Chapter 16
Social: Amid Chatty Humans and Things
Guy Kawasaki is a well-known brand in tech circles. He was part of the early Apple gang involved in marketing the Macintosh in 1984. He has since written 10 books and been a speaker at a number of technology events. He used social media extensively in launching his last book1 and is a firm believer that it can be leveraged for any product launch, not just a book launch.
Kawasaki used a Facebook Fan Page, a book-specific website, Twitter tags, optimized search words, and email campaigns; shared review copies with influential and not-so-influential bloggers; and held photo contests and quizzes. The total budget for all these activities, he says, was under $20,000.2
At the other extreme, a 30-second ad on the U.S. football Super Bowl event costs plenty. It was estimated at $3 million for the 2011 game. The cost reflects the fact that in most years it is the most watched TV show across the world. The 2011 game drew an audience of over 110 million, even in countries where football means something quite different and the game starts at ungodly hours. The production of the commercials costs even more. You are talking real money here compared to Kawasaki's budget above. Yet in 2011, the underlying theme for most of the Bowl ads was integration with social media.
The biggest change from previous years: The commercials did not point to advertisers’ static websites, but instead to their Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, or iPad apps.
Big budget or small, it is clear that social savvy is a required skill in the new world, especially when it comes to product launches.
Super Bowl and Social Media
Social Strategy1, a firm that tracks media intelligence, compiled data on social channels around the 2011 Super Bowl. It found “Twitter was the dominant game-day source of social media activity. Viewers who were mobile-enabled seem to prefer Twitter for real-time conversations. YouTube and other sources had much more impact the week following the game, although Twitter was a strong player in both periods.”3
Advertisers on the Bowl blended traditional and new media in creative ways:
- Mercedes-Benz ran a “Tweet Race.” Four teams raced to Dallas (where the Super Bowl was being held) in Mercedes cars, fueled by how many times fans tweeted using the hashtag of their celebrity-led teams (Serena Williams, Rev Run, Nick Swisher, and Pete Wentz) from Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Tampa in specially equipped Mercedes vehicles.
- Volkswagen's ad, which featured a young Darth Vader discovering the “Force” around its Passat, was one of the most viewed on YouTube after the game and was the “most loved” in a survey of tweets.4
- Perversely, Groupon, which is obviously web/social savvy, as we have discussed in other chapters, created plenty of buzz, albeit negative, with its Tibet-focused commercial. A sample Tweet was “That @groupon commercial? 50% off having a clue how to spend millions on a Super Bowl spot.”
Beyond the Super Bowl, the integration between TV and radio commercials and social media is accelerating. Paramount Pictures, while launching Transformers 3 in the summer of 2011, allowed fans to “Shazam” TV and radio ads for a free download of an exclusive live version of the Linkin Park single “When They Come for Me.” Fans could also watch a featurette, buy show tickets, or purchase the soundtrack.
Shazam, which calls itself the world's leading mobile discovery platform with its reach of 125 million users, has been used by Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Honda, and other major brands to integrate traditional advertising with mobile sites.
Swag and Social Impact
Google's annual developer conference I/O usually has plenty of announcements. In 2011 it was about Google's streaming music, Chrome, and Android momentum. The real eye-popping watermark the conference keeps raising year after year is the swag (“stuff we all get”) that attendees qualify for, and then talk, tweet, and blog about:
Google I/O 2008 had one Keynote speech, and Android phones were a presentation, not a giveaway. For Google I/O 2009, every attendee received a “Google Ion” phone, which was a special edition HTC Magic running Android 1.5. [In 2010], every attendee received one of two Android phones, a Nexus One, or a Motorola DROID, before the conference even began. Then at the second day keynote, they were told they'd get a not-yet-released-to-the-public HTC Evo 4G as well.5
The 2011 event brought attendees a then-unreleased Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Android tablet, a Verizon 4G/LTE mobile hotspot, a developer version of the LG Optimus 3D (a 3D glasses-free smartphone), and a Sony Ericsson Xperia Play smartphone.
For 5,000+ attendees that may seem like a big marketing expense, but given the influence and social reach of these attendees in the technology early-adopter market, it is often a wise investment.
Cirque du Soleil offered free tickets to its show to bloggers during Blog World in Las Vegas in exchange for an “honest review on your blog or podcast.” Said a blogger (on a blog, of course): “I think that this was a brilliant idea. What better advertising could you get than reviews from bloggers, some of whom have a network of hundreds or even thousands of subscribers?”6
Dell's “Free-Range Marketing”
“I bumped into Michael Dell at All Things D after his interview, and he was nice enough to show me this laptop that he was carrying that he said no one's seen before. It's a small form factor notebook . . .,” blogged Brian Lam about the mini-notebook he had just seen. 7 It turned out to be a yet-unannounced Inspiron 910 (also known as the Mini 9).
Sometimes, the social buzz is unintended (though Mr. Dell is certainly savvy enough to have leaked the story by carrying a hard-to-miss red-colored device) and it helps for a company to move quickly.
Dell's official launch for the notebook was more than four months after the original blog post on Gizmodo:
They needed to be mindful of their upcoming launch activities, so they turned to what they termed “free-range marketing”: allowing the community to drive the excitement and the story about the new product. Blogs, forums, and social bookmarking sites like Digg were abuzz with talk about the new Dell notebook.
Dell actively monitored the ongoing dialogue, absorbing the information and feedback from the community using tools from Radian6.8
Radian6 has since been acquired by Salesforce.com, and is a key component of the Social Marketing Cloud the company announced in December 2011.
IT and Brand Impact
IBM, which certainly knows about IT audiences, used its Lotusphere conference in early 2011 to announce that we are seeing the “fifth shift in business technology”—from mainframe to departmental computing to the PC to the Internet and now to social business.
Bruce J. Rogow, introduced in Chapter 5, puts it even more crisply:
20–70 percent of a firm's brand is now delivered or supported by IT.
Historically, a firm's brand and brand equity was built through advertising, promotion, and the customer's confident use of the product or service. Today, the brand equity ebbs and flows with the quality of the call center, the ease of use of a website, ability to properly deliver a product on time, and the ability to have the right version of the product where it should be. The coolness factor includes the apps that are available to support the product or the buzz created in the social media. That buzz can be positive or negative. Who hasn't seen the YouTube video “United [Airlines] Breaks Guitars”?
My new Audi A4 broke down. Cars break down all the time, of course. But it took them nearly a month to locate the proper part, figure out what was wrong, and get the expertise to fix the problem. I posted over 25 missives on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. In today's properly IT-supported business it should not take a month. The brand suffers.
In the B2B space, companies expect that their suppliers can seamlessly integrate into their automated supply chains. They expect the suppliers’ inventory, pricing, availability, ordering, refresh, return, product information, and invoicing to be world class. The brand is no longer just about having your decal on Jeff Gordon's NASCAR or having your blimp fly over a football game. Most customers now experience your firm's real brand through interaction or lack thereof with your IT-supported vehicles.
No matter what Rogow says, many IT leaders are still cynical about social networks. Bill Brenner is an editor of Chief Security Magazine, so he is conflicted between attracting new readers via social channels and his job of informing his readers of technology security risks. He shared his ambivalence as he joined Google+, the social network described further on. “But the business value is worth the risk for me. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have been a big source of new CSO readers, and I expect Google+ to help us further. As long as I don't decide to actually trust these sites, I figure I'll be okay. I hope.”9
Many CIOs are not ambivalent. They see little upside from social networks. Indeed, some surveys suggest almost half of them see such networks as employee time wasters. The irony is that their own HR colleagues, whose job is to worry about employee productivity, have embraced social networks like LinkedIn.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, one of the first browser companies, and now a general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen-Horowitz, puts it succinctly:
LinkedIn is today's fastest-growing recruiting company. For the first time ever, on LinkedIn, employees can maintain their own resumes for recruiters to search in real time—giving LinkedIn the opportunity to eat the lucrative $400 billion recruiting industry.10
“Gamification”
Gabe Zichermann is an author, event organizer, and blogger around an exciting new trend called “gamification”—the use of games and rewards to engage users. He provides his first example:
With Nike+, Nike's goal was obviously to generate brand loyalty and ultimately sell more sporting equipment, but it clearly thought very carefully about what kinds of people would use the application and prioritized those players’ needs first. It didn't simply start assigning points and badges for buying Nike products; instead, it sought to make running more fun and thereby attract a large community of runners to whom it could then market Nike products.
A player can jump right in and begin using the app as little more than a pedometer with a stopwatch. As a newbie, she can begin by playing against herself, competing against her best time or best distance, using a leaderboard of her runs to motivate her to keep improving. But as she continues to explore and use the application, new games are presented.
Nike+ adds a social layer to the basic run-tracking game, creating a much richer experience for its players. Runners are encouraged to connect to Facebook and post their run information to their feeds. When a player begins her run, the app posts a notice to her Facebook feed and asks her friends to cheer her on. Each time a friend “likes” the post, the app plays a burst of roaring crowd over her music, to let her know that a friend has just supported her efforts. This opens up a fun social loop that reinforces the player's commitment to her fitness program, whether she is training for a marathon or going for a casual jog. At the end of her run, the player can see the supportive comments her friends posted on Facebook. But the app also includes surprise encouragement and positive feedback from celebrities such as Lance Armstrong and Tracy Morgan, adding a variable reinforcement touch. Beautiful “heat” maps show her where she was running fastest and slowest, making it more fun and engaging to review a run.
The core application is a handy tool for runners to track the time and distance of their runs. But the skillfully employed game mechanics take this basic pedometer and turn it into something far more social, engaging, and fun, subtly drawing the player into the game and making her want to come back again and again.”
Zichermann continues with another example:
Jigsaw (acquired by Salesforce.com) is a business-to-business marketplace for contact information that has successfully employed a leaderboard in order to encourage the uploading of consumer data. Essentially a wallet for virtual “business cards,” Jigsaw allows people to both upload and download full contact information for anyone. Although somewhat controversial—you can upload anyone's contact information with or without their consent—the idea is simple enough, and quite compelling. However, it would be impossible to create an up-to-date database of 16+ million professionals’ contact information in a cost-effective manner—so Jigsaw relies on users to upload the business cards they gather at trade shows, conferences, and through their social networks.
But one of the site's most compelling strategies is its leaderboard—a place where users can compare their performance within the network against each other. In fact, the company offers leaderboards for each of the core activities it's seeking to promote: New Contacts Added, Contacts Updated, Referrers, and Wikis (notes). These leaderboards (and the challenges, levels, badges, and points that they summarize) have enabled the company to move from cash compensation to virtual compensation, eliminating huge costs, gaining substantial advantages in their competitive space, and encouraging users to take actions that directly benefit the company without any obvious reward.
For some users, their ranking on the leaderboard is their reward.
For other players, and possibly most importantly for marketers, the greatest power of leaderboards is that they are also a decisive indicator that some kind of game is being played. They reveal the existence of a ranking mechanism, signal the existence of a point system, and suggest the presence of rules for ways to garner those points. They are an essential part of the puzzle in game based marketing.
Other creative uses of gamification include:
- When it launched the HTC EVO 4G phone, Sprint offered up “virtual badges” when users perform EVO ‘firsts’ including tweet, upload an EVO unboxing video, check in on Foursquare, or take the ‘first photo of an eight-person 4G hotspot’ (a unique feature of the EVO) using their device. Those badges—which prominently feature “4G” images—can then be shared on Twitter and Facebook. Users who are ‘first’ get featured on the EVO homepage too.”11
- Warner Bros. used Foursquare to promote the release of the movie Valentine's Day starring the (social media savvy) star Ashton Kutcher. The promotion involved “Romantic Tips” around the cities (New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Boston) that the movie featured. If users checked into any two of these locations, they unlocked a special Valentine's Day badge.
The Digital Crowd Queuing around the Block
We have seen the lines that form outside Apple stores around the world when a new product becomes available. Something similar happened virtually when Google+ was launched in July 2011.
Google+ is Google's response to Facebook with the differentiation of “The easiest way to share some things with college buddies, others with your parents, and almost nothing with your boss.” And it was invitation-only for its “Limited Field Trial.”
The scarcity of invites led to a dramatically increased social buzz and even auctions of the invitations on eBay. There were also scams. Cyber security firm Sophos exposed a Google+ invite scam that sent out invites that look like the real thing, except the link took the tricked users to a pharmacy web site that sells Viagra.12
John Quelch, marketing professor at Harvard Business School, wrote:
Marketers are trained to match supply to demand. Everything that consumers need should be available at the right time in the right place at the right price. Coca-Cola's mantra always has been to be within an arm's reach of desire. To be out of stock is to lose a sale or, worse, to lose a sale to a competitor.
But marketers also understand that, by using the illusion of scarcity, they can accelerate demand. This false scarcity encourages us to buy sooner and perhaps to buy more than normal.13
Google+ certainly created that virtual crowd waiting for the launch with those in the front of the line wearing “jealous?” T-shirts. It claimed 20 million members in the first month. Impressively, its stock reflected that excitement, and the market cap went up 30 percent, or $45 billion, in the same time period.
Yes, that's one heck of a crowd around the block.
“Things” Can Be Social, Too
Think social buzz only works with humans?
Japanese automaker Toyota is planning a private social network called “Toyota Friend,” powered by a tool called Chatter from Salesforce.com. It will connect Toyota customers with their cars, their dealership, and with Toyota:
Toyota Friend will provide a variety of product and service information as well as essential maintenance tips, creating a rich car ownership experience. For example, if an EV (electric vehicle) or PHV (plug-in hybrid) [both due in 2012] is running low on battery power, Toyota Friend would notify the driver to recharge in the form of a “tweet”-like alert. In addition, while Toyota Friend will be a private social network, customers can choose to extend their communication to family, friends, and others through public social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. The service will also be accessible through smart phones, tablet PCs, and other advanced mobile devices.14
Japan, of course, also leads the world when it comes to social robotics. After its 2011 tsunami, many were soothed by Paro, the robot seal. The robot is covered in tactile sensors and responds to petting by squealing. The country is also experimenting with nurse robots and, in a decade or so, it is expected that instead of its traditional focus on industrial robots, two-thirds will be “service robots” used in care of its aging population.
With billions of sensors talking to each other and to us there is a parallel social network, broadly called the Internet of Things, we have yet to fully understand or leverage. A relatively simplistic application is that of shared washing machines and dryers that text and tweet students in a dorm, when their clothes are done.
Conclusion
The technology elite know how we live in a world of plenty of chatter, human and non-human. Learning to interpret that chatter and magnify it via social savvy is no longer a “nice to have.” Not only your employees, but also your products need to be socially savvy. Let's next look at a socially savvy product, the Lexmark Genesis.
Case Study: Lexmark Genesis—A Printer for Our Social Times
“High-gloss black piano finish.”
The striking physical looks of the Lexmark Genesis are what every initial product review focused on when it was introduced in October 2010. Seventeen inches tall, it towers over every other device on the desktop or on the office floor. If the height does not get your attention, the glossy, sloping black front surely does.
Next you notice the 4.3-inch touchscreen LCD display, which is about the size of the smartphones most of us are used to these days. That's your gateway to the setup (who looks at user manuals these days?), ink levels, and the applications. Large, easy-to-read graphic icons drive the copy, scan, and fax functions. It also comes with “SmartSolutions,” some pre-packaged and others downloadable from the Lexmark online SmartSolutions library.
Then you notice the blazing speed of the scanner.
Wrote Engadget:
750 milliseconds after you close its front-facing scan bay, the CMOS sensor generates a preview on the 4.3-inch color touchscreen, and 2.2 seconds after that, it's got a full 300 dpi image saved on your USB-connected computer or winging its way across 802.11n wi-fi.
It makes easy the choice to store the scanned documents as JPEG, PDF, editable Word document, or auto attach in those formats to e-mail. The Genesis packages a 10-megapixel digital camera instead of using charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays found in traditional scanners. The speed has led Lexmark to call the printer a “Now-in-One,” a play on the traditional All-in-One designation for multifunction printers.
Finally, you notice the ease with which you can set up your home or office “cloud” as you can use its wi-fi connection for laptops, iPads, and iPods. Or you can use a port on its side to print directly from a USB device or memory card. That negates the need to upload pictures onto your PC and then print. While Lexmark SmartSolutions are designed for business, they can also be social, allowing users to scroll through and search their Twitter feeds as well as view their Facebook walls.
And why not? When everything from shoes to pens to grills is becoming smarter, why not a dramatic improvement in the boring old printer?
From Lexmark? The Kentucky-based company often does not get the exposure it would if it had been based in Silicon Valley, but it has a 20-year track record of innovation.
The Company
Lexmark was formed in 1991 when IBM divested its printer and related supplies business. In 2010, Lexmark sold products in more than 170 countries and reported more than $4 billion in revenue. It diversified into global manufacturing and software expertise over a decade ago. It has talent pools and manufacturing capabilities in Cebu, Philippines; Shenzhen, China; Kolkotta, India; Juarez, Mexico; and Budapest, Hungary.
It can claim a series of milestones such as Operation ReSource, a free laser-cartridge recycling program for customers way back in 1991. It can also boast the Medley, which was in 1995 the industry's first printer-fax-copier-scanner combination product with color printing capability, and in 1997 it introduced the industry's first inkjet device capable of printing 1200 x 1200 dpi. In 2006, Lexmark introduced Fleet Manager, allowing channel partners to deliver Lexmark's managed print services tools and technologies to their customers. By 2007, it offered customers the widest range of wireless printers. In 2010, Lexmark acquired Perceptive Software to expand its document workflow solutions portfolio.
In addition to products under its brands, it also white-labels printers sold by Dell and IBM.
Printers as Maligned Devices
Even with all the innovations in printers that Lexmark and its competitors like HP and Canon have delivered over the years, the printer is considered a frustrating device by most consumers and businesses. Blame that on frequent paper jams and other service issues, on expensive toners and other supplies, on long wait times to warm up/print/scan, for polluting the environment, and for archiving/shredding headaches of printed paper. In fact, retailers often use printers as loss leaders to sell other equipment.
Indeed, it is striking that Consumer Reports in its “Printer shopping tips” mostly emphasizes considerations on how to minimize usage:
- Avoid blank pages.
- Print fewer pages.
- Conserve ink or toner.
- Power it down.
- Seek efficiency.
- Recycle cartridges.
So, the Genesis design team had its work cut out for it. How do you get consumers excited about a significant form/factor leap in a device with a boring and frustrating image?
The Genesis Design Process
Robert Eskridge, in the Lexmark Product Development Engineering group, describes the design process for the Genesis:
The key element in the entire process was innovation in how customers use our products and what customer benefits we provided at each decision level. That may sound obvious but required a disciplined multistep process.
We started with early “white-paper” concepts. As with any new product, we looked at marketing input based on the review of customer feedback on our earlier products. Out of that, we knew the Genesis needed to be a smaller footprint and that guided us to the vertical look. We also looked at the competitive landscape and the current state of “the art of the possible” in terms of technologies.
Next we got input from a handful of “Outcome-Driven Innovation” (ODI) sessions. ODI is based on the premise that when it comes to innovation, the job, not the product, must be the unit of analysis. Based on conceptual mockups, we got customer feedback on how they used various copying, faxing, scanning functionality. This really helped with our Flash Scan decision as we saw customer delight with “document to digital” in three seconds compared to the much longer time they tolerate with scanning today.
We then did in-house testing and tweaking that covered the whole customer experience—unboxing, setup, ease of cartridge installation, networking, and using the device. One feedback point given the vertical platen was to engineer a card clip to hold in place smaller receipts, business cards, and photos.
We then performed online testing to validate various concepts (images, feature/function, pricing). I would estimate we had over 2,000 participants over the product design cycle. Finally, we moved to betasphere testing with product placement in customer environments.
A deep dive color study was done to determine the two models that we have today. One has a high-gloss black all around and the other has silver panel accents. No major technical changes were uncovered during the last few test cycles; however, tweaks on usability and messaging were implemented based on customer feedback.
The SmartSolutions
Kathy Edwards, in Lexmark communications, explains the concept of SmartSolutions, which are such an important part of the product:
They are focused on making our customers become more efficient. Most solutions were designed to help small and medium-sized business be more productive, thus saving time and money. Complicated tasks are made easy with one-touch workflow solutions.
Take a personal productivity example. I am always copying invoices and then filing them. With SmartSolutions, I can customize an App, name it Invoices, then scan every invoice into my Invoice File Folder on my PC or Mac. I can shred and recycle the hard copy, allowing my business to have everything in an electronic format for archiving, and I've become a little more efficient instead of spending time on copying and filing. All with one touch of a button. The solution was customized to fit my specific needs during my initial setup.
Or take expense tracking. Businesses have charges and travel receipts that need to be maintained for tax purposes. With SmartSolutions, they can customize an App, name it Tax Receipts, and scan those copies to a file folder, or even better scan directly to their tax accountant via email. Again, the solution (scan to file or scan to email) was customized during their one-time setup.
Lexmark has a SmartSolutions store (like the Apple App Store or Android market) with a number of free and purchasable applications from Stamps.com, Evernote, Box.net, LegalZoom, and TripIt, among others.
The Social Product Launch
Jerry Grasso, Vice President of Corporate Communications, says the company leveraged social media extensively for the product launch:
We launched the Genesis product at BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Las Vegas in October 2010. First time we have done that. We usually launch products at CES or other technology shows but over the last year we have seen a tipping point for the payback from leveraging social media. We launched simultaneously with press events in New York and San Francisco and even in those cities we invited a mix of bloggers in addition to more traditional media like the New York Times.
Our analysis shows over 50 blogs or articles were written about Genesis within a few days of the launch with a readership of over 32 million around the world. You can measure quite easily the Tweets and other readership metrics from the write-ups in blogs like Engadget and Gizmodo. We found it was especially influential in the early adopter customer base.
The Genesis is definitely a printer for our increasingly social world. Its social features, and its social launch, give it a solid chance to reshape the worldview of printers.