Social Branding for B2B. Notes from a Hardass Motherfu*ker Guest Lecture presented by Scot McKee, Managing Director, Birddog to a University School of Management MBA course, 2011. McKee introduces the digital branding and social marketing challenges of today to the business leaders of tomorrow. The University plays host to a presentation of explanation, insight and case study examples from the practical world of B2B brand building, digital strategy and social delivery. McKee's additional thoughts and a video are available at: http://www.birddog.co.uk McKee's books on the subject of Creative B2B Branding and Business Marketing are available from Amazon - http://is.gd/mckeebooks

1. Social
Branding
for B2B
Notes from a
Hardass
Motherfu*ker
Presentation to University MBA Students
Scot McKee, Managing Director, Birddog
Dec. 2011

2. I‟m here because of this
“Can‟t stop recommending this book”
***** Amazon, 2011
“If only all business books were this good”
***** Amazon, 2011
“The first business book I have read from start to finish”
***** Amazon, 2011

3. A summary of me
25 Years of B2B brand strategy pain
Just when I thought it was safe
Digital marketing happened
And then Social Media…

4. A summary of the B2B Mkt.
Lifetimes of communicating function over form
Dogmatic repetition of product specification
Neither of which the customer cares about
Then Social Media scared the crap out of everyone

5. A summary of you
Learning marketing during a banking crisis
Eurozone economic meltdown
An „endless‟ global recession
Fundamental changes to business marketing
In other words…
…the pain has only just begun

6. All roads lead to the brand
Today‟s objectives:
Offer insight into new media realities
Encourage you to challenge B2B conventions
Prepare you for the shit-storm heading your way

7. All roads lead to the brand
To do that, we need to answer a question…

8. What is a brand?
Answer:
“A perception, or collection of
perceptions in the mind of an audience”

9. What is a brand?
“What people say about you
when you‟ve left the room” - Jeff Bezos, Founder, Amazon

10. What is a brand?
So, in a B2B context, a burnt cow‟s arse is not a brand

11. What is a brand?
This is not a brand either
It‟s a badge

12. What is a brand?
THIS is a brand

13. What is a brand?
Your brand is how people „feel‟ about you
„Intangible assets‟

14. What is a brand?
Traditionally, we have controlled perceptions with „stuff‟

15. What is a brand?
But what happens when there is no „stuff‟, only people?

16. What is a brand?
People now connect to devices, networks, communities
Not „stuff‟

17. What is a brand?
Business brands are „always on‟
Up mountains… on the beach…

18. What is a brand?
…in public… and… (ahem)… in private

19. What is a brand?
In social spaces brand focus is now „content‟
Not the old business content, new customer content

20. What is a brand?
To influence brand perceptions, content has to be:
Customer focussed
Customer relevant
Customer endorsed
Even customer generated

21. What is a brand?
In other words, businesses facilitate brand conversation
But no longer control it

22. What is a brand?
Selecting the right message to shape perceptions
is very different from pushing the corporate message

23. What is a brand?
Social ideas & concepts that engage the customer
May not be aligned to traditional corporate „selling‟

24. What is a brand?
Determining „good‟ from „bad‟ or success from failure is
governed by client expectation, and the crowd… *Eeek*

25. What is a brand?
2 very different examples
With different outcomes
Highlight the disparity…

26. The Powwownow Story
Digital Strategy
Community Engagement
„Pull‟ v „Push‟
Creative Platform®
Social Channels
The UK‟s leading conference calling service provider

27. The Powwownow Story
Digital Strategy
Community Engagement
„Pull‟ v „Push‟
Creative Platform®
Objective:
Social Channels
„Build a social community to raise brand awareness‟

28. The Powwownow Story
A single online creative concept to encourage
debate about business travel
(and offer the conference calling alternative)

29. The Powwownow Story
Applied via a „sponsorship‟ brand model

30. The Powwownow Story
Multi-platform delivery

31. The Powwownow Story
Online/offline social integration

32. The Powwownow Story
Info - graphics
Distributable content creation

33. The Powwownow Story
After 5 months:
Community of 55,000
Engaging hundreds daily
100% positive sentiment
Brand awareness high
Sales conversion low
Project suspended

34. The Powwownow Story
Q:
#Success or #Fail…?
A:
Social Success
Sales Failure
Learning:
Agree achievable objectives
Social strategies are long-term
Supports the sales process, not replace it

35. When it goes right… it can go very right.

36. The RingGo Story
Objective:
„Harness positive brand sentiment to influence customers
and prospects‟

37. The good guys
3rd Party mobile parking services provider

38. The bad guys
The Rail Operator & Parking Contractor replacing RingGo
with a less efficient and less secure parking system

39. The deal
3 Week campaign
Briefed in 20 minutes
Agreed on a handshake
Full agency autonomy & independence
(no client approvals/delays)
Blogging platform launched within 24 hours

40. Give it a Name

41. Give it an Image

42. Hit the „Publish‟ button…

43. Focus on Content

44. Focus on Content

45. Focus on Content
Blog offered news & opinion
A destination for customers
Content driven by advocates
A bridge linking communities
High visibility & transparency

46. What was achieved in 21 days?

47. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 22 2011
14 views

48. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 23 2011
63 views

49. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 24 2011
220 views

50. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 25 2011
458 views

51. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 26 2011
535 views

52. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 27 2011
917 views

53. The Yellow Lines analytics
February 28 2011
1,402 views

54. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 01 2011
1,621 views

55. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 02 2011
5,104 views

56. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 03 2011
6,900 views

57. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 04 2011
7,643 views

58. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 05 2011
8,074 views

59. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 06 2011
8,504 views

60. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 07 2011
9,433 views

61. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 08 2011
10,707 views

62. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 09 2011
13,556 views

63. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 10 2011
14,693 views

64. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 11 2011
15,365 views

65. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 12 2011
15,523 views

66. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 13 2011
15,699 views

67. The Yellow Lines analytics
March 14 2011
16,570 views

68. What did we achieve in
21 days?
Community building:
Over 22 Thousand (22,000)
unique site visits

69. What did we achieve in
21 days?
Engagement/ Brand advocacy:
>8 Hundred (800) comments
99.8% positive sentiment
Local News Coverage
BBC Radio Coverage

70. What did we achieve in
21 days?
Policy review/ Setting:
Email petition from supporters
Email responses from Board
Directors to RingGo customers
27 Letters submitted to MPs
Requests from Office of Rail
Regulators (ORR)

71. What did we achieve in
21 days?
“The Yellow Lines is an
invaluable asset that has
gathered all the positive user
support we knew existed but
were never able to harness,
and made it available for the
whole world to share…”
Harry Clarke – Founder, RingGo

72. Great, but…
Social case studies are rare in B2B
Fear, inertia, scepticism, lack of experience dominate
So…
Q: How do we drive change?
A: Lead by example, one Turdy Brown step at a time…

73. B2B Marketing Conf. 2011
Full Keynote
Presentation:
www.birddog.co.uk
Here are the
important slides…

74. The social wall of turd
Customers are on the other side

75. The B2B Challenge
Staff, customers & prospects
have gone Digital and Social „crazy‟

76. The B2B Challenge
But the business response isn‟t quite working

77. The B2B Challenge
The challenge is for business to keep up with customers

78. The response so far
In the „old‟ digital days, you would send email

79. The response so far
Not working?
Ok…SEND MORE

80. The response so far
But it‟s still not working
Because of the „social‟ wall

81. The response so far
It stops everything…

82. The web is dead
Source: Wired/Cisco

83. The web is dead
Audience adoption of social media
is forcing business change

84. The web is dead
The central corporate „push‟ hub

85. The web is dead
Now has to „pull‟ audiences from social spaces

86. The web is dead
Now has to „pull‟ audiences from social spaces

87. The web is dead
But while businesses focus on the website

88. The web is dead
The customers are ignoring it

89. The web is dead
Oops
Customers love being social

90. Some facts
Over 8,000 social channels
Mobile commerce to reach $31bn by 2016
938 changes to Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn since
1/1/11
90% of the World‟s data has been created in the last
2yrs
28% of buying decisions influenced by social networks
Source: IBM/Social Media Today

91. The point for B2B is…
Those who “don‟t see the relevance” – are dead.

92. The point for B2B is…
Social media needs to become the fabric of all marketing
activity

93. The point for B2B is…
The entire Marketing Plan needs to be socialised
(That doesn’t mean all marketing is social media…)

94. Social integration
Understanding the customer‟s journey
Allowing online engagement offline
And vice-versa
Encourage advocates, not customers
Personality trumps protocol
Create experiences, not sales pitches

95. Potential Reach?
E.g. Promoting this presentation via:
Traditional/Website/Email
100

96. Potential Reach?
Promoting this presentation via:
Our known/tracked/online network
In the first 24hrs
100 100,000

97. Potential Reach?
Conservative extended community
100 100,000 200,000

98. Potential Reach?
Within a week
100 100,000 200,000 500,000

99. Guardianship
Seeding + Syndication + Aggregation = Reach
Increased Reach = Brand Amplification
Brand Amplification = Sales
But… ownership changes hands

100. Guardianship
From the moment you hit the button
It‟s not „yours‟ anymore

101. Guardianship
It belongs to the crowd

102. Guardianship
The audience becomes part of the brand
It wants to be associated with content
It wants to participate
It wants to share

103. Guardianship
When brand support is high
Sales are the inevitable consequence

104. To end at the beginning
Engaging Content Creation
Distributable Social Content
Cross Channel Sharing
Message Amplification
Customer Engagement

105. The social experiment
And that was the end of the presentation
Apart from… the photo

106. The social experiment
To engage wider audiences, you have to make your
brand, your world, accessible to the outside world

107. The social experiment
So, at the start of my presentation, I took a picture…

108. The social experiment
…and tweeted it

109. The social experiment
It received more views than the entire conference
delegation… in 5 minutes

110. The social experiment
In 10 minutes… It had been re-tweeted 26 times

111. The social experiment
In 15 minutes… It achieved coveted „Top Tweet‟ status

112. The social experiment
By the end of the day, it had been viewed 400 times

113. The social experiment
Less than a week later, views passed 1000

114. The social experiment
It could have ended
there...
…but the crowd had other plans

115. The social experiment
During the presentation…

116. The social experiment
After the presentation…

117. The social experiment
Picked up and quoted by competitors
(Thought leadership)

118. The social experiment
Support
Fan
Advocate
Facilitating independent brand awareness

119. The social experiment
YouTube video released (next stop Hollywood…)

120. The social experiment
Not an advertisement
Not sponsorship
Not paid for
Not requested
Content aggregation,
Syndication,
brand amplification

121. The social experiment
The future of a B2B
brand will be
determined by its
social audience –
whether you like it,
or not
Content aggregation,
Syndication,
brand amplification

122. The social experiment
One hour after movie release

123. The social experiment
That‟s a month of presentations, in an hour

124. The social experiment
One week after slides were shared

125. The social experiment
That‟s over two years of presentations, in a week

126. The social experiment
Revenue will come
from a bunch of
people you barely
know learning of
your brand from a
bunch of people
they barely know…
…but trust implicitly

127. Final takeaways
You‟ve seen a large social campaign
A small social campaign
And a personal social campaign
We haven‟t even touched on what‟s really possible…

128. Final takeaways
…But that‟s another story for another day.

129. Final takeaways
Listen – customers talk to/about you all the time
Be social – talking about it isn‟t the same as doing it
Hurry up – your competitors are already there

130. Final takeaways
B2B Brands can be built online
It‟s my job to make it possible
It‟s my job to show you how
It‟s your job to make it happen

131. Thank you (and be social…)
Scot McKee

132. Contact
www.birddog.co.uk