Wide Angle

MLC’s survey data from 200+ companies shows that executive leadership of social media is critical to success.  Indeed, 57% of brands with CMO leaders of social media see strong returns on their social efforts, compared to just 18% of companies without CMO leaders.

The reason?

Social media enable brands to build strong customer relationships that deliver value to multiple functions e.g., new product ideas (NPD), answers to customer questions (Customer Service), or advocacy (Marketing).  Managing these shared relationships requires strong cross-functional collaboration, which only a leader with significant clout and authority can achieve.  As the customer champion, the CMO is uniquely positioned to play this role. Read More »

Jeff Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak, keynoted at MLC’s opening executive retreat last week. Arriving in his signature cowboy boots, Jeff shared his fittingly defiant approach to leadership in the “Wild West” of social media. He also shared insights from his new book, “The Mirror Test”.

Adversarial Leadership

Jeff opened by saying:“my job as CMO is to create tension,” and explained how he challenged the status quo and broke the rules to get action on social media at Kodak. He once asked Legal how many people he would have to annoy before he got fired. When they said a third of the company, he decided he still had plenty of leeway to push his plans through.  Similarly, when we asked how to deal with Legal’s approval processes for social media, he answered “You’re in marketing, be creative.” Read More »

Best Buy’s Twitter-based customer service tool has created a lot of buzz over the last year. We asked John Bernier, Best Buy’s Social Media Steward, what makes it work behind the scenes. John is the Digital Product Line Manager and Social Media Steward at Best Buy. He develops digital products and tools for Best Buy employees and customers, while shepherding social media initiatives, such as Twelpforce.  He has worked at Best Buy since 2004, playing a variety of roles in marketing communications and marketing strategy. We spoke to him early last month. Read More »

Susan Lavington has been SVP Marketing at USA TODAY since 2007. During that time, she spearheaded the brand’s adoption of social media – including turning 100 journalists into regular Twitterers.

We asked her how she did it. Read More »

Social media enables any employee in any function to interact directly with consumers.  This makes employee engagement more important than ever – both to limit reputation risks and capture new opportunities for employee advocacy (i.e., employees promoting the brand online).

As a very first step, companies should limit downside risks by implementing a social media policy (MLC members, click here for tips and examples).  In addition to defensive guardrails, companies should also offer simple guidelines or training to help engaged employees make the best use of social media.

Beyond this, now is a good time to redouble efforts to measure and boost employee engagement. Indeed, 46% of executives agree that surveying employee satisfaction and acting on the results is the best way to protect online reputation. Read More »

One of the most common social media questions we hear is “How do I build global capabilities?”  The challenge is that each market has a unique manifestation of social media (different platforms, levels of uptake, user habits), while each marketing team has different strengths and weaknesses.  With such varied needs and opportunities, attempting to standardize capabilities globally simply doesn’t work.

The best companies embrace heterogeneity instead of aiming for global consistency.  They assess each region’s individual needs in order to tailor capability goals and training accordingly. Read More »

Although we all know peer recommendations are the most trusted source of brand information, we don’t always know who our advocates are or how to get them to share recommendations.

Qwest Communications really struggled with this.  In certain markets, up to 50% of Qwest’s prospects request a customer reference before agreeing to purchase.  With no systematic approach to sourcing references, sales reps would spend an average of 4 hours (across 2 or 3 weeks) to find each reference.  Not only did this slow down the sales cycle, but reps would also burn out happy customers by over-contacting them or turn to less satisfied customers and get poor references.  Then Qwest found a creative new approach to references. Read More »

Looking across the 50+ campaigns on MLC’s B2B Marcomm Showcase, it’s clear that the very best get 3 things right: 1) they engage the sales force; 2) they maximize cross-channel synergies; and 3) they capitalize on a customer insight. 

As all 3 are easier said than done, we’ve surfaced tips and tactics from the marketers behind some of last year’s best campaigns – Alcatel-Lucent, National Instruments, and Qwest Communications. Read More »

Launching a new product and want customer advocates to help spread the word for you?  See what you can learn from National Instruments’ LabView product launch (a software program for engineers).  The launch campaign, which won MLC’s 2009 B2B Marcomm Awards, generated more than 2,000 customer tweets and 80 customer blog posts in just one month.

What was their secret?  Building platforms and content around customer needs – not their own product launch.  Read More »

We may not have the jet-set, champagne-fuelled ceremonies of the B2C ad world, but our 2009 B2B MarComm Awards are just as exciting, if somewhat lower scale. 

MLC Members can access the links in this post, including our showcase of all 50 entries to see the high quality of work and get ideas for your own campaigns. Despite the consistently high standard across campaigns, we had to select a few that stood out from the rest.

We are pleased to announce 8 finalists that excelled in terms of campaign focus, target understanding, message relevance, and channel impact:

2009 MLC B2B Marcomm Awards Finalists

• Alcatel-Lucent | Hotel Experience
• Motorola | Two-Way Radio Lead Generation Campaign
• National Instruments | Energizing Engineers at NI Week
• Qwest Communications | Voice of the Customer
• Telecom NZ | No One Will Know You Are Gone
• Telstra | Enterprise & Government Productivity
• TELUS | Who Knew
• Thomson Reuters | ProLaw Office

Read More »