Groundswell: Part Three

1. Groundswell:Part Three The Groundswell transforms Presented by: Praveen Mohan Stephanie Baker Diana JOHNSON

2. Chapter 10 How connecting with the groundswell transforms your company Case Studies – Unilever (Dove) & Dell

3. Groundswell – Transforms your company • Case 1 • Unilever: Parent company of brands like Axe, Lipton, Vaseline, Dove, etc.. • Annually they spend over billion dollars in marketing products. • Rob Master and BabsRangaiah helped Unilever to use Internet as media to market their Dove Brand products. • Dove’s 75 second “Evolution” Video on YouTube was watched by over 5 million people in less than a year • Dove "Evolution" Video

4. Groundswell - Unilever The “Evolution” video garnered the top advertising awards at Cannes advertising festival, and best of all it caused a surge of traffic to Dove’s Campaign for real beauty website- more than double what Dove’s 2006 super bowl ad drove. Dove spent 2.5 million dollars to air this commercial during super bowl whereas literally nothing for You tube commercial. The largest advertising spender embraced low-cost, low-control social technologies, but it did not happen overnight.

5. Groundswell - Transformation • The three essential elements to this transformation: Important to take step by step • First, mental shift takes time and practice and requires a repertoire of shared successes, building on these stepping stones is also essential to giving opportunity to adjust their concepts of how things should work. • Second, each of these stepping stones leads in a natural progression to the next step, you need a plan and vision to take your organization to the next level • Third, you have to have executive support. Realistically you need to start small and sell it to your upper management to embrace groundswell thinking

6. Groundswell - Unilever For Dove’s campaign for real beauty in 2004, they took a big risk by featuring everyday average women instead of industry norm of using slender, young, perfect models. This radical idea was well researched and it worked well. Dove tried to market their product using NBC reality television show “The Apprentice”, this paid well for them as well, as it generated increased number of hits to Dove.com transforming into higher sales. The above experiences and several other led them to experiment with the Web using the Evolution video that became a huge success.

7. Groundswell - Unilever • Lessons learnt from Unilever: • Take small steps that have big impact • Innovative campaign for real beauty • Featuring in “The Apprentice” • “Evolution” video • Have a vision and a plan • Transformational thinking can be maddening slow, but patience pays. • Top executives at Unilever had a vision of Unilever’s potential with groundswell thinking. • Build leaders into the plan. • The top executives were relentless in embracing emerging media and give consumers the voice in the brand

8. Groundswell - Risks Sometimes business books make it look easy by showing only success stories, companies sometimes fail to embrace groundswell. An ‘X’ company spent 8 months in detailed planning in creating an executive blog, but the idea never took of since it was shot down by the executives, who feared loss of control over marketing message and prospect of getting negative comments from customers. The executive team also did not have any idea about what groundswell was.

9. Groundswell - Dell Dell is pretty advanced in using Groundswell to its advantage. In fact, Dell’s entry into the groundswell began as real trial-by-fire crisis. In 2001, the company started off shoring its customer support, and its customer satisfaction began to decline in 2005 according to a survey. In 2005, Journalism professor and noted blogger Jeff Jarvis wrote in his blog about the abysmal customer service he was receiving from the company.

10. Groundswell - Dell Dell lies, Dell sucks.. Dell Hell. These were some of the comments he posted in his blog. Dell’s hell was not just a PR nightmare, starting Nov 2005, the company’s profits started dropping and was losing its investors confidence. On June 21, 2006 a Dell notebook caught on fire at a conference in Osaka, Japan, http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1042700/dell-laptop-explodes-japanese-conference

11. Groundswell - Dell Dell’s VP of corporate group communications, Bob Pearson and his team began tracking blog posts, but they didn’t have ties back to the customer service to act on complaints. There was no one in the company whose job was to reach out actively to bloggers with problems. Dell had over 3 million customer contacts per day. Later , Dell setup digital media plan with a blog and assigned a product expert to manage it.

12. Groundswell - Dell Dell started proactively responding to customer issues, they also issued an update on the flaming notebook at Japan. The blog team had access to departmental managers within Dell so that they could respond proactively in the blog to the issues related to them Taking up on the success of the blog, Dell later launched “Ideastorm”

13. Groundswell - Dell • Lessons learnt: • It took a crisis or two to get Dell get started. Once they were in, they really took it to the next level. • Dell mastered one thing at a time, starting with listening. Listening to blogs, to solving bloggers problems, to blogging themselves, to IdeaStorm, they pulled themselves up into the groundswell. • Executive push and cover made the difference: Michel Dell provided support from the top, giving Bob and Lionel the ability to breakdown departmental silos. • Authenticity was crucial: Dell couldn’t get anywhere in the groundswell until it honestly admitted its flaws.

14. Groundswell – Preparing transformation • Implementing Groundswell in an organization can be minefield with full of risks, but with proper planning you can succeed. • First, start small • Second, educate your executives • Third, get the right people to run your strategy • Fourth, get your agency and technology partners in sync. • Fifth, plan for the next step and for the long term.

15. Chapter 11 The Groundswell Inside Your Company

16. Employee Quote I work retail. I inspire creativity and fun with my employees. I grand open stores, as many as possible, really. And I have never before loved a job and a company the way I love this one. My name is Ashley Hemsath, and I am Best Buy.

17. Tapping the Groundswell inside your company The bigger a company is, the more of a problem internal communication becomes. Information tends to flow down the ladder, but rarely does it go back up. Around the world, employees are connecting on internal social networks, collaborating on wikis, and contributing to idea exchanges

18. Case Study:Best Buy: Connecting Far-Flung Sales Associates Blue Shirt Nation was started by two corporate marketing guys, Steve Bendt & Gary Koelling, who wanted to gather customer insight on what kinds of advertising worked. “We had a lot of posts that said it sucked” It turned out, money wasn’t what was needed to make Blue Shirt Nation a success, participation was

19. The Impact of the Blue Shirt Nation Best Buy didn’t anticipate that Blue Shirt Nation would not only educate management, but enable employees to help each other. Some managers worry that connecting employees will create a revolt, and sometimes it does. The Blue Shirt Nation (video)

20. Internal Groundswell Benefits Listening Talking Energizing Supporting Embracing

21. Case Study:Avenue A/Razorfish: Collaborating on a Wiki Collaborating on a Wiki(Video)

22. Wikis are spreading through the corporate world Intel-Intelpedia Organic-Organism

23. Case Study:Bell Canada: Driving Cultural Change from the Bottom Up The Director of Collaboration services was trying to find a better way of dealing with ideas in the company. Created ID-ah!, which allows anyone in the company to submit an idea and then have the employees vote on it. Within a year and a half, more than a 1,000 ideas and 3,000 comments had been submitted. Companies should deploy social technologies internally only when organized change is both desirable and possible.

24. Strategies for nurturing the internal Groundswell The internal Groundswell is all about creating new ways for people to connect and work together. It’s about relationships, not technology. Internal Groundswells work only when management is listening Plan to ramp up in stages and ease people’s participation Find and encourage rebels Culture and relationships trump technologies

25. Chapter 12 The future of thegroundswell

26. Jason Korman Makes wine It’s a terrible business Distribution is challenging Awareness from magazines Knew he needed a different approach

27. Jason’s Different Approach • Concentrated on the experiences wine is a part of and not the wine in the bottle • Groundswell thinking • To encourage people having a good time with his wine to talk about it • June 2005 • Sent wine to 185 bloggers in the United Kingdom and Ireland • Also sent a little booklet suggesting that they write about it if they liked it, or even if they didn’t • By the end of 2005 • 305 blog posts mentioning the wine

28. Results • Partnered with Hugh McLeod • Brought his international following, catchy graphics, and intuitive feel for what works in groundswell • Pamphlet gave credibility and authenticity • Two years later a $10 million business • Jason has continued to build success with a Facebook group, YouTube videos, and Flickr photos • CNN, Advertising Age, and Microsoft • http://www.stormhoek.com/blog/ • http://gapingvoid.com/2007/02/23/stormhoeks-jason-korman-interviewed-on-winecast/

29. Stormhoek http://www.youtube.com/StormhoekWines#p/f/30/ODvfb37nR_4 It lives in the groundswell The internet is its marketing department Created a company in multiple countries They live in the groundswell and know they will grow as it grows

30. The Ubiquitous Groundswell • Technologies are exploding • They are cheap and easy to create and improve • Tap into the Internet advertising economy • Result • Groundswell is about to be embedded within everyactivity • Social networks will connect people with the groups they care about • Transactions will be constantly rated and reviewed • Tags will reorganize the way we find things • Feeds will alert any changes in content

31. Let’s spend a day in that future. • A day in the life of the ubiquitous groundswell • You’re in marketing at a shoe company • You wake up on December 1, 2012 • Your phone • You’ve set it to bring you information from the Wall Street Journal, Footwear News, and Women’s Wear Daily • The feeds are smart • Comment from your phone • Receive alert that interstate is backed up

32. At the Office • Check your monitoring dashboard – is it mauve or canary yellow • On your blog you make a trial balloon • Search ShoeTube to find source of the buzz • Put a link in your blog and a link to your post on Super Shoe • Update internal wiki so manufacturing and retail relations know what you’re up to • Time for lunch and turn your phone on private

33. Afternoon • Of the 191 comments on your blog – 75% are positive • Competitors can see this • You have an edge • You place an order that goes straight to your boss and operations – no need to contact them • You will post the news on your blog in a week or two • It will be too late for competitors to catch up • Shoe ambassadors • Look and see that daughter and friends are talking about algebra on FaceSpace.soc

34. Groundswell Changing Companies • Mobile Internet, feeds, communities, blogs, and wiki • Already working right now • Participation is missing – but rapidly on its way • unhealthy focus on the short term –instead creation of effective long-term strategies • Will make incremental moves with feedback • Will have a secure relationship with customers

35. Groundswell Changing Companies Companies will need to make the groundswell a resource Product cycles will speed up Constant feedback Strategies based on deception will be doomed

36. Attaining Groundswell Thinking • Advice on not what to do, but how to be! • Developing the right attitude • Never forget it is about person-to-person activity • Be a good listener • Be patient • Be opportunistic • Be flexible • Be collaborative • Be humble

37. Questions?