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The Twenty Most Important Social Media Buzzwords for 2010

My, how the digital times are a-changin'. We're downsizing to small screens, friending the world, thinking in 140 characters and downloading -- dare I say -- "billions and billions" of apps designed to make everything we do simpler, faster and more convenient (well, we think). And so, only days into 2010, I decided to kick off the year with an Ad Age column dedicated to the most appropriate buzzwords to describe our curious stampede to the social media and mobile future.  Here's are a few excepts and favorites from the piece. Read the full-article here. Anything missing?  Send feedback here or via my Twitter account (twitter.com/pblackshaw)

• SPURNED MEDIA: Just like it sounds, earned media that goes horribly negative, invades otherwise pristine search results or bleeds into traditional media. Bad customer service is a top driver of "spurned media."

• MOBILENECKING: The alarming tendency to have our necks titled down or shifted sideways -- ever glued to our mobile device. This anywhere, anyplace epidemic is increasingly common in cars, airplanes and crosswalks. Closely related to term "Eyevoidance," where no one looks at anyone anymore.

• JACK RIPPER: The device warriors who hog outlets anywhere they can find them -- in the airport, via the USB port of a colleague's computer, even a restaurant reservation desk. They get a charge from a charge.

• WIKI WART: A bad piece of news or an embarrassing brand episode (e.g., an activist protest or a social-media campaign that backfired) that just won't go away in a brand's Wikipedia description. PR pros often give false hope to brands of removing the warts, but relentless Wikipedia editors put them right back.

• OEDIPOST COMPLEX: The curious neurosis that compels folks to sleep with their Blackberry or iPhone. The afflicted can't stop checking -- even in late hours -- for responses to tweets or blog and Facebook posts.

• BRAND TEASE: A consumer who "friends" or "fans" a brand, only to never return for a second date. Brands feed the cycle by forgetting to court the consumer with engaging, interesting or sustaining content or value.

• APPTOSTERONE: The mojo that fuels intense "mine's bigger/better" conversation about mobile apps. "Dude, you got Bump, but I've got FourSquare." Marketing techies are loaded with Apptosterone.

• TWITSTOP: A bathroom detour from a meeting or conversation in order to check e-mail, Twitter or the latest and greatest via an app. (Swear on the Bible, I don't do this ... but I'm told lots of others do.)

• DIGITAL DETOX: What we all need -- at least in doses. As we've learned, total digital immersion has side effects. Let's all pursue a roadmap for balance in 2010. (This is likely the topic of my next book, so send feedback.)

Again, here's the full article.  Love to hear your thoughts. 

Three Words Marketers Must Sing in 2010: Serve, Shrink & Simplify

In one of my last Ad Age columns for the year, I focus my attention on three critical words marketers need to embrace, repeat, and perhaps even "retweet" in 2010:  Serve, Shrink, and Simplify.  It's worth a full read, but here are a few excerpts:

Serve:  You've heard this from me before, but I'll say it again. Service is the new marketing. Serving trumps selling. If consumers are in control, we can't just sell or wrap ads around them. We need to serve their needs, solve their problems and dial up talk-worthy "brand experiences." And we must do so 24/7, as Twitter-influenced consumers increasingly expect the "service desk" to be on all the time, from the 800-number and brand "chat" line to the Facebook fan page. Serve and you'll touch the nerve.  The other good news is that more brands are getting this -- almost intuitively. That's why we're seeing a fire hydrant of service innovation taking place across brand blogs, Twitter and even iPhone apps.  Consider the implicit assumption in mega-brand Tide's new iPhone app -- the "Tide Stain Brain" -- which acts as a de facto washing consultant.

Shrink: Our screens are shrinking -- big time. With billions of "app" downloads -- certain to explode further in 2010 -- much of our attention is now fixed (often frenetically) on screens half the size of a playing card. That has big implications. We need to adapt to a smaller interface. We need to rethink design. We need to cut the clutter. We need to obsess on the power of "icons" with the compulsiveness of a Steve Jobs or an airline safety card designer. We need to translate "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" brand websites into two-inch screens. Oh, and this "shrinking" principle also applies to how we tighten and simplify copy. Twitter's 140-character limitation may seem like a climbing Everest to the "diarrhea of the mouth" crowd, but get used to it. Brevity is the soul of wit, my friends. We need to do more with less. Indeed, small is the new big.

Simplify:  Of course, we'll never win on either the "serve" or "shrink" principles unless we really simplify things for consumers. Admit it, we love complexity. We hide essential information in illegible fine-print. We're rather give consumers a 200-page "how to" manual than a simple video demo. If you want your iPhone app to sing, you darn well better build it on "add water and stir" simplicity principles. If you want your small-screen ad unit to engage, or your sponsored content to drive participation, you better think hard about stripping out the gobblygook. Just think about the upside. Consider all the micro-charges on our bank or Amex statements because Apple computers made it ridiculously simple to pay for content. Then project that to e-commerce sales, or perhaps even the riddle of how to save online content from Jack-the-"Free"-Ripper." Let there be no doubt -- simplicity sells.

Again, three words:  Serve, Shrink and Simplify.  (Full article here.) 

Is the Consumer Affairs Dept an Endangered Species? (An Open Letter to SOCAP Attendees)

 Is the consumer affairs department an endangered species?   I know, this sounds harsh – but the question is quite honest, and certainly timely.   I’m also tossing this out there as a provocative “call to action” at a time when consumer affairs professionals – contact center heads, customer service suppliers -- are assembling from all over the country to the Society of Consumer Affairs Professional’s (SOCAP)  annual symposium n Chicago.  Normally I’d be there – this is one conference I never want to miss – but I just so happen to be moderating the keynote panel at Ad-Tech San Francisco tomorrow on the topic of “Innovate or Die: Building Great Brands in the Era of Disruption.”  (Yes, in light of my opening sentence, there’s irony in the title, and I certainly hope to include a representative of SOCAP -- perhaps President Matt D’Uva or Chairman Pete Edghill -- on the panel next year.)

Here’s the rub.  Right now, in 2009, the consumer affairs (or consumer relations) industry has two strikes against it.  One, marketers generally treat this group as as “the neglected stepchild,” a term drawn directly from the most important chapter of my recent book “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000” (Doubleday Business).  This is reflected in budget, staffing, and, in many cases, a typically marginalized role at the strategy table. Second, the explosion of social media tactics and strategies – typically led by marketers, ad agencies, PR firms, and the mushrooming legions of Twitter-schooled “social media experts" – has started to eclipse if not cannibalize consumer affairs' role in bread and butter consumer engagement activity: listening, responding, solving, managing feedback loops, and more.  It’s not that consumer affairs is doing less that they were, say, a year ago, but their total “share of conversation” relative to other groups is heading south.  Relevancy matters!

All of this has led to what I’ve often referred to as a massive “conversational divide.”  Marketing stakeholders are jumping into the social media space aggressively, and with no shortage of hype and exuberance (not necessarily a good thing) – from Twitter "service" accounts and corporate blogs to Facebook fan sites and user-generated ideation contests – while the consumer affairs department is barely keeping up.  The “divide” is most pronounced in the consumer experience.  Direct feedback channels (800 numbers, email feedback forms, online FAQs) are innovating at a fraction of the pace of the external social media “engagement” efforts.   Don’t believe me.  Just randomly pick ten major brands and ask whether their “feedback interfaces” match the pace of innovation with their social media efforts.     Yes, there are pockets of innovation where corporate accounts on Twitter act as de facto “consumer relations” outposts, but with the exception of perhaps Frank Eliason of Comcast (disclosure: a client) it is unusual to find a person with customer service or consumer affairs “credentials” staffing such efforts.  Even on the phone front, brands simply are not keeping up with consumer expectations, a point Emily Yellin hits hard (and persuasively) in her excellent new book, "Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us"   Again, we have a “conversational divide.

So what does this have to do with SOCAP?   Now more than ever, the consumer affairs community needs to step up to the plate and grab a real seat at the social media table. The conversation and table-talk at this year’s SOCAP confab should center around the tactics and strategies to realign management thinking about their potential to lead this promising area of innovation, and why they consumer affairs is positioned to do this better than anyone else.  That was precisely the theme of my keynote speech to SOCAP at their annual conference in October 2008, and I repeat the point for emphasis here.  In fact, the need is more urgent than ever.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not blindly taking a position or throwing darts at the corporate org chart.  The folks closest to the pulse of the consumers who reach out to companies should naturally have a hand in the “expansion” (e.g. social media) efforts.  Brands will slip, trip, or outright fail if they don’t enroll the very same folks have invested years and years of experience in empathetic listening to consumers; in solving problems to retain consumer loyalty, and perhaps even nurturing advocacy.  The social media movement needs that discipline.  It might even need a wee bit of consumer affairs caution and conservatism.    Again, the consumer is in control; we -- all of us -- can't screw this up!

Consumer affairs is well-positioned to make headway, but they can’t take the space – or their birthright in consumer “listening & engagement” – for granted.  As I note in my book, “one of the most important imperatives for management seeking top-line growth is to rethinking, and in many cases, reengineer, the entire consumer affairs operation. In fact, this revamping may prove to be a far more efficient, high-return investment than pouring more money into paid media.”

“After all, the consumers most likely to fill out an online feedback form or call the customer service number are the same folks who create online word-of-mouth.  In every study I’ve conducted on online consumer behavior, a strong correlation exists between consumers who exercise feedback channels and those who create media.”

Here's a big advantage.  The consumer affairs/relations department technically owns what we referred to at the recent Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) listening leadership summit as the “brand backyard.”  This is a critical zone of control, leverage, and “sense and respond,” and also one that’s expanding via online chat, brand communities, and vastly smarter CRM tools. This “brand backyard” is where keynote speaker Kim Dedeker of P&G drew inspiration to ultimately become one of the industry’s leading marketing research executives.  Turns out her first job at P&G was answering often-challenging consumer calls on products like Downy, an experience that was so revealing of brand insight and value that she used it to open up her speech.  

Which leads me to a few final thoughts on “Listening.”  Even if the consumer affairs department makes meaningful headway on the “listening front” – and by that I mean better translating the value of it collects from consumer for marketers – we can hoist a partial victory flag.  Reinventing “listening” is nothing short of an industry obsession these days, and for good reason.  Just ask the Advertising Research Foundation’s Joel Rubinson, who along with CEO Bob Barocci are challenging the entire research industry to rethink the entire listening equation.   As the Nielsen chart I presented at the ARF event suggests, listening now feeds many mouths and needs in the organization.  That's a huge opportunity for consumer affairs.

So, again, now is the time for the consumer affairs department to step up.  I frankly think the marketing folks will meet consumer affairs half-way.   Last month I spent half a day with room full of CMOs and VPs of Marketing on this very topic as part of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) "Senior Marketer Think Tank."  We asked hard questions about whether "service is the new marketing," and we obsessed over the topic of  the "conversational divide."  They are ready to engage (pun intended) consumer affairs or anyone for that matter dedicated to forging meaningful relationships between brands and consumers.

So the timing is perfect, and the conditions are ripe.  In the end, the consumer will benefit much more from a bridge…not a divide.   - PE

Consumer Affairs Reform “Reader” (Select Articles I’ve Published in the Pas

Marketers Love Conversation, Unless the Consumer Starts It! (Ad Age Column)

Word of Mouth Begins with Consumer Affairs

“Attention, I don’t want your freakin’ Attention!”

Customer Service Meets “Lord of the Twitters”

Word of Mouth Marketing 101: a la Zappos

Consumer Affairs is Knocking on Marketing’s Door

The “Third Moment of Truth” (Feedback, Expression)

Tell 3000! My Book Just Launched! Keep Listening, Stay Credible!

I’m incredibly excited to announce today's release of my very first book, “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in a Consumer-Driven World.”  Published by Doubleday Business, the book is now available in most major bookstores as well as Amazon.com and other online venues.   

The book’s core question is critically important, and one I’ve been thinking about since testing new feedback models in the California legislature back in the early 1990s (and all the way up through my tenure today at Nielsen Online):  how to establish and maintain credibility by being authentic, listening and responding to customers, and forming relationships built on openness, transparency, and trust.  The growth of the web, and the unprecedented power and leverage it provides consumers, puts this question in a unique, if not urgent, context.  This Q&A from Sunday's Edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer provides helpful background on the book themes.

Ongoing Participation: Beyond just reading the book, I also hope you will participate in a sustained conversation and debate about its themes.   Toward that end, I’ve created a website entitled Tell3000.com that provides key resources, open-forums, video reviews, and most importantly, a series of audio-based consumer interviews about brand experiences that I hope to update nearly every day.  Here’s the short list of ways you can stay involved.

• Participate (provide comments, even complain) on the Tell3000 blog

• Sign-Up for Tomorrow's Nielsen and Nielsen Online sponsored webinar

• Join a Discussion in the Tell3000 Open Forums

• Join a “Tell 3000” Facebook Group Dedicated to the “Service is Marketing” Theme

• Join Me at a New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, San Francisco, or Pasadena (My Home Town) Event.  All events will be posted here.

• Follow Me on Twitter or the Tell 3000 feed of brands that respond/engage

• Send ideas or suggestions for my new bi-weekly column in Ag Age about the symbiotic relationship between “service and marketing.”  Here's my last article. Send to the following.
  

• Share your candid (even critical) reviews, or join a discussion forum related to the book themes, on Amazon. 

A much longer list is cited in my book, but an enormous and grateful thanks to all of those who provided support and encouragement,  especially my wife Erika (who's featured in this "day before launch" commemorative photo along with my three kids: Liam, Leila, and Sophia.)

Kicking off the "Tell 3000" Book Launch With a Webinar

Time grows short.  My new book, "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000" officially hits the bookstore Tuesday, July 8th.  The book takes a look at how marketers and brands can establish and maintain credibility in today’s consumer-driven, digital world. Launching a book is like having a party and waiting to see who shows up, and at what precise time. I'm excited and terrified at the same time.  Early buzz is really encouraging, and Amazon pre-sales certainly show signs of genuine interest.  On July 9th, I will be providing a sneak preview into book themes in a Nielsen hosted Webinar from 2-3 PM EST.  I'm deeply honored to have Beth Thomas-Kim, Director of Consumer Services, Nestle USA (and chairwoman of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, SOCOP), and Tom Asher, Director of Consumer Relations North America, Levi Strauss & Co. join me to talk about the key book themes. As I walk through each of my "Six Drivers of Brand Credibility," Tom and Beth will offer candid reactions and perspectives based on their experience.  I'll be sharing more information about the book in the coming days, but if you want more information, here are a couple links:

• July 8th Webinar Sign-Up
• Official Book Website, Tell3000.com
• Official "Tell 3000" Blog

 

Business Week on Consumer Vigilantes: Customer Service, Emotion, and CGM in Focus

Business Week's 3/3 edition (available online now) features a very important cover story by Jena McGregor entitled Consumer Vigilantes: Fighting for truth, justice, and the right to speak to a manager. The issue also includes an annual ranking of "Customer Service Champs" -- many of whom, interestingly, have been profiled in either this blog or my forthcoming book, "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000!"  -- as well as a provocative (and spot-on) op-ed by Jeff Jarvis entitled "Love the Customers Who Hate You".  Importantly, McGregor writes:

"The sting of a bad experience can cut so deep that it transforms an upset customer into an activist no longer interested in just a refund." 

As we've probed many times in this blog (see tagged links), and in nearly a dozen ClickZ columns, marketers and business executives have yet to internalize the critical symbiotic relationship between brand/service "experiences" and "media" output (and I'm not talking about paid media). McGregor's piece helps make that connection more obvious and transparent.  The propensity to speak out (hence generate CGM or social media) is inextricably tied to depth of consumer loyalty or disloyalty, and its powered by the web's growing arsenal of megaphones that seem to get even more powerful every day thanks to the advent of multi-media (e.g. video, audio, photos) as well as "I second that emotion" community and social-networking capability.    The upside of extreme loyalty and brand emotion might be found in places like Facebook's 40,000+ member Southwest Airlines group or the nearly 70,000 member "Addicted to Starbucks" group (more perspective here). The downside of extreme disloyalty and boiling emotion -- what McGregor describes as "venom-spewed tales of woe" -- can be found in tens of thousands of places on the web's digital trail, from message boards to blogs to YouTube.  (As Jarvis suggests, just go to Google and add the word "sucks" to a brand query.)

So What Next?  Business Week does a great job diagnosing the problem, and the "winners" part shines light on a host of best practices (Fairmont, Lexus, Trader Joe's, Lands End, Enterprise), but I still worry whether there's a big missing piece of the conversation around "what next."  Importantly, are the marketing leaders -- the owners of the biggest discretionary budget, and arguably the most influential drivers of change in large enterprises-- internalizing the message, and translating these new insights around consumer behavior into better "media" models.  If "service is the new marketing," as they say, what's the blueprint for re-engineering the marketing department along these lines?  How should the CMO -- or the constellation of communications agencies (media planning, advertising, PR, digital) -- be incented to move in this direction?  And will there be rewards and recognition for the mostly undervalued (and typically non-strategic "cost center") owners of the call-center, email feedback, and more?   

First Things First: Since 2000, I've attended over a dozen conferences of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals, one of the largest industry group's representing corporations and brands that own the "listening pipe." While not nearly as glamorous as the "new media" or Web 2.0 confabs and conferences, these SOCAP events always hit me like a refreshing cold-shower because they are grounded in the real nuts and bolts of listening, training the front-lines, adapting to an increasingly diverse (e.g. Spanish speakers) and demanding consumers, developing fair and consistent methods for responding to consumers, and navigating impenetrably complex legal barriers (and fear).  I have also learned that this department is consistently underfunded and under-resourced, and mostly divorced from marketing.  As boring and mundane as their work seems, it's hard not to conclude that if a company can't nail the "basics" of consumer listening they'll never get it right, or be credible, in the far more vexing and volatile social media zone. (Remember, most of the vigilantes Business Week's McGregor highlights initially reached out the company, but those experiences were poorly managed and only made the situation worse.)  So you have to start with the source.  That said, like the CMO, the consumer affairs and customer relations leaders also need to step up to the plate, a point I underscored last fall in a SOCAP keynote entitled "Wake Up and Listen to Consumer 2.0."  If they want more budget, more respect, more leeway to nurture meaningful consumer loyalty -- and hence positive word-of-mouth and CGM creation -- they need to make their case, and do so now at a time when the resource-rich marketers are dotting every third word in speeches and memos with the word "conversation."  My book lays out a host of strategies for making such a case, but short of even reading a book (or Business Week's story) business leaders simply need to take a long, hard stare at today's consumer and negotiate a new relationship.  The good news is that there's a growing laundry list of best practices in this area I like to refer to as Listening-Centered Marketing, from Dell's Ideastorm to the 800-number-all-over-the-place Zappos.com.  We're also seeing new metrics and measurement protocols (this is part of what I do in my day job) that make it far easier for brands to understand and act upon varying degrees of consumer emotion (the building block of consumer loyalty or even defection) flowing across the CGM landscape.

Final Question: And so I end this post with a simple question: how do we shift from consumer-powered "vigilantism" to company-powered "service vigilance."  Business Week's piece fires up that conversation, and I really hope it continues down the right path.

This Brand May Be Monitored for "Quality Purposes"...and Other Lessons in Consumer-Surveillance

In my ClickZ column this morning, Adapting to Consumer-Controlled Surveillance, I volunteer a dosage of tortured ambivalence about today's marketing environment:

"I often worry that in our sometime irrational exuberance over the benefits and wonders of conversation, brands are blind to what it truly means for consumers -- our coveted buyers and lifetime revenue streams -- to be constantly watching, monitoring, evaluating, and talking about us. At the end of the day, consumers are monitoring brands and companies "for quality purposes" 24/7, far more attentively than companies recording toll-free calls. And that has enormous consequences for how we promote, protect, and manage brands."

It's not that I lack excitement about "participation" and "conversation." I just worry that brands and their agencies -- and other brand stakeholders -- all to often sidestep the more difficult questions around how to truly manage and interact with consumers in this age of "consumer control." Romanticism sometimes suffocates realism. Marketing claims often simply betrays the facts.  This is big theme in my upcoming book, Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in a Today's Consumer-Driven World.  This isn't to suggest I have the answers, but I do know we need to get this particular "conversation" going sooner or later.  In my column I outline six key rules and principles to warm up our thinking. They include:

• We must rethink what it means to be truly credible. In a world of 24/7 consumer surveillance, credibility is everything. Today's infrared-enabled consumer can find every chink in the brand armor. My book outlines the six drivers of brand credibility: trust, transparency, authenticity, affirmation, listening, and responsiveness. Getting these drivers right not only neutralizes the impact of piercing consumer radar but also lays a foundation for a win-win.

• We must become better listeners. Marketers must shift from a paid-media marketing model to a listening-centered marketing model wherein all early signals, whether extreme or ostensibly insignificant, are absorbed and internalized across the brand franchise. This requires both internal brand radar, and processes and tools similar to what my own firm (and many others) provide for external listening.


• We must reposition customer service as the new media department. You can put Dove Evolution, Dove Onslaught, every Doritos consumer-created Super Bowl ad, and dozens of hugely popular user-generated ad spots into a blender, and they still won't come close to filling the Olympic-sized pool of negative media in the conversational airwaves implicating bad customer service. In categories like banking and financial service, conversation indicting customer service owns upwards of 40 to 50 percent of all discussion volume. In electronics, the number is around 20 percent. The consumer-controlled surveillance culture is actively taking notes on customer service, and the narrative -- the content it creates -- can cut in either positive or negative directions depending on how well brands nurture this arena.


• We must rethink the value and importance of indirect marketing, including human resources and operations. In a surveillance culture, consumers see three levels deeper into the brand. What they see has less to do with the message's polish and more with the brand experience's foundational drivers. Products that work require a superb operational backbone. Meaningful service experiences require a service profit chain of well-trained, motivated, loyal employees. Smart, interactive, responsive online interfaces require excellent business processes.


• We must close or integrate the silos. Brands need a united, cooperative front to contend with the elevated power and leverage of the consumer-controlled surveillance culture. At some point, it's just not going to work to have PR firms, advertising firms, digital agencies, and other supplier groups messaging against or with these new currents. We can't have eight different groups managing and interpreting influencers. We probably need to refashion and recast what we mean by holistic communication.

Here's a link to the full article.

Is Customer Service the New Marketing? In CGM Land, You Bet!

Is customer service the new marketing?  That's certainly been a long-standing contention in the blog, and it's the theme of a one-day conference taking place in early February.  A firm called GetSatisfaction is the primary host, and it looks like a promising -- if not long overdue -- confab.  The timing is for this conversation is just right, and I frankly hope we'll see more of this in 2008.  My upcoming book (which I'll start previewing in future blog entries), Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000, hits this very theme right smack in the strike zone.  In particular, it makes a forceful argument that marketing in the age of consumer control needs to be completely realigned around customer service and consumer affairs.  With millions upon millions of CGM comments across the web indicting (or complimenting) varying degrees of customer service, or brand listening, there's plenty of empirical evidence to support such a direction.  The key for brands is to draw specific linkages between key dimensions of the service experience and what I like to refer to as the "CGM echo effect."   Such analysis is critical to drive investment or media-mix reallocation.  In the wireless category, for example, customer service issues related to "billing" tends to have a higher word-of-mouth or viral impact that other issues.  This became obvious to me starting in 2000 while analyzing hundreds of thousands of letters on PlanetFeedback.com and more recently across thousands of online expression venues. Certain issue hit core emotions more than others, and customer service is at it heart consumer emotion. (See article: Attention! I Don't Want Your Freakin Attention!) Conversely, brands like Amazon and online shoe seller Zappos.com tend to be rewarded by great service delivery or shipping.  (See recent NY Times story entitled Put Buyers First, What a Concept.) What's needed is a new science of "cause and effect" around the service experience that heavily factors in advocacy and word-of-mouth.  Consumer affairs and customer service departments, in partnership with marketing, can help lead that charge, and that was my hold-no-punches challenge in my October keynote to the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP).  The CGM revolution and Web 2.0, I argued, is finally lending credence and strategic relevance to consumer affairs -- so it's time to lead and set the new agenda. We'll revisit this issue at Ad-Tech San Francisco in April, so stay tuned.  (I can't attend the February conference, but I'm jealous of anyone who can.) For more fun reading on this topic, see: 

• Consumer Affairs: The New Advertising Department

• The Conversational Divide

• Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Levi's Wall of Letters

• Servicing Search: A Better Ad Model

• Postcard from the Welcome Mat: Sheraton Solicits Photo Experiences

• The Science of Talk Value

• Listening Centered Marketing

• 2006 Agency of the Year: Nobody (Max Kalehoff)

Customer Service Oldies But Goodies: "Attention? I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!"

Last week work overload prompted me to miss my usual deadline for my ClickZ marketing column, so my editors published an "oldie but goodie" entitled "Attention, I Don't Want Your Freakin' Attention!"  The article resurfaces at a time when the topic of customer service is elevating to a new level of debate and discourse in marketing circles. The topic is loaded with irony, and I think the pseudo "conversation" here well reflects that.  If you want to get a taste of real interactions (at least from the consumer side), you might want to peruse some of the letters and comments on PlanetFeedback.com.  Customer service ironies ooze throughout the site.  (Disclosure: I founded PlanetFeedback, and am darn proud about that!)  Other good resources for getting smarter in this area is the website of the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals (SOCAP), as well as website of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA).   

MarketingProfs Podcast: Debating the Great "Conversational Divide"

Precipitated in part by a post by my friend and fellow WOMMA board member Jim Nail questioning whether whether social media is scaling the Hype Curve -- a topic I also took on recently in a ClickZ column (Sustaining the Conversation?), I was invited by MarketingProfs Ann Hadley and Paul Dunay to participate in a spirited podcast on the subject.  Jim also participated, although it would be a total stretch to suggest it was a debate, since we agreed on 99% of the points. In a nutshell, I reiterated many of the same points you keep hearing from me on this blog: we're just not credible as marketers on the "conversation" front until we make meaningful investment in listening infrastructures (consumer affairs, relationship marketing).  Too many CMOs and industry pundits are waxing poetic about the power of conversations while the consumer gets snubbed at the brand welcome mat or feedback pipe. We need to get beyond such "conversational divides" and drive more consistency and credibility. Other folks engaged on this topic include Joseph Jaffe and Jen McClure of the Society for New Communications Research.  Here's a link to the podcast