This is why we get out of bed in the morning…

… and believe in the things we’re doing, Just watch yourself:

By the way: did you know we changed our blog to here?

My interview with Vincent Evers

** Did you know we have moved our blog? Please direct your RSS reader to here **

Sometimes it seems that a day is just different as you’d have expected. Take last Wednesday. I was at the office of Remco Bron from Innovader, So Many Thoughts and a bunch of other things, together with Erich Taubert, our partner in the development of one of our medical apps. In the middle of the conversation Vincent Evers, a Dutch Gadget Opinion Leader, joined the discussion. After a few minutes of talked medical tech Vincent explained that he’s currently experimenting with an electric car. But Vincent being Vincent, he does that..differently.

Meet Leafplan: a project where 6 cameras inside the car record everything what happens in the car. Vincent uses the car to explain about green technologies, and to interview for him interesting people. And he does so in a total geeky, gadget-stylish way: you enter the car, teak a seat behind the wheel (he let’s you drive), he jots your name, company, interests, e-mail and Twitter name in an app, pushes record and off you go. In a 10 minute drive he asks the driver all sorts of things related to new developments, among other things. After the drive is over, he taps the ‘Stop’ button on his app. Then the magic happens: the movie is being converted, a pre- and post roll including lower-third titles are being added, it’s uploaded to YouTube and an e-mail is sent to the interviewee once ready. O yeah, it puts it on Twitter as well. Mind you, with just one tap of the button.

Pretty cool. Even cooler when he asked us to be interviewed by him. We couldn’t resist. If it was only to drive in a super fast electric car. And fast it is…

(sorry, it’s in Dutch)

Is this the future of TV?

Tv is said to be the last place that is not yet invaded with interaction and social. Although there are many attempts, such as Apple TV, Google TV and a few more, but these remain attempts scratching the surface. What is really needed is a total revamp of the way the TV works, how cable companies do business and broadcast companies deal with licenses.

Steve Jobs said just before he died: “I finally cracked it”, referring to the TV. Will able be able to re-invent a 7th industry? Or will Google take it away with their next iteration of Google TV? We’ll see. In the meantime, our neighbors in the east are not sitting still either, en came up with a nice concept:

 

Lessons from Best Western: customer first, channel later.

Many (if not most) companies think inside-out, central from their product or service, searching for ways how to push this most effectively to their customer. Sure, we all know how important the customer is, without them no existence, but do we really imagine how it is to be our customer? Do we know their experience of all moments that they’re in contact with us? In other words, do we know the customer journey? In most cases not, or at least insufficient.

Best Western UK does it different. A middle-class hotel chain, a franchise organisation. Or, according to Tim Wade, Head of Marketing, a member-organisation. “Best Western consists of independent entrepeneurs who, in contrast with our main competitor Holiday Inn, have a lot of freedom in running their business. As long as they fulfill a few minimal and basic requirements, they are free to develop any kind of service they see as appropriate.” At first sight

a complicated way of managing a consistent brand, but Best Western has solved that creatively: just because of this versatility inspiring entrepeneurail climate, Best western is able to approach the customer in a more personal way. ‘Hotels with personality‘ is therefore the current slogan.

Most important is the Total Customer Experience: optimizing all contact moments, before, during and after a visit to one of over 200 hotels in the UK. In order to support this, they’ve developed a cross-media campaign, which is lead by an extensive email marketing campaign. Through the latter a lot of customer data is collected that gives a detailed insight in the customer journey. And this again forms the basis for a lot of other tools that have been developed. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter are closely monitored and responded to when needed. Main goal with this is to get good revies on sites such as Tripadvisor.

“It is essential that customer comes before channel”, says Tim. “Understand the experience your customer goes through and you understand where you van improve your product.” And even though the campaign is lead by email marketing activities and social media is mainly reactively managed and could be used more proactively, you can’t say that a campaign with an ROI of £45 for each pound spent isn’t successful.

We spoke with Tim about this Best Western campaign during the Enterprise Marketing 2.0 congress organized by KGS global in Amsterdam earlier this month.

So it happened today…

Where to start a blog post writing about something that you’ve seen coming from a vast distance, but you knew it would be shocking when it would actually happen. This morning that was the case, when I read that Steve Jobs had passed away. The entire day I was sad, which is strange for a man I didn’t even knew personally. Or did I?

I’ve always been tagged as an Apple fanboy. I don’t know why, but the first time I worked on a Mac (Classic) it felt OK. May be it was because my roots in computer technology lie in the Commodore Amiga platform, or may be because I was too stupid to understand DOS. Either way, in 1993 I ‘switched’ (yeah, I did own a PC, 16 MHz with 20 MB HDD at that time) and never looked back. The Mac Classic was changed for a Performa 400, Performa 630, PowerComputing clone, G4 PowerMac, PowerBook, iMac G4, iMac G5, iBook, iMac Intel, iPod, iPod nano, iPod mini, MacBook, MacBook Air, iPhone 1st Gen, iPhone 2, iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad 1, iPad 2… Anyway, I’ve had my fair share of Mac stuff around me.

A funny thing happened. When I started working on the Mac I became interested in the company as well. Reading about their plans, their products, trying to figure out their strategy. I remember that at my first job (I was working on a biomedical research department at a pharma company) I spent hours and hours in the basement reading old magazines of MacWorld Magazine. And my boss thinking that I was doing literature study on Nitric Oxide in peritoneal mouse macrophages. It was a dark time for Apple. Steve was kicked out and Apple for struggling to survive. It was also the time that as an Apple user you were the misfit. In a Windows dominated world mid nineties it seems that I always had to defend why I was using Apple, and not conforming to the status quo. Because you are a fanboy, you just don’t understand why people make their lives so complex using an inferior operating system like Windows 3.11 or 95 was (let’s face it, that was ugly. I won’t even mention Windows ME). It was the time that evangelizing was top of my list. Don’s ask me why, that’s just fanboy-behaviour. I had a mission, a mission to help Apple survive. Because what would happen if Apple would cease to exist? I would have to work my entire life on my Performa 400. Or switch back to Wintel. OK, I settled with the first option.

But that didn’t happen, obviously. The hammer really hit me when Steve came back (before I hardly had heard of the guy) and launched the ‘Think Different‘ campaign. I wouldn’t go as far as saying I saw the light, but the notion that it was OK to think different, or even to realize that great minds usually thought different came as a sort of revelation. Mind you, I was 25 at that time. An age where you are looking for an identity in your recently acquired grown-up life. Steve came, introduced the iMac and the rest is history. Evangelizing became less of an issue, playing help desk for friends and family even more because of the massive number of people switching to the Mac year after year. And now, 18 years later there are more people with Macs in my environment than people on Windows (or may be that is because I choose my friends wisely) and is Apple the most valuable company in the world. Life can take strange turns.

There’s no question about it, how cheesy that may sound: Apple did change my life in a profound way. I am in the extreme fortunate position that I can honestly say that I made a career out of my hobby. When I went to the Chamber of Commerce 7 years ago to register the name DigiRedo I had only one goal with this company: making a bit of money so that I could buy cool Apple hardware. DigiRedo was at that time not even close to the company it is today (actually, we only used the name and together with René we created the company that it is today). But my entrepreneurial feelings, my desire to not comply to the status quo, to focus on design, to create and give good looking presentations, even how to manage a company was inspired by Apple, and thus Steve Jobs. Jeez, we are even building our new business on one of his innovations: apps.

Some people say it’s a kind of sick to worship a CEO of a computer company this way. That it is a religion. That’s OK, let them. I hope they realize that Apple fanboys and -girls do not only exalt the products because they are easy to use and set the standards for the rest of the industry. No, it is because, especially back in those days, you made a conscious decision to not go with the flow. As a person you wanted to be different. In a world where everybody was wearing blue, you were wearing green. And that felt good. Is still does by the way, though many people are wearing green nowadays. I do not see a difference in worshipping an artist like Michael Jackson, or a CEO like Steve Jobs. Both were great persons who achieved great things and inspired many.

He did inspire me, and looking at the mainstream news, the internet, and the number of people who talk about it on the street today it seems that I am not alone in this. There will be still wars in the world, we are still worrying about climate change, so after today the world won’t be different on the larger scheme of things. But some things have lost a shiny edge around them.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

 

DigiRedo’s New Media session at FECAVA congress – follow us LIVE!

Currently we’re in Istanbul at the FECAVA congress, an international veterinary congress. FECAVA is the Federation for European Companion Animal Veterinary Associations. Most of the congress is about clinical subjects like dentistry, internal medicine and radiology. But also the veterinarian needs to realize the importance of communication and the impact of new and social media. And the opportunities they bring.

This afternoon, starting around 2pm, one of the sessions will be entirely dedicated to new media and what the veterinarian can do with it. Together with FECAVA we’ve organized this session, which exists of three presentations: I will start with a presentation with an introduction on new media followed by Susie Samuel from Vethelpdirect, who will talk about how you can use new and social media in the veterinary practice. After the break Erik will talk about online communities. The session will be closed with an open discussion with the audience, a bit unconference-like, where everybody can share their opinion, thoughts and doubts about the use of new and social media for the veterinary practice.

In the meantime we will encourage people to use Twitter (#fecava11). The session will streamed live and can be followed live here.

Enterprise 2.0: part 4 – how do we start?

The following article is also published through pharmaphorum and is the fourth in a series about Enterprise 2.0.

‘We want to start using Twitter professionally, but how do we do that?’ ‘I want to start a Facebook group, can you help me?’ Regularly I receive these requests. First thing I ask is ‘Why would you want to do this?’ And then it becomes silent.

It is very tempting to start using these new and innovative communication tools, but realise  that they are just tools. Tools that need a purpose and a plan for using them. Tools that have a new dynamism and are not without risk. But tools that should not be ignored but investigated and tried to get familiar with. As said earlier, using new and social media is not without risk. That’s why you need to start internally. This fourth episode of this series focuses on defining the basis for developing your social business. Where are you on your journey towards Enterprise 2.0?

• Know your organisation
  Before using social collaboration tools within your organisation you need to really understand your organisation first. Who are you and why are you doing the things the way you do? What are your core values, your mission and vision and, more importantly, are you really living up to them? What is the attitude of the workforce towards the organisation? How strong is the connection between colleagues, departments and divisions. How ‘social’ are your staff?

The 7I network model, recently developed by Marco Derksen and Rachelle van der Linden, is a helpful tool for a good insight in your organisation. Although the model primarily was designed to understand where you are in the transformation to an external network-organisation (which certainly should be part of the goal for an Enterprise 2.0 company) the model is also very useful for the internal transformation towards social collaboration. It focuses on 7 critical aspects:

1. Identity – why are you here?
   If you do not know why you are doing things, you will never become successful in them. Many organisations know what they do and how they do it, but there are only a few that really know why they do it. Those are the true innovators, the visionaries  and the market leaders. Simon Sinek calls this ‘The Golden Circle’ (click here for his inspiring TED talk).
2. Internal organisation – are you able to empower?
   An E2.0 organisation is open, transparent and authentic. Management-style is more facilitative than directive. Are you able to loosen control and empower your people? How do you reward and motivate them? How loyal is your workforce and how can they manage empowerment?
3. Insight and knowledge – do you know each-other?
   Many organisations are built in silos. How much insight is there in the competencies and activities of the various departments over the different silos? Do you know who knows what? And how broad within the organisation is the corporate strategy understood?
4. Innovation – dare you go ‘out of the box’?
   Innovation is not exclusive to the R&D divisions of companies. Anyone, any team, any department and any company can innovate. But can you? Are you able to do things differently? Do you dare thinking outside-in? And are you able to share those ideas with others to make them even better?
5. Inspiring network
   In order to collaborate you need a network. A network that inspires and improves ideas. Where experts across disciplines know how to find each-other. How does your internal network look like?
6. Interaction
   Collaboration leads to better performance. But only if interaction is authentic, open and honest. You need a high level of trust between colleagues and in the organisation. Feedback may go all directions. Is this possible in your company?
7. Instruments
   If your culture allows social collaboration, you need to match this with the proper technology. For that it is important to know what technology and what tools you currently use. Are they open or closed? Are they easy accessible and user-friendly? Does it allow collaboration? How is your IT department organised and what is their attitude towards the current changes in the industry? Take another look at the graph from the previous episode, representing the development of the intranet, this time indicating where the majority of companies are. Do you know where you are?

• Strategic fit
  As said before, in order to understand the dynamism of social computing you need to experiment with it. Dare to connect, share information, collaborate, comment, review, rate and socialise. But when doing it, give it business value by finding a fit with the current strategic direction of the organisation.In general, four types of business strategies can be identified: strategies that aim on growth, innovation, cost reduction and transformation (source: Dachis Group).The project that you choose as pilot or experiment should clearly fit within this strategy.It will motivate people using the new platform as it is in line with their objectives and helps them fulfill their tasks efficiently. More important, it will increase the chances for support and approval from (senior) management. It will justify the investment, as it adds business value to the social experiment.

That said, don’t let ROI define the success of your project. Social collaboration cannot directly be translated into hard data. Yes, sales can increase as a result of Enterprise 2.0, but it’s only part of the success. Most of the benefits will be seen in the mid and long term and are not that straightforward and easily measurable. Benefits such as sharing of knowledge and experiences, fostering innovation, improving motivation and loyalty of employees and crowd-sourcing to name a few. Some can be measurable and calculated, others are more subjective. It is as one community manager explained to me once: ‘how much do you love your mother? And how much do you love your mother more than I love mine?’ This illustrates the difficulty many managers have with this new era. For decades, figures have ruled business. Top line, reduced costs, increased market share. But those cold figures say nothing about the real performance of people, nor if they’ve performed the best they can, with satisfaction, with the best motivation. And at the same time, these are the core elements of the long term success of an organisation and the result of human interaction. Ever heard a relation therapist say: after my counselling, your marriage will improve with 22.4%…

Look closely to yourself in the mirror, know who you are as an organisation, find the strategic fit and realise that the road ahead is bumpy but one that leads to successful collaboration and you’re ready for social business.

Enterprise 2.0: where to begin (part 1 – does your boss know social media?)

The following article is published through pharmaphorum and is the first in a series about Enterprise 2.0.

Social Media in pharma, it still  a hot topic and main subject of most of the marketing and communication conferences that I attend. And like in any industry, and with every innovation, some brave pioneers try to cross the borders and push the limits. Take Marc Monseau, John Pugh and Alex Butler who started to explore Twitter on behalf of their employers Johnson and Johnson, Boerhringer Ingelheim and Janssen-Cilag. Take the JNJHealth channel, Bayer’s InBedStory series and Janssen’s Living with ADHD campaign on YouTube. Take Facebook initiatives by Pfizer. All of which are grassroots initiatives to test the social media waters. And these aren’t all.

But where is the pharma industry really when talking about using and implementing social media? Does pharma really understand it? Is it mostly useful as a marketing tool? Or does pharma know how to live social media?

One thing is clear, social media has become a major channel for the consumer, for the patient and for the doctor. But pharma still struggles how to get involved – bound by regulations, afraid of mention of adverse events and scared of patients (and doctors) talking directly to us – pharma hold themselves back from this high visibility that social media provides. Even the FDA has no clue how to deal with it, referring to the radio-silence since the public hearing in November 2009.

“If Twitter is just useless twitter, why does it have
close to 200 million users?”

That’s not all. That’s just finger-pointing to the outside world, referring to influences we do not control. But when looking in the mirror, what do we see? We see enthusiastic and passionate marketeers and communication specialists, eager to explore the great opportunities of social media. And we see the thick brick walls they encounter on their way to the decision making units, the boards of management, the legal departments and regulatory affairs. What’s the benefit of getting involved? Where is the ROI? What positive impact could it have in our business?

The opportunities are beyond their imagination. But in order to get that message across, we need to convince them of a few things. So let them know the following:

Unaware makes ignorant
It starts with understanding what’s happening around us. If Twitter is just useless twitter, why does it have close to 200 million users? Why are almost 600 million people using Facebook? Understanding social media starts with becoming aware of what it actually is, why it is so big and why it has such impact. As said, we as marketeers and communication professionals are aware, sure. But what about our managers, our board, our lawyers? Force them in a room, lock the door for half a day, explain to them and they will leave the room enlightened.

Control lives in Utopia
One thing that you need to let go immediately in social media is control. There is no control. You cannot control what your customers, your patients and your doctor say and think of you. You cannot control the response to the message you send out. What you can control is your interest in them, your care and how you may be able to help them. Your products and services are there for them and not the other way around. Connect, build up a dialogue and offer help to make their lives better. Don’t push, don’t sell, but listen and respond.

“You cannot control what your customers, your patients
and your doctor say and think of you.”

Think before you act
I know, it’s very tempting. Once you see the power of social media, the urge is to start working with it as soon as possible. But beware, first understand where your customers are, how they use social and new media, then think about how to get involved, make a plan and only then think about the technology. Take the POST approach: People. Objectives, Strategy and Technology.

Learn by mistakes
You cannot learn without making mistakes. So when you start using social media, allow people to make mistakes. Learn from them. Making mistakes makes you better at things.

Start in shallow water
But making mistakes in social media can have serious effects. So, when you immediately start in the ‘big bad world’ outside, anything you do is visible to anyone. And that can be potentially harmful, even if it’s unintended. It’s the same with swimming: if you jump in the deep, chances you’ll drown are high. Therefore you learn it in shallow water. So, why not start experimenting with social media in a safe environment? Why not start using it internally, within your own organization? With that you kill at least seven birds in one stone:

• it improves internal communication
• it improves internal collaboration
• it stimulates innovation
• it leads to knowledge sharing and retention
• it increases productivity and efficiency
• it leads to higher motivated people
• it’s fun

Meanwhile, you learn how social media works (and that’s bird number eight).

This is what we call Enterprise 2.0: Social Computing in a business environment. A necessity for any company that wants to lead by innovation, that wants to attract talent and keep them inside, that wants to share and retain knowledge and harvest the potential that’s within the organization.

“Don’t push, don’t sell, but listen and respond.”

Most of you are probably familiar with all of this. But again, what about the layer above? What about the managers that make the decisions? Are they aware? Do they realize that standstill is regression? That it’s a form of ‘ostrich politics’? There are always higher priorities, so there is no reason to postpone the experiment. And if you do, then tomorrow, while taking your head out of the sand, you feel as if you’ve been left behind in the Stone Age.

In the coming months we will publish various articles on Enterprise 2.0. How do you start? What are the requirements, the do’s and don’ts, the pitfalls and the opportunities. How do you manage your community and more.

In case you have specific questions or experiences you’d like to share, please feel free to leave a comment.

The next episode in this series will be published on pharmaphorum on May 10, 2011

Enterprise Social 2.0: an impression

A few weeks ago KGS Global organized a conference in Brussels titled Enterprise Social 2.0. A 2 day meeting with large brands on stage (such as Toyota, Cisco, BMW, KLM, British Telecom, Accor Hotels) but also smaller companies like the Roger Smith Hotel and non-profit organizations such as Médicins Sans Frontières. A good quality of speakers with some great examples of how to use Social Media as a way of getting connected with your customers and turning them into fans.

We’ve produced a short video-impression of the conference, which has been released by KGS today. Just check it out below.

TEDx Maastricht – and we’re part of it…

Today is TEDx Maastricht, a conference about the Future of Healthcare, organized by The Radboud University Medical Center. A very interesting meeting,  because of the impressive line of speakers, the TED formula and the topic of patient empowerment, e-health and participatory medicine.

The whole event will be livestreamed the entire day, and we’re very pleased to be part of this production. Off course all presentations can be followed live and in the breaks interviews and reports from the foyer will be made. The latter belongs to our  responsibility: our reporter Erik van der Zijden and cameraman Eduard Ernst are out there, looking for short stories, asking about the participants’ impression of the meeting, their experience with Health 2.0 and the Future of Healthcare in Holland.

Check out the program, turn on the Livestream and enjoy TEDx Maastricht. Even if you’re not there physically you can still be part of it…