The last in a series of extracts from Martin Thomas’s new book Crowdsurfing: Surviving and Thriving in the Age of Consumer Empowerment

Some business leaders and politicians are natural crowd surfers.  They are pragmatic and flexible, without appearing to be weak.  They are endlessly fascinated by and curious about human behaviour and especially that of their customers.  They also have the ability to anticipate consumer demands and needs and then respond in the right way and at the right time.

Many of the entrepreneurs behind the world’s most successful new brands possess these crowd surfing skills.  But others have had to train themselves to be become crowd surfers, often having been forced to change their behaviour and that of the companies they lead.  Michael Dell by his own admission had to learn the hard way, after the blogging community – Jeff Jarvis’ “raging mob with pitchforks” – came close to bringing his business to its knees.

What type of personality is best suited to becoming a crowd surfer?  Writing on the subject of leadership, historian Niall Ferguson has described good leaders as “the ones that realise (a) I’m fallible, and (b) the world is chaotic.”   Echoing the sentiment expressed by Intel’s Andrew Grove in his best-selling book, ‘Only the paranoid survive’, Ferguson also suggests that, “insecurity is … an important part of being a good leader.  You have to be aware of your vulnerability.” (Business Strategy Review, Summer 2007)

One of the most common sentiments expressed by many business leaders is that things feel out of control.  For some this is highly disturbing – it conflicts with their idea that management is all about the imposition of control and the search for predictability and certainty.  Trying to find order amidst the chaos is the thing that keeps them awake at night.

Sir Martin Sorrell, the head of agency giant WPP, is clearly not one of them: “these days, complexity goes with the territory.  Anybody who believes that life is going to become simpler in this day and age needs to have their head examined.  In an increasingly networked world, the 21st century is not for tidy minds.  I think – certainly in our business – trying to simplify complexity actually ends up in destroying value; that keeping complexity adds to value.”  (Management Today, April 2008)

Leaders, such as Sorrell, appear to be the ones most likely to thrive in this new world – they are comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, possibly even chaos.  Tom Peters, as befitting the author of a book called ‘Thriving on chaos’, describes them as leaders who “love the mess” and defines ‘crappy leadership’ as “The leader who needs to be comfortably in control.”

Martin Thomas has spent 23 years running marketing communications agencies in PR, advertising, sponsorship, entertainment marketing and new media.  The blog of the book is www.crowdsurfing.net

In their new book, ‘Innocent: our story and some things we’ve learned‘ (published by Penguin), the founders of Innocent share some interesting insights about social media.

Today Innocent has a blog, films on YouTube, plenty of Flickr groups, Facebook fans and Twitter feeds. The founders say: ‘they’re all new ways in which we can have conversations with people. We like conversations, because they’re two way and if they’re good, you learn stuff. Basically, if there’s a new way in which our drinkers want to communicate with us, then we’ll get involved.’

Innocent, which has drawn criticism for its recent investment from Coke, has not been afraid to air its views and solicit comments from its customers on its blog. Blogging, Innocent says, has enabled the company to stay focused on its drinkers.

Innocent launched its Veg Pots in 2008 but did not foresee the reaction they would get from vegans on their blog. Vegans, who they thought would like their Veg Pots, started posting comments compalaining about the presence of honey in a couple of Veg Pots. As honey comes from bees, vegans could not consume a Veg Pot. In direct response, new recipes were developed by Innocent in response to the feedback and a new range was launched. ‘Just by being porous and listening, we turned a negative into a product improvement’say the founders of Innocent.

I’m a great fan of Innocent’s social media approach and the way they are using social media to connect better with their customers. They have grasped the fact that customers will talk about them through social media whether they like it or not, and that not conversing, not participating, is not an option. Customer loyalty is not a fixed commodity and I think that customer loyalty will be built increasingly on how companies listen, respond and carry out conversations through social media.

Obviously you  have to filter and condense and interpret the data you receive and be smart about what it is telling you. As Innocent says, ‘find the nuggets of pure gold that you can realistically action’.

Smartphones are taking social media to a new level with applications which let you update your Facebook account while you’re on the move.

As smartphone cameras become more powerful, it is possible to record video or snap shots and upload these directly to your facebook account.

Twitter applications are growing too. On the Nokia E63, for example, you can load an application called Twibble that lets you post your status and see the updates from those that you are following.

Some corporate execs wonder how on earth people have the time to use social media. Time? They can do social media whenever and wherever they want to….

The opportunities for brands/organisations are muliplying by the minute. Twitter and Facebook provide real-time publishing platforms which enable you to connect better to your key audiences. For example, say someone is unable to use a cash point machine, they could contact the bank’s customer service via Twitter and get a fast response. Sounds fanciful and too futuristic perhaps. But who had really heard of Twitter six months ago?!

As the wheel of influence  turns, it is the smart companies, the canny ones, who are going to realise first how the world is changing. How different approaches are required. How different thinking is needed.

A lot of our clients are getting interested in Twitter. To begin with we are encouraging them to take a full look at what Twitter is about, look at how other companies are using the service and consider how best it can support your business objectives. Get the strategy right first before implementing.

The PR team at Domino’s Pizza in the US are being held up as a case study of how to deal with a crisis with its origins in social media.

A couple of Domino’s employees posted a video on YouTube showing them doing some pretty unpleasant things to food about to be served to customers.

A piece in USA Today following the story highlights a checklist for PR teams managing social media crises.

Interestingly, the advice in the article mirrors the advice we’ve been giving to companies over the last few months. Make sure you have a reliable means of monitoring social media, set guidelines for staff use of social media and respond quickly to flash points.

See the USA Today piece here.