As I drove back from my interview with Ashraf Garda on the radio show Media@SAFM on Sunday I thought about the conversation that I have got involved in regarding the new Cell C campaign.

The whole thing started with a video posted on YouTube on Wednesday 28^th July. The video was supposed to be a segment of comedian Trevor Noah’s comedy show in which he ripped into all the South African cell phone networks.

The fairy tale was that the Cell C CEO was so concerned on seeing the video that he placed a full page ad of apology to Trevor Noah and all of South Africa, promising better service and within a few hours offered Trevor Noah the job as the CEO (Customer Experience Officer) a kind of independent referee on Cell C customer service called telltrevor . In these few hours they also set up a rather large website development.

For good measure Cell C also changed their logo and announced how they were going to change the standard of cell phone connections with a new network.

The only thing is that it’s all a fantasy.

I had been pulled into the controversy firstly by commenting favourably on the Cell C apology, naively as it turns out. You see I had never expected a major marketing company to pull a stunt you would really only expect from “Honest Joe’s Used Cars.”

I was full of praise that at last a South African corporate had understood a little of Social Media strategy – listening and then responding, swiftly and with gravitas to a complaint. Why Cell C’s Full Page apology was a Marketing Masterstroke.

I was really disappointed when I found out from blogger Marc Forrest, Cell C the Joke is on you that it had all been a stunt. I felt it important to respond and did so here Cell C is Astroturfing, What a Joke

This was picked up by Radio Highveld news and Media@SAFM. And Mandy de Waal wrote a really good article with comments on Daily Maverick

This is a pulling together of my thoughts.

1. The media landscape has changed. Customers are connected and vocal. Dan Gilmour calls them the ‘Former Audience” because they have the power to generate as well as consume content. They are active participants in the branding process.
2. The first step in new marketing is listening. Listening to what the customers are saying and responding with solutions adding to their experience  as well as with honesty and so building relationships based on trust.
3. The second is building an experience for your customer, an experience that they will value and tell their friends about, in other words build brand fans.
4. The principle underlying marketing in an always on and always connected world is that the customers have control. This could be described as a democratisation of marketing because in this world your communication is a discussion not a lecture. Brands can no longer tell customers what they should believe and with enough media spend, shout at them until they believe.
   1. New marketing is really about preparing the environment for the idea (which is what a brand is) to spread. It’s like as a farmer prepares the field creating the right environment for the crops to grow, the marketer must nurture the brand in a partnership with its fans.

So what has Cell C done wrong?

Strategically:

1. If you are going to poke the sleeping bear with a pointed stick you had better have a well thought out plan, because it may wake up.  The core of this is the customer’s experience.
   1. Does Cell C have a demonstrably better network than either Vodacom or MTN?
   2. Does Cell C have demonstrably better customer service?
   3. If not then they have set themselves up for a very bloody nose.
   4. If you want to have a relationship with your customers, the foundation of that relationship is trust.
      1. So is it a good idea to try pulling a stunt and spinning a yarn?
      2. Is it a good idea to pretend that a new independent customer service system had been set up?
      3. Why would I want to tell Trevor instead of Cell C?

Executionally

1. You don’t try to hoodwink your customer, even if you think its funny. Don’t make a fool of him, especially if your intention is to make him a hero.
2. Once you start a relationship with subterfuge it taints the rest of the relationship.
3. Customer service is a company culture thing. Pretending to outsource customer service to a comedian with no record as a consumer champion is bizarre.
4. Is appointing a comedian as your customer experience officer a message to tell everyone that your customer service is a joke.
5. Cell C has launched a new logo – but their TV ads still carry the old logo, that is just sloppy, and a message in itself.

What I would suggest:

1. Cell C get your network working, your outlets working and make sure that your customers are getting a superior experience.
2. Your customers don’t care how good you say you are, they care about their cell phone service
3. Then develope the tools to let your customers tell the rest of us about it. Because they are going to do it anyway.
4. Then go on and invite the rest of us in to join the conversation, using all media.

I am reminded of an article I read in the Huffington Post yesterday, called The dark side of vitaminwater it reveals that Coke’s legal team, who are defending a consumer protection lawsuit claiming that Coke has misled its customers into believing that vitaminwater is healthy, with the argument that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitamin water was a healthy beverage.” What twisted logic. Is Cell C under the illusion that they can treat their customers the same way, follow the same kind of strategy and same kind of defence if they get called out.

The fairy tale is just a fairy tale and we now know that. What we also now know for certain, because Trevor told us, is that the Cell C network is terrible.

In the US Domino’s Pizza has come under a lot of flak for their new marketing strategy.

For admitting that their product sucks, that the pizza base tastes like cardboard and saying sorry and then as a response to what their customers said developing and launching a new recipe. Crazy stuff Dominos, say the critics, you are alienating your loyal customers who presumably love cardboard and you are damaging your brand.

You can read the criticism on eConsultancy and Advertising Age by clicking on the links. While you are there read the comments. and when I tweeted the article today almost all the responses were the same, surprisingly disagreeing with the criticism.

Traditionally you would have either defended the product and shored up the brand or launched the new recipe with a “you always loved the old pizza but we have made it better”type of line.

But actually in today’s market that’s a very risky strategy.

• Domino’s customers all know the Pizza sucks, they buy it for convenient fast delivery.
• Their friends all know it too.
• They are connected to their friends.
• If you lie they will tell their friends that you are a liar.

So this is what domino’s did:

Now’s time for another story. In the late 80′s I was Client Services and Strategy Director for one of the hottest agencies in South Africa. One of clients was the biggest wine and spirits distributor. They had a dog of a wine brand, it had been promoted on the basis of its heritage – it was named after the birthplace of man who had opened a refreshment station at what is now Cape Town for ships bound from Europe to the East Indies in the spice trade.

Only one of the products was doing anything, a sweet wine loved by drunks in the Eastern Cape.

The heritage positioning was so thin that I suggested that we should throw it out and call it what it was “a good everyday drinking wine” the kind of stuff you would drink with your friends, people whom you had no need to impress.

Much to the horror of the Brand Manager but with the support of the senior management, who had decided to give the brand one last shot. So we told the truth about the brand and implemented that positioning, won a Bronze Lion at Cannes and saved the brand.

The foundation of good marketing is not just great advertising its great product and great experiences. What’s the point of trying to tell your customers stuff they already know is bull. Why not show them a little respect, show them that you care, maybe they will give you the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe this campaign will get customers to have a fresh look.

Well done Domino’s – Telling the truth may just be the Killer Strategy.

Photo by cafemama on Flickr

The notion that there is a divide between digital marketing and traditional marketing based on whether the technology used is analogue or digital is really a little ridiculous.

This thought was all sparked by a conversation I had with a prominent industry person yesterday. We were talking about the state of digital and traditional marketing in South Africa. During that entire conversation I felt that we were on different planets, as though our point of departure was entirely different. I concluded that I must be  communicating badly and when I thought about it I realized a reason.

The marketing, adverting and for that matter digital industry often think of digital as a medium. That your job is to have a smart idea that you push onto the customer and you use the media they use because then they will see it. This allows traditional ad agencies to think that because they have a digital or interactive section they are in the game. That digital is a channel. This is where the thinking is flawed.

Marketing needs to change because the way people find things out, how they learn, how they connect and so how ideas spread has changed. Its a fundamental behavioural change.

People are still people and brands are still brands, but neither behave the way they once did.

If you use new channels in the same way that you used old channels then the new channels wont work, they wont just work because they are digital You can rethink the way you use the traditional channels – so that they do work.

The divide is not between digital and traditional, or new media and old or anything like that. The divide is between those who cant understand the changing consumers and those who can. Its not a debate between media types its a debate about how ideas spread.

The traditional marketing industry is based on two key assumptions. Consumers are ignorant and believe what they are told. Without this advertising can’t work nearly, not nearly, as well. Yet we have seen internationally that both those assumptions have proven to be false. 2010 could well be the year the penny drops, but probably not completely.

The assumption was once true: consumers were ignorant – they got their information from the company, from salesmen from advertising. Customers also used to believe what they were told; they trusted advertising – business controlled the brand message.

Not only does research around the world show that trust in advertising has declined but we also know that through the Internet and by their own connections, customers have access to an unbelievable mountain of information, opinions and comments. Just these facts have changed marketing forever. It’s with this backdrop that I make my predictions for 2010.

1. Someone will notice that, in spite of conventional wisdom, South Africans are connected. I mean, more than 30% of us access social sites on our cellphones alone on a daily basis. Everyone has a phone, even at the lower levels of society, with the majority capable of connecting to the Internet. But they won’t know how to use this information.

2. Marketers will be the first to cotton on. They will be influenced by their international contacts and will finally realise that the excuses of “but the majority of South Africans don’t use the Internet” and that we just don’t have the bandwidth are exactly that: excuses. With the new undersea cables coming into South Africa and Africa, bandwidth as a problem will soon be a thing of the past.

3. Local advertising agencies will be leaning back, secure in their misunderstandings but becoming slowly unsettled, as they listen to their international colleagues talking about the international media bloodbath and the need to rush to digital. They will see their international associates buy digital agencies – or even start a division of their own. BUT they won’t be the core of the business.

4. Agencies will still see digital and online as a media channel and start integrating into them more and more, not realising that the key characteristic of the Internet is that it’s a social creation. It’s about people connecting, not about the technology, or even the sites themselves.

5. Internationally, the lead will be taken by thought leaders – who realise that social media is not separate from the individual’s total life experience – making sure that digital eventually becomes the centre of the brand connection, not an adjunct.

6. From a technology point of view, manufacturers will be accelerating their efforts to make sure that connection to the Internet is ubiquitous and cheap. At the high end, Apple’s iPhone is already carrying more web data than any other mobile device; but there are netbooks, tablets, the Android phone and the soon-to-be announced Apple iSlate all making sure that, more and more, the web experience is accessible and separate from the technology.

7. The way people are finding stuff on the Internet is changing; this may start having an effect on traditional digital marketing. The filter that most users will place on getting the data they want will be their friends. SEO optimisation techniques will be under huge pressure from new search algorithms and as “friend” filters and real-time search guide web users.

8. There will be a lot of flapping in media circles as traditional media morphs. The resistance movement led by the News Corp relics will continue to resist and will become increasingly irrelevant. Media entrepreneurs led by the former journalist will reinvent the way the news is spread and the financial models related to that.

9. With every major change in society, new players will emerge, new approaches will take form and the cards in the pack will be reshuffled. I believe that we will see the first major signs of that in South Africa in 2010.

Marketing will change because consumers have changed. Consumers are no longer ignorant, whether they are 25 or 52 and living in Diepsloot or Dainfern; they have unprecedented access to information, they are buying online and are part of massive electronic networks.

Maybe the penny will drop, maybe it won’t. Then next year’s predictions will be to guess how big the splash will be as the dinosaurs fall into the marketing tar pit and their new competitors, more nimble, like mammals, create a new marketing ecosystem.

This post first appeared in Bizcommunity trends report.

Picture by The invizible on flickr

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Sent out by email the invitation asked their clients to pass on to 10 of their friends and to claim a free treatment.

The take up was beyond any one’s expectations and responses were suddenly streaming in at an alarming rate. In fact so much so that they crashed the system.

I spoke to Mike Herbert the General Manager of Gary Rom Hairdressing about what he learned from the campaign. I could tell that he was under huge pressure from the client base some who thought it was a scam. They had had to close the promotion a few days after launch.

It wasn’t it was just an amazingly successful campaign that worked thousands of times better than anyone expected and worked right here in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Please watch Mike Herbert talking about what happened and  the lessons learned:

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A hairdressing business marked the opening of a store in Melrose Arch, Johannesburg by offering a promotion to 30 customers and their friends and got well over 50 000 responses, and in the process could have put out of business. The offer was for a free treatment and chance to be involved in a prize draw for a years worth of free hair treatment. The mail was sent on November 5 and got well over 50 000 application by November 16.

This was the email that went out.

“Well, I hereby formally invite you to indulge yourself at our new Gary Rom Hairdressing salon at Melrose Arch and experience this exciting new concept in South African shopping. All you have to do is forward this e-mail to 10 of your friends and be sure to copy/cc our GM, Mike – mike@garyromhairdressing.co.za – and you will receive an electronic voucher for a complimentary Kérastase ritual treatment in our sound-proof cabine, as well as a blow dry, valued at over R500!

But wait, there’s more!  Once you have redeemed your voucher at Gary Rom Hairdressing at Edgars Melrose Arch, you will automatically be entered into a prize draw where one lucky winner will receive a year’s free hair services and products, valued at over R 40 000.00!  This fantastic prize will be drawn live at the Edgars Melrose Arch salon at 6:00pm on Thursday 4 February 2010.”

By November 9 to honour the response would have driven them out of business.

This the post that was posted on their website on November 16.

“Since we published our public apology last Monday (9 Nov), this viral campaign has snowballed even further and we have now officially received more than 50,000 applications for a voucher for a treatment and a blow dry.  We have also received a whole lot of criticism for being naive on the nicest end of the insult scale, to being conmen on the opposite side of that scale.”

What at total embarrassment  for the naive Gary Rom, what a fantastic demo of the power of the internet and email.

photo credit: Glen Bowman

I am sitting on the plane on the way from Cape Town to Lanseria. Just completed a grueling round of speaking engagements.

I was struck by a number of things.

Firstly. That many of our “trainee communications experts have no clue of digital. I find it extraordinary that I could actually find only 3 bloggers and one twitter member in a third year advertising and communications class (marketers, art directors, copywriters and designers.)

We really need to push awareness with them. You have to understand the space to be able to advise others.

Secondly. That there are two distinct approaches to online marketing. The technology approach approaches it from the point of view of teh available technologies and how to deploy them. The interruption marketing POV that sees it from the traditional marketing and advertising point of view. how to use the channel to push marketing messages.

Then the third group who are in the distinct majority. The communicators who really understand the effects of the technology on society and how that is changing how they interact and need to be interacted with.

Finally at the mobile marketing conference it struck me how both of these approaches affected how people thought about one of the most important windows on the internet namely Mobile, Its impossible to think that a mobile network like MXIT which carries 330 million IM messages a day can not be regarded as the most important channel to reach 16 – 25 year olds in South Africa. Mxit boasts 12 million members growing at a rate of 12 000 a day. Extraordinary.

What I learned is that the digital reality is slowly dawning though and for the mobile marketing workshop to be oversubscribed double is a good indication of that. Maybe most in the room were already converts but so what, they want to touch the space – they become missionaries.

The AAA Digital Marketing Academy is set to prepare and up-skill the marketing and communication industry for the growth in the use of digital media.

Worldwide trends are telling the story:

• The consumer’s trust in traditional advertising and PR is declining.
• Control of brands is shifting to the costumer.
• Customers are more likely to seek product advice online than from advertisements and corporate brochures.
• Over 50’s are the fastest growing group of social media users.

South Africa has been relatively insulated because of the poor connectivity and a static internet population. Over 5 million experienced internet users in the higher LSMs is a significant market. Mobile is already a major factor and the imminent bringing on stream of the new undersea cables and increased and probably cheaper bandwidth, should dramatically push up broadband usage.

At 38% year on year growth digital advertising was the fastest growing media type in South Africa during 2008 and advertising is only a part of a complete digital strategy.

Presidential no hoper Barack Obama was elected to the most powerful job in the world on the back of a digital marketing campaign.

In tough economic times marketers are looking for more measurable results.

I have no doubt that as a marketer you appreciate all this, but can you make it work and who are you going to turn to help, guidance and advice, who are you going get to plan our strategy and how are you going to implement it, and how qualified are the internet and social media marketing gurus?

AAA Digital Marketing Academy is designed to fill that gap. We intend to develop a corps of digital savvy strategists and marketers who don’t only understand the technology but more importantly how to deploy it in integrated communications campaigns.

I am privileged to be the initiator and director of the Academy.

We are initially offering two courses, but will continuously roll out more.

The foundation course is on Digital Strategy which covers the latest thinking on digital and social marketing and a knowledge of the tools available. This is a practical course which will provide an understanding of the field. We will then take each topic and cover it in more detail in a series of verticals courses designed to cover topics covered in the strategy course in depth and  providing actionable skills, graduates will be well equipped to implement campaigns.

The Google Adwords course is the first of the verticals to be rolled out, under the guidance of an industry expert who works with Adwords every day the participant will qualify for the theoretical part of Google GAP qualification. Other verticals will follow.

Nobody in advertising or marketing can afford not to know this stuff, and this is how to get the knowledge you need.

For more information go to AAA Digital Marketing Academy.

Pic from mushon on Flickr

I must take responsibility for asking the question re the DA’s use of Social Media.

The responses have been very interesting. The DA has retreated behind the laager. Other Bloggers have taken up the debate, and comments on blogs are flying some very good others very emotional. See for examples Nic’s blog and on Vincent’s blog. We don’t all agree on stuff and that’s great because its healthy, but really none of the  “social media experts”  are all so far up our own arses to quote Nic as he thinks. Maybe in fact they are interested and critical learners.

What happens if the DA attempt at Social Media is great opportunity for a debate, what if it’s high profile and right in front of us happening every day and something we can all watch.

Maybe all the people who have tried to turn it into a personal thing should just take a huge step back and debate the issues, learning from what is happening so that we move forward with a greater knowledge than what we had before.

Maybe we can use the debate to educate and alert the market.

Maybe we should watch and analyse every move, not for the sake of democracy, or politics or personal self interest but because out of debate comes learning.

There are very few Social Media experts in the world and those who think that they “know it all” are delusional. Those who question are not insecure as one commentator puts it but the opposite secure enough to know that there is a lot to learn.

Looking forward to the debate and looking forward to the Case Study that’s coming out of this and by the way interesting reading on Getting Social Media from top blog Mashable to be found at the link.

Photo from cromacom’s photostream on Flickr

Silent Crowds by Tochis on Flickr

Crowdsourcing is a radical thought in today’s world. If you have a business problem, instead of solving it internally as you would traditionally you just open it up and ask the world.

A typical crowd sourcing project would involve distributing a huge task over a massive network, with no limit to the number of potential contributors, with the work itself broken into small discrete tasks.

In his book Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business, Wired Journalist Jeff Howe who first coined the phrase reveals that “the crowd is more than wise — it’s talented, creative and stunningly productive. Crowdsourcing activates the transformative power of today’s technology, liberating the latent potential within us all. It’s a perfect meritocracy, where age, gender, race, education and job history no longer matter, where the quality of work is all that counts and every field is open to people of every imaginable background. If you can perform the service, design the product or solve the problem, you’ve got the job” quoted from WIRED.

On Thursday I attended the media announcement of the first IdeaBounty reward. The job was for First National Bank and was in answer to a brief to find a way to change the perceptions of South Africans in FNB’s Premier Banking Segment and get them to adopt Online Banking.

Billed as a crowdsourcing project the IdeaBounty is in fact not so in the true sense of the word as it is really an ideas competition with one winner instead of an ongoing use of the crowd.  None the less it is still a very interesting and innovative use of the Internet to solve a business problem. There are benefits for both sides, clients get access to hundreds maybe thousands of creative brains at an extremely cost effective rate. Creatives are also able to sell an idea without having to execute it and a steady stream of opportunities to showcase their work in a protected environment where their work is safe from plundering.

Crowdsourcing is likely to be something that more and more companies turn to tap into talent which exists out of the organisation, after all most of the best brains are working for someone else.

Another and not totally dissimilar group named Add!ct Creative Lab has a large database of people of a whole range of creative disciplines, such as poets, writers, artists and chefs from around the world and deploys them into solving creative problems. Add!ct Lab is based in Belgium but its leader @JanVanMol lives in Johannesburg.

From a branding point of view this is a bit of a coup for FNB as it establishes them as innovators. It is also significant that the first IdeaBounty project was commissioned by a bank as it gives the project some credibility to other organisations considering using crowdsourcing, and should accelerate adoption. Its also significant that the winning idea came from Europe demonstrating how easy it is that South Africa business can tap into international talent.

Crowdsourcing will be a common place tool in the future, I am looking forward to see how it grows from this start.

Congratulations @followandyh who led the project at FNB, and the Quirk team for starting us on the journey.