Third Idea Consulting

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.

I had some other topics lined up for today—my thoughts on what applications like Scanaroo are doing for social CRM, for one—but it looks like there’s some breaking news on broken social tools that must take precedence.

Today saw a massive denial-of-service (DOS) attack against popular social networking sites, most notably Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I won’t link to them directly right now—they’re the Big Three so you know how to find them, and they also have enough traffic trouble at the moment—but I’ll cheap out and give you the New York Times coverage here.

Social media like these have quickly changed the way we go about our daily lives, so it’s all the more painful when we info addicts get cut off at the source. I was really looking forward to seeing what was happening in my personal Twitosphere today, not to mention driving some traffic to my site and those of my allies. Twitter has been hit hardest, and despite claims that the problems have been fixed, many users (myself included) still have no access. Facebook has been unreliable as well, so my Mafia Wars conquests are on hold for now. LinkedIn is more of a tactical asset for me—I use it when I need it, but don’t stay connected for long—so I haven’t seen the extent of the damage there, but you can be sure that some important business connections didn’t get made today.

The optimist in me says that when irresponsible scriptkiddies with a surplus of free time and a dearth of creativity launch attacks like this, it ultimately strengthens the sites they attack. But the inner optimist is very small, and not nearly as vocal as the rage-filled monster who wants to make an example of these jackholes with a blowtorch and a pair of pliers, Marcellus Wallace-style. I suppose I’ll have to settle for the criminal justice system, but that will do.

This moment of Ahab-vs.-Moby-Fail also reminds us that social networking and customer engagement aren’t new phenomena. We still have phones, and the ability to go to bricks-and-mortar establishments. Most of the Internet still works, too, so it’s not like the engines of enterprise have shut down altogether. Social CRM is a strategy, and the online component is not the only component.

/rant

In other news, I’ll be guest-blogging for my friends Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary, the CRM Playaz. My piece isn’t live yet, but when it is I’ll have the honor of being their first post. Along with that, I’ll also be chatting with them on their next podcast, recording tomorrow. I can’t get enough of these guys—they combine insight with humor, whether separately or working together. They also show exceptional taste in guests.

The call for corporate transparency is one of the loudest in social media, and one could argue that social CRM has taken flight because customers demanded a way to get past the false front of advertising. That’s why the recent case of Lifestyle Lift drives me up the wall.

Background info: Lifestyle Lift is a cosmetic surgery company that engaged in a marketing practice known as Astroturfing—using false testimonials to give the impression of customer satisfaction. The fraud was discovered, and the New York State Attorney General fined the company $300,000 as part of a settlement. You can see coverage here (via Ars Technica).

Deceptive practices like this are nothing new, and neither is my outrage—I first heard about the Lifestyle Lift situation a couple of weeks ago, in a local newspaper article handed to me by my girlfriend—but I wanted to see how it turned out before venting on my blog. I’m angry for a number of reasons. The company president directed employees to create false online personae and write glowing reviews of Lifestyle Lift procedures, without identifying themselves as employees. They were also to argue with and discredit legitimate critics, since obviously the honest opinions of real people were bad for business. I can’t believe it came from a failure to understand how social media works, so the only alternative is an active desire to commit fraud, coupled with complete disregard and contempt for the public and the law.

What really galls me is that, rather than destroy the company, the AG allowed it to settle for a small fine and a promise to stop their deceptive practices. While $300,000 may seem like a lot of money to an individual, it’s likely a drop in the bucket for a business that offers cosmetic surgery. Their reputation will certainly take a hit, assuming anybody hears about this case, but it doesn’t seem likely. The closest the Lifestyle Lift site comes to admitting wrongdoing is the following bit of fluff, at the bottom of its main page:

The Lifestyle Lift Code of Internet Conduct and Assurance

Lifestyle Lift® pledges that all Internet communications accompanied by the trademarked Lifestyle Lift® logo are fair and accurately represent the latest in medical information about facial firming procedures. The comments and photographs are from actual patients and fairly represent the results and opinions of thousands of our patients. Lifestyle Lift® is proud to take a leadership role in establishing new standards of Internet conduct and communications. We promise that any Internet communication accompanied by our logo can be relied upon as true and accurate; and all communications originating from our practice will be clearly identified with the Lifestyle Lift® logo. If you have any questions or concerns about the authenticity of any internet content or postings, please contact Lifestyle Lift®.

Note the part about taking a leadership role (emphasis mine). They get caught in an institutionalized program of lying to the public and discrediting real people, and rather than admit to wrongdoing they claim to be leading the charge for open and honest communication? That’s chutzpah. Plus, there’s no clear way to enforce the claim, so all Lifestyle Lift has to do in order to keep Astroturfing is to be a little more careful about it. That just ain’t cool.

We have a responsibility, in this increasingly social and connected world, to fight against this sort of thing. To demand honesty and decry fraud. It’s bad enough to see sockpuppets on message boards where it’s all just talk—this is people’s money and appearance at stake. Don’t let Lifestyle Lift get away with it. Don’t let anybody get away with it. Do your part to make sure everybody knows about this bold dishonesty and the wrist-slap punishment it incurred. When you suspect Astroturf marketing is in play, make noise about it. If you’re in business, don’t do it. It’s up to us to create and maintain the honest dialogue we demand, and to make sure those who try to cheat are held accountable.

Okay, there are far more reasons to pay close attention to customer opinions than what I’m about to present, but this one’s as good a reason as any. According to a joint study (PDF) by LinkedIn Research Network/Harris Interactive, there’s a pretty wide gap between what marketing professionals and customers think are effective advertisements. (See coverage by AdWeek here.)

The Harris poll explores two main questions: general effectiveness of advertising type, and ads addressing the economic crisis. It’s never explicitly stated, but the poll appears to be focused on TV advertising. Whether or not that’s true, the results can likely be extrapolated to other advertising media.

In terms of general effectiveness, the three biggest gaps are for ads that make the viewer stop and think, that provide new information, and that are integrated into the look and feel of the show they appear with.

• More than half of marketers (53 percent) think ads that make the viewer stop and think are very effective, but just 30 percent of viewers feel that way. That’s a 23 percent margin, for those of you scoring at home.
• Ads that provide new information are only slightly close to the mark: 51 percent of marketers versus 29 percent of viewers feel they’re very effective, a 22 percent gap.
• Ads that are integrated into the feel of a program (The MythBusters build team and their Diesel Diaries commercials for Volkswagen are the best example I can think of) fare particularly poorly, in my opinion. While the gap is “only” 19 percent (26 percent of marketers vs. 7 percent of viewers), it’s a ratio of 3.7:1 which tells me money and effort is being wasted. Informative ads, according to Harris, have 37 percent of marketers and 30 percent of viewers saying they’re very effective, so for every $37 spent you could say that $30 is going to the right place. With integrated-feel ads, every $37 spent equates to $10 spent well. This is not the mathematics of success.

I must say I am shocked—shocked—to discover that marketers don’t have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the people they’re trying to attract.

No, actually I’m not shocked at all.

Let’s be fair to marketers, though. They (as a profession) have had to adjust in recent years to a demand from the C-level for measurability and accountability. (Excellent article from 2007 here;  fresher commentary here.) It’s not an easy thing to have to make wholesale changes to the way you ply your craft, but the marketing department has done so. Now they’re being asked to adjust again, using not only new techniques but new media as well.

“Tough,” you say. “Change is part of growth, so why should anybody get to make excuses?” (I hope somebody said that, otherwise I look like a jerk.) When you’re learning new things while still expected to deliver something useful, you tend to fall back on old habits, good or otherwise. For too long, marketing’s job was to create markets for products—conjuring demand for new products, rather than answering existing demand. This led members of the profession to sometimes value their own opinions over those of the public. This happens when ANY group of insiders/experts becomes too insulated, but marketers have been singled out in recent years as the prime example.

The disconnect between marketers and the marketed-to is just one more reason why social media needs to be integrated into any smart CRM practice. Rather than spending advertising and marketing money on extended campaigns only to find out months later that they’re a failure, the CMO and her team can find out within hours or days whether their efforts have gone awry. Sure, you don’t pull a campaign because of negative initial reactions alone—sometimes a spot needs to grow on people—but in the long run companies will save precious budget and deliver what customers want to see far more effectively.

It might not have been an “eventful” period since my last entry, but there are definitely a lot of things going on in the social media world—enough that I’ve been having some trouble narrowing down my thoughts to one topic. As such, I’ll touch on a number of different things, part-linkdump, part commentary.

More social media guidelines. I’m glad to see that Intel isn’t the only big company getting serious enough about social media engagement to codify its approach (see my previous post here). A recent post on FastForward Blog notes similar efforts by IBM, Sun, and RightNow. Thing 1: The FastForward writer says he was told RightNow’s guidelines were partly shaped by what Intel, IBM, and Sun had set down. Does this mean there’s already a second (or third, or 12th) generation of such corporate policies floating around for the public to see? I hope so. Thing 2: Oracle acquired Sun in April, after failing to reach terms with IBM. I wonder how the acquisition will affect Sun’s social policy, or for that matter Oracle’s.

A man and his brand. Last month (sorry, didn’t see it until a few days ago) filmmaker/author/Jersey boy Kevin Smith did some heavy Q&A for readers of Decider before a live appearance. You can read it here. (NSFW if you’re not allowed to read profanity, or if a guy who answers questions while smoked up is against company policy. I pity those who fit this description.) Say what you want about Kevin Smith (I dig him), this is a guy who really understands himself, his audience, and his industry. He understands it better than major studios who think viral marketing can be made to order and posted to the MySpace and put into the YouTubes. This is a successful creator who knows where he’s from, and what created his fan following, and stays in touch with it without pandering to it. His answer to the third question sums it up well:

Many celebrities seem to guard every shed of privacy they can get their hands on, yet you have always been a very accessible public figure. With a SModcast, a blog, your Evenings With series, and a Twitter, your life seems to be an open book. What drives you to let people into your life in such an intimate way?

I don’t know any other way to be, really. Once media was created that allowed a dialogue to open between filmmakers and audience, there was no way I couldn’t embrace it. This is a communications medium, film. We do this to get a reaction and hear what people have to say about our work. It’s enormously flattering when someone (or lots of someones) are interested in you enough as an artist to wanna know about your life and opinions beyond the actual work that brought you to their attention in the first place. [...]

Kevin Smith is his own successful brand, and he got that way by never trying to be a brand, or be anything other than what he is: a comic-book fan, a regular guy, a sarcastic observer of what he grew up around. I’m not saying that a manufacturer of backed abrasives can have the same ease in relating to its customers, but it’s an ideal to consider whenever social CRM is on the table.

A duel of trust. As our online relationships become broader and more diffuse, we’re starting to ask who we can trust. It’s not surprising that surveys are being conducted on just that topic, nor is it surprising that different sources are getting different answers. The Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey (via Adweek) says trust of consumer reviews and opinions—other than those of personally-known individuals—is at 70 percent. The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report, however, says there is “strong to complete distrust” of anonymous consumer reviews, and only about 33 percent trust of online friends’ recommendations. That’s an awfully wide chasm to bridge. To be fair, though, in the Razorfish report 86 percent of respondents say that “whom they trust is dependent on the type of product.” I don’t imagine a war between these opposing points of view, but trust is an important issue that we need to make sure stays current. I’d say it’s more important to figure out what creates trust than to identify its strongest locii, but that route opens the possibility of manipulating trust—something businesses are often all too willing to try. See this New York Times column by Bob Herbert for an idea of what I mean.

Update 1: Shortly after writing this, I came across the 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer. (PDF link.) It’s a bit more general than the two above, but still quite valuable. Thanks to Prem Kumar Aparanji (@prem_k) and Josh Weinberger (@kitson) for the tip.

Update 2: Also shortly after writing this, I realized I’d left out my take on the United Airlines broken guitar saga. I’ll save that for my next post.

That’s all for now. Keep an ear open for the next podcast of Paul Greenberg and Brent Leary as the CRM Playaz. It’s coming soon, and these two are always on point and entertaining. No link yet, but Paul’s pretty reliable about putting linkage on his ZDNet blog.

Thanks to Metafilter (by way of my girlfriend), I found out about a case involving the apparent power of social media. I would have missed it entirely because of the other recent social media event surrounding Michael Jackson’s death. It involves another celebrity, Adam Savage of MythBusters.

Briefly, the situation as reported in the Vancouver Sun is this: Savage got hit with $11,000 in connectivity charges from AT&T for what amounted to a few hours of use over a period of five days. The company shut off his phone as a result. Savage turned an assistant loose on the provider to try and straighten out the charges, but it appears that the real work was accomplished with a few tweets. (No disrespect intended to the assistant, of course.)

Your first reaction to this story might be, “Aha, the power of social media in action!” (It was my second, right after, “Those guys have the best job ever, and I love that show.”) But if you look deeper—not just in the MeFi comments but read Adam’s own words—you’ll see another thing at work: the power of celebrity.

“A lot of people on Twitter are saying, ‘Well it’s great that it worked for you, because you’ve got 50,000 followers, but what about the rest of us?’ ” Savage said. “And I totally agree with them.”

The fact is that the power of massed customer voices is mostly a sea-change thing for the moment. One tweet, one blog, or one Facebook group typically has little power of its own; as they accumulate, they exert pressure on businesses that want to maintain good public opinion. It’s like emailing your senator or congressperson to ask them to put their weight behind a certain bill—no matter how awesome and right I think I am, my note is almost useless by itself. It’s going to take a lot of constituents to shift a legislator’s opinion, or get one to make it a pet project instead of just something to vote on.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and Adam Savage is capable of a much louder squeak than most of us. Kudos to him for acknowledging this.  The typical customer would have spent days or weeks sorting this mess out, or might just eat the charge if it was small enough. You’d better believe that if AT&T hit me with $11-grand in charges I’d become an instant sensation on Cursebird (NSFW).

The change we’re all hoping for is that businesses don’t just use social media as an alarm system directing them to fires which must be put out. If somebody goes to the trouble of starting a social networking group founded on the premise that your company is run by thieves and/or morons, or makes a public-message complaint that is echoed by others, it doesn’t just mean some customers are unhappy—it means you’re doing something wrong. Fix the damage first, put out the fire, but if your next step isn’t taking a hard look at the policies that caused the fire, you’re missing the point of listening and are a fire hazard.

Also, congratulations to MythBusters cohost Kari Byron (no, she doesn’t know me) on successfully completing her pregnancy internship. Good luck in your new role as Doctor of Momology.

OK, first a disclaimer and personal note: I don’t intend to minimize, ensnarkify, or otherwise make bones on the death of Michael Jackson. It will probably happen anyway, because I have the self control of a cracked-out hummingbird. Let me just say that, while I’d never have described myself as a fan, and Michael’s public image drifted past mockable and into pitiable a long time ago, he was a powerful force in music and entertainment. Starting with the Jackson 5, he brought some great music to the world. Thriller is still the top-selling album of all time. Oh, and could he dance—Sammy Davis Jr. and Fred Astaire (among a great many others) seriously admired Michael’s moves. Admit it, you used to try to Moonwalk because Michael did it. There’s more to Michael Jackson than I’ll ever know, and while parts of his life were unfortunate, ugly, and even self-destructive, I respect a great entertainer when I see one, and Michael qualifies.

The Internet nearly broke on June 25, 2009. It wasn’t hackers, EMP, sunspots, or an earthquake at a critical server farm. No, it was far, far worse.

A celebrity had died.

The first I heard of the situation was from good friend and former office-mate Josh Weinberger (or @kitson to you Twitter addicts), who linked me celebrity gossip site TMZ’s report that Michael Jackson had died suddenly. The journalist in me expressed doubt, and I looked for confirmation; early reports from sources I considered more trustworthy said the 50-year-old pop icon had collapsed, been revived, and taken to a hospital, but the granular truth never became clear to me. Whatever the specifics, the King of Pop was dead, and bloggers and tweeters beat the major news sources to the story.

I’m not going to get into a fight over why a famous person’s death should become world news, especially when there’s so much else going on that could have a material effect on our lives. I’ll let Datamonitor analyst Ryan Joe’s Facebook status update sing that song.

There had already been two other celeb passings that week, but they didn’t make as big an impact. EdMcMahon was 86 and clearly slowing down (is it too soon to resume calling him Old McMan?), and Farrah Fawcett had terminal cancer, so to be blunt their passings were a matter of time.

Michael was a true surprise, and he seems to have had a much bigger and more vocal fan base. The sudden traffic spike brought browsers to a screeching halt; sources at Google said the surge in queries seemed like an attack.

Not Jacko's EKG, Google's.

As with any news of this sort, it gets worse. On the heels of the news of Michael’s death, rumors began to spread that Jeff Goldblum had fallen to his death while on a location shoot in New Zealand. Similar stories concerning Harrison Ford started circulating, then a number of other stars got the R.I.P. treatment.

Goldblum answered back with the only force more powerful than a twitterstorm: the Colbert Report.

Whenever a famous person of any magnitude is reported dead and there’s no reason to expect it, one will always be well-served to check the rumor to make sure it isn’t complete bullshit. The fact that the (confirmed) deaths of pitchman Billy Mays and impressionist-comic Fred Travalena barely made a ripple can be attributed as much to the sudden skepticism caused by the hoaxes as to the relative dimness of their stars. (Sorry guys, but anybody who thinks either of these fellows is on the same tier as those I’ve just mentioned has been watching way too many infomercials and ’70s reruns.)

Twitter is a powerful force because of its immediacy, but also because the 140-character limit means that details are lost or ignored—only the headline gets picked up, and lies can spread as fast as truth. On the one hand, I’m glad that somebody (an asshole, but somebody) decided to inject a little perspective into the rumor mill, and remind us that crowdsourced =/= accurate. On the other hand, such a demonstration could weaken or slow the adoption of social media, and that would be something else to mourn.