WIKILEAKS for Marketers??!!

Wikileaks has turned much of the world on its head. Exposing information, documentation and communication that many thought was secure.

The main target has been the US Government and how it deals with others. However, the next group in the site’s crosshairs is rumored to be big business.

Whatever your opinion of the site, you have to ask why everyone wasn’t more prepared for this. Business and Marketing in particular has undergone a change with the advent of the Internet and Social Networks. Transparency and engaging prospects in meaningful dialogues has become the way to success (continued or newfound).

Why wouldn’t that become expected (or forced in this matter) for everything? People don’t like to be kept in the dark or treated in a non-professional/ unequal/ condescending manner.

So, with that in mind, Marketers should take stock of themselves or the way their business deals with people.

But, wasn’t it just stated that Marketers have changed for the better if they want to succeed? Sure, but that still leaves plenty of leeway to use people who don’t know better.

Let’s look at talent. You’d think Marketers would want to deal with talent justly, in order to have them produce a constant stream of quality material to support programs. That’s true of in-house talent.

Many have found ways to exploit outside talent. Especially those that want to break into the business or are trying to secure a new client. Often this takes the form of ‘contests’ where the talent submits an ad (be it video, audio or print) for free as an entry into this contest. The business will post them on a website and encourage voting, with the idea that the entry securing the most votes winning an opportunity to work with the company in a creative capacity.

This is great stuff for the Marketer. They have effectively quadrupled their budget for nothing. People created ads for free and they’re directing others to view them. So now, there’s essentially a viral team exposing your brand for free as well. Even if the contest is on the up and up, resulting in an unknown plucked from obscurity,it’s still just paying for one ad. There’s no guarantee for the talent of continued work. (Technically never offered in most contests, but it’s implied that this is the start of a new career/ new client nevertheless.)

There is also a website that allows designers to essentially work for free on jobs as a ‘pitch’ to various clients. The same thing is going on here with a company getting the ad fully formed before the talent even knows if there’s a job or what the pay is.

Let me make it perfectly clear: Professional talent does not do anything for free. If you are talented and want to work on something to promote yourself as a showcase, then fine. Once there’s a client involved then there should be contract negotiations as to what’s expected and what the payoff is. Then work commences. No one will respect work that’s given away.

These are desperate times for some and that means others will prey upon perceived weaknesses. Marketers should be more self-aware of how this may reflect upon them and their business, but there is no law or morality clause that keeps them from taking advantage of gullible people.

In the spirit of Wikileaks though, think about how this might look to others. Follow your own path and hope it’s not one that will come back to bite you on the backside.

TO ROI OR NOT? THAT IS THE QUESTION…

The big turnaround in the marketing industry in the last couple of years has been to make it a legit business application. It has to justify its existence by directly attributing how much money it brings in vs. the amount spent. The idea was that marketing was being phased out because nobody could quantify it before.

Well, guess what; now marketing can be phased out becuase it can be quantified too much. Marketing has a big load to carry and part of it is not quantifiable. How does Brand enter into the picture? It’s not the sort of thing that you can pin exact dollars brought in by. But, in turn, do you dare ignore it because you can’t? (That’s a rhetorical question to those not already in marketing. YOU CANNOT IGNORE BUILDING A BRAND AND MAINTAINING IT.)

What about the crazy out-of-the-box thinking that we always hear marketing has? How many people can an extraordinary campaign bring in? What makes an extraordinary campaign? This is in that 50/50 part of marketing. There is a time and place for out-of-the-box thinking and there is not. That’s what the CMO is to ascertain. Market research is then what validates a campaign. (See Wendy’s ‘red wig’ commercials to see an example of what happens when the wrong decisions are made on all phases of this.)

Marketing has room to be more like the other departments of business, and it should, but it also has to never lose sight of why it was needed in the first place. Creativity. You can ROI that right out of the picture and when you do you can see the marketing department follow suit soon after.

WIKIs and YOU…

The latest issue of CRM magazine (Jan ’08) has an interesting article on Wikis. More to the point; its use or non-use by many companies.

I can attest to a large company that currently uses a Wiki for their emergency response team, but not for their salesforce or engineers/contractors/floor production staff. Essentially this is because the leader of the ERT took it upon himself to set up the Wiki. Nobody in management or a leadership position to the other personnel apparently find it viable or time-efficient to do so. As a result, the ERT team is constantly honing their skills and increasing their productivity/effectiveness.

Conversely, productivity is lost in the other areas as skills and effectiveness are attributable to institutional memory and documentation of actual procedures is scattershot at best. (Much of what is documented takes into account the institutional memory and skips over items that neophytes will run into trouble with.)

Wikis can greatly increase the learning curve and serve as a receptacle for best practices, trouble shooting and strategies. Most importantly, they can be amended and added to in order to best enable company personnel to react to the changing environment of business.

For those not prepared to tackle creating a Wiki, there are solutions available for purchase. Some are designed especially for sales and others, such as Oracle’s offering, provide an integrated solution.

There’s no reason why sales shouldn’t know how to validate a lead, marketing shouldn’t know the correct use of a brand or the CMO couldn’t show his fellow execs new entries to illustrate the business climate and strategies employed. Wikis can do all of that. Why isn’t your company employing one?