Delivering high expectations

(WAL) Today myself and DK are visiting Bridgend College to work with the Entrepreneurial Champions on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government. These champions aim to promote entrepreneurship to their students across Wales. Once empowered, we hope they will go on to enable others to steer their motivation in the most effective, communicative and financially lucrative way possible.

When economic conditions are harsh, entrepreneurship is one of the core skills that individuals need to draw on to pull themselves out of a slump. Inspiration from training is only half the battle, and a great idea needs to flourish with business knowledge in order to develop into something bigger than just a pipe-dream.

If you have an inspiring website, link, or knowledge resource regard teaching and/or entrepreneurship, please let us know in the comments below, so we can share with the guys on the day, or send us a message through MediaSnackers on Twitter.

Related posts : Welsh Assembly

Speaking in Dublin

(IRL) Yesterday myself and DK had a short notice phone call to step into another speaking gig for Vistage UK. Like excited little bunnies (or at least me, because this is my first trip to the Emerald Isle) we packed and fled the country like a pair of high tailing bandito’s.

As usual throughout the day we will be inspiring, motivating, empowering and training a great group of like minds, interested in understanding the powerful opportunities of social media in the corporate world. We’re really looking forward to it and hoped to be challenged throughout the day.

Your presentation and interactive work introduced new concepts and sources for for V33 members & their guests and even those less engaged with the internet found it useful and have taken away some ideas for action.

Comments from the members included : ‘pushed me to rethink my bias against social media sites’, ‘will use sites to enhance our web’ and ‘excellent presentation and great to get to try actual blogging, very useful’.

I am pleased with today and enjoyed your engaging style and willingness to tackle anything.

Etain Doyle, Vistage Group Chair Ireland

If you want to keep an eye on further discussions and conversations online regarding Vistage, please be sure to follow the search for the #vistageuk hashtag on Twitter and also keep an eye on this page for more media as we capture it.

Related posts : Past Vistage Speaking Group Gigs

McDonalds and social media

(WORLD) The MediaSnackers podcast focusses on individuals, organisations or companies who are simply impressing us and which are crying out for more discussion.

Heather Oldani is the Director of PR for McDonalds (USA) and colead on their digital strategy.

0.00—0.46 intro
0.47—3.07 the digital strategy
3.08—5.30 monitoring the brand online and how do they react to it
5.31—9.12 examples of engagement
9.13—11.45 priorities relating to internal adoption
11.46—13.41 future plans
13.42—13.53 outro

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TRANSCRIPTION:

Heather Oldani: Hello, my name is Heather Oldani and I am the director of public relations for McDonalds US business. Living and residing outside of Chicago and I'm currently responsible for two primary functions. One, leading and directing the public relations strategy across all brand promotions, new product news, menu items, etc as well as collating our current digital strategy, encompassing social media as well as mobile and future technologies for the US business. And partnership and alignment also with our global counterparts.

DK: Brilliant. Well I just really, really appreciate you giving up your time to speak to MediaSnackers today. Tell us what you were doing with this digital strategy, where you're at, what you've been up to?

Heather Oldani: Absolutely. So we have been dabbling I would say within social media for the last two years. We started out looking at, I think where a lot of companies go in looking at what exact tactical execution would make sense to support our marketing and public relations efforts. So, i.e. if we're launching a new snack wrap menu item to our menu, what's the YouTube activation or what's the Facebook activation to support our overall marketing and communication strategy? And where we came too quickly in the fall of 2008 is that we needed to take a step back and say, what's our overarching strategy? What do we really hope to accomplish? What's the brand opportunity? And from there, how do we structure ourselves for success internally so that what we do on the external facing front aligns with that overarching strategy and really starts to establish a benchmark for long term success within social media.

So we formed a cross functional team in late 2008 and that team has been at work for the last 14 months developing the overarching strategy, developing the guidelines for activation and choosing those categories and channels that we think offer the most brand impact for McDonalds moving forward. We've been monitoring and listening to the online conversations; making sure that we at all times what's being said about McDonalds and what people are looking for from McDonalds. One of the main gates with the brand through some of these social media channels. And then of course, starting to activate our presence in some of the key channels for us moving forward and then now at this point, we're looking at once we've got the strategy in place, the guidelines in place, how do you really start to elevate our activation, how do we further our line with our global counterparts across the world with McDonalds in every communities across the world is a significant opportunity for us to align with our global communications and marketing counterparts around some of our social media spaces. So that's where we are currently and anxious to continue to move things forward.

DK: Wow. There's a lot going on there. I want to come back to something that you mentioned about monitoring and listening online. This is something that is part of what you've been doing. Now I was recently watching something online that you were talking about this and you said, “Every five seconds, someone is talking about McDonalds.” From our perceptive when we work with clients and tell them about monitoring your brand profile online, RSS feeds, Google alerts, whatever it is how you monitor it. How do you monitor that in terms of that's got to be a lot of traffic? And then secondly, how do you react to it?

Heather Oldani: Right, exactly. Yeah. It is a number, I choose to look at it, it could be very overwhelming. We choose to look at it as an opportunity. So clearly, the numbers show that if someone's talking about your brand every five seconds, that there is a significant opportunity for you to be involved in that conversation. So what we have established as part of our cross functional team is we've got a very dedicated listening function. So right now or last year in 2009, we were leveraging radiant six to capture the dialog that's happening online on a number of key business and brand priorities. We cannot monitor everything. We needed to monitor those conversations that we believed aligned with our biggest brand and business opportunities and from there, capturing the dialogue in those key areas and focusing our efforts on whilst we've got a grasp of what's happening through listening, going in and starting to engage in some of those key brand and business priorities.

So it involved a lot of categorizing, key word searching, making sure that we knew who the influentials were on some of those key brand topics and priorities, engaging our customer satisfaction function here in the United States. We actually have a dedicated team that's responsible for customer satisfaction and helping to resolve issues at the restaurant level either through email and now through social media via twitter. So involving them and then from there also making sure that as I mentioned we have a dedicated team, i.e., two to three individuals at our PR agency that have been listening and monitoring and capturing all the conversations that are taking place. And even by narrowing the key word search, we were still capturing about 70 to 90,000 conversations a month.

DK: Wow. So can you give us an example, a real life example then? I don't know if you followed this through yet because I know you're at the listening stage. But have you reacted to something that you've almost heard or listened to or read online and could you give us an example of how you then followed that through in terms of this conversation that you say in that there's an opportunity to be had?

Heather Oldani: Yeah, there's a couple of ways. So there’s two examples. So if I look at twitter, twitter's very rapid fire conversation and some people go on there to rant and/or rave about brands and their experiences with the brands. So we've got a six person team that is leveraging co-tweet to monitor the twittersphere and determine where those brand conversations are and what’s being said. And for example, we launched a new burger to our US menu last year, the Angus burger. And some people there had gone into to try it, had a bad experience at the restaurant level. We actually determined that this person is overall a big supporter and fan of McDonalds, had just had a bad experience at the restaurant level in trying the new Angus burger product.

So we actually engaged with him back and forth through direct message a number of different times and actually were able to recover him, send him some BOG's (Be our guest cards) which is like what we call free coupons to go in and try the Angus burger for a second and third time. And so we saw the positive dialogue one, wow, McDonalds was listening to me. Two, they've actually taken the time to reach back three and find out what the issue was and where the issue occurred. And then three, cared enough to based on the conversation, send me some coupons to go in and give it another shot. Which at the end of the day, he did and reported back positively about his experience. So for us that was a huge opportunity to not only recover that one customer, who's a fan of McDonalds but then also the word of mouth spread of him then tweeting back out to his follower base that we're listening, we cared and that we're trying to rectify the situation. So that's an example on twitter. That happens as you know very rapid fire over a course of a couple days.

We also then had an example with a blogger who wrote a post about what his five year old son taught him about marketing and it was the fact that his five year old son wanted to come into our restaurants to receive our happy meal toys, had gotten very excited about some of the properties that we had there. And the last two times that they had visited, the restaurant had been out of the current happy meal property toy and so he had gotten a replacement toy. He talked about the disappointment that his son experienced, etc. So by monitoring, we were able to capture that. I actually reached out to him. I have a four year old son myself and can underhand the disappointment that comes when we don’t have the properties at the restaurant due to supply.

And so we reached out, had a conversation and we were able to actually ship him and his son the full sets of the last three properties in order to again, make good and ensure that our customers are getting the experiences that they want and deserve from the brand. So it ended up very positive. Again, very appreciative that we were able, we were listening and capturing that dialogue. So I think those are two just recent examples of the power of one by one reaching out to customers and engaging them in a positive way and encourage them to have great perceptions of the brand.

DK: Cool. And let's shift the focus there on more internal adoption of social media. Because I know that you're very keen that not just one person does social media for McDonalds and again your priority is looking to global, I don't know what you call it but global adoption maybe of all this stuff. So where’s your priorities at the movement as someone who is co-leading the digital strategy for McDonalds which is a huge brand. How do you just, where do you start?

Heather Oldani: You know, there's a couple of efforts. We work very closely with our internal communications counterparts and our HR department. So we as a global brand are just now releasing or getting ready to release our social media guidelines. So this will be a set of guidelines, a set of etiquette do's and don'ts. Because at the end of the day we absolutely want to recognize that our employees across the world are in the digital space and communicating. And two, given our size and given our reach and the number of people who work for the brand on a global basis, we believe that there is an opportunity for our employees to be a positive representation of the brand through social media.

So kind of giving them the guidelines as well as some things to think about and representing the brand online; those guidelines are going to be coming out in the next couple of weeks on a global level. And from there, what I would imagine is and I can speak for the US, what we hope to do then is start to train and equip our staff in understanding what social media is, if they don't already know. If they don't have a twitter account, how to get up on twitter. A lot of people have Facebook, Bebo, etc accounts. So, getting them familiar with the tools and how to leverage them. And then from there, how to ethically and positively represent the brand in social media space.

So we're working on a couple of training opportunities as well as then making sure that from just an ongoing engagement that to your point, it's not just one person engaged in the space but that we have a number of different individuals for example our chief nutritionist. And not many people are familiar that we have a chief nutritionist at McDonalds. But having her trained in the use of the tools and having her be a good representation of the brand on some of those key nutrition and food quality discussions through social media. So we're looking at kind of creating the digital squad if you will that will be able to go out and communicate.

DK: Great. Well, we could just talk and talk about this but we’re running about of time here. So I’d love to ask a wider question here. In terms of for you personally, what is your future plans for – I know you're on twitter and stuff like that. So tell me a little bit about what you're hoping that the brand overall will get for them and for your personally as well, for the use of social media?

Heather Oldani: Yeah, absolutely. Again, I think it goes back to opportunity. We know that we have a huge opportunity in this space as a global brand and being able to capture and engage customers as such a one on one and two way conversation level is a fabulous opportunity that I think we are just on the cusp of taking advantage of both here in the US as well as a global brand. So I'm really looking forward to working with the team and to taking and activating the brand in a much bigger way this year and moving forward. So we’ve got some exciting things planned.

I've actually just officially signed on and hired on a director of social media. So that person's going to come on board and really start to take on a full time activating our presence in the space. And then for me personally, I think just being a part of McDonalds and the brand that it is and continuing to help co-lead this effort. It's a fascinating opportunity as well as personally developing and each time I say that I think that I know all the trends that are out there, all the technologies that are out there, something else comes along. And watching the rapid adoption curve with mobile and some of the things happening there with GPS based technologies and other applications for our restaurants and for our employees. So I think it's a great space for people who if you’ve got the desire to learn more and continue to push yourself, from a brand and marking communications standpoint, the opportunity's there.

DK: Brilliant. Well, thank you for giving up your time again. And I really appreciate you coming to speak to MediaSnackers about what you're doing then.

Heather Oldani: Thank you and thank you for the time.

Everything

(WORLD) This is quite fun.

Social media is like the classic Swiss Army Knife—can be used in so many ways.

Here are the top ten search terms :

I know we've done nearly all of these and over time I'm wondering how this will change?

Will more generic things start to appear like 'plan a wedding', 'buy a car', 'find a man/woman' etc.

What do you think?

MediaSnackers gets a big sister

(WORLD) Social Media For Suits provides personalised mentoring for CEOs and senior executives.

We launch with a pedigree having already completed three packages during our top secret gigs these past few months.

Check out the testimonials below from CompTIA UK, Glasgow Grows Audience and The Working Knowledge Group:

Developed as a response to some discussions we’ve had recently with our clients plus the observations that they were very few suits attending our training / services, this is our shot at aiming higher up the chain of command; to enable those on the coalface to have the support and understanding of the people who sign their paychecks, set their workplans and budget spends etc.

Please help us to dissmeinate this first-of-its-kind (anywhere, we think) and a brand new separate but equally complimentary big-sister company to the services on offer at MediaSnackers. Many thanks in advance.

Social Media For Suits

Inspiring more suits

(GBR) Serving up another juicy half-day social-media-taster for a group of CEOs on behalf of Vistage International this morning in Putney.

DK and Mark helped us today to understand what social media is all about and showed us in a very practical way how we could use it. The 'new normal' for all our businesses requires us to consider and implement more person to person communication in our marketing mix.

John Thorpe, Group Chairman

Related posts : Past Vistage Speaking Group Gigs

Feast whilst you can

(WORLD) There's only one week left (less really) to read for FREE our little publication Zen And The Heart Of Social Media—come 1st March 2010 you will only be able to taste selected chapters and you'll have to purchase either the book or pdf to get the full meal.

On Twitter please hashtag all things ‘Zen And The Heart Of Social Media’ with #zathosm.

Devour past blog posts.

It's all academic

(GBR) Chuffed to be speaking at the fourth seminar in the (deep breath) 'Rethinking Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media' series (no website), here at Open University, Milton Keynes.

The morning session will be on 'New directions in youth culture research', delivered by PhD students, the afternoon session is focussed on 'Youth as a consumer market' in which I'll be presenting.

DK gave a polished, engaging, multi-media presentation about youth and social media for our research seminar series "Rethinking Youth Cultures in the Age of Global Media" (funded by the Economic and Social Research Council). Those attending—a mix of established academics and newer researchers in the field of youth culture, and people from national youth organisations—found it fascinating and thought-provoking, and DK gave us some clear issues to take our discussions forward.

Professor David Buckingham, Director of the Centre for the Study of Children Youth and Media, Institute of Education

Related post : Rethinking Youth Culture

MediaSnackers Speaking/Masterclass

Inspiring the suits

(GBR) We’re in Windsor delivering another half-day social media taster for a group of CEO’s on behalf of Vistage International.

An important aspect of Speaker sessions/workshops at Vistage meetings is helping our (CEO) members to be aware and abreast of the many developments and changes in the world of business, through technology. This awareness is vital to their having a competitive advantage.

MediaSnackers, in their presentation to one of my CEO groups in February 2010, amply fulfilled that objective and fully engaged the participants.

Ian Simons, Vistage Chair

Related posts : Past Vistage Speaking Group Gigs

Giving something back

(WORLD) The red carpet is out, we’re all tuxed up and the champagne has been popped… sounds like the perfect time to announce the 2010 MediaSnackers Awards.

Here we go:

• Best Overall Platform : Tweetdeck
• Best Newcomer : DropBox
• Best Piece of Technology : Kodak Zi8
• Best Free Install/App : Adobe AIR
• Champion Achievers : Palmerston North City Library

And now for the acceptance speeches:

The winners were chosen at our recent development day and are basically given to people and companies who have helped to make us look good over the past year—thank you guys.

The new category of 'Champion Achievers' is awarded to a client who have made some great strives to adopting social media into their operations (we know it could be a potentially dangerous move but we have nice clients so we know they won't take it personally).

Here’s what the awards look like :

What do you think? Good choices?

Related post : MS Awards 09