From Theory to Practice – The Wisdom of Crowds, Barbie and the Montreal Canadiens

Wisdom” is a word that sounds to anyone ears, more closely related to the Dalai Lama than to hockey fans or Barbie customers. However, I must admit that the marketing team of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team has found an interesting way to take advantage of the wisdom of its own hockey fans by effectively applying the concept of the “wisdom of crowds” while the Barbie marketing team should learned from their now well-known experience.

Wisdom - A word that can be associated in a different manner to the Dalai Lama, Barbie and the Montreal Canadiens fans
Wisdom - A word that can be associated in a different manner to the Dalai Lama, Barbie and the Montreal Canadiens fans

The Wisdom of Crowds Concept

So what is the concept of “wisdom of crowds”? Popularized in the best-selling book entitled “The Wisdom of Crowds” by the journalist James Surowiecki, who is a staff writer for The New Yorker, the concept of wisdom of crowds stipulates that the aggregation of information from a group or a crowd, resulted in decisions that are often better than the ones that could have been made by any single member (expert) of the group. For those who know me well from either my e-marketing class lectures or guest speaker’s presentations noticed that the wisdom of crowds is a concept that I especially like. However, this concept should be applied cautiously, since it can be as powerful as it can be harmful.

For the “wisdom of crowds” concept to be applied effectively, one marketing expert should take in consideration at least the following five criteria:
1. There is a need to have enough individuals that are targeted;
2. Individuals need to have at least a moderate level of expertise towards the product;
3. Individuals need to be the real target of the product, or the ones buying it;
4. The contribution needs to come from as much different people as possible;
5. There is a need for incentives to participate.

The Bad Application – The Barbie Case

One of the weirdest results I know related to the concept of the wisdom of crowds is the “I can be” Barbie contest. The objective of the contest was to choose a new career for the well-know Barbie. To find the new career, the Barbie marketing team launched a four-week online contest from January 11th 2010 to February 10th 2010. The contest was flooded by high-tech women (see the Wall Street Journal article on the topic) who turned the contest into a claim that the new Barbie should be a computer engineer, which was the profession that actually ranked first. Seeing the beautiful results, the Barbie marketing team decided to create two new “Barbie”, the second position being news anchor, they at least save their face with that one, but to me it was an actual failure of a bad application of the “wisdom of crowds” concept, since the criterion 3 and 4 were not respected.

The Great Application – The Montreal Canadiens Case

On the other side, after sending flowers to the Ottawa Senators loyalty team in my post entitled “A Brilliant Use of Automated Emails as an Online Marketing Strategy Made Me Buy a Hockey Shirt”, I must say “bravo” to the Montreal Canadiens marketing team directed by Vice-president Ray Lalonde for their new “Molson Export three stars of the game” selectors which are now “the fans” (See the story) . Thus, for each Montreal Canadiens hockey game, fans can start to vote 90 minutes after the beginning of the game for “Molson Export three stars to the game” by either visiting canadiens.com/3stars, or by downloading the Canadiens smartphone application for BlackBerry, Android and for iPhone. For me, that’s a great application of the wisdom of crowds concept since fans: (1) feel more involved with the product/brand (which is the Montreal Canadiens, (2) want to show to anyone their new smartphone application, (3) buy more merchandise, since Montreal is surely a city that lives and dies with its hockey team, but this does not resulted in hockey jerseys sales if I compare to past hockey games I saw when I went to Philadelphia to see the Flyers or to Long Island to see the Islanders. A single drawback of this “wisdom of crowds” application may only be the bias of fans toward their own players, but after seeing the results for the first game, it seems already like a success.

Conclusion

The “wisdom of Crowds” is a concept that can have an enormous potential in marketing. However, applying it to the right situation, the right media and the right people can have an important between a success or a failure. Have a nice hockey season… Any other case related to the concept of the “wisdom of crowds”?

Jean-Francois

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A Brilliant Use of Automated Emails as an Online Marketing Strategy Made Me Buy a Hockey Shirt

I spent the last few days/weeks computing some R functions for automating a multiple variable selection of linear models using the LASSO and the SCAD penalties. It took me time to create my code, but at the end of the day, it is freshly automated and it is able to perform a statistical task in a few seconds which would have taken me days to run using standard statistical software.

And the Relationship with Online Marketing?

So what is the relationship with Online Marketing? Well, my automated program has allowed me to save time in the future, and that is exactly an objective that should achieve any organization who wants to take advantage of web features. However, these organizations should do even more than only saving time, they should also build online customer loyalty through automated programs. My latest example is related to a sport that I cherish, which is hockey. Living in Montreal, I have the chance to live in a city which is home to the team with the most Stanley Cups in the NHL history, the Montreal Canadians who played their home games at the Bell Center. I also have the chance to be 2 hours away from Ottawa (Ontario) where the Ottawa Senators play their home games at the “Scotia Bank Place” in Kanata, which is a few miles away from Ottawa. Over the last week, I attended a game in both of these arenas. This was the third time I went to Kanata to see a hockey game during this hockey season, and every time, a day before the game, I always receive an email similar to this one presented below.

“Dear Jean-Francois,

We are looking forward to seeing you on Game Day to watch the Ottawa Senators vs. Toronto Maple Leafs on March 6th, 2010 at 07:00 p.m.

Doors for Ottawa Senators games open at 5:30 p.m. for evening games, 11:30 for 1:00 p.m. games and 12:30 for 2:00 p.m. games.

Here’s everything you need to know to make your game day run smoothly.

HOW TO GET HERE
• Scotiabank Place is a quick 15 minute drive from downtown Ottawa. Click here for directions and a map.
• Scotiabank Place Parking Tips
• Public Transportation

TICKET PICK-UP

Before the game:
If you haven’t already received your tickets by mail, printed them on-line or picked them up, tickets can be picked up with the credit card used for purchase and photo ID matching the credit card at any Sports Experts location in Ottawa.

Paperless tickets:
If you selected paperless delivery, your tickets have been delivered to the credit card used for purchase. Bring your credit card used for purchase and your photo identification matching the credit card to the game. DO NOT visit the box office. Go directly to the ticket taker. They will swipe your credit card, verify your identification and print a receipt displaying your seat location.

TRADITIONAL TICKETS ARE NOT ISSUED WHEN SELECTING PAPERLESS TICKETS!

At the game:
Express Ticket Kiosks are located at Gate 1. Tickets may be picked up at the kiosks by swiping your credit card used for purchase or at the box office windows with credit card and photo ID. Wait times can be in excess of one hour so we recommend, when possible, picking up in advance!

WHERE TO EAT
Scotiabank Place – the place to eat. Six restaurants to suit every budget from stone-fired thin crust pizza to chef attended food stations featuring prime rib. Eat dinner then walk to your seats to enjoy the game! Reservations available at each restaurant.

Full restaurant descriptions and menus
RESERVE ONLINE or call: 613-599-2582

SCORE ONLINE
Score, the Ottawa Senators’ game-day program, is now available online. Along with reader favourites such as player profiles and opponents previews, Score Online features bonus links to bio pages, video highlights and photo galleries. Click here for the latest edition.”

Email I received before the Ottawa Senators Game
Email I received before the Ottawa Senators Game

And After the Game

Furthermore, after each game in Kanata, I always receive an email similar to this one below.

“Dear Jean-Francois,

We hope you had a great time at the Sens game on March 6th, 2010.

FULL GAME RECAP

For a complete recap of the game, including player statistics and photo galleries, go to www.ottawasenators.com, your home for exclusive Ottawa Senators information.

You can also see the post-game interviews, video highlights and more on Sens TV

2010 Score Magazine Survey

Tell us what you think of Score, the Ottawa Senators’ game-day program, by participating in this survey, and we’ll enter you into a draw for two club seats to the Senators vs. Philadelphia Flyers game at Scotiabank Place on March 23.

Special post-game ticket offer

Eastern Conference battle! Watch Chris Pronger take on the Sens. Tickets starting as low as $39.14. This offer will apply to 100 ends,
200 ends and 300 upper and lower level.

– March 23 at 7:30 pm

Visit capitaltickets.ca/promo and reference the special code: XXXXXXXX

This offer ends Friday, March 19 at midnight and is available by Internet only.”

… And With the Montreal Canadians?

That’s not the end of the story, so what do I receive before and after each Montreal Canadians game? I always receive “nothing”. The tickets are always sold out anyway even when the team is playing like a minor league team, so perhaps the organization thinks there is no need for building online customer loyalty through automated emails.

My conclusion

In conclusion, I am not a huge fan of any hockey team, I like the game from an objective perspective. However, last Saturday, I decided to buy a hockey shirt for the Ottawa Senators game, the game was coined as the “Battle of Ontario” and I decided to support the Ottawa Senators by buying a “Daniel Alfredsson” shirt, and sincerely the two emails that I showed you both had an impact on my decision of buying this item. So what is the lesson of this story? Don’t take me for granted? Innovation in online sports marketing comes from organizations in markets where it is harder to load the arena? Anyway, any additional thoughts on the topic?

Jean-Francois Belisle

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Visitors: To Convert Them Right Away or to Make Them Comeback, That is the Question?

Two weeks ago, I attended a conference given by my friend Marc Poulin at the W3Quebec. The conference was quite interesting from a practioner’s perspective, and after his presentation, Marc and I had a discussion around the importance of either converting or creating incentives for users to come back to the website. At first glance, we discussed about the difference between low-involvement and high-involvement products.

After some “hardcore” thinking, my thoughts on the topic would help me come to the conclusion that depending on the type of website, both objectives are positive outcomes but depending on the type of website, the preferred outcome should vary. Personally, my objective on an e-commerce website would always be to convert the visitor for any type of product. In this way, for an e-commerce website selling dishwashers, which could be considered as a high-involvement product, I would put the emphasis on comparing the product to competitors to facilitate the sale. However, my objective would be to convert and not to make the visitor comeback again and again. Thus, for this reason I present in the table below a list of type of websites and which of the “comeback” and “convert” options should be considered as the most important outcome.

Convert the visitor or creating incentizes to make him comeback
Convert the visitor or creating incentizes to make him comeback?
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# Type of website Example Primary objective Other objective
1 E-Commerce website www.amazon.com
Convert Comeback
2 Relational website www.nissan.com Convert Comeback
3 Brand promotion websites www.coca-cola.com Comeback Convert
4 Newspaper websites www.nytimes.com Comeback Convert
5 Social Network sites (SNs) www.facebook.com Comeback Convert

1. E-Commerce websites

Like mentioned before, the primary objective of any e-commerce website should be to convert the visitor into a buyer, and generally, in a minimum number of clicks.

2. Relational websites

Relational websites can be quite similar to e-commerce websites even though we can’t buy products on these websites, they should emphasize a call-to-action (conversion) aligned to more traditional objectives (i.e. calling the company, answering a callback facility questionnaire).

3. Brand promotion websites

Brand promotion websites had for objective to be relational, but also they should be made to constantly increase the aura and the positioning of the brand. But this aura is only possible if users visit this website, the more active users are, the better it is for the organization. For this reason, brand promotion websites should focus on creating incentives to increase the willingness of the user to come back to the website.

4. Newspaper websites

Newspaper websites differs from blogs that are mainly like personal relational websites in the sense that the main objective would be to convert a visitor into an e-mail or RSS feed subscriber. Any newspaper website makes most of its money out of advertising (and VIP content) which reinforces the need for integrating features that encourages the visitor to comeback to the website.

5. Social Network sites

Social network sites (SNs) are emerging in the webosphere as websites where forcing a visitor to comeback is the main objective. In this situation, the objective would be more associated to actions like clicking on an ad or to concepts such as stickiness, but at the end of the day what is most important is that the visitor come back to the website to create a larger and more active network.

Conclusion

In conclusion, to borrow William Shakespeare phrasing, or if you prefer Tom Dickson one, to “convert” or to “comeback”, that is the question? And it all depends on the type of website. However, a good first step for any organization having a website is that, at least, one of these objectives is reached. Questions? Comments? Or Suggestions?

Jean-Francois Belisle

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Launching a Successful Online Marketing Campaign for Buzzing the Buzz Using the Buzz/Viral/Buzz Sequence

Mentioning the need to build a successful online marketing campaign is easy to say but way harder to detail. What can be considered as a successful campaign? The answer is straightforward; a campaign that reaches the fixed objectives whilst minimizing the costs and maximizing gains. In other words, we can define a successful campaign as one that generates a positive long-term return on investment (ROI). To the minimum, if your objective is to gain subscribers to your newsletter, all you need to implement in relation to your online strategies is one designed ad and a single video that redirect viewers to a subscription form thereafter. I personally think that the simpler is the better, and that the buzz/viral/buzz sequence is a good recipe to success. So what is the buzz/viral/buzz sequence?

The buzz/viral/buzz sequence is a 3-step hierarchical procedure which includes:

1. Buzz in the creation process;
2. Viral to propagate in the targeted population;
3. Buzz in the targeted population.

Each of these steps is described with more depth in the following paragraphs.

1. Buzz in the creation process

If there is no buzz around the video in the creation process, the probability that there will be a buzz once launched to the targeted population is minimal. Why would I share a video is the question to ask to any member of the marketing team before the campaign is launched. Great campaigns often come with innovative and simple ideas. You are much better off dumping a bad video than showing the whole world how much the video sucks!

2. Viral to propagate in the targeted population

Viral marketing is about the techniques employed to propagate a message/video in the online environment. If the message/video sucks, you will spend plenty of time trying to spread rotten material. For a more detailed view of viral marketing myths, feel free to read my post entitled “Demystifying Viral Marketing – 7 Myths of Viral Marketing Campaigns”.

3. Buzz to the targeted population

If there is a buzz in the creation process, then chances that viral techniques worked are multiplied and chances that a buzz occurred in the targeted population are exponential. In other words, buzz in the targeted population is a function of the two previous elements of the sequence. A well-executed example of these three steps is the successful online campaign featuring the Bee Boys Dance Crew for Häagen-Dazs video (see picture below) launched a year and a half ago.

The Bee Boys Dance Crew for Häagen-Dazs - A Successful Online Marketing Campaign
The Bee Boys Dance Crew for Häagen-Dazs - A Successful Online Marketing Campaign

Conclusion

What do you think of the proposed sequence? Do you have any example of organizations skipping the first part of the sequence and then whining about the fact that users didn’t buzz on their campaigns? Users are not dumb, so proponents of the online marketing intelligentsia, please stand up!

Jean-Francois Belisle

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Multichannel Tourism: 10 Questions to Answer for Customer Acquisition

Two weeks ago, I came back from a trip to Gaspésie which was a really appreciated (and needed) rest. However, even though I didn’t travel much this summer, in visiting Norway, Quebec City and Gaspésie, I drove a lot and had the opportunity to visit many different cities and to sleep in many different hotels and motels. And yes, I’m still bringing back home some sort of a tan, even though I focused my travels on northern destinations! During these vacations and especially whilst driving, one business question was always on top of my mind; how do these places (hotels, motels, etc…) operate to acquire new customers? But more precisely which kind of reasoning should they intuitively follow to optimize their customer acquisition strategy?

Moulin à Images (Quebec City), Parc Forillon (Gaspésie)
Moulin à Images (Quebec City), Parc Forillon (Gaspésie)

When coming back and after some serious thinking, I draw the following simple model presented below which explains in 5 questions who your customers and potential customers are and how did/could they find you?

1. Where are you?
2. Which period of the year?
3. What are you offering?
4. Who are your customers?
5. How did your customers find you?

Multichannel Tourism Model for Customer Acquisition
Multichannel Tourism Model for Customer Acquisition

How to take advantage of this Model?

A model is always something that scares a huge proportion of practioners, but it is also a way to simplify a reality, a reality that should be understood in order to take advantage of a given situation. So let’s reformulate the 5 questions of this model into 5 Yes/No managerially-driven questions:

6. Are your offers aligned with what the city has to offer at that period of the year?
7. Are your offers aligned with what the customers want in this city at that period of the year?
8. Do you know how your customers find you?
9. Do you optimize your number of customers coming from all 9 ways?
10. Do you know why your customers choose you?

So what are your answers? Common sense and archived data should take care of 6, 7 and 9, while a simple single-sheet questionnaire with two questions distributed to customers should answer 8 and 10 and provide you with a starting point for increasing your number of customers. If you answered “Yes” to all questions, then you perhaps need some vacations, your job is done, if this is not the case, then take another close look at this model.

Jean-Francois Belisle

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Demystifying Viral Marketing – 7 Myths of Viral Marketing Campaigns

“Viral marketing” – referred to as “online word-of-mouth marketing” – can be considered a buzzword in most organizations when it comes to e-marketing strategies, as many organizations want to launch a viral marketing campaign. However, few organizations are conducting state-of-the-art viral marketing campaigns and few of them are really aware of the myths surrounding this buzzword. In quest for some common myths around viral marketing campaigns, I recently read an article entitled: “The ten worst viral marketing campaigns”, which gave me an idea as to where some organizations fail to achieve their objectives. In this way, this post is an attempt to regroup 7 of the most common myths surrounding the viral marketing phenomenon.

viral_marketing

1. Viral Marketing is Easy

Unfortunately for managers and fortunately for e-marketing consultants and agencies, viral marketing is anything but easy. As discussed by social networks guru Duncan Watts, for each successful viral marketing campaign, there are many that fail. However, to increase the chances that it actually works, the viral marketing strategy should be under the direction of e-marketing experts (unlike in the illustration at the top) and part of a well-defined online marketing plan. Frameworks such as the SOSTAC© framework, developed by consultant and best-selling author PR Smith, could be used. This framework consists of the following six components:
1. (S) Situation analysis: Where are we now?
2. (O) Objectives: Where do we want to be?
3. (S) Strategies: How do we get there?
4. (T) Tools: Which tactical tools do we use to implement strategy?
5. (A) Actions: Which action plans are required to implement strategy?
6. (C) Control: How do we manage the strategy process?

2. Viral Marketing Campaigns are Short-Term Strategies

Viral Marketing Campaigns should be short – generally a maximum of 3 months – sometimes 15 days are enough to spread the message. However, the duration of the campaign should not impact the horizon of the strategy. As one of the fundamental objectives of viral marketing campaigns is to gain a larger database, viral marketing campaigns should be considered as long-term strategies that should be used to attract new users and propagate awareness, to thereafter through other e-marketing strategies turn them into loyal users (consumers).

3. To start a Viral Marketing Campaign it Takes a High Number of Users

Many managers think that you need lots of users (reachable via their e-mail) as a baseline to spread the word. As in many aspects of life, quality is better than quantity. In this way, the first important question to ask is how many emails of users your organization has in its current database, and in relation to this, to what degree are those users involved. An organization is better off with a small number of users that will at least read the email sent to them, than with a high number of users where most of them won’t even open the email you sent. The second, less intuitive question to ask is to whom these people are connected. I agree the answer may be “I don’t know”. However, one of the worst kinds of database a company could have would be one where everyone in the database is connected to one another and has huge overlap in the people present in their social network. This kind of database is generally a sure failure for viral marketing. What is most needed is a small number of the “right” users, not necessarily the influencers, but more precisely the ones that are connected to these influencers and that are willing to positively propagate the information, a group that Seth Godin labelled the “hive”.

4. Viral Marketing Campaigns are only for Large Companies

It is equally possible to go viral for small companies than for international ones. Once again, the database is an important starting point. One other important component to take in consideration is the potential number of users the company could reach via this strategy. In this way, an organization of any size operating in a B2B perspective doesn’t really have a clear advantage of launching this type of campaign. Thus, the size of the organization doesn`t really matter, especially considering that small organizations with lower market shares have more to gain than the ones with high market share.

5. If the Product is Trendy Users Will Propagate

Even though it is proven that some products can be considered as trendier than others and more willing to propagate, if your online marketing plan is sloppy, and if the viral marketing campaign is not as trendy as the product, your chances of growth are quite diminished. In this way, propagation is not directly influenced by the product, it is influenced by the content of the campaign, which I agree can be influenced by the type of product. However, for the campaign to get viral it should either generate reactions such as “ah”, “oh”, “hahaha”, “wow” or “wack”, and/or imply strong incentives. Important questions that may arise may include: (1) is it worth my time to send it to a friend? (2) Will my friends think I am spamming them by sending them this message? (3) How would I react if my friend had sent me that message?

6. Viral Marketing Campaigns are Costless

Some organizations might think that viral marketing is costless and that all you need is: (1) a database, (2) good content and (3) a message (sometimes incorporating the content) that will be sent to many potential viewers. However, even though it is true that you can start a viral marketing campaign with these components, there can be big money involved there, since all in all, a viral marketing campaign is like an architectural project, costs are higher than predicted and are related to the quality.

As organizations may know, the sentence “build it and they will come” from the 1989 movie Field of Dreams doesn’t prove to be true in e-marketing. Thus, the propagation of a viral marketing campaign starts when users are becoming aware of the existence of the campaign. In this way, for users to become aware of the viral marketing campaign, what is first needed is to contact them. A problem that may arise as stated in the third point is a lack of quality of the database. This problem can be solved by buying a list of e-mails, for which the price of each thousand e-mails may vary between $100 and $250 depending on the agency and the specificity of the list. Furthermore, another way to spread the word is through advertising, but once again not at any cost. The procedure of using both viral and advertising for a campaign is labelled as seeding. And concerning the costs, what about the personalization of e-mails, and with which software? And most importantly, what is the content of the campaign? What are the incentives?

7. The Outcomes of Viral Marketing Campaigns are Hard to Measure

Overall the outcomes of a viral marketing campaign should not be hard to measure. Although it is trickier to measure the impact of a viral campaign when it propagates on other websites, something sure is that it is not hard to measure what is going on our organization website. As stated earlier, one of the objectives of a viral marketing campaign is to increase the number of users in our database, this would be a first metric. Other metrics can be used:

1. Number of unique visitors on the website dedicated to the campaign (awareness);
2. Number of purchases related to the campaign;
3. Computation of multichannel KPIs;
4. Positioning of the brand on the web through online marketing reputation engines.

In conclusion, these 7 myths are only some common examples of myths surrounding viral marketing campaigns. Many other myths could be added, any ideas?

Jean-Francois Belisle

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18 Roles of a Successful Brand Community – How Many Employee(s) Should You Hire?

In an interesting post published in French, my friend Julie Lemonde – inspired by Boston University Professor Susan Fournier’s article published in Harvard Business Review coauthored with practioner Lara Lee – describes the 7 basic principles related to how to build a successful brand community. Frankly, I recommend both readings since they are: (1) well-written, (2) concise, (3) in depth, and (4) theoretically and managerially sound.

In reading Julie’s post, one of the 7 principles entitled “Communities are strongest when everyone plays a role” piqued my curiosity. This section involved a description of 18 roles that should be part of a brand community. Here is the exhaustive list:

1. Mentor: Teaches others and shares expertise
2. Learner: Enjoys learning and seeks self-improvement
3. Back-Up: Acts as a safety net for others when they try new things
4. Partner: Encourages, shares, and motivates
5. Storyteller: Spreads the community’s story throughout the group
6. Historian: Preserves community memory; codifies rituals and rites
7. Hero: Acts as a role model within the community
8. Celebrity: Serves as a figurehead or icon of what the community represents
9. Decision Maker: Makes choices affecting the community’s structure and function
10. Provider: Hosts and takes care of other members
11. Greeter: Welcomes new members into the community
12. Guide: Helps new members navigate the culture
13. Catalyst: Introduces members to new people and ideas
14. Performer: Takes the spotlight
15. Supporter: Participates passively as an audience for others
16. Ambassador: Promotes the community to outsiders
17. Accountant: Keeps track of people’s participation
18. Talent Scout: Recruits new members

Interestingly, in these times of economic crisis, one important managerial question emerged from this description: how many employees does a company need to hire to fulfill these 18 roles? As a matter of fact, nearly anyone’s answer to this question would be “many”. Based on simple math, propositions such as hiring 3 employees – each one having 6 roles (18/3 = 6), could come to the table. However, after some “deep thinking” – and some deep sleeping – I came to the conclusion that only one person should be hired to fulfill these 18 roles. A normal manager`s reaction to this conclusion could be: “this employee will be overload”. My answer to that question is definitely “no” and is based on two interrelated principles.

Inspired by Seth Godin’s 2008 already best seller book entitled “The Tribes”, the first principle would be “to hire the best available community leader”. Thus, efforts should be made to avoid sloppy recruiting. To make an analogy to hockey, which General Manager would want to pay a certain amount of money for a bunch of third-line players when he could spend the same amount on THE franchise player? In our case, who would want to hire a bunch of average brand community managers, when you could have THE brand community manager, the leader, for less money than the other three combined? These leaders can be identified as active members of social networks and using an experiment such as “The Triiibes Project” (yes, there are really 3 i’s).

Interrelated to the first principle and based on Godin’s definition of leadership – leadership is to lead not to control –, the second principle would be to “let the brand community go”. Thus, inspired by the classic work “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” published by Adam Smith in 1776, the highly-cited 1961 Coase Theorem by Nobel laureate economist Ronald Coase, and on thoughts of the well-acclaimed Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, if rules in the brand community are well-defined and easily available, then the talent will emerge and the 18 roles will be filled one by one by members of the community with minimal guidance. In other words, once regulations are well-established and well-diffused, and that everyone feels they can contribute to the well-being of the brand community, every new member will take the role that fits the most with his/her personality, so that every member of the brand community could be categorized in one or more roles.

tribes

In conclusion, only one brand community manager is needed for a successful brand community. Furthermore, in analogy to the Kevin Costner famous sentence in the movie Field of Dreams: “if you build it, [they] will come” that can be translated in a brand community context to “hire the right person and they will come”. So will you come?

Jean-François Belisle

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