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Node XL Maps for #standardbank and #FNB on twitter during the ASA firestorm

Walter Pike — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 06:49:33 +0000

These network diagrams have been uploaded to illustrate my interview on SAFM on the media show at 9:20am Sunday March 4, 2012. Live streaming here (obviously this link will be no use unless you are listening live)

The first map describes the conversation for #FNB.

To help you understand it the size of the pictures is in proportion to followers, The green line are “followers” and the blue lines “retweets

#FNB 16/2/ to 24/2/2012

This is the same methodology but a picture of the #standardbank over the same period.

#standardbank 16/2 -24/2/2012

I work with Marc Smith who does these maps and we can do them for you – you need merely to contact me by clicking on this link and filling in the contact form

Changing my posterous blog

Walter Pike — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:27:57 +0000

I have decided to change my posterous blog at walterpike.net to be more of a personal blog my personal musings – If you are following the Pike’s thinking (marketing and such like) type posts here – please find them on http://walterpike.com

For some reason Ive ended up duplicating content.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

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@RBJacobs showing understanding of ORM

Walter Pike — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:48:30 +0000

I happen to think that FNB do a pretty good marketing job, I have been a fan of the manner in which the @RBJacobs twitter persona handles queries. But its interesting the way people think about brands – this morning @PerrynMeyer commented on FNB as below.

I retweeted but copied @RBJacobs into the tweet saying it was over to him to sort out – sure enough he responded and invited @PerrynMeyer to to contact him. Out of left field another fellow @Nicholas_Duncan appears and expresses his opinion that @PerrynMeyer should not have commented in public as she has tarnished the brand and then criticised me for having retweeted it as I did.

I am sorry @Nicholas_Duncan but brands are not tarnished by what people say about them, brands are tarnished by what brands do. People saying what they feel and expressing their opinions is what enlightened brands would hope for, they understand that they don’t control brand that belongs to the customer/consumer.

You see you can’t control the conversation – nor would you want to. What you want is to be part of it and to be seen to care because your brand is not what you say it is – its how your customers experience it and what they tell their friends

What @PerrynMeyer and I did was not tarnish the brand, on the contrary we gave @RBJacobs the opportunity to burnish it.

What better outcome for FNB than this (their response retweeted) – unless its a thank you from @PerrynMeyer as well.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Digital Promotions are not the same as Social Media marketing.

Walter Pike — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 20:32:27 +0000

The Nando’s Dictators campaign see TV ad here and its accompanying promotion using digital channels (although I don’t know how the customer gets from the TV ad to the digital promo) is very different to social marketing.

Sarah Britten in her article Is Nando’s ‘Last Dictator Standing’ the new ‘Old Spice Guy’? probably inadvertently, draws the correct comparison because in spite of the hoopla the jury is still out on the Old Spice Man’s effectiveness. Both are old style push campaigns and at best interactive.

I find it frustrating when I hear the discussions online and elsewhere referring to this campaign as a social media campaign, its an oxymoron – when you start understanding social media you realise that social media is not about campaigns – it’s not about push – it’s about facilitating communities it’s about ideas spreading.

I wonder when the power of social marketing of tapping into the value of communities, conversations and memes will dawn on brands?

A #hashtag does not a social strategy make.

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Takumi Sushi – I am sorry but you lose.

Walter Pike — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:10:07 +0000

People do such ridiculous things when they find their brand under attack and here is a good example.

This is what happened;

A twitter user buys R399 take away sushi from a place called Takumi Sushi, When she opens up the container she finds a dead bug, she thinks it’s a cockroach – so she does like every normal twitter person would – she posts a tweet with a pic referring to how she had found something extra in her starter.

When she goes back she shows the management and apparently the chef responds in anger by throwing the container at her general direction.

Only after this started spreading through twitter did the establishment respond followed up by a threat of legal action obviously intended to intimidate the customer. Read the whole story here

Eventually a voucher was offered to the young ladies, which they turned down (kind of obviously) and now Takumi Sushi has offered to give the R1000 voucher to the person who makes the best response on the story.

The fact that the bug wasn’t a cockroach at all but a beetle is not the issue, its not even an issue that the clumsy bug could have flown into the sauce at the customer’s dining room. Nobody will really know.

The issue is that this business instead of apologising and fixing the problem acted with violence and then decided to intimidate its dissatisfied customers in the public domain and then to make the folly worse is now using the R1000 of vouchers to induce people to say nice things about them.

In this new world customer service is the new marketing – you have to give people a great experience – and if you do they will tell their friends. You behave badly they will do so as well.

If the management at Takumi Sushi had accepted responsibility the incident would have died away in seconds – instead its been floating through the interwebs and here I am sitting a good 12 hour drive from wherever in Cape Town this place is and writing about it, and some people will even read this – maybe even a lot.

I can’t possibly judge what is the the real truth but like any normal person I did a few searches on twitter and using Google and on the whole the Desmarais sisters come across a reasonable – Takumi on the other hand come across as defensive and their behaviour as aggressive and completely unacceptable.

Sorry Takumi that not the way to do it. You lose.

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What’s the point. Bid or Buy?

Walter Pike — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:33:49 +0000

So if bid or buy or anyone else wins the prize for the best ecommence site – who are they fooling, what did they prove, that’s not all if you click the link you will get an improved chance to win an iPad by liking the Facebook page.

So their Facebook page will have hundreds of iPad fans.

Pointless – wouldn’t they rather have bid or buy fans. What’s so hard to understand?

Dear Walter
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CellC will miss Lars Reichelt … and so will we.

Walter Pike — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 11:12:47 +0000

I am very disappointed to hear that Lars Reichelt the real CEO of Cell C has resigned My personal experience of the man was very positive. I met him after I had roundly slammed the CellC Trevor Noah campaign in blogs and on the radio. He invited me for a cup of coffee to discuss my views a discussion scheduled for half and hour that went on for hours. I still hate the campaign but think the strategy that it was communicating was brave and spot on.

I think that he is one of the very few CEO’s around whom I believe have the both the vision and the drive the change that the industry needs.

I don’t know what went on behind the scenes but to quote Bill Bernbach “Now as always, the future belongs to the brave” and Lars Reichelt was brave.

Congratulations Lars – you made a difference.

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Social Media is a very African concept.

Walter Pike — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:19:24 +0000

A striking tall black lady stopped me in the corridor at the #imcc conference today.

She observed “Social media is a very African concept isn’t it?”

Think about it – the whole concept of Ubuntu (Ubuntu: “I am what I am because of who we all are.” ) sharing, community and the tradition of story telling.

That kind of sums it up.

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Why you don’t get marketing in the social world.

Walter Pike — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 19:49:13 +0000

Marketing in the new world is very different to marketing in the world we think we are in.

The Internet changed the game when for the first time it created a communications medium that allowed the one to one conversation (like the telephone) and the one to many conversation (like TV) and a many to many conversation to take place all at the same time and when for the first time the source of information also became the site of coordination. When it connected people in a different way than was ever possible before.

It changed the game completely, and it changed it perfectly.

When you are traveling down a straight line and perfect change occurs it gets you traveling in exactly the opposite direction. You were traveling west at 120 and suddenly you are traveling east at 120.

It looks like the same road, its exactly like the same road and every time you look at the road you can’t figure it out because it’s exactly the same. However instead of driving into the setting sun it’s in your rear view mirror. You are going someplace else.

It’s as fundamental as that.

Completely, perfectly different.

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Kulula how hard can it be?

Walter Pike — Tue, 31 May 2011 17:01:56 +0000

I am 6ft2in tall. If I sit with my back to the seat back and my knees slightly apart I can just fit into the kulula seat. So every time I fly I get to the airport early and check in asking for the emergency aisle and it’s extra legroom. You can’t check into those seats online. Today I was more than 2 hours early and when the smiling ground staff checked me in and assured me I was in the seat I wanted. I walked through the security check smiling. Phew its really worth the effort to get there early.

I am sitting in Seat 15C It is the row immediately ahead of the emergency aisle, it is the only row on the plane in which the seats cannot recline.

In fact if you had to chose the worse seats on this flight – they are in this row.

In the seat next to me the lady has a headache she wanted some space to rest. I am grumpy and very irritated. I am also a Kulula jetsetter (their frequent flyer program).

Really HOW HARD CAN IT BE? Just put me into the seat I asked for.

Kulula has a strong presence on social media, the person behind their twitter profile is great, she is caring and engaged. It just doesn’t matter though because although she can try to fix problems it’s just band aid she can just try to repair the damage. There is an operations problem and it’s not fixed and unless Kulula fix it they may as well close their social media presence. I had a conversation on twitter today talking about measuring social media. I will enlighten you in a different post. But you can measure Facebook friends, engagement all you want but this is where it happens the conversation between those seat 15C and 15B. What was that conversation?

It went like this. “Do you know that Mango now fly from Lanseria?

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