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A friend in Amsterdam shared this video on Facebook today, and I was inspired to spin it here on the TLOTL blog. It struck me as a potential “beginning of the end” in the tedious debate of the question: is social media dead?

I refuse to waste pixels issuing birth or death notices for social media (or wade into questions of its citizenship for that matter). But if you are still monitoring social media’s vital signs, or if you just like watching videos, then watch the video. Then read my analysis. And whether you agree with me but think I missed a few points, or you think I’m hopelessly hopped up on social media Kool-Aid, I invite you to make your case in the comments section. [Hey, as long as you're not a comment spammer or some other type of internet n'er-do-well, you can even launch an epic vitriolic screed against all forms of social media containing links back to your blog or Twitter page.]

Here’s my take on what this video and story does for KLM Royal Dutch Airlines:

Launches a new Miami route with a dose of the fun a KLM passenger can have there. Message: when you fly KLM the transportation is part of the destination. And now one of the reasons you would go to Miami in the first place is one of the reasons you’ll consider flying KLM to get there.
Targets a customer segment with a high expected lifetime value. If you’re a major airline in 2011, it’s nice to fill a seat. It’s reeaaally nice to fill it with young people who tend to travel in groups, probably don’t have kids or a spouse to think of, and spend disposable income on international leisure and entertainment. Seats filled (for 16-18 hours round trip!) with those kinds of passengers provide KLM with a captive audience who will buy drinks, meals, movies, and sign up for credit cards and loyalty programs.
Connects a distinctive, generations-old brand with notions of youth, vitality, style, escape and adventure. These themes appeal to a wide cross-section of the traveling public, and indeed have been part of the air travel sales pitch to consumers for much of the last century.
Shows KLM:
a. Using social media. Period.
b. Using social media to listen to customers, and not just to blast out special offers or manage the TV news cycle.
c. Using social media to engage customers in profitable exchanges – “yes, we’ll gladly move the Miami route launch up one week, but you gotta get your raver friends to fill some seats.” I bet shareholders like that part of the story.
Differentiates KLM as a company that rises above the B.S. – at a time when the dominant storylines in air travel are rising fares, nickel-and-dime surcharges, and (in America at least) TSA body scans, KLM is setting a Guinness World Record for the highest altitude dance party. This is really smooth, and the nexus of content and context matters a lot here. How would we feel about this video if this were 1999 instead of 2011? In a world awash in post-Cold War, dot com, fin de siècle giddiness, a thumping, transatlantic, 30K-foot dance party would’ve looked terribly tacky and “me too.”

Leon Pals, a Rotterdam-based trendwatcher, posted on thenextweb.com that even if this video is just a clever concoction of KLM’s marketing department or creative agency, he enjoyed it as an example of effective social media. (Such sleight of hand would seem a needless risk for KLM, in my opinion.)

I would take Pals’ point further and say that even if some level of storyline manufacturing took place, this would only underscore social media’s value as a communications channel.

And BTW, let’s just take it as a given that all media is subject to misuse. We should move beyond moral outrage and accept that, at some level, we’re just going to have to figure out the difference between authentic and synthetic messaging. We can try to regulate and we should. And we can hope that those who think it’s ok to “pee in the pool” (I’m talking to you J.C.-Penny-and-or-the-agency-that-supposedly-acted-of-its-own-accord-to-employ-black-hat-SEO-practices-on-J.C.-Penny’s-behalf) will eventually be caught in the act, publicly shamed, and sent to the big house if necessary.

But in the meantime, we marketers have a job to do, and that is TO SELL. And whether or not J.C. Penny or anyone else is cheating is not our concern. What we need to do is tell great stories that inspire the right customer to engage our brands, and ultimately, buy our products. Well done KLM.

Happy New Year TLOTL readers. Even though this is the week when most of us are heading back to work, I’m kicking off 2011 with a post that is perhaps 80% frivolous, 20% serious.

After a holiday break that included a healthy amount of feasting, family time, and general decompression, I decided to finally join the ranks of individuals who feel compelled to remove most of their winter clothing and hurl themselves into near-freezing water on New Year’s Day. And even though I reside in Seattle — which, at 47 degrees and 37 minutes of latitude, is closer to the North Pole than it is to the equator — I figured that jumping into the chilly waters of Puget Sound wasn’t silly enough to suit my purposes.

No, clearly it was necessary to travel 144 miles north to Vancouver, where a throng of nearly 2000 like-minded, half-nekked individuals huddled on the shores of English Bay for the annual Polar Bear Swim. Here we waited for the (warmly-dressed, hot cocoa-sipping, and smirking) event organizers to inform us that it was finally “ok” to dive into Pacific Ocean waters measuring a very uncomfortable 6 degrees Celsius.

The photo to the right links to my Facebook album documenting this adventure. The combination of a large crowd — many of whom were feeling the effects of liquid courage, early-stage hypothermia, or both — and the presence of my 5 year old daughter prevented my paparazza (wife) from even approaching the designated plunge area. But the videographers at the Vancouver Sun captured the proceedings from the shoreline. And there’s a very entertaining, crowd-sourced slideshow of the event on Flickr.

You may be wondering what would possess an otherwise normal person to do such a thing. Of course I can only speak for myself. The answer lies somewhere on the continuum between “I have no freaking idea why” and “because I had to.” One does not typically over-contemplate the decision to join a Polar Bear Swim. It’s a commitment that is almost always made in haste. And I think that’s really my best answer to the “why” question, and also the tie-back to the “20% serious” claim I made at the beginning of this post.

Some who know me may disagree with this assessment, but I think I’m a fairly careful person, or careful enough anyway. I pay my bills on time. My life, health, business and property are all adequately insured. I try to leave a clean wake in my relationships. Before making important business or personal decisions, I have been known to (obsessively?) analyze them through multiple lenses, be they financial, spiritual, social, global, metaphysical, or “other.”

Just after Christmas I ran into a business contact who observed that it’s normal for him to generate 10 good ideas, try to implement 8 of them, and be satisfied if none of them work, as long as he learns something in the process. I genuinely admire that about him. And what I think he admires about me is that I’m exactly the opposite. I love to generate ten good ideas, and then use my analytical skills — and those of my collaborators – to kill or “parking lot” the nine that don’t make sense right now, and use the remaining energy to execute well against the one that I believe will work.

Now, to be clear, I wasn’t trying to rinse off these personality traits in the frigid waters of English Bay. I think they have generally served me well over the years. But in joining the Polar Bear Swim, I very much wanted to celebrate the virtue of “not thinking about stuff too much.” And a great way to celebrate that virtue is to fullly experience the discomfort, and the thrill, that comes with it. And so if I’m going to be not comfortable while I’m not thinking too much, it’s preferable to be not alone.

New Year’s Day is just another day, but it’s a marker of change. Change happens all around us, and within us, all the time. I find that the company I keep, more than anything, is what makes that change manageable, rewarding, and, more often than not: FUN.

Happy New Year!

A slight detour for today’s post. Let’s pay a brief visit to the land of B2C retail fitness, to see if any insights apply to B2B sales and marketing.

One regular “client” of my consulting practice is the Pilates and personal training business my wife Heather and I have owned for the past 3.5 years. I have no formal training in Pilates or personal training, and to be honest, until this year, my physique more closely resembled the guy in the classic “BEFORE” photo than the slimmer “AFTER” version. For this reason and others, I’ve typically worked more behind the scenes in that business, handling finance, operations, and marketing, supporting our staff and Heather as they support their clients.

Heather wears several hats too, including the very important Head of Sales hat. This is a challenging and rewarding job for her. She helps people make and manage investments in their health. According to HealthyPeople.gov, a service of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, only about 23 percent of adults in the United States report regular physical activity for 20 minutes or longer 3 or more days per week. Heather’s trying to engage the subset of that population who:

live close enough to our studio in Seattle to make regular ongoing visits with their trainer
are able to invest in private instruction (we don’t offer group classes)
are willing to pay for an elective health service not covered or subsidized by insurance
are physically able to exercise
have the time, or are able to make the time, to attend training sessions
aren’t already working with a trainer at another facility
value our services, people, facilities, and the way we do business

So yes, Heather has a challenging and rewarding job. Her business is highly relationship-driven. I know, I know, everyone’s business is relationship-driven, but hers really is. She’s learned, and taught me, a ton about how these relationships get started and grow. And as good as she has become at listening to prospects, educating them, and building their trust, the old adage is as true for her as it is for any sales person: you can’t win ‘em all. For any number of reasons, some within and some beyond her control, not everyone she meets will become a client. But every potential client, whether she meets them or not, will ultimately make some kind of decision, conscious or otherwise. That decision may be about whether to become a client, or it may be about whether to visit the website, pick up the phone, or ask a current or past client about their experience. And this brings us back to the theme of this post: every lead converts.

To explore what I mean by this, let’s apply the sentence in the broadest sense possible.

For simplicity, let’s define “every lead” as every person that engages Heather’s business. Not just the people who call her to ask about studio services or rates, or come in for an introductory session, or consider a membership package, but everyone. Any person who ever:

walks by the studio and takes a flyer from the box outside
drives by and notices nothing more than the window graphics or other branding elements
visits the studio’s web site
visits a third party review site (e.g. Yelp)
observes or engages in a social media conversation about the business
meets a current or previous client at a business function, or a kids’ soccer game
meets a current or previous prospect at a [insert business or social event here]

Simplified Conversion Model

And now let’s define “convert” just as broadly. Not just the conversion of qualified prospects into clients, or of leads into qualified prospects, or even of traffic (foot, phone, or web) into leads. Let’s define conversion as any change in a person’s opinion of her business — no matter how strong or subtle, how temporary or permanent, or how grounded in fact or fiction — based on currently available information available.

And now, let’s go one step further and give a B2B-sounding name to this entire cycle of people gathering information and developing their opinions. Let’s call it: the considered purchase process.

Back here in the B2B world, we are trained to be efficient, mechanical, and sometimes even a bit mercenary about demand generation. And the military-industrial language we use to describe our trade – e.g., driving conversion, filling the pipeline, growing revenue (exponentially), launching multi-channel integrated campaigns, etc. – reflects the intense expectations of management that we take the beach deliver results.

But as we focus our energy on the relative few who ultimately decide to buy, it’s helpful to remember that every person’s opinion of our company changes as they interact with us. We may be leaving money or value on the table when we ignore those who don’t take our prescribed next step. Or worse, we may be creating headwinds for future sales efforts by handling these people in a careless way. Every lead converts, in either a good way or a not-good way. And unless you’re selling to a market of infinite size where no one ever bothers to share their impressions of your business, each one of those conversions matters.

Doing the things that get more leads to favorably convert, more of the time, helps us build healthier pipelines and more predictable revenue growth.

Smart social media – 5 ways KLM gets it right

2011 – Bring it on.

Every Lead Converts

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