Rowan's blog

Engaging and enabling IBM's Brand & Communications teams around the world (CEB Awards)

The 2016 CEB Internal Communications Summit and Awards is on in London at the moment. 

My colleague Nicky Parkinson and I submitted an entry (below) in the 'Innovations in Digital, Social, and Mobile Communications' CEB Award category, for our next-to-no budget work engaging and enabling IBM's Brand & Communications teams around the world. 

We were delighted to have been shortlisted, the competition was tough!

CEB AWARD SUBMISSION - Innovations - IBM - June 2016 from Rowan Hetherington

IBM on Brand

What is IBM's brand strategy? IBM's Jon Iwata explains it in two minutes:

“IBM on Brand” by Jon Iwata from VSA Partners on Vimeo.

 

I think the logic applies well to 'branding' a career too, i.e. a career is not defined by the various roles you have been in, but by your character - the values, beliefs and skill sets that make you unique.

 

Do marketers need to be strategists?

Marketing is getting increasingly complex.

The marketing funnel is no longer linear, it has changed:

(Source: Forrester)

Typical marketing funnels, like the one shown at the top of this excellent Forrester graphic, were largely based on a groundbreaking article published by American academics Lavidge and Steiner in 1961.

1961 was before my time – but I’m told that in 1961 there were 3 television networks in the US. Clearly a lot has changed in the marketing landscape since then. 

The ‘new funnel’ represented in the lower portion of the graphic shows the impact of peer reviews, competitive alternatives, recommendations from peers and user-generated content.

This is infinitely complex because there are literally thousands of different ways to engage. I don't even think it's accurate to call it a 'funnel' anymore, it's more like a giant subway map - our prospects and clients could enter and exit at multiple different points. This is all due to Web 2.0 and social media having turned the communications landscape on its head in the last ten years. Prospects and clients now source information, make decisions and get influenced in very different ways.

As a result, I believe as marketers, we need to integrate our activities into a consolidated, integrated map that creates a positive user experience along the engagement journey – providing touch points when, where and how our prospects or clients want to engage, i.e. on their terms, not ours.

To do this requires a lot of thought - not just the ability to implement activities, but real insight and strategic planning ability.

Do you think today's marketers are strategic enough?

Skills gap highlighted in the 2012 IBM Tech Trends Report

Continuing the theme of my previous post, you may be interested to learn that only 1 out of 10 organizations have the IT skills needed to harness the benefits of business analytics, mobile computing, cloud computing and social business. This data comes from a new survey from the IBM Center for Applied Insights. Nearly 50 percent of educators and students surveyed indicated major gaps in their institution's ability to teach the right IT skills.

This survey of more than 1,900 technology professionals, academics and students has been alarming to CEOs, CMOs and other C-Suite leaders trying to gain new insights into changing customers demands and buying trends.

 

While IT skills and digital skills are somewhat different, they are becoming increasingly interconnected as marketing becomes more technology focussed. The most significant skills gaps I have encountered while trying to implement the Integrated Planning System are:

1. Social (listening) research. How can organisations engage or respond effectively if they cannot hear the conversation going on?
2. Content. By content, I mean social content and curated content as opposed to paid content, which we know all too well how to create and implement. These first two skills gaps connect to 'social business'.
3. Analytics. This is the same as 'business analytics'. This is different from the metrics - the skill required is analysing the results and creating meaningful insight that can derive new behaviour and future iterations.

 

Does your organisation suffer from similar skills gaps? What have been the most successful methods you have found to address them?

The digital skills gap

One of the big challenges I encounter in my efforts to enable the Integrated Planning System is that existing staff often do not have the skills required to implement the steps.

Even if there was budget for agency resources, many of the tasks involved cannot be effectively delegated to an agency, because that generally adds to the silo effect (as opposed to having one integrated team focussed on the client experience for each constituency segment). This becomes troublesome if:

1. the agency is not an integrated part of the team throughout the process of planning, implementation and iteration, or
2. multiple agencies are competing for budget by recommending engagement tactics that fit into their capability areas (rather than contributing to a neutral planning process based on Steps 1 & 2 of the Integrated Planning System).

 

My experience is that this digital skills gap is pervasive around the world. At IBM, this is something we work to address internally as we have many internal experts. I recently met with Patty Keegan from Digital Chameleon, which helps
companies mainstream digital knowledge & skills across their business. It was interesting and validating to learn that many organisations in Australia are going through the same challenges I have been working to address through the internal Digital Strategy Enablement program at IBM.

Patty was recently interviewed on Sky News about the digital skills gaps in Australia. I thought you may find this interesting.

View on YouTube (incl. full screen option)

What is social listening and why should organisations do it?

In an earlier post I covered detailed findings about enabling social listening research within IBM's marketing and communications practice. Those of you not familiar with social listening may be wondering what all the fuss is about -- why has social listening become a hot topic? 

This short video, from the internal Digital Workshop in Milan last year communicates the value of listening -- and why all modern marketers should all have some basic skill in this area. A few of my followers found this on YouTube and said they found it useful, so I'm sharing it here.

View on YouTube (incl. full screen option)

If your defined constituency segment is active online, I recommend embedding a listening practice as the backbone of the Integrated Planning System. It provides significant value as part of steps 2, 3, 4 and 5.

First, listening can be extremely valuable in defining the constituency segment you want to engage with, as well as gathering Constituent Insights, including information about their shared interests, beliefs, ambitions and behaviours (which may inform the value proposition and content) and which social sites, networks and platforms they use (which will inform decisions regarding which tactics and media to use within the engagement plan).

Listening should also be an ongoing activity throughout the engagement cycle (Step 3) -- for example responding in near real time to potential leads. It would also form part of the measurement system (Step 4) and analytics (Step 5).

I hope this is useful to those of you new to social listening.

The Integrated Planning System

I led the 'Plan' stream at the FUNNEL Sydney event on Monday with a presentation titled, The Integrated Planning System: Five steps to ensure your marketing plan remains effective within the evolving digital environment. 

The Integrated Planning System - Presentation for FUNNEL B2B Marketing event, Sydney 2012 from Rowan Hetherington

I have been working on this system for a couple of years now. We used it in IBM's Digital Strategy Workshops, designed to enable IBM's global marketing and communications practice on digital, which have now reached 1,500 team members. It is also a key part of our corporate digital guidance materials. An earlier iteration of the work is shared in this earlier post.

Many of my posts on this blog touch on elements within this Integrated Planning System, including digital specialty areas and also the overall change management effort involved in adoption of this type of approach within a large, globally integrated enterprise. This topic fascinates me -- I welcome any thoughts, ideas questions or comments. 

 

Speaking at the FUNNEL Sydney event

I was very honoured to speak at the FUNNEL B2B Marketing and Sales event in Sydney on the 19th Nov. It was the first time this event had been run in Australia (it is well known in the UK). 280 delegates attended, from around Australia.

I enjoyed many of the other speakers' presentations and met interesting people - most of whom were there to discuss and learn about the impact of technology; digital, big data and analytics on the profession. 

The tweets flowed and a lot of great points were shared with the hashtag #funnel12. A few quotes that stood out to me from the day:

• "Inbound converts 300% more than outbound at SAP, which is why we're focussed on pull marketing" ~ Ray Kloss, SAP
• "Digital comms are about relevancy, not reach" ~ Benoit Droulez, Traction Digital
• "Begin with the customer experience & work back toward the technology" ~ Quote from Steve Jobs, used in a presentation
• "Stories are 6-7 more times likely to be remembered than traditional corp. messages" ~ Joanne Jacobs, 1000 Heads
• "I wouldn't call it social media - I'd call it digital relationships" ~ Ray Kloss, SAP
• And my favorite...?! "Lightbulb moment listening to @RoHetherington re Constituencies vs Audiences!" ~ Bronwyn Cook

Thanks to @greenhatmktg and @SocialSammy for taking these photos of my presentation:

I will share my presentation in the next post.

Many thanks to Brad Langton and the FUNNEL team for creating an enjoyable and valuable event.

 

Action Research Project: Enabling social listening at IBM

Earlier this year I designed and led a four week Action Research Project. The aim was to gather insight into how sustainable, pervasive social (listening) research could be enabled within IBM's marketing and communications practice.

This project was not about developing specialised, highly trained social listening teams within IBM -- we have those teams in place. This project focused on testing ways to enable social listening to increase the surface area of a function by allowing staff to identify and respond to opportunities themselves.

In July 2012, 16 voluntary participants completed guided action learning cycles. The participants were broadly representative of the marketing and communications function: from 11 disciplines across 10 countries, ranging from senior executives to recent graduates. Data was compiled, analysed and presented to the business in a research report with recommendations.

Listening Action Research Project Report from Rowan Hetherington

I'm interested to hear from anyone else who is conducting similar research.

This project method is being re-run within IBM as an organisational learning system for listening, with results backing up the findings from the initial action research project.

 

Case study: IBM's journey to becoming a social business

MBA, Change management, Communications and IT students around the world are learning about social networking tools and the potential benefits of applying these tools within an organisational context.

Articles on this topic quickly become out of date, due to the speed of progress in this rapidly emerging area.

This case study provides information, current as at September 2012, about IBM's journey to becoming a social business.

Case study: IBM's journey to becoming a social business (September 2012) from Rowan Hetherington

My thanks go to:

• Greg Cartan, Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM), Graduate Certificate in Change Management (GCCM) Course Leader for 'Systems for Change'. Greg invited me to write this, as a way to update the existing AGSM course materials and provided helpful guidance on how to write an academic case study.
• Ethan McCarty, Senior Manager, Digital and Social Strategy at IBM, for content contributions.
• Karen Lilla, Manager, External Relations, Social Business for reviewing.
• Lena Lockhart, a wonderful friend, for lending her proof reading skills.