birddog

Not Enough Time for Social Media?

I am increasingly expected to frequent the musk-scented washrooms and fastidiously monitored self-service comestible bars of international airport business lounges. It would appear that my legendary status at the very forefront of the digital B2B revolution is attracting a wider audience than I expected. I think, and I secretly hope, it’s because businesses are starting to take a more serious interest in B2B social media.

It’s actually a very specific audience that is prepared to pamper me with the executive international washroom facilities I so rightly deserve and send me to such wild and far flung locations as, well, Munich, for example. The C-Suite is finally talking an interest.

The C-level audience has been slow to adjust to the transfer of digital power in the social space. At the junior end of the business, the ‘Y-Gen’ digital natives are fully committed – it’s a problem to keep them off Facebook and on the job in hand. In the middle management tiers there is interest, but not always the budget or mandate to fully commit marketing resources. And then there’s the C-Suite.

CMO, CEO, CIO, CTO even the CFO. These are the people with the power and money to make a difference and yet this group has remained almost completely disinterested in the process of online engagement. Until recently. Whatever the reasons for the slow adoption of the C-Suite (and there are many) they appear, at last, to be taking a more healthy interest in the subject. I’d obviously hate to be the one to tell them they’re a bunch of Luddite laggards just as they start to get their shit together.

What I can tell them, however, is to stop complaining that they ‘haven’t got time’ for social media. The conversation usually goes something like this –

“Scot we invited you here to the exotic Schipol Airport Conference Centre because you seem to be thoroughly versed in this newfangled ‘social media’ thingy. Everywhere we look, we bump into your name. So we thought we’d ask you how you find the time. We’re such incredibly busy and, frankly, important business executives that we simply don’t have the time.”

“Mmmm…”

“And…”

“Yes?”

“…Well, we’re very, you know… ‘Senior’. And Executive.”

“Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Right then…” And there follows a practiced routine of pithy one-liners and knob gags where I charge the client an inordinate amount of cash to expound on the vagaries of the digital economy. I could save myself a considerable amount of airline indigestion if they would only appreciate one thing – they can’t afford not to find the time. I used a double negative there. It’s that important.

The accessibility (or inaccessibility) of brand leaders has never been more apparent. Digital channels totally flatten the communications hierarchy. If you don’t like the answer you receive from the customer service rep, you ping the Chief Executive. That’s not unusual, it’s now expected. It’s also expected that the CEO will be listening – not only to the contents of their inboxes, but to a spectrum of social channels. Alternatively, the customers will post their experiences online for the whole world to form its own opinion of the brand. Whichever way the CEO looks at managing the company’s reputation, social media is now their business. It’s quite a commitment, not least because the CEO is busy. And executive.

That usually gets them thinking. There will be nods and smiles. I’ve even seen someone take notes. But it’s not as good as the “Why me?” question.

“Why did you pick me to give this presentation? How did you find me? How did you become my customer? Why did you give me an airline ticket, indigestion and, significantly, a pile of cash?” The answer is usually, “We follow you on Twitter”, or, “We found you on LinkedIn.” The fact that social media directly generates revenue isn’t lost on them, but I still feign surprise and say, “Oh, are you using social media then?” They look down at their shoes, shuffle their feet and say, “Um, no… I don’t have… ehh… time…” The job of finding and listening to what the customer wants can be delegated to anyone. The responsibility can’t. Find the time.

Scot McKee

Managing Director

The Web and Travelling

More than half of UK internet users are booking their holidays online, according to research from the GetSafeOnline. In the past year I have done a fair bit of travelling, and while there are a million websites ready to offer all the information you could possibly need when planning a trip, there are only a few I would always recommend.

I use www.skyscanner.net for the cheapest flights. Searching for the best flight is often the most time consuming part of booking a holiday, but using www.skyscanner.net, it doesn’t take long at all, as it quickly brings up every flight to the chosen destination and arranges it from the cheapest to the most expensive. The website scans over 650,000 flight routes and can tell you everything you need to know about a flight to pretty much anywhere in the world.

As well as buying online, the internet streamlines the whole process of flight booking, from checking-in online, checking weather conditions and delay information, as well as printing out luggage labels and boarding passes. Your friends and family can even stay up to date on the progress of your flight using live flight tracking websites!

For accommodation, www.hostelbookers.com will find the best-rated options by price and location. Luxury hotels are unlikely to be found here, but for up-to-date availability, honest and reliable recommendations and useful location information, choosing the right place to stay for your trip through www.hostelbookers.com will be quick and painless.

Using the web to find accommodation is a lot better than buying a travel book, as a book goes out of date as soon as it goes to print. This website, on the other hand, is updated regularly with new hostels, recent reviews on good or terrible experiences written by people who have actually stayed in the accommodation, and ‘live’ price and room information.

When I’m planning things to do, I would always use Trip Advisor as the top website for ideas on the best activities in the city or location I’m visiting. Hit www.tripadvisor.com, or www.tripadvisor.co.uk for European trips: they’re well known travel websites, but for a reason. It boasts 35 million user reviews, with the number of users logging in increasing 50% last year.

Trip Advisor gives reviews, activity prices and contact details and location maps/directions. There is also a travel discussion forum that is a very handy tool to use if you have specific questions or want to know more detailed information, with hundreds of users contributing personal opinions and reviews rating everything from weather and beaches to local amenities and the locals themselves.

You can even use Trip Advisor to plan your whole trip if you like, as you can compare and book flights and accommodation as well.

In fact, the web makes travelling so easy now that you can go away every weekend!

Alexandra Maher
Account Executive
Birddog

What’s in a name?

Readers of a certain age will know George Foreman for what he was: a world-class boxer and winner of 76 fights. Others –students, say – will more likely be familiar with the name for its association with the food grill Foreman launched in 1994. His famous tagline – “It’s so good, I put my name on it!” – has permeated into popular catchphrase culture. Business Week reckons ‘Big George’ has earned in excess of $200m as a direct result of the deal, while the grill itself has shifted more than 100m units. It’s a success story of personal product endorsement the like of which is now very rare. Or at least medium-rare.

To be fair, the 21st century power of celebrity is such that figures like the Beckhams or Cheryl Tweedy have no need (financial or otherwise) to lend their actual names to other products, and, likewise, brands only really require a glimpse of a famous face or a few words from their mouths for a celeb endorsement to work its magic. It’s one thing to flick a head of styled hair and quip “You’re worth it!” in a 20 second ad, though, and quite another to take the step of signing over your given name to the fate of a single product.

It is probably fair to say then that ‘putting your name on it’, as George Foreman confidently stated, and building it up as a brand is no easy matter. The potential risks struck me as (continuing the food theme) I sat down with my better half to eat in Tom Aikens’s restaurant in South Kensington. It was the first restaurant the semi-celebrity chef opened, in 2003, and is simply called Tom Aikens. In large lettering outside the building. It’s a permanent tying of name to brand and assumes responsibility for pretty much anything that happens to diners here on in. Now, I’m no restaurant critic, but as it turned out the experience was so good, it’s worth giving it a go.

The first thing was the décor: comfortable furniture, soft low lighting, a warm unelaborate interior design. It had an inviting air, encouraging the relaxed chatter murmuring in the background. Not one element hinted at pretension, which, for a well-known chef-owned restaurant in South Ken on a Saturday evening, could have been forgiven.

The front of house staff, meanwhile, were immaculate, appearing from nowhere to fill up empty wine glasses, bringing out each course with exquisite timing (we were eating from the eight-course Tasting Menu, so this was doubly appreciated), tactfully replacing cutlery and napkins, explaining information about certain dishes, and never short of a ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’. But despite all this, they couldn’t have been more unobtrusive, and any prior notions that this high level of service might seem overbearing, or worse still, aloof, were long gone.

And so to the food. Whether or not the man himself was behind the scenes was irrelevant: the chefs and kitchen staff at Tom Aikens succeeded in delivering a stunning, tell-all-your-friends-about-it tour de force in contemporary cuisine. From the cured Foie Gras to the passion fruit jelly, via John Dorey fillet and loin of ewe’s cheese-marinated lamb, the sumptuous tastes and rich textures instilled in each course made for an unforgettable and supreme dining experience.

Because the experience at Tom Aikens’s restaurant was, from start to finish, of the highest order. A not-insignificant investment in the personnel and countless hours training, sourcing the best ingredients and ensuring the finest preparation and presentation, pitching the aesthetics of the restaurant just right – it all had to combine exactly to positively affect the end experience and achieve a continual rise in stock for the Tom Aikens brand. If there had been even one weak link in the chain, the negative perception would have been firmly associated with the name – and in the eyes of the customer, followed it around wherever else it appeared.

Instead, it was an illustration of how hard work, preparation and care for the entirety of a brand will deliver a rich and full experience of it. It was also an illustration of just how necessary that effort is, to ensure your brand is being enhanced by everything that’s connected to it. It’s not what’s in a name, after all, but what’s behind it. Tom Aikens has certainly got it right.

Tim Miller
Content Editor

UPDATE: 4 October 2010

Things got a little bit exciting at the Birddog office last week. Even more exciting than that time a beach football got delivered by an anonymous sender.

Following the above blog post spotlighting George Foreman’s mid-nineties rebirth as the lean, mean grilling machine, then waxing lyrically about the experience at the Tom Aikens restaurant in South Kensington, both aforementioned foodsters were soon contacting us in response.

It was Mr Foreman’s Twitter people dropping by for a chat first of all, but Tom Aikens took the next step of engagement by seeking out Birddog’s contact details from our website, and leaving a personally addressed note of thanks in our eagerly-accepting inbox.

The blog itself had, by this point, been live on the site for three days. On the first day, having tweeted through the Birddog feed about the latest blog update, @GeorgeGrillsUK were on our tail. Two days later, Tom Aikens was in touch via email, taking a moment to offer thanks for our positively charged blog.

James Ainsworth, social media marketing specialist at Alterian, was suitably impressed by the speed in which George Foreman’s team got in touch to blog about it.

Having already sung the praises about brand experience originally, it also appears that these brands have a commendable approach to social media monitoring too.

Tim

Social Rebranding

I’ve been drinking coffee from a glass recently. The last time I did that was a few years ago and the experience wasn’t altogether satisfactory. Unlike my previous experience in Marylebone, however, this time I was in Spain. In Spain, real men drink their coffee black. I’d tried ordering a white coffee (‘con leche’) but had been laughed out of the bar on the grounds of questionable sexual orientation. Real men definitively drink their coffee black in Spain. Black, and bastard strong. It’s ok to have sugar for some reason, but milk is strictly for girls or men wearing dresses.

I adapted fairly quickly I have to say. The coffee was served in a stout little Pyrex glass slightly larger than a shot glass and left to cool momentarily. When it was cool enough not to cause blisters, but not so cold as to warrant further accusations of cross-dressing deviance, the coffee would be knocked back in one by heavily moustachioed hombres – much like a shot of vodka. No one was able to explain to me why exactly, but presumably the speed of consumption had a direct correlation to the enamel remaining on my teeth.

I followed this national custom from my second cup of Spanish coffee onwards and maintained the ritual for the following fortnight. My whole perception of coffee and the experience I had with it had changed overnight. It therefore struck me that coffee had ‘rebranded’ in Spain.

This wasn’t a cursory change of packaging or identity. It wasn’t a new flavour or a variation on an existing theme. The way people perceived the ‘brand’, the way the audience interacted with it and the expectations surrounding it were completely different. (Workmen having coffee and brandy at 9 O’clock in the morning for example…) I had to change how I thought about coffee in much the same way as companies wishing to rebrand their business need to change the thinking of their staff, customers and prospects. It was coffee, Jim, but not as we know it.

The importance of the discovery is not so much the drink as the state of mind. I have frequent conversations with B2B marketing professionals about their desire to ‘rebrand’. As the discussions progress, it transpires that they don’t want to ‘rebrand’ at all. They might like a new corporate identity, they may need help with messaging or positioning, they may be seeking creative change. All of which is admirable, but that’s not rebranding.

Rebranding a company involves cutting a swathe to the very heart of the business, discarding everything and anything no longer of any consequence and rebuilding perceptions based on a new centrally held belief (or a new understanding of a belief). That’s quite a tough thing to do. It’s easier to brand from scratch than it is to ‘rebrand’ – a blank canvas is easier to work with than one that first needs to be covered over. But that just makes the endeavour all the more worthwhile.

For brands to remain relevant over time, they have to evolve, change, reinvent, ‘rebrand’. Keep the good, throw out the bad. It’s not something that has to happen every year, but it should happen with significant shifts in the market, in personnel, in the business and in the audience.

As I watch B2B brands adjust to the digital marketing age, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that some are more attuned to the online needs of their audience than others. Some will evolve and navigate social spaces and mobile landscapes more easily and successfully than others. And some need to rebrand.

The trouble for B2B marketers in this shifting landscape, however, is knowing what to rebrand to. What do we say? What do we do? What do our customers want? What central brand belief do we retain and how much do we dispose of?

Whatever the uncertainty, take heart from Spanish coffee. If the spectrum for coffee brand acceptability, and indeed popularity, is anywhere from a whipped cream and marshmallow topped mocha latte at a Covent Garden ‘Java Emporium’, to the shite they drink out of a glass in the backstreet, semi-derelict cafes in Spain, well, at least there’s hope. The real challenge is accepting the need for change and knocking it back. ¡Salud.

Scot McKee

Managing Director