There have been several instances of companies using social media to apologize for their mistakes, whether for a policy, or product, or a situation that they were responsible for, either directly or indirectly.  Whether it’s the CEO of Jet Blue apologizing for leaving their customers stranded on the runway, or Google saying sorry for an email outage, companies recognize that by saying sorry, they can head off a potential reputation management nightmare, and engage their customers at the same time.

Today, I came across an example of a city using social media for the same thing.  Napoli, in Italy, has a soccer team that’s currently enjoying what looks like their best season for ~ 15 years.  One of their star players is a Slovakian gentleman named Marek Hamsik, who has been linked with a big money move to teams across Europe. 

Last Thursday, Mr. Hamsik was out for a stroll when he was robbed at gunpoint of 800 Euros, and his Rolex watch.  Fearful that this would hasten his departure, and perhaps doom their season;  fans of the Napoli team jumped onto Facebook and created a group with the sole purpose of saying “Sorry.”  Four days later, this group has over 4400  members all wanting to apologize, and let him know that the regular people of Napoli don’t condone what happened.

Marek Hamsik has responded by saying that he’s just looking to put the incident behind him.  And, when told of the Facebook groups that have sprung up about this situation he said “Don’t worry, I am not leaving.” 

It’s doubtful that the one incident would have forced him to relocate, after all … there are robbers with guns in most major cities around the world.  But, when one of the major European clubs comes in with an offer for his services, he may now stop and think about the support he received from the Napoli fans as they came together on Social Media sites.  And maybe, just maybe, that’ll be enough to keep him in the blue of Napoli, at least until the end of the season.

One of the more famous examples of a company using a game as a marketing technique was Burger King. They built three games for the Xbox and Xbox360 and sold them for $4 a pop.

Of the reviews I’ve read, most do not speak highly of these games. But, at the same time, very few speak ultra-negatively either. One review at gamespot.com summed up Sneak King with - “Sneak King isn’t a good game, but it’s so crazy and so cheap that it still manages to be weirdly compelling.”

Match that with the fact that during the 5 week promotional period, they sold more than 2.4 million units.  And as of June 2007 (the latest numbers I have), it was tied with the third best selling Xbox title of all time. 

Its estimated media impression was equivalent to thirteen Super Bowls and helped drive record traffic and sales.  Hence, not surprisingly, Burger King considered this a success. (Numbers and success analysis courtesy Coloribus.com)

We can learn from this…that reaching the upper echelons of perfection is not so much the goal as producing something of interest to your customers. The low cost of entry (particularly compared with the normal cost of a game $30-$50) and the novelty of stuffing hamburgers into the mouths of unsuspecting citizens (the premise of Sneak King) added to the luster and success of the games.

I surprisingly had a hard time finding failures. You might think this bodes well for video games as a marketing technique, but I wonder if most of the failures have been so small that the media took no notice of them.

One failure I found was Viagra’s “Viva Cruiser” Game.  But, this seemed more due to a lack of explaining the side-effects of the drug rather than a problem with the game.

So, what can we learn from this? Video games can be a very lucrative tool for customer engagement.  And, they are a largely untapped market as I could find very few examples to include here. But, even if you do everything right, somethings such as legal worries or other unforeseen problems can sink the ship. Tread carefully.

Wait, think about it first, don’t just do it.

…but all of the cool companies are doing it… and there isn’t a dedicated social network for our prime audience – steeplejacks. If we act fast enough, and leap in with both feet (not something recommended in the steeplejack world), we can become the go-to destination for steeplejack enthusiasts around the world.

Picture by Sponselli

So, have you checked out the demand for such a site? It could be that the reason there isn’t a steeplejack social network is that steeplejacks are too busy climbing chimneys to go on the Web. It could be that the audience isn’t of sufficient size to make a dedicated social network viable. It could be that they’re all already engaged on a similar social network such as one dedicated to dangerous occupations. If you haven’t done the research, you have no idea whether the potential exists for the site to attract enough active members to be a success.

If the potential for the site exists, your next question should be - What will it offer to attract and retain a user base? If you build it, they most likely won’t just come. You have to ask yourself various questions, with the primary ones being: What will the users get out of it? What resources will you offer them that they can’t get elsewhere? Is it just the opportunity to talk about their job / hobby with others? Will you aggregate data from other sources in one place – maps and images of the tallest chimneys, videos of them being climbed, instructional demonstrations, etc – or will you offer new information not found elsewhere?

Of course, part of the discussion on the actual offering should be what you intend to actually use the site for. Do you intend to make ad revenue off it? Sell your products to members? Offer tours & events? Mine the users for their experience and recommendations on your products? Obviously, whatever you intend to do with the site will give direction to the overall look and feel of the site, as you’ll want to ensure that you’re attracting the right people for your purposes.

So, now that you believe there’s an audience, and you have a plan for how you’re going to use it, and a user base building and retention strategy; it’s time to think about the cost to your business. What’s it going to take to get this social network off the ground, and what resources are you going to have to dedicate to it on an ongoing basis? Do you need moderators? How many? How often does your company create new content for the users? How much handholding do the users need? Are there superusers that you can trust with certain responsibilities?

Picture by ThomasHawk

Finally, you have to watch the evolution of the social network to see whether it still allows you to achieve your goals. If it begins to deviate from your purpose, you have to make a choice as to whether you’re going to allow it to float off course, and see where it ends up.  Or, whether you’re going to ‘right the ship’ and make minor course corrections along the way. The problem with the former is obvious, while the problem with the latter is that too harsh a correction can potentially alienate some of your user base, so you need to be careful and preemptive where possible.

What if, after all this, you decide that it’s just too much work to start and maintain your own social network? Depending on your goals, you may just want to go ahead and partner with, or sponsor an existing network. In our example, maybe our firm looking to engage Steeplejacks could negotiate to manage the channel on Steeplejacks on the Dangerous Jobs site - or at the very least, become such an expert in the eyes of the users that they come over to your product page to buy your goods…because ‘he knows what he’s talking about, so his stuff must be good’.’

It doesn’t even have to cost much to sponsor a network. One group I belong to is a meetup group for local soccer players. The cost to the organizer of the meetup group is $45 every 3 months. The cost of this group was previously shared out among the members. A couple of weeks ago, we took an offer to have the group sponsored by The Soccer Resort, a soccer tournament organizing company out of Hoboken, NJ. I don’t know the full details of the arrangement, but I’m going to assume that for at a minimum of the $15 per month cost of the group, The Soccer Resort has just placed their name in front of almost 200 avid soccer players in the DC market. Not a bad price at all.

In my last post, I referenced a magazine ad from an older issue of Business 2.0 (October 24, 2000) describing how interesting it is to time travel BACK in time to get a ‘gut-check’ of the present and maybe, even look into the future.

Perhaps, more interesting than that ad, in my journey back in time, was the large absence of Google on the business radar back then.

Not only was Google absent from the ‘Internet at a Glance’ page, but there was not even a mention of Google in the article about ‘buying ads online’ called ‘Open for Bid-ness, Round Two.’

The article opened citing a recent report that showed many online media buys took place by old school means: “faxes, phone calls, business lunches.”

The article described the abundant need for business/technology that worked for both ad buyers and ad sellers; a solution that addressed the concerns; and concerns about introducing new technology to automate the process.  Or, on the flip-side, it described the problems with having to beef up a sales staff, concerns about excess inventory, and big concerns with conflict of interest between publishers, sellers, buyers, and agencies.

Hindsight is so clearly 20/20.   Nice job, Google!  You saw the opportunity, the challenge.  And, you solved the problem.

So, perhaps a good resolution for me (and you) for next year (wow, is it that time already?) is to read these articles with a bit more sense of foresight – to try to figure out how the current big problems could be the next big solution.

Well, maybe not a day, maybe 8 years.

When I was home for Thanksgiving this past week, I had a chance to enjoy one of my guilty pleasures.

Be Warned: The next few lines may contain the nerdiest thing you have read in a long while.

I’ve saved most all of my old issues of Fast Company and Business 2.0 and when I have spare time, I like to peruse the old issues. I know, I know, N-E-R-D-Y.

But, in my defense…marketing, like much of business, tends to be cyclical. So, I think it is interesting to look at the business trends and emerging business trends from the past, sort of a print version of the Wayback Machine. And, it’s not only the articles and ideas that I find interesting, but also the advertising.

In fact, here’s one of the best ads that I came across was in the October 24, 2000 issue of Business 2.0.

How great is this ad?
“Do you think a hunch about data relationships will improve browser-to-buyer conversion?”

But, here is the best part:
“Your disjointed and incomplete eMarketing data has had you playing the guessing game for too long.”

Back in 2000, way before the great analytics growth explosion, when (WebTrends) Executive
Summaries consisted of nothing more than a few (some meaningless) metrics…

…Coremetrics had the guts to call attention to the fact that eMarketing is trackable and that marketing decisions should not be made based on hunches or worse, bad data.

The fact is that analytics have improved by leaps and bounds in the past 8 years. But, the sad fact is that despite that, many marketers are still making important spending decisions based on their gut-feelings and bad data.

And maybe, some of that is caused by the overwhelming amount of analytic data that is available now. There is a big difference between data and information. Because data whether meaningful or meaningless, without context is really no help. But in this economy, in this recession, very few companies have the luxury of experimental marketing or, in words of Coremetrics, a ‘VP of Guesstimation.”