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Bud Light Bands and Huddle Productions
Bud Light Bands and Huddle Productions
This will be our most successful campaign. We are currently over 5 million impressions in two weeks but the goal is over 200 million in 2 months. I think we can..I think we can….:)
http://www.huddleproductions.com/2012/07/26/bud-light-bands-campaign-roger-creager/
The Rise of the Networked Enterprise (from McKinsey Quarterly)
One of my colleagues today asked me how asked me social media is changing corporations. Of course, I’m fascinated with this subject and see radical changes on the horizon. So I did a little digging today and found a few things I thought were worth sharing.
First: Harvard Business Review – says that traditionally up to 90% of budgets are spent on promotions and advertising. However, advertising does little to influence people’s purchased decision. People’s recommendations matter most. Case in point: eBag and Yelp! Two great case studies!
Second: Forrester – says that 500 BILLION impressions regarding products and services are shared online, with 60% being share on Facebook. And 16% of users generate 80% of mess ages.
After discovering these two nuggets, I kept digging and came across “The Rise of the Networked Enterprise” from the McKinsey Quarterly (www.mckinseyquarterly.com). Here’s that article. Enjoy!
McKinsey’s new survey research finds that companies using the Web intensively gain greater market share and higher margins.
December 2010 • Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui
Source: McKinsey Global Institute
Every new technology has its skeptics. In the 1980s, many observers doubted that the broad use of information technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) to remake processes would pay off in productivity improvements—indeed, the economist Robert Solow famously remarked, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”1 Today, that sentiment has gravitated to Web 2.0 technologies. Management is trying to understand if they are a passing fad or an enduring trend that will underwrite a new era of better corporate performance.
New McKinsey research shows that a payday could be arriving faster than expected. A new class of company is emerging—one that uses collaborative Web 2.0 technologies intensively to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend the organization’s reach to customers, partners, and suppliers. We call this new kind of company the networked enterprise. Results from our analysis of proprietary survey data show that the Web 2.0 use of these companies is significantly improving their reported performance. In fact, our data show that fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.
Over the past four years, McKinsey has studied how enterprises use these social technologies,2 which first took hold in business-to-consumer models that gave rise to Web companies such as YouTube and Facebook. Recently, the technologies have been migrating into the enterprise, with the promise of creating new gains to augment those generated by the earlier wave of IT adoptions.3 The patterns of adoption and diffusion for the social Web’s enterprise applications appear to resemble those of earlier eras: a classic S curve, in which early adopters learn to use a new technology, and adoption then picks up rapidly as others begin to recognize its value. The implications are far reaching: in many industries, new competitive battle lines may form between companies that use the Web in sophisticated ways and companies that feel uncomfortable with new Web-inspired management styles or simply can’t execute at a sufficiently high level (see sidebar, “Managing the Web-based organization”).
Notes
1 Robert M. Solow, “We’d better watch out,” New York Times, July 12, 1987.
2 See “How businesses are using Web 2.0: A McKinsey Global Survey,” mckinseyquarterly.com, March 2007; “Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” mckinseyquarterly.com, July 2008; “How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” mckinseyquarterly.com, September 2009; and Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P. Roberts, “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work,” mckinseyquarterly.com, February 2009.
3 Andrew McAfee, Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2009.
The findings
Our annual surveys of Web 2.0 use in the enterprise provided the basis for the findings in this article. The present survey, our fourth, garnered responses from 3,249 executives across a range of regions, industries, and functional areas. Two-thirds of the respondents reported using Web 2.0 in their organizations. As in past surveys, we asked respondents about their patterns of Web 2.0 use, the measurable business benefits they derived from it, and the organizational impact of Web technologies. We also inquired about the market position of the respondents’ companies, whether their market share had changed, and how their operating margins compared with those of competitors in the same industries.
Web 2.0 technologies are now more widely used
The share of companies where respondents report using Web 2.0 technologies continues to grow. Our research, for instance, shows significant increases in the percentage of companies using social networking (40 percent) and blogs (38 percent). Furthermore, our surveys show that the number of employees using the dozen Web 2.0 technologies continues to increase.4 Respondents at nearly half of the companies that use social networking say, for example, that at least 51 percent of their employees use it. And in 2010, nearly two-thirds of respondents at companies using Web 2.0 say they will increase future investments in these technologies, compared with just over half in 2009. The healthy spending plans during both of these difficult years underscore the value companies expect to gain.
Among respondents at companies using Web 2.0, a large majority continue to report that they are receiving measurable business benefits—with nearly nine out of ten reporting at least one. These benefits ranged from more effective marketing to faster access to knowledge (Exhibit 1).
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Toward the networked enterprise
We analyzed the shared characteristics of groups of organizations in our survey and clustered them according to the magnitude of the business benefits respondents reported from the use of Web 2.0 tools and technologies. Our analysis revealed striking differences.
Among respondents who say their companies are using Web 2.0, most (79 percent) achieved a mean improvement of 5 percent or less across a range of business benefit metrics (Exhibit 2). Respondents at the companies in this group report the lowest percentages of usage among their employees, customers, and business partners; say that Web 2.0 is less integrated into their employees’ day-to-day work than respondents at other companies do; and are least likely to report high levels of collaboration or information sharing across the organization. We call these companies, still learning the ropes of Web 2.0, the “developing” group.
Three types of organizations, however, seem to have learned how to realize a much higher level of business benefits from their use of Web 2.0.
Internally networked organizations. Some companies are achieving benefits from using Web 2.0 primarily within their own corporate walls. The survey results indicate that companies in this group—13 percent of those using Web 2.0—derive substantial benefits from deploying these technologies in employee interactions. Respondents at such organizations report a higher percentage of employees using Web 2.0 than respondents at developing organizations do. Respondents at half of the internally networked organizations reported that Web 2.0 is integrated tightly into their work flows, for example, compared with only 21 percent of respondents at developing organizations. Web 2.0 also seems to promote significantly more flexible processes at internally networked organizations: respondents say that information is shared more readily and less hierarchically, collaboration across organizational silos is more common, and tasks are more often tackled in a project-based fashion.
Externally networked organizations. Other companies (5 percent of those deploying Web 2.0) achieved substantial benefits from interactions that spread beyond corporate borders by using Web 2.0 technologies to interact with customers and business partners, according to survey results. Executives at these organizations reported larger percentages of their employees, customers, and partners using Web 2.0 than respondents at internally networked organizations did. But the responses suggest that the internal organizational processes of externally networked organizations are less fluid than those of internally networked ones.
Fully networked enterprises. Finally, some companies use Web 2.0 in revolutionary ways. This elite group of organizations—3 percent of those in our survey—derives very high levels of benefits from Web 2.0’s widespread use, involving employees, customers, and business partners, according to the survey. Respondents at these organizations reported higher levels of employee benefits than internally networked organizations did and higher levels of customer and partner benefits than did externally networked organizations. In applying Web 2.0 technologies, fully networked enterprises seem to have moved much further along the learning curve than other organizations have. The integration of Web 2.0 into day-to-day activities is high, executives say, and they report that these technologies are promoting higher levels of collaboration by helping to break down organizational barriers that impede information flows.
4 For more details, see “Business and Web 2.0: An interactive feature,” mckinseyquarterly.com, December, 2010.
Capturing competitive advantage
Executives at the more highly networked companies in our survey reported that they captured a broad set of benefits from their Web investments. A key question remained, however: do these benefits translate into fundamental performance improvements, measured by self-reported market share gains and higher profits?
We performed a series of statistical analyses to better understand the relationship between our categories of networked organizations and three core self-reported performance metrics: market share gains, operating profits, and market leadership. Exhibit 3 shows the results.
Market share gains reported by respondents were significantly correlated with fully networked and externally networked organizations. This, we believe, is statistically significant evidence that technology-enabled collaboration with external stakeholders helps organizations gain market share from the competition. They do this, in our experience, by forging closer marketing relationships with customers and by involving them in customer support and product-development efforts. Respondents at companies that used Web 2.0 to collaborate across organizational silos and to share information more broadly also reported improved market shares.
The attainment of higher operating margins (again, self-reported) than competitors correlated with a different set of factors: the ability to make decisions lower in the corporate hierarchy and a willingness to allow the formation of working teams comprising both in-house employees and individuals outside the organization. These findings suggest that Web technologies can underwrite a more agile organization where frontline staff members make local decisions and companies are better at leveraging outside resources to raise productivity and to create more valuable products and services. The result, the survey suggests, is higher profits.
Market leadership, which we ascribed to those organizations where respondents reported a top ranking in industry market share, correlated positively with internally networked organizations that have high levels of organizational collaboration. Self-reported market leadership also, however, correlated negatively with externally networked organizations. We believe it is unlikely that better interactions with external stakeholders lead to a decline in market position. A more likely explanation for the data is that market leaders use Web 2.0 to strengthen internal collaboration, seeking to enhance the organizational resiliency required to maintain their leadership positions. Market challengers, by contrast, may be more focused on external uses of Web 2.0 to win customers from industry leaders.
Overall, we found that respondents at 27 percent of the companies in our survey reported having both market share gains against their competitors and higher profit margins. That kind of performance clearly makes these companies profit consolidators in their industries, with earnings growing faster than the rest. Highly networked enterprises were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were. This finding suggests that the fully networked enterprise could become the benchmark for more vigorous competition in many industries.
Moreover, the benefits from the use of collaborative technologies at fully networked organizations appear to be multiplicative in nature: these enterprises seem to be “learning organizations” in which lessons from interacting with one set of stakeholders in turn improve the ability to realize value in interactions with others. If this hypothesis is correct, competitive advantage at these companies will accelerate as network effects kick in, network connections become richer, and learning cycles speed up.
Going forward
The imperative for business leaders is clear: falling behind in creating internal and external networks could be a critical mistake. Executives need to push their organizations toward becoming fully networked enterprises. Our research suggests some specific steps:
- Integrate the use of Web 2.0 into employees’ day-to-day work activities. This practice is the key success factor in all of our analyses, as well as other research we have done. What’s in the work flow is what gets used by employees and what leads to benefits.
- Continue to drive adoption and usage. Benefits appear to be limited without a base level of adoption and usage. Respondents who reported the lowest levels of both also reported the lowest levels of benefits.
- Break down the barriers to organizational change. Fully networked organizations appear to have more fluid information flows, deploy talent more flexibly to deal with problems, and allow employees lower in the corporate hierarchy to make decisions. Organizational collaboration is correlated with self-reported market share gains; distributed decision making and work, with increased self-reported profitability.
- Apply Web 2.0 technologies to interactions with customers, business partners, and employees. External interactions are correlated with self-reported market share gains. So are internal organizational collaboration and flexibility, and the benefits appear to be multiplicative. Fully networked organizations can achieve the highest levels of self-reported benefits in all types of interactions.
About the Authors
Jacques Bughin is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office; Michael Chui, based in the San Francisco office, is a senior fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute.
The authors would like to acknowledge the important contributions of Angela Hung Byers and Martin Rouse.
Passion in Your Craft
In Crush It!, author Gary Vaynerchuk repeatedly speaks about passion and I thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss in how it relates to this company, Huddle Productions. Passion is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a “strong desire or devotion to some activity.” I think we are all familiar with this word.
But how do we define it and relate it to our lives or our jobs? Perhaps some insights into the characters behind Huddle Productions will shed some light. Take Chris Yates for example. I have known Chris for 25 years and since the day I met him, you knew he was passionate person.
Chris did not wait to graduate college to begin his career. He started it while in college, gaining valuable experience that would set him apart from the rest of the pack. It’s a great story and I know I won’t do it justice here, so when you meet Chris, be sure to ask him about it.
In a nutshell, Chris was passionate about sports. And even though one of his claim’s to fame is intercepting Heisman Award winning quarterback Tye Detmer, Chris recognized that he wasn’t big enough or fast enough to play professional football. So while in college, he began his 20+ year television career on Public Access TV. For those of you old enough, you’ll remember that Public Access TV received its notoriety on Saturday Night Live when Mike Myers and Dana Carvey created the characters for Wayne’s World, which was later turned into two, well received movies. Remember this, though – Chris did this 3 years before Wayne’s World came out. Chris created his first sports TV program in Austin, focused on the Texas Longhorns and Dallas Cowboys, who at the time conducted their training camp in Austin.
I was fortunate to be a very small part Chris professional start: helping him film various events and interview various sports starts. It must have been quite a sight to see a college kid using very antiquated equipment stand toe-to-toe with the big boys in the national media and professional sports. At the time, Chris did the majority of the filming, interviewing, editing, and production. And the reward for all this hard work? A 2:00 A.M. time slot on Saturdays that each and everyone one of us stayed up to watch.
Chris parlayed this experience into a career that saw him start as low as one of the lowest markets in the nation Laredo (market 198) to working all the way up to one of the best Dallas (market 5). Along the way his creativity landed him 3 EMMY’s and numerous Katy, and Associate Press awards including the Sportscaster of the Year Award.
In 2007, Chris saw the proliferation of social networks and new distribution channels and joined forces with others who shared his passion to form Huddle Productions – a social media company specializing in video. In the short history of Huddle Productions, Chris has re-channeled that passion and energy into his company. In doing so, he has even earned another EMMY!
Chris’ passion stood out throughout his media career and it continues now with his own company, Huddle Productions.
What Social Media Books Do You Recommend?
I have recently plowed through several books relating to Social Media and need your recommendations for my next round of books. I’ve read Groundswell, Tribes, Clue Train Manifesto, and 4-Hour Work Week. So what’s next? Here are some that I’ve looked at on Amazon:
- Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business – Jeff Howe
- The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly – David Meerman Scott
- The Social Network Business Plan: 18 Strategies That Will Create Great Wealth – David Silver
- Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide: Business thinking and strategies behind successful Web 2.0 implementations. – Amy Shuen
- The Digital Handshake: Seven Proven Strategies to Grow Your Business Using Social Media – Paul Chaney
- Marketing 2.0: Bridging the Gap between Seller and Buyer through Social Media Marketing – Bernie Borges
- Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) – Brian Halligan
- Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion – Gary Vaynerchuk
- Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust – Chris Brogan
- The Social Media Marketing Book – Dan Zarrella
- The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web – Tamar Weinberg
- Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business – Erik Qualman
- Secrets of Social Media Marketing: How to Use Online Conversations and Customer Communities to Turbo-Charge Your Business! – Paul Gillin
- The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success – Lon Safko
- Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything – Don Tapscott
- The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom – Yochai Benkler
- Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations – Clay Shirky
Looking forward to your recommendations!
–Keith
GOOGLE Yourself !
Adapted from Huddle Productions article: http://www.huddleproductions.com/?p=290
GOOGLE Yourself
Original article by Chris Yates on September 11, 2009; Keith’s version … November 10, 2009
Several months ago, my friend Chris asked, “Have you ever Googled yourself?” Most of us, would not readily admit it to this as it might make you seem very conceited. And, in this day of the “brandividual,” I think it plays an important role.
Having earned my MBA many years ago, my identify has been closely associated with my employers or clients. This list includes Nortel Networks, The Princeton Review, Sabre Holdings (formerly The Sabre Group), Nokia, Expedia.com, Hilton Hotels, FedEx, Chevron, Infosys, and LexisNexis. If you Googled any one of those companies, you wouldn’t find me (unless you’re on Linked-In, then you might find me), but you will find a lot about them.
So, back to my questions: What happens when you Google yourself? Are you on the first page of search results? If so, what are you doing to get there? If you’re nowhere on the site do you think that matters?
Personally, I think we have to move past thinking that Googling yourself is tied to being vain. You should not think of it as bragging or vanity because it’s really about measuring what you are doing to market yourself and determining what is working. I know it has helped me and Chris tremendously understand how to be more effective online.
Two years ago, Chris Googled himself and had only one mention on the first page of Google results (and this was after 20 years in broadcast journalism). For me, it was zero. Turns out there are quite a few people named “Keith Knox” in the world and many of them seem to be leading very interesting lives: race car driver, professional soccer player, professional boxer, professional table tennis player, scientist, musician, etc.
Chris and I then shifted our focus to marketing his company and brand online. The results have been interesting for both of us. Now when you Google Chris or myself the majority of mentions on the first page of Google are for us (and not the other Chris’ or Keith’s from two years ago)!
Please don’t feel odd about Googling yourself. You should feel worse if your name is all over the front page and it’s NOT YOU. Personally, I believe in a few years that business cards will become obsolete. Everyone instead will say, “Just Google me!”
Social Media – Fad or REVOLUTION?
Is social media just another fly-by-night fad or is it a revolution in the way we live?
I am utterly amazed by that fact that so many people do not yet understand the incredible shift that is taking place in the world today. Time and time I again I hear that social media is just another fly by night fad. Well, I disagree. It’s not a fad; it’s a REVOLUTION. Here are some facts that prove my point.
Let’s start with a comparison. How many years did it take to reach 50 million users?
- Radio –> 38 years
- Television –> 13 years
- Internet –> 4 years
- Facebook –> 100 million users in 9 months
If Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest.
Let’s start with another fact. Today, baby boomers are the largest generation. Did you know…?
- In 2010 they will be surpassed by generation Y
Let’s shift gears and talk about television for a moment.
- Only 14% of consumers trust advertisements
- While 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
- Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate positive ROI
- 90% of people with a DVR or TiVO fast forward through tv-ads
Word of Mouth is still the most effective sales tool. It’s changing the way we connect, the way we share, the way we work.
******************
Update regarding sources:
1. Mashable.com
2. YouTube Video: Social Media Revolution
3. Groundswell by Charlene Li
4. Socialnomics.net
5. Many others….
Do You Really Know What You’re Selling
Want to get a jump start on your Business Plan? Start by describing exactly what you are selling and what you are not selling. Sounds simple, right? It’s harder than you think.
for more:
http://cynichols0226.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/do-you-really-know-what-your-selling/
Los Angeles, CA 2009 Ethical or Not?
from WJS: on July 10, 2009
Interesting! What are your thoughts?
The business climate is worse than the air quality.
By RICK NEWCOMBE
Los Angeles
If New Yorkers fantasize that doing business here in Los Angeles would be less of a headache, forget about it. This city is fast becoming a job-killing machine. It’s no accident the unemployment rate is a frightening 11.4% and climbing.
I never could have imagined that, after living here for more than three decades, I would be filing a lawsuit against my beloved Los Angeles and making plans for my company, Creators Syndicate, to move elsewhere.
But we have no choice. The city’s bureaucrats rival Stalin’s apparatchiks in issuing decrees, rescinding them, and then punishing citizens for having followed them in the first place.
I founded Creators Syndicate in 1987, and we have represented hundreds of important writers, syndicating their columns to newspapers and Web sites around the world. The most famous include Hillary Clinton, who, like Eleanor Roosevelt, wrote a syndicated column when she was first lady. Another star was the advice columnist Ann Landers, once described by “The World Almanac” as “the most influential woman in America.” Other Creators columnists include Bill O’Reilly, Susan Estrich, Thomas Sowell, Roland Martin and Michelle Malkin — plus Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonists and your favorite comic strips.
From the beginning, we’ve been headquartered in Los Angeles. But 15 years ago we had a dispute with the city over our business tax classification. The city argued that we should be in an “occupations and professions” classification that has an extremely high tax rate, while we fought for a “wholesale and retail” classification with a much lower rate. The city forced us to invest a small fortune in legal fees over two years, but we felt it was worth it in order to establish the correct classification once and for all.
After enduring a series of bureaucratic hearings, we anxiously awaited a ruling to find out what our tax rate would be. Everything was at stake. We had already decided that if we lost, we would move.
You can imagine how relieved we were on July 1, 1994, when the ruling was issued. We won, and firmly planted our roots in the City of Angels and proceeded to build our business.
Everything was fine until the city started running out of money in 2007. Suddenly, the city announced that it was going to ignore its own ruling and reclassify us in the higher tax category. Even more incredible is the fact that the new classification was to be imposed retroactively to 2004 with interest and penalties. No explanation was given for the new classification, or for the city’s decision to ignore its 1994 ruling.
Their official position is that the city is not bound by past rulings — only taxpayers are. This is why we have been forced to file a lawsuit. We will let the courts decide whether it is legal for adverse rulings to apply only to taxpayers and not to the city.
We work with hundreds of outside agents, consultants, independent contractors and support services — many of whom pay taxes to the city of Los Angeles. This spurs a job-creating ripple effect on the city’s economy. Yet I suspect many companies like ours already have quietly left town in the face of the city’s taxes and regulations. This would help explain the erosion of jobs.
Regardless of the outcome of our case, the arbitrary and capricious behavior of some bureaucrats is creating a lose-lose situation for everyone involved. If we win in court, the taxpayers of Los Angeles will have lost because all those tax dollars will have been wasted on needless litigation.
If we lose in court, the remaining taxpayers in Los Angeles will have lost because their burden will continue to swell as yet another business moves its jobs — and taxpayers — to another city.
As long as City Hall operates like a banana republic, why is anyone surprised that jobs have left the city in droves and Los Angeles is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy?
Mr. Newcombe is president of Creators Syndicate.
Why do IT projects fail?
According to Gallup Management Journal, 70%+ of IT initiatives fail due to “people” issues. My question to you is why?
There are 3 rails to business: People, Process, and Technology. In today’s world, most money is spent on Technology: put the system in place, transfer the data, stablize it, and do the minimal amount of training and process engineering. That’s why more than 70% of IT projects are deemed failures — because they do not focus on the human element.
One of my most recent clients, gave me these 2 quotes:
“95% of ourIT projects in my group require behavioral change” — that is, people have to change the way they do things
“Business process redesign is required in most projects”
Technology / IT changes do not happen in a vacuum. It requires the People and Processes to be examined in full, along with the Technology component, so all 3 can be aligned. Change Management is the practice / discipline to ensure this happens. Change Management is a structured approach for successfully implementing business changes in a planned and systematic fashion so people and organizations understand, accept and support the change as a strategic advantage.
Successful Change Management
- Accomplishes the original business intent
- Achieves or exceeds Return On Investment (ROI)
- Aligns behaviors and actions to business results
- Delivers high value to customers and employees
- Develops the capacity to adapt more quickly to change
- Creates higher achievement – success breeds success
- Strengthens the organization’s competitive position because organizations are now in a constant state of change
Knox Keith / Keith Knox B-L-O-G 