There was much debate at last night’s S&M Forum about the increasing usage of the “participative” web by CIOs. Both our our CIO speakers (CIOs from Reuters and Wyeth) mentioned that they use Twitter, blogs, and other 2.0 type media to find information to help keep abreast of trends. They also mentioned that both had come under increasing pressure to allow the organisation as a whole to interact with the company’s brand communities via these tools – their consumers were increasingly demanding it
This chimed with a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled “Getting Brand Communities Right” which discusses the huge success of Harley-Davidson in this arena. So if Wyeth, Reuters and Harley are doing it so well, why can’t IT companies? The answer, or one of them, seems to reside in the HBR article – where the author says, “Too often, companies isolate their community-building efforts within the marketing function.” As a result, it’s not inclusive or authentic and the IT companies’ business audiences are turned off. As Wyeth’s CIO said at the event last night, ” if the blog or content sounds like a corporate push then it turns me off immediately.”
The same goes for any really successful marketing initiative – the thing that’s remarkable is that it’s so rarely anything to do with pure marketing, it’s something that comes out of the business that marketing can build on. If marketing isn’t playing a role to spot (or create) these opportunities and react to them, then it’s always likely to be hamstrung. However many communities it tries to build, it’ll never be the B2B Harley-Davidson.
This ties in with HBR’s interview with Fiat’s CEO, who says: “There was also a lot of young talent locked up in marketing and other functions that historically were not considered high-potential career paths. The guy who runs the Alfa division now is 40 years old. The guy running the Fiat division is 42. Neither has an engineering background, but both were first-rate consumer-products marketers, and the company sorely needed their talents.” Based on what our CIOs were saying last night – that their successors are the 20-somethings with the mix of marketing savvy and technical wizardry – it won’t be at all long before an interview with an IT CEO says the same thing.
2 comments
I think that every IT company COULD be a Harley-Davidson if they were willing to invest the time and money on an “experimental” campaigns that incorporate web 2.0 activity. Every company has young, energetic people who are familiar enough with Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn, etc to harness their potential, but I think most companies are put off by the reality that web 2.0 takes a significant investment of time to make it worthwhile — unlike a DM or even email marketing, web 2.0 activities require daily committment in the long term.
I don’t think that every company could be a Harley Davidson. Although there are lots of people with intimate familiarity with 2.0 communication mechanisms, very few REALLY understand how to use them. Most companies are attempting to leverage these new channels, but their efforts appear to be trite and clumsy. Although young, enthusiastic, high-achievers are important elements of a social marketing strategy, there needs to be a strategy. The difference between organizations that are really taking advantage of social media channels, and those that are failing, is a comprehensive strategy, with 2.0 channels intermingled with more traditional channels.
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