The Connected Company – from Culture to Marketing Success

Customers are connected and they are communicating. A connected consumer has a greater number of choices (what and where to buy, from whom) and has a greater voice in the marketing conversation (what’s great, what’s not, what sucks, who’s evil) than ever before. This trend is continuing and customer power will only increase from where it is today.

Companies will need to be able to

• Respond to more complex and escalating customer desires (and demands)
• Adapt quickly to changes in customer choices and preferences
• Find ways to align customers, partners and communities with the company (or vice versa)

The only way to address a connected customer base is with a connected company, because connected customers move and change too fast for traditional companies to keep up. A traditional hierarchical company can’t operate at the pace of conversation.

Customers and employees need to be able to navigate a company from within too. To find what they need when they need it, and also to find things they didn’t know they were looking for.

Consider this in a fractal manner: every person and every team needs to understand the company’s business as a whole, and maybe even operate as an independent business or service within that company, in order to provide maximum value in this new economy.

Any company that needs to market in the social space needs to also understand these basic tenets

Are you:____?

• Able to express your collective culture internally and publicly?
• Adaptable/Flexible (able to make the best of emergent opportunities)?
• Focused on making connections, both internally and externally, as a natural aspect of its culture?
• Able to articulate business value, both as a function of what it sells, and its people within?
• Able to respect connection and collaboration as much as traditional ‘output’ that can be sold?

Social Activity at DMC-PDX

Come to the DMC-PDX this Sunday Dec 11, where I will lead the audience through an engaging interactive social exercise from our core methodology- Gamestorming, in which everyone will participate in building a rapid social network within the room. This will help illustrate some of the tenets presented, and provide a gathering, collaborative  social experience to kick off a highly interactive learning opportunity at the conference.  This is analog, human and energetic.   We hope to see you there.