birddog

Social Media for Bloody Important Senior Executives

I know very little about the hotel and hospitality industry. That should never stand in the way of a good speaking opportunity though. Not ever. If anyone’s prepared to pay me good money to shout at them, there’s a reasonable chance I’ll say, “yes”.

So I found myself in Berlin as a speaker for the International Hotel Investment Forum (IHIF). It was a reasonably big conference with over 2000 global hotel investors, financiers and senior executives in attendance. It was certainly big enough to warrant a decent Wi-Fi connection. You’d have thought.

My research had indicated a certain degree of social media adoption by the hotel industry, limited predominantly to ‘customer services’ and running scared of TripAdvisor. The senior executives – the ‘C-Suite’ – however, were wholly disengaged. Social media wasn’t really on the agenda. They had more important matters to attend to. That proved sufficient inspiration for the title of my presentation – ‘Social Media for Bloody Important Senior Executives’.

My thinking has moved to the ‘Social Enterprise’ – a place were the entire business drives the social engagement of the organization. From the bottom of the enterprise to the very top, everyone is empowered, enabled, motivated and rewarded in its online endeavour to satisfy customers and prospects – including the senior executives. It’s only a matter of time. When the next generation of digital native middle management reach the boardroom, the enterprise will be social. Or at least it will have a chance. I don’t think it’s such a stretch. But it’s a very long way from Berlin and even further from the hotel industry.

I spent three days talking to delegates who, almost without exception, were clueless as to the opportunity or impact of social channels. In one of my presentations to over 100 people, only three of them had heard of Slideshare, none of them were using it. With over two thousand delegates attending the conference, I was anticipating a deluge of Twitter activity, but they could only manage a trickle of tweets. The general response was, “In the hotel industry we expect to do business face to face”. Well, yes, we all expected to do that years ago. We expected to travel by horse and cart a little while ago too, but the world has changed. So has business – whatever industry you’re in. The importance of direct contact in business is undeniable, but it’s not the only way of connecting with your audience.

As I stood at the front of the room giving my presentation, I couldn’t help but be slightly distracted by a man on the front row equipped with an SLR camera and strobe flash. Every time I changed the slides, he took a flash photograph of the projector screen. I had 60+ slides so you can imagine how it might get on your tits after the third slide. My presentation was about distributing social content, about helping your audience by sharing information. “It’s OK,” I said to the man, “you really don’t need to do that – this entire presentation will be available on Slideshare and YouTube just as soon as I have a Wi-Fi connection.” He carried on taking flash photographs of the screen regardless. What I should have said is, “Are you STUPID or just not LISTENING?” but based on President Kennedy’s Berlin experience, all he would have heard is, “I am a donut”.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 20 7323 6666

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/scotmckee
LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/scotmckee
Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/birddogb2b
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/BirddogB2B
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Turdy Brown Trousers – B2B Marketing Conference 2011

I ponced around on stage giving a keynote presentation at the annual B2B Marketing conference recently. I swung my arms around and splattered the front row with spittle and grew increasingly red in the face as I tried to convince congregated worthies of the need to accelerate adoption of digital and social marketing practices. I can’t be certain, but based on the cheering, a certain amount of swooning and riotous applause, I’m calling it a win.

I called the presentation, ‘Turdy Brown Trousers’. It was perhaps a little unconventional. But then again, the whole point was to demonstrate that conservative and traditional communications in B2B are failing, while the opportunities for digital and social development are huge. Doing nothing will surely be the death of many business brands. Hopefully, I gave the audience several reasons to consider the state of their trousers.

This audience has been warned before that it needs to change policies and practices. It’s the speed of change (or lack of it) that is the current cause for concern. I wanted to demonstrate that the social opportunity was… ‘real’. Other presentations on the day focussed on what has happened in the past. Or they asked the audience to participate in the present. My interest was the future potential for the audience. It was a high risk strategy – not something that B2B is exactly famous for, but hey, someone’s got to do it…

So I announced on stage that although I had a captive audience, my real interest was the extended B2B audience outside of the room – i.e. The rest of the B2B world. For my business message to carry any real weight I had to reach more interested people – and I was going to do it, live, as I gave my presentation. I unsheathed my iPhone and told the crowd I was going to take its picture and tweet it.

At the end of my 15 or 20 minute presentation, we’d have a look at how many people I’d been able to virtually draw into the room and we’d track progress thereafter. They shuffled nervously in their seats. Nevertheless, on the count of three I made them all wave their arms in the air and duly tweeted the photo.

15 minutes later, when I’d quite finished reigning brimstone down upon the audience, I asked the Editor of B2B Marketing to reveal how many people had viewed the photo. “Um… it’s 25,” he said. I was a little disappointed – I was hoping for 100. Then, a voice from the back of the auditorium shouted, “Hit the refresh button!” Joel duly refreshed his screen and said, “Oh yes, sorry, it’s 289.”

In 15 minutes, one photo put more engaged people in the room than the entire marketing activity to promote the conference. By the end of the day, the number of views had reached over 600. Less than a week later the views were over 1,000. The figures are still climbing if you’d like to check.

The market has changed. Your B2B social audience is real, engaged, fast, responsive and growing. I needn’t have worried about the risk of tweeting that photo. What was there to lose? Nothing – I believe in the crowd. By contrast, the brands that continue to ‘wait and see’ risk losing everything.

Below, you’ll find the slide deck and accompanying live audio recording from my presentation. Enjoy.

Turdy Brown Trousers | Scot Mckee | B2B Marketing Conference by Birddogb2b

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 20 7323 6666
Twitter: @ScotMcKee
LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/scotmckee
Book: http://amzn.to/mOUKOH

The Yellow Lines | B2B Marketing Awards Finalist 2011 | Best use of Social Media

Social Media Campaign for Cobalt Telephone Technologies | RingGo

Free Wi-Fi for Business

As a ‘civilised’ western society, there are certain measures that we put in place to represent our civilisation. We pursue a work ethic that entails the pain of endless meetings, the suffering of corporate politics and the general indignity of the daily commute. And throughout the grind of our civilised existence, we placate ourselves with an insatiable consumption of and for technology. Tech has become the Novocaine of the civilised masses.

Everyone has a computer. Apart from the peasants, and naturally, in a civilised society, we don’t count the plebs. Almost everyone has a smartphone. An alarming number have a second smartphone because, well, actually, I don’t know why anyone would need a second mobile phone – presumably because they have more than one pocket. And in more recent times we have extended our societal civility into further portable technological advancements. The ‘app’ culture has arrived.  We have the iPad (two of them), Kindle e-readers and a stampede of me-too tablet lookee likees that entice us to appear on the cutting edge of society. Or perhaps we just look like twats with our iPads on the train? Either way, our ‘always on’ society demands that we accessorise accordingly.

Regrettably, this utopian techno-society is never going to work. Not, at least, with the shit wi-fi infrastructure we have in the UK. I have travelled the world and I am here to report that the very crux of our civilisation now relies, almost exclusively, on the availability of wi-fi. I can be even more specific. For western civilisation to avoid the calamitous fate of previously dominant societies including the Romans, the Egyptians and the Incas (and let’s remember, none of them were technophobes) wi-fi needs not only to be available, it needs to be free.

In the UK, we buy our data plans from our mobile service provider, we enable data roaming and we tweet, facebook, email and surf for the full 30 minutes or so per day that our batteries will allow. We then spend the rest of the day seeking outlets to fleetingly top-up our batteries. “Good morning Madam, I appreciate we’ve never met, but I was just passing and wondered if I could plug my phone in for a few minutes…?” It’s not really very civilised.

Switching off the ‘data roaming’ functionality on your phone and using available wi-fi hotspots undoubtedly prolongs battery life (thereby extending the pain, suffering and indignity) while keeping your phone switched on leaves you at the mercy of the service providers roaming charges. On my last sortie into the European wilderness, the roaming charges were enough to make me weep. I’m welling up again just thinking about it. There are only about 3 free wi-fi hotspots in Europe, and they’re all in Starbucks. That’s it. After that, if you want to conserve energy and avoid paying hefty charges, you have to switch off your mobile device. Not the ideal solution, for a civilised society.

In the US it’s different. I’ve just returned from America (LA baby) and having learnt my lesson in Europe, I had my roaming switched off the entire time. I expected to be blissfully incommunicado for the entire trip. Imagine my surprise when I discovered free wi-fi on almost every street corner. Here are just a few examples of where I raised an eyebrow at the free accessibility of the internet: every coffee shop, supermarkets, retail stores, every hotel, restaurants, the airport, the car rental office… even the beach. The important point is that the wi-fi access was free.

The US has reached a tipping point where digital access is simply expected and delivered. In the UK, it is possible to find free wi-fi access (there’s an app for that…) but it’s a struggle. It’s a small detail perhaps, but in my mind, our lack of infrastructure (without punitive charges) is illustrative of our wider inability to grasp the demand for and need to provide digital services for the digital economy. Wouldn’t business be so much easier and efficient if we could actually use the technology that we’re so attached to?

So I’ve taken the encryption off my home hub. When you come over to my house from now on, you’re connected. Well, it’s a start.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666
twitter: @ScotMcKee

Pitching Digital – The Line in the Sand

I have had cause to proposalate in the last few months. Proposalation is the line that, as an agency of repute, one draws just before dropping one’s drawers and taking it up the Mohave Desert. The ‘before’ part is an important distinction. Pitching is bullying in my mind and so it simply won’t compute. I hate dedicating the resources of the agency for no reward – we have clients who pay for such a service and there isn’t a credible reason I can give those clients for making them pay, and yet give others the same service for free, or ‘speculatively’, or for the ‘potential opportunity’, or however the hell you try to justify it. It’s simply unacceptable.

So, now that that’s clear, what have we got left? Well on the basis that the prospective client has equally staunch views on ‘sampling the merchandise’ and requires more than a lifetime of credentials, case studies, awards and testimonials because, you know, what if overnight you suddenly start delivering shit…? Well, that’s where the agency can proposalate – write a proposal, show an ankle, but whatever happens, keep the drawers firmly in place.

And so I have proposalated for the last few months – with mixed results. On the plus side, almost every client proposal has been approved and progressed towards something wonderful. On the down side, almost every prospect proposal has met with anxiety, procrastination and a nervous twitch.

I’ve learnt a few things in the last few months. The first, and probably the most important, is that in a difficult economic climate and in a rapidly evolving digital space, the trust of an existing client is far more valuable than the potential riches of an uncertain prospect. There are brands that are willing to embrace digital change and those that would prefer to produce the same old, same old in the vain hope that it might work this time (even if it didn’t work last time). No matter how compelling the proposal, nothing changes the basic fear of the unknown.

The digital space for B2B brands is currently one of chance – the chance to change, to do things differently, to evolve. The vast majority of the work that I am currently proposing simply hasn’t been done before. There are no case studies, there are no measures or benchmarks. That’s quite a hard sell for the traditional B2B prospect. Actually, it’s pretty difficult for an existing client, but the at least client has trust. The measures are therefore not what has been achieved for other clients, but ‘how much do you trust me?’ We’ve never done it, you’ve never done it, no one’s ever done it… but it’s cool isn’t it? Trust me. Spend some money on it and let’s see what happens… Like I said, a hard sell.

So I’ve learnt that I’m wasting my time speculating on prospect proposals. Digital brand strategy and delivery is too risky for the majority. Those closest to accepting and embracing change are already our clients so it makes sense to focus on them. They will become the case studies that the other laggards eventually follow.

It makes no sense to continue to educate the market in the art of the possible when the market makes little tangible investment in that process of evolution. They’re interested in it alright – it’s the interest that simulates the proposal in the first place. They’re even excited by the potential – “incredible… that’s amazing… can we really do that…?” Well, actually, no, you can’t, because you’re not prepared to pay for it and I’m getting tired of telling you while you jack-off in the corner.

That leaves a few, a happy few, a band of brothers. Whichever way I look at it, it’s still a hard sell. And so I’m going to stop proposalating. I have better things to do. For a start, I have some needles in a haystack to find. They’re out there, but I’m no longer going to try to write a proposal to find and convince them. Once they’ve narrowed their options, they’ll find me. We should all draw a line in the sand. Not in the Mohave Desert though.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

Follow Scot on Twitter

31/01/2011
Additional/Related information: Fast Company – The Future of Advertising