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!

 

Show the Luv to your employees - the real secret behind "customer centricity"

I'm in the midst of a pile of research for a new body of work on the post-recessionary consumer.

In this process, I simply cannot believe the amount of re-cycling of old ideas is going on - the same concepts are being repeated in Web 2.0 format with ever more fancy new names; book designs that are ever more beautiful (thank you Creative Economy);  and accompanied by slick videos that are easy to embed and syndicate. 

One term that is rising to the fore in 2010 of all years is "Customer Centricity" as if the customer had just been discovered!! I can't disagree with the notion that success will only depend on selling something that the customer wishes to buy and that companies need to switch their focus from products to customer experience and support. I have always taken that as a given. Back in 2002 when Customer Relationship Management (CRM) was all the rage, I tried to identify why spending millions on software to continue to push products to people in a friendly way (ie the ability to insert a personal first name at the head of communications) wasn't working. At the time, Dancing with the Customer was our response. What I do take issue with is the way this most basic and obvious of concepts is being dressed up as new, exciting and so cool some 8-10 years later.

So in this context you you can imagine my relief in finding this short video clip of the co-founder of South West Airlines talk about their approach to customer care. Note: there's not a buzzword or piece of marketing jargon in the entire 3 minutes - just plain old common sense. For those of you who don't have time for the video, here's the essence. Be clear about who you are, what you stand for, hire the right people who align with those values and treat your employees in a way you would like them to treat your customers. Simple, eh?

“We don’t have any secrets; we are an open book. But every time these companies came in they would want to know ‘what are your programs?’ And I would say over and over—and you could see the shades go down because people didn’t buy it—we don’t have ‘programs’ it’s a way of life. It is who we are. We spend an incredible amount of time hiring the right people who want to do the right thing. But we don’t have programs for handling things.”

10 technology trends for 2010 - a strategist's perspective

While I have (for good or ill)  occasionally been described as ahead of my time, I resist describing myself as a futurist as the latter label sounds so pretentious. On the other hand, I do invest many hours a month reading, scanning, searching information that enables me to sense patterns so here are some things to watch in 2010. I’ll follow each of these topics over the next few weeks and identify what i think might be the consequences for places then – so stay tuned! The anticipated "buzzwords" for 2010 are highlighted in red. PLEASE feel free to point out serious omissions. Comments welcomed!!

 
 

1. Social Media Morphs into Social Business – you don’t need a social media strategy in 2010. That won’t be enough. You  will have to socialize your entire business, starting at home by engaging your employees, then your customers, in that order.  Keeping an eye on cost and returns  will be as important as it always was but more tools and metrics will emerge in response to the need to fine tune strategies and tactics and demonstrate accountability. Enterprises that remember it's all about people before process; purpose before profit, and passion before protocol tend to come out on top.
 
2. Integration & Identity - Thanks to widespread application integration and consumer desire to use multiple, diverse applications seamlessly and together,  identity will become a key issue in 2010 – who owns it, stores it, has access to it and under what terms? Could 2010 denote the "death of the login?" 
 Without  sharing my profile, how can I expect for the information I seek to be relevant and customized? But to whom  will I entrust data about me and who else should benefit from accessing it? Will we finally see travel-specific "widget" or web services shops to facilitate aggregation and smart mash-ups that can be used by amateurs and professionals alike?

3. Place-based Communities - we've seen the importance of community to people in the offline world and global connectivity has, in many respects, divorced community from geography. But thanks to the ying & yang of life, every trend has a counter-trend and technology will now enable people who share a common address (ie live in physical proximity) to find each other. I had no idea that YELP (one example of a hyperlocal site) attracts more visitors than Twitter. For whatever reason, I think we might slow down in 2010 and take more time to enjoy what is under our noses. Fed up with irresponsible national leadership, we'll see more community self-determination. Place brands won't be created - they'll emerge from the collaborative efforts of people identifying aspirations in common. They'll be recognized as social and emergent - now that is an important word. DMOs will recognize that they are, in fact, community facilitators, experience orchestrators and stage managers for a visitor's narrative. They'll invest in "destination webs" - the neural network that binds community members together and enables them to share intelligence and respond collectively to external threats and opportunities. 

 
3.Mobile phones and mobile apps will spread in number and intensity i.e., we’ll use them for more tasks; their content will get more real-time and richer, (more augmented);  more pleasurable to access; and smarter and more relevant to my activity, place and purpose.
They'll be used as content generators and payment devices just as often as communication devices - they might, one day, solve the identity issue identified in Trend # 2. But do you trust your mobile phone company more than Facebook. It's a tough call.
 
4.Content Curation. Content will threaten to bury us so the emphasis will be on curation, filtering and managing in and out of the cloud... Expect to see a number of companies try to bite at Google’s heels with more relevant, personalised, customisable search parameters that reflect the content being searched and the browser’s objectives. 

 
5. Video – it seems everyone wants to be on X Factor or a reality show. In 2010 their dreams will be fulfilled. Cheap HD cameras, Like FLIP,  that can stream to the internet in real time (UStream) will add to the mountain of pixels already clogging the airwaves. The new word for this is Vlogging and Cisco is leading the charge – well they would be, wouldn’t they? 
 

6. Customer Engagement & Crowdsourcing - while in 2009 content was being generated spontaneously by consumers, expect brands and destinations to take a more proactive approach to engaging customers in generating useful content and supporting their brand advocacy. BTW advocacay is the new buzz word for “word of mouth” and crowdsourcing becomes a way of engaging the entire destination community (visitors, residents, local businesses, associations and people) in inviting and caring for guests. 
 
7. Women – in 2009, more men than women were using social media and women’s purchasing power and style captured men’s attention. About time. So will 2010 be the year that women leap to the stage and start presenting at travel and tech events? Your guess is as good as mine. At the Phocuswright conference, women constituted less than 10% of the presenters but, as one of them was in charge of Google’s ad revenues, then maybe less = more.
 
8. Language – as many tourism businesses and enterprises rush to the developing world, where signs of the green shoots of recovery appear first, we’ll face a new challenge. The world is not WASP; cultures differ and people need to work in their own language. Expect to see a spate of translation services – automated and semi automated. Technology costs might go down but localization costs will make up for it. There might be a low cost solution (see trend 6) but you’ll have to wait till later in the New Year for my thoughts on that one.

 
9. Semantic or Synaptic Web – as humans rush up Maslow’s ladder in search of meaning, technology follows suit – hence talk of a Semantic Web. A new term that will crop up more frequently in 2010 is the Synaptic web – are they different?  Well the first is about deeper layers of meaning and the second is about connections and relationships. The network of the web is increasingly resembling the neural pathways in the brain. 

 
10. Collective Intelligence. 2010 will mark the end of the Age of the Individual and the emergence of a new form of collective thought  - a Global Brain - and action that emerges from the multiplicity of new, different and self aware connections. We’ll start to find ways of working without formal leaders and commands from above. We’ll emulate the working of computers while mimicking the behaviour of swarms. In 2009 a number of books on swarms and herd appeared on bookshelves – expect to see more in 2010 as we learn how to work across platforms, cultures and vast distances as a agile and adaptive teams. This is especially relevant to destinations. In 2010, expect to see DMOs focus on getting SMART and attending to the needs of the niche, smaller operators at the end of a "long tail."

And if this isn’t enough, the bloggers at TNOOZ have published their technology predictions for travel here. Surely enough food for thought to fuel and entire new year of feverish activity!!!

Vail's Gutsy Leader Turns Marketing Strategy Upside Down

Here’s a superb example of tourism leaders re-thinking marketing in response to the down-turn and the emergence of social and rich media. CEO Rob Katz explains via video, of course, how Vail has completely re-thought its marketing strategy and relationships with skiers. 

The full story is available from Advertising Age link here

The recession significantly shortened the planning time  for the purchase and sale of ski experiences - decreasing from 4-6 months to 2-3 weeks.  Vail also recognized the volatility in the marketplace and realized that print media restricted their ability to respond to short-term, even real-time demand. 

Last year Vail had spent 80% of its budget before the vacation period so couldn’t respond to last minute demand.  So they took the brave decision to pull 50% of their ad spend out of print and put in reserve. Vail now uses social media and operates like a political campaign to communicate in real time response to local market conditions.

It’s a brave call – their competitors are still present in the big ski publications with the conventional rich brand messaging but Vail has a war chest with which to strike as demand rises closer to the holidays. No wonder Katz likens himself to Braveheart!

If it works and the gamble pays off, you can bet others will follow – hopefully the print community possesses similar gutsy leadership within its ranks. They’re going to need it.

Escaping the Commoditization Trap - intro

In a resource constrained world, tourism, like all sectors, will have to deliver an honest return on the use of precious resources i.e., pay the true and total cost of its operations. 

 In the long run, cheap travel cheapens everything. The supplier sees his already thin margins evaporate and has to slash costs, standardize, homogenize and automate. Travelers’ experiences deteriorate and the host community ends up picking the tab – to cover increased costs of handling waste, congestion, economic and social dislocation (see earlier post on the new Death in Venice). 

Cheap travel is neither good business (prone to boom and bust and dependent on volume growth) nor sustainable.

If a destination is talking about being sustainable, it has to escape the commoditization trap. Here are three ways out of this nightmare – to start: 

1. stage experiences unique to a place and time; 

2. engage and enable customers to personalise their own experiences in meaningful ways; and 

3. enable the customer to have a transformative experience – ie, experience an inner change of perspective, being or value. 

The rest of this essay describes these three antidotes in more detail - read on here to learn about how places as far apart as Lapland, Canada, and Nevada are using experiences to avoid the gravitational pull of "commoditization" through experience design and innovation. Readers - please add more case studies to this discussion. A sustainable tourism depends on your efforts!

WTM Celebrates 30 years - video designed to encourage reflection

Thank you Dimitrios Buhalis for posting this video on Facebook. It's an 8 minute overview of the growth, evolution and potential future of what has to be the world's most global and pervasive economic and social phenomenon.Designed to inspire the 5000 exhibitors at the World Travel Market and the hundreds of thousands of visitors, who walk the trade hall floors,  to think reflectively about the future, it provides plenty of food for thought! It will be discussed at the Tourism 2030 event at WTM on 12th Nov - see here

Will Whitehorn, whose company Virgin Galactic aspires to move people carbon free, outside the earth's atmosphere, urged hotels to "become much more efficient through the use of solar, wind, waste and water power in order to live with the risk of expensive oil while dealing with a public that demands better, cheaper ecotourism".

While there were several heartening references to the need for responsibility, there appeared to be an implicit assumption that "industry" must also cater to what the public wants i.e. more, better, cheaper ecotourism...The Secretary General of the UNWTO, Taleb Rifai confirmed this by saying that "travel has become a human right, like the right to breath, the right to speak and the right to think" almost implying that any attempt to curb this appetite would be an infringement of those rights. 

Mr Rifai concludes with a bold and "optimistic" vision - "very soon, there will not be a single human being on ths universe who will not cross an international border as a tourist or as a businessman. This tremendous power of people moving all over the world is what is going to shape our industry and impact the world". 

You betcha... 9 billion people crossing an international border at least once a year equals a 10-fold increase in tourist arrivals...just as well they'll be flying in space. Now what kind of fuel will be used to defy the gravity sufficiently to lift off 9 billion souls eager to keep exploring? 

I'd like to think travel was a right but I think  its secondary to and dependent on the right to clean water, sufficient food to grow healthy bones, and a roof over one's head. So if Mr. Rifai's vision were to be realised, we've got much responsible work to do. 

Having spent my entire life serving this phenomenon we call tourism, I happen to really care about the future of the many dedicated and bright people engaged in it. But there won't be a future unless much higher standards of self-honesty and realism are applied. It's time to focus energy on creating a vision of a better , less harmful tourism and jettison ideas that we can continue with "business as usual." International tourism is a privilege NOT a right. It can bring benefits but incurs huge environmental and social cost - just ask the Venetians. Responsible tourism or Sustainable tourism will never fly unless both sides of the equation are recognized from the outset and we stop applying a woolly-headed, polyannnish, false optimism and got deadly serious about transformation.

Gen Y Holds Tight to E-Mail and Texting - where do they get time for travel?

Newspapers may be reporting on the demise of e-mail, and some research indicates that young people are turning more toward social networking than more traditional online communication, but college students still see e-mail as a critical medium for messages.     via www.emarketer.com

I had read elsewhere that Gen Y considered email too slow but this research shows that emails are as popular as sending SMS messages. 

The key point to note from the emarketer article is that the amount of time devoted to social networking sites and email combined is huge - some 62 hours. But that total doesn't include the time spent on sending those texts, talking on the phone, reading messages and visiting web sites - all activities US college students would be loath to give up. Add in the time needed for study and attending classes (?), chilling out with friends, traveling to and from school, attending to bodily functions and requirements and you have to wonder where they find time to travel. Has anyone done a study on the potential for screens to absorb more attention than the real world? 

Finland makes 1Mb broadband access a legal right | Webware - CNET

According to the report, every person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection.

via news.cnet.com

It's not the size of a brain that makes the person SMART, but the number of connections. By making broadband access a legal right and setting an ambitious target of 100 Mb by 2015, the Finns show just how smart they are....Methinks a winning combination: ubiquitous high speed access, mobility,  digital literacy plus the Finn's skill at design? Stand back and watch this space....

Social Media - déjà vue?

An overwhelming sense of déjà vue is the emotion most often aroused in response to the tidal wave of enthusiasm for the marvels of “social media.” The current hype reminds me of George Santayana’s warning, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

First I want to thank Tim Malbon (@malbon) of Made By Many for his blog post drawing my attention to a recent article by David Armano in the Havard Business Review and available here. 

David is a brilliant designer who has proven able to illustrate graphically and potently some of the major changes in how we see our world, and our relations with each other. I use his images, slides and quotes frequently and with gratitude as well as attribution! See below left.

David and Tim both make the valid point that the term “social media’ is being trivialized by marketers and promoters who see the emergence of such communication tools as Facebook and Twitter as nothing more than another set of distribution channels that can be used to reach and influence a customer. 

Even McKinsey, the epitome of mainstream consulting, is in on the act – triumphantly and proudly claiming in a recent article, The Consumer Decision Journey, that they have  (just?)discovered that “a more sophisticated approach to marketing is required – one that enables marketers to move aggressively beyond purely push-style communication, to influence consumer-driven touch points along what they have decided to call “a consumer decision journey.”  

Their research with some 20,000 companies provides further proof of the cyclical, dynamic nature of the customer buying process – as opposed to the linear, funnel model that has dominated marketing thinking. Their interactive exhibit shows how the number of brands in a consideration set can vary according to the attitudes and experience of the customer (are they passive or loyal), stage in the cycle, and effects of events that trigger purchases. It’s a good article and worth a serious read. 

But perhaps it is a sign of my age or a need for some summer sunshine, but I feel I have seen it all before. Around the time of the dot com bust, the corporate world was also fixating on Customer Relationship Management – spending millions on software that would enable them to personalize their messages and “manage” customer relations. Authors of the  McKinsey article mentioned earlier speak about “managing word-of-mouth.”

CRM Has Only Had Limited Results - will Social Media Fare Better?

Many felt back in 2002 that CRM was not delivering on its promise and there was much soul searching as to the reasons why. In 2002, I wrote a paper on the subject called  Dancing With the Customer in an attempt to dig beneath the surface and examine why CRM was unlikely to succeed despite the millions spent on it. The premises and arguments made 7 years ago could be applied with very little change to an analysis of why use of “social media” will, in general, generate the same mixed and often unsatisfactory results for those who have not really understood what's going on beneath the surface.  

Back in the late 90s and early 00s we asked whether bad software design was the issue. Was the problem a technical one or was it structural? Was it the way companies are organized into functional silos that was the source of the problem? Nearly a decade later, McKinsey concludes their essay with the suggestion that organizational structure does indeed present the major impediment and that the customer-facing activities of web sites, PR, loyalty programs need to be integrated and given appropriate leadership. 

Where I disagree with McKinsey

But I am sure, as I was in 2002, that the problem goes much deeper than the need for functional integration. Siloed structures reflect a culture, a shared understanding of “the ways things are or work around here.” 

The reality is that most corporations view marketing as a battle or power struggle and the language used to describe marketing gives this attitude away.  Customers are targeted in order that markets are captured, competitors are slaughtered and consumers are persuaded to do something of direct benefit to the marketer. In 2009, with no tongue in cheek, McKinsey personnel can write: “If marketing has one goal, it’s to reach customers at the moments that most influence their decisions – to seek those moments when consumers are open to influence.” In a culture that considers the company as predator and the customer the prey, then the term “open to influence” likely equates to “at their weakest and most vulnerable” (my words).  Is this not why second glazing salesmen and debt collectors always call at dinner time?

Again McKinsey reveals the power of implicit culture in the concluding sentence of their essay when they write “marketers need to view the change not as a loss of power over their customers but as an opportunity to be in the right place at the right time, giving them the information and support they need to make the right decisions.” 

So it's not structure but culture and a deeply ingrained mindset that's the problem.If you don't fix that, no amount of tweets, followers or fans are going to make a sustained difference. 

Today’s consumers don’t need to be persuaded to consume – they spend their entire day having to consume – but they can and do need to be supported. As any aid agency will tell you, people cannot be supported unless they are treated respectfully as equals and until there is a fundamental shift in mindset that sees donor and recipient,  company and customer as engaged in a mutually beneficial conversation, transaction or, as I have suggested, a dance. 

Social Media Is Not a Fashion but a Symptom

Social media is not a fashion or even a trend but a symptom and sign of a much deeper shift in the relationship between producer and consumer; employee and customer. It’s a fundamental mindset shift that is both enabling and being enabled by the availability of interactive, digitized media and tools.

It is, as early architects of web 1.0 and 2.0 discerned at the turn of the Millennium, about a fundamental shift in both power and perception. As Armano writes: 

 

It never used to be called “social media”. eBay and Amazon never talked of “social media” - they talked about “service” and “community”. They spoke of the potency of The Web to smash old business models, flatten out-dated hierarchies and wrench power away from the centre and towards the edges to create new types of value exchange. Communications is but a tiny fragment of this revolution - albeit massively interesting and important - and yet it’s the campaign-flavoured, comms-focused stuff that defines - and limits - “social media” for most businesses.

In the Dancing with the Customer paper, I also focus on service and community: 

So winning enterprises are those that conceive of themselves as inter-connected business webs or trading communities held together by a common customer. The customer sits at the centre of an orbit not at the end of a chain. Winning enterprises are those with the most “intelligence” – i.e. are able to sense and respond to visitor needs in real time. They are able to exchange and circulate this intelligence to all members of the community so that the visitor’s whole experience is a positive one. 

So if you want to really ensure that your company or destination stays ahead of this revolution, you’ll spend less time wondering about your Facebook strategy, measuring the number of followers or even checking your Twitter grade and spend more time thinking through how you work collaboratively with others to design a profitable ecosystem that provides the deep support customers seek and deserve. For industries like tourism that are suffering the ravages of commodification, such a systems  approach is the only one that will save us from self-destruction. It's also an approach that requires an unparalleled level of collaboration.

So for summer reading that is guaranteed to “change your mind”, don’t read "Twitter for Dummies" or "100 Ways to Succeed with Social Media" but revisit The Cluetrain Manifesto, or pick up Rushkoff’s prescient analysis, Life Inc., Tapscott’s Wikinomics;  Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody or,  perhaps,  dip into the prescient, profound but much under appreciated The Support Economy by Shuboff and Maxmin to discover the scope, scale and pace of deep change that's  happening out there. 

Alternatively, enjoy the kids, the beach or the ice cream and come back here and pick up the Reader's Digest versions of the above and have a great summer vacation!

And remember – you are not at war; life’s a dance. 

Enjoy the summer.

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.