Rethinking how we communicate, collaborate and innovate
In: Toronto Events
10 Jun 2009
It is that time of the month again when we bring together some of the smartest and most innovative minds from the Toronto startup, tech and marketing community to kick back, enjoy ourselves a bit and connect with other young people doing big things.
This month we have aligned our next event to coincide with the awesomeness of the lineup of events that Netchange Week is bringing into Toronto and I look forward to opening the doors to more of Toronto’s ambitious and intelligent elite.
The GenYTO meetup will follow the Refresh Event at MaRS which features several remarkable members of the GenY community including Craig Heintzman of the World Wide Web Foundation and Darius Bashar of DailyChallenge.
Our venue for the June meetup, Pogue Mahone, is just around the corner from MaRS so it will serve as suitable afterparty to the day’s Netchange events
If you know any remarkable young people that gel with the ethos and ambition of our community – don’t hesitate to pass on the invite. If you happen to follow me on Twitter or read the blog and we haven’t yet met in person please come out and I will make sure I introduce you to some really interesting people.
To RSVP for the event visit http://genyto.com

Photo credit, Steve Wampler
This weekend my father and I were discussing purchasing a digital SLR camera to step up our photography hobby from point and shoot to something with more substance. A step which is significant both in price, features and the variety in models. Given my modest knowledge it was important to do my homework before recommending a purchase.
The way I research most of my purchases is online first, checking the major retailers and specialty stores looking at the all the options, specs and prices. For this purchase I visited several online retailers including Best Buy, Black’s Photography and Henry’s and quickly learned that as an uninitiated customer the 500 word feature outline can be overwhelming, intimidating (you can check it out over here) and if anything confused me, making me less confident in coming to a decision.
Then I went off to the blogs and found some great articles from Ken Rockwell who gave a great technical outline of how to buy a camera (hint: half of those specs on the website were BS) but still I wasn’t sure how the advice he was giving related to me personally and my unique needs.
Within minutes of sending of the message to my network of about 1,000, I got great responses from some good friends and trusted online connections I have developed over the last few months. Their responses gave me a great ‘real’ idea of how the camera is used and shared their own experiences from using both products themselves.

Their input was great and edged me closer to the buying decision more than any other of the marketing channels.
All the while through my information search I wondered, shouldn’t the brands be here? Is there value in them assisting me im the purchase of a $500+ piece of equipment?
Black’s has great offline programs to educate consumers on how to use and buy cameras but they are virtually silent online. Currently I am not brand loyal to either Henry’s or Black’s and I will most likely buy the camera from the store closest to me barring terrible service or a ridiculous price difference.
However if someone from the companies were to reach out and engage my questions, they would have themselves a sure sale.
Personally I would welcome either brands into the conversation of my buying decision, how about you?
Would you find the attention from the brand overbearing, intrusive or helpful?
What if they offered you a 10% coupon on the purchase if you bought it from them instead of the competitor?
Intrusive or an extension of great customer service?
Today Facebook announced several new developments to aid both brands and people increase the punch of Facebook as a marketing tool. Aligned with their recent moves to make Pages more business friendly, the development of public personal profiles and the elimination of regional networks Facebook is taking strides to increase the scope of who we interact with on Facebook outside of our circle of family and friends.
This means that brands can add more branding to their existing pages eg. http://facebook.com/coke instead of http://www.facebook.com/pages/sumol/17755744821?sid=b1873b411cfc9230ab5dd301af42fc59&ref=search
This important because from the perspective of search engine optimization as Facebook Pages or Profiles will show up more prominently in Google search results and will result in more ‘organic’ visitors to your Facebook Presence.
As marketers this is important because it increases the reach of Facebook marketing campaigns and it also increases the accessibility of promoting campaigns. Instead of having people remember a 50 character link, you can direct people to a far more memorable url such as http://facebook.com/danielpatricio or http://facebook.com/coke.
I have already created easier to remember urls for several of the clients I work with eg. http://bizlaunch.ca/facebook but this is a great step and should make it more easy for those who are less intuitive to share their profiles with more people.
Personally a big focus of my work with clients revolves around leveraging the offline interactions back online to a social media presence such as Facebook, so this is going to be a great way of redirecting those offline experiences back online with an easy to remember message.
Oh yeah and if your name is John Smith and you would like to own http://facebook.com/johnsmith, you will probably have to stay up until 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13 to even stand a chance.
I think this is a great step and really adds value to any corporate or personal Facebook marketing campaign.
Will you be adding your new custom Facebook Profile url on your business cards?
Techdirt is a fantastic blog that I have really come to enjoy over the last few months for their insight and great perspectives on the future of the digital world we live in. Yesterday I came across the article from their ‘treating-fans-right’ department which sparked a dialogue on the issues we are facing in the inevitable landslide of change and how a independent band is actually actively promoting fans who are burning copies of their CD and helping those that don’t know how, to do it more actively.
Over the last few years we have seen the crisis control of many of the proverbial gatekeepers of content and intellectual property shift their stance from absolute shutdown (Napster) to frantically aggressive (suing a 12 year old) to archaic (the iTunes takeover) to the desperate state that they find themselves in now.
For decades, radio stations and djs were seen as the distributors and influencers of music and were largely nutured by the record labels. However Napster, Pirate Bay and the bevy of online filesharers, coupled with the iPod led a pirate lead coup de etat of the record industry. By making it easier to share music with your friends and listen to a playlist customised to your tastes consumers were no longer interested in the plastic discs the record industry was trying to sell.
Instead of bringing out the lawyers to solve a marketing problem they should have taken an objective look at the role piracy was playing and what it was telling them about their customers.
To quote Techdirt:
Chester French realise that the pirates are pivotal influencers in their communnity. They are motivated to tell more people about the product but are limited so they go above the mean to spread the word and they turn to piracy for a solution. Instead of ’solving’ the situation with lawyers they embraced and empowered their fans.
The role of marketers in this digital age where social aggregation and word of mouth is to enable those influencers and passionate fans that are your most valuable assets.
The issue isn’t that people don’t want music anymore, personally I routinely pay upwards of $50 to see a concert but I haven’t bought a CD in years, the issue lies in the gap between what customers want and what the record labels want to sell.
Are there pirates in your market environment that might unsatiated brand advocates?
What are you doing to enable them?
Photo credit, Juhan Sonin
It seems every single brand or marketing campaign seems to have the goal of ‘reaching out’ to their community.
I think the community approach to brand management and brand experience in principle, shows that more corporations are prioritising the customer relationship or at least seeing the opportunity in doing so. However in reality- far too many approach it as a marketing gimmick rather than an integral part of business strategy.
What I have found as a consumer and in my observations of several brands is that far too many companies approach many of these campaigns with a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivations of the members of the community and the role of the brand as a part of that community.
The sad truth is that many companies spend millions on developing online communities that fail dismally. The motivation seems to be: “lets create a community so our customers can all talk amongst each other and discuss how great we are”. Is it really any surprise that they fail?
The problem is that in an age of information overload where attention is one of the scarcest resources, your customers don’t want to split their time on yet another destination online if there is no benefit to them.
Brand communities fail because they don’t understand the fundamental motivations and needs of their customers.
Brand communities are not about what you want them to do, rather marketers need to understand why the members of the community are motivated to 1) connect with other members of the community 2) connect with the brand 3) what role the brand needs to take to provide value and facilitate those interactions.
For brands managers that have ‘controlled’ rather than facilitated conversations for decades and where open or uncontrolled conversation has been equated with fear and failure, this can be quite a significant shift in perceptions.
Freshbooks connects freelancers to work together or find jobs, Harley Davidson creates an community for motorcycle owners and Vertical Response has a community for email marketers which helps them share tips and best practices.
The common thread is that these brands have influence on their community because they own the conversations. They own the conversations because they create an environment that facilitates the fundamental needs and motivations of their community. The community members took ownership because it directly assists them and provides value.
Who are you customers and who is your community? Are you providing value and engaging in the conversation or just trying to farm email addresses?
Photo credit, CBGB Hoser
