The New CEO Job Requirement: Social Media

JDRichard

The sad results are in: 70 percent of all CEOs have no presence on social networks. And John Mackey of Whole Foods is the only CEO of a Fortune 500 firm who maintains his own blog — yeah, the same John Mackey who stepped in it by comparing Obamacare to facism in an interview with NPR. Hey: it’s time for CEOs to rethink their approach to social — or should I say get an approach since I doubt they think about social very much. Social media is a job requirement for the CEO.

In 2012, George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research (and an excellent blogger), delivered a presentation about why CEOs don’t use social media, and the reasons apply today: a general aversion to risk, lack of time, a generational bias against social, and the existence of regulatory constraints (as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently reminded us). Those constraints are understandable — but CEOs need to get over them. The fact is, CEOs need social media. Social helps CEOs better understand their market, their customers, their employees, and their own brands. Even better, social can help CEOs run their companies more effectively. An IBM study says that brands without social CEOs are less competitive, and according to Social Media Today, eight out of 10 employees want to work for social CEOs.

Recently, I sat down with Jermaine Dupri, to discuss how social media helps him be a better CEO of So So Def Recordings. As you might know, Dupri blew up the So So Def Recordings website and replaced it with his own social media community, Global 14. Dupri and I published the outcome of our conversation as a byline in Fast Company, available here. The byline discusses five ways social helps him run So So Def, an example being the way Global 14 gives him insight into up-and-coming musical talent. We also cite other CEOs who use social media effectively, such as Richard Branson, whose use of platforms like Twitter humanizes the Virgin brand.

If you are a CEO (or aspire to operate at that level), I hope our byline helps you embrace social, even if all you have time for is the occasional tweet. Just don’t blow off social.

4 technologies every CMO must know

In 2011, IBM released a report that identified the four biggest challenges keeping CMOs awake at night: the explosion of data, social media, the proliferation of channels and devices, and shifting consumer demographics. Those challenges also represent growth opportunities with emerging technology as the catalyst. To help marketers anticipate and respond to a constantly changing marketplace, I have collaborated with four of my colleagues at iCrossing on a white paper, Four Technologies Every CMO Must Know in 2012.

Four Technologies Every CMO Must Know in 2012 uses (I hope) approachable, down-to-earth language to explain geeky sounding terms like HTML5 and Hadoop – and discusses their business impact on marketers. For instance, a section on the data management platform (DMP) focuses on how a DMP helps marketers segment audiences and customize content more effectively.

The paper is the result of the efforts of Doug Bryan, Mac Ling, Malcolm Leach, Matt Pouttu-Clarke, and myself. We combined subject matter expertise ranging from analytics to mobile. As we say in the white paper, it’s important that marketers get into the habit of becoming more comfortable with technology, and it’s also pretty easy to do so thanks to the proliferation of free content from the likes of Forrester Research, Gartner, and Mashable.

What technologies are you tracking?

Digital Darwinism at Cannes

Is there such a thing as a digital brand? Joe Crump certainly thinks so.

Joe is an executive in the strategy practice of Avenue A | Razorfish, my employer. On June 21 at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, Joe will unveil the top 10 digital brands based on a new scorecard (created by Avenue A | Razorfish) known as the Brand Gene Scoreboard.

Joe contends that brands need to view the digital world differently than the off-line world. In his view, digital is “ruthlessly Darwinian.” Consumers form impressions of your website in milliseconds. If they don’t like what they see, they can shut you out forever with one easy mouse click. Or tell their friends how boring you are you on blogs, review sites, and social hangouts like Facebook.

His view: brands must tap into the immersive and social nature of digital to survive. They have to be more fast moving than ever if they want to put digital at the core of their success. He’s decided to do something about it by developing the Brand Gene Scoreboard to help companies assess how digital their brands really are.

The scorecard identifies seven attributes such as immersion (how easy it is for a consumer to become engaged with your digital home), social (whether a consumer finds your brand worth sharing), and adaptive (how well a brand responds to a consumer’s digital environment), among other qualities. Flickr, Netflix, and Nike score well when measured by the scorecard. But some of the leading brands according to Interbrand, like GE and IBM, perform poorly when we apply the Brand Gene Scoreboard to measure their digital brand savvy.

Joe’s point of view is not without controversy. To the naysayers, there is no such thing as a digital brand anymore than there are digital people. You don’t need digital to make your brand “social” — good-old fashioned word of mouth occurs in the offline world all the time and will continue to do so. And brick-and-mortar stores like American Girl illustrate that you don’t need digital to be immersive.

And yet . . . digital is different. Yes, people have been marketing through word of mouth for a long time. But as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in The Groundswell, digital turbocharges inherently social behaviors and takes word of mouth — for better or worse — to a whole new level. What used to be a long, gradual process can now happen literally overnight because of social media tools like blogs. And there’s no question that a digital destination like shaveeverywhere can turn even the most mundane product demonstration into an engaging and fun experience that’s hard to convey in the offline world.

If you are at Cannes, you can see his talk Saturday, June 21, at 1 p.m., Debussy Theatre, Palais des Festivals. If not, you can hear a flavor of his ideas by viewing the presentation at the top of this blog post (this is a preview of the Cannes presentation, which Joe delivered at the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit in New York on May 14.) Check this out, too, for further reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree.

Digital Darwinism at Cannes

Is there such a thing as a digital brand? Joe Crump certainly thinks so.

Joe is an executive in the strategy practice of Avenue A | Razorfish, my employer. On June 21 at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, Joe will unveil the top 10 digital brands based on a new scorecard (created by Avenue A | Razorfish) known as the Brand Gene Scoreboard.

Joe contends that brands need to view the digital world differently than the off-line world. In his view, digital is “ruthlessly Darwinian.” Consumers form impressions of your website in milliseconds. If they don’t like what they see, they can shut you out forever with one easy mouse click. Or tell their friends how boring you are you on blogs, review sites, and social hangouts like Facebook.

His view: brands must tap into the immersive and social nature of digital to survive. They have to be more fast moving than ever if they want to put digital at the core of their success. He’s decided to do something about it by developing the Brand Gene Scoreboard to help companies assess how digital their brands really are.

The scorecard identifies seven attributes such as immersion (how easy it is for a consumer to become engaged with your digital home), social (whether a consumer finds your brand worth sharing), and adaptive (how well a brand responds to a consumer’s digital environment), among other qualities. Flickr, Netflix, and Nike score well when measured by the scorecard. But some of the leading brands according to Interbrand, like GE and IBM, perform poorly when we apply the Brand Gene Scoreboard to measure their digital brand savvy.

Joe’s point of view is not without controversy. To the naysayers, there is no such thing as a digital brand anymore than there are digital people. You don’t need digital to make your brand “social” — good-old fashioned word of mouth occurs in the offline world all the time and will continue to do so. And brick-and-mortar stores like American Girl illustrate that you don’t need digital to be immersive.

And yet . . . digital is different. Yes, people have been marketing through word of mouth for a long time. But as Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff point out in The Groundswell, digital turbocharges inherently social behaviors and takes word of mouth — for better or worse — to a whole new level. What used to be a long, gradual process can now happen literally overnight because of social media tools like blogs. And there’s no question that a digital destination like shaveeverywhere can turn even the most mundane product demonstration into an engaging and fun experience that’s hard to convey in the offline world.

If you are at Cannes, you can see his talk Saturday, June 21, at 1 p.m., Debussy Theatre, Palais des Festivals. If not, you can hear a flavor of his ideas by viewing the presentation at the top of this blog post (this is a preview of the Cannes presentation, which Joe delivered at the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit in New York on May 14.) Check this out, too, for further reading, and let me know if you agree or disagree.