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Posts Tagged ‘Blake Bowyer’

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Yelp Off! How Businesses Get Even with Review Sites

25
June
2010

Yelp is a dish best served cold, but when review sites get adversarial for brands and small businesses, tools like Propadoo find the silver lining

Blake Bowyer (@BlakeBowyer)
Media Program Analyst

“The music sucks, the guy behind the counter has an obnoxious laugh he can’t stop sharing with the cafe, and the drinks are overpriced. If you wannabe cool, you can come here and fit right in. If you ARE cool, you know better spots … I’ve been here long enough to know what’s good … “

The above is a snippet from a scathing review written about favorite coffeehouse in Denver. I admit that Café Europa isn’t for everyone. And while the tattered lounge chairs might be a turn-off, I still spend hours there – I’m talking 5 to 6 of them, in a row – snuggling my laptop and immersed in homework. Do I go for the coffee? Or because I prefer sitting on a couch my grandma threw out 20 years ago? Probably both – but it doesn’t matter. Why? Because, chances are I didn’t rave about either on Yelp.

The thing is, I use Yelp – a lot. When traveling in a foreign city and lost in a sea of indistinguishable Thai restaurants, I fire up my Yelp app for guidance. What’s the problem then? Increasingly, I – and a skyrocketing number of others – am leaving my culinary kismet in the hands of a small, opinionated cabal. If we apply the 90/9/1 principle that states 90% of a community’s members just read, 9% contribute occasionally, and an elite 1% produce the majority of the content, the tastes, sensibilities, and perceptions of a few are shaping those of the remaining 90-99% on a site like Yelp.

9091rule 300x209 Yelp Off! How Businesses Get Even with Review Sites

Seems inequitable, right? Combine that small sample with Yelp offering sponsorship for higher placement, allegations of extorting small businesses, and insider/faux reviews, and suddenly the community seems a lot less credible. I believe in the wisdom of crowds, but this is e pluribus unum and from many diners comes a few reviews to rule us all. Moreover, for businesses and brands that don’t monitor their review-site image, the deck may be stacked against them and dealt with a two-star rating by customers who think the barista has “an obnoxious laugh.”

How do businesses and brands fight back? What is the recourse for Café Europa against the power of Yelp and other review sites? First, let me acknowledge that the best defense is a high-quality product, service, and/or customer experience – those can’t be beat. However, as I stated, the sensibilities of one customer who hates the music isn’t necessarily representative of the dozens of coffeehouse denizens who enjoy it. And that’s where tools like the intriguing startup Propadoo come in.

What’s Propadoo? In short, a web-based platform that facilitates customer testimonials by allowing businesses to collect props at various touchpoints and by making the review process quick and easy. Even if a business’s customers aren’t amateur bloggers or generally loquacious, Propadoo is more inviting and, theoretically, will produce a more accurate picture of opinions by combing a larger sample. In short, that’s good for underrepresented businesses and valuable for prospective customers searching for the best delicatessen, drugstore, or drycleaner.

From an organizational standpoint, utilities like Propadoo augment search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and can rank high during search queries to counteract – or support – ratings on review sites. While I’ve only mentioned Yelp, this is also valuable for businesses facing fire or receiving praise on other communities such as TripAdvisor, Citysearch, and Urbanspoon. The testimonials on Propadoo can also be streamed live on an organization’s website, showcasing props wherever potential customers may see them.

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Propadoo testimonials featured on OpenWorld Learning's site

While some could argue quick-review tools have the same issues as Yelp, the benefits are greater and could be complementary to review sites to craft a fuller picture of quality. No matter the crowd, it’s only as wise as the number and diversity of the people who comprise it. By bringing more customers into the fold, tools like Propadoo potentially do everyone a favor by bringing justice to businesses and info to customers. After all, the drinks at Europa aren’t any more expensive than other coffee shops in Denver and I happen to enjoy the music. I better log in to Yelp and defend its honor!

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What we learned from the Nestle social media crisis of 2010

18
May
2010

More fallout from the Nestle social media crisis of 2010 teaches us a valuable lesson brands need to understand

Andrew Bates

Social Media Practice Lead

Earlier this year you may recall the Nestle social media incident.   Our Media Program Analyst at-large Blake Bowyer covered the incident and ramifications for us in March during the fiasco in his post 10 Days Later: Nestle’s Social Media Implosion.

Basically Greenpeace initiated a Facebook and YouTube attack against Nestle for contributing to deforestation.  The way Nestle handled the situation caused the crisis to grow and become a web wide phenomenon.   2 months later, and Mashable shows that Nestle is still dealing with Greenpeace’s social media backlash.  The Nestle web site is covered with their new found concern for the environment.

Again we see that poor crisis management and a lack of engagement strategy lead to a PR nightmare.  Does this mean large brands should avoid social media?  No – the big public brands need to get ahead of these possible negative public attacks by embracing and developing  a social and new media strategy that includes some amount of planning for dealing with negative audience sentiment.

@AndrewBates

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Three Ways Digital Media Can Save Air Travel

23
April
2010

The airline industry needs to embrace digital media, and fast. As the customer experience of flying redefines rock bottom, a paradigm shift can’t be delayed any longer.

Blake Bowyer (@BlakeBowyer)
Media Program Analyst

It’s 12:30 p.m. at Denver International Airport and my flight, Delta #2244, should’ve been in the air an hour ago. Instead, I have another 120 minutes to kill before I board – hopefully. The ticket counters are jammed, Delta employees are frantic, and forsaken passengers are struggling to navigate a voice-response system that wouldn’t work if they called in a library, much less a cacophonous airport.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?” “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?”

That might as well be motto of the airline industry at this point. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.” Apologetic, yet ineffective. We’ve been saying it for years, Delta – and United, American, Frontier, et alia – you’re just not listening and you’ve had your fingers in your ears for decades. Social media gave us a loudspeaker and it’s destroying you – it’s lynching you. United breaks guitars, Delta misstated its fees under watchful eyes of frequent flyers, and American Airlines offered free flights on Twitter during the earthquake in Haiti – by mistake.

Time and again, digital media are not-so-slowly taking airlines to task and chipping away at the last reserves of goodwill these companies clutch. However, as much of a sore spot as digital channels have been for air travel, they have the potential to be a boon – an under-the-seat life preserver in a water landing of vitriol.

Airlines need to reach out and grab the digital media life vest before it floats away. Here are three ways digital media could be used to make air travel better for everyone:

1. Smartphone apps and (better) mobile websites. The self-serve kiosk was a huge step forward, but a passenger’s mobile phone has the potential to be a much more powerful tool to help both customers and airlines execute efficient, real-time air travel experiences. Develop apps that don’t just allow me to show my boarding pass (which is inexcusably limited to so few passengers, airlines, devices, and airports anyway), but I want to change my seat, upgrade cabins, order my in-flight beverage, sign-up for a frequent flyer account, purchase tickets, et cetera, et cetera. There is incredible potential with the growth of smartphones – and the best airlines can do is an electronic boarding pass and laughably late SMS alerts? Half of the airlines don’t even have mobile websites. Sigh.

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The Delta information vacuum really sucks.

2. Crowdsourcing. As firms in various industries begin to embrace the wisdom of crowds, air travel appears to have perfect industry DNA to capitalize on a tested approach – millions of customers a day with plenty of feedback and countless points of contact. Passengers spend at least two hours apiece traveling even the shortest distances from A to B. Search, purchase, transit, check-in, security, gate, flight, and so on. Each step of the process needs to be examined, and not from the trees, but beyond the forest. Just like MyStarbucksIdea, airlines can improve this experience from beginning to end by tapping an incredible source of customer feedback. I’m sure customers have plenty of constructive things to say – it’s time to listen and understand them.

3. Location-based services. Airports are perfect candidates to partner with geosocial networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, and BrightKite to enrich the airport experience. As one of the sadistic people who enjoy airports, I’d be thrilled to know where to eat, what bistros have wifi, what concourses have coffee at 11 p.m., and so on. However, even a more common passenger could benefit from augmented reality to get updates on flight information, shuttle services, gate changes, and even the best place pass the time during a delay or get a salad among the greasy food courts that litter airports. Even a well-planned airport like DIA is an information vacuum – give us the information and it’ll mean fewer headaches for everyone.

Of course, this list could go on and on if we discussed the potential with Twitter and Facebook, but airlines are gun-shy after so many crash-and-burn debacles. The one advantage of the predicament these firms have put themselves in is an opportunity to change. Airlines will never be mistaken for being nimble (despite jaguars on the tails of some Frontier planes), but, as Tyler Durden said, “Once you have lost everything, you’re free to do anything.” Any airline could see this as an opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?” I’m done repeating it – I’m just hoping high-speed rail lays track before I go hoarse. Time to find out what gate I’m at now.

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10 Days Later: Nestle’s Social Media Implosion – Why?

29
March
2010

How Facebookers commandeered the brand’s site for their own cause and why social media melees can go so wrong, so fast.

Blake Bowyer (@BlakeBowyer)
Media Program Analyst

Prologue: If you don’t know what transpired on Facebook with Nestlé, search “Nestlé Facebook” or click HERE.

It’s no secret that social media democratized the Internet’s share of voice – no longer do messages need to be viral to spread the word, they simply require exposure. And now where do the disseminators find the pulpit? Your brand’s Facebook page or @ reply Twitter stream or Yelp reviews. This isn’t a post about how risky social media are, but WHY they there is so much risk and the three inalienable rights in an open-forum era. It all starts with the parable of a candy company …

“… they will be deleted.”

And that’s when the Facebook Wall caved in on Nestlé and it was overcome by the chocolatier’s “fans”. As much as a social presence can be a bullhorn for fandom, it makes the jeers of the detractors even louder. While mudslinging factions could be marginalized in the past or framed as extremists and minorities, social media allow these groups to assemble, grow, and reach critical mass. In short, these groups always had the possibility to be more influential, social media just furnished the tools. As I mentioned in a past INSIGHT post, your social audiences are merely gatherers – not “fans or “followers” – until you offer otherwise.

The flare-up on Nestlé’s Facebook page harkens back to slideshow presentation created by a dissatisfied customer spreading the word about a deplorable Doubletree hotel experience. If you’ve never seen the slideshow, it’s a genius – and ultimately effective – example of pre-viral Internet inveighing. But that was way back in 2001, when Web 1.0 was rounding the bend of maturity to decline and audible consumer voices were few and far between online. This PowerPoint missive, while clever, was still a blip on the radar for Doubletree and most viewers were those looking for a laugh, not a hotel room.

But, that was ancient history and now consumers can take their complaints, messages, and hills-to-die-on straight to the fan pages and forums of these brands. This isn’t Hannibal’s forces coming over the Alps on elephants for the element of surprise; this is kamikaze warfare without the risk. Among other things, Nestlé didn’t recognize three inalienable consumer rights of a new media era:

  1. 1) Freedom of speech
  2. 2) Freedom of assembly
  3. 3) The right to petition

These rights existed before social media and prior to companies drafting their own customer bills of rights, but they were never as meaningful – or, more importantly, as possible. Just as Web 2.0 can facilitate the formation of a billion accessible niches, it encourages the assembly of customer coalitions looking to exercise their rights. And, truthfully, that development is a double-edged sword for both sides.

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With fans like this, who needs enemies?

As consumers, we have reasonable rights for which companies and brands should be held accountable. However, we risk eroding candor and responsiveness by drawing pistols on companies when our trigger finger starts to itch.

As companies, we can benefit from the openness of new media and glean valuable information, augment relationships, and correct mistakes to the benefit of everyone. However, inherent in these tools is public risk and every consumer must at least be respected, if not addressed – never deleted.

“… they will be deleted.”

The Facebook manager at Nestlé fanned the flames with those four words. Everything before them was forgotten and the company was suddenly a tyrant, turning the fight to principle, something all consumers were eager to defend and bringing many more into the fold. This isn’t an era of slideshows existing in a dweeb vacuum, but one that consumers’ rights are realized and a brand must share the microphone or risk having it ripped from its hands by a pirate radio eager to broadcast its faults.

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