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8 Years to BzzAgent’s Values

February 4th, 2010

As a company, we just went through an exercise to identify and document BzzAgent’s Values, or the philosophies that guide our actions.   At various stages, the whole company collaborated on defining the values that are already prevalent at BzzAgent, as well as the ones that we want to begin to instill.   What we’ve finalized feels just right for who we are and for who we want to be.

If you’re at a company that doesn’t have its values defined, I’d highly recommend the process.

Wbee1hat’s somewhat disturbing is that we’re in our 8th year of business and this is the first time we’ve ever gone through this process.  Up until this point, many employees would agree we had values, and many would even agree on what they were – but because they weren’t articulated, it was impossible to make decisions based on them.  Well, it’s never too late, right?

BzzAgent Believes In:

Being radically focused on voice of the consumer

We believe that whatever consumers have to say, be it good or bad, it is worth listening to.  We’re passionate about getting people to talk — and others to listen — and we’re unrelenting in searching for and understanding consumers’ wants and needs. We will invest in technologies and methods that bring us closer to authentic conversations and provide consumers valuable and rich experiences that allow them to converse more effectively.  We know that the voice of the consumer is permanently changing the marketing landscape, and we seek to offer marketers pragmatic solutions to be part of that conversation.

Making marketing a better place for marketers and consumers

We believe in a new era of marketing, where it’s no longer acceptable to interrupt, interfere or capture the consumer against their wishes.  In this era marketers must be respectful of a consumer’s time, interests and preferences.  This can only be accomplished by understanding, respecting and aligning with consumers’ natural behavior, without seeking to drastically change it.  Consumers benefit when they feel a marketer is honest and provides additional value when and where desired.  Marketers benefit when people actually want to hear their messages.

Transparency from all stakeholders at all times

We believe the future is about being open and honest in everything you do.  For our clients, this means we stand for ethical word of mouth and social media interactions that include disclosure, script-free messaging and honesty of opinions.  For our staff, this means we will share information generously, answer any question as best we’re able and create consistent opportunities for two-way dialogue.  And for the world, this means we’re always willing to bend the rules of what it means to be open about our business.  Try us.

Embracing individuality

We believe that we’re all a little different and that’s what makes each of us so wonderful and valuable (as people and to the business).  We want our staff to be themselves in every aspect of what they do, no matter how quirky, eccentric or outlandish that may be.  We believe our individuality is the spirit that drives each of us to succeed and the combined power of our individualism is the bond that creates a sense of team and community.  As a member of our community, we expect you to share your opinions whenever, wherever, however and with whomever you feel appropriate:  we trust your judgment.  So go ahead and let your freak flags fly, baby.

Responsiveness that blows minds

We believe that being responsive is being considerate, and that swiftness is the ultimate sign of respect.  Without being hasty or sacrificing thoughtfulness, our sense of urgency is a powerful communicator of how much we care about our clients, consumers, employees and vendors.  We want people to be wowed by our availability and our devotion and the speed with which we deliver it.  We believe people should communicate early and often and you should never do tomorrow what can be done today.

Continuous innovation

We believe in delivering exceptional value because we’re constantly willing to experiment.  For our clients, we aim to listen to their needs and be flexible enough to deliver outstanding solutions.  For members of our consumer community we want to provide an experience and engagement with brands that is unlike anything they’ve had before.  And for our staff, we want to provide a work environment that is fresh and different in meaningful and unique ways.  With all of this in mind, we seek to always be leading, and will leave the following to everyone else.

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New Rules for Freelancing While Full-Time

January 27th, 2010

There’s a standard that says full-time employees shouldn’t take on freelance work, and I think it’s time to throw that out.

According to our employee agreements, no one employed by BzzAgent should be taking on any freelance work.  Section 4, paragraph #1 states:

You agree to devote the full measure of your total business time, skill, attention and best efforts to the Company’s business and to discharge and fulfill the responsibilities assigned to you by the Company during your employment under this Agreement.  You agree that you will not render services to any other person or entity without the prior written consent of the Company, and that you shall not engage in any activity which conflicts or interferes with the performance of the duties and responsibilities of the Position.

For some companies, freelancing full-time employees is something to turn a blind eye to, like turning at a red light with a “no turn on red” sign (or, I guess,  smoking kind buds on the Boston Common in Massachusetts…).  For others, it’s considered acceptable with approval, which is an awkward process for everyone involved.  After some informal polling, it appears that to most CEOs, it’s disapproved entirely and is considered grounds for a serious discussion about the employee’s role in the business.  But this makes no sense.

We have one employee who does web design work for us full time, and is also a master bronze sculptor who often gets commissioned to make pieces in his off hours.   A creative outlet on the side – of course we’re cool with that.  We have another employee who owns a rental property up in New Hampshire, which he manages in his spare time.   That’s considered entrepreneurial which we’re highly supportive of.  Shoot, one employee started and owns the coolest retail store on the eastern seaboard, Grand.   All of these are considered acceptable – and yet, if someone is being contracted to do exactly what they do at BzzAgent (without using confidential information or working for a competitor) we consider it inappropriate behavior.  So it seems the line is drawn at only being able to freelance what you’re NOT hired by BzzAgent to do.

freelanceI think this is an outdated concept.  The fact is, few white-collar employees work 9-5 at all anymore.  We’re expected to address work issues on weeknights and often on weekends.  We’re constantly reachable and it goes without saying that many are reviewed on the merits of their “always on” capacity.   More to the point, many of us expect employees to be  constantly active within the realms of social media – facebooking, tweeting, Linked-Ining – to connect, but also to gather research, identify new clients, get better at their job.  People are working more, and not getting paid differently for it.

But really…what an employee does in their off hours – nights and weekends – is their own business.  They’re not indentured servants.

So, as long as people get their work done, don’t divulge confidential information and don’t work for a competitor, my sense is freelancing is a smart thing for a business to allow:

  • It provides employees with additional revenue without costing the company a dime
  • It enhances the employee’s skill set, as they’re required to continue honing their craft for other managers
  • It reduces any likelihood of an employee having to sneak around or even occasionally feeling guilty
  • It may reduce turnover, as an employee can make more without going somewhere else

And, quite frankly, if someone has enough time to freelance, it’s our own fault for not keeping them busy enough.

So, we’re going to try a little experiment.  For the next 3 months, I’m officially allowing all of our full time employees to freelance – if it works out, then this will become company policy going forward.  My rules are as follows:

  • This doesn’t reduce any expectation of getting BzzAgent work done ( in some ways it probably makes it even clearer that you must produce at a very high level)
  • You don’t do any freelance work during the workday
  • You bring new skills back to the office to do awesome things for us
  • You don’t get so stressed at the extra work that you freak out completely
  • You take me to lunch or buy me a beer with all of the extra money you make

Who’s with me?

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Festivus ‘09: Grievance Analysis

January 7th, 2010

(Yes, the BzzAgent Festivus Grievance Pole was one of the highlights of 2009…)

In an effort to improve morale and in the absence of an “official” employee survey, we have analyzed the Festivus ‘09 Grievance list and devised bullet-proof recommendations that are sure to improve company culture.

Results

  • 60 Grievances submitted
  • 77% are anonymous
  • 75% have something to do with the office (vs. the world at large)
  • 42% ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS
  • 32% are complaints about colleagues
  • 18% are complaints about the list itself
  • 12% are complaints about Andy Roebuck specifically
  • 5% have some sort of rich media (pictures, etc.)

For those of you who like a more visual representation of the data, please see below:
Festivus_Word_cloud
Recommendations

Based on these results, we recommend the following:

  • Clearly, employees love writing in all caps, so we should force at least 40% of correspondence (internal AND external) to be conduced in all capitals. This will improve morale greatly and increase communication efficiency. THERE’S NO BETTER WAY TO GET YOUR MESSAGE ACROSS THAN BY SHOUTING.
  • Employees like anonymity AND complaining about other employees. In order to facilitate these two needs (SYNERGYYYYYYYYYYYYYY), we should start a generic “youreallywanttoknowwhatithink?@bzzagent.com” email alias that any employee can use to send whatever message they want to any other employee, this will most certainly end well. (FRICTIONLESSSSSSSSSSS)
  • Andy Roebuck should stop sneezing, sitting near Fletch, sneezing, talking about hot air balloons (“It’s not like you just jump in a wicker basket and go up. There’s a lot more to it than that.”), and sneezing
  • We should now eat Stonyfield yogurt with 3.5 pronged forks
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From An Upcoming Study on BzzAgent

December 18th, 2009

I was going to say the exact same thing…

The σα reflects the degree of heterogeneity across individuals, and the σδ reflects the degree of unobserved heterogeneity across campaigns (not accounted for by whatever observed covariates Xj in that model). The observation-specific idiosyncratic error can be interpreted as the unobserved interaction effect of a particular person’s propensity to talk about a particular product-campaign. Also, the parameter σε reflects the degree of over-dispersion in the counts, conditional on the other parameters.

(seriously, the rest of the paper is incredibly rich and easier to digest…more to come!)

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Seth Godin’s What Matters Now

December 13th, 2009

What happens when Seth Godin asks a few of his friends to chip in 200 words each for his new e-book? The answer is pretty obvious…

What Matters Now includes thought pieces from the likes of Guy Kawasaki, Jason Fried, Fred Wilson, Tom Peters, Chip and Dan Heath, Gary Vuynerchuk, Paco Underhill, Chris Anderson and Arianna Huffington…and little ol’ me… To read it yourself, click the image below.

whatmattersnow

While the e-book is important, what’s intriguing is how Godin uses social media to create immediate virality. I think Pete Kim coined this as an “ego trap”, which Seth appropriately recoined as “Hero Marketing”. The ingredients are pretty simple: make it easy for time-constrained, smart, semi-narcissistic folks to be a part of it. Then, make it free for intelligent, idea-hungry people to consume it. Presto, immediate virality.

But Seth realizes the most important ingredient can’t be overlooked: quality content worth consuming. The idea-hungry part of me read the book front to back and was truly blown away. The semi-narcissistic part of me wants to tell you my piece, titled “Dumb”, is on page 43.

Have fun!

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Social Media Meets Media Mix Modeling

December 11th, 2009

You can’t get much more real deal than this…

post-it2_v3

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The Brass Tacks of Social Media ROI

December 10th, 2009

We’re overwhelmed by the capacity for social media to actually drive real return. Forget about lengthy case studies that trump up the challenge, over-analyze the market dynamics and glowingly summarize how we solved. Forget about the squishy metrics like “Lift in Brand Perception” or “Purchase Intent”. Let’s get down to brass tacks, people…

post-it_v2_outlines

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The FTC and Social Compliance

December 1st, 2009

Today, Dec. 1, the FTC’s new Endorsement Guidelines officially go into effect.  If you’re a marketer tapping into the power of social media, word of mouth or advocacy programs, this isn’t something to be taken lightly.

Here are some tips for thinking about whether or not your programs are in compliance.

BzzAgent_SocialCompliance_FTC_1

When we started BzzAgent 8 years ago, we had the wise idea to develop a team of ‘Communications Developers’ who could act as stewards of great Word of Mouth behavior.  We now have 100 people on staff who review, analyze and respond to word of mouth reports.  Many mocked the business case of the ‘labor’ of these individuals, as an undue burden.  Now, with the FTC Guides in effect, these folks have been ultimately validated as a critical asset to BzzAgent.  As they’re now armed with everything there is to know about the FTC Guides and compliance, we’ve renamed them the Compliance Assurance Team (CAT) and are allowing marketers to utilize our expertise for any social media or word of mouth programs (not just ours).  See how below…

BzzAgent_SocialCompliance_FTCcard4-2

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17 People Who Created the Word of Mouth Industry

November 23rd, 2009

In 2004, Pete Blackshaw, Jonathan Carson and Dave Balter (yeah, that’s me) founded the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.  Our goal was to help our industry grow by setting ethical and measurement standards.  We knew almost nothing about associations, but we were adept at building businesses and had passion to beat the band

Last week, at the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, the Association held its annual conference and nearly 500 people chatted, shook hands, reconnected, learned something and generally got their Vegas on.   The rise of Social Media and the FTC’s updated Endorsement Guides were the major themes of the event, and provided plenty of fodder for discussion and debate.

A rolling boulder collects no moss…and these early WOMMA characters are no different.  Here’s where these early industry innovators were then and where they are now …

Who Then Now
Pete Blackshaw (@peteblackshaw) I mean, this guy needs no intro, but back then he was a big brain at Intelliseek.  Pete and I started egging each other on to develop WOMMA during a prep session for an Ad-Tech panel. Ok, so Intelliseek merged with BuzzMetrics, then they got bought by Nielsen.  Yeah, that’s pretty cool.   New fact from this conference:  Pete can go to bed at 1 AM, only to wake at 3 AM in a fit of note-taking and memo-writing.
Dr. Walter Carl (@doctorwom) The non-nutty Northeastern professor who started experimenting with proving the reach of offline word of mouth conversations. Now those early Northeastern experiments are the foundation of Chat Threads, an incredible platform that helps companies measure the results of word of mouth and social media initiatives.
Jackie Huba (@jackiehuba) & Ben McConnell (@benmcconnell) Yeah, they wrote the incredible, Creating Customer Evangelists and Jackie spent some time on the WOMMA Board. Both are wicked smart. Now joining forces with Sean O’Driscoll, Jake McKee and Sean McDonald to continue to build Ant’s Eye View, which plays at the intersection of customer engagement and social technologies. The whole crew has a cone of creativity you need to get inside.
Max Kalehoff (@maxkalehoff) PR genius with BuzzMetrics (now Neilsen Online), who helped WOMMA really craft its messaging. Plus he has cool glasses and a big smile. Sharp-as-hell tack at Clickable, continuing to ask the questions that need to be asked, and more often than not, giving us the answers.  Big smile still big.
Brad Fay and Ed Keller Ed wrote the Influentials while still at Roper NOP, where Brad and he were gainfully employed.  Ed pontificated often that this Word of Mouth stuff had big potential for the rapidly evolving research industry. Now run Keller Fay Group, a pre-eminent Word of Mouth research firm, and Ed was even President of WOMMA for a few years. Fun fact: Ed was home sick and didn’t make this event, but Brad showed up and someone even called him Ed.  I mean, they are hard to confuse.
Steve Knox (@trav1955) Steve ran the show at P&G’s Tremor, a teen-based Word of Mouth network that eventually added Vocalpoint, which focused on Moms.  Nothing said success more than P&G, one of the world’s greatest marketers, establishing its own business in this space. Tremor/Vocalpoint continues to break new ground with its methodology.  They’re now an outstanding member of WOMMA, and Steve is still running the show.  And this guy can present to be the band:  At this most recent conference he delivered a case on Kashi that was one of the most inspiring, thoughtful – and talked about – moments of the event.
Owen Mack & Jesse Buckley (@cobrandit) The guys behind Co-Brandit were yapping to us about video before anyone cared, including us.  They hung around a lot, and we thought they were either crackpots, or this video stuff might just have a future. Well, video seems to have made it. Co-Brandit has since filmed every single WOMMA event, giving them the only true historical record of the industry’s growth.  They’re still doing amazing social media video production.  Unknown cool fact: these dudes are cousins.
John Moore (@wommajohn) The dude who wrote awesome blog posts at Brand Autopsy about evangelism and advocacy, said what needed to be said, and never ever pulled a single punch Now officially part of the WOMMA crew, providing marketing leadership.  Still blogging, thinking and not even close to pulling punches. Plus he wears a mean lab coat.
Dave Reis (@davidreis) Dave is the guy behind DEI.  He was in the room when we pulled that first group together and was the consummate cheerleader. DEI is still kicking it, big time.  Dave wore the nicest pinstripe suit at the whole event.  Really.
Emmanuel Rosen (@emmanuelrosen) Emmanuel wrote the Anatomy of Buzz, a book that laid the foundation for many future Word of Mouth businesses, including BzzAgent. The revised edition of Anatomy of Buzz is out now (everyone got a copy in their bag); it’s an even better read than the first and updates word of mouth for the social media era
Todd Steinman (@tsteinman) Todd was one of the M80 boys, alongside Jeff Semones and Dave Neupert – they were in the room when started talking about organizing the industry.  True fact: most of the M80 folks were a lot hipper than rest of us. As an early pioneer in the digital Word of Mouth landscape, it’s no wonder WPP’s Group M decided to buy them a few years back.  They’re now evolving deeply into social media. They’re still pretty cool.
Jamie Tedford (@jamietedford) Jamie has great hair. It’s true, and that gave him some mad presence.  Jamie led Arnold into the Word of Mouth industry, extolling the need for agencies to get smart about medium, long before many were wise to it. Now Jamie is CEO of Brand Networks, a marketing company that helps “socialize” brands….Jamie sat on WOMMA’s board for a term,  and he still has great hair.
Bob Troia (@bobtroia) & Warren Ackerman (@warrenackerman) Bob and Warren ran Fanpimp, which developed online fan communities mainly for the entertainment industry. At the time the debate was whether this was the new ‘street team’ or guerrilla marketing or actually Word of Mouth. Fanpimp eventually evolved into Affinitive, an amazing brand community platform with a suite of tools to manage, monitor and engage social media advocacy.  Don’t let them fool you though:  These guys have plenty of fans, and they’re still pimps (in the best way possible, of course).

It was a hazy few days…that’s all I remember.  Congrats, BTW, to the entire WOMMA team for pulling this event together.  Truly exceptional work… Read the rest of this entry »

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CEO Wanted to Scratch an Itch

November 12th, 2009

So, I’ve got this incredible, market-making, revolutionary idea.  I need a CEO to run with it.

I have ideas all the time, but this is one of the special ones.  One that makes you drop everything else to make it a reality.   But, the thing is, my day job as CEO of BzzAgent keeps me pretty busy, and it’s not droppable.

So, if you’ve been a CEO – or haven’t been, but should be – I wanna talk to you.  Here’s the criteria:

  • I don’t care what school you went to or how old you are.  I’m ok with MBA, PHD or high school degree.
  • Experience in the real world is good, but not necessary.  Experience with a successful startup is valuable.  Experience with failure is a huge plus.
  • You must have the drive and energy to make this a reality.  9-5 doesn’t cut it, and the clock won’t stop.
  • Your charisma needs to magnetize people around you, and attract them like moths to a flame.
  • I want to see pinwheels in your eyes when you get excited about an idea.  If clients, friends, consumers don’t see that, it will never work.
  • This is a startup, which we’re going to build without “trying to fund it” first.  That means little cash, but lotsa upside.
  • You’ll have to deal with me.  That can be fun, inspiring and annoying all at once.

I will say no to a lot of people.  If you’re one of them, don’t take it personally.  I can’t tell you who will be perfect, but I’ll know it when I see it.

You ready?  Go!

scratch1

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