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FT 20 questions with Biz Stone

In a repeat of Maureen Dowd’s interview in the New York Times with the co-founders of Twitter earlier this year, the Financial Times has interviewed Biz Stone, with all answers limited to 140 characters.

 

While not as entertaining as Dowd’s piece, the article does offer some insights into the world of the entrepreneur, or “artist” as Stone says he would like to be remembered.

 

Stone is in the office from 7-7 or 8-8 but says he is “always on.” His iPhone is left on even when he sleeps, although he admits “I don’t always answer it.” Incredibly he says his guilty pleasure is watching TV and that he loves everything “from Gossip Girl to sci-fi.” I’m not sure when he has the time for that, or the painting of everyday objects he does in his “spare time.” At that point I started to wonder if Stone had developed some kind of time machine rather than a micro-blogging platform.

 

Other interesting tidbits include Stone’s stint as a caddy when he was 14. “I felt like a mule, carrying heavy golf clubs, for $12 a day. It was mind-numbing.” When asked about his most hated business expression Stone says “all of them” and “I always take “at the end of the day” literally, meaning at night.”

 

What really comes through is a that Stone is a nice guy who found himself at the helm of a social media juggernaut and had the brains to make the most of the opportunity. He says his best business decision was to give away as much data as possible and being open. There is the lesson for any budding internet entrepreneur. Be brave and open up to the collaborative input of the internet. As our recent webinar highlighted, it’s all about being ‘spreadable’.

“Chicken Snuff Movies? Aisle Seven, Madam”

By Carl Foster, PepperDigital

British supermarket chain ASDA is making a bid for greater transparency with its customers. According to Marketing Magazine, the concept of empowering the consumer is the trend of 2009, with examples of Vodafone and Yahoo! cited. As ASDA follows this trend it has some good tactics in place already, for example the 18,000 strong ‘Pulse of the Nation’ shopper panel that comments on new retail lines. However, some of the proposed new tactics seem a little odd, such as replacing walls with glass inside supermarkets, like some kind of executive fish bowl meeting room for the shop floor.

But it is the new media transparency tools that raise the most questions. Apparently buyers at ASDA HQ will be posting regular updates to the Aisle Spy blog about where food and other products are being sourced from. There are also two webcams, one trained on cows in a Scottish dairy and one at a vegetable processing factory. ASDA chief executive Andy Bond says, "the ambition is to reach a point where customers can trace the journey of every ASDA product: from farm to fork or warehouse to wardrobe." For me, this is where the whole concept breaks down for the ASDA brand. 

ASDA has come a long way since it was Associated Scottish Dairies; it now dominates the ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ end of the British supermarket spectrum. Since it was acquired by Wal-Mart several years ago that brand position has been reinforced. But in Britain, a country where celebrity TV chefs launch campaigns to stop the suffering of cheap, mass-produced battery farm chickens, ASDA has set itself on conflicting paths where it is committed to providing cheap food but also transparency in how it reaches our table. It would be easy to envisage Waitrose, which occupies the premium end of the British supermarket spectrum, conducting such an experiment. Its customer base typically has the financial wherewithal to worry about where their food is sourced and would be more likely to pay more to know the chickens are free range and killed humanly. 

But are ASDA customers going to have the same concerns? Or do they want to put dinner on the table for the lowest price possible? There will either be a 24/7 poultry snuff webcam coming to ASDA’s website soon, or the price of its chickens is about to go up, or we’ll learn that transparency has its limits. If it’s the later, it would have been better to have not launched the transparency concept with such fanfare in the first place. 

Museum Of Idiots

By Jackie Kolek, PepperDigital

Mistakes happen; it’s a fact of life.  Whether it’s an organization or an individual representing that organization, wherever humans are involved, human error will occur.   Most reasonable people can accept that and are willing to make allowances.  An organization can’t prevent mistakes from happening 100 percent of the time, but they can control how they handle those situations.  How they manage those moments and deal with the people affected ultimately leaves more of a lasting impression than the gaffe itself.

Yesterday, I took my kids to New York’s famed Museum of Natural History to see a free concert by alternative rock band They Might Be Giants. TMBG has what you might call a very “loyal” fan base -- from fans like myself who loved them in college and now rock out with my kids to their Grammy-winning children’s albums, to Grateful Dead-like devotees who travel hours to get to the band’s “Family Shows” (despite the fact they have no families and look rather odd at a children’s concert without any children of their own).   

 

So, when I saw they were doing a free family show under the giant blue whale at the Museum of Natural History, I simply had to go.  I was, however, prepared.  I’ve been to several of the band’s shows (okay, I admit it:  this was my forth one this year), and I knew there would be tons of people and long lines.  I’d packed plenty of snacks and toys for the kids; we left the house early and had several discussions with the kids about the need for lots and lots of patience.  The instructions were simple: the museum opens at 10 AM:  buy your admission, and then you’ll be directed downstairs to wait in line for tickets to the show.  Tickets were to be handed out at 10:15 AM on a first-come, first-serve basis to the first 300 people.  I was ready.

We arrived at the museum about 9:00 AM, and I was pleasantly surprised.  About two dozen people were milling around on the front steps, only a few of them without a toddler in tow.  At about 9:30, everyone began to line up by the front doors, and I thought, “Okay, this won’t be so bad.”  Then, about 9:55 AM, a security guard emerged and told us that everyone had to go downstairs to a different entrance in order to get concert tickets.   

To say bedlam ensued is putting it mildly.  Families ran as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped off at the front door.  There was a mad rush to the lower entrance, where another, longer line awaited us.  Then, to add insult to injury, we were informed that you could not buy admission to the museum from that entrance and had to go back upstairs, buy admission, then come back and get on an even longer line to get into the concert.  People were screaming, kids were crying and those of us with a toddler in risk of losing out on a ticket broke into a cold sweat.   

As it turned out, Mr. Security Guard made a mistake. We were in the right place all along.  People who waited patiently by the front doors lost their place in line and now faced missing out on the “extremely limited” tickets.  

My husband ran back upstairs to purchase admission tickets.  However, at that point, the printers broke, and he was unable to get the admission tickets.  Downstairs, in the chaos, I got in line with the kids to get concert tickets.  However, when I got to the front, I was told I could not get into the concert until I had my admission tickets.  I explained the situation to the guard, who looked oddly like Judah Freidlander in 30 Rock.  I’d waited in line, been told to go to some other line (which turned out to be the wrong place) and then couldn’t even get admission to the museum.  His response was stunning: “Yeah, we made a mistake, but there is nothing I can do about it.”  

“Nothing I can do?”  I was shocked and appalled.  They made the mistake, yet there was a complete lack of concern and even awareness as to what they had set in motion.  In this economy, people are scaling back on these types of outings and museums, and educational destinations have been decimated by budget cuts and curtailed spending.  Ironically, my favorite TMBG song came to mind:  “Museum of Idiots.”  These institutions need to bend over backwards to bring in visitors and ensure they go away with a positive feeling that makes them want to come back.

The Natural History Museum should learn a lesson from our friends at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk. This past summer, the aquarium launched a new program called Penguins on the Loose, where visitors got to get up-close with a live African Penguin. It was a new and innovative idea designed to bring in more visitors.  The aquarium had never done anything like it before and was completely unprepared for just how popular the show would be.  Aquarium staff quickly realized that they had some angry visitors on their hands, those who waited in line and never got to see the show.  They moved swiftly to address the situation: they brought in risers, added additional staff to manage crowds, gave free passes to disgruntled customers and stationed greeters along the lines to continually update people on what they needed to do.   

As part of our work with the aquarium, we conducted a sentiment monitoring audit to determine what people were saying about the event and how the aquarium staff managed the situation.  Overall, the sentiment was very positive, and a large majority of online voices felt that the aquarium had done a great job addressing the problem and making people feel cared for. As a result, the Maritime Aquarium had the second most successful summer in its history, even in the face of the worst economic recession in decades.

As for the TMBG situation, I finally tracked down a supervisor who knew what had happened and took steps to address the mistake.  She gave me complimentary admission and personally escorted me and my kids over to the concert.  The concert was awesome. Confetti guns under the blue whale were amazing, and a great time was had by all.  Thanks to the supervisor, my family spent the day at the museum, dropping lots of cash at the restaurant and gift shop rather than leaving in an angry huff.   

As for the Judah look-a-like, he belongs upstairs in the hall of apes. Customer service is the first line of building a reputation and how those interactions are managed ultimately determine what people say about your brand to others and whether they emerge as recommenders or detractors.

Campaigns: An Outdated Way of Thinking?

By: Sam Ford, PepperDigital

George Carlin had his "seven dirty words" routine, but I am beginning to see quite a few "dirty words" circulating when it comes to the social media space as well. For me, the word I focus on is "viral." As those of you who have heard me speak or lead a workshop in the past few months know, I have a bit of a hang-up about how language shapes how we think about issues. In social media, making a video or blog post or podcast "go viral" leads companies to still think they can be broadcasters in a social space and that people turn into impressions because of something in the content that makes them not be able to help but share it. (See more here.)

When I was participating in the Advertising Research Foundation's inaugural launch of its Social Media Council last week, I had the chance to rail on a few of this issue. And one of my panel colleagues, Chris Andrew from Digitas (Twitter feed here), had a dirty word of his own: campaign.

His point about moving clients away from talking about campaigns really resonated with me because of how often it has come up with clients. I liken it to fictional television content: there are shows that are episodic, which come at regular intervals but in which one episode has little or no relationship to those that came before. So, in the most traditional example of all, Lucy tries to find a way to become part of Ricky's show in almost every episode, and it fails. In the next episode, she starts all over again. On the other end of the spectrum are serialized television shows, where "previously on..." becomes crucial, and each episode picks up where the previous one left off. Soap operas have traditionally been that content, and most of the more critically acclaimed dramas today fall into this mold (from Dexter to Friday Night Lights to Ugly Betty).

In short, a brand is a storyteller, and that story has to be larger than any particular one-off campaign. As Joel Rubinson of the ARF says, maintaining a social media presence is not a campaign at all; "it is on-going and self-perpetuating."

The conversation also provided a few aspects of online communication that should NOT be treated as dirty words. Mark Studness from Verizon talked about the importance of customer service in social media spaces and Verizon's experiences with managing an online forum for their customers to share advice with one another and draw on their collective intelligence to solve problems, with Verizon being amongst but not driving the conversation (and then was surprised with customer service questions directly from the crowd during the Q&A, reminding us all that marketers aren't just marketers...they're customers, too.) Meanwhile, General Mills' Heather Maxwell spoke about how online research is not a dirty word and the importance and value in connecting customers in communities and gaining customer insights from facilitating and listening to their conversations.

All in all, it was a fantastic session, and a reminder not only at the many ways advertising, marketing, public relations, customer service, and research are all converging but also how many kindred spirits there are in so-called other industries. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who wants to add "campaign" to the dirty words list...although I still don't know if I can get others on board for doing away with "consumers."

Industrial Breakthrough, Brought To You By...Netflix?

By Dawn Lauer, PepperDigital

We may have Netflix’s brilliant contest idea to thank for the future cure for cancer, advances in genomics, biofuels, etc.  In its third year, the $1 million contest to improve Netflix’ usability  has taken the concept of “open source” to a new level.  The contest is open to anyone across the globe, and the winning team was announced Monday.  Made up of Ph.D.s, statisticians and computer engineers, the multi-national team used a database of hundreds of millions to provide a superior solution to improve Netflix’s movie recommendations system.  

From a  pure PR standpoint, it is a brilliant move that not only invites corporate interactivity and heightens awareness for its value but also gains access to the best and brightest minds around the world--all highly motivated to solve a Netflix business challenge.  The money is actually an afterthought when you consider the true brilliance behind Netflix’s supply-and-demand approach.  As The New York Times points out, data sets of Netflix’s magnitude are hard to come by, and Netflix counted on the fact that many research and modeling companies would jump at the chance to work with them.

The winning team combined different models using a crowd-sourcing approach to clinch the $1 million, but the real prize is the ability for entire industries to apply these models to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.  

(Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Netflix has clearly accomplished more than a PR stunt.  It’s blazing a trail for how we use the Internet and digital tools to constantly innovate.   

I wonder if we could apply the same model at this agency, perhaps at the next company brainstorm?  One thing’s for sure . . .a one million dollar prize would certainly solve the biggest challenge . . .getting people to come!