It's all about perspective

A man in a hot air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago but I don’t know where I am.”

The woman below replied, “You’re in a hot air balloon hovering approximately 30 feet above the ground. You’re between 40 and 41 degrees north latitude and between 59 and 60 degrees west longitude.”

“You must be in Information Technology?” said the balloonist.

“I am,” replied the woman, “how did you know?”

“Well,” answered the balloonist, “everything you told me is probably technically correct, but I’ve no idea what to make of your information and the fact is, I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help at all. If anything, you’ve delayed my trip.”

The woman below responded, “You must be in Management?”

“I am,” replied the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” said the woman, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You have risen to where you are, due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise, which you’ve no idea how to keep, and you expect people beneath you to solve your problems. The fact is you are in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but now, somehow, it’s my f**king fault!”

Justin and I discussed Brewster Inc’s new Vacations Canada TV website and I offered ideas related to strategy, execution, challenges and more including:

1) the value of a video presence on the web, something many businesses are still trying to understand.
2) the value of a comprehensive approach to online video marketing and how it can accomplish several goals.
3) a different, and exciting, approach to video production, co-funded by partners with complimentary goals and objectives.
4) why it’s important to have high quality video – why it’s not always best to ‘go cheap.’.
5) why  video works!

Click here now to listen to the interview on Vacations Canada TV. Of course I welcome your feedback – admittedly I didn’t answer every question the way I would have liked to and there was a lot of ‘ummmmms and uhhhhhhhs’ but that’s why I’m not in PR!

Further to our discussion yesterday, I realized it is my job, nay my responsibility to educate our team on the importance of social media in business today. Since it seems everyone would be too busy to attend a presentation,  I kindly ask you to take a few minutes to read further.

There is a conversation already taking place on the web about our products and brands, and experts warn businesses can “ignore this conversation at your own peril”.  We will NEVER have the ability to ‘control’ consumer opinion or negative feedback (nor would we want to) – whether it happens on our site or other websites – we must respond to it and that means correcting problems and issues and then communicating publicly. I would rather have a negative comment on our own site where we can respond to it – and demonstrate our responsiveness and reputation – rather than be oblivious to it elsewhere.

Kryptonite Locks provides the best example of this – all it takes is ONE incident – to have a significant impact on sales.

A brand is what your clients “say about you when you’re not in the room”.  We must use social media to harness all these discussions rather than pretend we can prevent them. Ken Kaplan declared: “social media is not something to fear but to embrace“.  We must enable the thousands of ‘brand evangelists’ (that is people who have enjoyed or are satisfied with our products and services) so that they may spread the word and market for our products for us!

In comparison, traditional marketing can be expensive and costly, not measurable, and short-term.  For example, a TV news story is seen by thousands of people, then it is gone and all but forgotten.  A blog story can be found for years by millions of people – it also provides links back to our sites bringing traffic and enhanced search engine ranking – and therefore improves product placement and exposure on the web.  I agree that marketing should be a calculated mix – however we are only scratching the surface on the most cost-effective and in my opinion, now the most important part of that mix.

For those that believe this is NOT a sales tactic, think of it this way… our sales managers make phone calls, attend tradeshows, and visit our clients (travel agents and tour operators) attempting to enhance our product placement, increase inventory, and remain top of mind. Our social media strategies achieve exactly the same goals by building and maintaining relationships (a connection) except it is all done on the web on various sites, blogs, and even social networks like, … yes Facebook and Twitter. In this case the hard cost is minimal however ‘sweat equity’ (via @chrisbrogan) is required.

Why use social media in our arsenal??

1. Reach - both industrial and social media technologies provide scale and enable anyone to reach a global audience.
2. Accessibility - the means of production for industrial media are typically owned privately or by government; social media tools are generally available to anyone at little or no cost.
3. Usability — industrial media production typically requires specialized skills and training. Most social media does not, or in some cases reinvents skills, so anyone can operate the means of production.
4. Recency — the time lag between communications produced by industrial media can be long (days, weeks, or even months) compared to social media (which can be capable of virtually instantaneous responses; only the participants determine any delay in response). As industrial media is currently adopting social media tools, this feature may well not be distinctive anymore in some time.
5. Permanence – industrial media once created cannot be altered (once a magazine article is printed and distributed changes cannot be made to that same article) whereas social media can be altered almost instantaneously by comments or editing. A news story is seen once by a large audience and then forgotten. Material on the web can be found for many years by a growing audience.
6. Trust – As we are inundated each and every day by traditional marketing and advertising, we have learned to “tune” these messages out. Consumers tend to trust each other (product reviews, testimonials, blog stories, etc) more than a message from a company trying to sell them something. This in itself, qualifies social media as a stronger choice for marketing our products.

In my opinion, Social Media and Mobile marketing must become an integral part of our marketing mix to remain competitive.

Finally, I highly recommend watching the first video (which should put this into context for you) and if you can make the time, scan the articles below. It is to your advantage to be familiar with these concepts; as part of the tourism industry , and more importantly as part of a Marketing and Sales team determined to increase sales and profitability, reduce costs and understand the marketplace and environment in which your business operates.

Just a few social media references: 

The World We Live In – video

13 Reasons Why Social Media Marketing is Worth your Time

Why Social Media is Scary

7 Reasons Why Executives Hate Social media

5 Ways to Sell Social media to your Boss

Fastest Growing Demographic on Facebook: Women over 55 (coincidentally this is a target audience for us)

The lineup of speakers includes Claude Guay, Senior Strategy Analyst at PhoCusWright Inc, David Pavelko, Head of Industry, Travel at Google, Brian Simpson General Manager at Travelocity.ca, Gisele Danis, Executive Director of Strategic Marketing at the Canadian Tourism Commission and a host of familiar faces guaranteed to instill fantastic insight as well as entertain!

I’ll provide some details during and after the conference. I’m really looking forward to learning and seeing some old friends. You can follow the conference minute to minute here on Twitter or by searching #orc09.