Turning Social Media Upside Down

I remember S&H Green Stamps!  As a child I remember wanting to go shopping with my mother so we could watch her earn stamps as her items were rung up on the cash register, then of course there was the fight to determine who got to carry the stamps home and the licking of the stamps and adding them to your books was actually a family event.  Kids even bragged about the number of books their family had completed and I am sure that housewives would discuss which retailer gave the most coupons and what was the best item to purchase with their books during their weekly coffee sessions around a neighbors kitchen table.

That was social media long before the advent of the internet as social media has become the "coffee klatches" of the 21st century.

For companies and brands the primary focus of their social media campaign is to advertise but the real success of social media is about conversations not the number of 'visits' or 'likes' one attains.

Everyone attempts to determine the success of their social media campaigns by the number of conversions that occur from social media sites but the reality is they may want to take a hint from S&H Green Stamps and think about how many conversations their product can create on social media.

Rather than viewing social media as nothing more than an advertising channel why not think of it as rather how many conversations can my product generate?

I think the ideal social media campaign would involve a game and that game would be involve some sort of token that would be gained via purchases of your product.  Zynga creates some awesome social media games, that create conversations and interaction.  All of their games involve earning points via playing the game but also involve the purchase of other, different points.  It would be logical to replace the PayPal based purchase of other points with tokens that are earned through the purchase of products.

You would benefit from the fact that individuals would be interacting and broadcasting that they purchase your product, at the same time you would be creating the potential for increases in the sales of your products  due to the desire of the game players to earn additional rewards and at the same time you would be creating an opportunity for consumers to earn rewards through their participation.

I have to admit that I am fascinated with the social psychology that is built into the games that Zynga has produced.  The way they build interaction and competition into their products and it just seems to me that they have created the ideal social media vehicle for products;  for the creation of the 21st century S&H Green Stamp program.

Seeing Yourself As Employees See You

I was reading an article about Walmart's new "Walmart Express" concept stores that they are developing to compete against Dollar General and the article ended with, "We have to look through the consumers' eyes…”

I couldn't but think, I wonder what employees see when they look at the company they work for?

Over the course of 20 years with a company that grew from 150 to well over 900 from both growth of the core business and through acquisitions I have had to wonder numerous times about how to deal with a company of employees who were now being "integrated" into a totally new system.

We would spend quite a bit of time reviewing their pay structure and benefits, we would also begin reorganizing and restructuring, and of course we were also moving them to our computer system and our vendors/suppliers.  All of this would be done with little or no input from the employees of the acquired company.

Its kind of like Zynga, which is relocating its headquarters and building a dog run on the roof of its new headquarters.  As a company that employs mostly young people, or "Millennials," as they are referred to I am sure that the idea is not all that novel.  But, the reality is the company is named after the founders dog and the dog is part of the logo.

From the outside looking in, one can find this an interesting 'benefit' provided to employess, but there is a possibility that the employees see it as nothing more than the heavy handed attempt by the founder to make everyone love dogs the way that he does.

The headquarters is 270,000 square feet so there has to be quite a few employees and imagine if all of them have dogs?  What happens if someone's Great Dane decides that my Pekingese annoyed it?  Would the company be liable for damages?

I remember when we were constructing a new manufacturing facility in 1990; we set aside space for expansion and the first "expansion" that management thought of was a gym for management!  As our work force was 85% female and our management was 100% male, a gym for management would have sent all the wrong signals!  The reality was if we were going to "expand" then we needed to do so in a way that provided a value to our operations; we needed something that would attract employees and keep employees once they were hired.  

Thus, our options were basically either a daycare or a auto repair facility because the two major reasons employees could not come to work was either that they could not locate a babysitter and or they did not have reliable transportation.


That was how Stepping Stones Learning Center, Inc., was formed, a not for profit daycare facility that was open to the public.  A daycare that actually lost the vote against the gym for managers!  


We opened the daycare to the public for two reasons; one, was because we knew that the employers would always suspect the quality of service if it was just opened to our employees and two, even though a not for profit we still wanted it to run as a business, separate from our business.


We eventually had two daycares, which served a total of 300 children most of the time!  These daycares allowed us to compete for employees and to remain a domestic manufacturer long after all of our competitors had flocked overseas with the passage of NAFTA in 1994.


The daycares paid rent and were profitable; today, one of them is still in operation long after we ceased operations because the local chamber used the daycare to attract businesses to their community!


I am not real sure how employees see a dog run on the roof of corporate headquarters?  I am not real sure how that attracts and retains employees; but do hope that they have carpeted their offices with carpet squares!