Design Thinking 101 Revisited

If you’ve visited a bookstore recently, you probably noticed there’s been a lot written lately on the subject of design thinking. Whether or not you think it’s just another trendy buzzword, the topic has been gaining momentum in the last 5 years and is beginning to spark genuine interest from both designers and business executives alike. Big brand names like GE, Proctor & Gamble and Harley Davidson  have elevated design thinking to their management ranks and Stanford University has even created an Institute of Design lead by IDEO cofounder David Kelley that believes “great innovators and leaders need to be great design thinkers.”

Could design thinking really be a management paradigm shift or is it just a bunch of hype? Could it have an impact on businesses and help to solve the world’s most wicked problems? The following is a roundup on design thinking’s tools, methodology and why you should care.

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The “Wisdom of Friends” Powers Brand Advocacy

We are hearing so much now about how social media is creating a shift from ‘the wisdom of crowds’ to ‘the wisdom of friends’, but what does that really mean for brand advocacy?  A lot.  It’s this ‘wisdom of friends’ that brings a new “social power” to brand advocacy.

Social power (the ability to influence) used to be determined by who had the most money, was the most intelligent, or was the most effective at impressing their will on others, but that’s changing thanks to social media.  Now social power comes through connections of friends, or the “wisdom” of friends, so Advocates have much greater influence.

Numbers still hold some power, and they always will, but the strength of connection is becoming even more powerful.   Consumers care about reviews, evaluations and what other consumers say about your product, much more than advertisements… and that is great for a brand.  What they care about even more is what their friends think about your product.  One or two friends’ opinions — the “wisdom of friends” – carry more weight than many other opinions combined.

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Thrive in 2011 By Making Social Sell

Blogging, engaging, listening to customers on Facebook or Twitter are all a necessary component of being online. But doing these things won’t help you actually make sales using social media. The idea of following customers into social spaces is smart. But incomplete without a means to capture attention and ultimately convert it into demand – leads and sales. Could the answer to selling more with social media be found in starting conversations that are worth having? And could conversing in ways that generate questions that you have the answers to be a better way to generate customer inquiries? Here’s my advice on making each social media marketing budget dollar go further in 2011.

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Research: Fastest-growing companies accelerated social media usage

Research released yesterday from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth indicates fast-growing U.S. companies continue to out-shine the Fortune 500 on deployment of social media marketing initiatives.  The research effort, now in its fourth year, studies a compilation of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine.

Social networking continues to lead the way. The platform most familiar to the 2010 Inc. 500 is Facebook with 87% of respondents claiming to be “very familiar” with it.  Another noteworthy statistic around familiarity is Twitter’s amazing “share of mind” with 71% percent (up from 62% in 2009) reporting being familiar with the relatively new micro blogging and social networking site. Forty-four percent say Facebook is the single most effective social networking platform they use.

In terms of actual usage, Facebook also leads the way:

Blogging remains an important tool for the Inc. 500. Fifty percent of the 2010 Inc. 500 has a corporate blog, up from 45% in 2009 and 39% in 2008.  Beyond the actual adoption of this tool, there is clear evidence that companies are using blogs effectively.  There is a strong propensity to engage consumers through accepting and replying to comments and providing a vehicle for subscriptions. Thirty-four percent have developed social media policies to govern blogging by their employees. Approximately 20% of the Fortune 500 has such a policy and only 22% of the Fortune 500 have an active blog.

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What I Learned About Social Media from a DJ Battle

McDonald’s hosted the finals of the Flavor Battle, a national DJ comepttion with a $10,000 prize on the line. Admittedly, I’m a fan of DJ music. I find the craft and creativity of top mixers to be great for listening and jaw dropping to watch.  (So yes…I’m a bit of a fan boy)

Tweeting from the event was not only fun, but it helped drive home some lessons and planning:

Have a simple plan: Our challenge was pretty straight forward–to take an event at a small club in NYC and make it more social. That included setting up a USTREAM feed from the event and hosting a Twitter chat with three folks well known in the DJ community.

Take a “from the couch” point of view: The DJ battle was at a relatively small venue during a huge snowstorm. Even before the weather report looked bad, we knew that our online audience would be much larger than those who were able to attend in person. As such, a major portion of our plan was to drive that experience for folks watching on the Web. We also had tech teams on the ready to address any issues with the video feed. My role was stoking the Twitter conversation.

Don’t go it alone: The battle was judged by three fun, dynamic and well known folks. Spinderella @Spindeezy (formerly of Salt n Pepa) DJ Irie @DJIrie, and Rich Nice @RichxNice (amazing producer who has worked with all the big names and got 50 Cent his first record deal). Part of our “ask” of each judge was to join the Twitter conversation around the battle. This started with a Twitter chat for fans prior to the event, which had the dual aim of generating online buzz to drive more folks to watch the battle and then lasted throughout the evening to drive further conversation.

Don’t be afrarid to be careful: At times, the DJ and Hip Hop communities can use colorful language that doesn’t always fit with McDonald’s G-rated brand image. To help mitigate the risk of blue language in our Twitter stream, I conducted a 10 minute pre-game session with the celebrities where I asked them simply to “be yourself, but let’s keep this PG…or PG-13 at least. There might be some kids and moms out there.”

Don’t forget to say thank you: To your Twitter followers and conversation drivers.

Admittedly, none of these lessons may be particularly eye-opening, but given that social media tends to be a “connect through the screen only” experience, it is always refreshing to step away from the office and gain a different perspective.

Rick Wion

#MarketerMonday with @JeffreyHayzlett on Social Media, Crowdsourcing & Change

In just a few hours it will be #MMchat time again and this week our SPECIAL guest will be none other than @JeffreyHayzlett for this Monday January 24th at 8:00pm eastern!!


The topic for our chat tonight? Is your business breathing in 2011? Social Media, Crowdsourcing & Change. We look forward to Jeff’s insights and on these based on his previous experiences at Kodak and as a cowboy.

Hope you’re all as excited as I am to have @JeffreyHayzlett join us and that you will all make the time to be with us tonight, for it truly is all of you who make #MarketerMonday Chat matter!

Remember #MMchat makes Mondays MARVELOUS!!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Too. Many. Channels.

  A little Friday fun. You’d think it would be easier to keep in touch with your contacts these days thanks to the many ways we have to communicate. Phone, email, texting , IM, Twitter @replies and DMs, Facebook messages – and let’s not forget about good old fashioned written notes.

But somehow, we’ve made it more complicated. Everyone has his or her own preference of how they’re predisposed to communicate and be contacted, and it’s a challenge, to say the least, to manage all of these channels and keep a mental Rolodex of preferences. Is there a solution? I don’t know. But Allen Mezquida shared his latest Smigly animation with me, and it captures it well.

Warning: there may be some offensive language in the video



Do you have a solution? Or do you just muddle along like Smigly above?

Scott Monty

From Community Management to Command Centers

In early 2007, Chris Heuer, Shel Israel, Deb Schultz, Giovanni Rodriguez, and I explored the evolution of social media within the enterprise at an intimate business event in Palo Alto. One of the more memorable discussions focused on the rise of an official role within business to listen to social discourse and channel inbound questions and comments as well as official responses. The question eventually arose, how do we classify this new role within the organization? The designation of “Community Manager” earned the greatest support that day, but it did so with a caveat, “communities, by organic design, could not be managed.”

Fast forward several years, the community manager has evolved into an industry standard position within the social media value chain; it is also the beneficiary of its own appreciation day.

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Will Canadian retailers survive?

“Motivated employees make a huge difference in service”  says David A. Aaker in his book, Strategic Market Management

Mind the gap

Like many busy moms, I willingly and sometimes, forcefully, take on everyone’s shopping in my family. This year, more than ever before, I’ve had the opportunity to experience the limits of customer service at retailers, more particularly, at Canadian retailers.

This has given me a pretty good insight in their practices and what the end user, the customer deals with. I will use this “experience” to bring you a series on Canadian retailers; the first topic is pretty general as it sets the tone and give you a fair idea of the landscape.

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You Are What You Tweet: Content & Company Define Us

As little as two or three years ago for most of us, we relied on information mainly from the mainstream media.  Today, the internet is content rich (and of course has been for longer than a few years) and with “everyday” folks like me joining Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc. the content available is incomprehensible.  I could go into all the stats available to support it, but since that’s not where I’m headed, I’ll skip that.  Where I am headed is this: you are defined, categorized, listed, judged and perceived by both the content you post AND the company you keep.

Yes, I said that and—although I don’t have the metrics to prove it—I can tell you from my own personal experience online that it’s very true.  I have tweeted “You are what you Tweet” and what I mean by that is this: If you want to be recognized for a certain type of skill, industry, vocation, cause, etc, tweet 80% of content about or relevant to that subject(s). A new 80-20 rule:  I tell clients to post 80% about business related content and 20% other stuff.  What’s other stuff? I say reserve it for this: fun with other Twitter friends, hobbies, and family—but not too much.  I think this is a good formula in general for keeping your “stream” valuable and credible, yet interesting while simultaneously demonstrating that you are indeed a real person with a sense of humor and knack for attracting like-Tweeters.  Ah-ha!

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