It’s only my second time at this conference and I must say I was really impressed by how it improved in a year. I’ll do a summary in a next article when I wrap things up about thess 10 days in the Philippines, but I need to stress from the get go that you’ve got a world-class event here. Better than conferences I attend in more traditional cities like Singapore for instance.

My task on that day was to participate in a panel about how brands can become social. I was sided with George Foo, the Founder and CEO of iHub media, the Facebook Official Sales Partner for South East Asia, South Korea, Japan & Taiwan and Frederic Levy, #3 of Netbooster Asia, a subsidiary of the French digital agency, headquartered here in Manila. Good mix: a platform, an agency and a business consultant.

In a society where women have such an importance what a relief to see one moderating the panel: Crisela Magpayo-Cervantes, the head of ABS-CBN Interactive, the biggest multi-media conglomerate and TV broadcaster in the Philippines.

Whew. Lots of great minds around me. Let’s take a notepad and my favorite Mont-Blanc ballpoint pen which never leaves my side.

The panel took cues on what Jeremiah Owyang, Maria Ressa and other speakers presented before us and built upon it, in a slightly more interactive way (hey, we’re talking social, right?), the public being able to ask questions and get varied answers from three cool guys.

Interactive is not social

Is social good for all brands? That was the first question.

My starting point, which is kind of becoming a motto now, is that interactive is not social. These are two different approaches. In interactive, there’s a people to machine and machine to people interaction, while social is a people to people platform -I sometimes call that C2C in the pure business sense.

The dynamics are different. I think it is key to understand this, especially with many agencies in the audience. Campaigns and discussions are linked, one can empower the second, but while campaigns tend to limit themselves in time, people go on with their lives and have on-going conversations -including those about products and companies.

It’s no different here in the Philippines than elsewhere.

The Philippines social numbers

With the staggering 79% YOY growth, reaching the 17m mark, the Philippines now stands as the 7th biggest Facebook market in the world in terms of active users. Up to last September, Friendster was still the top social networking platform here and seems to be going down the drain everywhere else in South East Asia too -it’s former last stronghold.

Extrapolating on the recent ComScore numbers, Twitter is reaching 2m users here, the 6th biggest Twitter market worldwide with a reach of almost 15%. Not bad. Not bad at all -and again, what a striking difference from the time I was living here when Plurk was leading.

Interestingly enough, while mobile data is still limited in the country, AdMob ranks it 10th for mobile usage [pdf], based on ad requests. Add to the mix that it is the texting capital of the world -I’d say over 1.5bn SMS with a subscriber base of slighlty over 50m- and you’ve got a pretty interesting picture: social networking + mobile = traction.

Now, the most important numbers, in terms of social strategy, are still lacking in the Philippines: What are people exactly doing online.
How long, where, when, how? Which demographics is where? What are they doing? Social games like Farmville -hint, they tend to drive a big female demographic? Are they on Tumblr? Are they active during the week and not the weekend? One needs to survey the market with all those questions. The absence of these more ingrained numbers limit the creation of valid strategies for brands here.

I’m sure that, by this time next year, those will have appeared on the market, though. It’s an absolute certainty. Jeremiah hit the nail multiple times.

Research, Strategy, Preparation

Coming back to brand strategy, going social is first about knowing where your customers and prospects are & what they do. It’s fashionable to open Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, but it is often done without doing research, without preparation. This is step two after intent. Research, strategy and preparation.

To quote myself: “there’s no such thing as a Facebook strategy, only business strategies”

The lack of deep demographics and online behaviors -the point I just made above- is limiting the research. But Filipinos brands haven’t waited, obviously.

In all cases, lack of strategy creates more problem than it solves. A very simple example: my airline of choice, Emirates. I don’t have any insider information on their strategy -or lack thereof- but opening a Twitter account then abrubtely stopping it (last tweet was on Jan 6th) shows a lack of long term planning.
On the other hand, look at Air France, the airline I used to fly the most when I was a resident in Tokyo, which offers great customer support through its social tools. When, as a customer, I was reacting on Twitter to the fact that my miles card didn’t get accepted in one Singapore hotel, they went as far as sending me an email within 24 hours, explaining them the differences in hotel miles rewards across continents. They couldn’t send me a direct message on Twitter -one needs to follow an account to get those direct engagement-, so they went and looked my email up in their database. Good stuff!
Nice for Emirates that I only have good things to say about them. Imagine the contrary. No one would have reacted. This is how stories like the Montrin Moms against a brand go in overdrive.

Negative comments are usually an overblown matter. I estimate they don’t surpass 20% of the comments -or reviews of a product. They act as validation for the positive ones -is there such a company or product that really gets 100% of satisfaction rates? Dream on-.
More importantly, and this is a motto of mine, by humanizing your brand, since going social is a people to people business, forgiveness is higher.

We, humans, do forgive others for their mistakes -unless too grave or repeated. I don’t want to forgive a machine or a brand. I don’t care. But I can forgive a humanized brand. Negativity is soothed by this process -unless you really have a crappy product, that is.

Training

Preparation does also mean not giving these social tools to the new hire, just because he’s young and Facebook is a “teen thing” or whatever. First, it’s not a “teen thing”. Second, it leads to the Nestle brandjacking debacle, where the employee, while maybe not a new hire, had no clue about crisis management. You don’t say to people to shut up. Imagine Nestle telling you to shut up. This is not communication on a professional level. Lack of training which led to a backlash against Nestle that got the world headlines.

Social media is a serious matter. It’s a job. With skills, both soft -empathy, sensibility- and hard -crisis handling being one. It requires both carefully choosing the pool of talent that will represent you online, but also training them on a on-going basis, while offering support (the Nestle Facebook page employee could have gone and ask what to do about it -he might have, again, I don’t have the specifics).

That, with the previous point, answers one of the question Crisela asked us: how to minimize the risks of social media.

Fred made an essential point there: life comes with risks. I’d add: deal with it. But I’ll advise: prepare yourself (with the risk of repeating myself).

This also applies in the choice of community managers, probably one of the most sought-after profile companies will get for in the coming years. Chose carefully. Pick a good listener. Think diplomacy.

Social Media doesn’t scale

Social media doesn’t scale. Repeat that in your head. Do that again, repeat it. Churn on it. You will never be able to follow the amount of conversations -including criticisms that need attention- especially with the high growth rate of social platforms adoption. You need tools to monitor, prioritize and group. Social CRM, in analysts’ talk.

Whether you’re a small company or a big corporation, this is tantamount. This requires investment. People’s investment. Money investment. You cannot escape this.

This would require a full analysis by itself. It was a 45 minutes panel -and I tried not to keep talking at the expense of my two great co-panelists-, I only touched the surface.

I however quickly mentioned the Apple case. Besides an App Store Facebook page, the Cupertino company seems absent on the social networking platform. Really?
Do you really think Apple is not listening the online chatter? Do you really believe Apple reacted to the recent antenna-gate issue because some big newspapers started talking about it. Apple listens. You can listen without being present. That’s your choice. Not always a wise one, but in case of Apple, they addressed the mounting complaints with a official press event. They were listening.

Being social is about being a good listener first. Not about babble skills.

Feedback loop

Listening with the appropriate social tools also allows a brand to measure the success or failure of a campaign. And it’s immediate. The campaign can be refocused -let’s say on the part that click with people, abandoning what doesn’t resonate. Quickly.

Use the feedback loop to full effect.

Listen, measure, track, rinse. And restart.

Use what people are telling you to get better, to evolve. Whether it is during a campaign or not.

Interactive can become social

Ken Mandel, head of Yahoo! South East Asia, said it best during his keynote: “paid media priming the viral pump”. Yes, an interactive campaign can generate conversations -and great ones. This is why I talked about interactive and social in terms two different approaches: they are still part still of an ecosystem. This was a main point in my keynote on day two, I’ll write about it on a subsequent post.

Going Agency or not?

This question comes a lot when I talk to clients. Coca-Cola is using an agency to run its Twitter, so it’s not something only small companies do because they don’t have the right staffing. The advantage, as my presentation on the corporate impact of social pointed out, is the professionalism. The disadvantage is the disconnect.

An agency, when it comes to listening and engaging in conversations, is not as passionate as you. It’s, at least, difficult that it will reach the level of knowledge you have for the brand that you do. Moreso the passion that you do have as you can imagine. Agencies are still, for the most part, in a broadcast culture, not in this C2C world I’ve mentioned. Beware. Only a handful of agencies understand this.

A very small amount compared to the massive presence of “social media experts” -you can replace that last word with gurus, rockstars, etc.- and to phony agencies -adding a social page to an existing agency website is easy, even famous ones do.
Be sure you get an agency that knows what it’s talking about. It should have done its homework. It should have deployed -it’s so easy to fake the appearance of seriousness and expertise.
Ask for credentials. Be social: ask around you. Why not create a Filipino website with reviews of agencies, that’s surely a good opportunity for someone!

I’m sure I’m missing lots of what has been said during these intense 45 minutes. I hope I gave you a good overview though.

More to come about this IMMAP experience in the days to come.

IMMAP coverage:
Paid Media Priming The Viral Pump
Maria Ressa And Your Heroes
Going Social With Your Brand
The Corporate Culture Of Social
Flickr photos

Like last time in the Philippines, this is a new presentation. I like the audience here, they help me reshape my thoughts with their feedback. I need to make some adjustments to its dynamic, but the core is there.

I took the audience for a tour at my experience in management issues that arise with the integration of social technologies into corporations.

Organizational Culture Shift

The new interaction between the brand, the employees -the internal assets-, the existing base of customers -the external assets- & the potential customers, seen a as rings in expansion -rings of trust expansion-, is shaking the organizational roots of companies.

I’ve seen it happening in front of my eyes: power struggles between departments, executives being wary of employees’ empowerment, absence of strategy -from target definition to clear objectives- in the hastiness to jump on the social bandwagon, lack of expertise leading to social fallouts.

Clear strategic objectives and being advocates of internal change to succeed are factors maximizing the opportunities -and monetization- of social media.

From Anarchy to Participative Democracy

Most of the organizations I’m consulting with are still at a pre-socialization stage, where testing out means authenticity flies high, but where the experience for the customer can suffer a lot, not mentioning the absence of readability for executives steering the company’s strategy. I called that -bluntly- Anarchy.

The Protectorate -a UN Mandate of sorts- solution, to keep my political system analogy, by outsourcing social media handling to agencies is worth a look but the disconnect between the reality of a company and the message of an external body is often clear and hard to consolidate.

The Central Planning route offers constitency but doesn’t really take the various needs of various departments, social technologies being very different if used for customer support, talent scout or direct sales for instance.

Democracy is a model that remains costly, but certainly the one that offers an excellent balance without the need of total overhaul of the organization. Participative democracy, like the one I enjoy as a Swiss citizen, requires such a DNA reprogramming that I don’t think it will be achieved by most. Only newly-created companies built on that baseline -think Zappos- or small enterprises organizations can currently hope to get to that stage.

You know, Switzerland is still the only country in the world with a wide direct voting system. Hard to replicate indeed.

Evolution of Trust and Control

I also propose that trust and control can be correlated in their evolution. The term ‘brand’ still evokes a culture of ownership, thus a trust more limited than if relayed by -less controllable- employees and customers, who might not be controllable but who can increase loyalty -trust equity- towards prospects.

From the inner circle to the outer ever-expanding ones. In fluid dynamics talk, a ripple.

A ripple towards a bigger customer base. More sales. More revenues.

Interactive is Not Social

The creed of all this? Use the fast feedback loop that social media brings into the equation. Monetization of the opportunities of social marketing comes at this realization.

And with people being the field of that expansion, C2C -even for B2B companies- is playing a key element of this foundation.

C2C. Consumer to consumer. People to people. Human to human. Interactive is not social, be warned.

Digital Brand Health

Before my talk, Dr. Donald Patrick Lim, ex-Yehey recently hired by MRM, shared a very interesting take on social capital. Using a financial output comparison, he proposed a new Digital Brand Health framework.

Finance wording:

Digital wording:

He assesses that by looking into components of online brand presence, one can derive the total health of the brand. This baseline become the pulse used for diagnostics and corrective measures.

Smart. I’ll comment the framework in another post. Hope Donald puts his presentation online for you to see, it’s worth it.

Socialgraphics

Jeremiah Owyang, whom I brought in my bags for his first visit here, ran his famous workshop of developing a social strategy. I’m sure he’s going to post this new presentation on his Slideshare soon, so let it just be said that he accompanied us on a fascinating journey from socialgraphics -the demographics and social technologies usage of your target- to ROI calculation case studies.

This presentation is the best I’ve heard from him yet. He’s stepping up his game every time. Impressive stuff. He has also mastered his on-stage persona. Call me lucky for having him as a friend.

Negativity is overblown

During the Q&A, Jack Madrid, GM Yahoo! Philippines whom I finally met in person after all this time conversing online, had a very sharp question on dealing with negativity.
I support the view that negative mentions are overblown in the eyes of many, meaning that they’re not as widespread as one would want to believe. They also allow for benchmarking. I will never believe that any product has no flaws. Negative reviews help me value the positive comments.

Now, product is the new marketing. Companies have thus to undertake self-inquisition journey to evaluates their offering -and themselves-, then only choose the right providers & consultants and train their staff appropriately.

By humanizing, brands also grab the added benefit of getting a more forgiving audience. Humans do forgive humans. Humans do mistakes. Brands are faceless.

In that regard, the Nestle debacle is proof, in my eyes, of poor foresight from the Swiss-based corporation. Crisis management know-how & processes are crucial on the real-time web.

Interestingly enough, I didn’t hear any of the attendees telling us how the loss of ownership bothered them during that Q&A. I usually get that a lot from executives. Didn’t they dare to?

The event, catered to C-level corporate people and marketing executives, was organized by IMMAP & Fiera de Manila at the exclusive Tower Club in Makati. Thanks to Leah, Nix, Norelyn and team for a fantastic event. I was honored to be sided with such great analysts like Jeremiah and Donald.

Note that Jeremiah will keynote tomorrow’s 4th IMMAP Summit (9.15am PHT), followed by the fascinating Maria Ressa, whom we had the chance to meet at ABS-CBN Studio 6 earlier this afternoon in Quezon City.
I’ll participate on a panel, ‘Going Social with your Brand’ moderated by Crisela Cervantes, head of ABS-CBN Interactive, at 4pm PHT. At 5.30pm, I will join Jeremiah on a live webcast hosted by the excellent TJ Manotoc.

My keynote on Social Listening & Earned Media is scheduled on Friday around 2pm.

IMMAP coverage:
Paid Media Priming The Viral Pump
Maria Ressa And Your Heroes
Going Social With Your Brand
The Corporate Culture Of Social
Flickr photos