Time to shine
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on October 9th, 2008
Tagged as: Uncategorized
I know. The blog’s been dormant. But as you can see, I haven’t.
Many years ago, a person much wiser than me said that before a lion pounces, he takes two steps backwards.
Well that’s more or less what I’ve done over the past few months and what you see here, and hopefully will continue to see as the plot thickens, is the result.
Lingolook now has a new look and an entirely new raison d’être. I have had an Italian blog since I first started blogging but it’s been out on it’s own, often left fallow and the coherency between one train of thought and the other was, well, haphazard at best. Now they’re coupled, and this is the one stop place for updates on me in my native and adopted languages. Looking forward to seeing how visitors move around this site.
This is also a “holding site”. I’ve stolen the name from the world of business but modded it for a web-based world.
In a few weeks Lingolook will become a limited liability company whose sole purpose is to plan, build and follow my own web projects and maybe pick up a few clients along the way.
I am not a stationary object and have many ideas just itching to get out. The first two are already on their way with a third due very soon. This is where I will group them, share them experiment with them and discuss them. It’s also a place where I can showcase clients’ sites and projects.
Work and learn then. Hands on all the way.
So the time to shine has finally come. Thanks Valeria for suggesting the title to this first post of the new site, and thanks to the amazing guys at The Blog Studio for putting it all together so well.
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Wordle does lingolook
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on July 11th, 2008
Tagged as: Uncategorized
Here’s a beautiful, if entirely random piece of software art for those of us who treasure the words we use.
It’s called Wordle and it makes a buzz-cloud image of the most common words on a particular URL, or piece of text.
Here’s what my blog looks like today. What does yours look like?
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Some tough love for Publicis
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on June 20th, 2008
Tagged as: Uncategorized
It’s not every day I choose to rat on a colleague. Nor is it a practice I’m particularly comfortable with, yet there’s something about the way this episode demonstrates how some agencies boast unrealistic claims of starting (or igniting) conversation with all its connotations of immediacy, transparency and honesty that just pisses me off.
Two days ago, I received a Google alert for the keywords “Acer Gemstone Blue”. There have been so many of these of late I’ll admit to no longer giving them more than a quick glance but this time rather than seeing a re-hash of my own writing, I saw the title “Ugly Aspirations“.
Click.
The site I’m now on is part of Publicis, a London-based agency which, by its own claims, is “Part of the 4th largest communication network, spanning 104 countries and all 5 continents” and whose mission is to …”Ignite Conversations with ideas so infectious that consumers adopt them as their own and pass them on“.
Even better, is this:
“Our Values: Lionhearted
We are fearless, proud and honest: we always do the right thing, for the greater good of our clients, brands and colleagues
We work with total openness and co-operation: we are all on the same side; we behave like friends.”
Wow! An agency I’d be proud to work with.
But back to the article.
Not a long one, but written to dismantle everything my colleagues and I put into the Acer Gemstone Blue launch campaign. That in itself is not a bad thing, I love constructive criticism and am always ready to learn.
But alas there’s nothing constructive about it. It’s just a low-handed attack on the work of a competitor (note their client list includes HP and their case study post proudly shows off their efforts.
OK. While I’m the first to welcome advice, I’m also not afraid of defending my work, which is what I did.
After two whole days, my comment is still “awaiting moderation”. So much for the immediacy and transparency of conversation.
You want to ignite a conversation? Then you’re starting a debate and you’d better invite the accused along or at least be prepared to hear him out.
You want to prove you know what Messrs. Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger were getting at in their original masterpiece? Then you’d better be ready to stand by what you publish (which brings into question the very 1.0, command-and-control practice of moderation).
You want to sell your clients on Web 2.0 (conversations)? Then you’d better look it up before you attempt to score a few cheap points at someone else’s expense.
It’s not my business to police the web and name and shame those who breach my own self-appointed laws and standards but this is a blatant example of an agency that either a) doesn’t get it, or b) thinks it’s clever enough to get away with not honouring its own mission and values.
Either way that damages both their and my reputation.
Maybe I don’t want to work with them after all.
UPDATE: It’s now the end of July 2008 and my comment has yet to be approved. I think rather Ignite Conversations, Publicis does a pretty good job of dowsing them.
UPDATE 2: Two months have gone by and the comment is still unapproved. I wonder if Publicis has the balls to give a critique of the Aspire One…
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Beautiful world
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on June 19th, 2008
Tagged as: Uncategorized
Don’t always take this route to express what’s going on my end but this is exception to the rule is truly worth it.
I can’t resist a song plug and this morning the very first thing I read on Twitter was a mention for “A Beautiful World” by Tim Myers from Meg Fowler.
What a beautiful song! The melody, the lyrics and most of all the vibes. They all align just right and make this my own personal candidate for the song that best represents what social media should be about.
Maybe it’s me going all soppy. Maybe I’m tired of fighting corporate resistance to the changes social media will inevitably force on them. Maybe if we could get 100 CEOs to listen, the transition would be just a little smoother…
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How thick do you spread yourself?
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on May 17th, 2008
Tagged as: Uncategorized
Yesterday I had proof that more is better.
That promoting yourself horizontally is more effective than doing it vertically.
And that the thicker you spread yourself, the wider your reach.
We all have our Facebook accounts, Twitter accounts, Flickr accounts, we have Squidoo lenses StumbleUpon pages, we share our del.icio.us pages and the younger amongst you might even have MySpace pages (mine’s neglected). This week I finally got myself on Friendfeed although I’m a little lost on that one.
The one I had left for dead was LinkedIn. It seemed a little too staid for my tastes. Almost 1.0 in its formality.
With LinkedIn, you link with people you actually have a working relationship with, so the big players in “real life” have a natural advantage as they simply have more clout here.
Because of this, and because I was focused on other areas of connectivity, I had been ignoring LinkedIn for long enough for my Pro account to expire.
Then two days ago, I updated it and within 24 hours, I was contacted by none other than the offices of Leo Burnett in Turin.
Just goes to prove that the thicker you spread yourself, the tastier you are.
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My take on Cluetrain
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on April 21st, 2008
Tagged as: Social Media, Uncategorized
So here we are at last.
Just a few more miles and this leg of the journey will be over. A few more twists and turns and the road will open up. A slight reprieve before it closes in on the biggest junction of my life.
There are only two choices: left or right. Both will take me on a journey of discovery. I’ll see the world no matter which way I turn, but I’ll see it from different points of view.
One then, excludes the other.
Turn left, and join the ranks. Promotion awaits with all the rewards and satisfaction that working for a big brand can bring. Daddy brings home the trophy of success, and the family celebrates this newfound stability with a sumptuous meal and smiles all round.
Turn right and I’m on my own. A lone voice with no safety net, no support and certainly no guarantees. My family depends solely on me so the risks and consequences of failure are unthinkable.
Left is the obvious choice. I have put in ten years of sheer hard work to get to where I am today. I have a voice that counts in my corner of the world and my craft is appreciated and promoted by the corridors of power.
So why am I even considering right?
I have the Cluetrain Manifesto to thank for that.
One year ago, there was no right. There was no left either, as there was no choice.
One career, one strategy, one result.
Then the Cluetrain arrived and opened my eyes like a new religion.
I had felt the tremors of change underfoot, I had read about it while trying to deepen the consciousness of my profession, and I had even sampled its power on two occasions and in quick succession. But before Cluetrain, I had never really understood it.
As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
The Cluetrain hit me head on. I was ready for it before I even knew what it was about and once on board, everything about me changed.
And now my dear friend Richard has dragged me into this new meme, and I have to explain what the Cluetrain is and whether it’s had an impact on my professional outlook. Me?
Let’s start with question 1.
1) What does the Cluetrain manifesto mean to you? How has the book and theses influenced or not influenced you?
My answer to this question is not difficult to surmise, given the way I started this post. For me, the Cluetrain was the precursor to the events that are beginning to engulf me. But whereas before they were impossible to comprehend, now they are impossible to ignore.
It is, of course, about connections, dialogue and transparency.
It’s as much about getting inside the hearts and minds of customers as it is getting inside the hearts of businesses. It’s about breaking down corporate walls that serve no other purpose than to protect the status quo. It’s about a change in attitude that affects us in equal measure whether we are marketers or customers.
The Cluetrain Manifesto starts off with a statement that more or less sums up the entire philosophy, a phrase that succinctly pinpoints which side of the fence you’re on with the precision and real time accuracy of military grade GPS positioning systems:
“A powerful global conversation has begun.”
You’re either participating or you’re not.
Every single word of this phrase is key to understanding the true meaning of the Manifesto.
“Powerful”
Thanks to the time-honoured practice of command and control, companies have stopped listening to customers and in doing so have chosen to ignore the force, wisdom and power of the many.
Now that customers have the technology they need to interact with each other, their numbers, opinions and voices have suddenly started to count.
Even the Buddhist concept of Itai Doshin (many in body, one in mind) is built on this principle and was used to great effect by Nicherin Daishonin in the 13th Century.
“If itai doshin prevails among the people, they will achieve all their goals”
Translation: Ignore your customers at your own peril.
“Global”
It’s bigger than you think. Everywhere people rediscover the value of their own voices, conversations will emerge. “Everywhere” on the web is not geographical, nor is it temporal. Everywhere on the web is technological so the more ways people discover to communicate their opinions, the faster their message will spread and louder their voices will resonate.
Translation: You haven’t got it covered anymore. It’s out of your control.
“Conversation”
This is the biggest word in the opening sentence and not just by size. It gives cause for existence for the first two.
As the Cluetrain makes painfully clear, marketing departments were introduced to bridge the gap between mass products and mass markets and in doing so, wiped out conversations between producers and their customers and replaced them with alienation and mystery.
Now customers have a voice, the official version of business as usual can finally be debunked in full view of everybody.
Translation: The true you is out in the open. Are you ashamed of it?
“has begun”
This is in the present perfect. i.e. it started at some point in the past and is still continuing in the present.
Translation: There’s nothing you can do about it, except join in. You can’t ignore it forever no matter how much fear you have of engaging your customers in real dialogue. The longer you wait, the bigger the gap between you and your company’s chances of survival.
In short, and in answer to question 1:
- It’s a measure of how afraid companies are of change.
- It’s an indication of how far they still have to go.
- It’s the reason companies “get it”, or not.
- It’s the reason I’m turning right.
2) Which companies have best implemented the Cluetrain Manifesto in your opinion and how were they effective?
Like Richard I am not in a position to give any real answer to this. Yet the one thing I do know, which won’t surprise any of you, is that the number of those that haven’t implemented it far outweigh those that have.
Having said that, I also don’t think that the Cluetrain Manifesto is something you simply slot in to a business model. Each company has it’s own take on how much they are prepared to let go and my feeling here is the bigger their exposure to risk, the shorter the leash on transparency.
Many of the companies in my own area act as if it’s in the interests of everyone to keep things as they are. After all, millions of dollars worth of marketing processes have been painstakingly put in place and the system can’t justify a reversal in policy just because Joe Public wants a say in things.
I know it’s unfair and I know it’s not correct but until Joe Public makes a large enough fuss so that the company panics into a response, the shift is’t going to happen.
Dell backed its way out of a very ugly situation thanks to a change in mindset and was advised extremely well by those behind its digital media arm. Yet I can’t help feeling that others are waiting for a similar catastrophic reason to get involved, as if it were Plan B or even C on their crisis management policy rather than an opportunity to rekindle all the trust and loyalty squandered over the years through command and control policies.
The other hole in the system comes from the companies who should be advising big corporations to give it a go. Again, in my experience, there are often more important and more lucrative things on the table. Balancing a shift in approach, commitment and transparency with the laws of diminishing returns on the significant investments needed to keep a social media presence afloat isn’t something they have the balls to push through right now.
Perhaps the market isn’t ready for it just yet. Perhaps Joe Public isn’t ready to take on the liberties offered to him by the Cluetrain Manifesto, no matter how ideologically sound it may be. I don’t think this is it.
In my experience, the few of us who get it don’t have the necessary influence to bring its principles to the discussion table, no matter how hard we try and for how long.
As it turns out, fear runs at very high levels.
In the unofficial blog I created to test the conversational water for Acer, TheAcerGuy, I have tried to apply the Cluetrain principles from the start, only publishing reviews of Acer products written by genuine customers, who are given full control over their message and a semi-official platform upon which their voices can be published, whether they are helping, complaining, gloating or venting.
Once over the initial and understandable fear of losing objectivity, this approach has turned out to be the single most intelligent thing I have so far done with the site.
Yet no matter how good the reviews, I cannot convince any of my superiors to see the immense value in this approach.
Again, another reason I’m turning right.
3) In thesis 57, the Cluetrain manifesto states, “smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.” In light of that thesis, is encouraging employees to use social media and blogging a good idea? Is it really effective, when an employee is encouraged but not directed?
Again, my response to this question is based entirely on what my limited experience has taught me.
In the IT world, there are two approaches to corporate blogging: indirect and full on.
HP has, at last count, 66 blogs (http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/bloggers.html) and all of them without exception have this footer:
“Opinions expressed here and in any corresponding comments are the personal opinions of the original authors, not of HP and may not have been reviewed in advance by HP.”
Over at Dell, there is just one blog, and no footer.
On the contrary there is a single page dedicated to underlining the commitment to standing behind the conversations http://direct2dell.com/one2one/about.aspx
Both companies’ blogs contain articles by people trained to stick by the corporate message, but one of them puts the interests of the company first, so that you read the blog through a sort of legal filter that at a moment’s notice would distance itself from a perilous comment to save the integrity of the company.
Meanwhile the other stands by what it says. Everything there is on the record and policy.
I know which approach I trust more.
4) How can a company encourage employees to use social media, and empower them to answer customer questions and learn from customers?
By understanding that respect, trust and loyalty are the greatest assets a company possesses, and that through these core values, a company builds a reputation for excellence and permission to engage its customers.
By building an environment that promotes these values among its employees before anything else.
By carefully explaining the opportunities and implications of social media to its employees with regular updates and raining sessions.
By showing trust in its employees by allowing them to engage freely in answering customer questions.
By standing by its employees if the conversation becomes negative.
From a concierge of a downtown hotel to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if there’s love, then that will come through in the conversation.
5) Do all employees want to talk with customers? If not what percentage want to internetwork and converse?
Again, I am not the right person to answer this question but I have an observation. From my own conversations, I have found people willing to talk from the most unlikely situations and reluctance from the most obvious.
Current thinking says that people in command should do the talking but that’s not the case.
I have college students willing to answer on behalf of a client, support staff from a repair center in the middle of nowhere desperate to change the way they talk to customers and managers who like the idea but don’t have the clout (or the balls) to start.
Not everyone can hold a conversation. Not everyone should. It would be nice if all CEOs had mega-personalities but as so often happens this is hardly ever the case.
I believe that companies should listen to themselves before launching an online presence and allow anyone on the payroll to have a say if they want to. If they’re honest, they only have to gain from the experience.
Now that I’ve answered all five questions it was supposed to be my turn to nominate another five people to do the same. Cluetrain doesn’t follow rules and besides, there is only one person I want to hear from regarding Cluetrain, and she needs no introduction from me. So over to you Valeria Maltoni.
I am going to be keeping my eye on this meme, especially as Groundswell seems to be gaining momentum. In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading more on this subject and how it’s affected people like me and businesses like your clients’, you couldn’t go far wrong with these:
| Cluetrainings - Doc Searls - Here are the slides from the Cluetrain @ 10 talk I gave at There’sa New Conversation, in New York last month and a video of the talk…
Cluetrain at 10 - The Cluetrain Manifesto is all about fundamental changes that we are living and experiencing… Approaching 10 Years After Cluetrain, Most Still Don’t Get It - Is it really the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain Manifesto…? 2 On Cluetrain At 10 - Phil Gomes and Richard Binhammer have both answered the five questions I asked them in my post related to the critique the cluetrain manifesto…. After 10 years, most still don’t get it - the Cluetrain Manifesto … - Let’s take a couple of minutes to talk about The Cluetrain Manifesto because many of my readers are new to social media marketing… The Cluetrain Manifesto at 10 - Dell’s Richard Binhammer was kind enough to ping me in a meme going around about The Cluetrain Manifesto as it approaches its 10th anniversary… Cluetrain, 10 years after - In Forrester’s Josh Bernoff / Charlene Li blog, on how Lego changed by engaging with AFOLs (Adult Fans Of Lego, sometimes referred to as ALE: Adult Lego Enthusiasts). … Cluetrain Revisited: Doc Searls, still radical 10 years later … - Doc Searls started his talk at the Cluetrain @ 10 event talking about the genesis of The Cluetrain Manifesto… After 10 years, most still don’t get it - the Cluetrain Manifesto … - There are some people with very strong voices & Valeria Maltoni has one that’s worth listening to… The Cluetrain Manifesto Conversation - If The Cluetrain Manifesto is still news after 10 years from its publication, the conversation that ensued has evolved… Have You Heard of Cluetrain? - Just under 10 years ago a website then book was released called The Cluetrain Manifesto. I did a quickie poll on Twitter and found around half of people questioned had heard of it. Today I want to repeat the experiment here. … |
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