• Be personal
• Be immediate
• Be edgy
• Be effective

How can they solve the paradox of the core issue of the Cluetrain Manifesto and offer a personal and human conversation – “These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.”

I called up Baochi Nguyen, who manages the Social Media Program at Boingo, to find out. I called her because as a user of Boingo, I had been so impressed by how human and personal Boingo was on Twitter. I had had a couple of issues that were picked up in minutes and I found myself talking to a real person with a name who fixed my minor problems in minutes and who as a result now gives me confidence as I travel that I have a companion that is by my side ready to help. Boingo and Baochi seemed to have found the way and I wanted to find out – first hand – what that way was.

At Boingo, Social Media is not some add on, but is core to the philosophy. Customer Care is the core idea for as in any service, if there is a problem, how and how fast you fix it is actually the deal. For travellers, access to WiFi that is up and easy to get is now a critical service. After all, I am an addict, aren’t you and isn’t Wifi becoming as important as your IP?

Most of the service issues are handled on the phone, but Boingo’s public face and voice is Twitter and Facebook. Baochi is located right next to the service folks – steps away. Here a monthly Buzz Report is  read by the senior team and the CEO and Baochi collaborate several times a week on hot topics coming out of the social media channels. This is no afterthought.

Boingo’s SM effort is not a sales and marketing effort. Nor is there an ROI demanded for the SM work – this is not a sales channel. It is where Boingo LISTENs to what is going on. “It is an invaluable channel for feedback where we are part of the conversation about us.” I asked Baochi how they staffed the role. She told me that because SM is 1) Part of the corporate goal of offering world class customer care and 2) Is a critical conduit for customer feedback and suggestions on Boingo’s service and software , the position demands, not an entry level of new person but someone intimately familiar with the technical world of the service and also was fully conversant with the strategy. The role is like being a navigator on a ship.

The position is one of high trust based on experience and interaction. So here we see the core of the solution to the Cluetrain paradox. Trust. Central is to place the work in the strategic role of “navigation”. Second as with all “navigators”  Trust has to be found in the person that you select to do this work. The person has to interact as a matter of course with the key parts of the organization – for her information and her channels are the optimal way to see through the noise and chaos of the modern market. Thirdly it is best to have a “Framework” for where she interacts with the public.

Baochi and a cross functional team that included senior management spent a great deal of time in developing the framework in which Baochi would have freedom to operate. This is not a set of guide rules abut what she says but a place in which she has room. The Boingo Framework includes:

• Talking about Boingo
• WiFi
• Technology
• Travel
• The Community
• The environment

These areas were chosen with care to match up the known interests of the Boingo users who tend to be travellers and tech enthuisiasts.

Boingo does not speak about anything outside this framework. They also set categories for these elements for weight. So 25% is about Boingo 25% for tech and so on.

Baochi sees her role also as providing a “Companion” for those on the road. It’s ironic because that is exactly how I felt as a customer – that I was not alone.

A key element of this feeling is that Baochi has “Super Fans”,  a group of customers who have formed a real relationship with her and Boingo. These Super Fans are the group who so enjoy their Boingo experience that they regularly evangelize Boingo’s services – without any prompting from Boingo. Baochi spends the first part of her day catching up with the fans and so deepening the friendship. I think that this is a very important insight. It is the secret to Laura Conaway’s success at Bryant Park, Planet Money and now Rachel Maddow. This inner core of relationships builds further trust and offers the enterprise an unparalleled access to deeper insight and support and to more connection.

Here is how the science works for this idea. What really matters is not the total number of “fans” you have but that you have a core of no more than 150 who really care. This is the leverage and Baochi and Boingo has intuitively played this card.

So in summary what are the lessons for you:

• SM offers the best navigation for a turbulent world – so it is not an after thought buried in the marketing department but an adjunct of the office of the CEO
• Trust is the key – the person who has the role has to be known to the senior team as a colleague and be given a framework where she has freedom
• The job is Listening and interacting
• Best helped by developing a small core of less than 150 people who are your social guides

You can do this can’t you?

Disclaimer – I have no connection to Boingo other than being a customer.

Procter & Gamble (PG) faces an unpleasant dilemma on its Old Spicebrand: Its campaign — featuring an impossibly handsome man in a towel who tells women, “So ladies, should your man smell like an Old Spice man? You tell me” — is hugely popular but sales of the product are going down. The campaign reached a climax this week as the Old Spice Guy filmed more than 200 improvised videos replying to questions and requests from Twitter users. Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, the Ellen Show and Perez Hilton were among those who got YouTube-ed replies.

But the shower-fresh brand has a dirty secret, as Brandweek notes:

For instance, it was none other than P&G that picked up the Film Grand Prix this year for Old Spice’s “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV spot from Wieden + Kennedy. There is little doubt about the viral hit’s popularity. Launched in February, the official version has racked up nearly 12.2 million YouTube views.

But sales of the featured product—Red Zone After Hours Body Wash—aren’t necessarily tracking with that consumer appeal: In the 52 weeks ended June 13, sales of the brand have dropped 7 percent according to SymphonyIRI. (That amount excludes those rung up at Walmart.) P&G execs were not available to comment.

* This view of the results is under challenge – they are not my numbers – please have a look at the end of this post for comment that suggests that the Old Spice Campaign may be doing much better

On the other hand, how much do you know about the Kotex campaign for U BY Kotex? Maybe you have not – you have missed some fun there too. But what they have done has worked. This is a new product and in less than 6 months it has reached an 8.3% market share in a mature market and it has not cannibalized the older Kotex brand. So what is the difference. Both had used very funny viral videos. What is the secret? I called on Jordan Miller who is the point person on the campaign and asked her this question.

At the heart of the Kotex Campaign is “Listening” and real conversation. The big idea was to take a taboo subject – periods – and offer up the support and the safe place where women and girls could help each other with advice and support. The funny videos were ‘Ice Breakers” and not an end in themselves. Their point was to make it easier to talk about a topic that even in our progressive time was off limits. The early videos also pointed fun at the old Kotex ads that had girls twirling in white swimsuits and where pads always had a blue liquid. If I have intrigued you go to this link to see some videos – the ones that Kotex made and now also the ones that the public have made.

This Facebook snip says a lot. We see the taboo aspect of the topic and the fear. We can see that Kotex have made it safe to ask questions. We can see that Jordan Miller is personally on top of the site – she never seems to sleep! Many questions are answered personally.

On the main site there is a panel of Experts, Mums and Peers that answer more generic questions.

So what has happened? What has made this work?

Simply, Kotex (Kimberly Clark) have seen through the viral fun aspect of social media – though they have pulled this aspect off very well – and got to the core. They have set up a space where it is safe to have a conversation on a topic where the silence has been deafening.  They have levelled the power by telling the truth about even themselves and laughed at how they used to talk about the issue and the product. All the video that they mock was their own old ads.

Central is no pounding message about the product! But a focus on the people who have concerns about their periods. The Old Spice ad is really about Old Spice. The U By Kotex campaign is about you and people like you who share a common problem.

I asked Jordan what she thought was the secret and her answer was that the senior folks really believed that this was the way to go – “They are the best Client I have ever worked for”. It’s ironic that top level support is still pivotal now when the culture  is so opposed to letting go power.

And power has been let go. All organizations who go down this road are scared that someone will say the wrong thing. All sorts of safe guards are set up that risk reintroducing the corporate voice and slowing the pace down.

Senior leaders gave up this control to their point person – Jordan. Who has been allowed to be very edgy on an edgy topic. The campaign is not run on a day by day basis by a committee but by one person who has a real voice and a rweal personality who is well known to all who participate.

For we know that we can’t have conversations with institutions but only with people. In my opinion this is the most important aspect of the entire campaign – the trust that Kotex put in a single person who has to participate in real time 24/7. There is no time to oversee and still be human. So the choice of who you pick is critical. The give up of power is critical. Not many organizations can make  this move but it is I think the key.

So what next? Kimberly Clark have to go forward. Not only has the campaign been a technical success in that it has moved product – but more important they are now connected to a community of 1.4 million women who have found something important to them in the conversation. What a place to find yourselves in as an organization! No more twirling!

So the “conversation” that we all need to have is not about your product or your service per se – but it is about your customers. What do they need to talk about? It’s not just about a funny viral video and being talked about. It is about having conversations about matters that are important to people.

The “conversation” has to be hosted not by an impersonal institution but by a person who in turn has to be trusted not to let the organization down.

“These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.” (Cluetrain)

This is not easy – everything we have learned to-date makes any of this hard.

Later this week a story about Boingo – who have found some ways about how to make this easier to start.

PS

PS Ciaran McCabe contacted me to tell me that the Bnet news of falling sales for Old Spice is being challenged

According to PR Week sales of the product increased over 100% last month. A piece in Forbes.com uses the same SymphonyIRI study to show that sales were up 7.9% from the previous year. At this time, there is no way to know which numbers are real and which are not. However, the -7% number still sounds fishy to me.” Source: The Ad Contrarian (Bob Hoffman, owner of SF ad agency Hoffman/Lewis)

PPS from a Commentatin: Rob, love both of these campaigns and agree that the Kotex campaign should get way more credit and press, but people have got to STOP citing these SymphonyIRI numbers in reference to the Old Spice campaign. They measure the year ending June 13th, 2010, a full month BEFORE the viral/social aspect of the Old Spice campaign even started. Not only that, they include 7 full months of sales data BEFORE the tv even ran. I recognize you’re just quoting from other reporting, but you ought to stop and consider whether you should perpetuate the incorrect conclusion that a campaign isn’t working by including PRE-CAMPAIGN sales data as your evidence. And guess what else? According to sales data released by Nielsen in the last few days, the body wash sales are actually up 52% over 3 months and 107% over the last month. Let’s all wait and see data from AFTER the campaign ran before we start drawing conclusions. Seems to be that would be fair.

Steve is the CEO of ManyWorlds, a firm that conducts R&D in the area of next generation systems and business processes and provides practical applications of this work to organizations. He was an executive at Royal Dutch Shell where he held  a variety of positions including Chief Information Officer and Vice President of Strategy and Strategic Alliances. Steve has a background in economics, mathematics and computer science.

Steve noted that use of personalized responses based on user behavior has been pervasive on the consumer Web through such things as Amazon’s recommendations.  However, this technology has been applied much less within the enterprise.  He feels that this is ironic since behavioral information available within the enterprise  can generally be much richer than out on the Web. You have a more clearly defined set of users and many more interactions to data mine, along with more related teams who collaborate and generate more behavioral data.  I would certainly agree with the difference in the quality of information on user behavior and also add that many Web 2.0 applications such as wikis work better within the trusted environment of the enterprise. This seems to be another case.

The Learning Layer approach takes this personalization several steps further. Not only are personalized recommendations provided to individual users based on their behavior and the behavior of others, but the system feeds these recommendations back to itself to continuously adapt on an automated basis. Steve said that the technology is currently available to do this, it just needs to be properly applied.

For example, a system managing content might make recommendations for related content based on a user’s profile and actions.  Using the Learning Layer approach, it would also keep track of all user behavior and feed this back into the system on a regular basis. The relationship between two sets of content may become stronger or weaker depending how it is currently being used.  The same logic can be applied to the connections between people to see the ebb and flow of connections.

The approach can be applied to work flow and here it gets even more interesting in my opinion. Just as old school knowledge management created more direct business value when aligned to business processes, I see the same thing happening here.  Let’s take the example of a property casualty insurance underwriter. After the system takes in enough actions to be able to differentiate the skill level of users, it is ready to go.

Now if an underwriter with no experience in underwriting laundry mats, for example, starts to work on one the system recognizes this. It also knows the steps that an inexperienced underwriter should take when working with laundry mats and provides these process steps. It can also recommend a person who is slightly more advanced than the user who can offer guidance. If the user has middle level experience, then the process steps can be tailored to that level. In the meanwhile the system is observing the ongoing user behavior on an aggregated basis and making adjustments in the proper process steps for everyone at all levels.

The technology is around to create this type of system. I can see the value and wish I had this capability when I designed knowledge management systems for underwriters in the early 90s.  Call centers that deal with complex topics would be another great target area. You need to have enough complexity to warrant this type of intervention and then enough users to generate useful data for the system to apply.

We also discussed the concept of learning value that Steve raises in the book. He took the concept of value of information from decision analysis and applied it to learning. In decision analysis people calculate the value of having certain information to help with decisions. The same concept can be applied to learning.  When undertaking an activity there is the direct value and the value of the learning derived from the undertaking. This often translates into the amount of uncertainty that can be eliminated by the new knowledge and its effect on actions. Steve noted that learning only has real value if it changes behavior (i.e., decisions).  If people will still do the same thing regardless then nothing is gained. That sounds simple but it is often overlooked.

I like this approach. I think it does extend the possibilities of enterprise 2.0. If we can create data rich environments through the transparent interactions within enterprise 2.0 then we have expanded the learning opportunities. Then if we can use this expanded learning to better guide individual behavior we have taken it a notch further. Now if we can turn this learning back on the system to auto-generate changes within the system itself, we have taken things another step further.  I think the data gained from the transparency of enterprise 2.0 is a large piece of the value. Here is an approach to make better use of this transparency.

Here the Foreign Office and the citizen connect and in time will create I think an unbeatable site where all you need to know can be found out – and where when bad things happen immediate action can be taken.

I think that we are seeing a new future for governments. Until now government sites had been slow, hard to use and dull. Until now governments had often banned the use of social media inside. But this model offers governments of all types the ability to  be fast – easy to use and effective. Also to be very cost effective!

The barrier of course is culture. But with HM Gov in the lead it will be hard to say that “we can’t do this”.

What area would you like to see where government uses social media like this?

Consider typical relationships and interactions. A relationship or interaction is abandoned when:

• The useful reason for the relationship or interaction has been fulfilled
• There were ‘irreconcilable differences’

At work, people are most effective when they can leverage all the resources available to them. Well-designed Enterprise 2.0 capabilities provide critical value by connecting resources to one another. But then what happens?

It turns out that we’ve been conditioned into behaviors that ill prepare us for the new opportunities that follow:

• In school we are taught to listen quietly and raise our hand to speak — because one person speaking at a time brought order.
• In business we originally used Memorandums (Memos) to say anything. But there was an implied formality of a memo, wherein if you spoke you were speaking formally on behalf of the company. After all, the memo often bore the company logo.
• Memos were replaced by email which was more interactive, but clearly lacked the real potential of an open conversation, and still carried the vestige of formality that was inherited from it’s memorandum roots.
• Early forms of open conversations took place in digital bulletin boards, evolved from physical boards where people would post messages for each other: An exchange of messages; hardly a conversation.
• Then there were digital discussion groups, which have evolved in various formats. But there’s a huge difference between having a discussion via an email listserve and one on LinkedIn where you can see an individual’s profile and other evidences of who they are.
• Conversations often take place in meetings, but political dynamics often inhibit the exchange. Pixar executives (in extra features on The Incredibles DVD) talk about times when they’ve had to challenge people who have held back their real thoughts in a meeting, as such honesty is critical to their culture and the success of their projects.
• I was reminded via a LinkedIn conversation that we are often chided into certain bad behaviors where others believe we should only contribute to that for which we are formally recognized to have expertise, as defined by our role.

If speaking one’s mind can still be an issue in Pixar’s culture, imagine the challenge elsewhere. Many think that disagreeing with something or someone is, well, disagreeable. Participants often pounce on individuals who express non-consenting views. In online discussions, people repeatedly bail out of conversations over misunderstandings that they didn’t stick around to clarify or otherwise attempt to reach common ground. Others haven’t learned the gentleman’s art of agreeing to disagree.

The University of Wisconsin thought the issue to be significant enough that they created an employee reference to improve the effectiveness of conversations, titled “Having Conversations at Work that Work!”

In order for any organization to be truly successful over time, its people must build and maintain strong, professional relationships with one another and that promote productive conversations about the work that is to be accomplished. Unfortunately, such relationships do not come easily or naturally. They require commitment, know-how, patience, and practice. Even then, successful outcomes cannot be guaranteed. Failure to develop them, though, usually guarantees frustration, conflict, and alienation between those who need to work together.

Let’s apply the “So what?” factor for a moment. So what if people bail out of conversations? So what if people can’t agree to disagree? How is this any different than the many decades we’ve been operating this way?

It turns out that we’ve been operating within the boundaries of a ‘fudge factor’. Businesses got away with errors because there was leeway to do so. Just as the efficiencies of markets squeeze the margins out of profits, the rate of change in businesses today is squeezing out the margins for error. The margins are also being squeezed by the exponential increase in the number of potential errors that can take place, and do. Businesses are discovering that there are errors that have been accommodated by these margins, which have never mattered…until now.

Can you imagine the conversations now going on at BP, which had they taken place openly over the past year could have potentially averted the successive errors that resulted in a global disaster? In the hearings, there was evidence that people had been told of the risks. Had these been open conversations would others have pushed back on the decisions? With more voices involved, would there have been more of a chorus of support to express the seriousness of the risks? Were these issues not similar to those that put Toyota in the Congressional hot seat as well?

What is it about these cultures that allowed for these gross errors to occur and not be challenged by others? Are there biases toward action over talk? In his book Informal Coalitions, Chris Rodgers challenges a common bias of action over talk:

For leaders, talk is action. Amonst other things:

• Talk sets the context within which action takes place. failure to understand the critical link between context and action is, perhaps, one of the main causes of poor “follow through” and failed initiatives.
• Talk is central to sensemaking and the creation of meaning.
  …
• Talk is essential to the effective implementation of action by aligning effort, solving unforeseen problems and charting progress.
  …

Even where Enterprise 2.0 infrastructures provide the means for open conversations, will individuals have the courage and commitment to stay engaged in the exchange? Or will they revert to prior conditioning and disengage at the first sign of conflict?

Imagine the possibility of all businesses being at risk who lack the kind of open, supportive Pixarian leadership, who will encourage their people to stretch lethargic muscles of engagement. We will continue to witness the sad after-effects of those who do not.

I have to admit that I sometimes fall prey to this behavior. I am watching the Open golf championship as I write this.  Golf is a good sport to multitask. I would never attempt to write a post during a World Cup football match. I like to pick my multi-tasking to allow for proper concentration for the task. There are many more mundane things that I reserve for multitasking with TV.  I still like some noise to concentrate and have certain jazz ballads that I play when I really want to focus while writing. But this is a diversion from the Bob’s main point.  I can see the negative impact when I try to jam too much into multi-tasking. Something suffers.

We also need to escape at times from being plugged it. This is a practice I try to follow and use painting as one route. More often I have my cell phone turned off than on but maybe I am too old school.  Bob encourages us to “put down at least some of these gadgets and spend a little time just being ourselves. One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us, to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs — those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.”

Bob also encourages us to listen more, even if it is simply to listen to our own inner thoughts. This is perhaps his best advice.

Understanding the power of well-thought-out and collaborative efforts to guide us through this complex age, it was very interesting to come across a work called the ‘Social Employee Manifesto,’ which outlines a set of core principles for working in the networked age.

Or as its author, Michael Fauscette (IDC), puts it, a “start” in this direction.  It’s a very good start, because many companies simply don’t know how to handle the changes in workstyles and attitudes that are being fueled within social enterprises.

Here are some ways organizations should support the social employee, as Michael proposes:

• Managers are coaches and mentors, not “bosses”
• Empowerment to take on business problems without micromanaging but within established guidelines.
• Social web policies and training.
• Freedom to choose hardware such as mobile devices, laptops, etc. that fits their individual work style.
• Continuous access to the social Web.
• The freedom and ability to form ad hoc workgroups as needed to address business issues and problems.

And here are some of the ways social employees support the business:

• Distributed micro-problem solving. Every employee can solve a small problem everyday. Distributed problem solving eliminates
• most large business issues before they get “big”.
• Creativity
• Strong work ethic that can self manage to personal results and high levels of productivity
• Responsibility and accountability
• Strong personal brand
• Participates and is engaged with the business
• Effectively represents the corporate brand

Does this cover it?  Does anyone else have ideas or principles for should go into a ‘Social Employee Manifesto’?

My colleague at CBS SmartPlanet, Heather Clancy, provides a look at GE’s $200 million open innovation competition — which seeks to rustle up “breakthrough ideas” that are targeted at what GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt describes as “digital energy technologies.”

GE, through this “Ecoimagination” program, seeks new ideas in renewable energy, grid deployments, and smart homes and buildings. The company has lined up a panel of venture capitalists, independent advisors and analysts to sort through entries for the competition, which will last about 10 weeks. The general public will also have a chance to view and vote on entries. Both small as well as big ideas are sought, and financial investment awards will scale from $100,000 and up. Add to that commercial opportunities in the form of distribution relationships, R&D validation, and partnerships.

I got a preview of the approach as Forrester shared a review copy of the report, The HERO Index: Finding Empowered Employees by Ted Schadler and Josh Bernoff.  Here is apartial quote form the summary. “The HERO Index is a new tool we have developed to measure just how empowered and resourceful your own employees are. Our data reveals that some industries (like technology products and services) and job descriptions (like marketing and nonretail sales) harbor more HEROes than others. Your new job is to find the HEROes in your organization and to encourage and support their innovative applications.”

I like this approach.  There has been too much effort to simplify jobs and automate processes. What first appealed to me about the early stages of knowledge management was the attempt to empower employees with the right information to excel at their jobs. The same opportunity was what re-energized me when enterprise 2.0 came along. To research this report, Forrester surveyed 4,364 US information workers — people who use computers or mobile devices in their jobs — in November 2009.

The reports points out that the same Web 2.0 technologies that empower customers are available to empowered employees in (I would add) enterprise 2.0. They then offer many cases of what I would call enterprise 2.0. For example, Sales trainer Rob Sharpe at Stanley Black & Decker created his own internal YouTube-type sites to share insights.  Employees working with clients can use can use cloud technologies to share project schedules or background materials.

These efforts are often light-weight from an IT perspective and are originated by people form the business units rather than IT.  In fact, they found that reveal that 39% of HEROes use productivity tools not provided by their IT departments.  These employees often do things at their own expense. For example, they found that 23% of HEROes use a smartphone for work and more than half of them — 12% — paid for it themselves. In addition, 13% pay for all or some of their monthly data plan.  They do this just toe enable them to do their job better. No wonder they should be considered heroes.

I am looking forward to this book. In the meanwhile the report if very useful to help you find HEROs in your organization, help then succeed and/or become a HERO yourself.

Such strategies should identify technology gaps and costly process integration points. Then enterprises need to request more eDiscovery application integration. Even then you cannot expect to end up with a single provider.  The report notes that recent survey results indicate that 60% of records management stakeholders and 57% of message archiving users perceive “synchronizing eDiscovery, records management, and archiving efforts” to be a challenge.

In theory the transparency within enterprise 2.0 should support greater eDiscovery capabilities but there is still the tendency to create even more silos. Cross platform capabilities need tor receive a greater focus.  The report offers some useful guidelines for enterprises as they navigate this space.