The top 10 list your company doesn't want to make

London Luton Airport

From the London Luton Airport Site

Luton Airport, just north of London, is the sixth busiest international airport in the UK, serving almost  9.7 million passengers in 2013. Planes fly from Luton to European and North African Destinations.  (Wikipedia, 2014)
The  Luton Airport Authority have an active marketing department, and use social media extensively, with  Facebook, Twitter and a variety of other platforms regularly updated.

Misuse of Social Technology
On March 14th  2013 Luton Airport had an unfortunate episode of accidental misuse of their social technology.
2013 was an especially cold year in the UK, with the country still experiencing snow and ice in March. Airline passengers are naturally concerned about whether or not flights will be running in such conditions, and in an effort to reassure passengers that the airport had the situation in control, an employee put a light hearted Facebook post of an plane that had slid off the tarmac in Chicago in 2005 with the text ““Because we are such a super airport....this is what we prevent you from when it snows......Weeeee :)”
What the employee had not realised was that the Chicago plane had run off the runway, into traffic, and killed a six year old boy.
Facebook followers were incensed.

The image that was posted on Luton Airport's Facebook site on Msrch 14th 2013

Immediate Consequences.
 The direct and immediate consequence of this mistake was the Facebook followers broadcast their discontent.
The next consequence was the story reaching the press, with emotive negative headlines such as:

“Plane insensitive: Luton Airport slammed for using fatal crash picture in Facebook publicity”  from the Daily Mirror
“Luton Airport Facebook Fail”, The Fresh Egg Blog

This then led to the episode being included in sites such as “5 big Social Media Fails of 2013 (and What We Learned)”. 

This site classifies the Luton Airport Facebook episode as a case of “bad judgement”, rather than bad execution, bad strategy or bad luck.
“Clearly, this is another example of lack of training. Perhaps, in this case the bad judgement also reflects a misguided social media policy in which content is posted without an approval process. In certain industries, it is wise to implement internal checks and balances. The added layer of approval can prevent such PR nightmares as this one.”

Techniques to avoid social technology misuse
I liked the blog “What Not to Do: Common Social Media Strategy Mistakes” which provides the following advice.

1.       Avoid Like-baiting, the practice of using provocative headlines to stir up social attention

2.       Do not buy likes and followers. Apparently it is possible to buy followers, but this blog warns against doing this, as the quality of your audience and real impact is reduced

3.       Do not post too much. An interesting suggestion that you may give your followers post fatigue.

4.       Do not ignore social media ROI (Return on Investment)

5.       Only using social media to advertise is a mistake

6.       Do not delete negative comments

7.       Ensure you keep up to speed with how social media is changing

On reflection, I consider that the Luton Airport staff were guilty of the first mistake only, in that they were so intent on posting a provocative headline that they didn't take the time to properly check what they were posting.

Some other relevant advice is included under the following headings in “Don't Make These Social-Media Blunders That Businesses Keep Repeating”.

1.       Mixing up accounts, stating how easy it can be to accidently post as personal message to a company account, and vice versa. Certainly something to be aware of, but not relevant to the Luton Airport case study.

2.       Social Media never sleeps. This point notes how important it is for companies who sign up to social media to ensure they have at a minimum a 24 hour watch on the social chatter, as responding after 8 hours to a twitter complaint is like three months in social-web time, and what might have been a small issue can become a viral headline.

3.       Automating everything. The advice here is that, while it is possible for a company to set up automation to reply to scheduled posts, replying to certain messages and following other accounts that it is still important to have human oversight of what is happening, especially when a crisis occurs.

4.       Leap before looking. The mistake alluded to here is using hashtags without first checking to see how it might already be being used, or without checking as to what else is happening in the news to check the implications.

5.       Loose posts sink ships, advising on the importance of a social media policy to establish guideline for employee posts.

I don’t consider that the Luton employees made these mistakes. In fact, they responded quickly and appropriately to the situation, by removing the offensive post and posting an apology.
“A spokesperson for Luton Airport told ITV:  said We apologise unreservedly. The post was wholly unacceptable and it will never happen again. "We have social media guidelines that clearly outline what is acceptable. However in this instance a new, over-enthusiastic member of our support team made an honest but misguided mistake and clearly stepped over the line." (Huffington )

In his publication “A Practical Perspective of Information Ethics”, Rogerson ,  provides eight ethical principles for a computer professional.

1.       Honour - is the action considered beyond reproach?

2.       Honesty - will the action violate any explicit or implicit agreement or trust?

3.       Bias - are there any external considerations that may bias the action to be taken?

4.       Professional Adequacy - is the action within the limits of capability?

5.       Due care - is the action to be exposed to the best possible quality assurance standards?

6.       Fairness - are all stakeholders’ views considered with regard to the action?

7.       Consideration of social cost - is the appropriate accountability and responsibility accepted with respect to this action?

8.        Effective and efficient action - is the action suitable, given the objectives set, and is it to be completed using the least expenditure of resources?

In this case, I consider that the Luton Airport Authority acted according to all principle, excepting that of 5. Due Care. If there had been a more rigorous quality assurance process in place the offensive image may never have been posted. Honour - is the action considered beyond reproach?

 Honesty

- will the action violate any explicit or implicit agreement or trust?

 Bias

- are there any external considerations that may bias the action to be taken?

 Professional adequacy

- is the action within the limits of capability?

 Due care

- is the action to be exposed to the best possible quality assurance standards?

 Fairness

- are all stakeholder's views considered with regard to the action?

Consideration of social cost 

- is the appropriate accountability and responsibilityaccepted with respect to this action?

Honour 

- is the action considered beyond reproach?

 Honesty

- will the action violate any explicit or implicit agreement or trust?

 Bias

- are there any external considerations that may bias the action to be taken?

 Professional adequacy

- is the action within the limits of capability?

 Due care

- is the action to be exposed to the best possible quality assurance standards?

 Fairness

- are all stakeholder's views considered with regard to the action?

Consideration of social cost 

- is the appropriate accountability and responsibilityaccepted with respect to this action?

A practical perspective of information ethicsA practical perspective of information ethicsA practical perspective of information e”hicsLonger term  Consequences of this event
The social media world agrees that this incident was not good, and it appears on numerous “worse Social media mistakes” lists, and is now the topic of my blog, but did it have any negative consequences for the company itself?
This, of course, is difficult to measure quantitatively, but the annual statistics for “number of passengers” through the airport actually show a slight increase for the year of this event. (Wikipedia,2014), suggesting no adverse impact on business as usual. The summary of “London Luton Airport in the media” does not give the incident a mention.

I consider this an interesting case study of the misuse in social media, in that an inexperienced staff member posted an image without checking the story behind the image. An easy mistake to make, but one with huge consequences in terms of the negative publicity for the company.

In investigating this case I was assured that the company did in fact have a robust social media strategy, and my conclusion is therefore that whilst this was not a good PR incident for the brand, it was handled in a timely and appropriate manner, and the potential damage to the business itself was minimised.


What do you think?

Up There

Can a implementation of a social technology platform such as SharePoint make a significant Return on Investment (ROI) for a company, or is the Dilbert cartoon a more realistic reflection of what occurs?

Street Crane are a UK company that manufacture industrial cranes, crane kits and hoists. In 2007 they were producing 60 cranes a month.

So how can a company that makes cranes possibly benefit from introducing Enterprise 2.0 technologies?

Given the additional details that the customers for their sophisticated electrical overhead travelling cranes are companies from across the globe, and that each crane delivered is a unique combination of components, you have some insight into where efficiencies may be gained.

The business case for the project identified that, "The company wanted to improve collaboration among the company’s teams and outside organizations that all have to deal with large volumes of design data and move away from sending CDs back and forth. The challenge was to manage our data in a much more sophisticated and effective way given the huge number of configuration combinations of our products.”

Street Crane chose to implement Solid Edge® software for 3D product design together with Insight™ for design data management. The YouTube video steps through how this product based on Microsoft SharePoint provides a collaborative design platform, with documents easily shared and updated with relevant people, regardless of their location, or time zone.

The Return on Investment (ROI) for this project is impressive.

Pique Solutions, sponsored by Microsoft, in a white paper titled "Connected Value: The ROI Benefits of Business-Critical SharePoint" (February 2013 ), use Street Crane as one of their case studies, and summarise the ROI as follows:

• "99% reduction in shop floor order-processing time (1.5 days to 30 seconds)
• 20% to 40% manufacturing growth over the past six years with minimal staffing increase; a more than sixfold increase in output from 30 cranes per month to more than 200
• 50% increase in user productivity and efficiency
• Suppliers and Customers get secure access to business processes around the clock"

Chris Russell, Street Crane Director of Development, describes the change for his company as follows:

"Our BCSP solution certainly provided ROI in the first year, but the impact to our business has been transformational. We have created a 24/7 window into our business, enabling suppliers and customers to participate directly in our business processes. Our rapid cycle times have allowed us to enter entirely new markets based on a ‘design-to-order’ process enabled by SharePoint."  

 The tangible benefits of this project were significant, and include:

• increased business availability, to 24/7 rather than UK business hours
• decreased cycle times for processing of orders
• increased number of new customers because of the new "design-to-order" service
• faster exchange of designs with customer, replacing the slow, insecure method of physically sending designs on CD increased output
• increased production (Six fold increase in production with the same number of staff)
• decreased number of errors and amount of rework required
• decreased cost of training, due to simpler processes and the familiar intuitive interface.

The intangible benefits included:

• increased efficiency by better document control
• increased collaboration by providing the ability to share selected data securely  with suppliers and customers  across the world
• reduced business risk of losing data, of losing customers
• increased security by provision of levels of access so people can see "the right data at the right time"
• increased customer satisfaction
• increased employee engagement at work
• faster and better decision making

 In reflecting on the impact of this project I can see only strengths. Admittedly the case studies are sponsored by Microsoft, but the success story is supported by the significant growth of the company through a period of recession, and by the industry accolades Street Crane has received, and is continuing to receive, evidenced by the  Street Crane Facebook page.

• July21st 2014  "The Sunday Times have ranked us as one of “Britain’s Fastest Growing Exporters” in their International Track 200"

 

• January 9th 2014, "We’re really proud to announce Street Crane has selected as one of “The UK’s 1,000 most Exciting and Inspirational Companies” in a league table drawn up by the London Stock Exchange."

 

Street Crane's company motto is "Up There".

I can only agree.

Trying (and succeeding) in selling car parts to women?

Well - they're not just selling car parts - Victory Auto Service and Glass do as the name implies: Service cars, repair windscreens and .... sell car parts. Starting with one shop in Minneapolis in 1997, they now have 5 outlets, and their expansion has been driven by their successful use of social media marketing.

I was intrigued to see that a small business, in a very traditional, non-IT area, was using social technology extensively to interact with its customers, and in particular, its female clients.

I found them whilst researching for the Women 2.0 Google hangout I'm doing with Lisa, Emmy and Anne at 9:00am next Thursday the 19th, to which you are invited. The Google hangout is going to be looking at social media and how it helps, hinders, is helped, is hindered and generally affects women in the workplace. You may have guessed Lisa, Emmy, Anne and myself are all women, and so have a personal interest, and experience in the topic. Should be fun!
 
Back to Victory Auto Service and Glass. A case study of their use of social media was posted in Sept 2013, on social media examia, well worth reading. The lady responsible for it's success is Stephanie Gutierrez. What Stephanie has done, is to take a male dominated, masculine focused business, attractive to women by promoting a friendly, helpful image. Women now make up the majority of their customers.




Welcome to Victory Auto Service & Glass

Your premier auto specialty shop

This small business is actively using no fewer than 5 of the, "adding value by the use of social technologies" tips identified in the  McKinsey report (2012).

The Victory Auto Services facebook site, last updated today, abounds with happy smiling faces, and fun snippets of information designed to appeal to their customer base, which is now 60 % women, employing tip 5 for Marketing and Sales: "Use social technologies for marketing and communication/interaction." The most recent posts include photos of cute kids and puppies and friendly messages such as:
 "Do you have a kid going back to school this week? Or are YOU starting school back up as a student or teacher?  We're wishing you a week filled with great morning traffic and safety from crazy drivers in the pickup lanes!"






The posts include quiz like questions, jokes and cartoons as well as special offers. Tip 6. "Generate and foster sales leads".

 The comments from customers allow the company to use tip 4. "Derive Customer Insights".

For organisation and distribution, the inclusion of an app to provide easy booking of a service makes use of tip 3. "Use social to distribute business processes"; but I think the cream on the cake is the additional customer service they provide, employing tip 8; "Provide customer care via social technologies", in their series of you tube "how to " videos. The most popular one being "How to top up your wiper fluid." with 10166 views.

This particular company has shown to me that you don't have to be a multimillion dollar global retail giant to make effective use of social technology.

Is this what it's all about?

Social media use by EY.



Life at EY

The McKinsey report published by McKinsey Global Institute (2012), identifies professional services firms as being innately social organisations, relying on confidential and trustworthy interactions with colleagues and clients, often in different locations. The necessity to collaborate by sharing knowledge internally and externally therefore makes them a service sector able to see significant return on investment from implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools. Wikipedia describes the big four audit firms, as international professional services networks, offering a range of knowledge based services.  The global and networked attributes signal to me that these firms would benefit from McKinsey value lever 9: "Use social technology to improve intra- and inter- organisational collaboration and communication.", and are therefore worth a closer look.

In INN346 lectures Callam Porch and Jamie Turner have provided interesting insights into the way Deloitte takes advantage of social medial tools, and speaking to a colleague in KPMG I understand they also extensively use blogging, a corporate version of yammer, instant messaging and other Enterprise 2.0 tools. Therefore, for this blog I've chosen to investigate the third largest of the big four audit firms, Ernst and Young, or EY as they brand themselves. I have elected to investigate the global EY, rather than just the Australian division.

As an external potential customer - how can I tell if I will trust Ernst and Young?

EY have an inviting home page which immediately provides evidence of extensive use of social technologies for them to interact with their customers. Relevant, current information is constantly changing, an events calendar provides webcasts of changes to standards, and issues to inform customers, and there are links throughout to several blogs from their newsroom, such as the "Analyst Relations" blog, and their webcasts.

EY extend an invitation to connect via email alerts, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, EY Webcasts and EY Insights Apps. There are 12 apps for iPad and iPhone alone, covering tax insights to business reports and forecasts.

The richness of information provided on the webcasts alone, from broad general guidance, to specialist information, is impressive.

EY are extensively using value lever 5. "Use social technologies for marketing Communication/interaction.", and value lever 3, "Use social technology to distribute business processes."


As an existing customer - how can I collaborate with EY for maximum mutual benefit?

So much information! But if I am an existing customer - what additional Enterprise 2.0 technologies are available?

There is an EY Client Portal that offers more. Apparently collaborative services are offered in protected online work environments. Assumedly a plethora of internal blogs and wikis - intriguing - but I was unable to find access to this.


Working within EY - how can I collaborate with my colleagues, and can I be heard by the senior partners?

The external use of social media by EY is impressive, but what of the internal? Given EY provide extensive outward facing advice, including useful business templates, I assume they also use a collaborative system in-house. However, finding inside information has proved a challenge.

To understand the need for internal communication within EY,  it is worth considering for a moment where EY colleagues may be located. EY is a global organisation with seven geographical areas. To facilitate global communication  they have introduced an online toolkit called "intercomm". This looks promising, but again I couldn't access detail.

A McKinsey report, "Turning buzz into gold", identifies the benefits of using social media platforms for recruiting, which EY are doing, posting jobs on LinkedIn.

A blog posted in 2009 by a social media consultant was fairly scathing in it's review of EY's internal understanding and use of social media, concluding that none of the EY participants attending his social media event had seen their own company's social media sites. Not so good when they were EY marketing and development representatives. However, that was 5 years ago though. Have things improved?

Well, EY launched Yammer in 2013, with a major publicity campaign. Better late than never?

A webinar "How EY measures Yammer use" is being held on Sept 2nd , 2014, could provide insight into the success of this development.

My conclusion on the use of blogs and wikis by EY is that they are using blogs extensively to assist their marketing and sales, to provide customer service, and in operations and distribution. I assume the same level of information sharing occurs within, but was unable to find the evidence required.

If anyone else has any tips on how to source this data please let me know!

The burgers may not be better, but the marketing is.

In deciding which organization to target for this blog I thought I'd take inspiration from Justin Yung's brilliant second blog, where he compared social technology use in Pepsico and Coca-cola, and I would consider an organization we all know.

Starting last year,  my son would eagerly get out his mobile phone whenever we approached a certain fast food outlet, to see what freebie he could score. Obviously Hungry Jacks were successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies in their functional area of marketing and sales. I thought I'd like to investigate whether giving away all this free food actually helped.

I found that, well, yes it did.

The campaign's success was acknowledged by Hungry Jack's winning a 2013 Australian Mobile Award. Their "Shake and Win" campaign, launched mid 2012,  saw a 25% increase in profit and a 1186% return on investment.

The brief on the AMI awards site, states

"Executed through owned media, mobile banners and earned media, primarily via Facebook check-ins, the app remains one of the most downloaded branded apps and number one in the free Food & Drinks section. The pilot project has since become a permanent pillar of the business without any subsequent investment and is still delivering additional, exponential profit. "

 

Hungry Jacks is a fast food outlet, in a competitive market in Australia. In 2006, the Australian government in comparative analysis of food chain outlets, recorded Hungry Jacks with 594 of 5234 fast food outlets (11%).

Before introducing this campaign the company described itself in Marketing Mag as
"Outspent and outnumbered, and with declining revenue and share of voice, Hungry Jack’s needed help. Clemenger found a new-world solution to an age-old problem which delivered ROI of 1186% and became a permanent part of Hungry Jacks’ marketing mix."

The Xfactor consulting group describes how the app works:
"Upon downloading the app, consumers were invited to “shake their phone” within a 1 km radius of a Hungry Jacks store to receive a prize. They then had 20 minutes to redeem the prize. Facebook users who “checked in” at Hungry Jacks were also rewarded. More than 200,000 prizes were on offer, including freebies, two for the price of one and discounted products. The app also features a store locator and the first nutritional calculator from a fast food restaurant."

The benefits of this campaign can be categorized under two levers aligned with marketing and sales by the 10 Social Technology value levers published by McKinsey Global Institute in 2012.

Value lever 5. Use social technology for marketing communications/interaction:

The benefit immediately identified here is use of customer's existing channels of social media communication and provision of a low cost app to gain extensive coverage amongst the appropriate target group for the organization's products.

The McKinsey report states that "unless individuals receive value from using social technologies, they won't use these technologies."

I know from personal observation that the Shake and Win campaign provided a popular interface for Hungry Jacks target audience. Not only my son, but all of his class would go home via Hungry Jacks. The benefit of this is short term, in gaining customers, and long term, in developing habits in people.

In Marketing Mag, Kathy Hatzis, director at AMI says, “It is so easy to continue on the traditional route in a highly competitive market place and simply fight on price. However, providing an extremely tactical traffic building campaign that allowed for a fun, interactive way to experience the brand and get a deal proved to be a winner.”

Value lever 6 : Generate and foster sales leads: The benefit to Hungry Jacks here was that consumers were using facebook to tell their friends about the special offers.

 On a socialmediaoverflow, the blogger gives insight into why this app was so successful.

"I am pretty sure I got this app the day it came out or soon after (it was a Friday), one of my friends made me download it and we all got free Whoppers on our way out to a bar. We were very happy and posted about it on Facebook and told people at the bar to download it and try it out as there was a Hungry Jack’s nearby.

Over the next few days the newsfeed was littered with people checking in to Hungry Jack’s and people were commenting on the posts asking what it was, or if people were familiar, everyone was asking “What did you get?”.

 

So, Hungry Jacks, introduced a low cost app, that got all their customers rushing (in the 20 minute  time allowed) to their restaurants and telling their friends exactly where they were.

In the Australian,  January 24 this year, the company that owns Hungry Jacks reported a near tripling of their annual profit to $21 million.

Impressive.

 

It's not just the technology causing the paradigm shift.

7:30 am Friday morning, preparing green tea to start the day and a co-worker asks why I'm so pumped up. Response: I've found the answer.
This Enterprise 2.0 unit is a mind stretcher - the market potential of blogging, flattening organisation hierarchies with social media, sites to source global expertise - wow. Yet, I'd been grappling with whether the technology was the cause of this seismic shift in thinking, or the effect, and on Thursday night found the answers in Jo Owen's book.

I had been concerned by the one-sided view of some of the evidence for the impact of Enterprise 2.0 tools and thought there must be more to it.

OK, I understand the technology is phenomenal, but why has it had such a profound effect? Owen's writing provided the background I sought, describing how, in the old management style (in INN436 we have been calling Enterprise 1.0), every company was following the same management rules or strategies, which had often been retrofitted onto an existing successful business model. The result, as business competitors were doing the same thing, is that nothing improved. In fact, worse still, we suffered the dot.com bust and the credit crunch. Owen gives a high level overview of what he calls Modern management (Enterprise 1.0?) vs New World Disorder (Enterprise 2.0?). A snapshot:

• analysis, certainty vs experiment, uncertainty
• competitive warfare vs asymmetric warfare
• prescriptive rules vs  change the rule.
• make and sell vs co-create
• information deficit vs information surplus
• formal power vs informal power

The understanding I gained was that the technology is enabling this paradigm shift, but is only one of five drivers. The other four equally important factors are:

1. Education - not that humans are smarter, but that more of use have higher education
2. Affluence - that we are better off than our parents and grandparents, and this provides new markets.
3. Globalisation - in the old way, a product was assembled on one site, in the new, there can be several globally dispersed sites. Globalisation opens new markets.
4. Recessions - cited as tough for individuals but good for progress.(For one thing, less viable companies disappear, so there is less competition.)

I appreciated seeing the darker side of the changes also. "The new technology promises freedom but delivers slavery". As an example look at the comments posted in response to airlines proud announcements of wifi provision on long haul flights. A potpourri of responses.

Owen's writing provided another light bulb moment as to why modern man needs to collaborate. This one really resonated with me. Modern man is "collectively smarter but individually more ignorant", and therefore have a greater requirement for collaboration.




A medieval peasant could make and repair almost everything they needed.
A medieval scholar might confidently say they knew 10% of all known human knowledge.

A modern man often doesn't know how things are made, and relies for repair on the aid of a magic wand (credit card)
A modern scholar will confidently know only a teeny tiny % of all known human knowledge.

So - now I understand just how massive this world order change is, and where the technology fits in, I feel I can comfortably and confidently address this week's task - to identify a company successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

and the winner is.. Johnson & Johnson, the world's largest healthcare company, provide an example of an established company who has changed to embrace Enterprise 2.0 technologies. This social media  website has an interview Robert Halper, who is the director of video communication for Johnson & Johnson. Robert explains how Johnson and Johnson use youtube to directly promote healthcare and indirectly humanise the image of the company.

 

Although for interest - read this blog on a company in Brazil (Semco) where the owner made radical changes to the way the company worked by removing management and empowering employee collaboration, including allowing the workers to choose the hours they worked and  their pay scales and all without advanced technology.

 

and to finish - a great video...

Crowdsourcing explained

 

Whew.
So much information, so little time.

Thanks for reading my blog.


References:

Owen, J. (2009) "The Death of Modern Management. How to Lead in the New World Disorder" Wiley