Servant of Chaos

Trust is Up for Financial Services’ Connected Consumers

While the retail sector continues to flounder, the Financial Services industry seems to finally have cottoned on to the digital business opportunity presented by social media.  A new report published by ING shows that frequent social media users (ie that lucrative and market-making early adopter segment) view social media as being as reliable as other online media.

Moreover, social media goes beyond simple information dissemination. The report indicates that “financial information posted on social media changes opinions, preferences or behaviour more often”. Clearly, as we have noted previously, our connected consumers are discovering, debating and deciding what to purchase and when independently of our marketing funnel.

Financial services leaders will increasingly need to develop and execute strategies that reach, engage and transform their relationships with their connected consumers. The impact has been felt in 2012, but the power will grow through 2013. Is your company ready?

How ClickFrenzy Became a ClickFizzer

It should have been a raging online success for Australian retailers – a pre-Christmas event bringing together hundreds of local stores to create an online marketplace unrivalled in Australia’s digital history.

The aptly named ClickFrenzy was designed to kick start the holiday purchasing season with an Australian flavour – with local retailers aiming for a greater slice of the estimated $16 billion spent each year online. It appeared to be a match made in virtual heaven – retailers with full warehouses and consumers waiting with wallets fattened off the back of low unemployment and stable economic growth. What could go wrong?

Like Any Failure, It’s Not About the Technology

When the ClickFrenzy servers went down minutes before the 7PM launch, Facebook and Twitter exploded with frustration. But the seeds of this failure go back years. 

For decades the retail sector has been under-investing in technology. Despite having international eCommerce startup superstar BigCommerce sitting on their doorsteps, most Australian retailers steadfastly resisted committing to the online purchasing experience. Some of the largest of retailers launched  poorly designed digital stores with clunky and outdated user experience, limited product lines and pricing models that were less than sharp. The excuses are many and varied, but at the heart I believe it’s a case of the The Innovator's Dilemma – retailers past success has created the obstacles preventing them from succeeding in the face of changing markets and technologies.

Retailers Were Blindsided by the Connected Consumer

Over the last couple of weeks I have been speaking a lot about the disruptive impact of technology. The Connected Consumer has transformed the landscape and outflanked most brands. They are discovering, debating and deciding what they will buy well ahead of the traditional marketing funnel.

Retailers may have seen this change taking place but have not undertaken the transformation in strategic thinking, execution and delivery that is required. They did not dig their well before needing the water. They did not follow the most basic of customer centric models (see below).

The Good News – Retail Now Has a Burning Platform

As I suggested recently, the under-investment in technology by the retail sector has been possible because there was no “burning platform”:

People still bought goods – especially appliances and larger items in stores, and “online” was considered risky, unreliable, and difficult to navigate when it came to returns, warranties and customer service.

Many retailers in the past have made many excuses for poor online execution, appalling digital strategy and non-existent or simplistic social media engagement. I am half expecting to see the same again.

But Australian retailers should wake up and smell the smoke. It’s time for a dramatic rethink from the ground up. It’s time to delve deep and understand the fundamental transformation that has taken place in consumer markets and to work with the disruption in a way that transforms the nature of retail. It’s time for digital marketing transformation.

Funnel Conversion: Make it About Your Customers

It’s one thing to have a marketing insight, but quite another to do something valuable with it.

Living as we do with an abundance of data, what marketers increasingly need is a way to filter the information, distil it for insight and apply their business and brand knowledge in a way that creates value for both the business and their customers.

But where do you start?

Eloqua has compiled 40 infographics covering a swathe of marketing disciples from the back office to the front of house. There are charts on analytics and marketing automation, social media, email marketing and lead management.

Armed with this data:

• Consider your own marketing challenge
• Find a chart that speaks to your problem
• Compare and contrast the chart data to what you know about your business

Now … think about how you can close the gap or solve your challenge. Do you need help? Resources? Budget? What can you do within the next three weeks and what can be delayed until 2013?

STOP.

All this makes perfect sense. But before progressing, consider how this plays out with customer experience in mind. Which of your priorities also provide wins for your customers? What does it mean to recast your efforts through the lens of the customer?

With an abundance of data we can easily lose sight of our customers. Marketers must continue to maintain focus not on their marketing processes but on the constantly changing customer landscape. If you aren’t focusing on your customers, rest assured your competitors are.

Event Report: Constellation Research Connected Enterprise

At some events, all eyes are turned towards the shining stars on the stage, but at Connected Enterprise, Constellation Research’s annual conference, the lines are blurred. This weekend long conference is an intimate innovation event for senior business leaders who not only have an interest in disruptive technology – they’re putting it to work within their businesses.

Keynotes and sessions centered around the Constellation business themes:

• Future of work
• Next generation customer experience
• Data to decisions (big data and analytics)
• Matrix commerce
• The new C-suite and consumerization of IT

The keynotes and panels ran from the high energy of Endeavor Global’s Linda Rottenberg to the explosive quirkiness of IDEO’s Tom Kelley. Private equity investor, Love Goel set forth a digital vision for emerging and established companies.The Gabriel Institute’s Dr Janice Presser challenged business leaders to understand the nature of teaming and its link to high performance, sharing frameworks and practical examples of her Teamability process in action.

Anne Lise Kjaer provided a glimpse into the near future through the Kjaer Global trend atlas – calling out a new vision of the 4 Ps of marketing – people, planet, pleasure and profit. SAP’s Vishal Sikka revealed the human creativity behind the global company’s technology success. And R “Ray” Wang fired some hard questions at Microsoft’s Mike Ehrenberg provoking a great fireside discussion.

Box.com’s Aaron Levie sparked some controversy with his comments about the ugliness of enterprise software and Adam Pisoni from Microsoft’s newly acquired Yammer suggested that the enterprise was ripe for disruption.

Interspersed across the jam packed weekend were one-on-one discussions between attendees and Constellation’s team of analysts. This allowed for focused discussion around particular business challenges – with a great deal of passion and insight often exploding from one table or another and rolling, contagiously across the room.

Live Quarks – short case studies from FanAppz and Metaio’s Trak Lord - kept the audience engaged and interacting not just with ideas but with live demonstrations of technology “in the wild”.

But it wasn’t all work and ideas. There were social events like golf, cooking and a spot of geo-caching designed to take the conference in a different direction – deeper, more personal, interactive.

The panel sessions provided case studies and deep dives into emerging technology and business impact. Talking with GetSatisfaction’s Jeff Nolan, Informatica’s Dennis Moore and Badgeville’s Kevin Akeroyd, we touched on the changing shape of customer experience and the power of big data to transform marketing and our customer relationships.

Fellow Aussie, Ben Haines, CIO with Pabst Brewing joined Leerom Segal from Klick Health, Ben Doyle from Enterasys and Lawrence Housel from Industrial Mold and Machine to discuss the changing nature of the C-suite and the impact of the consumerization of IT. Already many businesses are seeing clear value from this global trend – with panelists able to free up resources to deliver more strategic capability across their companies.

Shellie Molina from First Solar, Richie Etwaru from UBS and Meagen Eisenberg from DocuSign explained how their organizations were transforming business process through technology – linking demand and supply chains with matrix commerce strategies. It’s still early days for many companies, but these disruptive leaders were providing hard facts and figures to back their initiatives and drive further innovation.

A culmination of the event was the announcement of the 2012 SuperNova Award winners. Drawn from literally hundreds of entries entered into the business themed categories, a wide swathe of businesses competed to showcase their use of disruptive technology in a business context. The winners were:

• Consumerization of IT and the New C-Suite – Cari Cook, Delta Delta Delta
• Data to Decisions – Sheve Handl, ARI
• Matrix Commerce – Meagen Eisenberg, DocuSign
• Technology Optimization and Innovation – Leerom Segal, Klick Health
• Future of Work – Miguel Lozano, Shift CEMEX AND Chris Salles, Guitar Center
• Next Generation Customer Experience – Jason Williams, Ipswitch AND Lynn Hemans, Taco Bell

The tight focus on topics and the restricted audience created a pressure cooker of ideas and innovation in a very short time. Those in the audience could easily have been featured on stage – and this made the non-conference program particularly valuable. Constellation’s Connected Enterprise 2013 promises more of the same – and will be a must-attend event for disruptive business leaders everywhere.

The Shift from Mobile First to Mobile Only

Every year the mobile marketing industry boldly announces that THIS will be the “year of mobile”.

In 2005, Sony Ericsson, O2 and Samsung added new features and capabilities to their mobile handsets, delivering 2Mb cameras and GPS to blur the lines between the personal digital assistant and the cellular phone. It was the year that BlackBerry conquered the world and the Apple iPhone was still two years away from it’s game changing launch.

Mobile Device Saturation Outflanks Marketers

Over the last seven years much has changed. But perhaps the most astounding change is the near saturation levels of mobile phone usage – not just in the US, Australia or Europe, but globally. The World Bank reported in July 2012, that mobile phone access now reaches 75% of the planet’s population. And Google Trends reveals an unprecedented surge in mobile marketing interest.

And yet the question remains – how ready are enterprises for the demands of a mobile-ready world?

Marketers have been slow to adapt – first to the web and then to the mobile. Consumers (ie 75% of the global population), however, have not, embracing every new wave of mobile innovation with open palms. The World Bank report suggests that rather than petering out, the "mobile revolution is right at the start of its growth curve”.

Digital Disruption: Lessons from Asia Pacific’s Digital Trajectory

Asia Pacific is not just an economic juggernaut – it is also a petri dish showcasing the consumer behaviour and business impacts that are being wrought by the shift to digital. And while many enterprises have begun to respond with a “mobile first” strategy – designing customer experiences around the mobile device, our trend report on digital disruption suggests that this may not be enough. For many consumers, the future of digital may not involve a desktop computer at all. Mobile first may not be enough – it’s time to consider what it means to have a web experience that is mobile only.

For marketing leaders, there are five key lessons that can be drawn from Asia Pacific and applied to any market:

1. The Internet experience is mobile with a social heart.
2. Consumer adoption is disrupting patterns of media consumption and transforming the buyer’s journey.
3. Digital adoption will drive marketers’ thirst for mobile solutions.
4. Marketers will turn to marketing automation to scale execution.
5. The shift to digital requires a re-casting of the marketing funnel.

Download a copy of the report to learn how mobile and social adoption will change your market strategy.

Who Really Uses Facebook?

When you think of Facebook, the scale can be confronting:

• 1 billion members
• 45% of the North American population
• 42% of Oceania
• 35% of South America
• 270 million members in Asia

But who really uses Facebook? What do they look like? How would you characterize them?

The clever folks from Soap Creative have done us all a service by providing this neat snapshot of the 36 Faces of Facebook. See which one you are. And see if you can see your grandmother too.

36 Faces of Facebook Fans. The Good the Bad & the Ugly from Soap Creative

Re-invent Your Organisation

Almost every day we are reminded of the constant onslaught of change. Our customers are outflanking our businesses – challenging us to be more connected, transparent in our dealings and impact not only shareholder value but the world at large. These expectations have permeated our employee cultures, partner ecosystems and business networks. Taken together, they represent a complex problem that many organisations are unable to address.

What we need is to re-invent the organisation. And to do this, we need creative innovation.

The Creative Innovation Asia Pacific conference runs from 28 to 30 November in Melbourne, Australia. It brings together over 40 innovators, thinkers and business leaders who will present strategies, stories and insights to help you address “wicked problems”. Take a look at the full program here.

When you register for the event – use the code wicked to receive a 10% discount. It may be the best investment you make in your business’ future.