Brains on Fire

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  A Day in the Life

  Posted on March 30th, 2007 by Jennifer and currently 2 commenting.

  You know… I love chit-chatting about WOM and identity and all that good, “relevant” stuff as much as the next blogger, but I also think it’s important that we let you in on the culture here a little bit too. So, we’re hoping to make the commitment to photograph the exciting, interesting and sometimes just plain silly things that we do in order to remember them and share them. And with that… I ask the question:

  What does a 6’2″ designer (who just hit the big 3-OH, by the way) do when the office is too darn cold… and his pod-mate is a tiny 5’5″ woman?

  

  
  He Improvises.

  Tags: culture, Designer, Identity, Justin Gammon, WOM
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  Interview with Lionel Menchaca of Direct2Dell

  Posted on March 29th, 2007 by Virginia and currently 3 commenting.

  One of the most remarkable experiences that I was lucky enough to have at SXSWi was spending time with Lionel Menchaca, editor, moderator and chief blogger at Direct2Dell and his team who are focused on Dell’s new media outreach efforts. Because we get so many questions about large corporations opening their doors to transparent conversation, I asked if he’d share some thoughts with our readers here and he generously agreed.

  1. What is the purpose of Direct2Dell? It’s primary purpose is to give our customers a place to share their thoughts, ask questions, and tell us what we can improve on. My hope is that customers think that Direct2Dell is a helpful source of information. We try to share details of our products and services in a more personal way.

  2. Based on that purpose, how do you choose which topics are appropriate for the Direct2Dell blog? What items are considered not appropriate for the blog? We have over 20 core Dell bloggers on Direct2Dell and that gives us a wide range of expertise… a quick look at our category list gives a good idea of the scope. In terms of content: I look at three things to help shape topics at any given time: 1) Feedback from Direct2Dell readers 2) What’s happening in the blogosphere that may be of interest to our readers and 3) Ideas from the Dell bloggers themselves. About the only core topic area I avoid on Direct2Dell is financial performance. I can talk hardware, gadgets and OS details all day long… I’m just not an Investor Relations guy…

  3. A recent post on Dell’s foray into Linux generated more than 500 comments. Linux is also the hottest item on Ideastorm. How is Dell balancing this overwhelming response through your new media tools with the actual size of the market opportunity? Any thoughts on why this audience is so over-represented in your forums? Linux users tend to be a well-connected group. The majority of them use mailing lists and community sites of their chosen Linux distribution, linux-dell-laptops group at Yahoo, or Linux-Laptops.net to utilize the expertise of the open source community. Dell has been supporting Linux on Dell servers since 1999, we started our first public mailing list in 2001 to help IT administrators run Linux on Dell servers. Now we now maintain multiple mailing lists today. On the client side, while Linux users represent a small portion of the overall user base, it’s still a sizable community. What we hope to do in the near future is to offer the Linux user base even more options and flexibility than we’ve offered before. More to come soon.

  4. One of the most visible topics handled on Direct2Dell has been the challenges surrounding the XPS 700 (Dell’s high-performance gaming machine has faced delays and customer concerns about upgrade paths). How do you think that transparency of Direct2Dell has influenced Dell’s handling of these customer concerns? Transparency is an important aspect of blogs in general and it’s something that’s critically important to Direct2Dell. To me, transparency means addressing the pressing issues directly and honestly. In the case of the XPS 700, lots of us worked toward that goal. In the end, though some things took longer to address, there’s no question that transparency enhanced our credibility with XPS 700 users. [VM Note: humorous take on the PC vs. MAc tv ads substituting Dell XPS here]
  5. Many of our readers are struggling with beginning new media projects due to concerns about negativity. How did you prepare your internal team to deal with negative comments on the blog? Basically, we did our research. We knew that our US Customer Service needed to improve. About four months before we launched Direct2Dell, we began monitoring the blogosphere to find customers who had blogged about customer service-related issues with their Dell hardware. We also created a team of Customer Advocates who help resolve these issues, and I still work pretty closely with that team today. That work helped us get a pretty good handle on the kinds of issues we could expect. We also knew that for the blog to have a chance, we had to be committed to publishing negative comments and to addressing negative topics head on (battery recall, overseas call centers, etc.). While it made some Dell folks uneasy at first, it’s clear that honesty is the best strategy.

  6. On the heels of Direct2Dell’s success, Dell has recently launched 2 additional new media projects ” StudioDell and the highly popular IdeaStorm. How have you been staffing up internally (or externally) to handle all the listening and responding needed to continue an active conversation? For StudioDell we beefed up our broadcast media team to allow us to create a lot more video content. For IdeaStorm, we work with an extended team of folks, and also work closely with key team members of our Corporate Strategy team. They help us assess the popular ideas and are also instrumental in connecting our group with other departments that can help with execution side of things.

  7. Most importantly, inquiring minds want to know, have you and Jeff Jarvis had a chance to hug it out in person? No, not yet. I have to say I do look forward to meeting Jeff in person in the future. This year, I hope to be on the road a bit more—something I hope gives me a chance to meet more customers. Connecting with customers is one of the things I really enjoy about running Direct2Dell. I work with lots of customers daily mainly through e-mail, and I get to know some of them pretty well. That said, there’s no substitute for meeting someone face to face.

  If you have your own questions for Lionel, leave them in the comments here or visit him at Direct2Dell.

  Tags: Blogging, blogosphere, Community Sites, Corporate Strategy Team, Customer Advocates, Dell, Direct2Dell, Feedback, Financial Performance, Forums, gadgets, Hardware, Ideas, Ideastorm, Jeff Jarvis, Large Corporations, Linux, Linux-Laptops.net, Lionel Menchaca, Mailing Lists, New Media Outreach Efforts, OS details, StudioDell, SXSWi, Tranparent Conversations, US Costomer Service, XPS 700, Yahoo
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  JoBurg Espresso Sessions and a day at Missing Link

  Posted on March 28th, 2007 by Geno and currently 1 commenting.
  
  Today started bright and early with a 5:30 wake up call,  then off to Atlas Studios for Espresso Session 2: JoBurg. Atlas Studios is an interesting space. Cool vintage curved ceilings with hardwoods and exposed brick. As usual, the EventWorx crew turned the space into a cozy coffee lounge. I tuned my presentation a bit to engage the audience a little more. And it worked great! We had lots of fantastic questions. One of the best was from a mattress manufacturer who wanted to know if his product was worth inviting customers to experience their manufacturing factory. (YES.) The Q&A then turned to several hard questions about building social programs… from issues of crime to the spreading of community wealth.

  It was exciting for me that the conversations went on well over an hour after the sessions were officially over. The Standard Bank folks are some very nice people, and from the conversations, it’s obvious that their customers really value these sessions.

  Richard of Missing Link offered me the chance to visit the ML offices and I took it. What a collection of talent, spirit and energy! Richard has a good thing going. You guys have to rummage through my photos of the space. I spent some time with the animator guys in the back. Very talented and super nice guys and gals. It’s funny – the space is so full of animation and contrast but everyone works in the space with such focus. I’m impressed. They do their thing – presentations and presentation strategy – and they do it very well.

  Now for some thoughts. I was sharing stories with Richard before the Cape Town Espresso Session started and he was telling me about how awesome it made him feel to come home for dinner and his four-year old son meets him with a hug and says ‘I’m glad my dad is home.’ I told Rich ‘yeah I remember those days but my daughter is now 12 and affection and words for me have been gone for years.’ He looked at me straight in the eyes and said ‘Geno, it didn’t happen overnight.’ Bam! Rich didn’t mean to zing me but it did. As I was going over my presentation for the next Espresso stop in JoBurg, it hit me.

  I spend way too much time speaking in abstract talk about what WOMM is and what WOMM is not. Several years ago I allowed affection to subtly disappear from my relationship with my daughter. In business we do the same, as relationships mature we don’t feel the need to continue to feel that personal connection. Maybe we pass them off to another lower level person or maybe it’s just the case of being too busy.

  The majority of the time, the reason I recommend or go into my deep evangelistic behaviors is because I feel some love, or at least something. It could be just a smile, or if I’m really lucky they have shared something that turned into an experience that to me was worth sharing. A case in point: I was stunned when a South American businessman told me he had a problem selling South Africa as a travel destination. WTF! I would give up a free week at DisneyWorld to come back to this place. My friends that know me know that making that statement is a big deal. I have never felt such awe in my life. For the people, and the land.

  As fate would have it, I checked my email one last time before I checked out South African time and I had an email from my daughter. She hoped I was having a good time and wanted to see pictures of Cape Town. But it was the last line that got me. It read, ‘To the coolest person ever, Dad.’ Do I deserve that? NO. Does it ROCK my world? HELL YES!

  There is hope out there. I feel like a Fedex commercial but do yourself a favor, pickup the phone (don’t email), and call that one customer that popped into your mind. Tell them you just wanted to say hello and thanks. For one simple thing: being a customer.

  Some of our customers are begging for us to reconnect, as well as our family. Better yet, share with them your side of the story of that first connection.

  Tags: Atlas Studios, Building Social Programs, Cape Town, customers, DisneyWorld, Engage the Audience, Evangelisitic, EventWorx, Family, FedEx, JoBurg Espresso Sessions, Love, Missing Link, Presentation, Presentation Strategy, Reconnect, relationships, South American, Spreading Community Wealth, Standard Bank, WOMM
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  Quit Rippin’ People Off

  Posted on March 27th, 2007 by Spike and currently 13 commenting.

  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, eh?

  Bullcrap it is.

  Taylor pointed me to this interesting story, where one of those logo factories has been caught ripping off the work of SimpleBits. I’m tellin’ you, brothers and sisters, this is the sort of thing that gets me all hot and bothered ” in a throw my computer out the window kind of way (no, I would never do that to my Mac).

  I’m completely blown away at the people who call themselves professionals who will rip off an idea or design in a heartbeat. It’s even happened to us. A firm down in Atlanta actually not only ripped off the design of our website and copy, but took the images, too. You know, the images that are of our interior workspace! Unbelievable. But they responded quickly to a simple email and took down the site in minutes.

  And then there’s this guy. First, do me a favor, (but read the next sentence, first) and go to our website. After the intro, click on ‘The Fire’ and then ‘Take the Test.’ Spend a couple of minutes going through it. Now, before you go to this next site, make sure you look for ‘Is your brand vital? Click here to play the brand game’ when you get there.

  Look familiar? A creative company ripping off another creative company. Yeah, that’s good for your reputation. And when I wrote the president, Scott White, a letter, his response was ‘Nobody owns the hangman game.’ I agree. But read the copy. Follow the flow of the Yes/No pathways.

  We’ve found a handful of other sites that have copied different language on our site word-for-freakin’-word. They have all changed them, though, when they were, um, encouraged to. Except for the people in the paragraph above.

  The bad news is that as there’s more and more information out there, it’s not easy to monitor if people are doing this to you. I’m all for fans of a brand using the same design and language to create their own messaging celebrating the company they love (or hate) ” but a company ripping off another company for their own gain is a completely different story. So, when I get the chance (about once a month), I Google some of the words on our site and see what comes up. (But I Google ‘Brains on Fire’ everyday.) Might not be a bad idea to try it for your company, too.

  The good news is that with the technology out there, and sites like You Thought We Wouldn’t Notice, it’s a lot easier to draw attention to these boneheads and oust them in public.

  Tags: Atlanta, Brand, Design, Flattery, Google, Imitation, Logo Factories, Mac, Rippin' People Off, SimpleBits, THE FIRE, You Thought We Wouldn't Notice
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  Hello from Cape Town

  Posted on March 26th, 2007 by Geno and currently 1 commenting.
  
  
  

  If you would have asked me a year ago if I would be visiting South Africa twice in the same month. I hope have said how, and why?

  Well I’m very lucky to have been asked by EventWorx and Standard Bank to talk Word of Mouth for this years Espresso Sessions. Four stops around South Africa. The sessions are a way for Standard to invite their customers to a kick in the ass start of the day. They set up the furniture, a coffee shop, the visual presentation and breakfast. It takes a crew 7 to put these events together.
  The crowd today was a wonderful mix of private schools, travel and lots of b to c companies.  I’ll blog more later. Off to catch my flight to JoBurg.

  Cheers.

  Tags: B to C Companies, Cape Town, Espresso Sessions, EventWorx, JoBurg, South Africa, Standard Bank, Word of Mouth