It is the 1 year anniversary of Community Driven Marketing*. That makes it a good time to make sure that I am not “believing my own BS” and look at the development/events of 2009 in the world of marketing and social media while reviewing the assumptions of CDM.
As usual, in an annual report, there’s good news and bad news.
First, the good news.
Focusing on your Raving Fans (the core of CDM) has been widely validated in theory and, increasingly, in practice.
On the theory side:
- Forrester suggested in their report on the social web that we: focus more on finding your fans, since they and their friends and friends of friends will be your most important asset in this new world.
- HBS’ Rosabeth Moss Kanter has advocated increasing contact and communication with your customers in a recession as your best way to grow and two marketing professors wrote in the WSJ that “fans know best.”
- Seth Godin reminds us that we should think, “First, ten,” Guy Kawasaki endorsed the CDM whitepaper, and Mitch Joel emphasizes that we need to ‘start a movement,’ one that will ignite the passions of our members.
- Plus, there’s a healthy and lively debate going on about the value of influencers vs. fans (one that Guy Kawasaki called a ‘must read’) and the ROI of each approach.
As a result, there’s growing recognition that the game is no longer about “reach” in its traditional sense.
Which is good because, in my opinion, it’s not.
What’s more, on the practice side (more importantly):
- We are starting to see some efforts to quantify the value of a Raving Fan (and yes, I do think we’ll see them on balance sheets soon.)
And MOST Importantly,
- We’ve seen actual/real/tracked ROI generated on both the B2C side (an organic cosmetics company) and the B2B side (the partner channel of an enterprise software company.) [Dislosure: clients]
Next, the bad news.
Old habits die hard.
There are three stages to CDM (PDF here).
Identification is easy.
Activation is fun and sexy.
Cultivation, however, is what allows you to “cross the chasm” from a fan (or even a ‘Raving Fan") to a true evangelist who is willing to go out and spread the word for you (as these fans were, for example.)
However, Cultivation, is the hard part. It’s where you have to roll up your sleeves, shake hands, and kiss babies. It’s a lot of sweat and tears.
Which is why it’s easy to wish it away. To ask for Activation without earning it.
This recent story from WOM-leader Andy Sernovitz is but one of many that I’ve seen where organizations want to jump from “Identify” to “Activate” without going through good ol’ Cultivation-ville.
I just don’t think it will work or pay off. It’s the difference, as Chris Brogan says, between “audience and community.”
What you still see, a lot, is companies focused on the short-term results and not on the long-term relationship (see #6 here).
Consequently, there will be those who dismiss the value of “community building” because it doesn’t pay off.
They are right. It doesn’t, because the paradigm is fakakta.
And because they don’t think that “community” pays off, they don’t buy full throttle into the 2 core ideas of what makes marketing (definition: creating stories that people can tell themselves about why they want to buy from you) successful in 2009.
- Be Remarkable (the Purple Cow mantra) at every customer touchpoint
- Creating stories that are “Made To Stick”
So, they talk about “campaigns” instead of “relationships” and don’t heed John Moore’s sage advice “Bake it or Make it. (Just Don’t Fake it.)”
So, where does this take us for 2010?
In his fantastic new book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation
He instructs us that we first need to contemplate “divergent thinking” before falling back on the more familiar “convergent thinking.” (Here’s Tim’s TED talk.)
What I think we’ll see in 2010 are two types of marketing organizations.
The first will be those that refuse to diverge in their thinking about marketing. They will continue to treat the advent of social media as just another channel, instead of the massive revolutionary force that it is (as Adriana Lukas and I discussed: “It’s like the industrial revolution, only bigger.”)
The second, however, will be those that begin to diverge in their thinking to explore new ways in how to market in a billion channel universe. They may realize that marketing is getting back to its roots.
In 2010, I think marketing will center on Raving Fans and CDM-like concepts, but the processes around it will be messy for a while as we all experiment with what it will look like in terms of execution.
Lisa Bradner at Forrester calls it Adaptive Brand Management. I call it Agile Marketing Development.
Either way, it is as Paul Gillin writes: “Brand marketing is due for a makeover.”
Regardless, you are starting to see it take shape as this article in AdWeek shares some orgs that are considering/abolishing the role of the brand manager.
You’ll also start to see some companies that build their marketing around rapid response, like JackBe did (disclosure: client). This type of mentality was one reason why they were a Groundswell award finalist.
The convergence/divergence choice of 2010 is a marketing Darwinian moment.
Some marketers will adapt and thrive. Others simply will not.
Note of Thanks
*A big shout-out to Howard Greenstein for capturing the moment of Community Driven Marketing’s public launch at Jeff Pulver’s social media jungle event.