Tesco must trust us if they want us to trust them

Tesco is right to start the communications rolling in the aftermath of Britain's horsemeat-in-beef-products scandal. Emails to every customer (that they have emails for - which is a lot, thanks to Clubcard) about the value of trust, promises made about rigorous testing (the stuff we had trusted they were doing anyway) and a commitment to a new website to share progress and outcomes is all great.

But the more exciting, and both business changing and business winning, idea contained in Tesco's new commitments is in the pledge to 'open up our supply chain'.

This not only brings them the benefits of applying some of the 10 Principles of Open Business, it also goes some way to enabling customers to get closer to the wizard, rather than the curtain - in other words, the source of the brand.

And IF they are wise and consistent in the application of Open Business, if they truly wish to become customer-led, then co-creating the fix to this problem with those for whom it is intended will become second nature.

That's the part I see missing from the Tesco plan right now. It feels like the customer is being treated as a receiver of outcome rather than a key stakeholder in the decision making process. CEO Phillip Clarke has told us what he is doing for us, but he hasn't asked us what we think the solutions are, what we think will rebuild trust.

Getting closer to the source is a critical part of that. Being part of steering how that is done is another.

Tesco must first learn to trust us if it wants us to trust it.

Social Media: It's educational

One of the reasons I love social media is its ability to reveal the power of the network.

That power is there for anyone to discover. But is only truly appreciated by those who participate.

This is a key distinction. There are those who believe they can use social media and those who understand they can participate in it.

The first group, the users, stand back from it. And from afar they order its deployment. These are the people who - no matter how much they may protest - do not really understand it. (Picture courtesy)

This first group see social media as just another channel. They see it as another way to extend reach, to gather eyeballs. They like their measures in the thousands and millions.

They neglect a simple truth. The only measure that really counts is the action that results; a sale, a new believer, a new organisation, a better mousetrap. .

Theirs is the world of never mind the quality, feel the bandwidth.

You'll know you are in group 1 if you blog but don't allow comments, if you broadcast an rss feed into Twitter but follow no one, if you stuff videos on to Youtube but don't respond to comments or video responses. If you spam 'your friends' on Facebook.

Sure, you're using social media. You're not participating in it though.

The second group are those who genuinely benefit from social media. 
They learn as they do.

• Where group 1 says Use Social Media, we say Participate.
• Where group 1 asks how many were exposed to a message, we ask what action resulted ( how was a community of purpose galvanized to act?)
• Where group 1 stands back to witness the power of the network, group 2 is partipating in it.
  

Like I say, one of the reasons I love social media is for its ability to adapt people, brands and organizations to the networked world.

Those who would only witness are missing out on learning so much.

They aren't taking part in a conversation.

As I've said before, the act of participating raises and answers questions about control and ownership - a process which makes brands and orgs better adapted to the connected world.

This does not happen if you and your people simply stand back and count the beans.

This time, you really do have to be in it to win it.

Clay Shirky on humanising brands

Today I'm pleased to share part III of my interview with Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky (recorded in London on September 30 at the offices of Incisive Media).
It is part of a 35min interview.

Parts one: 'How algorithms caused the credit crunch'
and two: 'Why email trumps facebook et al'
can already be found on this blog (dated Oct 1 and 2, 2008).

In part three Clay discusses the different qualities of interaction required to humanise brands - and how creatives can welcome collaboration rather than seal it out.
As Clay puts it: "Brands aren't people. They don't interact. People do."
And he warns creatives who seek perfection in their campaigns: "Something cleaned up right to the edges has no room for me. Perfection says, you don't belong here."
Clay's contention is messiness is human and acts as a welcome matt for interaction.

Watch the video below:
See him in person here. Buy his book, here.

MySpace Music. Sharing the broadcast?

While the real lesson of the networked world for music is that (as Herdmeister would say) music is something we do together, MySpace is taking advantage of the monkey-see monkey-do (in this case monkey-hear, monkey-do) reality of the flocking activity of real human behaviour.

(Thanks to Jamie Burke for sharing this link).

MySpace has launched MySpace Music which effectively turns audio files of your favourite music into a Facebook newsfeed-style shared experience with your social graph (your MySpace friends, at least). (image by antikris via flickr)

It's integrating the functionality of the likes of last.fm and blip.fm inside the fully-formed social network of MySpace. And, of course, it's an excellent fit - because MySpace always was all about the music.

One of its biggest advantages over other apps is that it offers unlimited streaming of the music your friends are listening to from the news feed.

Now, if only the record companies allowed users to mash-up, remix and redistribute the results (that is adapt in order to adopt)... then we'd have a model that really fits the networked world.

This slidedeck (used previously on this blog, granted) reveals why I think that's important. Essentially, because it takes into account the importance of individual human intervention and relationships (in adhoc self-forming communities of purpose) in the spreading of messages today.

If you don't enable the co-creation side of the equation what you are effectively doing is using people as a funky new broadcast channel. It can work. I just don't think it's likely to work as well as the evolving network of two-way relationships that ceding control and sharing outcomes allows.

Lots to think about for MIDEM in January.

I am a DJ, I am what I play

Just added a new post to /Message. I am a DJ.
Music, mash-ups and the value of what evolves against what is planted. Come spin a record?

Who owns your comments?

Just added a new post on /message inspired by a brief exchange of tweets with Jeff Jarvis.