I run into several articles about mobile marketing and mobile apps that showed me how powerful the mobile devices’ world is. I have to admit I have no clue how adroit app developers can be. Did you know that Johnson & Johnson developed an app that guides parents through bath-and-bed time proces, provides them with useful advices and even helps their baby to fall asleep by playing lullabies? Another example – would you ever associate the insurance industry with meditation? I would not. But the meditation app provided by US insurance company Cigna found a lot of fans.

There is one thing that guarantees a success. Good and useful mobile application must be available for a user when he NEEDS it + exactly in the TIME and in the PLACE in which he needs it.

When I went through all that examples of “useful” apps I started to be little bit worried about the humankind future. Our mobile devices give us such a basic information on a daily basis that we are losing our common sense and natural thinking about problems. It is the same like the internet. Almost no one can imagine doing homework/research/project without using internet nowadays. I somehow feel that such an easy way of living only dulls the society and makes human kind more vulnerable when anything un-expectable happens. Just imagine worldwide disaster during which the internet would not work and all devices would be disconnected. We would not know what to do or where to go to save our lives just because we would not be able to read it on our mobile dashboard.

Let us look at some numbers:

• # of mobile devices on the world: 7 billion
• # of Twitter users: 555 million
• total # of iPhones sold: 193 million
• Total average of daily UPS shipments: 16 million

These numbers are only an example how we are equiped by electronic devices which connect people all around the world.

It is hard to imagine to live in today’s developed world without computer or mobile devices. I put the word “developed” in previous sentence on purpose. There are still places on the Earth where it is on the other hand impossible to use mobile devices, because of lack of any signal or electricity. And let us be honest, we all sometimes gate away to such places (mountain peaks, abandoned islands, deep forests,…) just because we are too tired of being connected all the time. We want to untie and disconnect ourselves at least for a while.

This is exactly what I did last weekend. Two days ago, I came back to Vancouver from my four-days Rockies trip and I am going to introduce you another numbers. I spent 4 amazing days in real physical connection with nature instead of the online connection with my study groups and other people. I had a chance to experience -18°C freeze in Lake Luise, +40°C hot water in hot springs, elevation of 2 451 m on Sulphur Mountains and also, unfortunately, many many hours in our bus (do not wanna know exact number here!) 🙂   Are not these numbers nicer than the top ones?

I want to take up my previous post in which I warned about some common mistakes that marketers and brand managers make. In this post, let’s focus on the marketing objectives and let’s answer the question whether they are (or can be) achieved in today’s online marketing world.

The most fundamental marketing objectives are:
– change consumers’ attitudes (change what they feel, think, in what they believe) which afterwards helps to
– change consumers’ behaviour. Marketing efforts win over consumers in the moment when they are doing (not doing) what marketer wants them (not) to do.

If any brand manager asks himself whether his brand’s presence and activity on SM are changing consumer’s attitudes and behaviour towards brand (products), the answer in most cases is NO.

What e-marketers do on SM is they try to spread awareness and positive WOM, encourage people to talk about brand, communicate problems and inquiries with them etc. I believe, e-marketers stucked at the beginning of purchase funnel – at the stage of spreading awareness. Yes, it is consumers’ attitudes towards SM and their behaviour online what had changed a lot, but this change has nothing to do with the marketing objectives!

Only smart combination of an online and offline marketing brings the brand closer to those dreamy objectives. Vancouver based company Indochino gives us a nice example. They very smartly use SM to invite men to the tailoring studio (which travels from city to city) where potential customers can experience all brand benefits offline (touch different materials, see colors and combinations on their own eyes, let a personal tailor measure them and offer them the best suit).

And this is only one example of many branches where the offline marketing still plays the prim and hardly can be replaced by any online performance.

I dare to state that we are living in a revolutionary era when traditional media advertisements and campaigns are slowly replaced by new social media tools. Nevertheless there are still a lot of misunderstandings in the business world that usually lead to not much pleasant pitfalls. If a brand manager or a marketer wants to avoid some of the fatal mistakes he should realize several basic things:

1. Social media environment is controlled by customers not by managers. We have to turn all the traditional B2C relationship on its head. It is a customer’s activity and his investment what creates SM platforms. Customers invest their time and efforts when searching for or engaging with your brand.
2. Previous note sounds very tempting, one can think: “Wow, that is awesome, customers do all the job, we will just take the cream.” The true is that you can leave SM live its own life, but then you will just cry over spilled milk. Uncontrolled SM activity and conversation related to the brand is usually more harmful than not using SM at all. Molson already knows very well…
3. On the other hand too much control harms as well. Once SM users find out that you filtered and deleted their posts or cheated on them like for example Dr Pepper/7UP did in 2003, you will recognize their hell anger. Remember, there are millions of users on the other side of Facebook wall. They can destroy you very easily.
4. Social Media and user generated content (UGC) are not for free nor cheap! Before you run your online campaign, it is very important to realize that SM monitoring and management in fact cost a lot of time and a lot of money. Once your brand enters the online world you will need qualified online advertisers and e-marketers who are in charge and keep the right track towards the dreamy objective.

… to be continued…

After two months of using Hootsuite Dashboard, learning through their online courses, completing modul exams and struggling with settings and creating new tabs with relevant and useful content I became a new Hootsuite certified professional yesterday!

What I want to say at this place is that I really appreciate the opportunity to have the access to Hootsuite University. It would not be possible without taking course COMM464 E-marketing at Sauder School of Business at UBC. Although the social media courseware was a useful supplement to the classes, some things were repeated many times (I promise, I will never forget that listening and conversing is one of the most important things when performing as a  e-marketer), other facts were so obvious (what is Facebook and how it works) that could have been left out. On the other hand the Hootsuite Certification courses were extremely useful and practical.

To be honest, I cannot wait to come back to Czech Republic and leverage all that knowledge I got through HSU in my school projects and in my future career. It might sounds selfish but I somehow feel HSU gives me opportunity to overperform other czech graduates in the field of marketing. After all, getting new competitive advantage is the reason why I wanted to experience other than european university in my exchange program.

If you are interested in politics in central Europe, you can check out the situation in my homeland where communist party gets enough votes to be the third in parliamentary elections. I will just save many years of my life not getting mad about that neither discussing how bad the situation is. Anyway I have already provided you with the insight into using social media in the campaigns in the previous entry. But another lesson for political campaign is:

“Even though your social media campaign is the best among others, it does not ensure your success. Different people (internet users as well as non-users) are keeping your fate in THEIR hands, it is purely up to them whether they will vote for you or visit your webpage or enter your store.”

Dear Mr. Schwarzenberg, let me advice you something. You already captured young people through social media at the beginning of 2013 when presidential election campaign took place. They already loved you, they were prepared vote for you in parliament elections since you lost the presidential ones. It was time to focus more on people who does not use internet so much and who hears more on the offline campaigns in recent weeks. These people were probably CSSD’s and communists’ voters. Smart combination of the online and offline campaign could have gained more seats in parliament for your TOP 09 to the detriment of communist party. I bet there will be new opportunity for doing that once the winners become losers in their after-election negotiation, no government is created in next weeks and new elections will be needed.

During my research on the topic of successful word of mouth and viral campaign, I have found one key point that all successful viral campaigns have in common – emotions. These emotions are mostly positive, cheerful, evoking laugh or at least grin and pleasant feeling. People want to have fun in digital world and spread their fun and good mood among friends and relatives. This is one of human characteristics that drives viral videos on the internet, it creates the desired shareable quality of the video.

Just think about some of the most spread viral videos. You can find wide variety of strong and mostly positive emotions. Let’s start at

–         cuteness (Charlie bite me, Daddy ate your Halloween candies, well…ethical aspects of having your own child as a main character of world wide spread video remain for another discussion), let’s go through

–         admiration (Redbull space jump),

–         obsession (recent Dior Homme with Pattison ),

–         feeling of sweet funny revenge (Prank war between husband and wife) or

–         just feeling of “WTF???” (Megawoosh) and end up at

–         pure hilariousness (Never say no to Panda).

But emotions and right content in your campaign are just the first step on the way to final success. They need to be amplified by other aspects and here are some advices:

1)     start at people who are open to share your videos  (we call them creators). These people will kick off the video to the online world,

2)     find appropriate channels and media for spreading,

3)     consider that nothing lasts forever (especially in today’s fast online world) and it is very possible that your viral campaign will last just a couple of weeks,

4) nevertheless it does not entitles you to bomb the digital world with other new videos. Remember, less quantity, more quality is golden rule for e-marketers!

We use social media with one particular goal: we want to be seen and heard. I believe that the only reason why online networks were created had been a human characteristic which just a few people are able to admit – the voyeurism. The desire to know everything about everybody brought crowds on social networks. Advertisements, famous people’s pages or political parties’ campaigns just followed these crowds.

Yesterday, I came across the story about a man from Prince George who was found dead in Boston. His family is now using the social media to collect money for his repatriation. I can reconcile myself to their blog but their Facebook page has crossed the border of ethics. However it might sound hard I am asking: is it even normal that his family has time and mood for adding photos of their dead son, writing posts about his death and answering to all condolences? In my opinion this usage of Facebook is just wired! But let’s move to more enjoyable and natural use of social media…

Czech people are after less than 3 years again in the maelstrom of election campaigns. Mr. Karel Schwanzenberg and his conservative party TOP09 together represent strict and non-populist opinions and aim mainly to young people in our political fight. Karel’s pubbing with students, awesome tags, truly friendship with Vaclav Havel – this is just an example of what makes him so popular. Furthermore one never knows what he will come with. A sudden and huge design change has taken place on the TOP09 website this afternoon. Everyone thought that hackers had attacked the website until TOP09 spokesmen explained that the change was a part of their campaign. Look at the pictures below and consider how crazy the change is:

The news about possible hacker attack has become a viral immediately and has brought wide attention to the party. Nobody would have believed that TOP09 is able to do such an unconventional and unpredictable step. But after all, steps like this one are the connecting link between young people and TOP09.

Well, my advice for today sounds: During doing your marketing online, do not be afraid of being controversial or sometimes even odd. Let people be surprised by your online behaviour. Your steps might become unforgettable for them. But remember (not just moral) borders!

Today’s lesson for me: Be aware of people who might feel animosity towards you even though you haven’t seen them for years. They can reach you in virtual world!

This morning my former high school classmate lost $70 because of virus on Facebook. Here is the story: His former classmate and very good friend sent him a message where she asked him to text his mobile number because she needed to try whether her new phone works properly. The message also contained a link to some online survey. He believed that she really needed his help because she is about to run her own business so he sent her the number and clicked on the link. A few minutes afterwards his mobile operator announced him that he gave the approval to the payment of $70.

Of course this is his huge mistake and a lesson for him. But the whole story has even more interesting continuing. We figured out that the virus was aimed just at people (and their relatives) from our former high school class. Well, there must be some aggrieved classmate or teacher who really hates us.

This experience leads me to the thinking that worse than unsatisfied and unhappy consumer is the consumer who wants a revenge. In today’s world, you would not find better place for his revenge than social networks and virtual world. In some cases you can be incredibly lucky and your company gets clean from the trouble. But there are so many cases when even one customer ensured that particular company will experience sales decrease, reputation dent and outflow of consumers. One for all: four years old famous story that “United Airlines breaks guitars”.

To avoid similar situations be sure that you behave towards your customers according the scheme called “Social Media Triage”:

As we often say in Czech Republic: “Pride will have a fall.” So don’t be lofty and behave to your customers with respect. Hopefully it will lead to better business world with fewer vindictive persons.

Let’s look at two similar stories – Czech presenter Pavlina Kvapilova’s and Neal Mann’s story.

I guess we are still discovering the area of social media in Czech Republic. Very few companies or organizations use this tool successfully when communicating with customers or public.

The public broadcaster CT24 (“Czech Television 24”) is one of the most successful users of new media in Czech Republic. It was Pavlina Kvapilova who introduced and started the huge project of New Media in CT24. Since October 2011 until very recently she had been an executive director of New Media Division of Czech Television. She brought the concept of being in touch with the public 24 hours a day through social media. There is live broadcasting in CT24 all day which allows people to express their opinions, understandings and doubts about up-to date problems through social media. These entries are then introduced in that broadcast. It closes the communication cycle but opens the room for discussion, sociological and psychological studies etc. What a genius idea, right?!

A few days ago, Pavlina Kvapilova was fired for the reason of redundancy. First of all, I really cannot find any redundancy in the post she was on and even less in the area of social media which is growing so fast. Secondly, everyone in CR knows that the actual reason for her dismissal is that she supported her colleague who was suspended from the position of the presenter of evening news. Pavlina’s work contract terminates at the end of November but she was told to not come back.

We can find the similarity with Neal Mann’s leave from Sky News when his boss told him to curb his Twittering about non-work subjects. Ironically Neal then joined Wall Street Journal that is owned by Rupert Murdoch too.

And I am asking: Why you, bosses, are willing to let the best people of your team leave just because they expressed their opinions in social networks? Still, this is the essential role of social media! You harm your company’s reputation but, what is worse, you infringe one of the most important freedoms in one’s life. Freedom of speech.