An important question for every organisation, internally and externally. And, in this case, councils and governments. This best way to get this is obviously by asking the people who are in touch with your company day in and day out - customers and employees.

That's why I loved this idea! Simple, discreet and something every organisation could implement with ease. I'm certainly going to be suggesting to people....

http://www.giveaminute.info/

I've been working on various CRM programs over the last 18 months, mainly using e-crm or DM. And the one thing you are always battling against is customers actually finding value in what you do. Not every customer is going to open their emails, not every customer is going to want to give you their information in return for the chance of winning a prize. I think how we approach CRM needs to change, both in terms of how we see CRM and in terms of how we try to keep customers in a "relationship" with said brand.

Let's start from the top, what's the point in CRM? It's basically to keep a customer interested in your brand enough that when it comes to replacing / upgrading their current product they choose your products. Simple, right?

The problem is often the mediums we use. We are still using age old DM principles to keep customers interested in our brand. We try to deliver fresh news, relevent offers, etc. because that's what keeps our brand top of mind, right? In the age of technology, we straying way behind in terms of what our customers actually NEED from us. 

What they really NEED beyond news and offers is utility. How are you helping your customers make the most of their lives, in the field that your brand is relevent? How are you keeping your brand top of mind in a manner that customers actually appreciate and find useful? The problem with monthly newsletters etc. is that most customers aren't actually that interested in what your brand is doing, they are interested in themselves and would much rather get something that helps them out.

So scrap the newsletter budget, and think about how you can help your customers in their lives whilst keeping your commercial goals in mind.

First of all, apologies for the radio silence. It's not that I haven't had time to write, more to the fact that I haven't had anything interesting to say! Anyway, upwards and onwards....

So, recently I've been working on a few projects where the budgets have been small, and I mean really small. It makes you think about the problem more and of course the solution a lot more. You need to get both right else you're not going to achieve anything.

In this scenario, I think of the PR model more and more and how it may be more effective than our current advertising model. Let me explain:

As it becomes more about content, quantity will reign supreme. We get bored quicker, things get old quicker due to how quickly information spreads - so brands have to be constantly relevent and fresh if they want to appeal to their customers.

And that's the key thought that should be powering our thinking in my opinion. As budgets get smaller, it's less about the blockbuster movie and more about the evening news. We need to think about how we are creating smaller, more engaging news worthy content. If you do the maths, metrics, ROI projections whatever, it's much more effective having 10 smaller more engaging ideas / news worthy ideas than one blockbuster that may or may not be effective.

Some examples

The guys over at urgent genius are trying something similar to this, it would be interesting to find ouy if they actually have any clients who have really bought into this concept. 

Also, worth noting the lo-fi ideas being done by the guys over at glue for their client Orange. Some of them get massive amounts of attention (online), others not so. However the key thing is that they are adapting the traditional agency model and producing content that keeps people coming back and gives Orange relevence. It would be interesting to see if they try to PR any of the ideas and get Orange more coverage. Interesting non the less and something for other agencies to think about, especially when it comes to content marketing.

An interesting project I worked on at Crayon.

Blogger outreach, community management, direct marketing....all that good stuff.

Sony Photo Challenge - Case Study from Crayon London on Vimeo.

We were recently talking about community managers in the office and someone naively suggested “can’t we just get a grad to do it?” I’m sure this question has been thrown into the mix every time this topic has been discussed. The assumption is that a community manager’s job is simple, easy and in some cases something that “just needs to be done.” What people don’t realise is that the community manager has the most important job within the online team, they are the ones who are closest to a brands audience, or at least they should be.

They shouldn’t be used to simply fight fires, answer questions and moderate. They shouldn’t be reactive, they need to be pro-active. .

I think the old image of the community manager simply being the moderator on a discussion board needs to be shunned, a community manager should be looking at real time data, pulling out insights and creating as many opportunities for the brand to engage and create value ,as possible. They need to be shrewd strategic thinkers that can identify opportunities for the product and PR teams. They should be someone who can identify positive trends that the marketing team can utilise. They should actually be out in the field testing products with brand advocates. The community manager’s role isn’t simple about being a faceless brand representative.

Show me a grad who can do all this and I’ll eat my hat :)

I received a pitch document the other day that was written by a rather large client, the kind that has a lot of money to spend on lots of banner ads.

This particular briefed boasted how in the previous year the brands online activity had resulted in 1m impressions. An impressive number, no arguing with that.  But all these impressions clearly didn’t create any impactful actions if they are sending around pitch briefs!

I think we need to move away from the notion of creating multiple impressions and instead towards creating smaller, more meaningful “moments.” It sounds a bit wanky but a “moment” stays with someone longer than an impression, not forgetting you tell others about great moments.

Ok, enough of the theory, here are some great examples of “moments” that create a great impact, all done instead of the conventional impressions route:

VW fun theory

Asics blogger outreach

And, one I worked on recently: Sony World Photography Awards

All are great examples of thinking differently, thinking about creating small moments that are then organically communicated to a bigger audience.

Moments > Impressions.

I saw this and it made me laugh:

Low involvement brands don't need a website, even more so in the age of facebook pages and twitter accounts.

Why is anyone going to visit your website when you sell tissues? Or crisps? Or chocolate? Woudn't your money be better spent creating digital experiences that keep your brand top of mind?

Let's say your website cost £300,000 to build and develop, woudn't that money be better spend creating multiple experiences? The answer is most definetely yes.

But I guess it brings in money for the agency (so it HAS to be done), it's something that is seen as essential by the client and if it didn't exist, what would the online manager do?! Use the internet to create content that people actually use and find useful? Surely not!!