Creative Agency Secrets

If you are interested or curious about what the Current Big Thing called Social Media is, who does it and what they are working on / talking about.  There are a wide range of great groups mainly based inLondon (sorry outatowners) that happen most weeks / months.

If you ahve a reason to come to town.  Try and drop into one or other of these.

Listen, Learn, Talk….

Chinwag event  NMK’s Beers & Innovation, Minibar, London Geek Dinners, MoMo London, Social Media Club, Creative Geeks, She Says, Swedish Beers, Open Coffee, Tuttle Club / Social Media Cafe, Girl Geek Dinners, Wiki Wednesdays, Next Wednesdays 

 And of course the BIMA events

Thanks to Dierdre of Chinwag for the summary list. 

What will it be like when consumers control their own data and become the driver of relationships with vendors?

Went to another VRM Lonodn meeting last week organised by Adriana Lukas.

Richard Marr has written a good synopsis of his undestanding with some very handy 'use cases" illustrating what VRM might be used for in the future 

Insurance

Bob is looking for some home insurance. He inputs data about all the belongings in his house that he wants covered, his postcode (zip code if you’re merkin), and then sends a message through the VRM host to insurance companies giving them one-off access and asking them for a quote. The insurance companies respond. He then selects the quote he wants, and provides them with his identity and whatever other personal data is required to establish a relationship. The chosen insurance company can then be given persistent access to Bob’s private house contents data so that he can quickly re-insure when he buys something to avoid being underinsured.

The insurance company wins because they can cut out the brokers. Bob wins because he gets cheaper insurance and can reduce the hassle of re-insuring. He doesn’t want to be underinsured if something goes wrong.

Neat, does it for me, particularly as the average fee paid to brokers for their service is £50 which would be a nice cost reduction on MY home insurance. 

While writing, Adriana has uploaded a slideshow of her vision of the user experience for VRM here 

I particularly like her summary of recent online applications that have created a movement behind the initial software.  Blogging is the killer app for conversations; Social networks are the killer app for relationships.  Could VRM be the platform for killer apps for transactions [slide 7].

She gives a travel example in slides 10 - 15 showing all the different places online she puts her travel information - from flights to photos and suggests these should come together into a single central place, personal to her. 

The working title for the online place where you put all your data is "Mine!" - double entendre intended. 

At the end is the link to the London VRM Hub wiki - come and join a meeting if you are curious.  They happen monthly. 

I've been online with Twitter for a few months now and here are 5 top tips on how to use it

1. Find top bloggers in your space and follow them.  Read the links they post - you often get the scoop early and can be commenter #1
2. Browse your favourite bloggers and see who follows them and browse their Twitter home pages and see who follows them - good for finding new interesting folk you didn't previously know
3. Tweet your blog posts and 'advertise' them online quickly via Twitter to get early readers who follow Tweets more regularly than Bloglines
4. Use tinyURL where possible to save characters
5. Always thank followers - and if you know them, follow them.  if you don't know them, read their home page, browas as in #2 above and decide if you like their stuff before following.

Steve Gillmore has written a neat summary of Twitter's progress and how he has used it during a live podcast with some uber-bloggers.

And a couple more because I thought of them….

6.  Don't write direct messages to anyone unless you REALLY know them

7.  [for non-US users] Turn off the SMS messages for days when you are at the computer - save up those rationed 250 SMS messages

8.  Watch out!  Twitter is compelling…. you'll get hooked ;-) 

Later… Found I am one of only 45 people following the BBC Radio 4's morning Today Programme on Twitter @todaytrial ….. interesting they only follow other BBC programme twitter sites and so NO Chance of dialogue…. which might enhance the programme….. they do read out the odd email during the show. 

Customer data has been an important part of the advice I give most of my clients for a long time - since I worked for Peppers and Rogers I have tended to suggest that it be called Customer Relationship Management or CRM.  

But that time is now moving into the past.  The future is about 'flipping' the control of customer data out of the hands of the corporation and into the hands of the individual.  

You and I both know that many organisations have our personal data - whether it is just logins to websites or fully comprehensive bank account and credit card details from vendors we use online and offline.   Do you have a complete list of these companies and websites?  Betcha don't.  I certainly don't.

 And so when something changes - you move house, for example or you decide that you no longer want your data to be held by a particular organisation or group of companies. you have to write individually to each to 'unsubscribe' or change or amend your customer data profile.  Which is frankly a right royal pain in the bum.

Early days yet - but a possible change is for you to hold all the data about yourself and for companies and organisations that want to have a relationsihp with you to come to a private place online that you control and manage and to"collect" your data there for their purposes - with your permission.  And so if you change something, you update in ONE place.  And if you change your mind about a company and you no longer want their newsletter, you go to one place and change their permissions - maybe letting them know automatically in the process why you did or what they did to make you alter your view of them and their brand.

Sounds good?

It is called Vendor Relationship Management.  VRM.  

And the principles are still being worked out by some of the leading minds of the online age - Doc Searls and Adriana Lukas.  I am working with Adriana on the London end of the project.  

If you want to learn more, read this slide deck from Doc updating his "Cluetrain Manifesto" view of the world 10 years on… and explaining some of the VRM principles as he sees them

And Adriana's One pager about VRM post which states her future-gazing view of the future.

If you are a business here's a possible future for you

Imagine having your customers share with you what they like, want and
think of you. At the moment, you are dependent on market research,
which is like looking through a keyhole at the rich ‘user-generated’
world. Imagine being able to relate to your customers, consistently and
persistently, where they contribute directly to your supply chain where
it makes sense - whether it is R&D, product design, distribution
and marketing. Interaction with them is modular, intuitive and
user-driven freeing much of your resources spent on marketing and
transaction cost.

And if you are a customer here's a possible future for you

The ability to manage and analyze your data will give you better
knowledge about yourself, the kind of knowledge that is the holy grail
of most companies’ customer data management. The awareness of your
preferences, understanding of your needs will help you to articulate
them easier and strengthen your position with vendors.

If you want to learn more about what you can do for VRM and what VRM can do for you - come to this workshop that I'm helping to run 

Tuesday April 15th, the theme is VRM and how it addresses (and
hopefully redresses) the imbalance between individuals and their
relationships with vendors, companies or institutions.

I am very pleased to say that my webstats are getting better.
Got a lovely result for a google search "advice on making business grow"  and I’m at number 4.

And I have also been picked up by FutureLab on their list of B2B Marketing Blogs.…

A belated thanks to the InHouseVillage folk for adding me to their list of blogs to watch. [curiously filed under ‘toolkit’??]

If you plan your charitable giving fror 2008 and want to try something new, copy me.  I gave $25 to Kiva earlier last year and this has been aggreagated with others’ to make a loan to a storekeeper in Ecuador who wants to expand his stock.  To date he has repaid $85 of the $700 loan. 

here’s an extract from the Kiva newsletter.

Dear Kiva Friend,
Happy Holidays!  We hope this finds you well.

Thank you for believing and participating in the Kiva.org movement to connect people through lending to alleviate poverty.

Because of your support, 2007 has been an amazing year for Kiva: over 170,000 lenders like you have funded 25,000 entrepreneurs to date.  That’s more than $16 million in loans across 37 countries - and at this time last year, we had just crossed the $1 million mark!  This explosive growth hasn’t gone unnoticed - Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and others have caught the Kiva bug, and enthusiasm continues to spread around the world.

I joined Twitter a while ago but have only just started to get it working and am now trying to use it.
Anyone else want to join the experiment?  My twitter id is on this feed.

Anyone else wanting to join up.  Here’s a helpful video on how to do it.

UPDATE   

Just downloaded the Vista plugin to put Twitter on my sidebar.  Here.  It’s called a Twadget.  Ugh.

BIMA do the BEST dinner debates.  I’ve attended a couple in the past. 

I am going to this event, and it promises to be a fantastic debate to add to the discussions that I started here and here.

Jamie
Galloway, Director of Digital Media, Central Office of Information. The
subject of the conversation for the evening is: ‘The future for PR in a
digital world’

[Nice use of English.. the future FOR not, you notice, the future OF….!]  Pedants of the world unite.

I met Simon Gill from LBi earlier in the week.  Great conversation.

He has a new theory about digital marketing.  THere are two parallel universes happening online:

1. The "marketing" web
2. The "real" web

the former is just stuff done for the purpose of marketing.  A brand site, a cunning support microsite for a campaign.  Nice but no reason to return or bookmark.

THe latter is where the future of one to one and "conversational" marketing is going.  It is warm, compelling and creates a reason for the customer to return and to possibly ‘get involved’.

And it seems Dave Birss is onto the same track.

Ever since working for Peppers and Rogers Group in the mid 90s, I have been waiting for the day when brands can have individual relationships with their customers.  And the technology to enable it.

MySpace’s Jay Stevens spoke at the Forrester Conference in Barcelona [thanks Jeremiah] here is his slide

Social networking creates influence which is strongest amongst friends.  Therefore social media must be in your media mix using ‘friending’ [ghastly phrase] to promote and recommend thus enabling the brand to start an ongoing relationship with the customer.

Bingo!