Aunty Van’s wacko filter for wunderkinder

Ever been struck by a great idea, but kept it quiet, just in case it sounds more wacko than wonder-child? After 10 years around the traps at Ogilvy PR and 14 in the PR business, I’ll share a secret: wonder-child is overrated.

But for those that err on the side of better safe than sorry, let me give you a quick filter for the big idea that you can implement between brain and mouth.

Last week I attended a MasterClass at ci2011 with famous physician, inventor and author of 82 books, Dr Edward de Bono. He took us through some concepts from his books ‘Think! Before It’s Too Late’ and ‘Six Thinking Hats’, but for me the most compelling part was the last 30 minutes of each session when he answered audience questions and entered into general discourse on the role of creativity within an organisation.

 Creativity often gets a bad rap. Corporate clients might sponsor the arts, but get a whiff of it in the boardroom and it takes a brave leader to grab it by the horns and see how they can apply it to their business.

 A key differentiator de Bono applies is creativity versus ‘crazy-tivity’.

Creativity is creating something new. According to de Bono, all valuable creative ideas will be logical in hindsight and have obvious benefits. In fact, when you are using creativity to create something new for an organisation, it’s often referred to as innovation.

Crazy-tivity has its place – in the realms of fantasy and entertainment – but it’s not the valuable business tool PR peeps need to employ in their bag of tricks.

 So getting back to this checklist between brain and mouth.

 This is not a de Bono list – it’s Aunty Van’s interpretation of de Bono – so take or leave it depending on where you think I sit on the scale of wacko to wunderkind.

 Before you make your suggestion, answer the following questions:

1. With hindsight, is your idea logical?
2. Does your idea have the potential to deliver obvious benefits?
3. If so, list two-three benefits that would support your idea.
4. What’s your gut saying? Is it a winner? Intuition doesn’t give you creative ideas, but it does help you judge the ideas you come up with. Trust yourself when you think you’re on a winner.

 Now I’m not saying you need to do this with every single idea. In some brainstorming environments it’s perfectly OK to switch the dial to wacko – in fact de Bono’s ‘Random Word’ tools might be considered in this category.

 But if you have time for the filter – run your idea through it – and it might help you articulate your thinking a little better.

 Dr de Bono has a number of ‘deliberate thinking techniques’ that I’m just starting to learn about. He’s number one on my reading list right now, so if you want to borrow a copy, go to www.bookdepository.co.uk .

He signed my copies so you can all PO! (BTW, that last comment was a de Bono in-joke … read his latest work and you’ll get it.)

‘Digitalising Aunty’ – Mark Scott’s vision for the ABC

Australia’s ABC, affectionately known as ‘Aunty’, is often regarded as an institution that is slow to embrace innovations and technologies –almost a relic of bygone times.  Aunty has a certain old school feel about her, whether it be the familiar faces of its presenters or its consistent programming. However, in reality, a more fitting name for the ABC of today would reflect that the ABC has broken down barriers ahead of its commercial cohorts.

Last month, about 150 guests crammed into a small room at the UTS Aerial Function Centre to hear Mark Scott, the managing director of the ABC, outline how the ABC was responding in the era of digital information, as part of the UTSpotlight series for the university’s alumni.

Scott reflected on a time when the ability of audiences and readers to quench their news thirst was at the mercy of the country’s news editors and newsagents. For example, if your newsagent wanted to, he could sell you a nine day-old copy of the New York Times; if you made it home in time, you would watch Richard Morecroft read the news, and if the head of news at Fairfax thought you might be interested, you could read an article from The Washington Post.

However, times have changed and while many see the ABC’s charter, structure and funding to be constraints holding it back, Scott believes innovation loves constraints and he’s taken these constraints by the horns. His view is the ABC should be more innovative, more relevant and more responsive to Australians than any other network.

Since taking the helm in 2006, Scott has expanded its services and the ABC now provides news, information, entertainment and other content across an expanding array of platforms: four television channels; digital radio channels to complement the four national and 60 local services; an elaborate online operation and customised material for mobile and other new media devices.

It’s fair to say the ABC is leading the digital charge. Its iView product, developed on a typical ABC budget of ‘as little as possible’, was the first to unlock audiences from their nightly 7pm social contracts with newsreaders to view their news. It meant they could view the news, and their favourite TV shows, at any time, from anywhere using the device of their choosing – iPhone, iPad or iMac. The ABC has realised the importance of digital and online in helping it to engage and maintain its audience.

Even the stalwart ‘old school’ bastions of the ABC have moved into the digital age – Four Corners has a Facebook page to interact with its audience, and Q&A regularly generates more than 30, 000 tweets in a single hour. The ABC has revolutionised the content Australians are seeing on their screens, centering it around them and what they have to say.

According to Scott, the role of the ABC is no longer that of a news teller but as a news host — a place where people can tell their own news and stories. The ABC is about Australian content and stories, stories for Australians by Australians. It provides a platform that allows them to do so. And where better than in their own world – online.

Guest post by Dorea Lau (@dorealau)

Big headlines, slow news

Part 3: John Bell on getting the timing right to launch your social media strategy

When John Bell, head of the global 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy’s global social media marketing and communications practice, was in Sydney in June, Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs caught up with him to talk about social media.

Following is the final post in a three-part series on how brands can get started in social media, measure its impact, how Australia compares to the rest of the world when it comes to social media and the challenge of finding social media experts who also understand marketing and communications.

Q: How do brands know they are ready to go to market with their social media program?

John Bell: In markets where social media hasn’t necessarily created a huge momentum, and Australia might be this way, the biggest challenge for communications and marketing professionals is timing. When do I get involved? When does it become essential that I do something?  When will my involvement and investment in social media be critical to my business compared to what I’m investing in now?

Those who have benefitted the most from social media are those who haven’t started too early, but early enough to get experience with it and start to understand inside their organisation how to manage their social network presence to be of the greatest benefit and create more two-way conversations between customers and stakeholders. It’s not like you can study up on it and then one day pull the trigger.

Research by The McKenzie Institute found that 20 per cent of brands using social media for marketing communication purposes across the enterprise are reaping 80 per cent of the benefit which leaves a lot of brands scratching their head and saying, “Does this do anything?”

I think that 20 per cent are the brands with the most experience and the most resources and commitment to social media. It’s the minority of brands right now who are applying social media to their business and feel confident and understand how it’s positively impacting them. I think this year in many markets, Australia included, we’re going to see brands that have been dabbling, start to get truly committed.

Question: How does Australia compare to some of the other markets you have experienced?

John Bell: The adoption curve has been tremendous with the growth in brands using social media for professional reasons skyrocketing. For a relatively small country of twenty million people, connectivity is fairly strong, there a lot of the conditions for marketplace readiness, including the growing use of smartphones, and strong levels of broadband connectivity, although I’ve heard there are some issues about the speed of the broadband. There’s a lot of experimentation occurring in Australia right now and I see a lot of companies hungry to move from experimentation to meaningful operationalizing. How can we get more out of it?

Question: This joke was doing the rounds on Twitter recently: “My boss found me asleep under my desk and was going to fire me, but I said I was planking so he made me vice president of social media”. Are jokes like this a reflection of the reputation that anyone can be an expert in social media?

John Bell: That’s probably happened all too often with companies investing some kind of key token staff hires for people who showed an aptitude in this space. They then realise they have no marketing communication skills, and can do nothing besides introducing them to Foursquare, etc.

Now a lot of brands are looking for people with the right blend of serious marketing communication skills and expertise in social media.

The next generation does come in with an advantage because of their intuitive personal knowledge of the space, but to expect them to go launch a multinational social media based marketing program a day after graduation is not realistic.

Part 2: John Bell on the challenges of measuring social media

When John Bell, head of the global 360° Digital Influence team – Ogilvy’s global social media marketing and communications practice, was in Sydney in June, Ogilvy PR’s Heather Jacobs caught up with him to talk about social media.

Following is part two of a three-part series on how brands can get started in social media, measure its impact, how Australia compares to the rest of the world when it comes to social media and the challenge of finding social media experts who also understand marketing and communications.

Question: There isn’t a global standard for measuring social media. Is there a push towards this and what are some of the challenges in measuring the impact?

John Bell: Everyone wants a standard measurement model that all their colleagues and peers will rely on. I predict that will happen, or a series of standards will emerge, over the next 10-20 years, but right now we just have to take it upon ourselves to measure impact for what’s good for the brand.

Question: What are some of the ways marketers are already using the measure the impact, such as engagement?

John Bell: Brand marketers are measuring engagement, but there’s no way to understand the ROI of engagement. It’s based on factors such as time spent, number of interactions, anything that’s indicative of me doing something with the brand, even something superficial such as “liking” it on Facebook or commenting on a post, or watching a video.

These actions are all indicative of some greater level of involvement and if you believe traditional sales funnel mechanisms, saying that people are aware of your brand means you now have them more involved and engaged.

A smaller number of that audience is now considering if the product suits their needs, whether they will buy it and a smaller number still will go ahead and buy it. That degree of engagement is useful to understand: are people engaged or not? So you can look on the Facebook admin wall and get a number of metrics or interaction metrics that are helpful.

The other trend is that a lot brands are putting value on the volume and quality of ‘word-of-mouth’. What are people saying about the brand? Are they being positive or negative? Are they associating the brand with what the brand wants? For example, are people associating Ford vehicles with fuel efficiency? Ford is trying very hard to make some of the most fuel efficient cars in the world, and emphasises that in all of its communications and is this reflected in the conversations online?

What a few of us are trying to do is to prove what we intuitively believe to be true – that the greater the volume of talk, and the greater the positive share of voice in the marketplace for a particular brand is indicative of preference for that brand over its competitors. And depending on what they are saying, of course, it could indicate intent to purchase.

Question: What if people are using social media to complain about a brand? How can brands deal with negative comments online?

John Bell: What’s interesting about negative comments is that there’s been an unintentional effect of brands developing social customer care outlets online. Twitter handles are meant to grab your attention if you’ve got something going wrong. If I were a cable service, Time Warner Cable, for example, the Twitter handles of other cable providers are meant to capture people who are complaining or having problems and take them into service, get them to customer care and get their problem solved.

Because it’s through Twitter, in this example, they are doing it and quite publicly, so they are getting a marketing side effect in that people are thinking, ‘Time Warner is listening to us, that’s good’.

The problem there is that we have trained consumers that if they have a problem with a product or service the first protocol is to complain about it to their friends online because that’s when the brand will step in and come to their aid.

It’s an interesting problem. I don’t think we, as marketers yet understand what — if anything –  we can do to both serve the customer service needs that are happening in the public space but not encourage more of them.

Next Page »