When it comes to customer service, brands that are 100% ‘digital natives’ seem to do it so much better that the older ones. There’s really no excuse for this. We’re many years into the digital communications revolution now. The mantra of being conversational, honest and accessible to customers really ain’t that new.
Over recent weeks I’ve had 2 very different customer service experiences. Admittedly pitting the boutique online printers Moo against electronics behemoth Sony isn’t really a fair match. But online, every brand should be ticking these essential boxes in the same way, or risk rapid damage to their reputation – whatever their size.
Moo: Good
We use Moo for our business cards, and the latest batch came back with a slight cutting error. Finding out how to contact customer service was stupidly easy. Every step of the transaction had already been reported by automatic email. The box contained re-order codes, a helpful returns sticky label and the website is clear from clutter, making navigation a breeze.
I sent an email, got a response and the reprints we on my desk at no cost – financial or emotional – to me, the customer. (Makes you want to write a positive blog post by way of a thank you, really).
Sony: Not Very Good
Meanwhile, the door on my Sony camcorder suddenly wouldn’t close, with or without a Mini DV cassette in it. Seeking assistance for this was the polar opposite experience. Googling the error code produced reams of forum posts slagging off Sony, this apparently common fault and their inability to communicate with customers on it other than charging them a lot of money to fix it.
Trying to find Sony’s own customer services for any official info was painful. Searches under a number of different terms pulled up variously unhelpful results: North American only help centres, drop down ‘help’ menus that didn’t list my particular camera model, vast FAQ pages.
Digital Content Strategy
A proper digital content strategy would see Sony not only simplifying and promoting the path to reach them direct, but also managing and reacting to the user comments about their products on other sites. It’s ridiculous that no representative from the company has contributed to those forums. Their reputation is being raked through the mud on there unchecked. The commercial missed opportunity is there for all to see.
Ok, so Moo may have a little too much Innocent Smoothiesque folksiness about them for some tastes, but all that chumminess is just a presentation style that works well for their type of business. The same principle of effective and rapid customer service can be handled in a totally corporate way with equally good results.
Help Them ‘Get It’
It all goes to show the huge culture shift that is going to have to take place very rapidly at ‘old’ companies as the general public increasingly seek answers to their issues online. It’s unfortunate but unsurprising that the brands that really ‘get it’ are those built for the new digital space.
At least helping all the others catch up presents a wealth of opportunity for a new breed of media companies. As ever, seeing it unfold around us is a very interesting process. Even though I still haven’t worked out how to get my camcorder to close.
I can’t help feeling disappointed observing the glee many people are taking in the ‘battle’ to get Rage Against the Machine to Christmas No.1 over the usual syrupy X-Factor ballad. Yet again, a virtual-pitchfork wielding mob springs up on Facebook/Twitter, overexcitedly spitting bile about ‘sticking it to Simon Cowell’ and clearly relishing being members of some achingly cool, subversive arbiters of taste and democracy.
But since when was buying 3 copies of a track (that you may well already own) to push it artificially to Number 1 a victory for democracy? And when did subverting the mainstream Saturday night TV populism of X-Factor become about a pop music popularity contest of equally silly, mainstream proportions?
I suppose at least people are buying the music. Downloading ‘Killing In The Name Of’ from a torrent site would kinda miss the point (but I bet it’s still doing briskly on those too this week). Much has been made of the fact that Sony is behind both of the No.1 contenders anyway, so can’t lose, no matter how much ‘people power’ is exerted with a couple of lazy clicks of a mouse.
Odeous as Cowell can often seem, slagging him off on social networks just makes the “I’m buying RATM, yeah!” brigade seem more disenfranchised rather than powerful. Downloading singles is not ‘sticking it’ to any ‘man’. This over-excitement feels like the early days of email, when it seemed incredibly big and clever to send jokes to all your contacts. As the platform (or rather, its users) matured, the childish approach to its new thrills wore off. In 2010 we can expect plenty more mobs to spring up, since the social web is such a new cultural phenomenon. You get the feeling the possibilities are only just beginning to be realised.
Yes, this does give ‘the people’ some considerable new empowerment – the freedom of speech Twitter mob against Trafigura highlighted just how difficult it is for companies attempting to silence the free press – but the faux-rebellious #ratm4xmas campaign also proves how easy it is to mobilise huge numbers of people to join a ‘cause’ they have not thought very much about.
Culturally this is hugely negative. Comedians fear making their most cutting jokes without a ‘campaign’ springing up (@jimmycarr was satirising the lack of weapons for troops but still got pilloried for mocking disability) and politicians have to speak in such bland, cautious terms as to render most interviews pointless. And socially there are potential problems too. With the mob acting as real-time moral police, will groups advocating attacks on ‘peados’ whip up the necessary critical mass online to go and start throwing stones at the local ‘loaner’ without checking the facts of the case – almost certainly.
But this is all inevitable cultural fallout from the rapid assimilation of powerful new communications technology into the core of our daily lives. The mobs will spring up, but the excitement that a Christmas No.1 mob, or a ‘let’s get a rich celebrity sacked’ mob, and particularly the more extreme, hate-driven mobs can bring will surely wane once we’ve all got over how easy it is to make a shallow statement by adding your name to a Facebook group.
What interests me is what comes next. When we’ve collectively grown tired of the latest example of ‘people power’ hitting the headlines, how will these tools be used properly? Simon Cowell’s own ideas of a political X-Factor sound more than a little scary, but he certainly knows that asking the crowd in real-time is going to be far more significant in how we are governed, and by whom, in the near future.
And what forthcoming technological developments will have come along by the time we’ve all got used to these latest ones anyway? The playing field is likely to have changed repeatedly before we’ve had a chance to get comfortable. Living in this new world will require a high degree of media savvy of us all. So, if #ratm4xmas acts as the UK’s ‘email joke’ moment in the evolution of social media campaigning then it might yet prove to have had a little bit of substance. And ok, it has belatedly become a charity fundraising project too, so I don’t want to sound entirely like Scrooge here. Merry Christmas!
Monday’s striking Guardian front page – the shared editorial declaration on climate change printed by 56 international newspapers – was unprecedented in the long history of newsprint. Papers have traditionally upheld a fierce rivalry, spelled out in their daily outspoken views on our political, cultural and national differences. On Monday they stood together, citing the potentially apocalyptic story of global warming as big enough to warrant a break with convention.
It was a worthy achievement. It also served as a reminder that the physical newspaper, with it’s blanket retail distribution and attention-grabbing headline space, still carries weight. The same highly charged editorial was displayed in the racks and kiosks of 45 different countries at the same time. Even the most viral of digital efforts would struggle to hit all those eyeballs so effectively.
Such innovation shows the way forward for the future success of print. It parallels the advantages of digital content in terms of global reach and shared ‘links’, while enjoying the unique access and political significance of the printed newspaper. Collaboration could well save the industry, and without Rupert Murdoch’s bizarre protectionist model ever having to be proved unworkable too.
Climate change is going to be the biggest story in the world for many years to come. It’s the ideal topic to unite global media, who in turn exert national pressure on politicians and promote essential local level lifestyle changes. Print may yet see it’s most powerful era.
Whatever the outcome in Copenhagen next week, the realisation is that analog and digital media have a more central role in ensuring the success of carbon reduction than the politicians. It is our collective yet individual daily decisions that will ultimately ensure any legislative targets are met. Those who inform us are charged with actually making this happen.
With that in mind, it’s time to sign up to the excellent 10:10 project, which manages to find just the right balance of personal involvement, realistic requests, positivity and an excellent media campaign. Therefore Alchemy Content is now and we look forward to seeing how the next year pans out, for newspapers, socially networked environmental campaigns and all our unsustainable carbon footprints.
Warner Bros have done a good job of showing how out of touch the Hollywood old guard still is when it comes to today’s fans. Last month they issued a cease and desist notice to a Harry Potter themed dinner party being run by the ever charismatic food blogger and underground restaurant spokesperson @msmarmitelover.
While her home restaurant is undoubtedly a fantastic success (it’s very tasty indeed, I can attest) and she has been featured in the press all year, the event remains a very small, living room based affair. Hardly a major case of copyright infringement, but the dinosaurs are not going to let individual facts get in the way of a good bit of blanket protectionism.
Meanwhile across London in Bethnal Green, the infinitely more savvy TV channel FX have embraced the fan themed party concept. They happily allow the promoters of club night Fangtasia to use their proprietary name from the series True Blood (it’s name of the bar). Their involvement even stretches to permitting the use of authentic signs/logos and donating prizes including branded bloodsucker lollipops and holy water!
Bringing brands alive for fans promotes the kind of long term engagement with characters that most TV/movie franchises can only dream of. We simply don’t live in an era where heavy-handed control of brands is the best way to protect your assets and copyrights anymore. With so many companies seemingly rushing to adopt social media practices across their online and offline activities, it’s amazing to see that some of the biggest media brands in the world are still stuck on their old model, fighting an uphill battle against the boundless creative input of their audience.
And so in this particular case, stories ridiculing the ancient corporate overseers at Warner v the supperclub host were a gift to the press and circulated widely, even making it onto Perez Hilton’s blog. What good is that kind of coverage to the Harry Potter brand?
Read MsMarmitelover’s account of the eventual evening on her blog. (Unbelievably enough, she has since received a letter from London Underground objecting to her use of their trademark in calling her dinner parties the Underground Restaurant! These companies really need to get with the disruptive times…)
We were over in Holland for the Amsterdam Dance Event (ADE09) recently, and despite growing in size and importance since I was last there in 2004, the conference and associated parties still really do deliver.
The dance industry generally, begrudgingly, agrees that their once traditional meeting place of Miami in March has been hijacked by the need for that city’s many nightclubs to turn a huge profit over WMC week from flash spring break kids, rather than cater to hob-nobbing industry professionals. And with other calendar fixtures like Popkomm in Berlin not happening in ‘09, expectations for ADE as the year’s real business-focused event seemed higher than ever.
This and the wider economic situation gave a real sense of urgency to the business meetings out there, with people keen to strike deals rather than simply talk a load of big talk.
We were speaking to lots of labels and artists about their digital content strategy, from to creating and managing mobile phone apps (a platform all are keen to be involved in), to social media marketing and producing bespoke, branded magazine-style content. It looks to have been a very productive trip.
The nightlife is also a real joy, with hassle-free doors and crowds, plus stunning industrial spaces like the new Trouw ensuring that Amsterdam is an ideal destination for such a dance music event, one that now brings over 90,000 people into the city to party.
Every party we checked out was happily full. Read the selection of ADE party reviews I wrote for Resident Advisor here, and plan your visit for 2010, whether for business or pleasure…
Proving in a big way that User Generated Content (UGC) videos need not all be tarnished by the ’sub-You’ve Been Framed clips of funny family cats’ brush, this student-made ‘lipdub’ video to the Black Eye Peas ‘I Gotta Feeling’ is nothing short of fantastic. 172 students from the University of Quebec in Montreal shot it in a single take and it sums up perfectly what can be done now digital technology is so advanced, easy to use and affordable that the focus of film-makers can be on the creative concept rather than how to afford/work the kit.
I actually meant to post this a couple of weeks ago after spotting a tweet from none other than the original track’s producer @DavidGuettaLife and it has since gone seriously viral with over 2m YouTube views.
The track is a great slice of optimistic pop anyway, and combined with the enthusiastic performances from the students (most of whom had only just started college and hardly knew each other) it produces a video that is joyous and life affirming from start to finish. Wrapped up in it all is very positive message about what can be achieved with today’s media and its platforms.
Forget the latest social media trends, communications fads and all those lofty opinions on the future of Twitter. The one thing that has emerged as a modern essential (one I believe we will soon consider on a par with having a phone number, or a listed postal or email address), is the status update.
It makes perfect sense in an age dominated by information, that we all provide a short ‘headline’ about what we are up to as part of our contemporary suite of work and social tools. We’re fast approaching a time when not to have a status update of some sort will feel as socially awkward as not having a mobile became in the late 1990s. And for businesses, it will be unthinkable.
It’s interesting to see the mobile operators and device manufacturers rushing into this space now (see the Vodaphone video below). The range of options they offer shows that this isn’t exclusively about Twitter, Facebook or any other brand. It’s also not about celebrity, or society’s obsession with self-importance, or an invasion of privacy, or a time consuming distraction. It’s a maturing of how we all use real-time social media in a way that isn’t overwhelming. It’s a practical method of communicating now we are all so instantly, permanently connected. An inevitable evolution of communication, no less. Ok, so it’s one that hasn’t featured in much sci-fi so makes us feel odd about our ideas of the future, but is ultimately very human.
Train Your Brain
The headline feed, whether this be news, marketing messages, blog posts or a public SMS from a friend’s mobile are the ultimate way to cope with and condense a torrent of real time information. Excellent free tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite help us to make sense of this as the feeds themselves become a flood. The mobile app and the personal website become important again as aggregators of particular feeds.
Our brains need to get to grips with this new way of receiving information, and its rapid advance is causing plenty of friction and resistance… of course. But the technology is guiding the way. Limiting the text characters (originally down to the basic restrictions of SMS) forces us to be brief and trains our minds to express ourselves in the concise way necessary today.
As society becomes more comfortable with sending and consuming information in this way, as yet unthought-of possibilities become apparent, both good and bad. Witness last week’s #trafigura and #janmoir outrage incidents (Twitter mobs could become a real problem, even if they can be mobilized for good), or the innovative #beatcancer charity drive. The best advice can only be that we all embrace the coming of the status update and train ourselves to be savvy as its cultural importance grows. What’s clear is that the pace of change isn’t going to stop, so those who remain resistant put themselves at an increasing disadvantage.
Such topics are to be discussed from a brand perspective at Media140 London on 26th October, a one-day conference on the impact of real-time media. Alchemy Content will be there, and we have a discount code for £40 off the ticket price for the first five people to buy a Media140 ticket using our exclusive promo code: E8NZAHJH. That makes it a very affordable £95.
Video for Vodaphone’s new 360 service, that is heavily geared towards the importance of status updates…
If the Royal Mail’s workforce goes on strike next week as currently threatened, it will be an important moment in the history of digital disruption.
The recent change in standing of our once world-leading postal service is largely down to the same technology that continues to reshape the media and many other industries. Seeing as many skilled media people still don’t have a grasp of this digital stuff, I doubt that the postal union reps are thinking ‘digitally’ about the consequences of trying to protect an outdated status quo.
Even with Lord Mandelson stressing that a strike would be “a suicidal act”, they seem intent on pressing on with action supposed to improve the deal for their members. The pace of technological change has caught most industries off guard, but Mandy isn’t just issuing idle statements about the potential demise of the Queen’s very own posties.
It’s not just the fact that banks and utilities are moving their billing (and junk mail) online, but the broadband-equipped population demands efficiency and above all immediacy in every area these days. We hear daily stories about companies planning on leaving the Royal Mail, and they really have no option. The majority of these are businesses that are successful online, including the home delivery daddy, Amazon. Trying to argue for better pay deals for an analogue workforce in a streamlined digital era is as ridiculous and futile as trying to copy-protect digital music files. Far better to accept the reality of how we live today and work out how to provide a relevant service around that.
There will be job losses, but we’re in the middle of another social revolution here. Next week may go down in its history as the moment a great institution was steam-rollered by progress, but it need not end that way.
Trevor Lovey’s new double mix compilation, ‘Body Jack’ (out now on Music Response) is filled with his best productions and remixes to date, plus some of the killer tunes in his DJ set and a host of exclusives. This is a journey through the sound that has established him as a global tour de force, from the deeper style of his Lil Bo Tweak projects through to Speaker Junk and his own unique take on party beats, featuring the likes of Bloc Party, Roisin Murphy, Bent, Switch, The Chemical Brothers, Alexander Robotnick, Don Diablo, and many more. BUY THE MIX on BEATPORT
‘Skoolin Tings’ is a brand new Trevor Loveys track, released exclusively on the ‘Body Jack’ compilation. It’s available for streaming via Soundcloud on blog sites now. Check it out: Trevor Loveys – Skoolin Tings by AlchemyContent “Skoolin was a track I did loosely based around a Schooly D and Code Money record from back in my youth,” says Trevor. “I always loved that beat. And I also used the snare off the ‘Big Beat’ 1970s tune, I guess again I’m trying to mix up those old ideas with new bass sounds and melodies.”
News that the Churchill Insurance dog (“Ohh, yess!”) is going to muscle his way onto the stage in no less than 22 pantomimes this Christmas will no doubt be greeted by howls and even whimpers from many quarters.
Bringing such a seemingly unsubtle commercial tie-in, reportedly worth in excess of £100,000 into theatres, particularly for family orientated shows like pantos, is sure to make a lot of people feel very uneasy.
But this is the reality already facing TV and online in the digital age as the audience becomes more savvy at ignoring/skipping through the sponsors messages that make things possible. It’s very interesting to see the theatre industry get in there first while the broadcast regulators worry about how to relax their laws.
It may not be pretty, but developing and creating characters for ads that then take on a wider life of their own is only a reverse twist from Disney or Star Wars characters helping shift McDonalds burgers. The new patrons of the arts are the nodding cuddly toys.
As long as the audience are sufficiently media literate they should be able to take this kind of thing for what it is (something that helps keep their ticket price down for starters). And that’s a good argument for actively teaching such literacy in schools, particular in an age of Wikipedia ‘facts’ and fanatical websites on health/religion/football being absorbed by otherwise impressionable minds.
Although it feels a bit brutal to have sponsored characters leading the “oh no he’s not”s in festive stage shows, this new era of highly creative advertising delivery actually shows how far our collective cultural intelligence has had to come in a digital era. A previous generation simply wouldn’t be able to comprehend the message, but today an insurance company can make money from putting a dog into a panto without having to plaster their name everywhere. Somewhere that’s actually quite subtle.
Monday’s striking Guardian front page – the 
