** Cross posted on Ogilvy’s Fresh Influence Blog**
This week I participated in a Social Media Week New York panel “Putting the Social in CSR” along with Bonin Bough from Pepsico, Deb Berman from Just Means, and Chrysi Philalithes from (RED). Its an extremely timely topic and one we have been thinking a lot about from a number of different angles. The great news? Social media provides the media for corporations to leverage their Corporate Social Responsibility investments to yield greater fruit for both the customer and the beneficiary.
The time-worn model of CSR of “Purchase X and we’ll contribute to Y up to $Z amount” can leave all parties feeling a little empty. Consumers know the company has already earmarked the money for the cause and is now trying to blackmail us into unlocking it by picking their brand over the equivalent. That similarly does little for the cause beyond the actual money donated – there’s little room on a package to tell the charity’s story and there’s no way for the consumer to choose to become more involved. To paraphrase John & Yoko, “EMPTY CSR IS OVER if you want it”.
Social media allows for the type of participation that can provide better return on CSR investments to all. Just a few:
* Connecting Customer and Cause – Activating around a CSR commitment in social spaces allows the customer to choose to go a step beyond just the purchase for token donation to donating themselves, connecting to the cause’s social space or promoting the cause to there social nets.
* Inspiring Meaningful Involvement – Social media allows companies to set up infrastructure for their customers to be the connection that makes the biggest difference. For example, Time Warner Cable (Disclosure: Ogilvy client, but we are not responsible for CSR), has made a 5-year $100MM commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through their Connect a Million Minds initative. They are measuring success not with number of $$ donated, but number of minds connected – a function not of their donation, but the number of people they have inspired & empowered to take advantage of the infrastructure they have created.
* Platform for Awareness & Promotion The much publicized Pepsi Refresh Project is taking a huge step in CSR – providing $20 million in grants to individuals and small organizations with good ideas to improve their local communities. Pepsi provides a platform to tell your story, promote your idea, and is doling out 32 grants per month to the democratically selected winners. The impact for these causes will go far beyond a microscopic logo on a box.
To reference Ann Charles’ Mashable piece on CSR 2.0, the new way to look at CSR is the “triple bottom line of people, planet and profit”. Maybe social media adds a fourth P – participation – that could be a goal in itself. Participation benefits the brand, beneficiary, and consumer alike and will fuel the type of CSR that will hopefully increase the efforts and investments of corporations in some of society’s most serious challenges.
What you see above is are the top reasons that marketers within the American Bankers Association have not yet added social media marketing to their current mix (taken from a longer survey on the state of SMMarketing in Banking). While the options listed are all important, the top reason for reluctance that came out in discussions in a learning lab I hosted at the ABA Marketing conference last week is not listed. That reason is some combination of the following: “I am/my marketing manager is/my customers are TOO OLD for this stuff.”
How do you handle this statement? In the past, I have chosen to fight it with a mountain of demographic data (or the handy Forrester technographics tool), but demographic data can easily be dismissed as too generic or inflated. This is as much a state of mind issue as state of the reality issue anyway. Here are some other options to address:
• Train and encourage personal social media adoption in the workplace. Once it becomes a part of your life, it is much easier to understand the benefits, relevance to your customers, and how your might marry the two. This is harder than it seems – it is very easy to help someone set up a Facebook account, but an uphill battle to get them to use it.
• Get specific data on your customers’ social media usage. This could be done through primary methods like polls or through secondary research such as looking for mentions in social media (free tools include Summize Twitter search, searching on Facebook, or Google Blogsearch). While demographic data may not hold water with your peers, demonstrating that your customers are looking for you is extremely compelling.
• Run a pilot in your “Sweet Spot” to show results. When all else fails, ask forgiveness. (note: this could be risky, but sometimes very successful).
What have YOU done in your workplace, your agency, or around your dinner table to respond when you hear that social media is just for kids?
Today marks Day 2 of the LIVESTRONG Global Cancer Summit taking place in Dublin. In attendance are cancer advocates and survivors from 65 countries who can truly represent and discuss the complex issues comprising the global cancer burden.
Can’t attend? Never fear, there are plenty of ways to not only learn, but participate and make your voice heard and opinion counted from wherever you might be:
- Summit LIVE – Sessions are live Ustreaming from AND the LIVE tab of the very robust LIVESTRONG Facebook fan page or from livestrongblog.org (which also includes aggregation of tweets from the floor).
- Follow @livestrong on Twitter for interesting tidbits of data as they are released live on stage of the summit and opportunities to respond to Twitpolls.
- Visit LIVESTRONGAction to sign the World Cancer Declaration and have your name included on the list of those demanding that cancer be a global priority that will be presented at the close to the summit.
<Disclosure: Ogilvy Client- – cross posted on the Fresh Influence blog>
In my WeMedia talk this afternoon, I will be mentioning the JFK principle.
I am often asked – in and out of work – about how to get fans, customers, ambassadors, bloggers to do something FOR US. This very approach is why most communities and outreach efforts never get off the ground and the disconnect that Mack Collier discussed in this blog post. Most community building efforts fail because they are created in order to be monetized, yet communities will not grow and thrive around the concept of monetization.
In order for you to grow a community, you need find a core set of people who will find disproportionate value from what you can provide. This could be information, a space to gather, entertainment, or a willing ear. That audience will be the ones to offer you feedback and guidance on how to build a community (or any sort of engagement program) and the ones who will talk about it, help you recruit, etc. So how do you find ask your core audience? By asking (with apologies to JFK):
Ask not what your audience can do for you, but what you can do for your audience.
This is similar to the advice that we as a community offered to Recipecomparison.com here, but it is applicable in any number of social media strategies where you are trying to find your talkers.
Try taking this audience-centric approach and find the people for whom you can do the most. They just might be the ones who can do the most for you regardless of their “influence levels”.
Spurred on by a post from Mack Collier, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell posted an interesting vlog post yesterday on the idea of authority. I believe this concept of obsessively counting Twitter followers is the idea that touches off this debate. For example, if you have 25.000, does that mean you are an authority? I think Mack, Jackie, Ben and many other are all agreed that the answer is no. Alone, Twitter followers doesn’t even necessarily mean you have great influence, it is only a base brute measure of “reach” (you could also add in reach of the RTs for total reach) in the same way that media has measured reach for years.
There are some other interesting nuggets in the Ben/Jackie interplay in that video that piqued my interest.
Does a book indicate authority?: When Perez Hilton comes up, they reconsider whether or not he may be an “Authority” when the fact that he has a new book up gets mentioned. Initially I chuckled at the idea of having a book giving you street cred in the church’s eyes, but then I reconsidered. Writing a book usually indicates that the author has done a huge amount of research into a particular topic and (often) has some personal experience or connection to the topic that gives them further credibility.
Are authority and influence the same thing?: Jackie asks this as “Are the things that you say retweeted?” Ben by positing that “You are an authority if you have people who take your word and take action”. I think both of these are less about authority and more about influence. From the wikipedia entry on this authority: “What distinguishes authority, from coercion, force and power on the one hand and leadership, persuasion and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy.” I do think that its possible for an authority to not have a large group of people listening to them. Similarly many people can take action on what Britney Spears telegraphs, but I’m not sure this makes her an authority at anything other than influence.
Have online celebrities convinced themselves they are real celebrities? Ben and Jackie included some fun Twitterati mentions of folks that I really enjoy who really are caught up in their follower count. Stay tuned for G4’s “Twitterati: Where are they now” series in 2014.
Thanks to Ben & Jackie for the inspiration this morning!
