Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
More on the IDC Web2.0 Conference yesterday (attendees aside), there were some great insights that I’d love to talk about.
Prof. Michael brought up a point that I personally identify with. He says sometimes he has a guest in the class room and the guest is talking to the class, but the class is talking to each other via IM (or maybe Twitter), in other words, we’re having multiple levels of conversation.
I hope this is not new to marketers by now. Listen to Sarah from ReadWriteWeb or Ian from MTV. Generation Y is doing this. All the time.
Sarah will tell you they won’t even read this far down a blog post. Ian will tell you we have the computer on talking to 7 friends with MTV in the background and alternate-tabbing between games while stopping once in awhile to sms someone.
And that’s the truth.
Marketers are not going to get our full attention. And they certainly can’t demand it. They’re going to have to fight for it, not by interruption, but with darn compelling content. Does this mean we absorb less if we’re doing five things at the same time? Without empirical proof I’m going to say maybe. But I feel it also makes us aware of more. I can’t walk out of a movie these days without picking up at least one or two brands featured in the show, and more often than not the conversation becomes a “hey did you see that BMW insert?” after the movie.
Speaking as a Gen Y consumer myself, I love it when brands make the effort to connect, and seem like they’re genuine. (not some scammy thing). I’ll talk to you about Sony, about EA Games, about Bluehost and about HP because I know that they’re at least recognising the new presence of the new consumers and trying. They may not be fantastic at it, but it’s better than pretending we don’t exist or are a “fad”. (full disclosure: my office does PR work for HP)
Speaking of listening, I wanted to talk about this yesterday and am further prompted by this comment. Dear Yahoo!, I love that you sponsor stuff like the Web2.0 conference, but Jonathan is right. Does it make sense to sponsor it when people don’t get what you’re about? I love the “social” ymail and I love how it was presented in a non-intrusive way together with the goodie bags. But wouldn’t it be cooler to connect with say, 60 people who are in the space, in the know and can really appreciate what your product is about? Or give them a chance to try it and be bought over?
If you’re willing to listen to a proposition (not for me, but for the local Singaporean blogosphere), let’s start a conversation!
Tags: bluehost, ea games, Gen Y, generation y, hp, ianstewartmtv, IDC web2.0 conference, im, mtv, multi-tasking, multiple levels of conversation, readwriteweb, sarahintampa, social media insights, sony, sponsorship, twitter, yahoo, ymail
Posted in Blogs, Marketing, collaboration, community, social media | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008
#1 and #2 reasons why Plurk over Twitter are cliques and threaded conversations respectively. Cliques allow you to send plurks to specified subsets of your followers. I have a local clique, and that’s where all the chatter that is unique to Singapore goes to, instead of spamming it to everyone. Threaded conversations allow you to follow one conversation, unlike Twitter where replies are rather fragmented.
Let’s go on to #3: Organic Conversations.
Yesterday I posted about EA Games getting customer service. I posted about it on Plurk as well:
Within seconds of posting, NovelistKat talked about how they may get customer service, but not how to treat their employees. This went back and forth awhile until litford hopped in to talk about jPod and how it’s a spoof of EA and its programmers. (full conversation here)
Isn’t this how true conversations happen? Imagine talking about a shoe brand (no names) over dinner. “Man those new shoes I bought are comfortable“. Somehow the conversation meanders to “I hope that comfort is deserving of the child labour that it took to make it” and then after a little more it goes to “Did you see the new ad for the shoes on tv last night?”
Conversations have a life of their own. Seeing them grow organically has a lot of value. How many brands could listen in or participate in the EA conversation and learn from it? EA certainly. Douglas Coupland perhaps. The jPod network could’ve pointed us to a website to stream the first episode for free and get us hooked. The possibilities are endless.
I write this post partially in reply to @jonathank of Fabrikade who isn’t sure of the personal/business possibilities of Plurk yet, hope this is one step towards convincing you, Jonathan!
Tags: customer service, ea games, following the conversation, joining the conversation, organic conversation, Plurk, Singapore, twitter
Posted in Blogs, Plurk, Singapore, social media, twitter | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Customer service is a big pet peeve of mine. So I’m always grateful (and sometimes surprised) when I’m on the receiving end of good customer service.
I had a problem with Mass Effect and dropped an email to EA Games Support in Singapore. I got an email reply in three hours (still acceptable) saying:
Greetings Mr Tay,
Thank you for contacting Electronic Arts Singapore.
I’m sorry for the difficulty that you are having with the game.
If you are running on Windows Vista,
1. Click on the Windows button on the taskbar below your desktop.
2. Type in “dxdiag” in the search box just above the windows button and press “ENTER” on your keyboard.
3. On the DirectX Diagnostic Tool window, click on the “Save All Information” button. This will save a text file on your desktop.
4. Send the text file back in your email reply as an attachment.
We will then be able to advise you further on what additional steps you need to take to get the game running.
What they did right:
- a nice greeting, neither too formal nor informal
- expressing an apology that I had problems with their product
- a step by step guide on what actions to take and what to do next
How often does customer service do this for you? I’m betting not often.
What’s the big deal, I hear you say, it’s just a game right?
No.
Games are expensive. I paid S$64.90 for this game to get the proper validation code to play this game with no problems. If EA Games doesn’t convince me of the value I get from buying the original, they encourage me not to buy their games.
However, now I know the opposite and it pays to buy EA Games, it makes it much easier to make the decision to buy a game, knowing that you wouldn’t be wasting money or getting frustrated.
Now, if only every company took care of their customers and gave them a reason to remain paying customers.
Tags: customer service, ea games, ea sports, great customer support, mass effect, retaining existing customers
Posted in Singapore | 4 Comments »
