I took a break from work yesterday and decided to read about the world of corporate espionage. That's where I find the Stern Hu saga of great interest. For those who in Australia who have been living under a rock, Stern Hu is an Executive of Rio Tinto, one of the world's biggest mining companies. He was sentenced recently for industrial espionage, enabling RIO to overcharge China an amount of money equivalent to 10% of Australia's GDP!
Few people in this world can claim such a feat. This must be some kind of world record. So what does one make of this? Well, if you do the crime, you do the time as they say. Stern Hu is currently looking at a 10 year jail sentence.
What follows is more of what I see as the real story. What happens to him? How does Rio Tinto and the Australian government respond?
The answer: Rio Tinto fires him and hangs him out to dry ON THE DAY HE WAS SENTENCED
What's up with that? Are we to believe RIO did not know what he was doing? His activities delivered an obvious and significant positive impact to the Aussie bottom line.
This strikes me as hypocrisy. Australia should try to get him back and thank him. Efforts like this may have contributed to our country avoiding a recession - a highly elusive feat for other developed nations.
I do no condone espionage or crime, but this activity is similar to soldiers who serve the interests of their country. In war, there are soldiers who shoot and those who deal in espionage. When they get caught, we should get them back instead of the whole country condemning them.
AGAIN - he gave 10 years of his life for 10% Aussie GDP.
Let's see Rio Tinto and Australia stand up for their patriot. Australia should be a noble country and stop with this phony moral high ground finger pointing.
Is Stern Hu one of ours? You bet.
Cheers,
Rick
http://xeesm.com/speciale
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Example of service provider developing trust with client for mutual profit
My experience with traditional agencies has been on the negative side, however there is a service provider I really like who go it right.
This business, called Eservices Email in Australia, has been an e-mail services provider here since 1999. Their services are not the cheapest, nor do they try and compete with their US and global competitors on R&D or technology spend. Instead, they built their entire business around service first and ‘bright and shiny objects /tech toys’ second. They apply this model consistently across every client they and serve and have recognised significant growth as a result.
The approach gained my respect as the person managing their commercial contract while I was at a large media and publishing business. Because they often over delivered for my business, I Was more willing to work with them to resolve the occasional issues that came up. In turn they worked hard to ‘think’ about how we operated and were instrumental in our overall email success. Because of their value add service, we saved at least $200,000 one year based on their advice and guidance that they did not charge us for.
This value add in the relationship is something many businesses don't see on paper and fail to acknowledge. I think this is the lazy power play way of doing deals and not conducive to long-term success. It starts with recognizing the provider is out to make a profit too – but within the relationship and its boundaries that are reasonable. You often see service providers pull away from the value add and strategy offerings because they are often not rewarded or valued for it. I was able to quantify this and worked to assure that their contract stood the test and review of our internal audits for over 5 years.
The final piece that really bonded me with this supplier is that I could trusted them to evolve their service with my business and its own evolution. I even set aside some ongoing development funding knowing that working with them for future service ideas would help reduce our overall costs and increase our ROI overall. When I asked their Managing Director about how other clients worked with them he mentioned several clients who do the exact same thing. This transformed our relationship into a very productive alliance that delivered ROI for the business.
When I have spoken to their CEO, Simon O’Day, I have always admired how the principles of the business started with 3 people or so and grew to 40 staff in his core business as well as a group of 4 businesses with nearly 80 overall staff in 10 years in ~7 years. No matter the size of the business, their culture and core philosophy has not changed. He did admit that it gets harder as you scale up but you have to stick to your heritage and address your failings honestly as they come up.
This is a practice that I not only advocate to other service providers, but one that I will adopt in my own service provider business.
This business, called Eservices Email in Australia, has been an e-mail services provider here since 1999. Their services are not the cheapest, nor do they try and compete with their US and global competitors on R&D or technology spend. Instead, they built their entire business around service first and ‘bright and shiny objects /tech toys’ second. They apply this model consistently across every client they and serve and have recognised significant growth as a result.
The approach gained my respect as the person managing their commercial contract while I was at a large media and publishing business. Because they often over delivered for my business, I Was more willing to work with them to resolve the occasional issues that came up. In turn they worked hard to ‘think’ about how we operated and were instrumental in our overall email success. Because of their value add service, we saved at least $200,000 one year based on their advice and guidance that they did not charge us for.
This value add in the relationship is something many businesses don't see on paper and fail to acknowledge. I think this is the lazy power play way of doing deals and not conducive to long-term success. It starts with recognizing the provider is out to make a profit too – but within the relationship and its boundaries that are reasonable. You often see service providers pull away from the value add and strategy offerings because they are often not rewarded or valued for it. I was able to quantify this and worked to assure that their contract stood the test and review of our internal audits for over 5 years.
The final piece that really bonded me with this supplier is that I could trusted them to evolve their service with my business and its own evolution. I even set aside some ongoing development funding knowing that working with them for future service ideas would help reduce our overall costs and increase our ROI overall. When I asked their Managing Director about how other clients worked with them he mentioned several clients who do the exact same thing. This transformed our relationship into a very productive alliance that delivered ROI for the business.
When I have spoken to their CEO, Simon O’Day, I have always admired how the principles of the business started with 3 people or so and grew to 40 staff in his core business as well as a group of 4 businesses with nearly 80 overall staff in 10 years in ~7 years. No matter the size of the business, their culture and core philosophy has not changed. He did admit that it gets harder as you scale up but you have to stick to your heritage and address your failings honestly as they come up.
This is a practice that I not only advocate to other service providers, but one that I will adopt in my own service provider business.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Enterprise Architecture Class deal
I had the pleasure of attending an Enterprise Architecture class with Promendo in Brisbane, Queensland in Australia. It was excellent and I highly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to take it. The course is not based on IT but Management Fundamentals and concepts that are non-technical. The course teaches you to assess a business based on business rules, applications and Technology - providing a mechanism for looking across all three aspects of the business simultaneously.
Promendo will be running the Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture course in Brisbane on the 19th & 20th of November 2009, with a special offer of free flights and CBD accommodation to attend. The Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture course focuses on understanding, developing and leveraging business enterprise architecture. Delivered by one of Promendo’s senior enterprise architects, this course is highly beneficial for any business professional interested in enterprise architecture. Please refer to the attached fact sheet for further course information.
As mentioned above Promendo will fly you up to Brisbane and provide two nights CBD hotel accommodation for free, all inclusive in the regular course fee of only $1285.00 + GST. As the course will be run on Thursday and Friday you may even choose to extend your stay, return flights on the weekend can be arranged as part of the package.
To take advantage of this offer please complete their online registration request form by the 3rd of November. Registration here: http://www.promendo.com/index.php?id=87
For further information about this offer please contact Leigh Harris Leigh Harris Leigh.Harris@promendo.com
Cheers,
Rick Speciale
http://XeeSM.com/speciale
Promendo will be running the Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture course in Brisbane on the 19th & 20th of November 2009, with a special offer of free flights and CBD accommodation to attend. The Fundamentals of Enterprise Architecture course focuses on understanding, developing and leveraging business enterprise architecture. Delivered by one of Promendo’s senior enterprise architects, this course is highly beneficial for any business professional interested in enterprise architecture. Please refer to the attached fact sheet for further course information.
As mentioned above Promendo will fly you up to Brisbane and provide two nights CBD hotel accommodation for free, all inclusive in the regular course fee of only $1285.00 + GST. As the course will be run on Thursday and Friday you may even choose to extend your stay, return flights on the weekend can be arranged as part of the package.
To take advantage of this offer please complete their online registration request form by the 3rd of November. Registration here: http://www.promendo.com/index.php?id=87
For further information about this offer please contact Leigh Harris Leigh Harris Leigh.Harris@promendo.com
Cheers,
Rick Speciale
http://XeeSM.com/speciale
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Nestle Social Media: “Nestea” plunge in sentiment and how to fix
As a Social Media practitioner, I like to observe what blue chip companies are doing in this space and had a good chat with a senior level manager at Nestle several weeks ago to see what their ambitions were. We discussed what they were doing with Social Media and what their objectives are.
This executive was happy with 70,000+ Facebook users joined to one of their Facebook groups. In fact, when I looked, hey had other international groups exceed 100,000 members. Those seem like big numbers and offer some sense of validation.
But it is not always about quantity and I looked into the groups to see what was going on. When I visited those groups, I saw commonly used “agency style tactics” that tend to be viewed as best practice:
- Sponsorship: Giving a potion of sales to building playgrounds for kids
- Use promotions to drive sales of candy bars
Let’s be clear though, Social Media is not marketing. Social Media is about being social and fostering relationships that include an exchange of value.
The thing that separates the Social Media chaf from the high performers is the quality of dialogue in the community. It is not just group members saying “I love this product” even though there is no shortage of those declaring their love of Nestle chocolate (My highschool days include great sugar highs off of Nestle Crunch).
On first observation, I did not see many real conversations going on in the Nestle groups and always remain sceptical about paid bloggers and employees creating self validating comments.
Again, Social Media is about being SOCIAL! Not just about promotions, PR and marketing tactics. The promotions tactics will become old hat soon and I would be more ambitious with my social investment than to excite ~300 people out of 70,000 each time a promo is run.
As I looked further into one group, I noticed something else - HEAPS of negative sentiment! Apparently, this is because of Nestle’s operations in Zimbabwe where, facing a shrinking pool of suppliers, they have elected to buy from Gushungo Dairy Estate (reportedly owned or controlled by the Mugabe regime). Here is a link to the Guardian site for an explanation http://tinyurl.com/ybb5axq. Note that the Guardian tends to have more of a left wing bias when reading.
The Zimbabwe issue is an important one. However, it is not something the business cannot overcome.
China has an abysmal track record on human rights and no one will forget many people died in Tiananmen square (and wonder how many deaths were not reported).
Do consumers refuse to buy products from companies that use China as a manufacturing center? Yes, here is a site with a slogan Don’t Feed The Dragon http://home.ioa.com/~vampire/ (can you imagine how many things you own that would disappear if you boycotted Chinese made products?)
With the global economic mess, don’t be surprised to see more protectionist themes come about. Based on past history, this stuff only kills the world economy and there is documented evidence that this behaviour fuelled the negative effects of the Great Depression. Count me as one of those not interested in going there.
Back to Nestle…
From a Social Media practitioner point of view, the real story is not determining if Nestle supports the Mugabe regime. The real story was that few if anyone within the Nestle Facebook group actually sticks up for Nestle when this is going on. Where are all of those people who said “I love Nestle”? Those well worded PR releases don’t seem to be inspiring them http://tinyurl.com/yc2e3ww.
Nestle is no different from any other multi-national and has to deal with this problem. It is not about making a political judgement on their activities. I am only interested in the business challenge they face and how they deal with it.
I believe Nestle could be more open and contribute more in conversations with users to develop real social relationships with customers and create powerful advocacy that is currently lacking. Maybe they could consult with the masses using the wonderful new concept of crowd sourcing for ideas on how best to handle the situation.
There is this wonderful intra office politics tactic that has stood the test of time. Example: One manager does not want to stick their neck out on the line, calls a meeting, puts a problem on the table (not actually giving a position on the problem), then ensues a chain reaction of people looking at each other asking “what do you think?” Consensus is drawn to mitigate risk when the responsibility of a decision is shifted to others.
Using this metaphor, Good Social Media Strategy assimilates the customer into the organisation as if they are a part of the decision making. Put the customer in the shoes of the company – having to deal with a real world problem. Nestle has a much better chance of gaining empathy this way.
The upshot is that customers don’t see it as corporate CYA – they see it as respect for their opinion and a stake in the business (and they often give free advice without requiring stock options ☺).
Powerful advocacy emerges from this in ways that marketing and PR cannot accomplish. This buys more margin for error in the relationship as well, which lowers the cost of doing business.
In summary, Nestle is a good example of a company attempting to embrace social media and get it right. The painful lesson is that it is not just as simple as putting up a Facebook or Twitter account and it is not just about PR and marketing. It is about developing meaningful and deep relationships with customers as well as being approachable. It takes time to develop those kinds of deep connections. When those relationships are established, they will either protect or guide the business to profit.
Time for Nestle to take the full Social Media plunge.
Rick S.
This executive was happy with 70,000+ Facebook users joined to one of their Facebook groups. In fact, when I looked, hey had other international groups exceed 100,000 members. Those seem like big numbers and offer some sense of validation.
But it is not always about quantity and I looked into the groups to see what was going on. When I visited those groups, I saw commonly used “agency style tactics” that tend to be viewed as best practice:
- Sponsorship: Giving a potion of sales to building playgrounds for kids
- Use promotions to drive sales of candy bars
Let’s be clear though, Social Media is not marketing. Social Media is about being social and fostering relationships that include an exchange of value.
The thing that separates the Social Media chaf from the high performers is the quality of dialogue in the community. It is not just group members saying “I love this product” even though there is no shortage of those declaring their love of Nestle chocolate (My highschool days include great sugar highs off of Nestle Crunch).
On first observation, I did not see many real conversations going on in the Nestle groups and always remain sceptical about paid bloggers and employees creating self validating comments.
Again, Social Media is about being SOCIAL! Not just about promotions, PR and marketing tactics. The promotions tactics will become old hat soon and I would be more ambitious with my social investment than to excite ~300 people out of 70,000 each time a promo is run.
As I looked further into one group, I noticed something else - HEAPS of negative sentiment! Apparently, this is because of Nestle’s operations in Zimbabwe where, facing a shrinking pool of suppliers, they have elected to buy from Gushungo Dairy Estate (reportedly owned or controlled by the Mugabe regime). Here is a link to the Guardian site for an explanation http://tinyurl.com/ybb5axq. Note that the Guardian tends to have more of a left wing bias when reading.
The Zimbabwe issue is an important one. However, it is not something the business cannot overcome.
China has an abysmal track record on human rights and no one will forget many people died in Tiananmen square (and wonder how many deaths were not reported).
Do consumers refuse to buy products from companies that use China as a manufacturing center? Yes, here is a site with a slogan Don’t Feed The Dragon http://home.ioa.com/~vampire/ (can you imagine how many things you own that would disappear if you boycotted Chinese made products?)
With the global economic mess, don’t be surprised to see more protectionist themes come about. Based on past history, this stuff only kills the world economy and there is documented evidence that this behaviour fuelled the negative effects of the Great Depression. Count me as one of those not interested in going there.
Back to Nestle…
From a Social Media practitioner point of view, the real story is not determining if Nestle supports the Mugabe regime. The real story was that few if anyone within the Nestle Facebook group actually sticks up for Nestle when this is going on. Where are all of those people who said “I love Nestle”? Those well worded PR releases don’t seem to be inspiring them http://tinyurl.com/yc2e3ww.
Nestle is no different from any other multi-national and has to deal with this problem. It is not about making a political judgement on their activities. I am only interested in the business challenge they face and how they deal with it.
I believe Nestle could be more open and contribute more in conversations with users to develop real social relationships with customers and create powerful advocacy that is currently lacking. Maybe they could consult with the masses using the wonderful new concept of crowd sourcing for ideas on how best to handle the situation.
There is this wonderful intra office politics tactic that has stood the test of time. Example: One manager does not want to stick their neck out on the line, calls a meeting, puts a problem on the table (not actually giving a position on the problem), then ensues a chain reaction of people looking at each other asking “what do you think?” Consensus is drawn to mitigate risk when the responsibility of a decision is shifted to others.
Using this metaphor, Good Social Media Strategy assimilates the customer into the organisation as if they are a part of the decision making. Put the customer in the shoes of the company – having to deal with a real world problem. Nestle has a much better chance of gaining empathy this way.
The upshot is that customers don’t see it as corporate CYA – they see it as respect for their opinion and a stake in the business (and they often give free advice without requiring stock options ☺).
Powerful advocacy emerges from this in ways that marketing and PR cannot accomplish. This buys more margin for error in the relationship as well, which lowers the cost of doing business.
In summary, Nestle is a good example of a company attempting to embrace social media and get it right. The painful lesson is that it is not just as simple as putting up a Facebook or Twitter account and it is not just about PR and marketing. It is about developing meaningful and deep relationships with customers as well as being approachable. It takes time to develop those kinds of deep connections. When those relationships are established, they will either protect or guide the business to profit.
Time for Nestle to take the full Social Media plunge.
Rick S.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Article: The difference between ROI and Marketing accountability
I liked this article on ROI accountability http://bit.ly/DJykF
Brings up the age old issue of short term (sales thinking) vs. long term (marketing and lifetime value) thinking. Analytics and the ability to measure and place value on long term retention activity with more complex marketing practices such as social media = what will take marketing to the next level.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Online internet business model lifecycle
Below is my response to a post I found at http://tinyurl.com/kk8v65. The post was about the possibilities with Oracle and Yahoo deal. But more interesting was the author's explanation of his issues with search and rationale for paying for it if ads are removed. It triggered my thoughts about how there could be a really good case for subscription models to emerge in a long tail across the many maturing sites that are killing their customers with ads.
My comment:
"Your willingness to pay for better search results/experience is something I would agree with. The "piling on and commodisation of ads" to sites is becoming the sign of maturing products/markets lacking ideas. Ironically, my experience in the online publishing space shows people are less willing to pay for content that is free normally. However, to your point, if the experience is THAT bad, people are actually willing to pay for better experience for something they need. This may be the the new modern commercial internet cycle. Grow a site, pile the ads on, squeeze the dollars out till the ad yields go down, then your customers will pay you to not advertise, increasing your companies yield managing less ads. That is the final resting place or sweet spot for where business and the consumer maximise each others yield in the relationship. Hmmm, have I talked myself into believing in subscription models now? Nice thought provoking peace Axel."
My comment:
"Your willingness to pay for better search results/experience is something I would agree with. The "piling on and commodisation of ads" to sites is becoming the sign of maturing products/markets lacking ideas. Ironically, my experience in the online publishing space shows people are less willing to pay for content that is free normally. However, to your point, if the experience is THAT bad, people are actually willing to pay for better experience for something they need. This may be the the new modern commercial internet cycle. Grow a site, pile the ads on, squeeze the dollars out till the ad yields go down, then your customers will pay you to not advertise, increasing your companies yield managing less ads. That is the final resting place or sweet spot for where business and the consumer maximise each others yield in the relationship. Hmmm, have I talked myself into believing in subscription models now? Nice thought provoking peace Axel."
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Cool sites for measuring social media via analytics
http://map.sysomos.com
http://spark.scoutlabs.com/workspaces/
http://sm2.techrigy.com/main/
http://twinfluence.com
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