Change is always happening. It’s a constant, it’s not fixed. Enterprise transformation comes about through disciplined focus, iterative change and daily optimization. I happen to love the famous Facebook quote, “Done is better than perfect.” You’ll find that quote in Facebook’s offices and it’s often included in the marketing material they send clients. There’s a certain beauty in something being done, even though you know there are ways to improve upon it.

Enterprise transformation is more of a cultural shift than it is a deliverable. It’s something you feel first and then see, later. It’s an inside-out approach that takes patience, but when things start to click, it’s amazing how quickly you can move.

The challenge of course with an inside-out approach is that you’re often critiqued on the things you can see and your critiqued in the moment, not on the whole body of work. For example, we recently launched a program called Hack The Kitchen. As we thought about the future answers to the age-old question of “what’s for dinner” we knew we needed to look beyond our walls and familiar boundaries. Recognizing that reality and choosing to do something about it took courage, speed and a cultural buy-in.

The hack isn’t a stunt or a promotion; it’s a fundamental shift in the way we’re thinking about connecting with consumers. Look at the fine details; we’re not even asking/mandating companies use our brands or products in their recommendation. Asking the developer community to do that, seemed limiting. This is exciting for me and our team. Think about it, how many CPGs even have their own API? That’s usually something expected of tech companies, not of CPG companies. This is our first major foray into partnering directly with developers, exposing our IP, and inviting people to mashup that IP. It’s not exactly what you might expect from The Campbell Soup company. I think that’s one of the things I love so much about this initiative; it’s not what you’d expect.

The feedback from the development community, both praise and critique, has been helpful. It’s helpful, because this is iterative. Unfortunately, though we see it as iterative and part of a journey, I also know that we’re being judged and evaluated in the moment. For example, one of the most consistent pieces of feedback has been regarding access to the API. Specifically, people want to know if the API will be open to all developers. You can’t make a decision on such an important question, casually. There’s so many elements to factor in, like how many sets of API keys do we want to manage, are we resourced appropriately to handle requests/questions, is the documentation comprehensive enough and what type of infrastructure do we need in place to ensure access is simple and reliable.

We’re learning a lot as we go. By the end of the Hack The Kitchen initiative, we’ll have a much better handle on the questions we’ve already been considering and the many more questions to come. One of the questions we have for participators in Hack The Kitchen is, did you find the API and supporting documentation useful and simple to leverage? That’s an important question that will guide the future state of the API.

That’s the beauty of a partnership; it’s ongoing and iterative, just like enterprise transformation. Make no mistake, we do see this as partnership. Again look at the fine print, did you notice, one of the options was for us to work with a developer to continue funding their idea to completion? Something we learned before launching this initiative is that some developers just want to create concepts, but don’t want to see them through to completion. But, others, want to stay involved from start to finish. Hack The Kitchen allows both types of developer mindsets to participate, win and thrive.

Perhaps one of my favorite aspects of the program is how we’re handling what some call “spec work.” We’re taking a very open approach to it, specifically, the “entrant retains the ownership rights to its idea unless selected as Champion or Runners-up.” Net-net, unless we pick your idea, you retain ownership of it. Being an former agency person, this was a key add to the program. It just seems fair that you should retain ownership of your idea; after all, the entrant is the one who put in the time and effort.

This is just one brick in the digital foundation we’re building at Campbell Soup. These foundational elements are helping us live up to the vision I have for us: to be the most digitally fit CPG in the world.

I like where we’re headed.

In 2009, I wrote a blog post titled, “The Biggest Lie In Social Media.” The post focused on the industries love affair with talking about social media as something that shouldn’t be measured, because social media isn’t about the numbers. Fast forward 3 years and we can see, it’s indeed all about the numbers. In 2009, it was about the numbers. In 2010, it was about the numbers. In 2011, it was about the numbers. And today, it’s about the numbers.

Though we’ve advanced 3 years, would-be experts are still touting misleading information. I could spend a whole post, just on that, but I want to really focus on one thing: RELATIONSHIPS. Read a social media book or blog, listen to a keynote on social, meet with a social media agency and you’ll find them talking about how social media is about relationships. They’ll say, with social media, you can have a relationship with your consumers and your consumers can have a relationship with you. Sounds good. Heck, it sounds great. This concept has allowed for an entire new set of companies to be created, focusing on social CRM. These companies offer you the ability to create and enhance relationships with your consumer/customers…at scale. Wow. Pretty awesome, eh?

Let’s look at that word…relationship…for just a second. There are good relationships. There are bad relationships. Let’s assume for a second, that when the industry talks about creating a relationship, they mean creating a good relationship between your company and your consumers. For a second, let’s simplify and talk about the relationship between 2 people, because we always here how brands need to become more human to connect with consumers. Ok, so what makes for a good relationship between 2 people? Well, ask Google, and there are no shortage of helpful pieces of advice. I read through several of these links, at length; the one link that made the most sense to me was this one from WikiHow. They offer 7 steps to a healthy relationship.

1. Take responsibility for your own happiness.
   
2. Devote time to each other.
3. Develop better communication.
4. Be realistic.
5. Admit your mistakes.
6. Practice forgiveness.
7. Support each other.

Not bad, right? Seems simple. It’s clear cut. Let’s for a second, go with this model for creating  good relationship and apply it to the relationship between your company and your consumers.

Before you read any further, do you see the problem?

YOUR CUSTOMERS DON’T WANT A RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU

Let me say that again, without the caps: your customer don’t want a relationship with you. Before, you jump right to the bottom of this post and leave me a comment telling me about this one time that X customer did Y with Z company, let me say: yes, there are some verticals, some companies and some customers that do want a good relationship. Yes, there have been cases, situations and examples of this that we can link to and reference. But, those are the exceptions. Let me also say, in many cases, a customer may want a relationship with your company, but they don’t want it thru or on social media.

It is the single biggest lie being purported right now. The idea, that social media is the place where you can have a relationship with your customers. If we go back to our simplified version of relationships  the one between two people…well, social media is being referenced as a key reason for divorce in over 20% of divorce filings. The very assumption that consumers want a relationship…in social media…is the problem. How do we know this? Well, we can look at raw data from research and it’s not pretty.

and

Does that seem like a good relationship? If we again revert to our simplified version of a relationship between 2 people, would you maintain a “relationship” with someone who publicly complains about you and expects to receive financial compensation because they publicly took you task? Of course not. It’s a bad relationship. Oh, and I didn’t cherry pick. There’s a significant amount of research focused on what people want from companies in social media…and it boils down to the same thing.

But, do we really need research when we have the ability to go to twitter and Facebook, to view the comments from consumers to brands. Here’s just one example of how consumers interact with 1 brand in social. This works though if you use the “F” word and any brand name on twitter. When you see commentary like that, is it any wonder, that according to Social Bakers, only 30% of consumers receive a response from a brand on Facebook?

Can you create relationships in social media? Absolutely, it happens all the time. Can those relationships be long lasting? Definitely. Not only does it happen all the time, but I’ve personally been in situations where what a company does in social enhances by relationship with them. But, just because it can happen, doesn’t make it the norm. And unfortunately, as much as companies want to build a relationship with companies, the reality is most consumer don’t want a relationship with you…on social media.

Originally Published March 2012, Before The Database Crash This Summer. Minor content updates were added.
Social media is easy. Really, it is. Send a tweet. Build a Facebook page. Let your website visitors pin your content. It’s very easy. We see companies executing these initiatives every day. But, a collection of social media initiatives, is not social media at scale.

Social media at scale? Yes, social media at scale. A Facebook page is not social media at scale. Getting approval to launch a YouTube channel is not social media at scale. Social media at scale doesn’t come from a hired gun,the Social Media for Dummies book or by creating a social media department. It also doesn’t come from hiring head of social media for your company. Mind you, these aspects help, but they aren’t the answer or the silver bullet so many people are looking for.

Have you ever seen a duck on a pond? They look ever graceful as they “glide” across the water. But, if you could see what the situation looks like under the water, you’d see the utter chaos of feet moving rapidly. Without the chaos, that you don’t see, you wouldn’t appreciate the smooth nature of the duck’s movement on the surface. That’s very akin to a true social business culture. The output of a social business culture, is one that impresses. It wows. It seems effortless. It’s the organizations that have a real social business culture that are driving social media at scale.

This isn’t rhetoric. This isn’t theory. Unlike the results you’d get from Google, after typing in “social media expert,” my advice is grounded in real world experience of actually turning social media from a plaything, into something that scales.

So, with that said, and believe me, I realize how bold that last sentence sounded, let me break down the 4 key elements to making social scale.

1. Define Social: Strip away the word “media” and focus on what “social” means. Social is more than marketing, it’s more than media. But, what it means to each organization, based on your business objectives (yes, business objectives) varies. This seems simple, but it’s incredibly difficult and time consuming. Here’s why it’s important: let’s say, you’re a national retailer, and part of your organization’s DNA, is exceptional service. Well, the question shouldn’t be, do we need to be on twitter, it should be, how will social help us deliver on “exceptional service?” When you ask that question, you end discussing critical elements like how do we enable our customers to ask us questions on their terms? And you might end up with, twitter as the platform, via unique twitter handles for each concierge provider. That’s focus. That’s working across your origination. That’s making social scale.

2. Horizontal Beats Vertical: One of the biggest mistakes in building a business designed to drive social at scale, is the burning desire to build a social media organization. That organization then reports through some other function like marketing, PR, eCommerce, etc. This is akin to ad agency models used circa 2000, where agencies built separate digital agencies to compliment their “traditional” agencies. That model ultimately failed, because, it’s not sustainable, because experiences span channels, because margins couldn’t sustain redundancy and because we shifted to wanting integrated marketing. Coming out of key element #1, hopefully you see that social is more than marketing. If it’s more than marketing, you need social spread out across the organization, in a horizontal fashion, not put on an island and built vertically. An individual can’t scale. A dedicated team can’t scale. But, when social is built horizontally and woven throughout an organization, your “team” scales, because in essence, your social team, could be the entire company.

3. Talent Model: I believe the best people to lead and drive social are those who are marketers, that know digital who love social. Digest that for a second. When you hire real marketers, people who understand elements like connection planning, buyer behavior and margins, you start from a business foundation. And let’s be honest, if your social efforts aren’t driving the business, you probably shouldn’t be investing in social. But, you can’t stop there. It’s not good enough to just be a marketer; you need to know digital. Why? Because, the majority of social business integration is going to involve digital on some level and digital is fast becoming the primary consumption and connection vehicle for consumers. In social, a marketer who doesn’t know digital, is the equivalent of having a 2-legged stool. To be fair, so are digital people who don’t know or appreciate marketing. If you have a marketer that knows digital, you’re close. But, you need the last layer; the love for social. There’s a certain geeky-ness needed to thrive in social and make it scale. The person who loves social, stays on top of the space, they aren’t daunted when an organization puts up roadblocks and they have the passion to see something through to the end. One of the best hires I ever made in social, had a behavioral economics background. That meant, he understood why people do, what they do. He also had a solid background in digital, but loved social. If you start at the opposite end of this model, if you lead with social, then digital, then marketing, you’ll end up with a string of one-off tactics, and one-off tactics, don’t scale.

4. Standardize and Optimize: These are two very important words. You’ll use them often. To make social scale you need to standardize your language, partners, platforms, protocols, measurement approach and many other variables. Why? Because, when someone asks a relatively simple question like, what’s our social brand sentiment, you don’t want to have 4 answers from 4 platforms. Four different answers, leads to debates, which creates doubt, which impedes scale. While standardization is critical, you can’t simply set it and forget it. As your organization, the consumer and the space evolves, you need to continue optimizing those critical foundational elements.

There’s so much more than just the 4 key elements I outlined above. But, that’s why social at scale is tough, and only a few organizations are delivering social at scale.

Social media is a complex thing. There’s no doubt about it. I’ve lead social at several organizations and have seen up close how challenging it can be to make social something that transforms your business. Regardless of the industry you’re in (auto, financial services, CPG, travel, etc.) there has always been one consistent ingredient for driving social success: surprise and delight.

Now, surprise and delight can mean a wide variety of things. There are small things, like watching the fun exchange between Taco Bell and Old Spice. There are also big things like when JetBlue, recently fulfilled a NY Jets Fan’s request to fly on the plane. Yes, I’m serious. In a span of 24 hours JetBlue organizationally aligned to full on a request by a Jets fan’s crazy request.

Here’s the official word from JetBlue, on the situation:

We saw his tweet and it wasn’t hard to schedule the plane to fly him home,” Johnston said. “Now we obviously can’t have our customers dictating their routes all the time, but when we can listen to our customers, react quickly and do something cool, we obviously make the effort to do so.

That’s pretty powerful stuff. It’s the stuff that gets remembered. It goes beyond the cost of the actual cost to make that flight happen. That’s real surprise and delight.

Again…let me preface what comes next, by saying…I know how hard it can be to make even small things happen in social. You’ll hear things like risk mitigation, ROI or scale as reasons to only do the bare minimum.

I’ve been a life-long BMW fan. One of the first accounts I worked on, early in my career, at Fallon, was BMW. From their partnerships with the James Bond to the famous BMW Films initiative, I was blessed to work on some amazing projects with BMW. Post Fallon, I still remained a fan and eventually an owner, when I purchased a 2002 530i and eventually, my current ride a 2007 328i. I bleed “Ultimate Driving Machine.”

A few days I go, tweeted the official BMW USA account, “any interest in trading a 135 for a palette of soup?” I wasn’t expecting a response. But, when BMW replied 3 days later, via twitter, saying “Yep. Now where’s the soup?” I was blown away. Check out the full exchange here:

. @adamkmiec Yep. Now where’s the soup? foursquare.com/bmwusa/checkin…

— BMW USA (@BMWUSA) September 10, 2012

I was blown away for a few reasons.

1. This was completely out of character for BMW
2. They didn’t just respond via twitter…the used a foursquare check-in at Campbell Soup HQ, complete with a photo, to respond. That’s crazy creative and it definitely made things feel “legit.”
3. This was MY “surprise and delight” moment. It was cool to be on the receiving end.

I immediately replied with “Well played. DM address” – I was giddy and shared my surprise and delight experience with friends on Facebook and twitter, in addition to a few media outlets. Why the media outlets? Well, like I said, I work in social…and a moment like this, deserves to be covered so that the team behind it could be given proper credit.

After hearing nothing from BMW for a while I then responded with “I’m partial to Chicken Noodle, but it’s your call for flavor. Thanks.” Still nothing. A day went by. Then another, but still no response.

It’s been a long week, for a lot of reasons. When BMW responded to my first tweet…in the way they did, I was taken to the highest of highs. To have no follow-up…to feel like this was the simply, The Ultimate Tease, was deflating…to say the least.

I know social is tough. I know delivering on surprise and delight is tough. But, you know what’s tougher? Trying to retain a life-long advocate, after you’ve publicly teased them. There aren’t many things BMW does poorly. This, was one of them.

Let this be a valuable lesson to all of you working in social media for companies/clients – don’t promise, what you can’t or won’t deliver. Take a page from JetBlue and if you’re going to promise something, follow thru and make it happen.

The more I view the social media streams of my friends, colleagues and the people on social networksI follow, but haven’t met, the more I’m seeing social becoming a means for broadcasting “ME.” Oh, sure, it’s not just photos of yourself or tweets about yourself or videos with you as the star. But, make no mistake, it’s becoming social ME-dia. It’s becoming more about look at me. Let me break it down:

Instagram: Look at what I’m eating; doesn’t it look tasty?. Look at what I’m seeing; don’t you wish you were seeing it live? Look at what I’m experiencing; you’re missing out.

foursquare: Look where I am; don’t you wish you were here too?

Pinterest: Look at what I want; will you get it for me? Look at my style; aren’t I trendy?

Twitter: Look at how insightful I am about [insert topic]; don’t you share my insight?

Facebook: Look at my major life change [wedding, new home, new car, etc.]; please rejoice and applaud.

I’m not quite sure when this trend started. I don’t know if it’s always been there, but I was blind to it. But, it’s there, staring us in the face. But, here’s the problem. As brands we’re trained to make it all about us. Sure, we wrap it, in a warm velvety blanket called consumer value. Let’s look at this from a traditional brand’s point of view.

Instagram: Look at how great our photo is; won’t you please comment on it?

foursquare: Look at the deal you could get, just by checking in; won’t you tell your friends you’re here?

Pinterest: Look at all the great “things” we sell; don’t you want it?

Twitter: Look at how helpful we are; would you retweet us?

Facebook: Look at how interesting we are, won’t you “like” us?

Have you ever been in a room where two very confident extraverts are having a conversation? It’s funny to watch. You have 2 people who don’t know how to listen…how to make it about the other person. They try to one-up one another…oh really, you just got a new car? That’s great, I got a new house. Oh, you just became VP of something, I just became the youngest partner at XYZ.

Well, that comical experience, of which I admittedly have been a participant of, is strangely similar to the stand-off taking place between many brands and their consumers/customers in social media. There’s plenty of guilt to go around. This isn’t just brands being focused on their own interests. This is also about consumers needing to be less focused on themselves and more focused on actual partnership.

The greatest potential in social comes from unlocking the mutually shared passion and interests between brands and their consumers. Call it what you want…there’s lots of fun buzzwords, like co-creation. This is the gap. This is the gap you have to solve for. But, before you can solve for the gap, you must mind the gap…you must recognize it exists…you must understand why it exists. The reason why it exists will be different for every brand and every consumer in every category. That’s a reality.

But, if we, as consumers and brands, don’t choose to mind the gap, it will widen. If it widens, the potential that exists in social media will never be realized.