Third Idea Consulting

There’s been a slight change of plans, readers: I was all set to give you a rundown of the great stuff that happened at Paul Greenberg’s recent SCRM Summit in Herndon, VA, but a funny thing happened on the way to the Capitol Region. Somebody mentioned snow, and all the DC-area airports rolled up their runways. I didn’t get to go, and neither did a lot of people. Sad.

However, while I was sulking over my misfortune, a couple of new developments in the world of social networking caught my attention. (Yeah, there were probably more than two, but these are the ones I feel like mentioning.)

First, Facebook just changed its home page, and not for the better in my opinion. Many things aren’t where I expect them to be, and my bookmarked apps (mostly games, I admit) seem to have been randomized—I never quite know what I’ll have available. Everything requires more clicks. I am not as vehement a Facebook-basher as some people I know, but a little warning about this change would have been nice. As it stands, Facebook has traveled through time to an era before UI design was considered important on the Interwebs.

Second, and equally jarring, Google surprised us (or at least me) with the launch of Google Buzz, a built-in social networking function for users of Gmail and presumably any other piece of the Google empire. Mashable has this to say about it, if you want full coverage. I say that it’s a good thing there’s a way to turn Buzz off, because I wasn’t looking for yet another social media environment to integrate with my daily explorations. It’s already far too easy to get lost in the things we do; Buzz might have legs—it’s a network for people you actually know and correspond with, as opposed to weak-tie pseudofriends—but right now it feels like a “me-too” offering.

The lesson from these two news items is that I’m an extremely grumpy person when somebody moves my cheese. But the more applicable lesson is this: Don’t be content with your current approach to social media, because it can become obsolete in a day. New apps will replace old ones, and the conversation moves whether you like it or not.

I ran across an amusing little incident (via MetaFilter) that happened recently in San Francisco, and I felt I needed to share. Members of the Fred Phelps-led Westboro Baptist Church gathered recently for a protest outside the offices of Twitter. I’m going to be smart and stay well clear of discussing the ministry, its protest signs, or the counter-protest to their small rally—you can read and see more of that at either of these not-safe-for-work links—but I have to address what one of the protesters was reported to have said. To quote the Asylum article by Harmon Leon:

As the verbal assault continued, I raised my hand and asked the obvious: “Why Twitter? Does God hate Twitter?”

“We have not quarrels with Twitter. Twitter is a great platform,” stated a gray-haired WBC woman juggling several signs that could be interpreted as funny and ironic if they were actually funny and ironic. Gesturing to one of the younger WBC women, she added, “Meagan, she’s Twittering right now.”

But she explained the reason behind the protest: “Twitter should be used to tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you!”

As a staunch advocate of the use of social media, I have to say this shows a complete misunderstanding of how Twitter works, and reveals the difference between the old and new schools of mass communication. Protesting at the Twitter offices to get the platform to be used in one way or another presupposes that Twitter is a one-way channel that controls all the messages sent through it. It’s like seeing a soda can on the ground next to a recycling bin and complaining that the bin doesn’t reach out and pick up the can.

The new model of social engagement starts with interested parties reaching out to other interested parties. The correct action to take if you want Twitter to “tell the punks of doomed America that God hates you” is to start telling them yourself via Twitter.

Of course, that’s going to be somewhat problematic, since Twitter doesn’t work by telepathy. You can spout all the hate you want (subject to Twitter’s terms of service) but if nobody’s following you, you won’t be heard. The punks of doomed America aren’t going to follow these people to receive daily reminders of how a fringe group thinks they’re damned—well, the masochistic ones might—so the message dies. That’s how it is with social: If you want to reach people, you must have something worthwhile to say.

The other day, I retweeted a short Social Media Today entry by Maggie McGary about some of the major effects social media are having on our lives. In it, she cited an accurate prediction and a side-by-side strategy comparison of Massachusetts’ senatorial election result; a report on how social networking is helping to save lives in Haiti; and news articles about how major brands are altering or outright abandoning the infamous 30-second spot during the Super Bowl broadcast in favor of social marketing. Now I’m going to add some opinion (about the first two things, at least; I love Super Bowl commercials and will miss them if they fade away).

The effect of social media on politics is nothing we haven’t heard before. Bloggers were important in swaying opinions during the 2004 U.S. presidential election, and Brent Leary and David Bullock’s excellent Barack 2.0 reveals how our current President made effective use of the immediacy and intimacy of social media to win a hotly contested race. The idea that the incumbent party could lose its Senate seat—despite a long history of success combined with sympathy for a fallen statesman—smacks not only of overconfidence but of ignorance.

Social technology has made it easier than ever before to spread word when disaster strikes, and to coordinate immediate relief efforts. Where it once might have taken weeks to arrange donations of money and essentials, motivated people and groups got it done in a matter of days—sometimes hours. Time saved equals lives saved when something as devastating as the Haiti quake hits.

In both cases, the technology is an important indicator and enabler rather than a deciding factor of its own. In both cases, technology is waving a great big flag that says, “This is where the people are!” Paying attention to that flag can have tremendous positive effects, whether in terms of electorate swayed, lives saved, or just business generated. Ignoring it means being ignored in turn. Social media is changing the world, my friends. It may evolve, but it’s not dying out any time soon.

Here in the Northeast (New York to be precise) we’ve just had our first big winter storm. It wasn’t as bad as predictions threatened, but it’s still made a mess of things. Ice and snow are now part of our daily lives, along with puddles of slush and people who seem to forget (or to never have learned) how to drive, walk, or operate a thermostat when the weather turns ugly.

As with most big cities, we rely heavily on public services, and even more so when it’s time to dig out from under a snow storm. Unfortunately, those services are among the last strongholds of people who don’t know how to listen to or care about customers. Make no mistake: Citizens are customers of their municipalities, and we’re not always served appropriately.

To be fair, bad weather makes life harder for everybody, including plow drivers and the transit workers who keep the subway stations free of ice. We’re also short on funds to pay for emergency crews. Still, I’ve been noticing an attitude of “I don’t care” this year, and because of the situation it’s hard to provide feedback in a timely and effective manner.

Some of our subways stops are above ground (crazy, isn’t it?) so they receive a heavier load of snow and ice. The steps leading up to the platforms are metal clad, which makes them incredibly slippery when wet. In my travels these past few days I’ve seen a number of stairwells at busy and not-so-busy stops that haven’t been shoveled, swept, salted, or even sanded. Slippery stairs plus impatient people plus city property equals hundreds of potential personal injury claims against a town that can’t really afford to pay. But nobody’s saying a thing, because if we’re using those stairs then we’re on the way to or from someplace, and it’s too cold and miserable to stop.

Yesterday afternoon I watched a snow plow try to make a right turn while a woman pushing a stroller was trying to cross the street. The plow (which had to start from a dead stop) essentially chased the woman out into the middle of the intersection in order to make the turn. But nobody said anything, because it’s cold, and everybody’s on the way to someplace else, and there isn’t a good way to chase down a snow plow on foot.

In both cases, and many more, the incidents get pushed to the back of one’s mind after a while because there’s something else to think about, and no lasting proof, and ultimately nothing gets done. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

If you’ve been keeping up on this whole social CRM thing, you’ll have seen the powerful effect that a photo or a short video can have in motivating corrective behavior when a company screws up. We need to remember that city services are a business, and we’re its customers, and we should hold the city to the same standards of responsibility with the same threat of ridicule. We’ve all got cameras on our mobile phones nowadays (at least many of us do, and the rest are expecting one this Hanukkah-Christmas-Kwanzaa-Solstice-Festivus). So just do what you’d do if your local big box merchant drops the ball on safety and service: Take picture, shoot a video, get it online ASAP. Tweet the incident to your friends and family. Blog about it. Be responsible customers, so that the city can be a responsible entity—or be held responsible.

I’m not advocating playing gotcha with city governments. We’re already far too prone to try and squeeze money out of government in this overly litigious society of ours. This is not about blackmail. This is about making those who watch out for us do what’s right.

Other than that, things are pretty good, and I hope all of you can say the same. Have a happy, healthy, safe holiday (whichever one it is for you), and try not to get too stressed out.

When budgets are tight, businesses tend to focus on cutting costs and reducing expenses. This usually leads to reticence on the part of executives to spend for new or upgraded business technology. Sadly, this is a case of being penny wise but pound foolish, if the figures reported in a recent study are to be believed. Billions of dollars are slipping through the fingers of companies who deliver poor customer service, and a lack of good CRM is one of the causes.

“The Cost of Poor Customer Service: The Economic Impact of the Customer Experience and Engagement,” a joint study by Ovum and Greenfield Online (commissioned by Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories) surveyed nearly 9,000 consumers in 16 countries. It revealed that lost relationships—defined in the study as transactions taken to a competitor or abandoned entirely—cost businesses $338.5 billion per year. That works out to about $243 per loss, according to the study. So if somebody ever says, “So what’s one customer more or less,” now you can tell them. For complete reporting, see the destinationCRM.com article by Christopher Musico.

Certainly, poor business processes and a lack of understanding of how to best relate to customers take part of the blame, but everything cited in the study as needing improvement—being trapped in automated self-service, waiting too long for service, callers having to repeat themselves, and customer service representatives lacking the skills to answer inquiries—everything can be remedied by smart use of CRM technology. Here’s a list of the traditional solutions to these problems:

• Trapped in automated self service? This one is easy, even anti-tech: Make sure there’s a way to escalate from the IVR to a live agent. Call deflection has value only if customers are getting the help they need. A timer or tracker that follows a customer’s call and lets a customer service rep break in with live service if the call goes too long or revisits the same menu too often would work if the company (foolishly, in my opinion) doesn’t want a “press zero to speak to an agent” option.
• Waiting too long? There are more than a few on-demand contact centers out there, as well as software that allows companies to direct their call overflow to work-at-home agents who can help absorb the volume. Take your pick.
• Callers having to repeat themselves? This makes me sad, because even simple integration between the CRM system, the IVR, and the agent’s desktop takes care of this, 100 percent. I can’t believe it’s still an issue.
• Representatives lacking the required skills and permissions? A well-stocked and -maintained knowledgebase means that your customers don’t have to suffer for gaps in a particular agent’s expertise. E-learning tools help agents stay current on important information. Not penalizing an agent for handing the call off to somebody who does know how to help, rather than flailing uselessly at a problem, is also wise.

Those are the usual ways to deal with the issues brought up in Musico’s article. It also mentions social media as a potential problem solver. I don’t deny the closing statements of the piece, where Ovum analyst Daniel Hong says it will take some time to get businesses comfortable and proficient with social CRM, but the investment of time and money must be made. It’s been shown that fellow customers are often better at solving some problems than a CSR, so answers are provided for free without costing agent time. Answers generated by the community can be added to the company’s knowledgebase, and over time this feedback can help fix issues with the next product or service in development. That sense of shared experience also makes for loyal customer advocates, which is money in your pocket.

Basic integration has been too long in coming for too many businesses, so perhaps the study will show them the true cost of delay. I hope they remember the social CRM part of the integration as well—bringing businesses into closer and more productive contact with their customers.

I’m about to start a guest blogging project for Sage Software, the company that brings you ACT!, Sage CRM, and SalesLogix. With their partner summit starting Monday, we figured it was a good time for me to introduce myself to the Sage user community, and here’s how I did it:

“Hi, I’m Marshall Lager, and if you read the ACT! by Sage blogs you’ll be seeing a fair bit more of that name in the coming weeks. That’s because Sage has invited me in as a guest blogger to provide my own perspective on CRM, Sage products, and customer experience. I’ll be kicking it off at Sage Summit, the annual partner conference, but I wanted to introduce myself and give you an idea of what you’ll be in for.

“You may be wondering, “Who is this guy, and why should I care?” Fair questions. I’m the founder and managing principal of Third Idea Consulting LLC, a consultancy focusing on CRM, especially social CRM and the increased power social media have given to customers. Those of you who read CRM magazine may also know me from there, where I was senior editor for four and a half excellent years. I’m the guy who wrote (and still writes) the back page column, Pint of View.

“That tells you a bit about who and what I am, but it might be just as useful to tell you who and what I am not.

• I am not a Sage implementer, employee, or partner. I am being paid formy writing, and I respect Sage’s products and am familiar enough with them to not make a fool of myself or the company. If you have specific technical questions about integration, business processes, or software capabilities, though, you’ll be better off talking to a Sage exec or ACT! Certified Consultant (ACC). I’m more of an ideas guy.
• I am not a spokesperson for anybody’s brand but my own. But maybe I can help you with yours. One of my chief contentions is that businesses don’t have the monodirectional control of their communications or their brands that they once did, and I think it’s a good thing. I’m all about customer empowerment, and how it can ultimately make businesses better. As such, I don’t really care what CRM system or techniques you use, as long as you are doing whatever it takes to keep your customers coming back with smiles on their faces, cash in their hands, and referrals in their mouths.
• I am not always serious. Writing is a pleasure for me. Thinking about CRM is also a pleasure. Combining them makes me do a little happy dance in my brain. At the same time, I realize that serious business shouldn’t always be serious, and we all need a change of perspective from time to time in order to prevent tunnel vision. Again, readers of Pint of View already know what I’m talking about. You might not always agree with me, or laugh with me, or find my comments in good taste, but they should make you think. If that’s happening, I’m doing my job.

“So, what can you expect from me? Over the next couple of months, I’ll be providing you with my perspective on the CRM industry, Sage news, and the state of customer/company dialogue in general. I’m starting with Sage Summit because it’s a big event, so you will see me all over the conference, talking to people like you about what matters to you. There will probably be some video podcasts or Q&A sessions along the way, so you can interact more directly with me.

“I’m also available for phone consultations, on-site visits, white papers, weddings, and bar mitzvahs. But you’ll have to pay me. The guest blog is entirely at your disposal. I hope you find it useful.”

There it is. If anybody’s going to be in the Atlanta area this week, look for me with notebook and Flip video in hand, trying to provide my perspective on what’s going on with Sage. I’ll be continuing the guest blog for a couple of months, and will mirror it here. I’m looking forward to the access to Sage that this will give me, as well as the chance to affect its users and partners in a (hopefully) positive way.

Right after the opening keynote at CRM Evolution ‘09, Sage North America (as represented by Larry Ritter and Ryan Zuk) gave me the lowdown on the next iteration of the venerable ACT! contact manager/CRM system. The official announcement dropped via Pitch Engine today, complete with social media integration, so I figured I’d provide my thoughts on what Sage has got going on.

I always refer to ACT! as “venerable”; it has a much nicer sound than “old,” and conveys a certain degree of respect. The product has had its ups and downs since its birth 23 years ago, but it’s hard to argue with success. A software product line that survives 20 years is rare enough, but ACT! has managed to thrive. According to Larry Ritter (senior VP and GM of Sage CRM Solutions, in case you didn’t follow the link), 2008 saw a 12 percent revenue increase year-over-year for ACT!, which is impressive given the economy and the competition. As much as we like to say that CRM needs to be in every part of a business, the fact is that many companies (especially small ones, where ACT! has most of its customers) do very well with contact management, sales force automation, and some marketing tools—which is pretty much what ACT! provides.

ACT! By Sage 2010, the new version, presents itself as a big change from previous installments. The interface is different, very clean. It reminded me of SAP’s new user interface for SME.

Functional--just enough, not too much.

The redesign isn’t merely cosmetic; Sage employed keystroke-level modeling to discover how users perform tasks and made its changes based on ease and efficiency. The results give Sage something to sell against: based on seven standard activities (see below), ACT! 2010 allows 25 percent higher productivity Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and 37 percent more than Salesforce.com—figures I’m sure both companies will refute or minimize if asked. Those tasks are:

• Find information about last meeting with a contact
• Create a new contact
• Search for all contacts in a specific area
• Schedule a call
• Record notes about a contact/customer meeting
• View your work week calendar
• Mark an activity complete and schedule follow-up

Still, if that’s all you really need from CRM or contact management, Sage makes a compelling argument for its product instead of Microsoft’s or Salesforce.com’s.

The other cool thing in ACT! 2010 is the social media integration—you knew I’d be getting to this sooner or later, right? ACT!’s Web Info tab will keep you posted on a contact’s social networking profiles and updates, links their Web site to the contact record, and lets you add data feeds to the record (Hoovers, Twitter, and ESPN are the examples given). Web searches from this tab pass information back and forth between ACT! and the activity, and it’s persistent, so you can do a Google search or get travel info without leaving the screen and update the record with what you find.

Marketing isn’t forgotten in this release. It ships with several email marketing campaign templates and a campaign designer. Drip marketing—a series of touches over time—and customer surveys are two of the functions Sage showed me. Everything is tracked and reported, of course, so hot leads with high open and forward rates can be piped directly to sales when appropriate so they can schedule a call or meeting.

In a nod to the changing face of the inbox, those meetings can be sent as iCal invitations—which work in Google Calendar as well as Microsoft Outlook. It’s a minor benefit (unless you don’t use Outlook) but it’s still very nice to have.

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So that’s the product. Let’s talk about the press release. If you follow the link provided above, you’ll see that the release has social connectivity built right in. There’s a short Twitter pitch in addition to the full-length announcement. Share buttons abound. There are links to fact sheets, images, videos, tags, related news … it almost makes me feel useless. When I discussed timing with the highly media-savvy Ryan Zuk, he indicated that there was little sense in setting an embargo date because all of the information was already in the hands of Sage partners and customers because of Sage’s blogs. Fluid, free exchange of information is a beautiful thing, huh?

I’m sure there will always be press blackouts, whether for legal reasons or just because a company wants to deliver a nice surprise. But information wants to be free, so I applaud Pitch Engine for a terrific delivery format—and Sage for making use of it.

If you’re wondering why the blog has been quiet for the past few days, it’s not a question of laziness—I’ve been working. Specifically, I was at CRM Evolution 2009 in NYC (co-located with SpeechTEK 2009), experiencing my first professional conference as an independent. It was fantastic, and before I write anything else, I have to express my gratitude to the people who made it possible. David Myron (editorial director of CRM and Speech Technology) and Paul Greenberg (conference chair and all-round great guy) outdid themselves from their positions at the top. Bill Spence and Paul Johnston kept the technical side of the show running smoothly. Josh Weinberger, Jessica Tsai, Lauren McKay, and Chris Musico (the staff of CRM); Len Klie, Adam Boretz, and Eric Barkin (the staff of Speech Technology); and all the support staff of Information Today should be proud. I’m sure the staff of the Marriott Marquis Hotel deserve thanks and credit as well. I just don’t like the place as a conference venue, so it’s hard for me to be as magnanimous with my praise.

The reason you’re hearing about CRM Evolution ‘09 now, instead of during the show itself (except for my tweets, hashtag #CRMe09) is because I am not used to doing it all myself. I’ve always had access to a laptop, but I don’t own one—there was no need, and I prefer desktops for personal use. While I knew I’d need to buy one before the conferences started in mid-September, I figured that for late August I’d be able to write my reports from home after hours. Little did I realize that there would be no “after hours” for me. I was getting home so late I only had time to sleep, shower, and go back. Lesson learned.

Paul kicked the show off right with his opening keynote, “The Social Customer: Listen, Then Act.” Not surprisingly, he made an apparently bulletproof case for the power and relevance of social networking technology as applied to CRM. Some highlights:

• The most trusted source of info for customers today is other customers.
• Customers want to do business with companies that are transparent, and that understand and cater to their needs.
• Social CRM humanizes the company in the customer’s eyes, and gives the company insight into its customers.

Of course there’s much more to it than that, and I expect the transcripts and recordings of Paul’s presentation and the many conference sessions will be available before too long.

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It’s been said that trade shows and their ilk are more about meeting and greeting than about learning anything. I have sometimes felt this was true. This conference was both for me. I learned what Sage North America’s next ACT! product will be like (more about that next time), and also got a sense of what SugarCRM is planning in the near future, but most of the learning wasn’t about specific pieces of software.

• I learned how speech analytics can be leveraged in social CRM, courtesy of Steve Graff, vice president of technology and chief architect for Autonomy/eTalk.
• Bruce Temkin of Forrester Research gave a great talk on the CRM journey, teaching more about what it takes for a company to fully embrace customer experience as its chief mission.
• Michael Krigsman, ZDNet blogger, extended his coverage of IT failures to include failures in traditional and social CRM efforts, yielding a lively discussion.
• Brent Leary (CRM Essentials, CRM Playaz, biscuit fiend) unloaded tons of great info in his talk on CRM and the Socially Empowered Customer. Next to Paul’s keynote, it may have been the most eloquent discussions of the power of social CRM I’ve heard.
• Casey Coleman from the government’s General Services Administration and Bob Greenberg (CEO of consultancy G&H International Services) amazed me with examples of how government agencies are using social technology to improve information flow, especially in times of crisis.

That’s just some of what came out of this show; I missed a lot of sessions I’d otherwise have attended due to scheduling conflicts. I also learned more about my own position as a consultant and analyst in the CRM world—there were too many sharp minds around, so I couldn’t help but improve myself by talking to them. Meeting and greeting them—old friends and new, including some I’ve known for some time but never encountered face to face—gave me a serious case of the warm fuzzies.

Maybe it’s because I was working for myself instead of providing coverage for an employer, but this felt like the best trade show I’ve been to in a decade. And that’s just for a relatively small event. My head might explode at Dreamforce.

Well, there’s always something getting in the way of updating the blog as often as I want to. Even the simple act of keeping up with what my friends and colleagues are producing can keep me from laying down my own thoughts. I say this not to ask pity or forgiveness (though I’m open to either) but to point out how much I love what I do. Much of my work day involves catching up with or checking in on people I like, because our work lives intersect.

First, some shameless plugs: The latest CRM Playaz podcast is live, starring me! Also Chris Bucholtz, and cohosts Brent Leary and Paul Greenberg. Actually, maybe they should all come before me, ‘coz they’re great. You’ll also find that the Playaz Blog is also live, with yours truly providing the inaugural post.

The joy of doing what I do as a business hit home for me the other day as I was taking a phone briefing with Christopher Carfi about his company’s (Cerado) new application, Scanaroo. I watched the first wave of coverage unfold and decided–being interested in mobile tech and social applications–that I needed to get some inside info. That, plus I really dig Chris and enjoy our conversations. Like I said, I love this job.

Scanaroo developed from a simple but insightful question: What does it mean if you (the customer) have a personal data store that’s under your control? The answer is that your data becomes more useful to you, and lets interact with businesses on your terms.

Check your wallet and you’ll probably find more plastic than paper–loyalty cards, membership cards, and insurance cards are the stuff of our daily lives. The problem is that there are so many of them, and we often find ourselves leaving a lot of them at home, thereby keeping us from using them when they’d be most convenient. Some businesses have tried to cut the clutter by issuing keychain-sized cards, but this just moves the clutter from one pocket to another.

Scanaroo puts the usefulness of these cards back in customers’ hands by digitizing them. This $0.99 iPhone app scans cards into your iPhone and provides a secure method of managing and displaying them as needed. Simple, and bloody clever to boot. By making the cards even more portable than they already were, and adding management and password access, Scanaroo removes the annoyance factor of loyalty/membership cards and ensures nobody will ever miss a deal they’re entitled to again. Mobile is the enabling factor.

I’d be able to talk about Scanaroo hands-on, but unfortunately I’m not currently an iPhone user. There are plans to expand Scanaroo to other mobile platforms, and possibly expand the utility in other ways. But Chris pretty much convinced me that I want an iPhone. I’ve been waffling over the idea for some time; the BlackBerry still holds an attraction for me, with its generous keyboard and track record of reliability, and the Palm Pre is the only multitasking mobile device out there, but the iPhone exudes cool. I came close to pulling the trigger a few times, but I found out I’d probably receive a free BlackBerry Storm at the end of August which made me hesitate. I’m back to wanting an iPhone, but I wish it wasn’t such an issue.

Scanaroo does something for the iPhone that smartphones have been doing in Japan for years–serving as a digital wallet (though Scanaroo doesn’t do transactions). I’ve been waiting for that sort of functionality for a long time, but always in vain. Maybe fear of wireless data theft via RFID sniffer has held us back. Maybe fear of losing a non-passsworded phone has. But rare horror stories aside, you’re still more likely to be an identity theft victim when you hand your card to a waiter or cashier than when some tech-ninja pulls your digits out of the ether. Gimme my digital wallet already.

The other cool thing about Scanaroo is that it’s an example of how capable the mobile device platforms are–there’s nothing but a little development work stopping Scanaroo from deploying on any device. Most devices have software development kits (SDK) available for free. Hence, anybody can make a cool app and sell it, or give it away. The app market is democratized (or socialized, if you look at it another way).

It’s not some new proprietary feature of a CRM system–it goes straight to the customers and gives them a tool that benefits them, and in turn benefits the companies that are trying so hard to get their loyalty programs to pay off. Carfi said “It means the power of the relationship is still firmly in the customer’s hands, but with a clear benefit for businesses as well,” and he’s right. That’s how you connect.

Friend and former coworker Jessica Tsai wrote a good entry on the destinationCRM blog today, and I decided to comment on it there. I did so, but it’s still gnawing at me a bit. Rather than let it go, I’m going to expand on my comments.

Back story: Jessica’s post had to do with a segment on the Today Show where author and brand expert Martin Lindstrom discussed what he found in a focus group of boys and girls age 9 to 11. Mostly, he discovered something we probably knew but tend not to think about too much: children learn the language of brand early, and it affects their behavior. (It affects older people as well, but Lindstrom was turning his cognitive-psychology eye toward tweens.) My response was that, while it’s good to develop critical thinking, there’s a danger of making kids more likely to tease and bully each other over clothing choices.

We were all young once. All of us should remember how horrible some kids can be to each other. Lindstrom has statistics and quotes that show things haven’t changed; if anything, they’ve gotten worse. When your entire world consists of people exactly your age competing for attention and dominance, youths will latch onto anything that can help oppress others and aggrandize themselves. Clothing is immediately visible, and fashion choices are easy to criticize.

Encouraging kids to serve as a marketing force by flooding them with brand messages and engaging them in online conversations makes excellent sense in some ways, as it shapes young consumers’ preferences and lets them put pressure on their parents. It’s also a recipe for making some poor kid miserable if his/her parents don’t have a lot of money to spare, or don’t want to start their kid down the road of  superficiality.

Most of the time, I’m in favor of unmoderated conversations between customers and businesses. When it comes to something polarizing like fashion, though, and when kids are involved, I recommend heavy monitoring and participation by the company. It’s not enough to delete inappropriate comments. If you’re going to engage minors in commercial conversations, you have a duty to guide that conversation in such a way that the seeds of elitism and bullying never take root. But it has to be done without patronizing, or you’ll dismantle your brand.

Somebody reading this is probably thinking I’m one of those people who always says, “Won’t somebody think of the children?” whenever a potentially uncomfortable topic comes up. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m all for treating young people like people, as grown up as they can handle, and believe that nothing teaches like experience. The best way to teach a kid why sharp or hot things shouldn’t be touched is to let them touch those things once (as long as they aren’t in danger of serious injury). But that sort of pain is momentary. Getting a reputation as a budget-rack shopper can happen with one bad choice and one cruel comment, and it can last for years.

Maybe I shouldn’t worry. Kids’ clothing should be marketed to kids, because parents generally don’t have a clue–I know for a fact that some parents would dress their kids in “adorable” sailor suits and jumpers until those kids can beat them in a brawl. But parents have to get involved somehow, and social media makes it easier.