Empowered

Introducing the Mobile Mind Shift Index (Webinar next week)

Josh Bernoff — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:51:36 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

We are in the midst of a mobile mind shift. This is not just about "mobile first" or apps. This is a complete change in the psychology of consumers.

In a change in behavior that can only be called Pavlovian, people with smart mobile devices request information and receive service. What's the weather? That's the weather. Where's the nearest Gelato shop? There it is. Does this laptop have good ratings? Sure it does. What are my friends up to on Facebook? Each request cements the idea that smartphone has everything you need. As a result, consumer start by requesting, then expecting, and then demanding that companies give them instant service. This is the mobile mind shift:

The expectation that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at your moment of need.

But how far along are people on this shift? Have your customers made the shift? How many of them are demanding mobile utility?

To assess this, we created the mobile mind shift index, a way to measure how far along any individual is. It's a 100-point scale. US online adults score an average of 27.9. If your customers score more than 35, then it's urgent that you provide mobile utility -- they will judge you based on the level of utility you provide. We also look at what proportion of your customers score above 40 - -the group we call the "shifted segments." If more than 35% of your customer base are in shifted segments, again, this means they are urgently demanding mobile utility from you.

We can score any group. Here's the scoring for E*TRADE and Fidelity customers for example. Now you can see why E*TRADE moved so rapidly to create great mobile and tablet apps. Their customers demanded it.

We're pretty excited about this tool, which let's any company analyze its customers on the mobile mind shift. If you want to learn more, join the webinar with Melissa Parrish and me on Wednesday May 1 at 1:00 PM eastern time. Register here. If you're a Forrester client, you can read the report here.

The Mobile Mind Shift

Josh Bernoff — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:09:49 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

I've been working behind the scenes for the last 18 months or so. We have other analysts like Nate Elliott working on social technology strategy, and I've been editing Forrester's books Outside In and Digital Disruption. But the time has come for me to get out in front of clients and all of you with research again.

Right now I'm working on the mobile mind shift -- a complete change in the way consumers think about the companies that serve them. The mobile mind shift is:

A set of behaviors and mindsets in which people go forward with confidence that any desired information or service is available, on any appropriate device, in context, at their moment of need.

I'll be revealing our research about the Mobile Mind Shift at the Forrester Forum for Marketing Leaders in Los Angeles on April 18. This includes a new way of looking at consumer data that can measure just how far along the mobile mind shift your customers are.

Here's a video about the new research. I hope to see you in Los Angeles.

Digital disruption will do to you what the Chinese did to manufacturers

Josh Bernoff — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 09:51:32 -0500

Digital Disruption is on everyone's mind. Netflix is replacing people's cable subscriptions. Simple apps like OpenTable and LoseIt! are displacing businesses like Zagat's and Weight Watchers. But if you want to understand why, you need to look back at the 80's and 90's and imagine you are an American manufacturer.

American manufacturers were successful at making quality products at a good profit, and paying good wages to their workers. But we all know now what happened next. The Chinese swept in and took over, leaving much the American industry unable to compete.

The Chinese manufacturers had two things going for them.

First, they had cheap labor. China was full of workers highly motivated to work for far lower wages than Americans. But while this factor got all the attention, it was not sufficient in itself.

Chinese manufacturers also needed access to distribution. They needed infrastructure -- container ships, supply chains and supply chain software, distribution partners, favorable regulations. Note that the Chinese didn't need to invent any of these things. They just exploited the capabilities that had become available.

So their formula was: cheap workers + infrastructure = disruption. The high labor costs and rigid structures of American companies couldn't adjust, and most of them were toast.

Let's fast foward to today. Imagine an innovator attempting to compete with your business. Let's call her Sarah. Sarah is bright and motivated and has identified a customer need that you're unable to satisfy as well.

This innovator has access to lots and lots of free or cheap tools. She can download an Apple SDK for next to nothing and post her app on the app store. Sarah can join 1.3 million sellers on eBay or become a merchant on Amazon. She can buy a URL for ten bucks on godaddy.com, leverage Facebook for marketing, and shift her search ads on Google to take advantage of the trends of the day. Sarah risks very little, except for her time.

Sarah is likely to fail. But Sarah is not your problem. Lots and lots of Sarahs are your problem.They're not all going fail -- some of them are going to succeed, and they will disrupt your business.

Compared to before, there are at least ten times as many innovators gunning for your business. The costs of entry are less than one-tenth what they were. So you have to expect to be competing with 100 times the innovation power.

It's just like Chinese manufacturing. These innovators are willing to work for cheap or free. And the infrastructure of the Internet and mobile devices gives them an instant portal to compete your business. Cheap digital labor plus digital infrastructure equals disruption. Lots of it.

This is the same dynamic Clayton Christensen highlighted in his book The Innovator's Dilemma -- but it requires so little capital that it happens much, much faster.

Barriers to entry are now obsolete. Deal with it.

If you want to know more about this, have a look at James McQuivey's book Digital Disruption, published today. It analyzes this trend, how fast its getting here, and what you can do about. Spoiler alert -- you're going to have to be a digital disruptor yourself to compete with Sarah and her thousands of friends. James' book is a manual on how to do that.

Want to know more? Sign up for James' free Webinar or the topic.

Digital disruption is terrifying. But we'll help you deal with it.

Forrester Groundswell Awards open for 2012

Josh Bernoff — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:11:26 -0400

Once again, we are launching the Forrester Groundswell Awards to recognize excellence in business use of social technologies. This is our sixth year.

Key facts:

Due date for entries: September 5. Don't be late, there are no exceptions.
Winners prove that they've delivered value to the business, not just activity.

The entry form is here. Nate Elliott is running the awards this year. His post announcing them is here.

Good luck. I've enjoyed being involved with judging and giving out the awards in past years -- there were some incredible applications. I'm looking forward to seeing what people come up with this year.

Customer Experience and Outside In thinking (and our book about it)

Josh Bernoff — Tue, 22 May 2012 09:11:20 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

About a year ago I devoted myself to finding the biggest, coolest, most important book we at Forrester could write. We reviewed all the potential choices and then decided we should do a book about customer experience.

Forrester's Customer Experience team has been working for 14 years now on the idea that improving the experience your customers have is the most important thing you can do for the growth and profitability of your business. That turns out to be easy to say, but very hard to implement. Book-worthy, you might say.

Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business is the result of a year's work from Harley Manning, the research director of our Customer Experience team, and Kerry Bodine, a highly creative analyst on that team. I will go out on a limb here and predict it will be one of the most important business books you'll ever read.

We made the unconventional decision to choose Amazon Publishing, the publishing arm of Amazon, as our publisher. In all other respects this is a traditional book -- it went through the same rigorous publishing process and will be available in print and ebook formats, just like any other book. But working with Amazon has worked out well for us.

Even though the book is not officially published until August 28, there are ways you can get on board now. You could:

Read Harley and Kerry's posts about it.
Sign up to get one sent to you soon -- it's available now for preorder at your favorite online bookstore.
Go the Forrester Customer Experience Forum. Not only will you hear Harley and Kerry and some of the world's customer experience leaders, you'll be able to get a free full pre-release copy of the ebook.

The Story Behind "United Breaks Guitars" -- a new book

Josh Bernoff — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:16:52 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

I was delighted to get the chance to interview Dave Carroll, creator of the amazing "United Breaks Guitars" video, for my book Empowered.

Luckily for me, my relationship with Dave went beyond an interview. I know a little more about his story, and a fascinating story it is. Now you can hear that story, too, since he wrote a book about it: United Breaks Guitars: The Power of One Voice in the Age of Social Media.

Here's the foreword I wrote for Dave's book. Buy a copy. I think you'll find it revealing.

In July 2009, Dave Carroll stepped onto a United Airlines plane from Halifax to Chicago and changed the world.

Dave is the iconic creator of United Breaks Guitars, an impassioned video ballad that describes his months-long trek through the world of airline customer service, illustrated with Mariachi singers, catchy country-style music, and clever visuals. But United Breaks Guitars is far more than music. With more than 10.7 million views, it’s a highly visible marker that business has changed forever, and that customers have taken over. This is truly the age of the customer, because any customer can, in theory, do what Dave Carroll did: use talent, fight back, connect with millions of other customers, and knock hundreds of millions of dollars off the market value of a massive corporation.

This engaging book tells Dave’s story from the inside. As you’ll learn, he’s one of the nicest guys on the planet, just a musician trying to do a great job. Despite the way he was treated, Dave shares the almost loving way he tweaked United after trying every other imaginable strategy. This may be one of the most humble stories every told by a man who changed the world. You’ll read about Dave’s upbringing and the family life that shaped him, his struggles as a musician, and how he’s taken this experience and used it, not only to build his career, but to give back to the people who helped him along the way, and to support the causes – like first responders and local news coverage – that he feels strongly about.

Embedded in this story are also nuggets of insight for anyone in a business, large or small. If you’re wondering what social technology means to your company, take a close look at what it meant to the companies Dave talks about in this story – not just United Airlines but Taylor Guitars, Ford, and Chubb Insurance. These companies have been changed by social technology – United now uses United Breaks Guitars in its customer service training, for example. They understand that social sites like YouTube and Facebook represent not just a threat from unhappy customers, but a unique way to listen and engage with all customers, improve your products, and improve your company’s image.

As a business author, my stock in trade is case studies and strategy frameworks. But Dave’s experience frames these ideas in a wholly personal way. In hundreds of stories and interviews, from CNN to The View, Dave’s story has become familiar to many of us, but inside it is an uplifting tale of how you can change the world with a smile and a guitar. As you read about Dave’s personal journey from musician to video star to activist to social media expert and public speaker, I hope you think, “Hey, I could do something like that.” Because in the totally connected world of social technologies, each of us now has the potential to change the world.

Proof that Facebook fans are worth more to brands

Josh Bernoff — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 10:43:39 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

The debate about the value of Facebook fans continues to rage on. I hate raging arguments in the absence of solid evidence. So I was delighted to see that analyst Gina Sverdlov of Forrester Research had applied actual statistical modeling to address the question, in a new report called "The Facebook Factor."

Gina's technique is simple to understand. Using a statistical technique called logistical regression, she examined a large number of factors that potentially contribute to whether a consumer will purchase, consider, or recommend a brand. The technique could work for any brand; the report specifically analyzes Best Buy, Walmart, Coca-Cola, and Blackberry.

The results are very suggestive.

Here are some facts from the report.

For all four brands, being a Facebook fan of the brand boosts purchase, consideration, and recommendation. For example, 79% of Best Buy Facebook fans bought there in the last 12 months vs. 41% of non-fans. And 74% of them recommend Best Buy vs. 38% of non-fans.
Of all the questions we asked (and there were many), being a Facebook fan had more influence over these behaviors than any other factor. Being a Facebook fan of Best Buy increases the odds that a customer will purchase by 5.3 times; the next closest influence factor is having researched consumer electronics, which only increases the odds of purchase by 1.4 times. The pattern is repeated for every single behavior and every single brand. For example, having a Walmart nearby doubles the odds that you'll consider buying there, but being a Facebook fan of Walmart increases those odds by more than a factor of four.

Does this mean you should pour your budget into building fans for your brand? No! While there is a strong correlation between these positive behaviors for your brand and being a fan, there's no proof that being a fan causes people to buy, consider, or recommend your brand. If you boost your fan base artificially, those fans will be less avid on average.

What this analysis does show is that fandom is worth something. Your Facebook fans are more likely to buy from you, consider you, and of course, recommend you.

This means that cultivating them with content and interaction on your Facebook brand page is well worth it, because this is where your most enthusiastic customers are. You have the opportunity to supercharge them, not just to buy, but to spread your message. For companies that don't provide these fans what they want -- interaction, content, things to share -- this is a wakeup call. And if your brand doesn't have a Facebook page, this report is proof you're stuck in marketing thinking from the previous century. Use this analysis to justify putting your marketing budget and effort into a Facebook page and the staff to keep it lively.

Media, Google, and shades of grey on April Fool's Day

Josh Bernoff — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:33:14 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

A headline stating that Mitt Romney was dropping out of the presidential race and endorsing Rick Santorum appeared at the top of Google News on Sunday. It was clearly false. How did this happen?

It starts with the bloggers posting on news sites. Len Burman blogs for the Forbes site as "The Impertinent Economist." Len is no joker. He is the Daniel Patrick Moynihan professor of public affairs at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, and was a senior official in the Clinton Treasury Department. Until yesterday, his blog mostly focused on pointedly skewering much of the partisan tax debate with both fact and well considered opinion. (I also know this guy a little more than most of the bloggers out there, since he's my smartest cousin.)

Does Len Burman belong on the Forbes site? Sure. Serious news sites feature bloggers, and with this kind of pedigree, he's the kind of guy we want to hear from. He's not a reporter, but these are shades of grey.

On Sunday April 1, Len posted a piece on his Forbes blog called "Romney Drops Out of Race, Endorses Santorum." It's pretty funny -- it makes an entirely believable case that Romney took credit for the Massachusetts health care law he presided over, decided Santorum would lose anyway, and wanted to wait four years to have a better chance. Of course, it would never actually happen, which makes it just a clever April Fool's joke. It's amusing -- go ahead and read it.

Like many Web sites, Forbes doesn't police its bloggers ahead of time. So the piece went up on Sunday when Len posted it, and an email went out to everyone following his blog. Should Forbes police every post its bloggers put up? Shades of grey.

Should Forbes allow April Fools jokes on its site? A lot of sites do. They know we can tell the diference. Shades of grey again.

The post ended up at the top of Google news. Why? Google News is an algorithm. It knows there were lots of stories about Romney and Santorum so this must be important news. And it knows Forbes is a respected news site. So Forbes articles about Romney and Santorum go on Google news. For a short moment, my cousin was in the most coveted spot in the news business. (The screen shot you see here was taken by Gawker.)

Should Google News have shown this article? Good question. But how would you stop it? Should human editors vet stories on Google News? That undermines the whole algorithm. Should it censure Forbes for hosting bloggers? Most other news organizations would be banned, too. Should it learn to identify jokes? That's would a fun artificial intelligence project. A little more vigilance would be a good idea on April Fool's Day, perhaps. Shades of grey again.

Or maybe the story belongs there, and we should learn to tell the difference between news and satire. It's the headline, though, that many would read and perhaps even believe -- and the headline looks like news.

What happened next is instructive. Forbes yanked the blog post (Len tied to repost it, it disappeared again) and also yanked a subsequent post in which Len explained himself. Why yank it? There are a number of possible explanations, but in my opinion, it was Google News that got in the way. This satirical post would probably have stayed there, but I think Forbes didn't want to look bad on Google News. All those people clicking on the seductive title on Google News, Facebook, and everywhere else it was shared then got a broken link on Forbes' site.

But you can't get things off the Internet. Len's post lives on a blog he set up for it. And in a classic example of the Streisand Effect, yanking the post led to other stories about the joke and the reaction in the sites of the Washington Post's, the San Francisco Chronicle, the New York Daily News, and Mashable. Not only that, it became a trending topic on Twitter. The story lives on. Shades of grey indeed.

You can imagine ways that Forbes or Google could fix this. Or you could see this as part of a trend that ranges from Fox News to This American Life. There is no longer a way to restore the black and white distinction between truth and the mass of opinion on the Internet. We must all become skeptics. Especially on April Fool's Day.

Mike Daisey, "This American Life," and you: Who is responsible for the truth?

Josh Bernoff — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:46:40 -0400

Thoughts on watching the fascinating interplay between Mike Diasey, Ira Glass of the NPR radio program "This American Life," and Apple. . .

In a nutshell: Mike Daisey describes himself as "Actor, author, commentator, playwright, and general layabout." He took a trip to China to see how Apple products are made in a factory at Foxconn, then wrote a monologue about it, which he delivers off-broadway in a show called "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs." Ira Glass' "This American Life" is a non-fiction radio program that tells stories about people (I've written about Ira before.) "This American Life" broadcast a piece with Mike Daisey about Apple and China on January 6.

Eventually, NPR reporters in China raised questions about the story. Much of it was not true. Incidents that Daisey described never took place, or were extrapolated from news stories of which he had no firsthand knowledge. His translator, whom "This American Life" finally located despite Daisey's attempts to obscure her identity, reveals what he made up, and where he stretched the truth. Glass dedicated his whole program this week to what they got wrong, how, why, and what is still true -- he pulled no punches in his apology. That program is absolutely worth a listen. I've embedded it below.

What are we to make of this? Who is responsible for the truth?

The frontlines of truth are in the mind of you, the reader. In today's world we have sources like The New York Times and ABC News, that we generally trust with facts. This is because of the standards they use and their reputation depends on those standards. But make no mistake: the "story" you read is a story -- it is written to engage you. Some facts are included, some facts are not, those choices determine the story. Balance is an interesting and slippery theoretical concept. Luckily, in a world that includes Google News, you have access to many points of view.

Generally, though, you can count on those facts. "This American Life" and NPR have a reputation for getting the facts right. This is why Ira Glass put together a whole show in this retraction; his reputation and NPR's are on the line.

What about opinion?

Forrester reports include two elements: facts and opinons. If we get the facts wrong, we fix it. If you have a problem with our opinions, tough. But any reader will find it easy to tell which is which.

News stories are supposed to be facts. But they are filled with opinions as well. Often, those opinions are given in the form of quotes from knowledgeable people (sometimes, those are analysts). But again, the journalist chooses those quotes. Often, reporters call me and ask my opinion, and I can see they are trying to confirm their prejudices, and if I say something that confirms them, I get quoted. My favorite is the "However, analysts say . . . " which is pernicious -- they generally talked to one or two people, confirmed their idea, and then can put it in print without even identifying who supposedly agreed with them. (A quick Google News search shows the words "Analysts say" appear in 14,000 news stories in the last 30 days.)

Of course, once you get past traditional media it gets far worse. Fox News and MSNBC cherry-pick facts and mix facts and opinions far more than less slanted media. Bloggers range from high ethical standards to no standards at all. We have all learned this, and we need to teach it to our children.

I believe Mike Daisey violated people's confidence twice. First, and he disagrees with this, his off-broadway show is a sham. When you tell a monologue in the first person, even in a theatrical setting, people believe it is the truth. His idea that the truth is flexible in the context of a monologue is wrong. We know "based on a true story" means that playwrights or story writers for television or movies have dramatized events. "The Social Network" is not the actual story of Facebook. But a monologue told in the first person is not a play.

Second, and he admits this, he should not have agreed to present his dramatized version as fact on "This American Life." Glass's mistake was to believe him, and he has paid the price for this.

What are the lessons here?

First, there is such a thing as truth. Second, even in normal situations, truth shifts depending on who is telling the story, because of the choices they make. Third, always consider the source -- this may the only remaining differentiating factor for conventional news media. And fourth, with all the resources available to you online, it is your responsiblity to seek out more viewpoints. The truth will out. But only if you, the reader, do a little more work.

Graphic: Actor's Guild of Lexington

. . . and we're back

Josh Bernoff — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:42:54 -0400

by Josh Bernoff

Due to some obscure issues regarding the way our Web content is served, the Empowered site and all the elements of it were inaccessible for most of the last two weeks.

It was a strange problem, because the site was visible from inside Forrester but not from outside. This led to some charming Twitter interactions (Josh: "It's working now." Site visitor: "Um, not it's not.")

Here's what I learned.

I made a promise when I put this content up and told people to use it. They expect it to be there. I was surprised how many people apparently use the Forrester Social Technographics Profile Tool regularly and complained when it disappeared.
My first instinct to communicate with the world was to blog and use Twitter. Luckily, Twitter was still working. Diversify your channels.
The generosity of the audience continues to impress me. Tweeters: thanks for not ripping into us for the downtime, and thanks again for being my unpaid tester corps -- and helping me show the Web team here that there is an audience that cares about this stuff.

Some URL aliases are still down but we're working on that, and everything is accessible from empowered.forrester.com by clicking on the tabs.

A public thank you to the following people who helped us debug the site from all around the world:

Pablo Sanchez Kohn (@pablo_sanchez_k)

Xenia Jones (@jonesx)

Elaine Young (@ejyoung67), a professor whose students were using the tool.

Taqi Rizvi (@taqirizvi)

Grant McDougall (@grantmcdougall)

Chris Maher (@chrishmaher113)

Suzi Craig (@SuziCraig)

Anita Loomba (@anitaloomba)

Max Faingezicht (@maxcr)