Have we gone as far as we can?
I like Zappos. Great company, great service, and innovative in its business model.
But how much of its innovation is proof of Social Media Manifest Destiny, and how much is peculiar to the personality of founder Tony Hsieh?
Listen to: Are We Out of Ideas?
Part of me wants to believe technology will enable new structures for service. Part of me has met Tony Hsieh, and understands how infectious his outlook is… within *his* company.
If we’re hitting 2011 and all of the case studies that consultants are pitching are either Zappos or DELL, then it’s time to examine the nature of those successes: Categorical, or Outlier?
(Or maybe the space is being oversaturated with people who don’t know what they’re doing, and only know what they’ve seen from last year’s webinars on these same two case studies.)
Here’s the email pitch I got… And it’s from the Bulldog Reporter people. At least they got a Zappos insider to share the story, but it’s time to either find new successes or move on past the old ones.
If you want Business to take you seriously.
—–Original Message—–
From: PR University
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 5:44 AM
To: Pigott, IsaacSubject: How Zappos Uses Social Media to Build Loyalty and Sales: Insider Shares Strategies & Tactics:
12/15 Bulldog Reporter’s PR University presents a new webinar How Zappos Uses Twitter and Social Media to Build Brand Loyalty and Sales: An Insider Shares Strategies and Tactics
Speaker: Thomas Knoll, Zappos Community Architect
Reasons to Attend This Event: Zappos.com is legendary for its amazing customer-service reputation—which starts and ends with its one-of-a-kind social media strategy. Hundreds of Zappos employees—including their charismatic CEO and founder, Tony Hsieh—tweet, post to Facebook, blog and upload YouTube videos. One thing is certain: Zappos’ social media strategy isn’t all fun and games. Indeed, there’s a hard-nosed business rationale behind its social media presence. Zappos wants to be known for its extraordinary customer service, and it uses social media technologies to demonstrate that high level of customer care every day. Here’s the good news—you can easily adapt everything Zappos does in social media to your products and services, no matter what industry you are in.
Step one: Join PR University for an exclusive training session led by Zappos Community Architect Thomas Knoll, who will give you an under-the-hood tour of Zappos’ social media engine. You’ll not only learn how it does it, but how you can use its hard-won insights to build the next social media success story.
If we keep churning through the same old case studies, then are we really moving forward?
Out of ideas? No, I don’t think so. Some of this continuous drumbeat on the same case study comes from laziness, IMHO. There are other examples out there (as David Meerman Scott points out in his post, also about getting over the same tired example). Practitioners note an event (hey, Company X does this right) then that becomes the top of mind example all the time. Scott mentions the fact that crisis comms people are STILL using the Tylenol crisis case study as an example, even though that should be considered so outdated nobody should use it any more, other than as part of a History of Crisis Communications class/paper/thesis, etc.
Why? Because it is easier to find content to design a slide deck when you Google the most popular case studies. It’s also possibly easier to connect with an audience when a speaker says “here is a case study” and the whole audience nods, because they too, have heard it before. Instant validation. No need to *thoroughly* explain, no learning curve, no need for in-depth background. It’s like fast food. It isn’t going to taste great, but it will be consistent. (And the more these examples get used, the more they resemble the intellectual equivalent of the nutrition content of fast food.)
Zappos, Tylenol, BP–these are the EASY examples. If people want to look smart, they need to look harder for the lesser-known examples.
As always, good food for thought.
Thanks, Jen.
Maybe this is exacerbated because the “Learn Social Media Now Or DIE!” pitches are increasing in frequency.
Even Mark Ragan admits that Ragan Communications would be a shell of itself if we weren’t in the middle of a communications revolution. (And to Mark’s credit, he really does dig deeper when it comes to finding newer and more diverse examples.)
But the bottom line is that if CMOs are being bombarded with emails preaching the same tired examples, at some point it hurts rather than helps the cause. Because not every business can be Zappos.
The problem is, what’s old hat to some people is brand new to others. What’s seen as last year’s news to some is this and next year’s education and case studies to others.
It’s always been this way (not just in social media), and will be for as long as there are early adopters versus the mainstream.
I agree that new examples need to be heard, and we always use little-known ones that are making huge strides. But not everyone wants to hear that, either – much like consumerism, it comes down to supply-and-demand.
All we can do is not write about the “names” and write about the other ones, and hope others catch up.
You’re right, Danny.
But maybe it would be easier if Zappos *were* more like the rest of the business world. It is a culture unique to Tony Hsieh, and when most business people hear him talk about it they shake their heads at the radical organizational transformation required to replicate his model.
It makes for a more difficult persuasion, because there’s an assumption that you have to go All In at the level Tony did.
Thanks!
Ike, while you raise a very good larger question—can social media marketing be effectively and efficiently used by the “average” business?—I think you’re exaggerating about Zappos and Dell being the only companies studied.
We at Bulldog Reporter’s PR University have featured speakers from many of the top social media performers in our teleconferences, including Cisco, Intel, Kodak, Virgin Air and a dozen more. We feel fortunate to have recruited Thomas Knoll from Zappos to address your other question, which is, is Zappos social media success due just to Tony Hsieh, or is it duplicable by others?
And as you have noted, it’s proving to be a big winner because lots of people want to know more about the details, notwithstanding Zappos’s ubiquitous press coverage.
Best,
Jim
Jim, you might just be the victim of being the last straw.
I am aware of Bulldog’s products, and you do present a wider array of guests. But I wish you had been subjected to my email solicitations for the last few weeks, as they have been drenched in the same flavors of Kool-aid we’ve seen in the past two years.
Bulldog Reporter is by no means entirely to blame, here… you just got caught sending the Zappos email on the day I went Howard Beale.
I need to get this out of my system — I am so sick of Zappos i could scream.
Thanks, I feel much better.
I agree with Danny that there is a such a constant churn of new folks coming on to the social web that this is all new to many people. For those of us that have been immersed in this for so long the result can be an echo chamber but I think we also are smart enough to know where to get the good stuff. As a matter of fact Ike and Danny are two good places to start!
Thanks Ike!