Read Craig Underwood’s blog posts about technology.

DEMOCRATS (USED TO) SUCK AT MARKETING. 3 IDEAS THAT DON’T.

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DEMOCRATS (USED TO) SUCK AT MARKETING. 3 IDEAS THAT DON’T.

 Net/ Summary:

 I absolutely LOVE the Harris Walz positioning “Freedom, Opportunity, and The Promise of  America.” It’s tight, brilliant, positive, and even better, in my opinion, than Jon OssofF’s “Jobs, Justice, Healthcare.” The team’s consistent use of the 3-point slogan also relieves years of personal frustration at Democrats’ inability to not suck at marketing.  In 2016, I wrote about this regarding the weak selling of the Affordable Care Act in my article What Obama Can Learn About Marketing from Ross Perot, Cecil Underwood, and Coalition Loyalty Program Marketing.

A few ideas for the Harris-Walz team:

  1. Every time Trump loses his mind in a social media post, press conference, speech, etc., refer to this as “WEIRD RIDICULOUS RANTS.” That could stick.
  2. Positioning the success of the Biden-Harris administration. Whenever Trump goes off on one of this “Biden is the worst president in history” weird, ridiculous rants (see it works), come back with:

“The Biden-Harris administration created more jobs, more new business start-ups, covered more Americans with health insurance, passed more bi-partisan legislation and funded more infrastructure projects than any other first term President in history. Period.”

  1. Create a “NOT GOING BACK FACTS” (NotGoingBackFacts.com) website. mobile site/ app that lets voters (and supporters/ field workers/ down ballot candidates) easily access the facts, charts and sources comparing the impact of both the previous 4 years under Trump vs Biden-Harris and expert forecasts for the next 4 years under Harris-Walz vs Trump-Vance based on his stated policies/ actions/ goals for the major issues important to voters.

Examples could include:

  • Jobs created.
  • People covered by health insurance.
  • Bridges, roads and other infrastructure projects funded.
  • Seniors whose monthly costs for insulin is now $35 vs $400 under Trump.
  • Student loan debts forgiven (both the number of people affected, and the dollar amount of loans forgiven.)
  • Bi-Partisan Bills passed.
  • Fiscal responsibility/ National Debt management.
  • Crime control/ reduction.

The ease and beauty of this is that (a) the data already exists in numerous formats and (b) the website/ mobile app could easily allow the user to look at the impact of the Biden-Harris record and Harris-Walz policies (or pain of Trump’s) on a local basis.

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CHU On Self Leadership – Baby Boomers: Stop Using the C-Word (Can’t)! 

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Summary/ Net: Boomers, please stop believing that you “can’t do” things you never mastered before – or better yet – tried without success in the past.  Use “The 5 T’s” to overcome your lack of confidence: Try, Training, The Right Tools, The Requisite Time, and Trial and Error.

I wrote this for three reasons:

  1. Few things frustrate me more than hearing friends, family members, and colleagues say they “can’t” do something when I know they have the capability to learn how to do it.
  2. I recently realized that over the course of my adult life, I have – on multiple occasions – told myself that I “can’t” (or more correctly, “couldn’t,” as these were in the past) do things I later learned to master. A few examples:
  • I thought I couldn’t learn to use a computer, then use Excel, then use “v-lookup” and “pivot tables.” Now, I have completed advanced Excel courses, can create PowerPoint faster than I can talk, and am learning Python.  Similarly, I went from not knowing how to create a simple video to making videos for my nonprofit, policy/ political, and other clients, learning Adobe Premier Pro to do so.
  • I thought I wasn’t handy; couldn’t be trusted to hang a shelf in our apartment. Today, I know I can do finished carpentry, recently building a cabinet that looks like a speaker with a lift to conceal a 70-inch TV in my living room.  I also made a set of bookcases that match the ones built by my friend and excellent carpenter/ contractor “Mr. Wayne.”
  • Although anyone who knows me today has a hard time believing this, not that long ago I thought I couldn’t ride a “drop bar” road bike. So much so that when I started cycling again about 12 years ago, my first purchase was a “flat bar” road bike.  Now, I ride several thousand miles a year on my beloved PARLEE RZ7 – training for endurance cycling events to raise money for research to find a cure for pediatric brain cancer.
  1. I also realized that – living in the 21st century – there are 5 “T’s” we can all use to overcome this lack of self-confidence in our ability to learn how to do most anything: Try, Training, The Right Tools, The Requisite Time, and Trial and Error.

The “5 T’s”

  1. Try

“You never know what you can do until you try…”

– C.S. Lewis

“Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?”

– Michelle Obama

 

 

 

It’s a trite tautology to say that we fail at 100% of the things we never attempt, but it’s also true.  That said, we have the benefit of living in the 21st century and the “4 T’s” dramatically increase the odds that we can all master new skills and capabilities if we summon the courage to try and take advantage of the resources to help.

  1. Training

“Training is everything.”

– Mark Twain

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.”                                                                                 –  Henry Ford

While “I don’t know how to do X” or “I’ve never been trained how to do Y” prior to 2008 might have been somewhat acceptable excuses for using the C-Word, that all changed in 2005, when YouTube was created.  Today, YouTube has over 90,000 lectures, tutorials, and courses on a wide range of subjects.  Want to learn how to build a finished carpenter-quality bookcase? Check!  Or to play almost any song on any instrument? Check! Adobe Premiere Pro? Check!

I remember first realizing this when my son Myles started his business making custom grip tape for skateboards in 2011 at age 12.  He sat at our family PC in the kitchen and taught himself how to use Photoshop to turn photos into drawings and then separate the images into individual layers to make stencils for spray painting the color images on the grip tape.  I remember asking Myles why he was using YouTube to learn Photoshop when his skateboarding coach’s wife was the lead instructor at New England School of Digital Photography.  His response – “I can do it myself.  And this is faster.”

In addition to YouTube, there are hundreds of online courses available from excellent providers, including Udemy, Kahn Academy, and LinkedIn Learning.  And most major universities are making their classes available to audit online for free.

  1. Tools

“Make sure that you always have the right tools for the job. It’s no use trying to eat a steak with a teaspoon and a straw.” – Anthony T. Hincks

“Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.” – Steve Jobs

Again, living and learning in the 21st century we have so many excellent tools available to help us learn and do new things.  Using Apple device apps like “Clips” which automatically convert voice to text captions on videos or the right “jig” to make sure the holes for shelf clips on a bookcase line up perfectly makes these formerly formidable tasks incredibly easy.

My transition from telling myself I couldn’t be trusted to mount a TV on the wall to hanging French doors and creating matching built in bookcases in my office was forced on me by the Covid-19 labor shortage.  My awesome contractor extraordinaire “Mr. Wayne” was too busy with larger renovation jobs to help me with my “house perfect list” projects, so I decided to figure out how to complete them myself.  I soon realized that I could buy both the materials – and some really cool “man toy” power tools like a power compound MITRE box – for less than paying someone else to do it for me.  And I get the wonderful byproduct of having more cordless power tools than I ever dreamed of.  (A colleague once said to me: “You realize you are a little boy in a grown man’s body!)

  1. Time

“Time isn’t the main thing, it’s the only thing.”                                                                                                        – Miles Davis

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration.  The rest of us just get up and do the work.”                             – Stephen King

 

To learn new things, once you have acquired the requisite training and tools (and training on how to use the tools), you have to put in the time.

Depending on the complexity of the material, skills, or project you are committed to tackling, the requisite time will vary.  As someone who has worked my entire adult life to manage the challenges of ADHD, I often find “getting started” to be one of the greatest hurdles to learning new skills (or completing tasks).  I have found that setting my iPhone timer for 15-20 minutes a very helpful strategy for getting going, saying to myself “Anyone can do this for 20 minutes!” And I often find myself re-setting the 20-minute timer – at times for hours.

Depending on the complexity of your challenge, great strides can be made over a few weeks or months by learning and practicing for as little as ten minutes a day.  I am a great fan of the book Atomic Habits, which praises the compounding power of just doing something one percent more each day. Language learning apps like Babble and brain training tools like Brain HQ are great tools for learning new skills and improving focus, short term processing memory and pattern recognition in bite sized lessons and games that yield significant improvement with little time invested on a daily basis.

Atomic Habits also recommends developing “habit stacking” routines, where you combine new routines with existing ones.  Examples from the fitness world include doing 50 air squats and heel raises while taking your daily shower or completing a few language and brain training exercises from Babble and Brain HQ while on the treadmill or stationary bike.

Other types of intellectual capital can be created by investing in a few hours of training.  Examples include specific software skill hands-on training – a few years ago, I invested in a one day 6-hour advanced Excel course produced by the company ONLC and was amazed at how much I learned (and was able to focus thanks to the extraordinary instructor and course design) and was able to apply immediately after completing the course.  A one-or two-hour cooking class can transfer a ton of skills and knowledge toward mastering new recipes and techniques, and weekend tennis or golf schools can raise your game to the next level.

  1. Trial & Error/ Try Again.

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.  The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”                                                                                                                                                                             – Thomas Edison

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”                                                                                                                                                           – Abert Einstein

The journey of learning new skills will often require a healthy dose of “trial and error.”  I learned the hard way during my “self-apprenticeship” to acquire finish carpentry skills to practice any permanent tasks – e.g. cutting, drilling and especially routing – on scrap wood before trying to rout out the space to countersink hinges on a finished door!  “Measure twice, cut once” is also a helpful mantra.

While writing this article, I thought a lot about why I succumbed to the negative self-talk of the “C-Word” for so many years.  One of the root causes of this destructive thinking appeared to be pervious failures at specific tasks, which given my career success as both an entrepreneur and consultant, is puzzling.  Although consultants and entrepreneurs/ business leaders have very different skills and attitudes on many levels, one phase both professions abhor is “We tried that already, and it didn’t work,” a phrase often used by “experienced” clients, managers, and traditional investors to kill innovative ideas, approaches, and products.

APPLE NEWTON

Imagine if Thomas Edison had held that point of view – I might be writing this article by the light of a whale oil lamp! Edison “failed” more than 1,000 times before producing a working light bulb, but is remembered for his beautiful quote “I have not failed 10,000 times–I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways it will not work.”

Or if Apple had concluded that a personal assistant/ communication device could not be developed and commercially successful based on the failed Newton – a brick size device launched in 1993.

While I am a huge fan of the trial-and-error method and learning from one’s mistakes, I also keep in mind Einstein’s definition of insanity as “Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.”  To stop using the dreaded “C-Word” and happily live on a vertical learning curve, it’s important to differentiate between learning new skills or creating new products and services that require constant repetition with many errors along the way – such as learning to play Hendrix’ Little Wing on guitar – with those that require continuous innovation and improvement – like the “Newton to iPhone” example above.  One of the greatest lessons I learned from my late father was the power of “Creative Persistence,” and I have often said that creative persistence is the key to all entrepreneurial success.  (For more on this, see my article “A Tribute To the Original Collaboration Evangelist.”)

Will Koehrsen’s excellent article “The Mundanity of Excellence: Talent Does Not Determine Success and Why That Terrifies People,” echoes many of these points in his excellent summary of “The Mundanity of Excellence” by Daniel Chambliss and also draws on insights from the books Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (Ericsson); Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance (Hutchinson); Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Duckworth); Principles (Dalio) and The Power of Habit (Duhigg). Koehersen’s summary of these great works:

“When we objectively study excellence, we discover:

  1. Excellence requires doing small, ordinary things consistently right.
  2. Innate talent is not responsible for high achievement.
  3. Significant improvement results from qualitative changes in how you practice skills, not from doing more of the same.

I hope this challenge to those of my – and all – generations to stop using the “C-Word” by leveraging the “5 T’s” is of value to you.  I would appreciate both your feedback on this article and any strategies you have used to learn and master new things.

 

CHU

A Collaboration Campaign – 5 Observations From 8 Days On The Front Lines In Georgia

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Summary: We drove over 3,000 miles last week from Boston to Atlanta, Jonesboro, Ellenwood, McDonough, Riverdale, Montgomery, Griffin, Lagrange, Oxford and Covington, Georgia and back home.  We travelled south to work door-to-door canvassing to help the Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff win their runoff races to represent Georgia in the US Senate.  The bulk of our time was invested in “curing” rejected ballots – mail-in ballots that had been rejected because the voter didn’t include the requisite ID or the Board of Elections reviewer decided that their signature did not match the one on file.

We realized that voter suppression was not only real, but much more insidious and painful than imagined.  Warnock and Ossoff won because their campaigns and the efforts of the Georgia Democratic Party were far superior to those of the Republicans, and because Stacey Abrams and her 2018 gubernatorial campaign manager Lauren Groh-Wargo provided the strategy and the intellectual, implementational and inspirational leadership to win the Georgia races and  flip the US Senate.  We also experienced the highs and lows of Wednesday, January 6th.  We woke to see data convincing us that both Warnock and Ossoff would win, were moved and inspired by the words and Memorial of Dr. King next to the  Ebenezer Baptist Church and then watched the horrific events unfold at our Nations Capitol throughout the afternoon and evening. As heartbreaking as those images and acts were, we remain optimistic about our future given both the impact of the leadership and work we saw in Georgia and the words of Dr. King who reminds us that “the moral arc of the universe bends slowly, but it bends in the direction of justice.”

 “We came to Georgia to do GOTV work, we were blessed to have the opportunity to do civil rights work.”

The 5 Observations from 8 Days on the Front Lines in Georgia

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Note to Starbucks CEO: Don’t use technology (or loyalty programs) to demotivate your employees

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Summary: While the Starbucks App is cool and makes buying coffee and food quick and easy without dealing with cash, credit or debit cards, the company appears to have developed the app without fully considering the impact on their employees. The app doesn’t offer users the option to tip baristas when making a purchase.  Other mobile payment apps like LevelUp and even taxi cab credit card machines make tipping quick and easy for users.  The Starbucks Rewards program also concerns us as it rewards customers for paying for one item at a time, even when purchasing multiple items, which could lead to increased employee and customer frustration.

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Collaboration Big Citizenship for Skateboarding in Brookline

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Net: Realizing that our son had no dedicated places to skateboard in our town of Brookline, Massachusetts, my wife Patty organized a group of young skate boarders and parents, teachers, nonprofit and other leaders to advocate for the creation of safe places to skate in our community.  Although we have a lot of work to do and have only taken the first few steps in what will undoubtedly be a long journey, the collaborative efforts of our small but committed group, the over 100 friends who supported us online and the 60 young skaters and their parents who attended our presentation to the town’s Parks and Recreation Commission have successfully launched our campaign.

FBS LOGO VS 2 BLUE AND YELLOW

In his recently published book, my friend Alan Khazei – the social entrepreneur , Co-Founder of City Year and former candidate for the US Senate – makes the case for creating change through the collaborative efforts of public private partnerships, where citizen activists, business leaders and government agencies work together to address challenges and create new opportunities.  He refers to this model as Big Citizenship, advocating that the old models of relying too heavily on either big government or private industry are tired, ineffective and not appropriate for creating change in the 21st Century.

Big Citizenship CoverAlthough the concept of Big Citizenship is not intuitive to all, you clearly know it when you see it in action.  I had such an experience recently.  Realizing that our son had no place to skateboard in our town of Brookline, Massachusetts, my wife Patty organized a group of young skate boarders and  parents, teachers, nonprofit and other leaders to advocate for the creation of safe places to skate in our community.  Alan would see this as a clear example of the power of big citizenship, and I would agree. But I also see it as a compelling example of collaboration and, as we are beginning to increase our social and traditional media outreach, a great case study in how the internet can support and turbo-charge the efforts of a small but committed group.

None of this would have been possible without both Patty’s initiative and the phenomenal and strategic efforts of our friend Armin Bachman.  Armin is truly a Big Citizen.  (Last year I encouraged Alan to promote his book by starting a Big Citizen contest where people could nominate others for recognition; I had Armin in mind as a leading candidate.)  Armin is an entrepreneur; he is co-owner of Orchard Skateshop, by far the best skateboarding store in the Boston area.  He is a social entrepreneur, having founded the nonprofit Extension, to make skating more accessible in the greater Boston area.  Armin and

Armin and Myles the other owners of Orchard are big citizens in their community as well, giving 1% of their revenues to local nonprofits and helping new artists by hosting shows in the gallery above the shop.  He is also one very smart and connected dude, knowing leaders in the skateboarding space across the country and increasingly around the world, and very gifted at finding data related to developing safe places to skateboard.  (Full disclosure: Armin is also Myles skateboarding teacher.)

Other members of the original group included Nicco Berinstein, a Brookline High School 11th grader and avid skater; Eileen Amy, Nicco’s mother and a registered nurse; Michael McKittrick, a Brookline High School teacher and the faculty advisor to the school’s skateboarding club; John Wynne, a Cambridge businessman, skater, and a passionate skateboarding advocate; and our son Myles, an avid skater and the person who helped us see the need for safe places to skate in Brookline.

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Hotels.com uses Web 2.0, great service and rewards to score a Collaboration Evangelist trifecta

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Net: Hotels.com provides great consumer value, excellent web and phone customer service and has one of the most rewarding loyalty programs I have seen.  The company shows how applying the philosophy and applications of Web 2.0, good customer service and a well designed and implemented rewards program can create customer loyalty.  Why book anywhere else?

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Three facts and 6 myths about Web 2.0

The three facts:

  1. Forrester’s 2008 Technographics research found that over 50% of the members of all major age groups are actively engaged with at least one Web 2.0 application, including blogs, user reviews and social networks.

  2. A 2008 McKinsey study of over 1900 large enterprises around the world found that only 28% were applying at least one Web 2.0 technology or tool.
  3. Of those companies surveyed by McKinsey that had applied at least one Web 2.0 tool to their business in 2007 and 2008:
    • 21% were very or extremely satisfied with their investments
    • 22% were very or extremely dissatisfied with their investments

 Yes, more businesses were dissatisfied with their investment in Web 2.0 tools than were satisfied.

The six myths:

  1. My customer (or employee or business partners) base is too old to engage with Web 2.0 and social media tools. This makes a lot of sense for businesses that cater to a younger population, but not for us.
  2. Our business is in a serious industry where privacy is very important. Therefore using Web 2.0 tools would not be appropriate.
  3. Web 2.0 is a fad and it will go away.
  4. Less than 30% of businesses are using Web 2.0 tools; if it doesn’t fade away, the next person in my job can deal with it.
  5. Social media applications do not need to be “launched” either internally for employee applications or externally with customers or partners. You should just put them on the web or your intranet and if they are valuable, people will use them. We tried an experiment and nothing happened, all of the above are correct.
  6. No one has been able to measure the business impact or the ROI of investing in social media technology.

Data and case studies to support 1-6 to follow in future posts.  Let me know your favorite myths. 

Customer service disaster non-recovery; Kimpton’s Hotel Monaco doesn’t get Web 2.0, earns first CHU “Un-recommends”

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Net: Despite the fact that user generated ratings and reviews have been a mainstay of the internet since at least 1999, many large businesses fail to provide an easy way for customers to provide feedback and do not monitor and respond to customer comments on the Web.  I recently experienced this first hand from the Hotel Monaco in Washington, D.C. It is the first experience bad enough to earn a ” CHU Un-recommends.”

In our page Six Web 2.0 Imperatives for All Businesses, we emphasized the following points under Imperative Four: Build, Activate and Support your Communities:

  • If you don’t provide a place on your site for customers to ask questions, it is highly likely that at least some of them will go to a third party site where they will be prime targets for your competitors’ marketing efforts.
  • Whatever you do, make it incredibly easy for employees, business partners and customers to provide feedback. And go the next step by proactively asking for feedback. Then, make sure you authentically respond to their feedback.

A few months ago in the post “A car for a car, a coffee for a coffee, $10 for free porn?” I wrote about several positive experiences where businesses seized the opportunity to turn service failures into brand building recoveries.   This post is from a different perspective.

A few weeks ago my wife and I were planning to attend Rhodes Scholar and Oxford University reunions in Washington, D.C.  I went to Hotels.com to find a hotel room for the weekend.  They had what looked like a great price on the Hotel Monaco, a Kimpton Hotel in a perfect location.  I have stayed at other Kimpton properties and always had good experiences, so I booked the hotel.  [Hotels.com is a great business and will be the subject of a future post.]

I flew to Washington early in the day so I could take my fellow alum and Microsoft uber-lawyer Steve Crown to visit Year Up, the innovative work force development program founded and led by Gerald Chertavian, for lunch.  We had a wonderful tour and Steve had a great session with several students, sharing experience and advice from his years of success and answering all of their questions.   After our visit to Year Up, I went to check in at the Hotel Monaco.  My wife Patty was arriving later in the evening.

A Beautiful Building

The Hotel is in a beautiful historical building that used to be a famous Post Office and appeared to have all of the usual Kimpton features – cool lobby, interesting bar, water bowl for dogs, etc.  I checked in and went to the room.  Although we had reserved a “deluxe queen,” room, it was very, very small.  It felt like there was less than 12 inches of space from the side of the bed to the window or the wall and a small desk was crammed into an alcove.  The room was a fraction of the size of the rooms we have had in other Kimpton properties.  Not exactly the venue nor the ambiance I had envisioned for a romantic weekend in DC without our kids.

 

 

The King Room

No problem, I thought, I’ll call the front desk and get a better room.  All seemed good when the desk staff offered to move me to a “deluxe King” on the “first” floor.  It turns out that the first floor is subterranean, i.e. it’s the basement.  My initial concern was that the room would be noisy, being so close to the street.  The front desk clerk assured me that they were quite quiet, and it turns out that is true.  But as I descended the stairs to the “first floor” I started to notice a bad odor.   Despite my attempts to simultaneously act like a two year old and ignore the smell and try to convince myself that Patty wouldn’t notice, it was clear the first floor smelled like a damp basement with a mildew problem.  Nonetheless, I powered on to the room.  The room was actually nice, with a huge bed, high ceilings, decent bathroom, and more room for the desk.   The architect had done a great job making the half-windows to the sidewalk seemed larger than they were and let in a lot of light.  Best of all, the room was not noisy at all.  I thought I could still smell something but rationalized that the odor was just coming from the hall.  I cranked the AC on high, ran around the corner to get some candles to complete the romantic ambiance I was determined to create, and took off for the Rhodes event.

The event to honor Sir Collin Marshall, who was retiring as the Warden of Rhodes House, was held at the British Embassy and it was wonderful.  By the end of the event, Patty had arrived, checked into the hotel and met me and several of my classmates at a Georgetown restaurant.  The food was great, the company even better and we stayed at the restaurant until almost midnight.  On the way back to the hotel Patty said, “Did you notice our room is in the basement of the hotel, the hallway smells like dog pee and our room like mold? ” I briefly considered returning to my two year old mindset, but chose to say something like “maybe a little, but I bought a lot of candles” and quickly change the subject.

 

The candles and the AC helped cover up the smell, and we decided to not try and change rooms again given that the front desk told me the hotel was sold out with two wedding parties.  The next day, Patty discovered there was mold on the bottom of the shower curtain.  A definite first for me in a “four star” hotel or for that matter, any star hotel.  In addition to the smelly hall and room mold problems, the on-demand movies in our room were very fuzzy and the engineer on duty could not fix the problem.  And whoever cleaned our room on Friday night forgot to remove the mold, but did remove our wine glasses and did not replace them.  All in all, a pretty bad experience. Read more

BMW falls in the gap between consumer expectations and business engagement with Web 2.0

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Net: The fact that 50% of all consumers are engaging with social media, but less than 40% of businesses are doing so means that some companies are leaving their customers exposed to competitor’s initiatives. BMW is one of many examples.

Last fall, I leased a new BMW X3 to replace my old one whose lease was expiring.The replacement X3 did not have the built-in navigation of its predecessor, so I decided to go online to search for a portable unit.First stop was BMW.com, where I expected to find an owners’ community where I would be able to ask others for advice.

When Underwood Partners conducts a Web 2.0 audit for clients, one of the outputs is a “heat map” that visually shows competitive and complimentary companies’ use of social media technology tools. The map is color coded: green represents a highly visible and useful application; yellow represents an application that is either buried deep in the site, poorly marketed or has a confusing user interface; red indicates that either the company is not using the application or we can’t find it. And given the amount of time we spend online, if we can’t find it, we don’t believe customers will either. [Note this graphic was first developed by Max Palmer when we worked together at Social Sphere.  Max claims it was called a “Palmer Map.” He’s a great analyst, but not so good on the marketing front!]

If we were doing a Web 2.0 audit of www.BMWUSA.com, the column Customer Forums would clearly be coded red.Although “My Account” has lots of information about how to make payments, pay off my lease early, order a new vehicle, etc., I couldn’t find any place to connect with other customers.So, I logged onto Edmunds.com, one of the pioneers of providing user reviews, customer forums, and other Web 2.0 applications in the automotive space.

On the Edmunds’ site, it was easy to find a BMW X3 Forum in their “Car Space” section where I was able to start an online discussion asking for help with aftermarket navigation systems. But as I was doing so, I noticed that Cadillac ads began appearing on the page. By not investing in Web 2.0 applications like customer forums, BMW literally drove me to a place where I was being served up competitors’ ads.

Some businesses delay developing a Web 2.0 strategy because they are afraid of “losing control” and fear their customers will post negative comments about their products on their own web sites. As this example shows, if you don’t provide an opportunity for customers to talk to you and each others about your products, someone else will. At best, you will have lost an opportunity for customer engagement, research and communication. At worst, you will be giving a third party the opportunity to monetize your customer through selling ads to a competitor. Which, at the end of the day, could ultimately cost you the customer’s business.

Web 2.0 ROI Must Read: EMC|ONE White Paper

Net: In 2007 EMC launched an initiative to develop a social media technology strategy because the company decided they should develop “social media proficiency” as a competitive advantage in their industry.  Despite the fact that the initiative did not have a specific financial return requirement, Chuch Hollis, the EMC executive who lead the development of their Web 2.0 strategy recently published a White Paper that estimates tens of millions of dollars of return on their sub-million dollar investment.

Last Thursday, I got up at an the ungodly hour of 4:45 am to fly back to Boston from Toronto to attend the Mass Technology Leadership Council’s Social Media Summit:  What’s the ROI of Social Media? (Travel note: in Canada you have to check in at least an hour – not 59 minutes – before flights to the US or have better selling skills than I to get through if you are late.)

Full of hope (and Red Bull) for more great case studies to add to my files, I arrived only a few minutes into the first speaker’s comments.  Danah Boyd, the brilliant and charismatic Fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, was giving a very interesting presentation on youth engagement with various forms social media.  She was not – however – talking about anything remotely related to the “ROI of Social Media.”  Maybe I could have missed that flight and slept in?

Next up was a panel of corporate users and social media agencies, but they too seemed to be tip toeing around sharing hard numbers to demonstrate the financial returns of their investment in Web 2.0.  And then he said it. He was Chuck Hollis, EMC’s VP, Global Marketing CTO. More importantly, he was the executive tapped to lead EMC’s development of a strategy to utilize social media technology to enhance the company’s competitive advantage.  What he said was,

“…and we eliminated a multi-million dollar training budget by moving it onto our social media platform.”

Chuck went on to say that he had blogged about the experience over the past two years and recently published a White Paper, entitled EMC|ONE; A Journey in Social Media. Chuck and the other panelists, including Leslie Forde from Communispace, went on to detail a number of hard number savings, revenue increases and/or productivity improvements from relatively minimal investments in Web 2.0 technology.

If you only read one thing about the impact of social media technology applied to the employee sphere, I strongly recommend you read pages 26-35 of the paper, starting with the section “Impact and Measurements.”  You should read Chuck’s entire White Paper, but start here if you are a results junkie like we are.  Before sharing a few quotes from the paper, I need to first make sure you understand that Chuck went out of his way to downplay the financial returns of EMC’s investment in social media, partly because he believes the greatest impact comes from the more immeasurable benefits of improved employee and business partner engagement and collaboration and partly because, as Chuck wrote:

“The entire topic of measuring business impact is very controversial for these type of projects.  There is no consensus regarding generally accepted metrics for social media proficiency. Furthermore, this inherent lack of useful measurements and metrics can be used as an excuse to not undertake an investment in social media proficiency.

“A key part of any initiative is establishing general agreements regarding these success factors.  We ended up talking in terns of our ‘measurement philosophy’ rather than concrete measurements.”

That said, here are a few data points you will find inside the White Paper:

  • Accelerating time-to-revenue of multiple $100MM business initiatives by even a few months or even weeks results in substantial sums.
  • The group manager of EMC’s competitive group estimates his group is now 3x-4x more efficient and impactful by using the social platform.
  • EMC is now in the process of methodically complementing and/or substituting online community interaction with meetings in the physical world.  These efforts either result in costs savings (millions per year), better and more time interactions, or both.
  • A reasonable estimate of the combined value of EMC’s blogging capability (in terms of alternative investment) would approach 20-50 million dollars annually.
  • Putting a number on the business value of [EMC’s] open interrogation is difficult, but probably runs into the tens of millions of dollars annually.
  • Estimating the business value of tens of thousands of employees who are significantly and statistically more satisfied and engaged is a difficult task, but probably approaches tens of millions of dollars per year in terms of improved attraction and retention of talent, fewer costs associated with turnover and related aspects.

As impressive as these statements are, having listened to Chuck talk for a couple of hours last week and reading most of his White Paper twice now, I suspect he is most proud of this impact:

” In reality, all we have done is created a mechanism where people do what they already want to do – meet new people, discuss topics of interest, and help each other out.”

Our sentiments exactly.