I remember attending an Internet World exhibition back in the late 1990s, at the Expotel in Hammersmith, west London.
One of the highlights was an address by a representative of Amazon.com, who was challenged by an audience member to explain Amazon’s diversification into electronic and other goods, when it had been founded – and marketed – as an online bookstore.
“You don’t understand our business,” he replied. “It’s not about selling books; it’s about acquiring customers.”
At pretty much the same time, a group of marketing gurus in the US launched The Cluetrain Manifesto, which argued that marketing on the internet was radically different to ‘traditional’ mass marketing becuase it enables “human-to-human conversations”.
Just a few years after The Cluetrain was published, the twin principles of acquiring customers and using the internet to facilitate human-to-human conversations were cemented in place as the pinnacle of 21st-century marketing practice by the explosion of online social networking.
There's a salutary lesson to be learned from the Kryptonite bicycle locks company, which tried to cover up a blogger’s discovery of a flaw in their locks, and ended up with a multimillion dollar product recall
Its authors declared that “markets are conversations”, and now Steven van Belleghem has arrived with a timely volume that sets out how marketing in general, and advertising in particular, need to get to grips with the impact online conversations are having on brands.
'Co-creation'
Van Belleghem’s book, The Conversation Manager, is subtitled The power of the modern consumer, the end of the traditional advertiser and the author is clear that the advertising industry has little choice but to change or face growing marginalisation, as brands develop hand-in-hand with consumers, through direct conversations.
He uses the term ‘co-creation’ to indicate the extent to which consumers are now involved in all aspects of the marketing cycle, from product development to brand positioning.
The book contains a wealth of case studies that illustrate the author’s claims. There's a salutary lesson to be learned from the Kryptonite bicycle locks company, which tried to cover up a blogger’s discovery of a flaw in their locks, and ended up with a multimillion dollar product recall.
Then there was the Donaldson clothing company, which terminated a brand tie-in with Disney’s Mickey Mouse without regard to consumer preference and went bust within a year.
And there are numerous good-practice examples too, which show how brands that engage successfully with consumers reap bottom-line rewards. My favourite story is about Dell, stung by Jeff Jarvis blogging his shoddy treatment by Dell customer service into a turn-around in approach that now sees Michael Dell personally hosting around 100 Dell customers at his house each year to discuss where the brand is going!
The book offers practical tips and strategies to help you become a ‘conversation manager’. To begin with, you must observe what is already going on online, not just in Google searches for your company name, but in blogs, forums, Facebook groups and Twitter feeds that touch directly on your company and your competitive landscape.
For example, setting up a Google alert for your brand and related search terms brings news of existing conversations straight to your inbox. And Google Alerts is just one of a baker’s dozen of free web tools listed by Van Belleghem as a basic toolkit for observing.
The next step is to facilitate. Make a place for consumers to discuss your products and services.
Providing special access to prototypes or previews for active online conversationalists can produce huge marketing return that may be well beyond your traditional marketing budget! If that sounds a bit scary, start by listening to consumer feedback on existing offerings, and then reporting back to consumers on how you’ve taken their feedback into account.
As Nazir Daud writes elsewhere on this site, you need to make sure your customer service “works for the customer as much as for the business”. You don’t have to invest much money in this – the cost is largely your time or your staff’s time.
But if you and your team can make it to the third and final step in the Conversation Manager’s model – to participate – then you can find yourself in a position to harness the power of positive online buzz. Beyond that lies the promise of transforming your whole business into a 'Conversation Company'.
If you’re trying to drive employee engagement as well as customer satisfaction, surely it makes sense to apply the same principles of listening, asking questions, being open-minded, honest and committed. After all, doesn’t that sound like the type of approach that makes for good conversation?
Finally, The Conversation Manager is a beautifully produced book. In what I take to be a deliberate juxtaposition of new media message with old media craft, the design, layout, typography and illustration are superbly executed, making the book a desirable object, one that you will enjoy leaving on your desk. That way, the powerful case studies and practical tools for conversation management will always be at hand.
