Social Media for OLD people

Anyone who has followed my blogs knows that Chris Brogan has had a significant impact on my social media education. The amazing thing is, he and I have never met nor have we even talked on the phone to each other.

I was sent a link to one of his blog posts. I read the post, liked it, and then searched his archives. Some of the suggestions and tips he offered were useful in our “everyday” business of selling iced tea concentrate to foodservice operators. Some of his ideas and postings were completely new revelations to me.

You see…I am old. Well, I’m older than Chris. I learned spreadsheets on Lotus 1-2-3. I did not have online access to research sites and news archives. I had to look stuff up in encyclopedias (real books) that required you to correctly spell the thing you wanted to research. For news archives, we would sift through hundreds of microfilms looking for a particular picture or quote. It was tedious and sometimes painful.

I love what the Internet has developed into so far. With news apps, search engines and alerts, we can filter information to specific key words so we don’t have to read the “fluff” until we get to something that is personally useful and/or relevant.

As a marketer and brand owner, I really love that social media is reshaping how business gets done. We have heard the term “social media marketing” so often that we blindly accept the phrase without really understanding what it actually means.

The concept of social media marketing is not an easy one to understand. (At least not for my age group.) We can define it as “marketing strategies utilizing the Internet and social/community websites”, which sounds pretty, but what does it mean?

Initially I looked at it in the context of traditional marketing. I tried to figure out how our print and word of mouth marketing campaigns would fit within the social sphere. To put it simply, I tried to fit a square peg (traditional marketing) in a round hole (social media).

It wasn’t until after reading Chris’ book (co-authored by Julien Smith) Trust Agents and then the book Socialnomics by Eric Qualman that the proverbial light bulb went off.

Social media marketing is not so much about marketing as it is about communication.

Reading those words now, I feel pretty silly. And I am sure a few of you out there (Chris, Julien and Eric most likely) are probably in disbelief that I didn’t just KNOW this simple truth.

Facebook, Twitter and the like are not about forcing a brand or product upon the consumer. For the companies who DO employ that strategy, IT IS SIMILAR TO WRITING AN EMAIL IN CAPS…it’s just not very professional.

Social media sites are about communicating. Sometimes you communicate with your clients and consumers. Sometimes you communicate with your peers. Every once in awhile you may even communicate with your competitors.

The marketing aspect comes from keeping your brand and/or product in front of consumers. By engaging in conversations about your product/company/ brand/ or even personal interests, you develop (or enhance) a relationship with your customer. You get to know more about the people using your product, and they get to know more about the people making the products they use.

I still have a lot to learn about social media marketing.

Thankfully, BECAUSE of social media, I have an almost unlimited supply of reference material and expert advice available to me.

Strategic Partners: For better or worse

Strategic alliances are not uncommon within the foodservice community, not even within the foodservice beverage division of the community. Sometimes, despite the best of intentions, strategic differences can occur between the two partners.

Over the next few weeks we will get to witness what is sure to become a very expensive dispute between two international foodservice brand powerhouses…Kraft Foods and Starbucks Corp.

According to an article on thestreet.com, Kraft has begun arbitration to challenge Starbucks’ attempt to end a 12-year agreement.

The dispute, it appears, is over the right to market Starbucks’ bagged coffee products. Starbucks has asserted that Kraft failed to meet certain provisions of their arrangement, including keeping Starbucks involved in major marketing initiatives, and has said those failures caused “the erosion of brand equity.”

In their defense, since executing the agreement in 1998, Kraft has taken the business from $50million to $500million in annual revenue. So there seems to be slightly more than “erosion of brand equity” behind Starbucks decision to terminate the agreement.

As the arbitration process evolves and more information becomes available, maybe we’ll get a more accurate picture of what is really at stake, and how much this dispute will cost.

In the meantime, the process has raised a question I feel is important. What is more important to a company/brand – maximum annual revenue or brand integrity and control?

Sure, my question is a somewhat loaded question. What company doesn’t want to achieve the maximum annual revenue possible? That’s what companies are designed for…annual revenue. If developing a strategic alliance with a partner is going to help you increase revenue (and/or decrease operating costs), then at the surface, it would be a wise decision.

However, decisions like that always come at a cost and usually that cost is brand control and/or brand integrity.

We don’t need to look any further than this past July when tensions arose between Honest Tea and Coca Cola over wording on the labels of the tea company’s product line. Honest Tea, in an attempt to retain brand integrity and brand control refused to change the wording. Coca Cola respectfully agreed with Honest Tea management, and no changes were made. Since Coke has a financial stake in Honest Tea, we can’t really define them as “strategic partners”, but even so, the importance of brand identity/control can be seen from this example.

A more likely dispute between strategic partners would arise when a decision is made to grow a product line thru new product offerings. The brand owner, after establishing brand recognition and value, decides they want to cash in on that exposure. The brand company develops some complimentary products to extend their product offerings only to find the synergies shared with their strategic partner on the original item(s) aren’t there on the new product offerings.

With the recent success of the Via line of instant coffee products, and the inevitable brand extensions to follow, the Starbucks decision to end their alliance with Kraft is a little easier to understand.

We’ll have to wait and see how much the decision costs Starbucks in terms of money and brand dilution.

Communication Breakdown

As manufacturers, how do we utilize the power of social media to help promote our brands? That’s a question I have been asking for over a year.

If I had a retail brand, the answer (I feel) would be simpler. As a foodservice beverage company though, how do you open the lines of communication with customers? Is it even important to a foodservice operator to have some type of communication with the manufacturer?

From the manufacturer’s perspective, I KNOW we want open communication with the operators who use our products. We want to feel like we are part of the operators’ success – a resource they can call upon when they need something outside of ordinary. We love the challenge of creating unique flavor combinations, or developing a product to meet a specific application. We also like hearing from operators when they have problems…it gives us a chance to resolve the issue and, sometimes those resolutions lead to completely new products. In any event, the communication leads to a stronger relationship and better understanding of each other’s business.

I’m pretty sure the operator would say it is important. With open lines of communication, an operator who has a specific need can communicate directly with the manufacturer to have a specific flavor profile developed. Or, if the operator had a problem with a particular product, wouldn’t it be easier to resolve the problem directly with the manufacturer?

If operators think communicating with manufacturers is important (and I know manufacturers think it’s important) where does the breakdown occur? Why are we not having more direct communication with each other?

From my personal experience, the breakdown appears to happen from the distribution side. Now before my distributor friends jump all over me, let me say this - not all distributors are the same. There are some progressive, modern thinking foodservice distributors across the country that have embraced social media as a way of solidifying the relationship between operator and manufacturer. By being a conduit and opening direct lines of communication, those distributors have strengthened their relationships with BOTH the operator and manufacturer.

But there are other distributors who (as I was reminded at a recent conference) feel they need to “own the relationship with the operator.” I can understand the sentiment, and the desire to keep the relationship private, but in doing so transparency is eliminated and trust is broken.

We’re all in this together –operators, distributors and manufacturers. Transparency is happening all around us via social media. If we become overprotective of our relationships, and don’t foster an environment that promotes open communication, we run the risk of alienating ourselves as the rest of the world rushes by at Internet speed.