The Conversation Manager

Investing in advertising is a common practice in our current enterprises, which is good! Investing in marketing and communication is a good thing which we should embrace. On the other hand, most companies see departments as customer care or their call center as a cost, which is strange in my opinion!

Call centers, for instance, are places where consumers take the lead and decide to contact your company. You have their full attention during that call. For the consumer this call is very important and they really expect your time and your positive intention to help them out.

Why do we see this as a cost and not as an investment? We invest so much in advertising of which we know only a limited part of our target group will be reached. The same company often refuses to invest in a real intense communication moment with a consumer: a 10 minute phone call. The KPI that is used most often in a call center is the duration of a call. Which is totally wrong! This motivates people in the call center to get rid of the client as fast as possible. I don't know what your experience is, but I certainly feel that duration of a call is their key KPI and certainly not my satisfaction after the call.

Imagine there would be a Telecom or Energy company who would turn this around and would see their service towards existing clients as their primary focus. I would like to be their first client, but I'm afraid there is still some work to be done to turn things around like that. But I'm convinced that every consumer conversation is a huge opportunity to grow your business.

Last Wednesday & Thursday, I joined the IAB Europe Conference in Barcelona. First of all: great location, great food & great people there. I really enjoyed it. Thanks IAB for organizing such a great event at such a great location.

Looking at the content, it stroke me that the most striking presentation came from ABInBev. One of the biggest advertisers in the world showed us how they are implementing digital into their organization. They’re doing it at great pace. During the next World Cup in South Africa: 75% of their budget will be spend to online media, 4 years ago 90% was spend on TV advertisement. Next to this huge budget switch, they created a global dashboard to monitor all results of their actions. The KPI is no longer reach, actually they don’t care about it anymore. No, their KPI is brand health because they know brand health creates growth for their brands (13 1-billion dollar brands, btw). They organize three day courses for their top management at Kellog’s University about digital marketing. In short: it is very serious business for them. An eye-opening story of a great advertiser.

What is really striking is that most presentations by agencies or mediaplayers were less innovative than this case. Whereas the industry is always blaming advertisers that they are not moving. Well, I’ve got news: big advertisers are moving fast. It’s not just ABInBev, look at some of the work Unilever and P&G are doing these days… For me, that was a wake-up call. The digital industry: media, agencies, researchers, consultants, … all of us. We need to re-invent ourselves faster. In my opinion, the digital industry is living in their own past sometimes, still using KPI's from 10 years ago. Today, it’s not that much about clicks anymore. Overmeasurement of consumer behavior is turning against the industry.

A suggestion: let’s work together! All of us! And let’s create KPI's that work. KPI's that are relevant for advertisers. Let’s talk more about the consumer and a lot less about technology. The goal is not to show off what we can do with technology, the goal is how can we engage with consumers. How can we help brands to increase their brand health. A good exercice would be: what can we keep of the last 10 internet years, what should we say goodbye to and which new elements do we need. Looking forward, not looking back is the idea, isn’t it.

A few days ago, Facebook changed the 'become a fan' button to a 'I like the brand' button. What a pitty!

Clicking on 'I like this brand', what does it actually mean? How high or how low is the barrier to push on that button? It's obvious that brands will get larger groups of people on their 'I like this brand' page then instead of their fanpages. Question is: what do you want as a brand? A page with a lot of people who like your brand or a page with less people who love your brand. That is the difference between fanship and liking: Fans love the brand, they don't just like it.

Having access to a group of people who love your brand was a great invention and a great tool for Conversation Managers. The new Facebook policy brings us back to the old school metrics where reach is more important than value. Facebook of all companies should know that value is the KPI of social media and conversation management (much more than reach).

My personal feeling is that the switch to 'I like' is all part of the masterplan in preparing their IPO next year. Larger 'databases' are worth more money. I was probably naive to think that Facebook would be the first IPO using new value parameters... As I said in the beginning, a real pitty for both consumers, Facebook and Conversation Managers that this decision was taken.