IVR Deconstructed

If you haven’t seen any footage of the rioting in Greece right now, you might want to check it out. The Greek parliament has been voting on austerity measures to stave off financial ruin, and the Greek public hasn’t liked it.

Thousands of protestors have clogged the square in front of the parliament building, throwing rocks and bits of concrete and whatever else they can grab.

Many have said they went there in peace but that the Greek police have been heavy-handed with their control measures. Without being there too, it’s hard to know for certain.

But in the videos you can see hundreds of protestors throwing projectiles, plumes of tear gas from the police everywhere and even police throwing rocks back at the protestors. It’s an ugly scene.

According to CNN, Greece received a bailout of $145 billion 18 months ago and is in need of another bailout, possibly as much as $170 billion. Contingent upon the Greek government passing austerity measures, that is.

The measures passed this week include privatization of state-owned property, tax hikes and cuts to government jobs and social security. All of which have enraged the Greek people.

Basically, international leaders (including the European Union and International Monetary Fund) said if Greece didn’t pass austerity measures, they wouldn’t lend any more money.

If Greece doesn’t get more help, it could not only default on the original loan but go under completely. According to CNN, Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has already lowered Greece’s credit rating to just above default—it now has the lowest S&P rating of any nation.

The worry is Greece going under, taking the rest of Europe with her and affecting the entire global economy. What enrages the Greek people so much appears to be not only the austerity measures but that their politicians allowed the financial woes in the first place.

Google and Facebook are kind of in a war on multiple fronts—for Silicon Valley talent, for Internet dominance and now for social networking.

Facebook is essentially setting itself up as a secondary Internet, while Google is doing all kinds of things and already basically runs the original Internet. They’ve been fighting for Silicon Valley developers (possibly overpaying them and creating a Talent Bubble).

And now they’ll be going head to head on social networking with the launch of Google+ yesterday.

The jury is still out on Google+ of course. For one, it’s not the first time Google has dipped their toes into the social networking pool. And those little dips—including Wave and Buzz—didn’t turn into full-scale swims.

The Washington Post has some skeptical, sarcastic chat comments up about it…

“Can’t wait to try Google+, because if anything Wave, Latitude, Buzz, Orkut, Jaiku & Dodgeball proves Google knows how to run social networks.”

“This Google+ thing is totally going to make Buzz look like Wave.”

But the overall first impressions seem to be positive rather than negative. PCWorld thinks Google+, despite a few things to work out, could be legit.

According to the online magazine, it has a “slick interface” and offers some subtle improvements on Facebook, particularly with content sharing and security (a concern for many Facebook users). It could give Facebook a run for its money, in fact.

And some experts think Google+ could be a boost for Google’s market value. Larry Haverty, portfolio manager for Gamco Investors Inc., had a lot of positive things to say in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Gamco has $35 billion in assets under management with Google as a top-ten holding.

Haverty said Google+ could exploit a few flaws in Facebook and could be “a huge market for them if they get it right.”

According to Haverty, the market hasn’t been giving Google enough credit with its valuation because Google has lately been focusing efforts on talent acquisition and development. Also, Google never lets the cat out of the bag on new developments before they’re actually released (as was the case with Google+).

But Haverty thinks Google’s stock is gonna rise, helped by Google+ and the other things the company is doing, including dominating the smartphone market with Android.

“This is gonna be a wake-up call for Mother Market,” he said.

It’s not crazy to think that Google+ could compete with Facebook, which has actually lost a good many users recently (over 6 million last month). Some people think Facebook may have peaked as a social networking site. (It’s still evolving as a business networking site and as a secondary Internet.)

In any case, I’m just wondering where these two juggernauts will finally collide down the road—they’re both still evolving. What will they finally become and which will win?

I’m also wondering in the short term how Google+ will affect Facebook’s value and its I.P.O. scheduled for the first quarter next year. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, it’s fun to watch.

Yesterday I wrote about how social media has benefitted passengers on airlines (sometimes at the expense of the airlines). Today I’m writing about the benefits to the airlines.

Let’s start with complaints, because yesterday’s post dealt a lot with that. Social media give travelers a chance to immediately complain about something. But they also give the airlines a chance to immediately respond.

Like, say, when the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud closed down airports in Europe for six days in April 2010. There were plenty of salty and/or distressed travelers tweeting on their airlines’ Twitter accounts.

According to Forbes, that was when KLM Royal Dutch Airlines decided to ramp up its dabbling in social media and went all in. The company decided to make social media its customer-service front line.

In the last year, KLM has defined new social media job roles, reorganized marketing and services and created a social media hub, according to Forbes.

By doing so, the airline is able to respond to customer concerns in as little as an hour. It can use Facebook and Twitter as its main marketing and service communication tool, which centralizes things.

Other airlines have made similar changes, such as Delta Airlines, Southwest and JetBlue.

Southwest has a blog (Nuts About Southwest) that the company uses to connect with customers. According to SocialMediaExaminer.com, a team of 30 bloggers contributes to the site—news and behind-the-scenes stories, in particular.

Southwest, like a lot of other airlines, uses Facebook for community conversations, streaming videos and ticket deals, according to SocialMediaExaminer.com.

So in the battle between passengers and airlines, there’s no real winner. Maybe there’s no real battle. In fact, it’s more like they’re both making out pretty well by using social media.

It’s not a surprise, really. Social media seems to be helping everyone these days.

So if you had to pick a winner and loser in the social media battle of airlines versus passengers, you might think passengers have the clear advantage.

What with irate passengers capable of trashing airlines in tweets, you’d think it would easily passengers winner, airline loser.

Let’s be honest. Everyone has a bad flight at least once in his or her life, for whatever reason. It might not be the airline’s fault per se, although you definitely want to blame them. Or someone, anyway.

I went on a ski trip to the German Alps one time—one of those once or twice in a lifetime type of trips that came together luckily somehow. Our bags, including skis and my snowboard, didn’t make it for a couple of days. That was a tough one.

But there wasn’t social media then. (Not that I would have tweeted about it—things like that happen.)

Twitter can be a touchy thing. People have gotten in trouble for tweeting when they probably shouldn’t. Just today, the Telegraph reported a breakdown in the British Airways strike talks over some tweets by one of the sides.

According to the Telegraph, talks were going pretty well until one of the parties sent out a series of tweets updating the progress of the talks. Those tweets evidently didn’t sit too well with the other side, who decided to rant about it in a television interview.

There’s also the weird social-media-fueled rumor about Delta Airlines partnering with Saudi Arabian Airlines and not allowing Jewish passengers on their flights anymore. Patently false—Delta doesn’t even fly to Saudi Arabia, according to the Economist.

And there’s the story of Delta changing their baggage fees policy with U.S. military after soldiers went on YouTube to complain about being charged for extra bags. That one’s true, actually.

For sure, social media is an outlet for passengers to rail against airlines, but it’s been a boon for the airlines, as well. Delta, in particular, has really benefitted from social media. Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow (benefits to airlines).

So if you had to pick a winner and loser in the social media battle of airlines versus passengers, you might think passengers have the clear advantage.

What with irate passengers capable of trashing airlines in tweets, you’d think it would easily passengers winner, airline loser.

Let’s be honest. Everyone has a bad flight at least once in his or her life, for whatever reason. It might not be the airline’s fault per se, although you definitely want to blame them. Or someone, anyway.

I went on a ski trip to the German Alps one time—one of those once or twice in a lifetime type of trips that came together luckily somehow. Our bags, including skis and my snowboard, didn’t make it for a couple of days. That was a tough one.

But there wasn’t social media then. (Not that I would have tweeted about it—things like that happen.)

Twitter can be a touchy thing. People have gotten in trouble for tweeting when they probably shouldn’t. Just today, the Telegraph reported a breakdown in the British Airways strike talks over some tweets by one of the sides.

According to the Telegraph, talks were going pretty well until one of the parties sent out a series of tweets updating the progress of the talks. Those tweets evidently didn’t sit too well with the other side, who decided to rant about it in a television interview.

There’s also the weird social-media-fueled rumor about Delta Airlines partnering with Saudi Arabian Airlines and not allowing Jewish passengers on their flights anymore. Patently false—Delta doesn’t even fly to Saudi Arabia, according to the Economist.

And there’s the story of Delta changing their baggage fees policy with U.S. military after soldiers went on YouTube to complain about being charged for extra bags. That one’s true, actually.

For sure, social media is an outlet for passengers to rail against airlines, but it’s been a boon for the airlines, as well. Delta, in particular, has really benefitted from social media. Stay tuned for Part 2 tomorrow (benefits to airlines).

Advertising is a vital part of any business’s marketing process, and marketing (or the establishment of customer relationships and a customer message) is the force that keeps businesses in operation.

Regardless of what type of products or services companies are offering, they must allocate at least some of their budget to both marketing and advertising. Businesses must glean customer attention, a customer following, and have a well-branded product that clients can easily recognize and indentify with.

Becoming a well-established brand can take years, and involves integration with various communication mediums in order to achieve the broadest reach. This process can be both exhausting and expensive.

Businesses typically seek to target those populations or demographics that are most probably going to be receptive and amenable to their product or service. However, identifying the correct target market, and then generating the capital to continuously sustain this type of advertising can be extremely cost intensive.

There has been a marked shift away from traditional advertising and an emergence of non-traditional types of marketing. Traditional media costs have skyrocketed in the past several decades. Combined with the convergence of communication and entertainment, marketing departments have begun to turn to less traditional forms of marketing and advertising.

Less traditional forms of marketing include cross-promotion marketing (ex. movie product placement, shared coupon events), place-based marketing (adds featured in non-traditional places like school buses, food labels, and food trays), and sponsorship promotion, (associate brand with desirable but unrelated person, place, thing, or idea).

These non-traditional marketing can be much more affordable than typical commercial advertising campaigns, can be a form of entertainment, and can allow anonymity in advertising (making it stealth marketing), and can even create a grassroots trend that can eventually result in mainstream popularity.

Non-traditional marketing can increase exposure and visibility, generate buzz, encourage word-of-mouth advertisements, and even lead to a sale or purchase. Conversely, traditional marketing can raise awareness, improve customer product knowledge, and eventually lead to a purchase or re-purchase. Both techniques are fundamentally important to developing a successful marketing strategy overall, but traditional techniques are much more costly than non-traditional.

Interactive voice response applications can make non-traditional marketing methods exceedingly more efficient. When customers see an advertisement in a movie theatre, on their lunch tray, or on their food product, they can be directed along to an IVR that can provide them with additional information.

Many non-traditional marketing efforts are extremely confined by space (i.e. adverts on products), so integration with an IVR can be exceedingly beneficial in that customers can call in and procure additional information, while also allowing a company to maintain branding and marketing information.