In a world where anybody with an internet connection can speak to the rest of mankind, the only way to establish your credibility is through engaging people in a valuable conversation. This is valid for you and me, but also for companies.
The old marketing based on telling us why a company is better than its competitors is dead. In the old way we were ‘consumers’, which means we just had to do one thing: consume. On the top of being consumers, we were also something else: believers. We believed Starbucks had the best coffee because we were told so, only to be told later that maybe their coffee wasn’t that great after all. Some people had faith in their favorite brand. Companies preached to get new believers.
Today is different. Some companies engage us in conversations (have a look at what these guys do: Balsamiq, Salesforce, American Express, 37 signals). They are eager to listen to our opinion and share their knowledge with us. They want us to like their Facebook page, subscribe to their blogs, leave comments, share content with others. Today companies feel more real than ever before. Sometimes, if they are really good at engaging, we may start treating them like friends. We help them, we listen to them, we talk to them, we give advice, we hang out. In a nutshell, we look for them.
The fear
Unfortunately, not all companies behave like that. Many of them are still scared of social media. You can find them in Facebook because that’s where people hang out nowadays, but they don’t love it. They think: ‘What are we going to do if people trash our products? Imagine the bad publicity’. Of course this is plain stupid and proves they still apply old thinking to new tools.
Those companies fear their own customers. But wait a second. Isn’t a customer someone who decided that out of all alternatives company X was the best choice for him? Are you telling me companies are scared of people who chose them?
The truth is, many companies are scared of their own laziness and lies. They can no longer hide behind stupid excuses for faulty products, and they’d rather think of a new damage control process than come clean with their customers. They think: ‘How are we going to control bad publicity?’, before they even create any social media presence. They think of social media as a tool to push out their message exactly like they would on TV or magazine ads. They don’t want a dialogue, they just want us to listen.
The power of failure
Let’s shout the biggest truth of all times: Everyone fails! I never met anybody who said: ‘I never failed in my entire life’. Everyone fails, and so do companies. Sooner or later your favorite company will make a mistake. You’ll be disappointed and angry. And here’s what you should do.
If the company constantly told you how they’re better than anybody else, you should shout: ‘You’re liars!’ If the company kept you engaged like a friend, and proved their honesty and transparency by setting up a dialogue with you, you should say: ‘It’s ok, shit happens. What can I do to get you back on your feet?’.
If friends fail, people are willing to help them. If companies don’t start being people’s friends, but continue hiding behind laziness and lies, they will always have someone to fear.
Who do you want to be?
Do you lie at work? How many times did you tell your boss: ‘Oh yes, I finished that report’, while wondering what he’s talking about? How many times did you blame someone else for your mistakes?
If you do that, know that your lies and laziness will be crushed at your first failure. If, on the other hand, you engage your colleagues and don’t hide behind lies you will always be trusted. If there is one thing I’m sure of, it’s that people learn much more from failure than from success.
Sometimes when I run workshops I say: ‘Let’s put the shit on the table’, and I ask everybody to speak for 5 minutes about one big mistake they committed and what they learned from it. People learn little from success, but they learn a lot from failure, even if it’s not their own. Then I conclude with: ‘You should be averse to failing, but you shouldn’t be averse to talking about your failures’.
I am going to ask you to put your shit on the table now. What was your biggest mistake at work and what did you learn from it?