Edelman’s Trust Barometer Report 2013: Our Global Leadership Problem.

 

If you aren’t familiar with Edelman’s Trust Barometer project, you should be. I can’t think of any other organization out there that has been able to peel back the layers of trust in the business world as effectively.  (If you know of other work I should be looking at, please leave a link in the comments.) Anyway, I want to share some of their findings here because understanding them will help everyone build and grow better companies. This isn’t just a PR topic. It affects everything: Brand management, communications, operations, retail, customer service… everything.

First, the checklist. Below is a graphic that shows 16-trust building attributes every organization needs to be aware of (and gauge). It looks like this year, Edelman added categories (what they call trust performance clusters): Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services, Purpose, and Operations. I can’t poke a hole into this. It’s solid.

Since I am as much a fan of best practices, brand strategy and change management as I am a fan of data, insights and infographics, you can imagine how stuff like this makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.

Here’s another piece of the Trust Barometer project: shifts in trust around the world year over year (YoY). To be clear, the graph does not illustrate consumer trust in the countries listed, but rather how consumers in each of these countries tend to trust companies, media, government institutions and NGOs. (If you think of it as a sort of cynicism graph, the US, the UK, Germany and France are a lot less cynical about all four sectors today than they were a year ago. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s a good sign.)

Edelman’s Trust Barometer report for 2013 is summarized really well in this video. (If the link below doesn’t play, click here.) It’s less than 3 minutes long and packed with a ton of really fascinating info, so keep your finger near the pause button. And no, I wasn’t paid by Edelman to push their report or say nice things about them. I ran into this yesterday on the Facebook. I was impressed by it and thought it was well worth sharing with you guys.

What’s particularly fascinating to me:

1) Tech companies seem to inspire the most trust and banking/financial institutions the least amount of trust.

2) Leadership and corporate culture are cited as the primary causes of corporate wrongdoing. (And rightly so.)

3) Globally, CEOs have less than a 50% approval rating. Only 18% of people expect business leaders to tell the truth, and 13% of political leaders to tell the truth. That is execrable.

What it means: a) we have a global leadership problem, and b) people are no longer blind to it. If that shouldn’t trigger a wake-up call, I don’t know what will.

Interestingly, people tend to still trust institutions far more than the leadership of said institutions. In the US, for instance, 50% of people trust business institutions, but only 15% trust their leadership. That’s a  35 point gap. When it comes to government, those numbers fall to 38% and 10% respectively, for a gap of 28 points.

Our trust in people – particularly in those who should be our leaders – is eroding. Fast. This is a major problem and it needs to be addressed. And no, cool Superbowl ads and cosmetic rebrandings won’t fix this. It’s a deeper problem and it is going to take serious, grown-up, deliberate work to fix it.

The only thing I wasn’t super impressed with was the “diamond of influence” and the media clover leaf thingamajigs at the end of the video. It isn’t that they are wrong (they aren’t) as much as they attempt to fix a leadership problem by addressing an operational problem. To use a medical analogy, it’s a little like trying to cure someone’s brain tumor by enrolling them in a social graces class. The solution just doesn’t match the problem.

Here’s a thought: Before you can address changes in operational models, you have to address the gaps in leadership that are the root causes of said operational problems. For instance, if you focus first on working with the organization’s leadership on baking the 16 attributes of trust into their vision for the company and then operationalizing them, maybe you have something that might work. Then and only then do you bring in the diamond and the clover leaf – to address the how of your why and what.

Always match the right solutions to the right problem. Otherwise, your business solution runs the risk of being little more than the corporate version of a cargo cult: a lot of mimicking and parroting, but absolutely no hope of generating real results. If you have a leadership problem, address that. Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t skirt the issue. Address it and fix it. Start with an audit of your organization, using the 16 trust attributes as potential areas of improvement.

Food for thought. Discuss.

*          *          *

Looking for straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space? pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)

And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

Read Full Post »

2013: The Year 90% of CEOs Will Lose Faith In Marketers?

Since everyone is rolling our their predictions for 2013, here’s mine. Don’t worry, it isn’t that 2013 will be the year of mobile or Social TV, or that social media “experts” will finally figure out what R.O.I. actually means. (They won’t. They don’t want to.) I have only one prediction for you, and it’s basically this: there is a very good chance that 12 months from now, we will learn that 90% of CEOs have lost faith in marketers.

It should be said that there are tons of solid professionals in Marketing professions, and they will continue to do great work – ethical work – and kick ass. They will solve problems, innovate and teach to others what they’ve learned. Their work and real success will drive everyone forward. Look for new knowledge, new methods and new insights. Real ones. Also look for new software, platforms and products they will have helped design or improve that will help you get more done. You already know who these people are. Even if you’ve never met them, you know who they are inside of five minutes when you hear them talk or watch them work. You know the real deal when you see it.

But the flip side is that the same hacks and posers who faked it all through 2012 and 2011 and 2010 and 2009 and 2008 will continue to lie and sell bullshit in 2013. Why? Because it’s easier. Because they’ve gotten a free pass so far. Because there’s good money to be made, selling bullshit. Because there’s a business model behind it and an “industry” to drive it, complete with metrics and equations and conferences and publishers all lining up to make their buck off confused senior managers with budgets to burn. There’s no incentive for any of this to stop. None. Nobody who has spent the last five years selling bullshit and building a personal brand around it is going to wake up tomorrow and have an epiphany. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it long enough. If they had a conscience or an ounce of professional responsibility, they wouldn’t have chosen that path. They won’t “self-deport” from their trajectory of made-up success and industry status. Not until the speaker invitations and the money dry up. We’ll have to wait until they get fired or move on to the next scam.

So here we are then: 2013. What’s changed? Nothing. As long as there are people who want to believe that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake, there will be people who will want to believe that the “I” in social media ROI stands for influence or interest or insights. As long as some people want to believe that more guns in schools will solve gun violence in schools, there will be people who will want to believe that likes and followers are legitimate measures of brand awareness. As long as some people want to believe that the Earth is only 5,000 years old and came preheated and ready-to-serve, there will be some people who will believe whatever nonsense you want to sell them. An equation. An algorithm. A methodology. A marketing religion. A measurement scheme. It won’t matter that it makes no logical sense, that it is mathematically incorrect, that it is a complete fabrication. It will still sell.

Fact is that if you are willing to lie your ass off, there are people out there who will believe you. Tons of them. Out of stupidity, out of laziness, out of sheer incompetence, it doesn’t matter. They won’t bother to fact-check. They’ll buy the lie, hook, line and sinker, because they don’t know any better, or don’t care, or just don’t want to do the work. If you can sell them something that will deliver good metrics to their bosses with minimal effort or risk from them, you will find eager clients in these people. It’s a simple business arrangement: They need to score that next bonus or promotion. The next case study they publish might even be their ticket to a better job. Sell them a product or vehicle that will make that happen and you’re in. And as long as nobody complains, everybody wins, right?

Well no. The only people who win are the hacks who betrayed the trust of those they ought not have taken advantage of in the first place. The companies that get defrauded don’t win. At all. Their CEOs sure as hell don’t win either. And that’s the rub: every time a social media director or a CMO or a digital consultant repackages a pile of bullshit into a “win” for the executive suite, the already fragile trust between marketers and CEOs further erodes.

For some insights into how bad things are and why, check out this study of the current state of social business. Here are a few takeaways: Only 5% of organizations are highly satisfied with their social media programs. Most of them don’t even have the right goals in place. Almost 40% of social media managers surveyed don’t think that measuring the success of their programs is even important. A business background is only important to 3% of organizations in considering a social media hire.

No wonder hardly anyone in social media understand the first thing about how to measure ROI properly or effectively deploy a social business program across an organization. It’s a shambles. A house of cards. I’ve never seen anything like it.

If you have the time, go to some of the big social media conferences this year and listen to all of the awesome success stories being sold there. Let yourselves be convinced that most companies out there aren’t failing miserably in the social space. Ignore the fact that most of their monitoring practices are operationally disconnected from the rest of their organization, that their “engagement” strategy has slipped into flacid 3rd party content schemes that might as well have been devised by SEO robots, that the connection between social activity and business results is still at best a muddled abstraction, that most brand managers still don’t know that a chunk of the likes and followers they paid digital agencies to acquire for them are fake, or even that the guy they just hired to run their social media program emails and DMs me three times a day to ask me questions someone getting paid what they get paid to do the job they lied about being qualified for shouldn’t be asking in the first place.

Let’s keep pretending that everything’s fine and that those of us who shake our heads at damage being done by the social media guru industry year after year are wrong for demanding more than this giant stinking heap of bullshit.

Here it is again: Only 5% of organizations are highly satisfied with their social media programs. 80% of CEOs no longer trust marketing professionals. A year ago, that number was 70%.

So welcome to 2012, part 2: Bullshit vs. the real deal. Same people on either side of that divide. The tools have gotten better but no other progress has been made. The cause behind this industry-wide fiasco will be the same in 2013 as it was in 2012, and it boils down to a simple word: choice. We all choose to either know our shit or fake it. We all choose to do the work or pretend to. We all choose to report adequately on what is working and what isn’t, or just select pointless KPIs we can easily manipulate to tell the story we want to tell. None of our choices have changed, and none of us have changed either. In spite of all of our new year’s resolutions, we’re still the same people we were in 2012, and for a lot of organizations, that’s a serious problem.

So what will happen this year? Maybe nothing. Or maybe I’m wrong and things will turn around. Maybe a bunch of social media gurus will retire or go find something else to do with their time. Maybe this will be the year when they finally start to lose traction. We’ll see. I won’t hold my breath, but we’ll see. Looking around though, I won’t be surprised if 12 months from now, a study comes out reporting that 90% of CEOs don’t trust marketers anymore. From 70% to 90% in just two years? Is that where we’re headed? There’s a good chance, yeah. And that really bothers me.

I am usually pretty full of ideas, but I have to admit that this time, I am stumped. I have no clue how to fix this.

*          *          *

I’m also blogging over on the Tickr blog these days too, so if you want more stats, facts, infographics, insights and less opinion, go check it out. You won’t miss the bite, I promise.

*          *          *

And as always, if you are tired of bullshit and just want straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space, pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)

And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.

CEO-Read  –  Amazon.com  –  www.smroi.net  –  Barnes & Noble  –  Que

Read Full Post »

What won’t you compromise (and compromise on)? – Inspired by Amber Naslund

Okay, I don’t usually borrow post titles or topics from other people, but today I’ll make an exception. Amber Naslund (@ambercadabra in the Twitterverse) just posted a remarkably honest, human and pretty personal post on her blog in which she asked (and started answering) a very simple but important question: What won’t you compromise?

Well, I thought it would be fun to follow her example and a) pose the question to you guys (in case you missed Amber’s post) and b) answer it for myself, albeit a little more loosely: Instead of just things I won’t compromise, I also added a few things I won’t compromise on (which is a little bit different).

Here we go. In no particular order:

Professional integrity.

I have worked for two companies that employed deceptive practices. Once when I first started out in the business world, and again more recently. In both cases, the amount of time between the moment I was made aware of the shenanigans and my departure from that job was remarkably short. I don’t play those games.

I could have rationalized that the deceptive practices weren’t mine, that I didn’t even touch that side of the business, that it really had nothing to do with me. I could have also rationalized that I had mouths to feed, bills to pay, nice toys to buy, but excuses are just excuses. Excuses are compromises. You can rationalize your way into a world of shameless douchebaggery if you aren’t careful. Just don’t go there. Not even a little. Ever.

Trust.

Either I trust you or I don’t. It’s really that simple. I don’t have to like you, but I have to trust you. In friendship, in business, in cooking, in war… trust isn’t gray. Oh, and trust is always a two-way street. It’s the only way it works.

Sushi.

Old Japanese proverb: Beware yesterday’s sushi.

Loyalty.

I’m kind of like Amber on that one. I grew up watching musketeer movies and old Starsky & Hutch re-runs, so the buddy mechanics are burned into my brain. Loyalty is something I value above most virtues.

By loyalty though, I don’t mean easily given loyalties – like the ones expected of you by an employer or a coffee shop. I mean real loyalties. Ones that last. People looking after each other-type loyalties. I’ll come rescue you if you get kidnapped by the Taliban type loyalties. If you earn that level of loyalty from me, consider yourself lucky. I’ll never let you fall and I’ll never sell you out. There’s no compromise there.

Food.

You are what you eat. I’m not doing myself any good by putting crap into my body.

Effort.

I get paid the same whether I spend ten hours half-assing a project or ten hours rocking it like nobody’s business, so why in the world would I not go for the option that will produce the best possible outcome, make the client deliriously happy and make me look like a god? I have a reputation to preserve.

Heck, I have a reputation to purposely smash regularly and rebuild like Oscar Goldman did Steve Austin: Better, faster, stronger. If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing exceedingly well. (Or as Gary Vaynerchuck would say “crush it.”)

Clarity.

Say what you mean. Mean what you say. That is all.

Manners.

Either you have manners or you don’t. If you treat waitstaff like crap, you and I aren’t doing business. If you are rude to me or anyone in my circle, ditto. If you make fun of the French (for real, not just to mess with me), d-i-t-t-o.

I am pretty uncompromising when it comes to people acting like self-important pricks. Manners matter a lot to me. It’s the little things.

Olive Oil.

Extra virgin. No mas, no menos.

Goals. Targets. Objectives.

Once set, they’re set. You don’t lower them. You don’t stop until you achieve them. When it comes to hitting a target, there’s the bull’s eye, and then there’s not. People who sold you on the bull’s eye but then tell you why less is just as good when they can’t seem to hit it are full of crap.

If this is an area of frequent compromise for you, either learn how to set them, or learn how to hit them. Either way, there’s no alternative to delivering on your promise once you’re in play. Compromise can’t live here. Ever.

Running shoes.

They either work or they don’t. I don’t care how cool they look or what logo they sport. Once you’ve developed ITBS, you learn not to screw around with running shoes. Even when that cool blue pair is 50% off.

Seatbelts. Helmets. Eye protection. Body armor. Brain-Mouth filter.

Taking risks doesn’t mean being an idiot.

The English Language.

If I can become fluent, anyone can. And should. Grammar and spelling are not optional. (Inventing new words though, is perfectly acceptable. Recommended, even.)

If a language is worth speaking, it is worth speaking well.

Jeans. Suits. Dress shirts. Overcoats. Couture of all origins.

They must fit just right. There is no compromise here. (Not just saying that because I’m French. Style knows no borders.)

Credibility.

Like your virginity, you can really only lose it once. Credibility is one of the most underrated and overlooked elements of a reputation, yet… without it, nothing else matters: Not talent, not work ethic, not intelligence. Once people start second-guessing your insights, your motives, your decisions, you’re done.

Quality.

If I pay for it, I expect it. Likewise, if someone pays me well, I fully intend to give them their money’s worth.

The family honor.

Many died fighting for it. It isn’t crashing and burning on my watch.

National security.

Note to the TSA: Boarding a plane with a 4.6oz tube of toothpaste doesn’t count.

The blood feud you don’t yet know about.

There’s no compromise in a blood feud. Only escalation and the sweet sweet taste of revenge. (Kidding!!! … But… maybe not.)

Knots.

If you’re a sailor and/or a rock climber, you know this too. You just don’t half-ass knots.

Toilet paper.

This one should require no explanation.

My good name.

Actually, no… wait… Scratch that. Everyone knows I’m a scoundrel.

Self respect.

No job and no amount of money is worth allowing someone to treat you poorly. Getting yelled at and dragged through the mud is fine if you’re in the military. You volunteer for that and it’s part of the fun. But in the business world, if someone treats you badly, don’t you dare let them get away with it. Once it starts, you’re screwed.

Success.

(See “goals, targets, objectives” above.) Status quo outcomes are never successes, no matter how many mediocre managers and business executives try to convince you otherwise. There’s no compromise here: Success has a smell, a flavor, a feel. Success rocks. Success feels like a million bucks. Success is a slam-dunk high-five that makes everyone look on with envy. Success makes you feel like a kid on Christmas morning. Success is real and it’s earned and it doesn’t come to you without a hell of a fight. Compromise there, and you’re a chump. (One of the many reasons why measurement is important. It keeps bullsh*t at bay.)

Vision.

If you imagine the best, why settle for average?

Ever looked at the transition between concept cars and production cars and wonder… “what happened?! That concept car was cool! This thing looks nothing like it! “

Yeah, that’s the effect that compromise has on vision.

Do you think the iPhone’s design was a compromise? Do you think that a Canon L-series lens is a compromise? Do you think that a Moleskine notebook is a compromise? A Cartier Tank? An Yves St. Laurent blazer? A Cervelo bicycle? My grandmother’s chocolate mousse? The Virgin Airlines experience? The screenplay in a Pixar film?

Should vision be adaptable? Sure. Should it be fluid? Absolutely. But there is an enormous difference between fluidity and compromise. Some of it deals with the outcome, but a lot of it has to do with intent. And purpose. And relevance.

Compromise is sometimes necessary, even good – especially in matters of public policy – but in business, it often sucks. It’s interesting, when you think about it, that the larger the number of people affected by a compromise, the more benign its impact, but narrow your focus down to individuals, and compromise almost always ends up in the negative column.

A compromise basically means that you gave up on getting the full monty and settled for less than ideal. Next thing you know, your diet is a compromise. Your relationship is a compromise. Your job is a compromise. Your car. Your wardrobe. Your career. Everything from your Saturday afternoon to your political beliefs, they all become compromises.

Some things are too important. Some things deserve champions, not compromises. Some things deserve to be seen through all the way, no matter how hard, no matter what the obstacles. And yeah, everyone can be a champion for something. Everyone should be. An idea, a product, a virtue, a cause… It doesn’t matter. It’s up to you.

Cultures of compromise typically don’t breed much aside from maybe mediocrity.

Chew on that for a few minutes. It’ll be well worth your while.

So… what’s on your list?

//

//

Read Full Post »