Fear Factor

Corporate social media? If that's not an oxymoron at your company or social enterprise, then social media can be scary, difficult stuff -- requiring a ton of courage and patience to deploy effectively, according to corporate social media strategists for Target, PepsiCo, Gap and Facebook.

"It's very, very scary," Claire Lyons, Pepsico's corporate brand program manager, told a packed room of nonprofit and CSR activists attending a panel at today's 2010 National Conference on Volunteering and Service. Social media represent "a huge shift in the way companies operate," she said, "because they [social media] shift the locus of control of a brand, which was always controlled by brand managers, and blows it up. ...It is changing the whole way that brand architecture is considered."

Lyons, one of the lead architects of the company's Pepsi Refresh campaign, said she finds social media "exciting." But using social media to engage employees and stakeholders is "very different. We really don't have control" of the conversation, she said. "This [social media] is a total quality management feedback loop par excellence."

Target also has discovered some uncomfortable moments moving to social media. Jill Pete, a member of Target's national community relations team, said it was hard at first to simply "step back, listen and not react to what was being said" on the company's Facebook page. "We were hesitant to step into this realm, especially Facebook, because Facebook's power is dialogue," Pete said. But the risk has paid off, she said. Target's decision to stay quiet and listen has been "a huge step for us because we'd been seeing some stuff on there that was inaccurate and we really wanted to correct it right away." Turns out, said Pete, the company didn't have to. "all inaccuracies so far, all of them, are usually corrected no more than two or three days after it has been asserted," she said -- by people Target doesn't know but who follow the company on Facebook. "It's testing our strength as a brand," said Pete. "If you're strong as a brand, you listen -- and you learn."

Joshua Rahn, New York Director of Facebook, shared an anecdote of how early Pepsi traffic on Facebook included one comment that simply made the statement: "I hate Pepsi but I love Coke." This triggered a swirl of internal communication at Pepsi, he said -- "the lawyers had a field day" -- but before the company could respond, one of its Facebook "friends" quietly posted a short note telling the detractor that if he didn't like Pepsi, to go to Coke's Facebook page, instead. It worked. End of story. "Before Facebook and Twitter," Rahn said, "people still bad-mouthed products. They always will. You will never be able to control for that. Never. But now, you have the opportunity to shape the responses."

In other highlights, panelists agreed that companies and organizations should:

* Get clear on "who owns social media" inside the organization. "Don't make the person who owns social a second-class citizen," Rahn said. "Your social media person shouldn't be a person who sits in on every third meeting andhas no authority and no independent power. This should be a person who has a voice. Where should the person sit? In your marketing team but they have to be able to make decisions." Rahn cited Starbucks as a good example of a company that "gets it" about social media's internal role, putting its social media team in marketing but giving it autonomy "and the same amount of say as its TV team."

* Consider setting up a private, branded employee social network. Abby Frost, manager of employee engagement and community partnerships at Gap, said the company has launched Sketchbook ["our employee Facebook," Frost explains]. On that social network, she said, employees share the highs and lows of the workplace expeirence, share team projects and communicate socially. Recently, Frost organized an "Ultimate Happy Hour" on Sketchbook, which included a video content among employees to celebrate the company's 48th anniversary. She said prizes were given out to the best employee stories and participation on the network remains high. So do employee retention rates. Said Facebook's Rahn: "As much as companies think of using social media to raise awareness, they also need to be thinking of creating engagement around it."

* Remember that ROI rules. But don't look for magic. Facebook's Rahn said that far too many companies, in their efforts to create a social media strategy, waste too much time trying to get something ready for release. "These are companies that need to consider their 'return on energy' instead," Rahn said. Gap's Frost agrees. "You need to move fast, not perfect," she said.

* Be clear that social media are a must for employee retention. If companies have hired someone to craft their social media strategy but won't let them use the tools on the job, then don't be surprised if you can't hire anyone good -- or keep them once they're on board. Target's Pete said Millennials expect to be able to use social media on the job "If you encourage your employees to engage online, they will engage in your favor; if employees see how you're connecting online and see how effective it is, they will become your biggest ambassadors," she said. "But if you don't let them engage, you may lose them." Rahn called it "social retention."

Erik Darby, vice president of business development for The Experience Project, which just launched TwitCause -- a new offering that helps companies engage Twitter users in their pet causes -- offered attendees "5 Things Your Corporation Needs to Know About Social Media." Here they are, briefly:

1. Know why you're going into social media. "Just going for fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter is not going to cut it," Darby says.

2. Know what ROI metrics you're measuring.

3. Be consistent with your social media engagement. "Don't expect to see results if you send out a tweet once a week," Darby says.

4. Be human. "Don't exploit your audience. Care about them. Ask their input on things."

5. Go where your audience is. "'Build it and they will come' isn't true anymore," Darby says. "If you're a pet company, for example, don't just do Facebook. Go where your customers are. Go on Dogster."

Okay, readers. It's your turn. Got any pointers to add?

-- Marcia Stepanek

(Illustration: istock.com)

Agitprop, Totally

There's a new BP protest site that's getting some serious buzz this week. It's called You Should Totally Apologize to BP and it's inviting visitors to "click here to say you're sorry" for buying the oil company's gas for your car or eating its cheese snacks. [BP sells snacks through its Connect convenience store franchise.]

The site was launched over the weekend by some of the same folks who have been bringing the world @BPGlobalPR, the spoof Twitter site that masquerades as the beleaguered oil company's PR stream.

It's just the latest in a series of anti-BP oil spill sites to get organized over the past month as the enormity of the spill begins to seep into the American psyche. Chief motivation for this latest bit of agitprop, organizers say, were remarks made last Thursday by Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton, who called the new BP-funded, $20 billion victim compensation fund a "shakedown" by the White House. "I don't want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something legitimately wrong, it's subject to some sort of political pressure that amounts to a shakedown," Barton said in remarks broadcast on C-SPAN, "so I apologize" to BP on behalf of the American government.

But the last word on Barton goes to the spoofsters, who wrote on their site (under a video clip of Barton's remarks) the following:

Rep. Joe Barton is right. BP deserves better than the horrible treatment they've gotten from America. The GOP is ashamed of America, and you should be, too. All BP did was try to bring us delicious crude oil with which we could drive our SUVs. They made tremendous sacrifices. And what did they get out of the deal? Just a little profit, which they could ow lose, thanks to mean American holding them accountable. This year, they could make over 25% less billions in profits, thanks to America's socialist agenda. The best America is one that privatizes profits and socializes losses. So Apologize to BP.

Though put up just recently, You Should Totally Apologize to BP has already started netting hundreds of followers on Facebook and Twitter. A tweet posted a few hours ago on the site's #ImsorryBP feed reads as follows:

Dear BP, We are so sorry we are carbon-based life forms requiring water and air free of misplaced petroleum to continue living.

What do you think? If you were BP's social media director (or Barton's press secretary) at this point -- and still wanted the job --where would you go from here? Let us hear from you.

On Social Enterprise

Alastair McIntosh, the Scottish environmentalist, community advocate and author of Soil and Soul: People Versus Corporate Power, said in a brief interview today that he thinks the social enterprise movement faces a variety of sustainability challenges. I caught up with McIntosh during a break in the Corporate Register Reporting Awards conference today in London. Here's an edited transcript of our short talk:

What's your take on the social enterprise movement?

I'm involved in a grassroots community organization in Glasgow where we are working in a very broken community with people with issues like addictions, homelessless, criminal records and so forth -- as well as with just ordinary members of the community. We look to social enterprise as a way forward but at the same time, it is actually very difficult because a social enterprise can work well when you have entrepreneurial, fairly well-sorted, business-oriented people behind it.

Quite often, though, what happens is that people who set up social enterprises move on, to set up their own businesses because they get to the point where they want to make money for themselves rather than put the fruits of their actions towards the common good. Another challenge is that when you are working with mostly broken people in society, they are often the intergenerational victims of poverty in its various forms and it's actually very difficult for them to get a foot on the ladder and to compete in the mainstream business world. So I think that social enterprise is a part of the solution -- although in practice, getting [social enterprises] going in hard-pressed areas and keeping them there can be more difficult than is sometimes made out.

What is needed to help them along?
I think that we need to shift our understanding of what a product is from a simple economic transaction in which we look for the cheapest price for the best available to an understanding that this is about the right relationships. And so the satisfaction we seek in what it is we consume needs to be partly built into the relationships that have helped to make them. Then, people might be willing to accept something that may not be as competitively priced -- but is much better socially.

So how do we get there?
Government is not the answer. It really has to come from our own hearts; it has got to be a transformation within us, whereby we seek to have a sense of our own value based on how we're connected to other values in the community around us -- and how we contribute to those values.

Will technology and social media help build stronger communities?
Technology and networking will be part of it. I would say a fundamental word is dignity. Is dignity built into our economic transactions? Is respect - the ability to take another look? Respect is our ability to look deeper than just to the surface of what's in the wrappers of the products we consume. Dignity needs to be built into [what we make and do via] the right relationship with the Earth and the right relationship with one another.

Do you agree? Let us hear from you.

--Marcia Stepanek

Transparency Bites

There's a firestorm that's erupting over how JPMorgan Chase & Company has fumbled its online contest to award millions of dollars to 100 charities this holiday season, and the incident is sending a stark reminder to socially-conscious companies trying to raise their "good" profile.

The message? Transparency matters (a lot) to today's cause-wired consumers. But that's not all. There's another lesson here that bears repeating, and it is this: don't invite Web-savvy crowds to participate in a "do-good" project without giving them control over the outcome - regardless of what the CEO thinks of it. Online fans and networks, it's clear, cannot be shut down nor controlled once you energize them around open initiatives they care about. Try micromanaging or censoring the people you invite to an online gathering, and you risk being accused of "cause-washing" — or worse.

The Chase brouhaha, in case you missed it over the weekend, first came to light on Saturday, in a New York Times story by reporter Stephanie Strom about how Chase is keeping its customers and Facebook "fans" in the dark about the outcome of a recent online contest it organized to give supporters a chance to vote for their favorite charities. Three nonprofit groups among the candidates for aid — Students for Sensible Drug Policy, the Marijuana Policy Project, and an anti-abortion group, Justice for All — told Strom they think Chase disqualified them as they began to amass votes because the company "didn't wish to associate its name with their missions" if they won, Strom reported. Strom also wrote that until Chase made changes to its contest in its final days, "these groups appeared to be among the top 100 vote-getters."

But what really has social media advocates miffed is Chase's failure so far to publish the final vote tallies, and to clear up whether it had, indeed, disqualified any of the charities that had participated. Over the weekend, a number of bloggers began criticizing Chase for the allegations, as well as taking the company to task for failing to create a public leader board showing a ranking of the charities based on the votes each charity had received from the more than 1 million people who joined Chase's Facebook fan page to vote.

One blogger, Nathaniel Whittemore of change.org, was especially critical, writing Saturday what he called "an open letter to Chase about their big charity transparency fail." In that post, Whittemore took Chase to task for failing to run the contest in a more transparent way. "You had the potential to build an incredible amount of social oomph with this contest," Whittemore wrote in his "Dear JP Morgan & Chase" letter. "...Now, [most nonprofits I know] think you're just one more system to game. And me? Well, I think it's pretty clear how I feel." Whittemore said that failing to provide a public leader board made Chase executives "look like jerks."

Another blogger, nonprofit social media consultant Beth Kanter, also weighed in, choosing the advent of Pepsi's own online charity contest to write a post a day later entitled, "What Lessons Will Pepsi Learn About Crowdsourcing for Social Change from Chase Bank Contest Fail?" Kanter's post yesterday, about the new Pepsi Refresh Project — another crowdsourced cause marketing project aimed at recognizing influential changemakers in society — also questioned Chase's handling of the contest. "Let's hope [Pepsi] learns from the recent Chase Bank's Online Contest Fail," she wrote. "I hope they avoid going to the dark side and waste (sic) money on projects and processes that don't have impact as well as many nonprofits' most valuable resource: their time." Kanter asked her readers, "What can Pepsi learn so its contest can truly make a difference in local communities, help them sell more soda, and avoid having its brand get tarnished?"

While Chase's official contest rules state clearly that the company "reserves the right to disqualify any charity for any reason whatsoever" — its apparent decision to exercise that right has struck social media advocates as being unacceptable, including the followers and creators of ad-hoc Twitter groups called #chasesucks and #ChaseDoesntCare. Wrote Kanter: "There are some things to think about with a completely open contest, one where anyone can submit an idea and the crowd votes on the best idea and the one with the most votes wins. The sponsor needs to ask if they are truly committed to the idea that gets the most votes, no matter who suggests it."

She has a point. As social media expert Clay Shirky told me earlier this year for a post I wrote for CauseGlobal, social media are starting to require companies and institutions to invent new ways to manage their organizations. Said Shirky in that interview:

"People managing these newly interactive organizations need to start explaining why it is that what they're doing and asking is important. They need to start articulating how people's input is helping the organization and its cause. It really does involve a degree of openness on the part of existing organizations that we haven't seen before. In fact, if you're a manager of a traditional organization looking for control, you will have trouble in this Web 2.0 environment. It's a little bit like the relationship between a trellis and a vine. You can shape it, but the organic growth and the ultimate structure is really going to be produced by the people who come there, and especially by the people you invite."

Okay, now it's your turn. What do you think? How much damage do you think this incident caused to the Chase brand? What do you think are the key lessons about corporate activism and social media to be gleaned from this incident? What would you have done differently if you were running the Chase social media campaign? Let us hear from you

—Marcia Stepanek

(Illustration, Gossip, by Malombra76 for istock.com)

[This post first appeared on Justmeans.com and reposts here with permission]

SkollFest

Today through Saturday, we're in Oxford, where the Skoll World Forum for social innovation convenes for its sixth year. Called the "Davos for social entrepreneurs," the event is all about celebrating up-and-coming and established entrepreneurs who don't simply want to get rich but also want to forge innovative solutions to the world's social problems—as well as create new business models for sustainable social problem-solving worldwide. The forum—being held in what Skoll's Oxford Centre Chairman Stephan Chambers today called "the most chilling economic environment we've ever experienced"—is being hosted by Oxford University and Jeff Skoll's social enterprise foundation. [Skoll, who was the first employee and first president of eBay, also is the founder of the independent movie company, Participant Productions.]

Despite the dour global economy, this year's forum has broken all previous attendance records, with some 785 social entrepreneurs from 65 countries in town for the event, including Kailash Satyarthi, chairman of the Global March Against Child Labor; Mary Robinson, founder and president of Peace Worlds Group, and Soraya Salti, senior vice president of INJAZ al-Arab, a youth education and empowerment project in Jordan. A wide range of panels Thursday and Friday will include talks entitled The Uses and Abuses of Power in Social Innovation, Capital Markets in Crisis, Powerful Women: Shifting the Status Quo, Technology and Shifting Power in a Hyper-Connected World, and Tomorrow's News: Models for an Everyone-is-Media World.

Cause Global will be covering parts of the conference. Among highlights so far:

* Roger Martin, the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, urged conferees to be "the kinds of leaders who reject the traditional choices between two or more unsatisfactory alternatives and instead create new courses of action in the world." Martin, during an opening ceremony at the historic Sheldonian Theatre, referred to President Obama's inaugural speech, in which Obama asserted: "For our common defense, we reject as false a choice between our safety and our ideals." Rotman said that time and again, highly successful leaders reject unsatisfactory options and create new alternatives. "They understand the power of the paradox," Martin said. "The critical take-away for social entrepreneurs, specifically, is that you must reject the notion that existing business models equal reality. The status-quo business model versus civil society is not a choice but rather the root of a new model, a new set of solutions for our times."

* Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and now president of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalisation Initiative, underscored the importance of government to help bring order to the current "chaotic" climate of change that is being felt around the world. She said:

One of the shifts taking place in this severe economic crisis is a recognition that government matters and that it's very important to the 21st century. We had been in a neo-liberal phase when there was a reduction of government and the private sector was supposed to be so efficient and we didn't need regulation. I am hoping we are now seeing a new era of more appropriate government, governments that are more responsive and also more welcoming to younger people with their tools of the information society. We need for people to become more participative in their communities and societies and their movements. We need more people holding those in power to account. How are social entrepreneurs holding existing institutions to account? We need more of that. It's important to do that and that's what social entrepreneurs and young people with their tools can do very well.

* Ken Brecher, the executive director of the Sundance Institute and an anthropologist by training, delivered an eloquent speech that underscored the importance of passion and persistence in the pursuit of the common good. He received a hearty round of applause when he compared the traits of social entrepreneurs to those traits which characterized and qualified the fearless crews recruited by the early 20th century explorer, Sir Ernest Shackleton. [Brecher quoted an advertisement that Shackleton placed in The London Times in 1907: "Wanted: Men for hazardous journey, low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in the event of success."] Brecher also spoke about the perserverance and resilience that characterized the life of the late Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, who received an honorary degree from Oxford in 1965, when she was 76 years old, during a ceremony in the Sheldonian Theatre [the spot where Skoll conferees were assembled Wednesday night]. Brecher urged social entrepreneurs to heed Akhmatova's example of creativity and passion against brutal odds to bring new levels of sanity to the world. "You can use your skills to bring order from chaos and in doing so fulfill the highest human function, not as visionary but with a strong sense of reality. (Akhmatova's life was) a reproach to those who feel that a single individual can never stand up to the march of history."

The conference, at the Said Business School, continues through Friday. For more on social entrepreneurs and the state of social innovation, see this recent article in The Economist.

— Marcia Stepanek

(Photo-illustration by Lise Gagne for istock.com)