Using technology to drive the best marketing of all – Word of Mouth

Posted by mattpoy on April 13, 2012 Posted in Social Media, Technology Tagged influencers, Marketing, One-percenters, sneezers, Social Media

There is some interesting research and debate around technology facilitating word of mouth marketing. I have always believed that nothing competes with shaking hands, making eye contact and building relationships, but Facebook and other social platforms are adding something else by creating conversations and driving engagement.

Brands are constantly seeking ‘likes’ and ‘recommendations’ from users and marketers are always looking to find those individuals who can spread the word very quickly because they are well connected – we call these people the ‘one-percenters’, yawners or sneezers!

The fact is, you tell one person something in the office, they will typically share it with one or two others. If you tell them on Facebook, it is likely that you tell an average of 140-150 others.

While word of mouth is more commonly understood in face-to-face contact, it is more about recognising what drives people to talk about things, then applying appropriate tools and platforms to create that engagement. British Telecom famously ran a series of adverts for their broadband service where Adam met Jane and after years of uncertainty they got married. BT cleverly tied the TV ads into email invitations and a Facebook page that encouraged the public to vote for the wedding dress, wedding car and music for the couple’s first dance. 500,000 people voted. That is some success.

Heinz have done it brilliantly with their ‘Get Well Soon’ can of soup that can be personalised and sent to an unwell acquaintance via Facebook, and my favourite of all is Blendtec, a blender company with more than 150 million views on YouTube taking requests from followers (in the thousands) to blend anything and everything. An ordinary product doing extraordinary things, creating buzz, conversation and deeper engagement.

Word of mouth is ultimately people talking about cool things, brands, events, products and stories that have raised levels of interest, regardless of tools or tech – just as I am doing now.

An i-something or other

Posted by mattpoy on March 30, 2012 Posted in Future of Technology, Technology Tagged Future Technology, Futurology, Gadgets

I spent the last couple of weeks travelling to Johannesburg and Dubai, meeting my team, talking to clients and helping with deals for some of our exciting prospects.

As ever, I learned some new things – particularly how de rigueur it is to carry several mobile phones. I had to chuckle, people in restaurants obsessively checking all their phones to see if anybody had called or sent a text message – it was most entertaining. I was asked – and frowned at condescendingly once – why I didn’t possess a Blackberry and only carry an iPhone, as if I were a handbag without a Chanel label.

So, in response, how about we all become i-people with an i-life, devoting ourselves to one company who sponsor our existence? We could live in an i-house or i-pad (get it?), drive a shared or borrowed i-car (recall collaborative consumption), wear an i–suit with our devices embedded into the fabric, have an i-pet and even an i-wife. No, I will not discuss this last one, it will only lead me into trouble!

Throughout my travels the best thing of all was still meeting new people face to face, finding a connection and common talking points and discussing future alliances and partnerships. However cool these devices might be, I don’t ever wish my telephone to be a status symbol; it is a facilitation device, a communications tool, not a pair of Jimmy Choo’s! Forgive my dwelling on fashion, but my apprenticeship was at Versace and I do like a nice suit.

Computers are disappearing

Posted by mattpoy on March 15, 2012 Posted in Connectivity, Future of Technology, Learning, Technology Tagged Connectivity, digital content, Education, Future Technology, Learning

We read stories of collaboration, social learning and communications evolving but how about the products that we use to facilitate these activities? They are fading into the background and before long, I can see (or not, as the case may be) a time when the device becomes invisible.

We saw the introduction of the infrared keyboard a year or so ago and I read forward-looking articles where the tables we dine in at restaurants will be embedded with the technology that allows you to order our bill, pay by credit card, send a take-away sample food box to a friend, all on the same interactive surface.

What else? I see phones disappearing into our clothing, communication devices that are integrated into the fabric of our coats and jackets, information beamed into our glasses and contact lenses, screens laid into walls and wallpaper which only come to the fore when they are needed.

The key is mobility, and reducing the weight of our bags and satchels as we race across our cities to the next meeting. Why carry laptop computers when we can access pop-up screens in cafes, beam the keyboard onto the coffee table and a holographic screen in front of us.

Before long, we will be online using the interior of our car windscreens (only when the engine is switched off) or via shopping mall display points, where combined with near-field communications (NFC) we will have the ability to search for a specific item of clothing, book a restaurant for lunch, a taxi to get home after a movie, and much more. The technology will be embedded into our every day existence, and there will be no need for separate devices.

The real beauty for me is how this facilitates learning – where we don’t have to go off for days at a time to understand an entire subject area if we only truly need a short 20-minute piece to help us with the task at hand. The technology will help up digest smaller, bite-sized chunks of learning, specific to a role or customer requirement – one tiny piece at a time, wherever we happen to be.

Collaboration is the future

Posted by mattpoy on March 5, 2012 Posted in Collaborative Consumptio, Technology

The Financial Times carried an article recently studying the Sony company, as they seek a return to the glory days of the Walkman. The new cheif executive talked about ‘collaborating to belong.’

Collaboration is central to a new wave of partnerships and working together – be with your operations division or your distribution channels. As technology shrinks the world, it is reinventing old forms of trust, where in many cases ‘using’ becomes more important than ‘having’ things. The importance of owning actual physical stuff is diminishing and having a physical product in our hands is not as important as the experience.

Sites such as NeighborGoods, ShareSomeSugar and SnapGoods allow us to lend and borrow everything we need within a community. The average household power drill is only used for 20 minutes in its entire lifetime, a lawn mower used for some 4 hours per year, so we do we all feel compelled to own one? These sites are redefining how we perceive ownership and nobody does it better than ZipCar. For every person that uses the service for their transport needs, between 6-8 give up owning their own vehicle. It makes sense. That is the future.

Top 3 in Technology

Posted by mattpoy on January 13, 2012 Posted in Connectivity, Future of Technology, Mobile, Technology Tagged Crowd, Future Technology, Gadgets, Mobile, Peer-to-peer

The Consumer Electronics Show is the annual gadget-fest held in Las Vegas and it is taking place right now. I thought it apt to share what I believe to be the 3 key technology trends of the year. Admittedly, I could elaborate on each of these for a blog post of their own, and some may well evolve into something different, but my top 3 are the technology-related trends I believe will end up impacting our day to day lives, regardless of our industry:

1. MOBILE will be far bigger than we think. Mobile internet devices (especially smartphones) outsell all computing devices and certainly PCs, and mobility will continue to change the dynamic of how we operate. By being better connected, it means we don’t have to be in one place, and this will influence remote working, a different type of communication and the restructuring of the traiditional office setup.

2. This leads nicely to NFC, or NEAR-FIELD COMMUNICATION. NFC is a short-range wireless technology that makes use of interacting electromagnetic radio fields instead of the typical direct radio transmissions used by technologies such as Bluetooth. It is meant for applications where a physical touch, or close to it, is required. NFC is planned for use in mobile phones for, among other things, payment, in conjunction with an electronic wallet. Mobile payments will cause a rethink of cash, travel and shopping. For those of us in the UK, think of an Oyster card embedded within your phone.

3. The CROWD. Sites such as Airbnb and CouchSurfing are leading the way in peer-to-peer networks, and as Rachel Botsman said in my favourite book of last year “What’s Mine is YOurs“, creative companies are using technology to redefine ownership. Why buy when we can rent, borrow and share amongst our community. Experience is far more important than ownership; for example, we don’t necessarily want to collect DVDs, we just want the experience of watching the movie, and usually, just the once. Cars is another area that will be seriously affected, with companies such as Whipcar and Zipcar helping reduce car ownership around the world. Technology is facilitating this change.

They are my top three, and no doubt many other trends will spin-off from these. Keep an eye out for news from CES and articles in all the newspapers and websites, all the main gadgets and trends will be featured there.

Youngsters helping the elderly get online

Posted by mattpoy on October 5, 2011 Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Technology Tagged Gadgets, People, Skills, Talent

Back from a short visit to the US, where once again I learned and picked up some cool new things. This one is all about people driving technology.

Read an inspiring article about Steve Jobs, who has left his day-to-day role at Apple. He embodies everything that Apple has created. I particularly liked the quote, “Apple has beautiful artifacts, but what Jobs has been building is a company whose legacy is ideas.”

Another such inspiration is London-born Sean Maloney, who was one of the leaders at Intel and recently suffered a stroke that deprived him of his ability to walk and talk. He has made a great recovery and is now the chairman at Intel China. Success, companies and technologies are always about great people.

A project that impressed me recently was Adopt a Care Home, an initiative that encourages young people from schools and colleges to help the elderly get online. The saddest part of this was that residents of a care home would go downstairs in the morning to collect their post and there wasn’t any. They were used to mail as a form of communciation. This project seeks to do something about that. One great example of its success is Enid Adamson, 87, who hadn’t seen her daughter, who lives in New Zealand, for 2 years. It was terrible that she feared she may never see her again. With the assistance of this project, they now talk once a week on a large screen using Skype, a webcam and clip-on microphone.

Great story. People driving technology to make this a better place.

Everyone should be a part of IT

Posted by mattpoy on June 11, 2011 Posted in CompTIA, Education, Events, Future of Technology, Skills, Technology Tagged CompTIA, Future Technology, Gadgets, People, Skills

Carlota Perez, leading economist at Cambridge University and an expert in global techno-economic paradigm shifts, explains that every 70 years, a disruptive technology emerges that alters the foundations of the economy. The 5 ages of transformation to date include the industrial revolution; the age of steam and railways; the age of steel, electricity and heavy engineering; the age of oil, cars and mass production; and the age of information and telecommunications.

It interests me to see the technology changing so much and so fast. Will technology ever reach a settling point or just continue to evolve ad infinitum; it cannot be too long before it becomes a utility much like electricity and gas, and I can see just one global and seamless wireless network where every device we purchase is connected.

Technology has been a catalyst for taking away precious time – by being better connected we are working longer hours. On the train to London this week I counted as many people on their smart devices as those reading or sleeping and you can just see the frustration as we travelled through a tunnel and they lost connectivity! I look forward to when my fridge has sensors and RFID chips embedded in its doors that recognise when I am out of bread and milk and can order it on my behalf, when my camera (or phone) automatically uploads my photos to my piece of the Cloud immediately as I am taking them and my casserole tells me which ingredients go next into the pan – all so I can get back some of the previous time that technology has taken away in the first place!

So where has the week raced away to exactly? It included a long trip to South Africa for the CompTIA member conference in Johannesburg, a great networking and education event for the leading IT vendors and training companies, and then swiftly back again to host meetings with some of our largest partnerships in Europe: Zenos, the UK’s leading IT apprenticeship provider, the Oxford and Cambridge examinations board (OCR) and Intel. Intel are diversifying into some cool new areas, look forward to seeing more of that. Is there a connection between the people I met this week, regardless of location and business focus – there clearly is. Each party is looking for ways to improve the skills of their staff, customers and partners to differentiate them in the workplace. Technology appears to be accelerating change, and yet we don’t have the skills we need to even keep pace with the demands. There is a common recognition that unless we have the skilled people in place to manage and develop this technology, and to put it to effective use, we may not get the best out of it from all quarters, and quite possibly never get the time back that so many people crave.

The two fellows in this picture were idling away in the sunshine at the Lion & Rhino Park in Johannesburg earlier this week – not a care in the world as we drove past. I wonder if they heard about Steve Jobs’ announcement of the iCloud!

Keeping IT cool

Posted by mattpoy on May 20, 2011 Posted in People, People Skills Talent, Skills, Social Media, Talent, Technology Tagged Gadgets, Investment in people, People, Skills, Social Media, Talent

Gadgets are the new cool – everyone wants the latest mobile phone, iPad 2, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy and a myriad of others. In fact, at the recent CRN PartnerConnect conference at the Ricoh Arena, where we talked about cloud business opportunities and mobility, our CEO Todd Thibodeaux brought all of these devices with him in his hand luggage and showed them to the audience, which generated a combination of laughter and interest. Todd also talked about making IT cool (http://blog.comptia.org/2011/05/09/making-it-cool/) and I would like to pick up on this.

When I present to audiences about some of the trends in technology, eyebrows are always raised when I ask about engaging our young employees and utilizing social media for business. Why? The younger generation are digital natives and they live and breath the technology that so fascinates my generation. For them, it is their oxygen, a gateway to the outside world. They also understand how it works, how it connects, and how to maximize it, so why do we push back and in some cases not allow social media sites in the office during work time. My view is that we should encourage its use, and also invite the younger generation to tell us how we can build sites to target the new generation on the platforms they are so comfortable with. That is how we can tie “cool” and “IT” together, and create a new harmony in the workplace. More importantly, by doing this we make our companies a more exciting place to work and we will attract the new generation to want to work for us. Today they have a choice, and those with the skills and talent will decide whether they want to add us to their CV. They are vitally important to our success, regardless of how cool we think our company is – we must engage them on their terms, because they are both our workforce and our customer of tomorrow.

Above was the view at the Ricoh Arena from my room when I drew the curtains in the morning. What a great idea to combine corporate hospitality suites with hotel bedrooms to maximize use of the space. Another cool.

Collaborative Consumption

Posted by mattpoy on May 3, 2011 Posted in Collaborative Consumptio, Future of Technology, Technology Tagged Collaborative Consumption, digital content, Future Technology, Futurology

I have mentioned some of these sites before, such as NeighborGoods, ShareSomeSugar and Swap, in previous posts, but this is a trend that must be taken seriously. Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers have shared an extremely insightful view of how we are moving towards a world of sharing and renting, as opposed to owning (‘What’s Mine is Yours’ – well worth reading). It is changing a mind-set started in the 1950s of hyper-consumerism, where all our ills were swept under the carpet with just another purchase. So the old community activities and sharing were quietly eased out of the picture as we focused on number one (me, me, me). Technology is facilitating change and allowing cool sites such as ZipCar, Freecycle, thredUP, Ecomodo, Landshare and CouchSurfing to bring together people with a specific need (ie. somewhere to stay during a trip overseas) with those that have something to share (ie. a spare couch for travellers). What is most pleasing is that hard working people who gave up their leisure time and hobbies so that they could afford bigger houses and cars are now utilising the benefits of technology to claw back some of that valuable time. Back in the depression of the 1930s, President Roosevelt in the US shut down the country’s banks for a week, and many stores and practitioners were paid not in cash, but in home-grown groceries, batteries, oil and tobacco. Whilst we may not be heading back to the 30s, technology is helping to drive new thinking, where we don’t need to own a physical CD to listen to music, don’t want the DVD but want the movie; in other words, we want not the physical goods but the experience. Here is another, very relevant, quote from Bill McKibben, from his book Deep Economy: “For most of human history, the two birds ‘More’ and ‘Better’ roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. Now you’ve got the stone of your own life, or your own society, gripped in your hand, you have to choose between. It’s More or Better.” I like that.