Category: Business (Page 5 of 11)

There is little that annoys people more than organizations and people who are not transparent. Shrouding yourself in secrecy and complicated procedures is a sure way to drive customers away. The trend is about openness, being clear and transparent on what you are about. And there is a supporting trend that people are watching you closely to see whether you walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Your conclusion might be that that means you need to tread carefully not to drop the ball. But that is missing the point completely.

The challenge in this trend is to open up your company. To make it more and more transparent and allow your target audience a look behind the scenes. This will be harder than it sounds. You will run into internal resistance within your organization. It might be hard to open up on the materials you use and where they come from. It might feel unnatural to reveal the environmental risks that are associated with some of the things you do. Or it might just be that your company has grown habits, departments, choices that are not at all focussed on the target audience. And you might be right in thinking that your audience would not like it if they knew. Well, this is your chance to make a difference. Changing now, you might have the ultimate advantage on your competitors who are likely to be in the same shape as you are. But if can make the turn before they can, you are on your way up and leaving them behind.

In your communications, be as transparent as you possibly can. Tell about what is going on. There is nothing wrong with a positive twist on what you are saying, but make sure you are not telling fairytales. If you are the most personal insurer in the country, you need to make it your business to know your clients’ name and their packages when you answer your phone. If you can answer all of their questions based on your knowledge of them and half of the question they asked you, they will feel like you know them. And they will feel like you care. In another example, if you claim your company is the most environmentally friendly producer of household appliances, you have to be it. And you can show people that you do recycle and do care about creating new products with a smaller footprint. Because that is in line with your company philosophy.
In both cases, living up to your claim will give you an edge over others. You will be talked about and people will testify to the fact that you live up to your claims. If you claim to be things you are not, you need to be prepared for bad publicity and possibly worse. A Dutch bank went down almost entirely based on public opinion. Another example is BP that saw a huge amount of corporate value vaporize due to public opinion on its approach to an environmental disaster.

After all this, it might sound like a contradiction, but transparency can be easily achieved. You just need to be careful to be consistent throughout everything you do. Transparency can be as easy as having someone who is approachable. It can be as easy as showing what it is you do behind the scenes so your target audience feels like they know your processes. And it can be as easy as sending out the emails to your mailinglist with a reply address so people can respond to you when they have read your news.

Transparency is a great trend for anyone who wants to get their point across. Because if you have a transparent image, that means that people are willing to trust you. Just because they know you.

This post is part of a series on 10 social trends that can help you get your point across. For more information or a tailored advice on what could be your opportunities, get in touch on arne@arnehulstein.nl

Jack is a personal injury lawyer. He just walked into his office at 10th street and earned  enough points to steal the mayorship of his office from Dan, his colleague. On his way to the office he picked up a coffee at the local Starbucks with a 10% discount for being their mayor. A mayorship he really enjoys as he loves their coffee. Foursquare checkins determine a geographical location you check into through your smartphone. Points are awarded for traveling, for checking in, for adding venues and for other things if a company chooses to do so. And people are checking in to beat their friends on points. Everybody wants to be at the top of the scoreboard.

In the coming years we will see playfulness become a bigger factor in society. Playing is no longer just for kids. Managers play, ministers play, gardeners play, entrepreneurs play, kids play. And they all play together or against each other to achieve the top position on scoreboards we never even considered before. Ken posted the most replies on a travel forum to achieve the status of “World explorer” on the forum and the top spot in their “Biggest travelers of the world” scoreboard. He is proud of it and intends to keep it. But he knows Barbara is right on his heels with just forty points separating their positions. So Ken keeps on posting relevant content to the site, because when his posts are marked as helpful he receives extra points. It is the competition that keeps him on his toes. And he loves it.

Playfulness is a great tool to work with. Over the last two years we see scoreboards emerge on everything. The motto for playfulness, or gamification is “If you can count it, you can score it”. And if you can score it, you can use it as a trigger. A trigger for thought, a trigger to buy, a trigger to participate.

Within playfulness we also see social gaming as a fast riser. Games like farmville, where you build a farm and share livestock with your friends would never have become a success five years ago. But now everybody is playing Farmville or other social games through facebook, through portal sites or in other ways. Social gaming allows you to play along and against your friends in games without having to have them present. But you are still competing to be the biggest, the best, the friendliest etc. And people love it. They play it for hours on end and they are willing to spend money to achieve higher scores. Just as they do with many more online games all over the world. As an example, games company Spil Games serves 130 million unique customers about 30 billion games every single month. That means 11,500 people are playing a game with them every second of the day.

The statistics are great. But how do you translate that into something that you can benefit from? You might be in a very serious business. You might think that there is nothing playful about what you are doing. But you need to reconsider. You need to look at what you are doing in a new way. If it can be counted, it can be a game. If it can be shared, it can be a game. And your playing field is your whole target audience.
Alice runs the city council safety department. For years she has been trying to involve citizens in what she is doing. She knows that when she can have them involved, the streets will become a safer place quicker than she could ever achieve. Alice could use gamification in her process to involve people. Things change when there are things you can achieve for yourself and for others. Alice can go out onto the streets and ask people to add their worry to a list. The list is then transformed into an achievement board which shows problems, their owners and the people who solved the problem. By solving the problem you can earn points. Problem owners can also offer rewards for solving their problem so there is more to achieve than points. As Alice has found out the problems of the community often relate to their safety, solving these problems will solve a large part of the problems Alice’s department needs to address.

The trend is that we see adults play as much as we see kids play. And their games are not much more serious either. People will take time to just have fun. And there is an angle you can work with. Make what you do fun. Make it count towards something your target audience can believe in. Make it something that is in line with your goals or your product. And you can. Anything can be turned into a game. A good one. A game that triggers your target audience to have fun. And if they do, they will credit you and your products for it.

This post is part of a series on 10 social trends that can help you get your point across. For more information or a tailored advice on what could be your opportunities, get in touch on arne@arnehulstein.nl

“Creativity is great for selling sketchbooks.” “We are in insurance, not creativity.” Just some random remarks you get when talking about creativity. But whether you think it fits your company profile or not, creativity is a social trend that allows you to reach your target audience.

Just to get it out of the way, creativity as a trend does not mean you ought to ditch your pinstripe for a red suit, nor does it mean your business cards should now be done by a graffiti artist. The trend in creativity means that people love to be creative themselves. It also means they appreciate an organization that has a creative edge to their products.

Within this trend, the best ways to reach people is through challenging them to be creative with your product or around a theme that fits your products or services. A great example of this would be a coffee chain that would ask people to take pictures of their favorite place to drink coffee and post them on a Facebook fan page. In return the fans can win a chance to have coffee there with 30 friends, muffins and other extra’s included.
Another option would be to ask people to help you develop a new product or service for you. In the Netherlands crisps maker Lays did this when it asked people to suggest new flavors for their crisps. Out of all the suggested flavors three were chosen for the final test, selling them in the supermarket. The sales of the three chosen flavors even exceeded the sales of all the time favorite crisps flavor. Brand awareness over the campaign period even went up to 80%, which is a big improvement over the 60% normally measured at Lays. The huge success of the campaign can be attributed to a couple of other trends as well, but unleashing the creativity of people to create new crisps has been one of the major factors in the success of the campaign.

Adding a creative edge to your product or service from within your company can be one of the toughest things you could want. However, people will appreciate it once you have got your edge covered. The edge you are looking for is something which makes your product remarkable. Something that is just a little bit different, but which changes the feel of your product or service enough to surprise people. It might be incorporating a local flavor in the product you are selling. Like the baking tin that was created by an artist based on an old button used in the traditional dress in Zeeland, the Netherlands. At first she wanted to make a limited edition of 2010 baking tins for the area. Four months later, she has now sold over 8000 tins in 30 countries and she is looking to expand with a new series of recipes from around the world. Another way to make a change would be to give your service a twist. You could be the world’s first socially responsible and environmentally focussed accountancy firm. But it would have to be in the genes of your organization. This would mean that all employees only wear organic suits, they only use electric vehicles to visit their customers and the office should be as paperless as possible. At the office fair trade and organic products are chosen for every solution possible and every employee can spend a couple of hours every week to provide a charity with their expertise. It can be done and it will pull a new group of clients towards you. A group that will choose for the best solution for themselves as well as the world around them. And when that choice is made in this way, the price is no longer the main issue at your negotiating table.

Creativity can be the trigger to involve people. Whether that is involvement with your organization, your goals, your product, your projects or your services. It can be one of the decisive factors in the choice your target audience makes. And that is not the only way you can benefit from creativity. The creativity of your target audience can also help you to explore directions that you would even have considered otherwise. And the good thing about that is that if your target audience leads you to new grounds, they also follow you to be your best customers and ambassadors there.

This post is part of a series on 10 social trends that can help you get your point across. For more information or a tailored advice on what could be your opportunities, get in touch on arne@arnehulstein.nl

We love to get excited. So, what is the news in that, you might be wondering. Did we not always seek excitement? Not really. There have been times when people were looking for security more than excitement. But now people are looking for excitement in almost everything.

Excitement has become on of the factors on which people base their decisions. They are more likely to buy a product, choose something or take part in something if it is exciting to them. Does this mean that everything needs to be a roller-coaster ride? Not really. Excitement comes in many shapes and sizes. However, you need to make sure that you choose a type of excitement that fits your purpose. Get it wrong and it will have customers turn away from you.

So, what choices do you have? At the word excitement most people immediately think about something like the roller-coaster I mentioned before. But you can also become excited about taking a long hike in the mountains. You can be excited about working with your neighbours to clean up the street. But you can also be excited about going to see the band you love. These are all very different things to be excited about. And you target audience can be excited about what you have for them. But only if you can hit the sweet spot of their excitement.

Your first challenge is to analyze your offer. It is not really important what you are offering. Just about everything can trigger some kind of excitement with its target audience. About three years ago, I talked to an online seller of chess games and chess materials. They were looking to grow their business, but they did not really know how. As you will understand, excitement over chess is the excitement of pushing your own strategic abilities. It is the excitement of solving a hugely complicated puzzle. It does not give you an adrenaline rush, but it does give a sense of achievement. Together we decided that this ought to be the excitement that should be aimed for. The excitement of pushing yourself, of beating the ability of others through commitment.

An example of how to get it wrong was presented to me last weekend on a motorcycle show. Here was this beautiful hand built bike which was built as a tribute to Barry Sheen. It is easily the fastest production road bike in the world, of which only 52 are to be built. Everything on the bike was purposefully created. Nothing was overlooked. And the €130K price tag reflected this. However, it sat on a square meter pedestal in front of a magazine stand with only a banner drawing a bit of attention to it. A shame for a bike that could replace the current bike in the dreams of men loving fast bikes. Interestingly a talk with the owner revealed that that was just the thing they really wanted to do. They wanted to put this bike in the heads of people as the ultimate performance road bike. The audience was there, but few people noticed it. The image of the bike would have been helped much more if the display would have been bigger and had a more exclusive feel to it. It would have helped if it would have had screens showing the bike beating other bikes in sprints and circuit races. And that theme could be extended to their online presence where they could trigger an online competition that would prove that whatever you pitch against it, their bike would always beat it convincingly. That would give this bike the sporting legend they are looking for. A mix that would get their target audience excited when they spotted a glimpse of the bike anywhere.

So, how about your product then? The first thing to do, is to determine what the excitement around your product could be. And then reconsider it. Ask others who do not know your product or yourself to give their opinion on how your product would excite them. Because honestly, we all have pre set ideas on what excitement would be for our products. A city council might think the excitement in cleaning up your street would be in living in a nice neighborhood. However, for its citizens the excitement might be in pulling people together from a couple of blocks and achieving something together. Never assume you know the answer. Have a number of people look at it from the outside. Often they will come up with things you never thought of.

But at the end of it all, be exciting. Be something that people can warm up to. Be something that they look forward to. Be something that they can care about. And don’t be afraid to move outside of your primary goals to achieve this. Because you, your product, your idea or your project can get others excited.

This post is part of a series on 10 social trends that can help you get your point across. For more information or a tailored advice on what could be your opportunities, get in touch on arne@arnehulstein.nl

All we ever do, whether in sales, marketing or communications, is getting something across to our target audience. It is that something that triggers buyers to buy, citizens to become involved, people to donate to charities and others to listen. But what are the keys to making them hear what you are trying to get across? The key to being heard is to be connect to a social trend at the time it is happening.

Social trends go beyond the tricks that are often used. Social trends are trends that we can see in the way we relate to one another in society, they are the movements that live in the core of our society.

In the coming weeks I want to go over ten trends that we currently see and that open up loads of opportunities for people and organizations to communicating to their target audiences. I specify people and organizations on purpose, as these trends are as important for an individual building a personal brand as they are to corporates, government as well as the one man corner shop.

The coming ten posts will focus on these ten trends:

1. Excitement
2. Creativity
3. Playfulness
4. Being transparent and clear
5. Passion and craftsmanship
6. Meeting and connecting
7. Doing it together
8. Personally tailored
9. Purposeful living
10. Meaningful experiences

These are the trends that you need to connect to if you want to really reach your target audience. Over the coming ten blog posts, I will be taking a closer look at each of these trends and what they mean, or can mean, to you. I will also try to make them practical by adding examples, ideas etc.

Just as an aside, these are not just trends to follow in social media. They are not even trends that just pertain to online media. These are trends that are happening across society. They are happening to all age groups and all walks of life. I am certain that you will recognize most of them, as these are trends that influence you as well.