Really interesting story here in the New York Times -- Marketing's
Flip Side: The Determined Detractor, a term I've never heard
before. The Times defines determined detractors as "persistent critics
of a company or product that mount their own public relations
offensive, often online."
What fascinates me about the article is not that these determined detractors exist and that they use technology to pick off the big guys. That's old news. Instead, what fascinates me is that the big guys are still reacting to these determined detractors, rather than responsibly responding to a need and directly engaging in the conversation. Technology enables determined detractors to quickly coalesce into powerful and well-connected communities, usually because they are not being listened to. The answer is not to do better intelligence gathering so you can react faster. Instead, it's probably more beneficial to simply recognize the reality that you are now part of a community, so just join the conversation.
Notice these bits here from the article sound pretty defensive:
What fascinates me about the article is not that these determined detractors exist and that they use technology to pick off the big guys. That's old news. Instead, what fascinates me is that the big guys are still reacting to these determined detractors, rather than responsibly responding to a need and directly engaging in the conversation. Technology enables determined detractors to quickly coalesce into powerful and well-connected communities, usually because they are not being listened to. The answer is not to do better intelligence gathering so you can react faster. Instead, it's probably more beneficial to simply recognize the reality that you are now part of a community, so just join the conversation.
Notice these bits here from the article sound pretty defensive:
Now
some public relations agencies and research companies are studying
determined detractors, dividing them into different groups defined by
motivation, monitoring their complaints and trying to help corporate
clients decide how to react.
...
BuzzMetrics,
a New York-based specialist in word-of-mouth marketing, has developed
proprietary software to scoop up information on trendsetters and
potential influencers as they travel the Internet, posting messages on
bulletin board sites, updating personal Web pages and sharing
information through e-mail mailing lists.
...
"For
brand managers, the big challenge is to predict trouble on the
horizon," said Jonathan Carson, head of BuzzMetrics. "When they see a
detractor they have to figure out whether it's a single disgruntled
customer or an actual smoldering crisis that could explode."
...
"One
determined detractor can do as much damage as 100,000 positive mentions
can do good," said Paul Rand, managing director at Ketchum Midwest in
Chicago, part of the Omnicom Group. "In the same way that we need to
understand who the positive influencers are, it is becoming even more
critical to identify and manage determined detractors."
...
Left unchecked, "hear me" types can
become "reputation terrorists"
who have a personal interest in publicly criticizing a company, Mr.
Rand said. "These are the folks we have to track and stay on top of,"
he said. "To not do so can cost money."
It seems that bloggers are filling a void in the coverage of the
Tsunami tragedy.
According to the New York Times:
According to the New York Times:
Bloggers
at the scene are more deeply affected by events than the journalists
who roam from one disaster to another, said Xeni Jardin, one of the
four co-editors of the site BoingBoing.net, which pointed visitors to
many of the disaster blogs.
"They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that other media just can't," with an intimate voice and an unvarnished perspective, with the richness of local context, Ms. Jardin said.
"They are helping us understand the impact of this event in a way that other media just can't," with an intimate voice and an unvarnished perspective, with the richness of local context, Ms. Jardin said.
Robert
Scoble points to Fortune's
article on corporate blogging -- "Why
There's No Escaping the Blog." It's a pretty long piece and pretty
well done, too.
Some nice info on how Scoble's honesty is helping to improve Microsoft's reputation:
That last sentence in Scoble's quote is the kicker. I think Sun has come a long way to implementing that very thought with the blogs on BSC and the other Sun blogs not hosted on BSC but aggregated on Planet Sun. I talk to developers and system administrators for the OpenSolaris project, and they all say they are reading the Solaris engineering blogs. And more are commenting now, too. The conversation is, indeed, well under way. And I can easily point to the benefits in my own little job.
Here are a couple of Sun bits from the article:
I still want to see Scott blog, don't you? :) My goodness ... can you imagine it? I asked him about it once when I saw him walking around MPK (Menlo Park campus). He just laughed. Loudly. :) Oh, well. So much for my influence, eh?
Blogs are bumping into all forms of communication:
I can understand this position. I spent nine painful years pitching messages in PR. But I'm out now, and I have a different perspective. Why must everything be a pitch to deliver a message no one believes? And why pitch bloggers? Why perpetuate the bad PR that the PR industry so richly deserves? Why not simply read blogs to understand the issues and the communities trying to interact with a company. And why not simply blog right along with those communities and join the conversation? In other words, skip the pitch. Your message is now delivered through the medium of the conversation -- which tends to only support credible content. This article is just filled with stories of companies who joined the conversation and benefited and companies who didn't and got burned. There are some good stories about Kryptonite, Dan Rather, Mazda, and Six Apart. All worth reading. These stories, though, have to be especially terrifying for companies that are still missing this little phenomenon. Oh, well.
Some nice info on how Scoble's honesty is helping to improve Microsoft's reputation:
When
it came to the criticism emanating from Boing Boing, Scoble simply ...
agreed. "MSN Spaces isn't the blogging service for me," he wrote.
Nobody at Microsoft asked Scoble to comment; he just did it on his own,
adding that he would make sure that the team working on Spaces was
aware of the complaints. And he kept revisiting the issue on his blog.
As the anti-Microsoft crowd cried censorship, the nearly 4,000 blogs
linking to Scoble were able to see his running commentary on how
Microsoft was reacting. "I get comments on my blog saying, 'I didn't
like Microsoft before, but at least they're listening to us,'" says
Scoble. "The blog is the best
relationship generator you've ever seen."
That last sentence in Scoble's quote is the kicker. I think Sun has come a long way to implementing that very thought with the blogs on BSC and the other Sun blogs not hosted on BSC but aggregated on Planet Sun. I talk to developers and system administrators for the OpenSolaris project, and they all say they are reading the Solaris engineering blogs. And more are commenting now, too. The conversation is, indeed, well under way. And I can easily point to the benefits in my own little job.
Here are a couple of Sun bits from the article:
The
biggest chunk of the 5,000 or so corporate bloggers comes from
Microsoft, but others work at Monster.com, Intuit, and Sun Microsystems
-- where even the company's acerbic No. 2, Jonathan Schwartz, gets in
on the action. (A recent Schwartz post openly criticizes competitor
Hewlett-Packard: "Yet another series of disappointing announcements.")
...
...
Even
blogging boosters Microsoft and Sun have hit bumps. Microsoft fired a
temp who posted photos of Apple computers sitting on a company loading
dock. Sun CEO Scott McNealy was urged not to blog after he showed trial
posts to company lawyers and colleagues. "I've got too many
constituents that I have to pretend to be nice to," he says.
I still want to see Scott blog, don't you? :) My goodness ... can you imagine it? I asked him about it once when I saw him walking around MPK (Menlo Park campus). He just laughed. Loudly. :) Oh, well. So much for my influence, eh?
Blogs are bumping into all forms of communication:
Blogs
are challenging the media and changing how people in advertising,
marketing, and public relations do their jobs.
...
Blogs are just the latest tool that makes it harder for corporations and other institutions to control and dictate their message. An amateur media is springing up, and the smart are adapting. Says Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations: "Now you've got to pitch the bloggers too. You can't just pitch to conventional media."
...
Blogs are just the latest tool that makes it harder for corporations and other institutions to control and dictate their message. An amateur media is springing up, and the smart are adapting. Says Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman Public Relations: "Now you've got to pitch the bloggers too. You can't just pitch to conventional media."
I can understand this position. I spent nine painful years pitching messages in PR. But I'm out now, and I have a different perspective. Why must everything be a pitch to deliver a message no one believes? And why pitch bloggers? Why perpetuate the bad PR that the PR industry so richly deserves? Why not simply read blogs to understand the issues and the communities trying to interact with a company. And why not simply blog right along with those communities and join the conversation? In other words, skip the pitch. Your message is now delivered through the medium of the conversation -- which tends to only support credible content. This article is just filled with stories of companies who joined the conversation and benefited and companies who didn't and got burned. There are some good stories about Kryptonite, Dan Rather, Mazda, and Six Apart. All worth reading. These stories, though, have to be especially terrifying for companies that are still missing this little phenomenon. Oh, well.
In "The
China Syndrome" a couple of weeks ago, Robert X. Cringely writes
about the recent IBM deal with China's Lenovo. The article is ok, I
guess, but when we get to the very last sentence we find this:
That's the extent of his analysis on Sun? "Especially Sun. Those guys are in trouble?" Well, I'm impressed.
Then, the following week, he wrote another column -- "Between an xBox and a Hard Place" -- with more deep thoughts on Sun and the dire consequences we face due to IBM's China deal. There are more sentences mentioning Sun in this article, but still very little thoughtful analysis. And, to make matters even more interesting, he comes to a far more dramatic conclusion. In the first article, we are simply "in trouble." In the second article, however, we are "going to shrink dramatically anyway, possibly to nothing." So, basically, we are going to die -- if we don't listen to Cringely, anyway.
So, here's how Cringely supports his extreme position:
Wow. I better start looking for a job. We're dead. After all, Cringely says so -- if we don't follow his advice, anyway. And I doubt we'll follow advice based on such a ridiculous and flippant review as this. Although I did enjoy the bit about "teenagers looking for a place to make out," though. That was a nice one. I don't read Cringely very often, to be honest, only when people (Jonathan Schwartz, Brij Singh) point out something of interest.
Losers
in the deal are HP, Intel, and Sun. Especially Sun. Those guys are in
trouble.
That's the extent of his analysis on Sun? "Especially Sun. Those guys are in trouble?" Well, I'm impressed.
Then, the following week, he wrote another column -- "Between an xBox and a Hard Place" -- with more deep thoughts on Sun and the dire consequences we face due to IBM's China deal. There are more sentences mentioning Sun in this article, but still very little thoughtful analysis. And, to make matters even more interesting, he comes to a far more dramatic conclusion. In the first article, we are simply "in trouble." In the second article, however, we are "going to shrink dramatically anyway, possibly to nothing." So, basically, we are going to die -- if we don't listen to Cringely, anyway.
So, here's how Cringely supports his extreme position:
Sun
will be immediately hurt more than any other company because Sun gets
more of its revenue -- close to 90 percent -- from the server market
IBM is about to target. Sun is in an extremely difficult position. Its
strengths have traditionally been in enterprise software and high-end
hardware, both of which mean that it can't flirt too much with Linux
and AMD or risk its traditional customer base. At the same time, IBM is
targeting the same customers as Sun, will be offering more powerful,
cheaper hardware and a great depth of software options, including a
Linux that doesn't in any way threaten other parts of IBM. Sun can't
compete on chips, can't compete on price, can't compete on depth. What
are they to do? Their current strategy of selling processing power by
the cycle is like a new car dealer renting back seats of cars on the
lot to teenagers looking for a place to make out.
What Sun needs to do is to establish itself as the de facto UNIX (not Linux) software vendor. Drop the hardware, make Solaris run beautifully on every high-end system from every manufacturer and compete with Linux by offering world-class consulting, service and support. Fortune 500 companies would sigh with relief, but Sun would also have to accept that the company will shrink in sales and headcount, though not in profit. This is the only viable strategy left for Sun, which is going to shrink dramatically anyway, possibly to nothing.
What Sun needs to do is to establish itself as the de facto UNIX (not Linux) software vendor. Drop the hardware, make Solaris run beautifully on every high-end system from every manufacturer and compete with Linux by offering world-class consulting, service and support. Fortune 500 companies would sigh with relief, but Sun would also have to accept that the company will shrink in sales and headcount, though not in profit. This is the only viable strategy left for Sun, which is going to shrink dramatically anyway, possibly to nothing.
Wow. I better start looking for a job. We're dead. After all, Cringely says so -- if we don't follow his advice, anyway. And I doubt we'll follow advice based on such a ridiculous and flippant review as this. Although I did enjoy the bit about "teenagers looking for a place to make out," though. That was a nice one. I don't read Cringely very often, to be honest, only when people (Jonathan Schwartz, Brij Singh) point out something of interest.
