B2B marketing: catching the social media wave

Some recent opinion has posited that we as a profession (in B2B marketing at least) are being slow to adopt new social media channels. The inference is that we should do away with the tried and trusted and dive headlong into the deep, rewarding azure of social media.

For those of us that have been around a few (but actually not that many) years this is disconcertingly similar to the technology bubble of just under ten years ago. A very fragmented market, loads of hype, lots of confusion, a new dotcom pitching up every day. No one really knew where to put their money but there was loads of it so it got sprayed pretty much everywhere. With a highly inefficient allocation of capital many of these investments vaporised.

Arguably, however, social media has now entered a stabilised phase. There are a number of well established platforms and models. Until very recently this wasn’t the case and many marketers could be forgiven for sitting back and waiting for the froth to come off the market. With limited marketing budgets only so much can be devoted to the new and untested.

Some commentators have gone as far as to say you don’t need an ROI for social media. Again, this is reminiscent of the dotcom days when otherwise serious people were running around asking questions like: “What’s your business model?” as if the "old" rules didn't apply. Michael Porter struck a chord with me at the time when he sagely observed (and I’m paraphrasing) – there is only one business model: you buy something and then sell it for more than you bought it for. The questions for marketers now shouldn’t be: “What social media channels are you using?” but “Which channels deliver the most valuable dialogue with your customers?” The latter may or may not include social media sites.

Anyways, all this is sounding a little on the negative side. It shouldn’t sound do so because I’m a big fan. Why else would I be sitting here blogging when I should be tucked up in bed? No marketing professional would resist new channels if they are demonstrated to generate a return. To target them, marketers need to find out where on the web their customers are aggregating; how they can then engage with them effectively whilst still promoting true (and revealing) dialogue and have a strategy to deal with the results of that dialogue – both negative and positive. All this must be done in a measurable way whilst integrating with existing channels.

The good news is that this is an exciting time to be a marketer. There is a tsunami of new and innervating stuff out there for us to get to grips with. Amongst all this it’s also important not to forget the basics of brand building programs – the requirements for:

• Access to multiple media
• Integrated communications
• Measurement of results.

Finally, returning to the issue of speed of adoption of social media channels by B2B marketers it’s worth looking at the classic Rogers’ adoption curve. With just under a third of B2B marketers using blogs that puts us firmly in "early majority" territory. This may mean that we have some way to go to achieve truly community-focused marketing but think about the rate of diffusion of previous innovations (e.g. telephone, PC, internet) in the business environment and you might say we’re not doing too bad.

Biotech's week: of sells and cells

There's been more news and views this week on how biotech is weathering the financial storm. It's only a matter of a couple of weeks since analysts were telling the Wall Street Journal that the sector was a safe haven in a stormy market. That picture is now looking distinctly out of kilter with reality. Admittedly, at the time it didn't seem to chime with what was going on around the industry.

At the start of the year life sciences was on a bit of a roll but by the summer it was obvious that the economy was catching up with it. With biotech being seen as the riskiest area in life sciences (e.g. long investment timescales for drug development compared to areas like diagnostics and medical devices) it's perhaps not surprising that it's being hit hard.

A report this week from Burrill and Company said that in October biotech had one of its worst months on record. It states ominously that market meltdown "will continue to affect for the foreseeable future the flow of much needed capital into the sector." As we have seen and noted elsewhere this is likely to result in tightening on costs (release of staff and less investment in R&D) with some companies being forced to sell out at less than favourable prices.

On a positive front, my erstwhile state of Michigan has joined its more progressive peers by passing Proposal 2 on Tuesday. According to the Detroit Free Press MI voters approved the embryonic stem cell research measure by 52% to 48% against. Opposition groups including the Michigan Catholic Conference and Right to Life of Michigan funded scare-mongering ads showing images of humans with hooves instead of hands. Proposal 2 amends the state's constitution to allow MI researchers to use embryos surplus to fertility treatment requirements to be used as a source for embryonic stem cells in disease research. Proponents say that the capacity for ESCs to form almost any cell in the body provides untold potential for curing disease. Michigan can now compete and attract investment and talent in this important area.

Obama: the real change - from sales to delivery

Much has been made of the marketing force that was the Obama campaign. Reaching out to and energising new audiences. Effective utilisation of new and multiple social media channels. Trigger marketing (or at least creating the perception of responsiveness) but all the time tirelessly pushing the core message of change.

Within any business, a considerable investment is made in ensuring that the marketing messages concord with customer experience. The handover from sales to delivery is optimised to be efficient and delight the client. However, the new president's room for manoeuvre to implement his key promise - change - will be very restricted. Being long on rhetoric and big on charisma will not provide the answers needed on the economy, security and international affairs. Will the inevitable dissonance that arises as a result of the difference between promise and reality be as expertly managed as the campaign?

Experience from the UK suggests there may be no reason to worry. The 1997 New Labour landslide was delivered on the back of a change message. The 11 years since has shown that apart from a propensity to waste massive quantities of voters' cash very little has changed. We still have lack of leadership, sleaze, poor decision-making and lack of imagination in abundance. Voters become inured to lack of delivery on promises. Perhaps because Obama is who he is that's enough change for the electorate anyhow.

One has to hope that the abovementioned campaign approach of rhetoric, charisma and lack of policy detail isn't taken on board by the UK Tories as a winning formula. Cameron has been excelling for some time with the latter factor (and let's not forget that new UK governments don't get a several weeks handover period) but to the extent that the second (charisma) is to a large extent required to carry off the first, they wouldn't have a hope.

The electoral college system means that, despite the fact that nearly 47% of voters plumped for McCain, Obama achieved a sweeping victory. The UK doesn't have a gearing system like the electoral colleges that amplifies differences; however, the first-past-the-post system means that usually the majority of the electorate is disenfranchised when it comes to installing a government. It's an imperfect system but presumably the knowledge that we get an opportunity to boot them out a few years down the line and the immutable law that every action has a reaction (viz. the rise of Newt Gingrich in response to the first 2 years of Clinton liberalism) is enough to sustain the disenfranchised through those years of pain.

Initial thoughts on what the new regime will mean for our industry. As far as biopharma is concerned in Obamadom, the industry can look to increasing cost controls with expensive biotech drugs in the firing line whilst a greater role for generics and general price controls can be expected. DTC (direct-to-consumer) advertising is also likely to feel the heat with greater regulation. Pharma donated approximately $10m to the Obama campaign.

Market for mammoths

On a non-election day the news that scientists had managed to create viable mouse clones from frozen cells would no doubt have created a frenzy of media teeth-gnashing and dire warnings from the "Thought for the Day" slot. As it was, it still got a good deal of coverage - my favourite being the Daily Mail headline: "Cloning from the grave".

The story was a classic in how the media manages to mis-cover technology issues through a combination of glossing over the detail and headline-generating hyperbole. A mouse has been cloned from 16 year old DNA - next step the mammoth!

First of all, we need to start from the premise that the story is hard fact. Here a degree of caution should be exercised - it's not so long since a certain Dr Hwang's career went south (South Career!) due to false claims of human cloning. The present work was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a second tier journal (usually where Science/Nature/Cell rejects end up) and one that relies on an old boys' network where papers submitted for publication are "sponsored" by members. Reproducibility is key: the work needs to be reproduced in other laboratories to verify it.

It would be a giant leap, in all senses of the term, to go from mouse to mammoth. For a start, any mammoth DNA will have spent the first few thousand years of its preservation in uncontrolled conditions. Even if the DNA is viable what current species would be the surrogate? It could hardly be shoved in a mouse - yes, we've seen human ears growing on mice but a mouse pregnant with a mammoth? I guess the nearest equivalent would be the elephant but they hardly lend themselves to the industrial reproducibility that would be required to achieve this. Finally, on the subject of our tusked, furry friends; what is the market for mammoths anyway? They would hardly make convenient pets unless you live on an iceberg. Given the latter are fast disappearing would probably require a large walk-in freezer to maintain them at a temperature at which they might be comfortable. Or perhaps Kubla Khan's vision: "A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice" anticipated this?

The media today also encouraged us to contemplate cloning ourselves from frozen bits. Apart from that rather exclusive segment occupied by the James Bond-style villain (Ernst Stavro Clonfeld perhaps?), again, what is the market for this? Anyone with an ambition to spread their DNA around the gene pool can do this by standard reproduction. Okay, you get diluted by 50% but at least the process is enjoyable.

Unqualified to lead

In the next few days we'll see who is to be the next President. According to the polls Obama is a shoo-in. Whatever the result it is a widely recognised fact that both candidates are deeply flawed. Highlighted in the media: McCain lightness on economic literacy; Obama has been swotting hard on international affairs.

Here in the UK we have Brown - a calamitous leader. He even had 10 years to prepare. He's only started to look slightly statesman-like with a single issue to focus on. His response to that issue (the economy) has somehow, on the international stage and according to opinion polls, made him appear decisive.

Although Brown's straw-clutching has not been particularly impressive* it sets him miles apart from the weak and the spineless response from the Opposition. What choice does the voter have - the Brown Terror (becoming more terrifying by the day) or Cameron/Osborne effeteness? All with the decision-making capacity of a paper plate of jelly.

What is it about the political systems on both sides of the Atlantic that produce leaders that are patently unqualified for the job?

Bricking it
*Speaking of pouring money down the drain can anyone tell me how many tens of thousands Leeds City Council has wasted installing and then de-installing block-paved road crossings? Anyone who has taken the slightest notice of a block-paved drive would have seen how these rapidly deform with the passage of vehicles. How were they supposed to survive when hammered by hundreds of vehicles (including buses and trucks) every day (and turning them into deathtraps for those on 2 wheels)?

Just another example of how so-called leaders are pissing our money away. Meanwhile the economy they created destroys our savings.

Who hasn't shot JR?

First of all, I'm probably not representative of the typical BBC consumer. For many years we had no TV (and consequently suffered years of abuse and harassment from authorities who couldn't get their heads around this simple fact. Perhaps the government could put as much investment into rounding up real criminals?). We finally succumbed to mild pressure from the Cost Centres to get a TV and were therefore forced to purchase a licence although we had no intention of watching BBC programmes. As things currently stand, I can probably muster up an average of one hour per week devoted to BBC programming. I very rarely use BBC websites, preferring more balanced (unbiased) and less parochial sources for news.

Therein lies the rub; who is representative of the BBC consumer and does the Corporation have any idea how to connect with them? Yes; the biggest problem for the BBC is that it is wholy disconnected from the consumer. Its customer being government which doles out large slabs of cash for it to overpay ineffective executives (why is Mark Thompson paid £800,000 a year exactly?). As a result it generates content it wants and imposes it on the paying customer. If the paying customer isn't interested, then like me, he doesn't watch.

As an aside, the governance from its paymaster is laughable - ref BBC Procurement being subjected to a "savaging" by the naifs on the Public Accounts Committee (Edward Leigh been in Parliament for 30 years and totally disconnected from commercial reality, Austin Mitchell asking ludicrous questions about whether toilet rolls were shipped up and down the motorway (get a grip man. Presumably selected because he himself was once a reporter - what has that got to do with procurement and finance exactly?) and some completely ancient MP (Alan Williams I believe) so doddery that he couldn't find the pages in the NAO report. The BBC procurement team was kind enough not to wipe the floor with this ragbag of misfits and ingenues but it must have been a real struggle for them not to. A complete joke; we have more stringent oversight of our local Scout Group accounts. The result, broadcast on BBC Parliament if not so utterly infuriating would count as far better comedy than the Auntie normally pumps out under this banner.

Following are a few thoughts on the BBC disconnect.

Simon Schama's American History: A Future (something of which I was made aware through advertising on Radio 4) - an interesting hypothesis but highly disappointing in its execution. Schama himself appears to be an intelligent man but in the production the programme was dumbed down to snail's pace conveying 3 or 4 interesting facts for every hour broadcast. The constantly changing shots - showing something and then whipped away onto something else - left the programme devoid of continuity and depth. Here is something at which the BBC should excel (and with the exception of the Gettysburg coverage) failed miserably.

Gardener's World - last week they advised viewers to sweep up leaves by using a lawnmower - how massively irresponsible is this? Already the blight of suburban weekends they advocate extending the season. Perhaps they could calculate how many extra tonnes of CO2 are pumped into the atmosphere as a result of this needless use of energy?

Blue Peter - even my kids, massive devotees over the years, now say this is rubbish. The reason, as far as I can tell, is that it doesn't connect with the realities of thier lives. They're not interested in the presenters chucking themselves up/down distant mountains - it bears no relation to their interests and day-to-day lives.

Reliance on a few individuals. This is another bugbear; why oh why given the thousands of talented individuals in this country does everything have to revolve around a few highly irritating "celeb's" - the curly, square-faced jerk from Top Gear, Wogan, Ross, the wally going in a taxi across America, the flop-haired one off "Have I Got News For You", etc?

The only solution to all of this is to hit the BBC where it hurts - i.e. stop paying the licence tax until they start producing what we want.