Services Marketing & Social Media

While it can be argued that IT Services Organizations in the current Context of highly competitive environment and extensive cost pressures tend to lean more and more towards products based philosophy . Every services organization in the quest of adding more and more value tend to focus on building packaged service offerings which at times could be actual intellectual property (IP), but most times will be nice packaging of the conventional services creating a perception of it being a IP. Many a time the recipient of the services might not be mature enough and in such cases , the neatly gift packed service offerings will be passed of as frame works , close to an IP etc.
Quintessentially Services Organizations are "People Based" Organizations and hence the quality of the value zone being created between the Service recipient and the delivery provider is highly dependent on the "ingrained DNA" of the organization. A mature recipient will be able to see through a superficial attempt or just a PR focused perception creation.
Could GE be known for Six Sigma with it out it being ingrained into every business and every part of GE ??
Leave alone the conventional marketing mechanisms being practiced in Services oriented organizations, which include targeted marketing , focus on creating one on one relationships , building mindshare , wallet share etc . Tectonic shifts are occurring in the age of Social media , which has the power to either RESET , RECREATE or "Destroy" the fallacies of the so called high level thinkers who are intent on only creating a perception and they are hardly giving any emphasis on the actual implementation and execution of the culture you want the organization to espouse. The execution and implementation of this in a "People based" Services organizations is the toughest and hardly any CEO can claim that he is close to perfection .
An example i came across was to do with Starbucks of whom i am a very Loyal fan with at least one visit per day to any of the establishments . It is a well know fact that Starbucks as a organization after the string of success it has enjoyed is going through trying times with the state of the economy and also the onslaught and proliferation of the McDonald cheaper premium coffee brand . Howard Schultz who has returned as the CEO and in his analysis of the organization brand , in his second stint talks about how the bloggers , twitterers and face bookies put holes in the brand equity of Starbucks which was carefully cultivated over decades of handwork.

A simple sensational unfounded story on "dipper well leaks" which claimed that Starbucks was insensitive and was wasting millions of liters of freshwater which had all of the conservationists up in arms . This essentially happened courtesy a huge viral campaign launched on the Social media.
Services industry is all about "People" and Social media is all about "People in Communities" which can dramatically amplify the effects both positively and negatively about the perception you are trying to build . A warning to all the so called "high level" thinkers, focus on controlling the negative and give emphasis on execution and implementation of the culture you want the organization to be known for.

Building a Perception Far Ahead of Reality ! think twice ..

Back after a long hiatus to the world of Blogging :-) READ as " Basic laziness to construct long sentences and paragraphs" . Being a marketer I often wonder whether building a perception far ahead of reality is the way to go. There was a time or it was often joked most American companies launch the product as soon as the design spec's are ready on a PowerPoint , let alone developing the product, beta testing etc. For instance Microsoft surely learnt a costly lesion with the disastrous results of the much hyped Windows vista platform. No wonder they were doubly sure and on the basis of the lesson learnt, came up with a much more stable and rock solid platform in Windows 7. On the mobile platform Windows 7 is still slated for late 2010 Commercial launch. They must be testing, testing and testing with the fright apple has given them with iphone platform. While the example chosen above has been more relevant to a product , this more or less holds true when a CEO is building a identity or cultural statement for an organization. For instance if Tata's stand for trustworthy brand , this has been achieved over many decades. For sure JRD meant believed the same with his heart and spent a lot of his energies in ensuring successful execution of the thought to reality amongst the thousands of employees across the conglomerate. There are stories within the Tata group about senior management being sacked for not believing in it and not going all out to execute trust worthiness and it was not just building hype and wishy washing away with flimsy execution.

Coming to the moot point of building perception which leads reality which is often driven or conceptualized by the so called Gurus or visionaries who often get carried away by the blind passion that the unique idea they have is perfect and ideal for the rest of the world or for that matter the company or division or any entity they run. The zeal with which they would want everyone else to see beyond the normal is often driven due to a few unique thoughts they have. While the thoughts per se are revolutionary they sometime fail to understand that execution of the thoughts is equally critical. Execution to the last mile and many a time it requires the masses to believe passionately the very thought you espouse. For the masses to believe with the same passion the unique idea will require perfecting the execution process to the extent it becomes a movement amongst the masses. This at times might take a complete decade. The shorter the time it takes if the great unique idea is thought through to an extent that every step is carefully managed and the original intent is maintained and passionately transmitted from one to another without any loss in the intensity original idea. The idea obviously needs to be real in all ways. "Thinking" , "doing" and " "communicating" all these three dimensions need equal amount of attention by every individual in the organization. Gone or the days of the army culture , that there is one part of the organization which will do higher level thinking another part will just be executers and another part will focus on information dissemination. Every individual / manager will have to spend nearly equal amounts of time for each of the above dimensions. In conclusion Building perception which is ahead of reality is a great idea and should be done but only to the extent it is sustainable and stands by its merit. Do not build a perception which is far ahead of reality but slightly ahead of reality is fine , so that each one of us will do the extra stretch to reach close to it or even achieve the same.