Writing Tip: Quickly insert an n-dash or m-dash in Microsoft Word

After writing about how the n-dash and m-dash are used, I thought I should add something about how to insert them quickly in Microsoft Word.

Word can create the n-dash and m-dash automatically (see my last post). But if you miss an n-dash – or if you want to add one when editing text – it becomes quite clumsy.

There is an easy solution for typing the n-dash and m-dash in Word:

Create easy typing shortcuts for the characters.  Word has default shortcut key combinations for special characters, but I find them inconvenient – this method assigns new shortcuts that are easy to type (and easy to remember).

How-to:

(These instructions are for Word 2007, but it is very similar in older versions of Word.)

1. Go to Insert —> Symbol —> More Symbols
2. Find the n-dash and m-dash in the character map, or just click on the ‘special characters’ tab and they should be at the top.
3. Choose m-dash then click ‘shortcut key’.
4. In the field titled ‘press new shortcut key’ enter a convenient key combination – I use ‘alt n’ and ‘alt m’. 
5. Click ‘assign’ (this is IMPORTANT – if you don’t click ‘assign’ the shortcut won’t be created).
6. Click ‘close’.

Repeat the steps for the n-dash (and any other special characters you tend to use).

Now it is easy to enter the punctuation you want without any extra typing!

Writing Tip: The hyphen, dash, n-dash and m-dash

In lots of writing, the use of dashes is very inconsistent – regardless of how ‘professional’ the writers are.

The hyphen, dash, n-dash and m-dash crop-up all the time in Microsoft Word but most of us don’t know why, and we use them inconsistently. I had to figure this out.

What is the difference?

-             hyphen
–            n-dash (or en-dash)
—           m-dash (or em-dash)

Typing dashes in Microsoft Word

En-dash:

automatically created in Word when you type “something - something” (word-space-hyphen-space-word).

Em-dash:

automatically created in Word when you type “something—something” (word-hyphen-hyphen-word).

When to use a hyphen, en-dash or em-dash: Examples

Hyphen

• Indicates breaks within words that wrap at the end of a line.
• Connects compounded words like “mass-produced”. (Closed compound words like counterintuitive have no hyphen in modern English, except for uncommon combinations that are confusing or ambiguous without a hyphen.)
• Connects grouped numbers, like a phone number 555-860-5086 (but not used for a range of numbers, like a date range).

En-dash

• Joins numbers in a range, such as
  “1993–99” or
  “1200–1400 B.C.” or
  “pages 32–37” or
  open-ended ranges, like “1934–”.
• Joins words that describe a range, like “July–October 2010”.

Em-dash

• Works better than commas to set-apart a unique idea from the main clause of a sentence:

“Sometimes writing for money—rather than for art or pleasure—is really quite enjoyable.”

• Separates an inserted thought or clause from the main clause, such as:

“I can’t believe how pedantic Ken is about writing—I mean, doesn’t he have anything better to do?”

“Hunter strode into the room—was he mad?—and the family stopped and stared.”

“Computers make everyday punctuation—for reasons that we’ll discuss later—more precise yet more confusing.”

• Shows when dialogue has been interrupted:

“I reached in and pulled the spray can out of my pants—”
“In front of the police?”

Break the rules!

Lots of people prefer the way the ‘space-en-dash-space’ looks on a page, and it is used in lots of magazines and papers. 

Sometimes when you submit writing that uses the em-dash people say, “What is that? I don’t like that big long dash thing.”

It is no big deal. 

I generally use it instead of the em-dash – just to keep everyone happy.

Useless trivia about dashes, for writing geeks

Why don’t educated English-speaking people use dashes correctly? Did we all skip the same grade-5 English class?

No, the problem is that computers changed the way we use punctuation.

The n-dash is named for its width in typesetting (when people used little metal blocks that imprinted each character): It is as wide as an upper-case N. The m-dash is as wide as an M.

In the days of the typewriter there was only the hyphen; this is still the only sort of dash on a normal keyboard (just to the left of that ‘backspace’ key). Using a typewriter, you had to use two dashes for the m-dash and ‘space-hyphen-space’ for the n-dash. BUT in books and other ‘proper’ printing, typesetters used the ‘proper’ dashes.

Computers brought this technicality to us all. Now we can type with the same punctuation detail as a professional typesetter, and programs like Word make this possible without anyone thinking about it very much at all. (Professional designers think Word is awful, but it works fine for most people.)

Writing Tip: Should I use punctuation after a URL?

This seems to be a common problem:

When you write a web address at the end of a sentence, should you follow it with punctuation, or use no punctuation (to help avoid breaking the web link)?

For example, should I write…

Who likes www.chow.com?

or just

Who likes www.chow.com

??

In years past this was a real problem, but these days you can stop worrying about it.

Using Microsoft Word, Gmail, Outlook, etc., punctuation will not cause a problem — the software has caught up and it will create an accurate link for you, in spite of any punctuation that follows it.

Marketing art online: something new every day at Wall Blank

In a fantastic union of values, art and commerce, Wall Blank is selling independent and unrecognised artists’ work online in a clever way.

Wall Blank follows a few good-minded guidelines:

• Just one new, limited-run reproduction of original photography (and other wall art) is added for sale each day - at a low, accessible price.
• Every Fridays’ sales proceeds go to the artists’ nominated charity.
• Artists are encouraged to relate stories and background information about their art – giving buyers some connection and meaning to latch onto and making this art a richer experience than the meaningless wallpaper usually sold at this price range.

Sales are online and reproductions are created at Wall Art after the sales are made, so there is no waste and costs are highly controlled.

What a tidy way to market up-and-coming artists, and make truly original art available to anyone. Tell a friend.

http://wallblank.com/

Integrating text and display ads on the Google search and content networks: An AdWords innovation idea.

Informing and influencing a customer pre-sales or building a brand in the mind of a consumer are activities that work really well if you can create multiple, strategic, synergistic points of contact with a consumer. This is one small part of what Integration means in marketing.

Google’s AdWords lets advertisers place relevant text ads on search results pages at Google (and its affiliates’ search sites) in addition to placing text or display ads on what it refers to as the ‘content network’ – the vast number of private web pages that accept paid advertising in their margins.

AdWords has a range of useful tools for targeting ads to the right market and the right segment. Here is one that is missing:

Adwords should allow advertisers to place ads in the content network based on search phrases used in their current session (or perhaps recent sessions’) history.

Why? The short answer: Integration and synergy.

The long answer, with an example:

Looking for a vet to treat my cat I might search “cat veterinarian Brisbane”. A few local vet clinics are shown in the natural and paid results on Google, and based on that search I might get some ideas about vet clinics I’ll use in the near future.

Even if I make a decision based on my search-based research, during the time that passes between my web search and my cat crouching terrified on a vet’s exam table, I will probably be quite receptive to promotions and branding messages relating to the topic of feline veterinary services.

Imagine a local cat specialist who wants new customers. We’ll call him Fred. Fred has a strong brand identity and one of the key competitive features of his clinic is his attractive and modern veterinary facility. This competitive advantage is related much more clearly in an image ad than in a text ad, but Fred’s clinic can’t use display ads on Google or search affiliates (only text ads are allowed there).

Unfortunately, image ads in the content network are very low-performing compared to text ads – and the content network is somewhat unproven and (in some cases) loosely-targeted as a brand-building tool. On the Google search page, Fred competes head-to-head with his competitors and his key competitive advantage is lost in the medium.

Now – after my recent Google search about cat veterinarians – if the next websites I visit have attractive display ads for Fred’s cat-specialist veterinary clinic, I will be very, very likely to investigate – and I am a perfectly-targeted customer!

How can this synergistic advertising contact happen?

Simple: Google should allow advertisers to run placement ads based on a user’s search history in addition to the other targeting features currently in place.

Non-profit fundraising strategy: Deciding where your organisation ‘fits’

A lot of non-profit charitable organisations I’ve worked with take a scatter-gun approach to fundraising: Anything that has worked for another non-profit seems like a good new tactic to pursue.

The result can be a fundraising program that lacks goals and lacks focus, and a fundraising staff that doesn’t know what to do next. Not a good situation to be in!

A non-profit that is results-oriented in its projects AND its fundraising stems from clear-headed leadership and a willingness to make decisions that, to the inexperienced, may look ‘limiting’.

I don’t mean to say that any charity should turn down donations from almost any source! I do think, however, that investing staff and resources in logically-chosen fundraising areas makes good, simple sense. Spending time and money on every fundraising idea that comes along, regardless of its relevance to your organisation and your cause, shows a lack of discipline and a lack of confidence.

One example: The large number of charities that have hopped onto the Facebook and Twitter bandwagons - expecting donation revenue, but having no clue what they will do next. Do they have something interesting to say to a social network? Will they have anything new to say next week? Do they have people who are able (and internally permitted) to represent the organisation online? Are they comfortable with people commenting about the organisation, outside their control? Are online networkers interested in their cause?

I know of several charities who can only answer ‘no’ to all of these questions, yet their budget-worried managers have heard about “that online fundraising thing” and can’t help themselves. 

The result? An online presence that conveys poor planning, poor communications and no followers. Oh - and of course - no donations. So these ‘online fundraising projects’ are regarded as failures, all the while distracting staff from areas of proven fundraising success.

Stop the insanity!

This blog post at The Foundation Center links a great article from the Stanford Social Innovation review.  The article outlines a list of fundraising strategic models derived from examinging America’s bigger charities. The list is a bit too narrow and short to include something relevant for every small- to mid-sized NGO, but the underlying ideas are thought-provoking and important.

Air Canada and Customer Service: Oil and Water?

This week while reading about service recovery (fixing problems you’ve made for customers, and trying to keep those customers) I received a very interesting email from Air Canada.

I had written to Air Canada, you see, to complain about two consecutive cases of incredible incompetence and systems failure - problems that took more hours to resolve than our Brisbane-to-Vancouver flights took to fly.  (That is, over 16 hours each.)

Needless to say I was fuming about this. The first time ‘round, I wrote about the experience in detail and (because there was no link available for consumer affairs or complaints) sent it to the office of Air Canada’s then-CEO, Monte Brewer. The reply from his office was basically “sorry, and better luck with other airlines.”  Wow!  My letter had been perfectly polite - what a response!

The second time we would not have flown Air Canada, but we needed to get to Canada very quickly and Air Canada operates the only direct-flight service from Australia.  Another incredible disaster during the reservations process kept me on the phone from dinnertime until 1:30AM. This time I found a customer affairs link online and, to to help blow away the smoke that was pouring out of my ears, I submitted another polite and detailed letter of complaint.

I received, in reply, and email that is incredibly obscure.  What does it mean?  Do I need to do something?

Here is what I received:

2009/6/2 Air Canada Customer Relations <aircanada_customercare_en@mailca.custhelp.com>

Below is a summary of your request and our response.

Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you.

You may also update this correspondence by replying to this message.
Because your reply will be automatically processed, you MUST enter
your reply in the space below. Text entered into any other part of
this message will be discarded.

[===> Please enter your reply below this line <===]

[===> Please enter your reply above this line <===]

If your issue remains unresolved, please update this question at
https://aircanadacustomercare-en.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/aircanadacustomercare_en.cfg/php/enduser/acct_login.php?p_userid=ken@netgain.net.au&p_next_page=myq_upd.php&p_iid=602463&p_created=124374586


Subject
———————————————————————————————-
pre-reservation and billing disasters


Discussion Thread
———————————————————————————————-
Response (Susan Rabbitte) - 06/01/2009 10:58 AM
Thank you for your e-mail.

Residents outside of Canada and the United States are asked to address their concerns with our international Customer Relations Departments. For your convenience, we have forwarded your file to the appropriate office and provided the contact information for you.

Air Canada
Customer Relations
GSA/Airline Marketing Aust Pty Ltd.
Suite 1810, Level 18, 264 George St.
Sydney, NSW 2000
AUSTRALIA

Fax: 011 61 2 92516777

We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,
Customer Relations

Auto-Response - 05/31/2009 12:57 AM
Thank you for contacting us.

This is to confirm that we have received your message and there is no requirement to re-submit your information. Our current processing time is 5 business days for general customer concerns and 20 business days for baggage related issues. We will make every effort to respond sooner. We appreciate your patience and understanding as you await our response.

To complete transaction please ensure you click below on “Finish Submitting Question”.



[—-001:001713:33953—-]

Thanks a lot Air Canada! Keep working on that customer service reputation!

Channel Nine and FreeView hate your digital recorder...

But the Australian High Court doesn’t.

The frivolous lawsuit brought by Australia’s Channel Nine - claiming the times and names of their broadcast programs were protected intellectual property - appears to be permantently canned, leaving a much brighter future for TV consumers.

After a courtroom battle that’s raged for three years, the independent digital program guide service IceTV will be able to publish television listings, including those for Channel Nine programs, without further ado.

Channel Nine, you see, has been suing IceTV in an effort to discourage people from using convenient digital recording devices such as personal video recorders (PVRs) or Home Theatre PCs (HTPCs). In Channel Nine’s dinosaur mind, any change in technology is a threat to their bottom line.

This court drama has broadcast the reality of Channel Nine’s attitude toward consumer choice: They don’t much care for it. Customers who want to record broadcasts with commonplace PVRs or HTPCs can go to hell, if Channel Nine may stand at the pearly gates of digital broadcasting.

Now IceTV can go on transmitting their digital program guide - and perhaps other guides will become available. (Most Aussies don’t realise that Microsoft itself provides this service in many places, but steers clear of Australia because of the aggressive TV networks’ legal saber-rattling.)

But Channel Nine still has a couple tricks up its sleeve.

First, of course, is the “revolutionary” Freeview service. This Aussie broadcasters’ cult is a shell-game designed to trick consumers into watching TV according to networks’ preferences - instead of their own. Everything FreeView offers - including more of those great duplicate channels! - will be freely available to anyone with a digital tuner and/or recorder. Don’t be misled by the intentionally-confusing ads and hype!

Interestingly, although digital recorders frighten poor Channel Nine and their Freeview friends, they will be happy to sell you a specially equipped Freeview-approved recorder themselves.  What is so special about a Freeview recorder you ask? Well, a Freeview-approved device will not let you skip commercials - a key benefit enjoyed by most PVR & HTPC users.

Another trick used by Channel Nine (and their network friends Channel Ten and Seven) is to run programs off-schedule. Always. Does the Aussie viewing public believe that the networks just can’t quite figure out how long the programs will run? The issue is that by running programs ten to twently minutes late during prime-time every day, they make it a bit of a nuisance to schedule automatic recordings of your favourite programs.

The good news for digital TV viewers:

You can set recording defaults on most devices (and on IceTV’s excellent service) to automatically place a buffer before and after programs, so you’ll get the whole shows.

And everything Freeview offers - including more of those great duplicate channels! - will be freely available to anyone with a digital tuner and/or recorder. Don’t be misled by the intentionally-confusing ads and hype!

PS:  Interestingly, networks and the newspapers they own sometimes pretend that digital recording devices are a special new threat to their livelihood. Apparently they’ve forgotten their own failed oppositions to the VCR.

Facebook doesn't like the taste of Burger King's app

Here’s an interesting story:

Burger King developed a new Facebook application tied to a promotional offer: You delete 10 Facebook friends and we’ll give you a free whopper.

Really clever – and bloody funny.

Facebook axed it, but that might have been a mistake: Burger king’s promo demonstrated the potential for really engaging promotions on Facebook. If Facebook wants to make more money than God (ie: Google) then they need more companies to work on creative new direct response and engagement devices. Otherwise, TV will remain a more effective channel – at least until a new mega-fad emerges or until TV and the internet become the same thing.

A better Facebook response to Burger King would be to take the risk and let the app run, while quickly finding a new promo partner that will give something back to users (eg: a free song on iTunes?) for every 10 friends who post a picture of you (or some other thing that suggests ‘closer’ friends). Even if the net effect on linked friends was negative, the net effect on user involvement, media attention and overall spin would be very positive.

And at the end of the day, geeks with 600 Facebook friends ought to realise the more Facebook friends you have, the less of a life you probably have. Getting free burgers while learning that lesson is a great deal! And the lesson might not hurt Facebook – it might even make its appeal more durable, by getting people to separate the wheat from the chaff and improve the actual quality of their “Facebook time”.

Kiva: making microfinance personal

Everyone has seen charity advertising that uses images of unfortunate people in difficult situations. Sometimes we react to these images by donating, yet often we react by shutting the images out, thinking “these people are fake examples, and my money will be wasted by the organisation before it gets to a needy person.”

If the last quote sounds like you, check out Kiva.

Kiva is a brilliant concept: Connect people who are trying to escape poverty directly with people who care - and who can afford small donations or investments to help others. This is ‘microfinance’ or ‘micro-lending’ - arranging tiny loans to real people who can’t get finance or credit from any traditional source.

At Kiva you can see a list of people and groups, located in countries around the world. Each one has a story and is asking for a specific amount of money to help complete a project or goal.

You can simply register at Kiva, then start contributing to small loans for the people whose stories, locations, ambitions or situations are interesting to you. Later you can see the difference that your involvement makes, via updates from the recipient.

If you are not one to give hand-outs to people in need (for whatever bizarre reason), note that Kiva is not about pure charity: the transactions are loans. When the loan is repayed, you can reinvest - possibly with the same borrower who has already proved that your investment and their efforts were not fruitless.

What is Marketing 2.0?

Marketers will have noticed that Web 2.0 is spawning dialogue in Marketing circles online, and that some people now refer to Marketing 2.0 as a distinct field of business practice and theory. It is perhaps natural that a great deal of what is written about Marketing 2.0 is by authors of blogs and online collaborations. Many are practising marketers rather than academics, but their dialog on the topic is credibly educated and, in the very dynamic area of online behaviour and marketing trends, perhaps more current than much academic publishing.

The dialog about Marketing 2.0 appears somewhat fractured and incoherent; basic assumptions in this area appear to vary among specific interest groups and industries.

One specific presumption and focus is on SaaS and the internet becoming a computing platform, and in this context marketing 2.0 becomes a variant of marketing that is specific to the IT and software business. As the Director of Marketing at Sage Software and Sun Microsystems Emmanuel Obaida has combined a business interest in SaaS and observations about media usage shifts in his prominent blogging (Obadia, 2007).

Another group’s focus is concerned with online marketing specifically. Distinguished from broader web 2.0 influenced thinking that directs CRM 2.0 to consider releasing control of dialog and relationships to consumers, these writers focus on online marketing and limit the context of marketing practice to one where the internet is the primary if not sole channel of marketing communication. Writers like Neil Patel, and Cameron Olthuis (focussing on online marketing services relative to their own online marketing practice) and Darryl Siry (focussing on web 2.0’s importance with specialty in specialty automotive marketing for Tesla Motors) specialised in tracking the latest shifts in online behaviour and online tools at a level of scrutiny that is in lead of popular internet usage, aiming to interpret the direction of flow of the rapidly-evolving medium relative to an informed practice of marketing (Patel, Saleem, Olthuis, & Fujiu, 2008; Siry, 2008). Writers at Beeline Labs’ collaborative blog and online community aim broadly to explore how the social web is becoming a part of fundamental marketing practice. The complexity of this field pulls their writing across social media and networking, software, online marketing practice and the evolution of broader marketing theory. The complexity is aimed, though, at distilling complex changes down to a comprehensible understanding of marketing in the web 2.0 era.

“A good marketer today must spend an extraordinary amount of time reading news and blogs, actively participating in the venues and mediums that your customers are engaging in and communicating through” (Siry, 2008).

Marketing 2.0 also embraces Web 2.0 practices like democratic outcomes and 2-way online exchange. As with CRM, Marketing 2.0 stresses that control shifts into the hands of consumers.

“CMR (customer management of relationships) will require modifying your traditional marketing efforts. It will demand more than promotions and advertising, and will require new tools for customer communication. A challenge for some companies will be getting a CMR strategy in line with the need to grow customer value when the advertising agencies (and their media planners) are more interested in customer acquisition and giving the brand image a makeover. Instead of fighting against CMR projects that appear to threaten their power base, marketing directors will have to recognize the transferability of their skills to CMR and learn to use these tools for more profitable media investments. Your strategy will have to include training programs to teach all personnel the objective of passing control of the relationship to the customer and the effective use of CMR tools.” (Newell, 2003)

The buzz about marketing 2.0 has quieted dramatically over the past two years. In part this owes, I suggest, to the futility of re-naming a field of business just because a tide of change (in this case web 2.0) has emerged in the external environment. But also it owes to the diversity of possible definitions for Marketing 2.0.

Compared to CRM and its spawn CRM 2.0, the broadness of the field of Marketing appears to create a diverse range of interpretations of what ‘Marketing 2.0’ might refer to. Unlike the community’s development of CRM 2.0, with Marketing 2.0 it is difficult to find coherent lessons or even a coherent identity, except what we might have predicted having examined Web 2.0 and CRM 2.0: Consistent ideas within Marketing 2.0 are basic hallmarks of Web 2.0 thinking:

    a) Organisation-wide, silo-breaking orientation to consumers is necessary, and

    b) Control of communication, strategy and the ultimate success of businesses all lies in the hands of consumers.

(I think many exceptions exist for idea (a), and I’m not so nihilistic as to completely accept idea (b), but both are valid syntheses of many people’s recent writing on Marketing 2.0 and contemporary IMC alike.)

This post is part of a developing series:

1. Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers’ online behaviours boost brand engagement
2. Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions?
3. Definitions and critical success factors for CRM
4. Is CRM 2.0 something new?
   
5. What is Marketing 2.0? (You are here)

References:

Newell, F. (2003). Why CRM Doesn’t Work : How to Win by Letting Customers Manage the Relationship. Bloomberg Press

Obadia, E. (2007, 23 June 2007). We’re moving from Desktop to Webtop. Marketing 2.0

Patel, N., Saleem, M., Olthuis, C., & Fujiu, R. (2008). Pronet Advertising.

Siry, D. (2008). Marketing 2.0.

Does your work make people happy? Check out Stefan Sagmeister.

 

I have been studying and working toward changing my career, aiming to make it more interesting, more challenging, more creative and more beneficial to the world.  It is a hard set of changes to bring into effect but I’m working at it. 

Recently the work of Stefan Sagmeister has caught my attention.

An Austrian-born designer working out of New York, Sagmeister does visual design for some interesting, high-profile clients and has built a career working for people who are
a) able to pay well for design, and
b) willing to let a designer create interesting messages and convey them in interesting ways, which is something Sagmeister is good at.

Something challenges me about Sagmeister’s work: Relative to contemporary notions about advertising, branding and marketing communications, it unconstrained by concerns such as integration, brand identity or sales effects.

Sagmeister suggests that branding is outdated. Considering this assertion in the context of the emergence of user-generated content, perhaps Sagmeister’s suggestion reaches further than he intended.

Anyway, I am a willing shill for Mr Sagmeister’s work primarily because he chooses to discuss ideas such as happiness, helping people, improving people’s lives by creating design, and so on. He does this self-consciously but not arrogantly or pretentiously. Whether you like his design style or not, I think some of his ideas are likely to appeal to almost anyone.

I think that whether materials and messages placed into the world by marketers and advertisers bring quality or value to the world, or have the ability to add happiness or interest to people’s lives, is something that we should consider seriously.

From a purely pragmatic standpoint, a brand that people associate with great ideas and design, shared without being diminished by overt marketing messages, might have some potential.

I suggest this is particularly true in a world where people can select the mediums and messages that interest them and can recombine marketers’ attempts to create coherent, integrated communications—with entirely unpredictable results.

Question:  Can organisations that are generous enough and self-confident enough to embrace this ideal compete successfully against ‘traditional’ competitors? Hmmm.

Give Stefan Sagmeister a minute of your time…

PS:  One of the art projects Sagmeister discusses, the Bubble Project by Ji Lee (a former Art Director at Saatchi & Saatchi New York, now Creative Director at Google), is an interesting implementation of user-generated content—both online and in the physical world. Brilliant results.

A careful balance: Corporate participation in online community

Online community members expect that businesses with whom they engage (or about whose products or services they network) will play some role in, or even facilitate, online dialogue. But for the business this role is a balancing act. Too much content, too much moderation or too much control will negatively affect both attitudes and traffic—to the detriment of the business.

Perhaps it is in part my affection for tex-mex, but I really like the Nacho Analogy.

Feller, K. (2008, 28 May 2008). The Chip-to-Cheese Ratio: when are corporate communities too commercial? Conversations Matter.

Is CRM 2.0 something new?

CRM has been regarded overall as a movement that is tremendously powerful—but predominantly unsuccessful.

No significant flaws have been revealed in the concepts underlying CRM, but rather the ability or willingness of leaders and organisations to successfully undertake CRM has been found lacking. Many authors regard CRM as, simply, a good set of tools and concepts whose application has been conducted poorly by a preponderance of businesses (White, 2003; Xu, Yen, Lin, & Chou, 2002).

“50 percent of leading brands’ heaviest buyers one year are typically not in that same group the following year, with a significant number of them leaving the brand altogether. This reveals a stunning opportunity to do a better job of raising customer commitment levels beyond those being achieved currently” (Rapacz & Reilly, 2008).

Frederick Newell is one author who is deeply critical of CRM’s track record, and quite early in the emergence of web 2.0 he proposed another re-badging of the field:

CMR (Customer Management of Relationships).

“In the world of CMR the power of defining the relationship transfers to the customer. Customers will engage in different types of dialog with suppliers, often being the ones to initiate the search for a solution. The concepts of self-service give the customer more control; the seller no longer mandates the process. There will still be targeting, but the customer may choose the target firm. In this topsy-turvy CMR world, the customer will tell us what she is interested in and not interested in, what kind of information she wants, what level of service she wants to receive, and how she wants us to communicate with her—where, when, and how often” (Newell, 2003).

Newell, and the earliest web-savvy consumers, were onto something. CMR is a concept that reappears throughout contemporary discussions of CRM 2.0.

Marketing and CRM authors have recently begun to acknowledge that the relationship is not only controlled by the consumer, but relate the quality and responsiveness of these relationships, including businesses’ consideration of customers’ needs and behaviours, to brand experience. It is noted that even for businesses pursuing sales or marketing perspectives on their business, ultimately it is customers who manage relationships, and that non-responsive or exploitive approaches to CRM can blind managers to this fact (which we might say would inherently represent a lack of consumer orientation, which we will discuss in a later section of this paper) (Ford & Nicks, 2003).

Ford proposes an integrated framework for uniting brand experience, creation/exploitation of customer relationships, and incorporating customers’ and companies’ perspectives.

“power lies with the customer and it is only by looking at markets through their eyes that businesses will succeed in building relationships” (Ford & Nicks, 2003).

Even this point, though, like the earlier dialog about relational strategies supplanting transactional strategies, becomes only a partial step to the end that is called up in the age of the social web. CRM (and IMC) perspectives on relational strategies focussed on collecting a broad range of consumer information in order to strategise and improve targeting. Discussions of this concept by authors such as Zahay retain the notion that consumer information is collected as a function of CRM in order to adjust the ways that businesses command and control their marketing efforts to maximise returns (Zahay, Peltier, Schultz, & Griffin, 2004). The further step implicit in CRM 2.0 is that control over a business’s purpose and function is largely handed over to the consumer.

The online wiki collaboration created by Paul Greenberg toward the development of the fourth edition of his book CRM at the Speed of Light, rather than helping to advance a distinct new practice, may serve to highlight some of the futility of re-naming the field. After extensive tabling and before-and-after comparisons, each of Greenberg’s points comes back to the same fundamental Web 2.0 ideas: Customers are given control of conversations, and their inputs are acted upon.

“CRM 2.0 is a business philosophy and strategy that fosters mutually beneficial conversations with customers through technology platforms, business rules, business processes, and social characteristics. It is the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation” (Greenberg, 2008).

Is CRM 2.0 anything new?

With CRM having a strong background in championing customer relationships, breaking of internal silos and overall consumer orientation, CRM stood in relatively strong stead as we shifted into the era of the social web.

Accounting for a new emphasis on consumer orientation and consumer control of communication, is CRM 2.0 a worthwhile re-naming of the field?

I suggest this is only the case if real orientation to consumers—and the adoption of an organisation-spanning mission to act on that orientation—are issues that fall solely within the domain of CRM. None of the literature or commentary appears to provide a reason that this might be so. CRM is a useful and necessary function, and its relevance is increased where businesses are conducted online, but the fundamental lessons and theory of CRM are really lessons for executive-level management. Every ‘foot soldier’ in an organisation needn’t be a CRM (or IMC) guru in order for the business to have a practical orientation toward its consumers—a general acceptance by executives and managers will lead to the right people gaining those skills and attitudes.

This post is part of a developing series:

1. Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers’ online behaviours boost brand engagement
2. Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions?
3. Definitions and critical success factors for CRM
4. Is CRM 2.0 something new? (You are here)
5. What is Marketing 2.0?

References

Ford, K., & Nicks, G. (2003). CRM And New Marketing: How Do We Capture The Customer Experience? Paper presented at the Market Research Society Annual Conference.

Greenberg, P. (2008). Authoring Wiki for “CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition”. http://crmsol.pbwiki.com

Newell, F. (2003). Why CRM Doesn’t Work : How to Win by Letting Customers Manage the Relationship: Bloomberg Press

Rapacz, D., & Reilly, M. (2008). The New View of Relationship Marketing: Better integration to deepen brand commitment. Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications (2008), 19-25.

White, R. (2003). Customer Relationship Management. WARC Best Practice, September 2003.

Xu, Y., Yen, D. C., Lin, B., & Chou, D. C. (2002). Adopting customer relationship management technology. Industrial Management and Data Systems, 102(8/9), 442.

Zahay, D., Peltier, J., Schultz, D. E., & Griffin, A. (2004). The role of transactional versus relational data in IMC programs: Bringing customer data together. Journal of Advertising Research, 44(1), 3-18.

Definitions and critical success factors for CRM

The building-blocks of successful CRM resonate throughout marketing and management

Broadly, organisations have long been geared toward customers in terms of setting growth strategies, marketing and sales strategies, product development and internal budgeting. But organisations were prevailingly centred upon the product or services they sold (Peppers & Rogers, 2004). Customer Relationship Management is a field that exploded in the late 1990s when businesses realised the potential of internal networks and the internet for tracking transactions of all types toward managing long-term customer relationships—to maximise customer satisfaction and engagement and, ultimately, the overall ROI for a CRM initiative ^{(see note 1 at bottom)} (Bligh & Turk, 2004).

The CRM literature is vast, spanning a range of approaches and interpretations delineated among business sectors and among camps with distinct definitions of CRM itself.

The most obvious division in the literature is the distinction between CRM as a broader concept describing organisation-wide customer orientation and CRM as a more isolated field comprising CRM technology (referred to by some authors as “CRM IS” (meaning CRM information systems) or as “eCRM” by (Lin, Lin, Huang, & Kuo, 2006)).

In a non-IT context it is be easiest (and most consistent with the origin and two decades of literature) to discuss CRM as a strategic business practice enabled by technology, with customer orientation being taken (as is predominantly the case) as a necessary precondition for successful CRM technology implementation, as we will discuss in more detail below.

Since early in the explosion of CRM, and throughout the years that have followed, lists of necessary preconditions or critical success factors for a CRM undertaking have been identified and discussed by a great range of authors in academia, business and the business media. Assessing these comprehensively would fill several books; however a more brief review does begin to reveal consistencies. The most repeated—and yet neglected—of these are reduced to a fundamental three by Phillip Bligh:

1. “CRM is not just a technology initiative; it must be approached strategically.

2. “Insight into customers and demand trends should drive CRM agendas.

3. “CRM must be implemented with an enterprise-wide perspective” (three points quoted from Bligh & Turk, 2004).

An additional necessity, repeated often and with greater urgency in the literature from recent years, is outlined well by Don Peppers:

4. “Establish one-to-one learning relationships: using data about customers, predict what each one needs next, treat them uniquely and increase mutual value with the customer” (Peppers & Rogers, 2004).

Point number one, above, points to the most common source of failure in CRM identified by businesses and the business literature. Countless business leaders have pursued the implementation of CRM in a shallow, arm’s length fashion—considering CRM to be an off-the-shelf ‘product’ that a company needs simply to install and turn on. This fails to recognise that CRM is a business function involving information that is received from customers, and more importantly it is also an orientation toward those customers with the aim of acting upon the information collected.

“[A] source of confusion related to CRM is the meaning of the term customer relationship management. Customer relationship management is actually a business transformation, not just a change in technology” (Marchand, 2006).

Point number two, above, highlights a need to move beyond a marketing perspective when engaging in meaningful CRM.

“Many marketers still think CRM is just an advanced stage of database marketing—using your customer database to find which customers would be the right ones for a specific product offering. They don’t yet understand that relationship building must start with an understanding of the customer’s needs” (Newell, 2003).

Points number two and four are explicitly linked to the necessity for pursuing relational strategies rather than transactional strategies. Relational strategies take into account lifetime cost and value with respect to the total of all interactions and transactions, whereas transactional strategy is focussed on the value of a current or next transaction (Peppers & Rogers, 2004).

“By focussing on the Customer we mean that a company’s managers and sales people should direct and orient their activities at the customer before, during and after sales. The relationship term is a way of moving companies away from having a purely “transactional” contact with customers to building broader and deeper relations that create high customer loyalty. And at the same time, create higher revenues from the lifetime relationship with the customer” (Marchand, 2006).

Point number three is perhaps the most repeated recommendation in the CRM literature. Authors point out that separate, often ‘siloed’ or even competing internal divisions such as marketing, advertising, sales, customer service, fulfilment—and even executive offices—must be united in their commitment to CRM. CRM changes the way information moves through organisations, and how information is acted upon. If this is not the case, even where every employee is sitting in front of a CRM terminal, CRM is not actually taking place. (Valentine, 2005; Xu, Yen, Lin, & Chou, 2002)

“Customer strategy helps avoid the silo effect that exists among departments in many organisations… [encouraging] department managers and employees to think first about customers and second about departmental policies.

“In many organisations, departments become fiefdoms and lose sight of their mission to support the delivery of value to customers. By contrast, high performance firms breach the walls between departments” (Bligh & Turk, 2004).

Breaching silos to create a horizontal, customer-driven organisation is a change for staff that is functional and communications-oriented (both internally and externally). But it is also a cultural shift that must be embraced by managers and executives and that must unite an organisation in defining its purpose.

CRM guides organisations to make customer relationships their primary function and to permanently overcome any thinking that makes internal structure and function appear significant by comparison.

“Customer strategy must drive customer-related policy; existing departmental rules are secondary in importance”(Bligh & Turk, 2004).

“…companies must develop a mindset and culture of customer centricity in their own people, in their products/services, their channel use and their interactions with customers. The management challenge when bringing CRM into a company is both people oriented and information based. To execute CRM effectively requires a cultural shift…” (Marchand, 2006).

But this cultural shift is not an easy one to effect throughout a large group of departments and people, and this is why enterprise-wide change—the most often cited necessity for CRM—is also the least often achieved.

“Employees’ resistance is one of the major risks associated with CRM implementation. In most companies, CRM efforts often never get off the ground because they encounter such stiff resistance from IT. In some of those failed efforts, CRM is proclaimed a new cultural initiative. Similar to TQM in the 1980s, it sounds great in theory. But what happens in practice is that management encounters so much resistance to implementing CRM as a large change management initiative that it just fizzles out” (Xu et al., 2002).

Point number four ventures right into the changes Web 2.0 is bringing to business and shines some light on the significance lurking here, but stops a half-step short of the true ethos, and the potential, of Web 2.0.

Where did this bring us?

People interested in IMC and marketing generally will be familiar with the themes and the CSFs for CRM. They are reflected in modern definitions of IMC and are ever-present in dialogues about web 2.0-era marketing.

Does CRM 2.0 move significantly beyond these?

Notes

[1]  It is important to note that the relationship between CRM and ROI has been a rocky one, at best, largely due to problems described above. Most studies report that fewer than 20% of new CRM implementations lead to positive returns, that even among those organisation that report positive results roughly half are unable to provide credible business data to assess their CRM, and that over 10% of projects never even reach a ‘live’ state. (Almquist, Heaton, & Hall, 2002; Bligh & Turk, 2004; Hansotia, 2002; Nairn, 2002)

This post is part of a developing series:

1. Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers’ online behaviours boost brand engagement
2. Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions?
3. Definitions and critical success factors for CRM (you are here)
4. Is CRM 2.0 something new?
5. What is Marketing 2.0?

References

Almquist, E., Heaton, C., & Hall, N. (2002). Making CRM make money. Marketing Management, 11(3), 16. (also published here)

Bligh, P., & Turk, D. (2004). CRM Unplugged : releasing CRM’s strategic value. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Hansotia, B. (2002). Gearing up for CRM: Antecedents to successful implementation. Journal of Database Marketing, 10(2), 121.

Lin, C., Lin, K., Huang, Y.-A., & Kuo, W.-L. (2006). Evaluation of Electronic Customer Relationship Management: The Critical Success Factors. The Business Review, 6(2), 206-212.

Marchand, D. (2006). Customer Relationship Management Challenging the Myth: Focus on people, not the technology. Perspectives for Managers, 131, 1-4.

Nairn, A. (2002). CRM: Helpful or full of hype? Journal of Database Marketing, 9(4), 376.

Newell, F. (2003). Why CRM Doesn’t Work : How to Win by Letting Customers Manage the Relationship: Bloomberg Press

Peppers, D., & Rogers, M. (2004). Managing Customer Relationships: A strategic framework. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Valentine, L. (2005). Rethinking CRM to make it pay. ABA Banking Journal, 97(5), 62-62.

Xu, Y., Yen, D. C., Lin, B., & Chou, D. C. (2002).

Adopting customer relationship management technology

. Industrial Management and Data Systems, 102(8/9), 442.

Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions?

Does the business world need Marketing 2.0, CRM 2.0, and even IMC 2.0—or just ‘Customers 2.0’?

Recent changes in internet functionality and consumer online behaviour, originally described as a far-reaching change in internet communications and colloquially titled “web 2.0” by Tim O’Reilly, involve (in part) a shift from an internet serving as a largely broadcast-structured one-directional medium to an internet where users contribute and collaborate extensively. The most apparent, current hallmarks of this shift include the exploding popularity of online networking, blogs, social communities and a general increase in the level of interactivity available online. Many successful commercial websites have embraced the trend by encouraging customers to contribute content in blogs, reviews, forums and other online facilities. Video games have evolved to include team collaboration and real-time communication among any number of remotely-located players.

Web 2.0 pundits suggest that this shift in online behaviour indicates a crucial new direction in consumer behaviour that entails a pervasive and growing expectation on the part of consumers that they should be able to engage with and contribute to whatever communities or entities they make contact with online.

That this appears to be borne out by the very nature of many online success stories—businesses such as Flickr, Facebook and Amazon—has led some in the business community to consider 2.0 trends as a pivotal shift that calls for a redesign or redefinition of business functions such as customer relationship management (CRM), public relations (PR) and marketing.

The lessons that are extracted from these changes, however, reflect in many respects established theory and practice in each field. In fact, lessons for business that are being touted as changes necessitated by the advent of web 2.0 echo some of the key lessons highlighted in the field of CRM for many, many years. The past two decades’ literature on the design, implementation and conduct of CRM overlaps extensively with ‘2.0’ ideas, and these overlapping indications appear to revolve somewhat upon consumer orientation.

Web 2.0 is described by some as a revolution that necessitates a significant redesign of communication with commercially important audiences. This has led some writers to suggest that new fields of thought and practice, with new titles such as ‘Marketing 2.0’, ‘CRM 2.0’ and ‘PR 2.0’, should be adopted to denote the differences to traditional practice.

Is a shift in the field of IMC toward a new era of ‘IMC 2.0’ called for, or would this essentially be giving a new name to pre-existing best theory and best practice in marketing communications?

In my next several posts I will review CRM, CRM 2.0, Marketing 2.0 and the current state of IMC—let’s see if this leads us toward IMC 2.0…

This post is part of a developing series:

1. Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers’ online behaviours boost brand engagement
2. Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions? (you are here)
3. Definitions and critical success factors for CRM
4. Is CRM 2.0 something new?
   
5. What is Marketing 2.0?

Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers' online behaviours boost brand engagement

Web 2.0 users’ high involvement and their expectations of online experience including rich information and opportunities to contribute or create—plus their familiarity with engaging in relationships and dialogue online—are a complex meal for some businesses to digest. Managing marketing and customer relationships in an age where consumers are active—and reachable—in a non-commercial environment is a difficult thing to get right. The fact that getting it wrong can spawn user-generated content, content that can influence your audiences for years onward, creates a critical imperative to approach online markets carefully. But the potential for the internet to become a powerful interface into people’s lives, where they engage in many ways and are cognitively engaged and contributing—possibly even contributing directly to you marketing by posting content relating to your business such as reviews, blogs and niche-interest dialogues and forum participation—makes web 2.0 an irresistibly powerful tool for marketers interested in utilising the latest in technological and social trends.

Although giving control to consumers rather than trying to control consumers is a tremendous and difficult conceptual evolution for many people to transcend, there is strong evidence for its ultimate success. By allowing people more and more to direct the services and products an organisation provides to them, to control communication and relationships, and to influence other consumers, these people are very likely to exhibit greater connections to brands than might have been imagined using conventional, ‘us-managing-them’ CRM and brand management.

“Robert B. Cialdini, author of The Psychology of Influence, reports that psychologists have long understood the consistency principle, which is needed to direct human action because the desire for consistency is a central motivator of our behavior. For example, Cialdini said, “Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment” (Cialdini, 2007)” (Rapacz & Reilly, 2008).

“Studies have consistently found that commitment fosters greater resistance to attitude change. As Ahluwalia et. al report, “Individuals who are committed to a brand, for example, have been shown to resist persuasive communications that portray the brand negatively” (Ahluwalia, 2007)” (Rapacz & Reilly, 2008).

Computing is facilitating people’s urges to contribute and express themselves, and for marketers this is a big deal: the cognitive surplus

During the past 50 years in prosperous countries people have invested their cognitive surplus – the idle, ‘functionally available’ or ‘free-thinking’ time in peoples’ days – almost entirely in the watching of television. Post-war, TV has occupied people’s cognitive surplus. This idea is put forth strongly by Clay Shirkey who teaches interactive telecommunications at NYU and serves as a popular commentator on evolving trends in online activity. Shirkey observes that the web is emerging as the new space for occupying the cognitive surplus, is poised to significantly displace TV’s role, and offers different avenues for occupying time that are importantly different from the purely passive consumption of television: On the web, in addition to observation, people can create, engage and converse

Shirkey claims that even a small shift away from purely observational free time may be a very significant shift in our society. He uses examples like online photo-sharing (at Flickr.com) and raises an important point: Pre-web 2.0, an individual engaging in the sharing of their creative photography would indicate a significant, committed activity. For people pursuing this activity, the technology provides efficiency that means real results are obtained in relatively few hours, enabling them to master their interest and generate a significant output. Today’s moderately talented amateur photographers can manage and distribute their output in a way that is so accessible, and that has such a great potential reach, that it is affecting a long-standing business—Shirkey cites a 99% drop in the average cost of stock photographs. (Elizabeth Bowie, 2008)

Very different from passive consumption of broadcast media and its advertising, engaged online activities create a setting where individuals are cognitively more active, guiding or creating or contributing – rather than just observing. Even very casual online ‘surfing’ is a far more engaged and cognitive activity than pure observation of a medium and media interface that one cannot influence or control such as TV. But with online activities becoming more and more participatory and with online technologies enabling far more sophisticated creation and input from people who are not considered experts in the field of their interest or expression, this new use of the cognitive surplus is actually time removed from the cognitive surplus itself. Becoming task-oriented and characterised by higher cognitive involvement, the time spent no longer fits with the cognitive surplus concept; it is productive and purposeful and, importantly, that it is being directed by consumers’ interests means that it is a window to their ideas and values.

For businesses, understanding that people using web 2.0 are highly involved with an activity or topic—and thereby targeting them in a way that is relevant and useful to them—makes web 2.0 importantly different from its earlier incarnation in a commercial sense. Web 2.0 is the internet with high cognitive involvement and providing facility for high levels of interactivity and expression. Because of this Web 2.0 is a unique new form media from web 1.0.

Web 2.0 sceptics might point out that the shift away from television and toward more engaged or productive (if not practical or necessary) online activities is not thus far a huge movement, but rather a gradual and fractional one. Shirkey provides an answer for this that may be more significant than even he intends: After fifty years of a strict media monoculture, even a relatively small shift in the focus of cognitive surplus time, away from purely passive consumption, may represent an extremely important change within our society. (Elizabeth Bowie, 2008)

Online contributors fuel their own brand engagement and convictions 

A hypothesis that we might grow from the beginning of Shirkey’s estimation of this change’s significance is this: Individuals’ interests and values are both satisfied and strengthened by the surplus time they invest in more engaged, involved online activities. These activities also boost their cognitive involvement (which is a concept that has received relatively little academic attention in recent years, though the antecedent, if not analogous, concept of engagement has enjoyed much attention in this context re: Web 2.0).

This notion is consistent with recent observations by Rapacz and Reilly (2008) and also with the literature on cognitive consumer involvement which indicates consumers’ cognitive involvement with a concept is both self-reinforcing and creates a receptiveness to external reinforcement where other influences (or influencers) support a hypothesis, as in Bottie et al. (2003).

And this idea highlights an immensely powerful concept for businesses whose consumers are engaging online; reflecting from a different angle the same ideas proposed by Rapacz (discussed earlier in this post):
Where consumers are creating content online that expresses their own involvement with a brand or product, their own input creates a psychological scenario that bolsters the commitment of their own ideas or causes them to defend and develop the ideas. Further, where these individuals’ ideas and interests are further reinforced by engagement in a network or community of like-thinking individuals, or even where they are called on to defend their content contribution and ideas, the individuals’ involvement with the subject (the brand or product) may be reinforced or increased.

It is observed that younger consumer groups who are heavy users of the internet—this no longer being an unusual or niche group—are heavily influenced by others with whom they interact online. “People like me” has become a tremendously powerful source of consumer information, topping surveys in many countries. Importantly, individuals identified as “opinion elites” indicate they will serve roles as influencers as much in favour of companies they do trust as in the disfavour of companies they do not. (StrategyOne, 2008)

Your dream customers

We might draw this toward a simple conclusion: Consumers creating online content or networking with your brand or product as a subject are not a threat! These people are in fact every marketer’s ‘fantasy consumers’: They are engaged, informed, likely to act as influencers and likely to have their own ideas and convictions relating to your business. These attributes are reinforced by their own online participation.

Engaging with these consumers positively will both increase those individuals’ positive engagement with your brand and increase the chance that they will represent ideas that are analogous with your organisation’s interests when collaborating and networking online.

This post is part of a developing series:

1. Web 2.0 Marketing: Consumers’ online behaviours boost brand engagement  (you are here)
2. Does the 2.0 revolution warrant renaming business functions?
3. Definitions and critical success factors for CRM
4. Is CRM 2.0 something new?  
5. What is Marketing 2.0?

References

Botti, S., McGill, A. L., & Iyengar, S. S. (2003). Preference for control and its effect on the evaluation of consumption experiences. In Advances in Consumer Research (Vol. 30, pp. 127-128).

Elizabeth Bowie, T. H., Dan Misener, and Nora Young (Writer) (2008). Clay Shirky on your “cognitive surplus”, Spark. Canada: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (A CBC radio broadcast & podcast)

Rapacz, D., & Reilly, M. (2008). The New View of Relationship Marketing: Better integration to deepen brand commitment. Journal of Integrated Marketing Communications (2008), 19-25.

StrategyOne. (2008). Trust Barometer 2008. Edelman Trust Barometer.

The best and worst in charity websites: Surveying visual impact and usability

Working in the non-profit sector I frequently see people challenged to create an attractive website that serves its objectives well. Recent trends in charity website design (and on the web in general) are stressing the importance of blog-type content posting an the ability to post video and other rich content. Creating such sites and doing it with an attractive overall appearance that is inviting and integrated with an overall brand identity is very hard to accomplish on a non-profit budget, but some people are doing it well.

Tackling a website development or redesign should involve a measured approach that refers to a strategic marketing plan, with attention to what specific objectives and their related strategies will be served by specific elements of the web design and function. And pulling it togehter in a nice wrapper calls for a survey of the landscape; here are a few examples, primarily from Canada and Australia…

Excellent Charity Websites

Caritas looks very nice and clear

Ecojustice illustrates an important basic lesson in graphic design: “select a couple of good colours and really stick to them”

Asthma UK is pretty nice (not revolutionary, but clean-looking and easy to navigate – impressive for an well-established large-ish organisation)

Design Can Change is very impressive, though this approach is a bit too image-based (vs info-based) for most organisations

CPAWS has a nice, simple look, but only at their main page. If you click-through to the British Columbia chapter there is an ugly page, but it is an example of a blog-format main-page.

Social Edge is not outstanding, but it somehow makes me want to read for a minute

Human Society - Humane Index is technically and creatively brilliant

Angkor Hospital found someone to do a nice design for this tiny, simple site

Starbright is just a really nice idea, putting web 2.0 trends to a good use, so I’ll put it in this group

Charity websites with good and bad elements

The Nature Conservancy is a bit too old-school-looking, but I do think it looks pretty nice

Greenpeace Australia has a modern, clean design and the central blog/news content is good, but the visual clutter is too heavy.

Greenpeace International is almost the same, but the clutter effect is reduced a bit by more consistent use of colour (albeit an ugly colour). This site shows one real advantage of a blog format: you can easily post video into your blog or news posts – looks current and energetic.

Australian Wildlife Conservancy is very slick and different-looking, but demands too much clicking before they give me any information

Guide Dogs US looks pretty good – but don’t they want donations?

Smith Family looks too bland, a bit like a bank website five years ago. But one thing they’ve got right: lots and lots of fundraising-oriented links and content.

WWF has a good structure and a good blog-ish style, but the menus and the banner are a let-down

Cousteau is very very simple and it looks okay for what it is. I wonder what their ’new site in 2008’ will look like?

Michael J Fox has good, unique style and colour (perhaps taken a bit too far?) but needs to provide some straightforward information to catch my interest – and the complex headlines are a barrier to visitors

ACF has good style and interesting (if a bit subdued) colour choices, but the final result is too cluttered

TLC looks very pretty, but they didn’t consider their audience well enough; the navigation is non-intuitive and there are too many PDFs

Breast Cancer Foundation is fresh and different, and really hinges on its blog format, but they slightly over-simplified and the too-pale pink colour is a mistake

Washington Area Women’s Foundation is off-beat looking yet conservative. I think I like it but I’m not sure. Putting ‘Latest videos’ on the main page is good.

Charity Websites with real problems

David Suzuki Foundation is much too busy-looking; your eyes just don’t know where to go, so ‘away’ seems like a good choice

Humane Society US has too much clutter and too many colours and buttons and logos

Western Canada Wilderness Committee just looks unattractive - but they too have gone to the popular blog format which could work okay with a slightly tidied-up design

WPSQ. Oh my. What can you say?

Cancer NSW is just too stiff and makes you click too much

Cancer Council Australia just doesn’t do it for me

Breast Cancer WA is old-school and generic looking

I hope I haven’t done offence to anyone in the latter categories - my comments are meant to be constuctive and to help people look at designs objectively and with audiences in mind - which is what we should all be doing, all the time, when working on non-profit communications.

Facebook to use personal info for targeting ads

Ask most any person what they think about online privacy and you are likely to get an answer that stresses the importance of protecting personal information. But: Review the social networking activity of your subjects and you’ll find a different story.

Users of Facebook and other social networks are posting extraordinary detail in their personal profiles, and the very nature of their networking and online interaction provides any viewer with intimate outlines of their lives and values. Yet Facebook users are likely to regard that content as somehow private and protected – or somehow separate from the issue of online privacy.

News that Facebook will let advertisers target ads based on users’ personal details – including hobbies, travel, photos and other ‘private’ information – might soon change that.

“The information made available by users can include everything from their date of birth, hobbies and interests to places and events they are planning to visit, as well as a wide variety of photographs.
“Advertisers will be able to access a special website containing this data, which will then enable them to identify their target audience with what is hoped will be a high level of accuracy.
“The ads would be different from the banner and box ads currently featured on the site, forming part of the “news feed” section which details the activities of a user’s listed “friends”.”

From WARC

The last sentence is crucial; it means that a central element of the Facebook interface, previously containing only notices about your friends’ Facebook activities, will be infiltrated with commercial content.

It is difficult to predict, however, how Facebook users will react. Most users will predictably oppose the change initially, but on the other hand users have not reacted against conventional banner ads that have been working their way into Facebook pages. Facebook’s appearance is far less obtrusively commercial than competitors like MySpace, and placing ads into the Facebook “News Feed” might not change that appearance; this strategy lets ads be insidiously well-targeted and places them in a context that almost forces users to read them, yet won’t necessarily turn Facebook into a garish side-show of flashing ads and bad design (like MySpace).

The Wall Street Journal story on this issue reveals even more depth to the topic:

“Next year, Facebook hopes to expand on the service, one person says, using algorithms to learn how receptive a person might be to an ad based on readily available information about activities and interests of not just a user but also his friends — even if the user hasn’t explicitly expressed interest in a given topic. Facebook could then target ads accordingly.”

From the Wall Street Journal

Making an online network profitable is a tightrope-walking venture. Will users permit the commercialisation not only of ‘their’ network, but of their personal details and network activity? We’ll just have to wait and see what network is growing fastest a year from now…

Update on Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 10:41PM by Ken Thomas

Since I wrote this post a great deal has happened in the world of Facebook, including:

• Online social networking continues to grow,
  
• Facebook defies predictions of audience ‘Facebook fatigue’ in spite of obnoxiously viral activity of popular embedded applications,
• Facebook exchanges users’ personal information with advertisers to create a rather unpopular and invasive marketing tool, then scales the project back as people react,
• Facebook roars past MySpace to become the biggest social network,
• Facebook faces much criticism for its questionable policies realting to user privacy and ownership of content (but stays quiet and avoids widespread perception of these issues),
• Facebook announces redesign of interface and opening of its system to developers, aiming to allow user profiles and details to port across sites of many types, naming preferred partners but so far releasing none of the discussed evolution.

I’ll be blogging more about Facebook some time soon, being particularly interested in the online public’s acceptance of what would not long ago have been considered unfair and invasive business practices. (Has online privacy become a completely outdated concept?)

Andrew Keen earns his stripes

Andrew Keen, author of “The Cult of the Amateur”, may be mistaken and backward-looking in his criticism of the internet for being corrosive to culture – but to his credit he also has humility and a sense of humour! Keen’s blog points us to his debates with commentators more level-headed than himself, and they are giving him some harsh online punishment:

On the Guardian Keen is flayed alive by Emily Bell.

Keen’s upcoming evisceration on the Colbert Report.
>>edit: sadly there is no evisceration; politically unpredictable mainstream comic Colbert handles Keen pretty gently<<