DestiCorp 2.0

It's Not Social Media, It's Social Business - Do you care?

The five biggest drivers of business change right now can be summarised thus:

1. Customers now have the power to talk back, to talk with each other; and to attract enormous attention simply through the power of their own creativity. The value of a company is now directly related to the subject and quality of the conversations that take take place about it and determine a reputation. Between 60-80% of all market capitalisation of companies is tied up in intangibles such as brand equity, reputation, human capital,and  intellectual property. Never has it been so important, or, for that matter, so easy to LISTEN.

2. There's finally a recognition that companies aren't things - corporate entities only with legal rights and no responsibilities - but collections of human beings keeping company with each other and working to a common purpose. As Simon Sinek has said: 100% of employees are people; 100% of customers are people; 100% of investors are people; 100% of supliers are people etc. So it's not surprising to see that companies behave like the people who work in them.

Some companies seem to be super cheerful, energetic, happy, passionate and devoted to serve; others are rigid, buraucratic, stiff, slow, and affect a bored disinterest. We still talk about them as "brands" but what we mean is personality.

This trend, by the way, is sometimes described as "the humanisation of business" - as if there ever was a time when companies were run by robots. (That's in the future not in the past). So instead of companies fretting about transactions; we have collections of people focused on relationships. It's all soft & fuzzy; about feelings not product atttributes; and behaviours are harder to measure; highy subjective and utterly intrinsically SOCIAL. Hence the title of the post. So congrats if you have a Facebook page, a twitter account and your company President blogs. But that won't be enough. Unless you've opened up every business process (in human terms - every human task; item of communication; element of service) and looked at ways it WOWs the customer; while enabling the employee who are doing the wowing to feel that they are growing and developing too. 

 3. Because companies are human and because humans are in such a fix right now, there's a growing desire on the part of both employees to want to find meaning in their work and for customers to find fulfullment or feel good about their relationship with it. No longer can companies afford to be nothing but lean and mean transaction machines focussed on quarterly profits. Edeleman's Good Purpose 2010 report found that 86% of global consumers believe that companies should place at least equal weight on societies interest as in business' interest. 

In fact, there's now growing evidence that companies whose culture expresses a "higher purpose" are significantly more profitable than those that place return on investment as highest priority. If you want proof, read Firms of Endearment, a more inspiring book than Jim Collins' Good to Great, that highlights the spectacular results achieved by 30 companies run by CEOs who are happy to call themselves Conscious Capitalists. There's even an institute that is promoting an alternative to the kind of capitalism that has got western economies into the trouble we're in now. So when you think ROI, remember that it stands for Return on Involvement (see Interaction Associates) and, as importantly, start to think of who is involved.

4. Customers are changing too. The recession accelerated a change that emerged in the late 90s when a growing proportion began to tire of the endless cycle of consumption, obsolescence and waste. As boomers aged, it was inevitable that they would be driven less by Maslow's deficiency needs (security, belonging, esteem) and more by a need to develop, to serve, to find meaning and purpose. Perhaps as a result of watching their parents and deciding that they didn't want to be like them, we find that GenY and the Millennials want more than a pay check. Some 61% of GenY employees say they feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.

There's a huge body of research that has been conducted since the recession that suggests anywhere from a low of 30% to a high of just over 50% of consumers could now be described as "conscious" - awake, alert and aware. They are taking more responsibility for their own decisions as their trust in traditional, authoritative "command and control" style organisations like Government, the Church, big companies is at an all time low. At DestiCorp we're so convinced that this trend will provide a means for tourism to get off the mass, industrialised bandwagon that we think is so destructive, that we'll be focussing all our work on ushering in a Conscious Travel movement. 

5. The role of women. Women have already shown their proclivity for use of social media. See an earlier post The Web is Female. We simply love communicating. But it's not all talk. Women also have the financial clout. According to Businessweek, American women make more than 80% of buying decisions in all homes.Their buying power  has soared 63% over past three decades. Some 30% of working women now outearn their husbands

While they are still hitting their head against the glass ceiling of senior management, it's women who undertake the majority of tasks that involve face to face or voice to voice contact with employees and, thereby, are directly reponsible for a firm's reputation. 

In summary. the decade beginning 2010 will be one in which companies thrive or wane on their ability to show they care; to create working environments in which human beings flourish and are active contributors to the healing, well-being and prosperity of their communities. 

Examples of travel-related Companies that Care include the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, where social media is derived from an inherent belief of its CEO and President, James Knowles. He believes in and encourages “the miracle of human growth.” The hotel’s connection to a community of people is based on story telling, off-line connections, and relationships built on passion, says the company. The team is always interested in telling stories that engage people while building relationships and relevant communities. The hotel says it is selling hotel rooms and events via the strength of its networking and content. To find out how Kimpton Hotels and the Joie de Vivre Group are showing they care, review this summary on the new Conscious Travel web site here.

So How Do You become a Social Business?

Becoming a truly social business requires some form of transformative shift in mindset at the top of an organization. First it means appreciating that a company, like a community, is a dynamic, living breathing system made up of living breathing systems who happen to be human beings. The distinctions between what is internal and external are artificial - the boundaries are highly permeable. And in these systems, the intelligence does not lie in the nucleus, the brain or the HQ of an organization but is distributed throughout with highest concentrations on the edges (or in the case of tourism, on the frontline where customers interacts with hosts). 

A conscious business acknowledges that all value resides in the nature of the relationship between supplier and buyer and the quality of those relationships is determined by the amount of self respect and mutual respect that exists in those relationships. Employees that are kept in the dark, not trusted by management, treated as children not adults, required to adhere to rigid "inhumane" policies and procedures etc. will pass on this antisocial culture to customers with disastrous consequences. The business might have a very active social strategy but implementation will fail if it hasn't addressed what it means to be a social business. 

Sadly most businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon by trying to master the tools without any consideration of the deeper change in mindset that's required. This is where I find Simon Sinek's observations helpful - treat the business as if it were a person not a thing because every interaction with customers, suppliers, other employees and other stakeholders will always be personal.

Here's Simon Sinek speaking plain common sense about Social Business. Pour yourself a coffee and take 25 minutes to remind yourself how the world really works!

 

Inbound Marketing and The Power of Attraction

Long before social media erupted as "the next big thing, many observers noticed that,  as power shifted towards the consumer, PUSH marketing would be replaced by PULL marketing. We even wrote a paper called When Push Comes to Pull ( Download Push-pull)  back in 2002!

And I'm pleased to discover on a recent reading that our predictions then are now becoming today's reality.  For example, here are 3 prognostications dated 2002: 

1. There'll be a shift in focus from promoting to listening, from selling to serving, from control to relationship building and from marketing as sophisticated promotion to a committed form of customer care. 

2. A task/event driven approach will be enbled by the widespread adoption of open standards, XML-wrapped web services and service-oriented architectures. 

3. A collaborative, event-driven approach to satisfying consumer's needs will, in turn, be enabled by a new business ecology comprising service providers, brokers, channel managers, affinity agents and network providers........

Sadly, with every generation and every new, "next big thing", the lexicon is reinvented to distinguish those "in the know" from those still struggling to keep up. That trend is unfortunate because it only slows down the process of diffusion.

The word now being used to describe PULL marketing (ie where the customer assembles the information they need when and where it is convenient to them, is INBOUND marketing and I think Mike Volpe of Hubspot is the author. Not that I wish to appear critical of Mike as he is a GREAT communicator;  has done much to advance understanding of this critical marketing shift and his firm delivers practical solutions that deliver results. Hubspot's slides on the topic are a good place to start and The Social Times Consultancy has just published this precise summary of Inbound Marketing that is useful for those in a hurry. 

The graphic of the magnet - copied, without permission from the Social Times post - provides the thousand word summary:  PULL or INBOUND marketing is all about ATTRACTION. 

 STOP PROMOTING and START ATTRACTING

That means stop talking about how great you are and start living and modeling your values and brand attributes. For tourism destinations that means ensuring that you ARE friendly and welcoming. Have you interacted with airline check-in staff recently or the taxi drivers that provide that critical first impression?. If you claim to be green and sustainable, is that commitment immediately obvious to the visitor on arrival and throughout every aspect of their experience? If you have positioned your city as one that is cool and creative, is WIFI ubiquitous and free?

It's an old maxim that "like attracts like". The beauty being that customers will self select if you act authentically and consistently with your brand's values. Given that so many parties are involved in the delivery of the experience, such consistency cannot be assured without widespread community effort. Branding is not a task that can be delegated to an agency no matter how creative or clever. A destination brand has to "ring true" and reflect the past, present and future aspiration and values of the community and they way its residents would like to welcome guests. PULL marketing is really all about service delivery and exceeding guest expectations. The concept maybe about 10 years old now - hardly new - but from an execution point of view is hardly out the womb!

National Parks in Peril from Climate Change

Climate Change is the greatest threat our national parks have ever faced. That's the conclusion of a new report we're releasing today, along with the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. National Parks in Peril highlights the 25 national parks most at risk.

via switchboard.nrdc.org

The "we" referred to above is the NRDC - that has issued a comprehensive report on current and future impact of climate change on the national parks in the US. Given that National Parks in Canada are likely to experience greater warming levels, such a study for Canada's parks would be timely. Please let me know what might exist. Go to the NRDC site for the report and check out the interactivity supporting this map showing the impact on western US. 

The livelihood of thousands of people involved in tourism around such parks in North America will be negatively affected over the next 20 years and,  given that during that short period, we know that global energy demand will rise by 50%; global demand for food will rise by 50% and water availability will decrease by 30%, the impacts on scenic values, ecosystems and biodiversity both in the Parks and out of them will sadly worsen.  Whether the tourism industry acts to avoid such changes depends on whether it really does care for future generations.

Any state, provincial, or national DMO that fails to include a strategy for carbon reduction in its future strategies is failing both the industry it serves and the future generations that might be their clients.

Twitter's new home page should send DMOs all a twittering

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Convention Visitor Bureaus (CVBs) are embracing “social media” (notably Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts ) at a noticeably faster pace than their adoption of the internet in the 1990s. That’s the good news. 

The bad news – for those that haven’t entered the brave new world of microblogging – is that “time waits for no one”. The twitter, social media tide continues to flow fast. Twitter’s new home page, announced yesterday and illustrated below, is designed to make Twitter less confusing to newbies. More importantly, it contains a search engine that can be accessed by any browser (having a twitter account is no longer a pre-requisite of search). 

As ably addressed by Colin Schaal in his blog post today, this “changes everything” yet again. If search is the primary source of traffic to travel sites and browsers can now get real time information and offers directly from the source, we can expect Google’s domination of search to feel some pressure and the stakes to be raised for DMOs

As I write this, the Destination Marketing Association International (#DMAI) is having its annual conference in Atlanta and a handful of delegates are tweeting – there’d be more than a handful but the poor wifi reception is apparently hindering some efforts?!? Twittering is bound to be a subject of conversation...

• Nathan Kam (@nathankam) has kindly assembled and updated a list of over 350 DMOs and CVBs that operate Twitter accounts – his  current list here appears to cover mostly North American destinations..
• GoSeeTell  here has compiled a list and applied a ranking that's published in their June blog
• DCI, a place consulting firm, has recently published a report, The Twitter Elite. Congratulations Baltimore, Greater Fort Lauderdale. New Orleans, San Francisco, and Tampa Bay. 

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way of tracking, comparing and evaluating the success of these efforts or, indeed, of ensuring that the lists are complete. So we must express our gratitude to these tracking pioneers and their willingness to share. 

Destinations like Denver (@iknowdenver) that have invested significantly in a twitter strategy are not included in Nathan’s list; Greater Philidelphia (@uwishnu) was excluded even though this DMO has pioneered social media in the USA; and Travel Portland (@indpx), while listed in Nathan Kam’s inventory, does not rank in the top 5 of DCI’s  elite despite pioneering the innovative Twisitor Centre that both GoSeeTell and Travel Portland developed. 

But it’s early days, the pace of change is breathtakingly fast, and twitter account names are sometimes ambiguous. Have you secured yours?

It’s an English summer, pouring with rain and cold (!), so I thought I’d add a little research of my own. I took a quick look at four national destinations – all of whom have positive marketing reputations to maintain. They just happen to be Britain and three of “her” former colonies!

VisitBritain is active on Twitter having safeguarded the brand name (@visitbritain) and has attracted 3,866 followers. The national DMO has emulated an earlier New Zealand initiative and encouraged browsers to follow an individual travelling around the "Edge of Britain". But their twitter page laments - twice in one day, no less, that no one is following "Scott". 

It took a while to find out who Scott was (@scottyramsay) - his twitter address is buried deep within the Visit Britain site as part of a campaign called the Edge of Britain. Please follow him asap - the weather's lousy and he must wish he were in New Zealand, Australia or even Western Canada where the temperatures are soaring. 

Australia has lead the way with Facebook – its fan page attracts some 246,000 fans and its Twitter account (@seeaustralia) has posted over 398 tweets that have attracted 3,436 followers. Impressive considering that the main Australia site does not announce either its Twitter or Facebook presence on its customer facing site.

New Zealand appears to be playing catch up as far as Facebook is concerned with the 100%PureNew Zealand Facebook presence attracting only 4000 fans but their Twitter account is older, richer in content (632 tweets) and its name has greater brand integrity (@purenewzealand), attracting over 5000 followers. The Kiwis also seem reluctant to promote the twitter account on their home page. 

Canada is lagging slightly compared to its southern competitors with no Facebook presence. The national marketing organization does have a Tweet account but its name, @ctccct, is unlikely to grab popular attention.  Despite the official and mysterious name, some 1623 followers have signed on. What is also surprising given the hold that policy has on decision-making is the fact that a French only version wasn't deemed mandatory (significant if you work for the federal government, that is). There’s no reference to any interactive social media on the CTC home page but there is a direct link from the separate media centre site  to the twitter account which appears to be both a responsibility and initiative of the media centre.

So given the rapid rise in the number of Twitter accounts - as well as the number of dormant accounts (some 20% have no tweets at all), we can also expect growing confusion in the marketplace as to which Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages are being run by “official” DMOs – or does this matter?  If, on the other hand, if place brand integrity and quality assurance are important, then DMO’s will need not just to be tracking mentions and tweets but keeping an eye on responses too. All point to more labour intensive work at a time when most DMO and CVB budgets are under real financial pressure.

It's an exciting time in tourism marketing history to be involved and I defy anyone to predict with certainty how this explosion in twitter chatter will evolve. But like any good party, best not to be a wallflower...isn't it time to dance with the customer or, in my case, go "singing in the rain"?!

In subsequent posts I hope we can start a rigorous discussion about the more complex and strategic issues associated with the implications of social media. In the meantime, I'd welcome your comments. 

If you have, as I hope you you do, detailed, practical questions of practitioners, as to what works, what doesn't or why when it comes to implementation, then I suggest you contact the bloggers in my blogroll or the authors of the sites listed in this post. If you want help convincing your boss or Board that this is an area you can't ignore or starve of resources, then I'd be pleased to help!

Brands as Change Agents - so says Unliver's CMO

The big firms are slowly waking up. At Media Week's Media 360 Conference, Simon Clift, the global CMO of Unilever responsible for selling €40bn worth of "soap, soup and tea", said the world had changed more than marketers have accepted or absorbed, and heralded "a new era of remarkable opportunity" - see here

While that may not be earth shattering, what I did find exciting to learn is the fact that Mr. Clift went on to say that "brands should be an agent of change" - a sentiment my colleague Leon Benjamin and I have,  in our own more modest way,  been pushing for nearly a decade as you can see here on an old, homemade site called Business For Good. 

See: Brands should be "agents for change," says Unilever cmo - WARC News - WARC.com.

If Simon Clift or someone at Unilever is reading this (he, he), I would strongly recommend Terry Barber's excellent post on what business leaders can learn from non profit organizations. He gives four suggestions:

1. Inspire customers by helping them believe in something they once thought was impossible. (It worked for Barack Obama)

2. Show genuine appreciation for their business (how many companies have you ever received a thankyou card or email from?)

3. Help him see that he is a part of a bigger community of world changers. One of the most powerful fund-raising terms is the word join. “Join the fight.” “Jointhe cause. “ “Join me”—all indicating that you can be a part of something much bigger than yourself.

4. Communicate how you are making the world a better place - see excerpt below...

I recently met with a CEO of a Fortune 500 Company and saw this principle illustrated in the most dramatic fashion. Throughout the building there were maps with pushpins marking various towns, cities, and villages around the world where this company and its employees were providing clean drinking water for indigent people groups. There was an underlying message there that said, What we are doing as a company is helping to make the world a better place. No matter what kind of business you are in, learn from the nonprofit sector that you can inspire your customers by illustrating how you are making the world a better place.

Do you aspire to inspire your customers? Give them something to believe in that they once thought was impossible. Demonstrate genuine appreciation for their business. Help your customers connect with other customers to illustrate that they are part of a bigger community, and communicate how you as a business are making the world a better place.

Lead and they may follow. Teach and they may learn. Inspire . . . and they will never be the same.

Alot of my work is for destinations - very rarely do Destination Marketing Organizations lead their communities and invest in making the destination a better place. As marketers they feel they can and should leave this to others. New Zealand is different - if you read their tourism development strategy. they believe that tourism should take the lead in ensuring the country lives up tothe highest standards of sustainabiility. They have to, after all, they're 100% Pure.

Learning Social Media From the Pros

You can read all you want about Social Media and how it is replacing traditional push channels but surely the best way is to hang it with a young traveler who uses it all the time. Visit Aarhus and a bright consulting firm called Seismonaut recently had the bright idea to develop a competition for which the prize is a free 48 hour visit to Denmark. The winner had to submit a video outlining how they would use Social media on such a trip and help Denmark make better use of all the Web 2.0 tools now available. You can check out more about this clever idea at www.48hoursindenmark.com. 

The winner, one Jesse Desjardin, just happens to hail from Northern Canada and his video is a great introduction to the ways his generation and even boomers like me are starting to use the rich array of tools to plan and experience their travels. (BTW,  I once used the GPS feature on my iphone in deepest rural India to see where our taxi driver was taking us. It worked and I was very impressed until I got the roaming charges when I returned home.)  But back to my story.....

Here's Jesse's video that  successfully persuaded the Danish as to why he should win the prize - not quite as exotic a prize as the dream job  won by a young British lad who will be caretaking a beautiful island in Queensland, but another good example of a low cost way to attract publicity for Denmark; and spike the interest of highly influential members of a target market (Jesse is online director for Global Gossip that runs 25 internet cafes around the world and regularly communicates with 25,000 people mostly aged 19-25).I bet they'll be following his Tweets - why don't you - see www.twitter.com/dessedee