Category Archive: Supergenius Live
We are amazed by all of the ideas shared at Word of Mouth Supergenius throughout the day’s 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant author sessions. (Live coverage available here.)
A big thanks to everyone who came and helped make the event so fantastic — and an extra thanks to those who shared so many great takeaways via Twitter. We’re highlighting 36 of our favorites here, but there are plenty more great here on Twitter.
- danbaird2000 Favorite quote from #supergenius “Be the change you want, or react to the change you don’t.” –Hugh
- shaifranklin Paull Young @charitywater: “An 8 yr-old girl can go out and tell the story better than I ever could.” #supergenius
- lbbinc stacey kane talking about the “firefighters of fun,” ppl at the company who stop you from doing things fun #supergenius
- nwjerseyliz #Supergenius Interesting to hear from Dell that their private users group is both “ravers” and “ranters” (people who liked & disliked Dell)
- mumby Visitors are 3x more likely to purchase after reading reviews -ester lauder #supergenius
- beehivepr Incredible success measurements for Gevalia as told by Dana Vogel, great social media merged with direct marketing story #supergenius
- woodwardcarrie I keep thinking the guitar guy is going to bust out the “free credit report.com” jingle. #supergenius
- Backbone_Media “You’re not what you say your brand is, you’re what people say you are..” @ramon_deleon #supergenius
- TaraNahrup Makers Mark shares brand ambassador team guiding principles (reinforce ownership, empower, be interesting and reactive) #supergenius
- jettemomant recognize that ur friends (consumers) really own the brand. Reinforce their ownership. From Todd Spencer. Makers Mark #supergenius
- fitsngiggles Great tip: Keep it special. It’s human nature to want things that seem hard to get #supergenius
- shaifranklin Todd Spencer @doeanderson: Exceeding expectations is a FULL-TIME job. #supergenius
- mandaleebee Recurring #supergenius theme: @toddspencer: Treat your consumers/customers/etc as friends. Reinforce their sense of ownership in your brand.
- OttoPilotMedia Customer service should be your primary investment for word of mouth marketing. #supergenius
- David_Rogers “Advertising is the cost of being boring.” — T-shirt at Word of Mouth #Supergenius
- adamstjohn Hsieh aka @zappos “ppl may not remember what you did or said, but they will remember how you made them feel”. #supergenius
- mariayava @marteeeen: Small is the new huge. Do something boring and make it amazing. Join bobsled team, or join Jamaican bobsled team! #supergenius
- daryllang Really fun marketing ideas in presentation by the WindsorONE lumber company. Favorite: Baseball card-style business cards. #Supergenius
- greggweiss “Social media fire can only be put out with social media water” @Ramon_DeLeon of Domino’s Pizza #supergenius
- danavan ALWAYS give a tell-a-friend form with simple messaging + made in USA! Make WOM EASY! (Windsor One) #supergenius
- DesignLinesLtd Every company should do this. RT @gibsondm Don’t make your core values just a meaningless plaque on the wall. -@zappos #supergenius
- thebrandbuilder Having a higher purpose than profits or being #1 in marketplace ironically creates both of these outcomes. – @zappos #supergenius
- TaraNahrup @briansolis says content no longer king. Now it’s CONTEXT #supergenius
- DrewNeisser “Don’t try to boil the ocean, start small” says @jbernoff on social media #forrester #supergenius
- LindsayLebresco We have IT recovery systems, why don’t we have Customer recovery systems? Via Jeanne Bliss #SuperGenius
- samdecker WOM words: relevance, resonance, salience, context, authenticity, credibility, connectedness, love, responsive. #supergenius
- DanessaMyricks Powerful and true! RT @candidcomments: Give your readers the chance to really interact with you. Open up the two-way dialogue. #supergenius
- pgillin Gen Mills’ Witt on blogger rltns: 1.Be authentic 2.Identify yourself 3.Reveal intentions 4. Follow FTC/WOMMA guidelines #supergenius
- lbbinc brendan hart – Tracking & testing drives content & promotions strategy. Developing voice is key to building loyal followers #supergenius
- tamar feedback is your guide to being awesome #supergenius
- johnfschneider Memorable quote RT @ckieff: #supergenius Andy Sernovitz: “The difference between honesty and sleazery is disclosure.”
- Agent94_ “Social moves faster than corporate.” Lindsay Lebresco, #supergenius
- lmarino Call centers seek to minimize interaction with customers – wrong approach. Lane Becker, Get Satisfaction #supergenius
- SuziCraig Awesome insight from @rohitbhargava ala Ogivily. “A great story is entertainment. A shareable story is retold.” #supergenius
- AndreaMoe Execute extraordinary experiences everyday. @saulcolt said that!
#supergenius - womel But I have to say, the office is just not as fun as #Supergeniusis. I wish every day could be a #supergenius day!
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Word of Mouth Supergenius was a thrilling experience. Brilliant speakers, fantastic attendees, and the support of amazing partners and sponsors made for one awesome day.
And thanks to the help of our official (and truly talented) live bloggers — Howard Greenstein, Tish Grier, and David Polinchock — we’ve got great live coverage from the day’s 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors.
Introduction to Word of Mouth Supergenius
- Welcome to Word of Mouth Supergenius — with GasPedal’s Kurt Vanderah
Opening keynote
- Love or Marketing? How Word of Mouth Will Save Your Brand — with GasPedal’s Andy Sernovitz
How-to classes
- How to Create Buzzworthy Topics — with Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence’s Rohit Bhargava
- How to Create a Fan Community — with Fleishman-Hillard’s Spike Jones
- How to Create Word of Mouth on Zero Budget — with Thoora’s Saul Colt
- How to Inspire WOM with Customer Service — with Get Satisfaction’s Lane Becker
- How to Stay Out of Trouble: WOM Ethics, Policies, and Training — with GasPedal’s Andy Sernovitz
- How to Respond to Feedback, Posts, Comments, and Tweets — with Converseon’s Lindsay Lebresco
- How to Create and Promote Your Blog — with Marketing Savant’s Dana VanDen Heuvel
- How to Create Offline Word of Mouth — with Tour:Smart author Martin Atkins
- How to be Awesome on Twitter and Facebook — with National Geographic’s Brendan Hart
- How to Measure Word of Mouth — with BrandBuilder’s Olivier Blanchard
- How to Work with Online Reviews — with Yelp’s Kevin Lee
- How to Work with Bloggers and Influencers — with General Mills’ David Witt
Afternoon keynote
- Delivering Happiness — with author of “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” and Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh
Real-world case studies
- WindsorONE — with WindsorONE’s Craig Flynn
- Domino’s — with Domino’s Ramon De Leon
- Fiskars — with Brains on Fire’s Geno Church
- Intuit — with Ant’s Eye View’s Kira Wampler
- PrintingForLess.com — with PrintingForLess.com’s Jessica Cooper
- Maker’s Mark — with Doe-Anderson’s Todd Spencer
- Dell — with Dell’s Caroline Dietz
- Estee Lauder — with Bazaarvoice’s Sam Decker and Estee Lauder Companies’ Marisa Thalberg
- Gevalia — with Kraft’s Dana Vogel
- California Tortilla — with California Tortilla’s Stacey Kane
- charity: water — with charity: water’s Paull Young
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4:30 — Kurt Vanderah introduces California Tortilla’s Stacey Kane.
4:31 — “All I ever needed to know about customer engagement I learned from Howard Stern. He built his audience one person at a time.” Stacey is talking about the process they used when deciding to introduce a new menu for California Tortilla and how she used Howard’s methods to accomplish her goals:
4:33 — Howard Pre-sold everything.
4:34 — So they pre-sold the heck out of it. Told customers to come in and get their old favorites before the menu changed.
4:35 — California Tortilla took down that 4th wall, so they let people know what was going on behind the scenes during the menu re-launch. They also gave away their recipes.
4:36 — They let their customers dictate their content and encouraged inter-fan conversation. They wanted to name the new vegetarian burrito the vegito. So they did a poll to see what the new name should be. One customer came up with the name no meato burrito and he campaigned heavily to get people to vote for his name.
4:39 — They rewarded highly engaged customers with special status:
1. Invited top 200 customers, Facebook Likers and Twitter followers to a VIP party
2. Held a secret password day
3. Awarded a “King of all Mayors” to person with most check-ins on Foursquare
4:42 — They dealt with discontent in a very public way, they didn’t delete negative comments. After deleting the Thai Peanut burrito, they posted the recipe online so people could make it themselves.
4:43 — California Tortilla had one customer, Vicky Tucker, who really complained about the Carribean Jerk chicken being taken off the menu. So, they are going to do a Vicky Tucker day at the store she goes to (it’s a surprise to Vicky) and let everyone have their fill of Carribean chicken burritos before they’re taken off the menu.
4:45 — The results:
- April up 10% (with no advertising)
- May up 7%
- June up 8%
Love this live coverage? It’s all thanks to the fantastically fantastic blogging of David Polinchock.
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3:50 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Dell’s Caroline Dietz.
3:51 — Caroline: Trying to tell a different story than what you’ve already heard in the past.
I’ve been at Dell for 7 years. For the last 4 years, I’ve been solely on social media and community teams. Social media is a journey — you learn along the way. We wouldn’t be where we are today without that journey.
We need a listening and engagement engine.
You need to know what it looks like when you open up your employees to listening and engagement.
Give the company bigger ears and be willing to take action and drive.
Help people, focus on customer needs, have suggestions, and work on brand reputation.
3:54 — We have social support channels — on Facebook (new app recently launched), on Twitter @DellCares (about 2 months old now), and listening across the web.
We use Radian6 to monitor conversations on the wider web.
3:55 — When we launched the blog, we realized many people just wanted to give ideas or suggestions. Michael Dell told us to think about how we could harness millions of people’s ideas.
We launched IdeaStorm in 3 weeks during early 2006. Michael Dell’s support was key for this. You need business and operational support. We reached out to 25 online influencers before we started and asked people to give feedback.
The day we launched the site, we didn’t put out a press release. We offered it to influencers and just told them to share with their network. We launched on a Friday, and by Monday we had 1000 new ideas on the site. It spread like wildfire.
3:58 — Within that first week, we had 2000 ideas, and we hadn’t fully figured out how to respond to them. Put together operational pieces as early as you can.
How it works: post an idea, and the community votes on the idea — thumbs up or thumbs down. Comment, discuss, and then decide what Dell is going to develop. We share what we’re planning to ask people what they think.
We have about 10 hard-core community members who vote on almost everything that’s posted.
We put up a “storm session” to get customer feedback about backlit keyboards, got the customer feedback, and got information for our product process without focus group expense.
4:01 — Caroline: We get about 80% improvements, 12% unusable, 4% innovations, and 4% other. The 4% innovations is where we’re really focusing. (We have done a lot of the improvements).
If you’re thinking about doing this, be prepared for the initial spike and then potentially lower steady state.
4:03 – We provide regular updates on the Direct2Dell blog every 2 weeks.
Example: Linux community became passionate about having a Linux option for laptop purchases.
4:04 — Promoter engagement: not just people who are unhappy or having problems — we’re looking for people who are happy and are supporters. We engage by thanking, educating, encouraging, and participating. We take ideas and create smaller feedback loops.
We have a team of 6 and use Radian6 to monitor Dell promoters (after the Net Promoter score.)
Thank people. If they post about buying a Dell, we engage to give them extra information about their computer etc.
We Identify them, recruit them, and qualify them. Then we engage with them and activate them.
4:07 — Look into the data about the customers to identify who you want to invite to a small private community to get exclusive content — sneak peaks and VIP invitations. We also look at their social influence and reach. We look for amplifications. We create an ongoing relationship with this group. We can test announcements before we go to a wider audience. These people may come to the brand’s defense.
4:09 — June: CAP days – we flew our “ranters” (people who had problems) in and let them set the agenda. We listened to their issues regarding products, customer support, etc. At end of the day we asked what they thought. They loved it — no PowerPoint, all discussion. We admitted mistakes and let people rant. We had business leaders there to directly listen. We had a graphic facilitator and created a graphic we gave to all attendees to share through their social networks. “We helped Dell change.”
4:11 — For “ravers” — the real raving fans — we had the same kind of conference. We had different themes: environmental commitment, mobile space, and product ideas.
Results: We reached 2.5 million people in that first week. The intent wasn’t to generate buzz, but really to engage. We got the extra benefit of buzz online with customers telling people that Dell is listening.
1. Business was highly engaged — in the room, listening to feedback and following up.
2. Attendees had large social networks.
3. Third Party moderation by high profile outside bloggers.
We have a private community with a hashtag for follow-up and communications. The event isn’t the end — it is the start of the relationship.
Q&A
Q: Liz Pullen: With your private communities — are those only for ravers or ranters as well?
A: We started with 2 communities. Two weeks into it, we realized the Ranters weren’t as angry. We merged the communities. Not all are engaged. Some stayed and participated.
Q: Coleman company: How did you set up IdeaStorm via the legal team? How do you keep competitors from taking ideas?
A: The legal team has been very supportive. We sat down with the IP team. There’s language on the T&C of the site — once someone submits an idea, it is Dell’s property. It is very clear to customers — they must agree before they get an account. There may have been a few things that stumped legal initially, but nothing recently.
Q: Melissa, Metro Health: Regarding promoters — Aside from airfare, were they compensated?
A: Air, hotel, transfer, meal and that’s it. We met with the legal team and worked out a disclosure agreement that they had to sign, saying that they would disclose to their audience what they got. None had an issue with that.
Some people were disappointed they didn’t get a product. But we felt this was more credible.
Q: Mike from Cymfony — You got 4% of innovative ideas-did they come more from ranters or ravers?
A: We haven’t done that analysis but we’re going to do that now!
Love this live coverage? It’s all thanks to the hard work of the very talented Howard Greenstein.
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PepsiCo: Recruiting talent with social media
Radian6: An exclusive chat with CEO Marcel LeBrun
BlogWell: How Big Brands Use Social Media