, they become informed. And, as we have learned, information is power. See, with information, people are empowered. With empowerment, people become more demanding. We want information delivered to us. We want it personalized. We especially, want it in real time….our time. We are after all, at the center of our own #EGOsystem.

If social media is so disruptive, so important, so transformational, why then do today’s experts fail to see social media as our industrial revolution? Why do executives see it as some passing fad that will vanish into geek obscurity like Pac Man, Rubiks Cube, Friendster and Myspace? Why do decision makers underestimate connected consumers and brush off connectedness as tech distractions, causes of introverted societies or the downfall of youthful conduct and education?

Many simply do not use these technologies to have an informed perspective, which prevents them from seeing a true vision for its purpose and promise. They either disregard it or they experiment with it. Few though, embrace it for its potential because they are part of it in a way that also becomes part of them.

This is where you can help.

Social media is just that…it’s social.You don’t own it. I don’t own it. Instead, it’s shared.

On Facebook, for example, when a company invests in an official presence, they tend to forget or overlook that Facebook is a shared space. It’s not a web site. It is not a captive forum. A Like is not an opt-in. It’s not an email subscription for marketing or lame content or real-time marketing. It’s still a page on a social network, the world’s largest social network at that, with over one billion users. Although it’s immense and unprecedented, it’s a democracy. It’s owned by the people for the people. As a brand, we must be of the people to earn the attention, respect, and loyalty among the very people we hope to reach.

But no…brand and social strategists instead complain that Facebook is forcing them to pay for attention. Their vocal discontent around the loss of reach aimed at Facebook’s decision to change the algorithm says everything. Complaints about the advertising platform reveals that traditional ads don’t really work in social but instead of trying something new, we’ll direct budgets elsewhere and stomp our feet on the way out.

We’re always ready to point out what doesn’t work, but we’re rarely so willing to fix the problem. Change inevitably starts with us.

All This Technology is Making Us Antisocial

Social media is not just another channel to broadcast marketing content at audiences. That ideology is anti-social in my book.

It takes a different approach.

It takes a different perspective to see what’s possible.

It’s also not unheard of to not invest in a presence if you have nothing of value to offer.

Social networks represent the real world to many people. This of course sounds crazy. But, think about it. We live life with our phones as the first screen. There are rare moments of solitude in our lives as our devices prevent us from having a moment to ourselves. But who am I to judge. Just because I was brought up a certain way doesn’t mean that the rest of the world should see life through my biases.

Social is introducing an unbreakable and also productive digital gravity that pulls us toward our trusted networks without question.

It’s our epicenter.

It’s us.

As a brand, as a strategist, think of any social network as a physical community. Because, that’s what it is. They are tribes where people join one another because of shared interests, passions, challenges, and aspirations.

Before we can say anything, before we can build anything, we must listen. We must feel empathy. We must understand the culture and the dynamics of any community before we attempt to join it. Doing so, feeds us humility and empathy. And these very human qualities will in turn inspire engaging strategies that contribute value into the communities we wish to join.

Social is a gift.

Attention is a gift.

Engagement is a gift.

Therefore, we’ve much to earn

Therefore, we’ve much to learn.

#WDYSF

To change, to make things matter to real people, everything must begin with a new perspective and approach. #WDYSF.

What

Do

You

Stand

For

#WDYSF = An important question you must answer before expecting anyone to stand along side you.

What is the value you wish to add. What is the value you wish to take away? How does engagement make things better or create new possibilities and opportunities for all involved?

No matter how much we say or publish in social networks, it doesn’t matter. If we do not see it differently, we cannot approach it differently. If we cannot show up humble yet poised to offer value, we are just another person in this digital room talking, maybe even yelling, to get people to pay attention. That’s not what this is about.

This is about community. This is about standing for something. This is about seeing something that others are missing. This is about doing what others cannot or will not. This is about inspiring a movement and building a community to bring your vision to life. And, this is true for anything and everything…not just social media.

This is your community. This is our community.

Remember…Community is much more than belonging to something; it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter.

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1 Short But Important Prediction for Marketing in 2015

It’s that time of year when experts share their predictions and others assemble them into long lists. Yay!

I’ve only managed to write one officially so far. And to be honest, it’s less of a prediction and more of something I’d love to help will to happen, not just for the future of marketing, but all of business.

I’d love to say that by 2015 we will truly see digital strategies that are integrated across digital, social, mobile, advertising, marketing, comms, et al. But, we won’t. What we will see though is a more conscious effort to bring disparate groups to the table to learn how to collaborate across screens, channels, and moments of truth to deliver ONE experience to customers wherever they are in the lifecycle.

This is why your work is more important than you might think or believe…

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The Gap Between Big Data and Big Insights: Turning data into engaging stories

Have you seen the popular HTC One TV commercial featuring Gary Oldman? It’s quite brilliant really. A highly celebrated A-list actor is paid millions to say little more than “blah blah blah” throughout the entire commercial. I’m reminded of it because that’s the reaction I tend to have these days when I hear the words “big data.” It’s almost as if I’m transported to the classroom in a Peanuts episode listening to the muted voice of the teacher muttering incomprehensible monotone words.

It’s not that big data isn’t important. Believe me, it’s the foundation for the future of business.  It’s just that every time I hear about big data, it’s either in the context of social media, The Internet of Things, data technology, Nate Silver, or a combination of all of the above. What I don’t hear enough is the human side of data, the questions asked, the insights that are drawn, and the ways that insights are then executed against at every level that matters (internally and externally).

The problem with big data is we think that by saying “big,” we automatically convey importance and urgency up, down, and across our organization.

Nope.

It’s not unlike saying social media, mobile, real-time, wearables, etc. They’re just buzz words. It’s what we do with them that counts. Big data,  activity, behavior, the importance of each is in how we set out to learn and more importantly, apply learning toward adaption or innovation…everywhere.  The greatest promise about big data isn’t access to it; it’s the ability to excavate intellectual gems in a mountain of commodity information. Big data takes a personal touch. I call this the human algorithm. It’s the ability for someone with vision, intention, and ambition to find data that leads to hypotheses, testing, and intentional actions and outcomes. It’s as much about inklings and insights as it is about evangelizing revelations everywhere from R&D and marketing to sales and support to loyalty and back again. It’s taking seeking specific data because you’re looking for something not reacting to it. It’s pouring through 1s and 0s (Tweets, comments, posts, personalized user data, visits, connections, purchases, location data, etc…) and making them matter to you and the people around you.

In a real-time world, big data can inform the next steps of those who are looking to compete for the moment and for the future…right now. Everything starts though with an intention of doing something purposeful and then using data to support instinct or ideation. Univision, for example, is one company that is using social data specifically to think globally but is also acting locally around programming engagement.

Univision’s Uni Approach to Social TV

Before leaving to start his new social TV advisory BRaVe Ventures, along with industry veterans Jesse Redniss and Gary Vaynerchuk, I caught up with David Beck, former SVP and General Manager of Social Media at Univision to share his experience. Beck work in social media at Univision is widely regarded and I wanted to better understand how his team tuned into the elusive signal over the oh so common noise to make data actionable. Beck had the unique challenge of delivering dynamic and engaging social content to a hugely passionate, multilingual, multicultural Hispanic audience living in the US across the Univision network.

For example, content for the Mexican audience won’t necessarily resonate with the Colombian audience, as with the Venezuelan audience and so forth. It’s up to Beck and his team of content producers to be both data scientists and creative community managers – collaborating on themes and topics across news, entertainment TV, original series’, lifestyle content, sports, and more – and delivering on exciting, relevant content in real-time across dozens of social platforms. No easy task, and not one possible without an organization structure centered on data, with proper tools of which to make use, and a team with cross-functional, data-centered expertise.

To help, Dave once turned to Expion, a content marketing optimization platform to localize and manage their social marketing efforts. In finding the right technology solution, Beck then had to think about expertise and capabilities to support his vision.

“When you sign on with an enterprise system, you have to ask yourself, ‘Did I buy the Formula 1 but I don’t have the pit crew?,’” Beck asked. “Before we even made the decision, we had to ask ourselves if we’re staffed to extract value. We ended up investing early in making sure we had the people and skillsets that could handle the analytics and transform data into actionable insights.”

The Univision team is now able to pick up very quickly on what’s catching fire – digital, TV, or social – and have an enterprise toolset with immediate utility. More importantly, the team can look at the data and surface cultural nuances to quickly identify what’s working right now and how much content inventory they have to create and deploy. This reduces the amount of sifting, allows them to do more analysis, and to be able to articulate to all the other groups very quickly on what’s working, and why.

Translating Data into Value

With market-relevant insights comes the ability to develop market-relevant content and engagement strategies. At Univision, the social team is realizing significant spikes in activity linked to TV shows (particularly with a moving story line and series) can have huge implications to the marketing of the show, the story-line development, and even advertiser value. For instance, during Univision’s reality beauty competition show Nuestra Belleza Latina (“NBL”), his team noticed spikes in activity when the contestants talked about their home country — in turn they created content and calls to action on TV, social, and digital to leverage country pride to spark conversation. NBL maintained the highest engagement (Tweets per unique) of any TV show this season, according to NielsenSocial.

Dave’s story takes the “blah blah blah” out of the mix by honing in on understanding what, why or how information is specifically valuable to the people involved in deploying, managing and extracting value. Technology is only one part of the equation. The other piece is human. Univision is just one of many companies turning big data into big and actionable insights. And I guess that’s what this is all about. It’s about taking something that really doesn’t in of itself provide strategic direction and, by asking the right questions aligned with the best intentions, turn data into not only actionable insights, but also engaging stories that matter to people…their way.

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Customer Experience Happens To You Not Because of You…But It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

 

Earlier this year, I was asked to write the foreword for a new book focused on experience marketing and CX. The opportunity appeared while I was in the throes of researching and writing my (not yet announced) book. As hard as it was to pull away from it, I must admit that it was a welcome distraction.

So, I stopped what I was doing and read the manuscript for Connect: How to Use Data and Experience Marketing to Create Lifetime Customers by Lars Birkholm Petersen, Ron Person, Christopher Nash.

As usual, the deal was that I would be allowed to publish the foreword upon the release of the book. And viola…here we go!

Customer Experience Happens To You Not Because of You

“You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.“ – Albert Camus

Many strategists realize that the world is only becoming more connected, not less. Yet many executives still wonder when all of this crazy texting, selfie-taking, snapchatting, lunch tweeting, shenanigans is going to finally fizzle out. I don’t know about you, but I’m already dusting off my rotary phone and digging out my floppy disk collection just in case we do decide to go backwards.

Not really.

You get it. I get it. Do we really need yet another pep rally to celebrate our like-minded perspectives and passion to bring about change. Yes. In fact, we need to really ourselves to march the importance of the changing customer right on up to the C-Suite to drive home the importance of customer-centricity for not only the benefit of people but also the future of our business as well as our place in the market.

See, customers in all of their connected glory are evolving with or without us. At the same time there’s a mind-boggling lack of urgency and a resulting scarcity to support, resources, and budget to understand and engage this rising connected customer.

Ladies and gentleman, we have ourselves a customer experience imperative. But before we go any further, I must press pause for a moment to share something stark yet commonsensical; technology isn’t the answer. That’s right. Even though we’re faced with radical changes in customer behaviors, expectations and preferences as a result of technology, to lead the next generation of customer experience does not begin with technology. It starts with people.

As such, the opportunity for customer experience requires elevated discussions where organizations assess current experiences against a vision for what they can and should be. For example, is today’s customer experience a byproduct of our brand promise? Do we deliver against our stated intentions and is that experience reinforced at every touch point?

Approaching customer experience in this fashion takes what is typically today a bottom-up approach and shifts decision-making to a top-down model. And we all know that true transformation comes from the top. The difference though is that implementing customer experience initiatives with both, top-down and bottom-up strategies sets the foundation of which customer-centricity can build and flourish. One is directional, the “North Star” if you will, where customer experience initiatives map against a vision for how brand promises are enlivened and reinforced before, during and after transactions. It sets the standard for investments in technology, engagement, insights and pilots. It also sets the standard to follow and benchmark to measure against for all those who are responsible for the experience, wherever and whenever it’s formed or affected.

The result is a brand promise that’s measured by the experience customers have and share. It ladders up the importance of customer experience transcending it from a functional role to that of an enterprise-wide philosophy.

Good intentions are just the beginning, but it’s not enough.

Let’s assume that businesses, for the most part, want to do the right thing. After all, they’re making increasing investments in CRM, social, mobile, digital, et al. With spending comes sincerity and intention, right? After all my years of advising executives and researching the evolution of markets, I can honestly say that executives seem to care. I can’t say that I’ve ever heard anything from executives indicating any intention of dethroning the customer as king.

I can’t imagine sitting in a boardroom and hearing leadership reveal a new direction of anti customer-centricity…”Team, we just don’t care about our customers. And to be honest, we could care less about their experience. We believe this to be a shorter, sweeter path to profitability and earn outs.”

Depending on which definition you align with, customer experience is often characterized by the perception a customer has after engaging with a company, brand, product or service.

If customer experience is a critical pillar to build relationships and business outcomes, why is it that we are still fighting the good fight? If so many executives agree that the future of business lies in customer experience, why are we spending this time together right now? What’s the point? The answer is that there’s a disconnect. The link between aspiration and intention is separated by vision and action.

To my surprise (well, not really), Oracle found in its research that only 37% of executives are actually beginning to move forward with a formal customer experience initiative. Considering that businesses race along with the speed and agility of a cinder block, I’m sure that even this initial group of leading businesses will not make significant progress to establish a competitive edge someday soon. But some companies will aggressively invest in CX and innovation in products, processes and services and that will set the stage for disruption.

Why?

The customer landscape is shifting. It always does. This time, however, the door to Digital Darwinism has been kicked off its hinges. Technology and society are evolving faster than the ability to adapt. Consumers are becoming more connected. As such, they’re more informed. With information comes empowerment. And with new found connectedness and power, customer expectations begin to shatter current sales, marketing, and support models.

Social, mobile, and real-time each contribute to a new reality for customer experiences and engagement. This isn’t news. In the previously referenced study, Oracle found that 81% of executives agree social media is critical for success, yet 35% don’t support social media for sales or service.

Businesses either adapt or die. Ignoring it hastens Digital Darwinism. Jumping in without understanding or intention is a moonshot without aiming for the moon.

This isn’t just a channel strategy.

This isn’t just a technology play.

This is a shift toward a new movement where customer experience now screams for us to “Create Experiences!”

Indeed, customer experience happens with or without you.

The customer experience imperative needs you to make the business case.

In your organization, people are talking about customer experience right now. But for some reason it’s just not a priority. Actions don’t reflect promises. In CX, you must create a sense of urgency to accelerate to match or outpace the speed of market transformation. Without doing so, a sense of urgency will be created from the outside-in.

It’s not just about the customers you have today; those who are not already your customers represent your future growth.

Connect is the ultimate tool to take advantage of the new marketing revolution, where the customer is in control.  You’ll learn to transform your customer’s experience, create lifetime connections with your customers, and jump ahead of your competitors.

When we take a new approach to engagement, customers feel the difference.

Nothing begins without you…and that is why you are the hero and this is your journey. The future of digital marketing and customer experience is in your hands. Feel it. Design it. Advance it.

If you don’t lead it, who will?

About Connect

Connect is the ultimate marketing guide to becoming more relevant, effective, and successful within the new marketplace. Written by a team of marketing experts serving Fortune 500 brands, this book outlines the massive paradigm shift currently taking place within the industry, and provides the insight and perspective marketers need to stay on board.

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Spotify, Taylor Swift and The Music Industry’s Missed Opportunity

Guest post by Monica Corton (@momusing), Executive Vice President, Creative Affairs & Licensing Next Decade Entertainment, Inc.

If you have any connection to the music biz, it’s been hard to ignore story after story of the pull out of Taylor Swift’s catalog from Spotify. As a music publisher, I have to say that I too share all of the frustrations that both Swift and Big Machine’s, Scott Borchetta have with the bad royalty structure that exists with regard to streaming music. Spotify is not alone in this and certainly not the worst player by far (some could point to Pandora for that). However, I feel that Borchetta and Taylor missed a watershed moment in helping themselves and the industry find a solution to this difficult problem. If Swift and Borchetta have an issue with the amount of royalties they are receiving from Spotify, why didn’t they negotiate for a special extra tier of payment (an increased price to customers of Spotify) for Swift’s catalog so that they could obtain extra income and still satisfy all of her fans who would rather stream her music hundreds of thousands of times than digitally download her album? We need tiered fees in streaming to become a reality if the streaming business is ever going to work from a royalty standpoint. We also need a higher royalty for masters and publishing and to reduce the amount of time that people have free access, but both of these probably could have been achieved with the popularity of Swift’s album, 1989. In fact, few albums could get a digital service to make such a radical change, but I think, Swift’s could have gotten it done.

This whole incident feels like Napster Part II. We all know that streaming is where people are going. It’s not a theory anymore; we are all seeing the change on our royalty statements. Album sales via physical and digital downloads are significantly down and the reams of pages of streaming royalties increase every accounting period. They don’t add up to anything of significance, but they are definitely taking up lots of space on statements. However, if we know our customers are trending this way, we have to find a business model that supports that trend or we risk pissing them off again ala Napster. In fact, the minute I read this story, I went on to the Internet to see the backlash and many were writing that if they couldn’t stream Swift’s music on Spotify, they planned on going to a Bit Torrent site to rip their own free copy. Is that what we really want here?

It’s hard for me to believe Spotify wouldn’t entertain a special royalty tier for Swift’s music and find a way to lock it in the paid only side. They had to know the backlash and bad publicity would be very harmful when it came to Taylor Swift. If a tiered streaming fee had been done, Swift/Borchetta would have gotten more money, probably not as much as selling physical copies and digital downloads, but more than the $500,000 she has been averaging from Spotify, and she would not have upset her fans. More importantly, she would have helped thousands of artists and songwriters who don’t have the juice to get this kind of change done. She would have really made a statement for changing the business model for all, in a much more positive direction which is what she discussed in an article several months ago.

We need Spotify to succeed. If the industry has a problem with the business model of Spotify (which we do), the goal needs to be to fix the business model through negotiation, not to destroy another potentially viable business. To clarify, I’m saying this without owning any equity in Spotify. I am all for fighting for songwriter and artist’s rights, in fact, I do that all the time, but I am also for finding a business solution to keeping the music echo system viable.

We need to be much more strategic as an industry in finding solutions to these complicated problems. When the digital services go out there and say they paid millions to the labels and publishers, they did do that with the majors, but they were in the form of advances against a sub par royalty structure. That money is sitting in unrecouped advance accounts, being very slowly released to songwriters and artists as the poultry royalty uses click in each quarterly accounting period. Everyone is telling the truth here, but the way the system has been set up is doing serious damage to the livelihood of creative people. I hope that all of the hubbub over this actually leads to some much more inventive business solutions, rather than a continued pull out from Spotify by other artists and songwriters.

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Digital Transformation is About Empathy First and Technology Second

Every day, there’s seemingly yet another disruptive trend that emerges out of nowhere which affects consumer behavior and the future of everything along with it. Many of you already follow some of the most notable trends disrupting markets today and I know you’re devising new strategies as a result in order to compete in these ever shifting markets.

- Real Time

- Social Media- Mobile

- Sharing Economy

- Peer-to-Peer Economy

- Maker Economy

- Internet of Things

- Crowd Funding/Lending

This wheel of disruption keeps turning and the Butterfly Effect it unleashes with each revolution is forcing the creation of new agile models to stay current let alone get ahead.

Aside from the caché that each of these white hot trends boast, they roll up into one of the most important business movements in modern history. Enter the era of Digital Transformation.

Digital transformation has been a key area of research for me over the past few years. In fact, Altimeter Group recently formed a strategic alliance with CapGemini, one of the leading authorities on the subject, to lead joint research endeavors that help guide businesses throughout their transformation efforts.

Following the CapGemini announcement, Gloria Lombardi of Simply Communicate, reached out to learn more about the alliance and also what organizations are doing to adapt to the 21st Century. I wanted to share our discussion with you here.

Gloria Lombardi: Digital Transformation. What does it involve? And, which companies are doing well?

In our report “Why and How Companies are Investing in New Business Models to Lead Digital Customer Experiences” we analyzed some of the best companies doing well in this space. These include Starbucks, Intuit, Sephora, Lego, General Motors, and Ford.

Each of them is going through digital transformation in their own way. But, the stories we heard were phenomenal across the board. I will save the concrete examples for the report since it is free to download. However, here I’ll share some highlights.

Everyone begins at the same place. It starts with asking a simple question, “How is my digital customer and employee different from those who are traditional?”

From there, you learn about journeys, expectations, behaviours, and preferences. You start to see that the investments you make today are indeed showing signs of decay or irrelevance.

However, seeking these answers, is how we begin to learn the “why” and “how” of digital transformation.

For example, Starbucks‘ CDO Adam Brotman started with digital customers and mobile platforms. “I started with mobile; that was the heart of it where we really acted as a team,” he told me. “That worked well and catalyzed, moving into web where we were charged with figuring out what our mobile web strategy looked like and how it connected to our loyalty and payment groups. From there, it snowballed pretty quickly.”

Digital transformation is also about building relationships and alliances inside the company to expedite and scale change. Digital leaders must open the door for passionate employees throughout the company who have the energy, passion, and experience to champion change. As LEGO’s Lars Silberbauer, Global Director of Social Media and Search, shared with me, “It’s about finding those people in different departments who are willing to risk things to be a lead within the company. There are a lot of people who want to take a company forward.”

Once you have support, digital transformation will lead to new vision and operating philosophies as well as models and processes.

Another example is Motorola Solutions. The partnership between IT and marketing was elevated to an entirely new level. Dubbed the “MIT Group,” Marketing and IT formed an official alliance to focus on an integrated approach to digital customer experience and change.

Based on these studies, what are the challenges to digital transformation?

Too many companies are approaching their digital transformation from a technology perspective.

But at the heart, digital transformation is the story of how people are changing.

Whether we realize it or not, the way customers and employees make decisions, the technology they use, and how preferences and expectations evolve or detour, are stories for us to discover. These are the insights that guide the transformation. Technology adoption is not the solution: it is merely an enabler for transformation.

It takes vision to make the change. I will share with you an example from our second report on digital transformation.

“The State of Digital Transformation” revealed the organizations supposedly undergoing digital transformation. (After studying the best companies out there, we wanted to compare them with everyone else).

88% of these enterprises stated they were going through digital transformation efforts. However, within the last year, only 25% of them completely mapped out the customer journey to get a clear understanding of new digital touch-points.

With these findings at hand, what’s your view for the future of digital transformation?

Digital transformation means different things to different people. That’s OK. The future is going to either happen to businesses or because of the changes they undertake today.

Change has to start somewhere. Strategists will realize that their digital customers and employees are not only different from their traditional counterparts, but also different from the executives who think they know them.

The future is really about empathy. Without empathy, there can be no real change. Without it, businesses will succumb to something that I call ‘Digital Darwinism’, when technology and society evolve beyond the ability to adapt and thrive.

A shared vision around digital transformation…Can you tell us more?

Altimeter and Capgemini’s work is not only complementary; clients and prospects already substantiate it.

Capgemini takes a holistic view of digital transformation across the entire enterprise – from manufacturing to marketing, service, support and everything in between.

Initially, Altimeter Group focused on the digital customer experience and employee engagement. Our view was inspired by the work we were already doing around social media, content strategy and mobile. We learned that significant budget and resource investments are led by sales and marketing to update aging infrastructures and to pursue the digital customer more effectively.

Our initial research was designed to help marketers and IT professionals think beyond technology. We wanted to encourage them to invest in strategy, system and process roadmaps, which are relevant for discerning, sophisticated, (and impatient) customers and employees.

Innovation. Is there anything we can anticipate Brian?

Innovation doesn’t always correlate to technology. Most of the time, it starts with perspective: seeing things differently. It is something that touches processes, models, and corporate vision.

This is a key area of focus. We look forward to sharing more in the coming months.

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