altfunction: corporate responsibility. media. technology. creativity.

Copyfight

Bill Thompson does an excellent job at BBC Online (The copyright 'copyfight' is on) of summarising the key issues debated at a seminar I attended at the ippr yesterday afternoon as part of their Digital Manifesto project.

I won't try to precis it myself, but three issues came to mind during and after the event:

a) Can a creator assert a 'moral right' over their work once it is made publicly available? Uncomfortable though it maybe for musicians, writers, artists etc, I am not sure that you can. You can say that you don't want a sculpture amended, but a copy of it? I would argue that the act of changing a copy of something, be it music, writing, paintings etc, so long as the original remains should be allowed - the artist's intention remains and, so long as credit to the creator is given, the developmental work based on a copy should be allowed.

When the Chapman Brothers amended copies of Goya prints many people were appalled. The brothers argued that the prints were copies, other originals remained and so it was legitimate that they could create something new with them.

b) The official topic was about the public domain: does it need protecting? One speaker, Damian Tambini suggested there are parallels with the discussions about public service broadcasting in the UK. If this is the case, and I think it should be explored, is it possible to ask the same questions about what the public views as in the public domain and ought to remain in the public domain, as various groups did about public service and public value?

c) Finally, was Cory Doctorow editing BoingBoing during the other presentations?

Link: The copyright 'copyfight' is on.

Jones Soda: the art of listening

Further to my last post about the Small waves vs the Big Splash, überblogger Seth Godin links via Tim Manners to an article in FastCompany by the CEO of Jones Soda, Peter van Stolk.

Godin highlights van Stolk's realisation that:

"You're not listening to your customer when you tell them, 'You need me.' You listen to your customers when you say, 'You really don't need me.'"

This is the big conundrum of corporate responsibility and marketing. It runs counter to everything marketing has stood for. What van Stolk argues, though, is that you focus on those who really want your product and spend less time trying to please those who don't. To do this he builds a deeper relationship with the customer. And to do this, you have to listen to them.

His observations on listening to customers is a pertinent to CR folk as it is to brand and marketing managers:

If you're able to give your customers the ability to give you info and you listen to them from their perspective, not everything they say will make sense. Not everything they do will be right. But you will know more about what you have to do based on the info you have. Because it's one component, but very critical component.

Focus groups are toilet paper: They're only used to cover your ass. You can get a focus group to tell you anything you want. When we do focus groups, tastings really, we have two choices: Does it taste good, or does it taste like crap? Yummy or crappy? Good or bad? It's not rocket science. And you get really good information. You have to be careful to make a distinction between getting the answers you want and honest answers.

That way trust is built. It's really very simple.

Link: Jonesing for Soda.

Small waves vs the big splash

Jon Strande takes on the idea of conversations in business:

I've got a real problem with this term. Everyone knows what it means literally, some people understand what it metaphorically refers to... but I'm not looking forward to companies that put this in to practice, for two reasons:

1. There is too much *directed* communication already taking place out there.
2. We all deal with too many companies in a given day to begin with, who has the time to pay attention to anything more?

Personally I agree with one of the commentators on his post,Jonnie Moore, who argues that:

Having a converstation does not mean doing dumbass market research and taking what people say literally.

It does not mean that a company expects me to have deep existential dialgogue each time a buy a mars bar.

It does mean that an organisation is sensitive to its stakeholders. That it notices their responses, and its own responses to their responses.

There's a whole lot more going on in conversation than just the words on the surface.

Quite. I've been thinking for a while about what this means for stakeholder engagement. I've been asked time and again by people how many stakeholders can you seriously expect to engage with. 'Stakeholder fatigue' is now a serious problem, particularly for NGOs, who cannot afford to 'be' stakeholder for half a day in a conference centre thousands of miles from the office for all the companies that seriously want to ensure their concerns are being heard.

This is where I believe businesses need to develop new skills to maximise the potential of the kinds of conversations Moore is talking about.

Rather than the big statements companies, NGOs, government and (very occasionally) citizens traditionally made through books, articles, press releases and events - all carefully mediated through publishers, event organisers, editors, press offices etc we are looking at smaller, more frequent, more nuanced communications facilitated by blogging and other social software. Think small waves instead of the big splash.

This changes how marketers and CSR/CR managers ought to think about engagement/conversations. The primary art will be monitoring the many small waves (mostly not directed at them or even about them) to identify currents and trends, many transmittedly through the blogosphere. Where necessary some intervention may be advisable, but for the most part it is a process of watching and filtering attitudes and concerns.

Direct conversations are then conducted with a greater level of knowledge, if less frequently. Rather then starting a conversation as you might over the telephone, this model is more like tuning in to the radio and only calling a phone in where you have already started to gather information about attitudes, tone, scope for engagement etc

The Big Splash model is not going away, but being able to monitor the small waves is not only more efficient, but critical if you are get more of a picture of what stakeholders really think.

Strande quotes Malcolm Gladwell on why asking people what they want and why changes their decision-making. I would take Gladwell's point to support what I am saying - it is through observation that you have really effective conversations.

Link: Business Evolutionist: Conversations or Compassion?.

Employee blogging

First there was the Waterstones blogger in the UK (asked to leave for thinly veiled candour online) and then there was Google's Mark Jen.

One obvious response from businesses will be to ask employees not to blog about work and add clauses to contracts to this effect. Of course many already have clauses to address confidentiality.

A more courageous approach is to engage with the blogging employees - it won't work in all cases, if the employee refuses to 'engage' of course it takes two to tango. The potential of an independent blog by an employee is clear:

It provides a window into what an employee thinks

It can become a lightning conductor for dissent and issues of concern that might not be raised through HR

It suggests a company treats its employees as adults - 'we trust you, are willing to take fair criticism and, in return, ask you to be fair too'

Ultimately, because it is unofficial a company can distance itself when necessary.

This is not to say there are equally significant risks and dangers, but when you get a reputation for having thin skin, unable to take criticism, you erode trust. Firing bloggers, who, if they are becoming an issue are by definition well connected and able to get rapid publicity, is unlikely to help.

Curiously, Jen is still 'powers Blogger', owned by guess who? Google.

Link: Curse of the blog strikes Google employee - silicon.com.

Am I a consumer?

The 'elephant in the bedroom' (unmissable issue no-one wants to discuss because it is too big to ignore yet also too big to address) for many businesses dealing with corporate responsibility is consumption: we humans are waste processors and the point of many businesses is to make us process more waste.

Talking to someone recently about consumption it occurred to me that a fundamental problem with discussing it is that we don't think about ourselves as consumers until something goes wrong.

You're sold a malfunctioning computer, you contact the Consumer's Association.

You're unsure which camcorder to buy, you buy What Camcorder?

But for most purchases? You're a customer.

Ask anyone in the street if they're a consumer and they'll think for a bit and give a cautious 'yes'. Ask them if they are a consumer and they'll ask, 'Of who?'

The consumption debate won't get off the ground until it becomes a debate about addressing customers, meeting their needs.

The trust discount

This feels like a PR-disaster in the making. McDonalds have been running a campaign around a tale of some small town American discovering a chip that 'looks' like Abraham Lincoln. There's even a blog. Thing is, according to Kevin Dugan's PRBlog: its all a fake.

I don't know how many people visit Dugan's blog - more than this one, I can confortably guess - but the real impact occurs when it hits an überblog like Gapingvoid with hundreds of thousands of hits a month and the influential likes of Jeff Jarvis and Tom Peters having a look: überblogger shall speak unto überblogger and the rest of us parasites feed off them.

As Malcolm Gladwell famously demonstrated in The Tipping Point: one link to a hub, and an idea spreads. Very fast. If the idea is 'McDonalds is faking', then the company loses trust. If the company then tries blogging again they have first to overcome the trust discount.

Blogs are an opportunity for openness and conversation: missing this opportunity is an own goal. Doh.

The good company

A couple of weeks back the Economist published a 'survey' of Corporate Social Responsibility; largely an attempt at a demolition-job on an idea the newspaper has always found uncomfortable. The effort was, sadly, a poor one. There was little in the way of sources and examples, the oft-mentioned and decidedly shadowy 'CSR advocates' bearing the brunt of the author's scorn. The estemed journal was demonstrating criticisms often levelled at such advocates.

This week The Economist published some of the replies, I've pulled out some excerpts below:

Your arid leader (“The good company”, January 22nd) seeks to discredit CSR by creating a false antithesis. Most advocates of CSR accept, as I do, that unadorned capitalism can serve the public interest — and adorned capitalism, through companies with an appropriate and proportionate approach to CSR, can serve that interest even better. ~ Sir Christopher Bland, Chairman, BT

A well-run company engaging in the selfish pursuit of profit would lobby for subsidies and tariffs to reduce costs and increase revenue, heedless of the market distortions they may cause. How do you square this with your usual argument that free trade is necessary to lift developing countries out of poverty? ~ Jean-Philippe Marcotte, San Francisco

Like the academics and consultants that have mushroomed under CSR, you concentrate on a woolly debate and wholly ignore the challenge that capitalism faces today. There is a prevailing public distrust of companies arising from the perception that profit precedes principle, rather than being based upon it.... Capitalism, the most effective mechanism the world has so far known for providing goods and services and creating wealth, is under threat not from without, but from itself and from its lack of underlying principles. It is a threat probably increased by the confusion of thought fostered by the proponents of CSR and the tunnel vision of its opponents, whose views dominated your survey. ~ Sir Geoffrey Chandler, Former Director, Shell International

Power to the people (in the FT)

Decent summary of how the blogging scene is making some corporations more than a little uneasy from the FT (registration required).

Scott Morrison's report focuses on the class action lawsuit against Verizon Wireless for being opaque about the functionality of Bluetooth on one of their phones. Bloggers have been sharing and disseminating information, demonstrating how a low cost distributed network can be communications nightmare for even the largest companies.

Microserf and überblogger Robert Scoble makes the killer point:

If companies don't understand... and don't learn how to track what people are saying, they are going to be hit violently with PR problems that they don't understand or know where they are coming from

Mike Masnick of Techdirt reiterates:

Companies that don't recognise this are going to get bitten

Though tech firms like Microsoft, Apple and Verizon may be more likely targets for angry geeks, the rest of the business world will soon find that the same rules apply. Blogging is opening up the world and opening up business. Morrison writes of Masnick:

He believes the best strategy is to engage bloggers openly and honestly in their realm. Any whiff of insincerity will be picked up and turned against a company.

The messages to business are simple:

A) Embrace and understand the new media, and
B) Make sure your corporate responsibility is more than skin deep - hiding is not an option.

Glasshouses

One of the most exciting developments of recent months is the emergence of blogging corporate leaders. There aren't many of them, certainly, but it is starting to happen. Look at GM's gmblogs or Edelman.

Why's this a big deal? Leaders in business have become distant. Even in small companies they are mediated through PAs, managers, PR officers etc. CEOs take the credit and the flack for performance (whether in equal proportion is a different discussion) but have little real connection to many people in their companies, still less to customers and other stakeholders.

Blogs could be an opportunity to re-establish this link. But good blogs are extensions of character: they are revealing and peel back the layers. The blogger is more vulnerable because most often there is right to reply. The blog becomes the conversation. (And Hugh 'Gapingvoid' Macleod is very hot on the importance of conversations for marketing.)

This conversation opens up the company, tearing a hole in corporate fabric which over decades has built up the layers to protect sensitive strategies from 'misapprehension'. This offers scope to address corporate responsibility issues: the GM blogs discusses fuel economy of its cars, Richard Edelman considers the ethics of his industry.

What this means, however, is that these high-power bloggers are going to have to engage with their audiences. If PRs write their blogs they will lose credibility soon. Respect will go to those who explain themselves and are willing, from time to time, to say, 'I dunno, what do you think?'

Blogs can offer a window into the thinking of the people behind a company, but they will have to accept that the rules are different, there are fewer places to hide in the blogosphere.

same means. different ends.

The green movement has taken the view that asking business to get the world out the mess it finds itself in (climate change, for example) is like asking Herod to run a Kindergarten.

For the most part, however, the ingenuity that got us in this mess is likely to be the ingenuity that will get us out. To paraphrase Steve Hilton: if marketing can sell you aloe vera infused lavatory paper it can sell you sustainability.

Hence the real challenge is aligning business opportunities with planetary needs. Unlikely though it seems, businesses offer the best chance of finding the real solutions to issues like climate change. They don't, however, exist in a vacuum and for their own sake. They are useful tools, means. What we need to find are how to align the different ends.