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COVER STORY
Hobson’s rules of engagement
1. Channels have fragmented
2. Sources of trust have shifted
affordable, you can do it now. Some of the tools that are out
3. Social media have arrived
there make it easy to reach out. You just have to use your
4. The consumer is in control
resources more efficiently and take away the restrictions on how
your people can build their connections with customers, even if
5. Content creation and distribution
it is outside the official way it is done in the organisation.”
have been democratised
He points to the example of Dell, which turned the PR disas-
ter that was
Ihatedell.net (where customers and employees alike
6. You must reach the new influencers
vented their frustration about the company and its customer
7. Transparency is required
service) into a success story by putting up its hands and joining
in the conversation online. “That’s a great example of how Dell
8. Engage in the conversation or fail
listened to what people were saying and it led to influential com-
to communicate.
mentators like Jeff Jarvis in the US turning from an enemy of Dell
into a champion of it.
“It was just part of the strategy, but all that online chat con-
tributed to the change. Indeed, it has led Dell to make changes
Useful links
not only with its blogs but also with initiatives like Idea Storm
whereby it encourages customers to tell it what it should be
doing next with its products, and it genuinely listens. It is the only
large tech company that is doing it like that, but there are other
www.nevillehobson.com
examples of big corporates that you wouldn’t think are capable
www.forimmediaterelease.biz
of making these major mindset shifts, but they are. We’re just not
seeing enough of it here in Europe, which is why I beat the drum
www.twitter.com
about this.”
www.qik.com
It all means that people in marketing, advertising and PR need
to get a grip of these new media, says Hobson. “Because if they
www.ideastorm.com
don’t, others will and they’ll end up being an irrelevance.
“Today, anyone can be a communicator. If you’re online you
can to some extent do the role that previously required a special-
ist. So what do we have to do to make ourselves seen to be valu-
able to the business? It’s not about writing press releases, it’s not
about doing marketing brochures. It’s about engaging with peo-
ple and influencing their opinions based on our knowledge and
skill in these new communication channels. We’ve now got more
tools that enable us to reach more people more precisely than
ever before. That has to be seen as an opportunity.”
Hobson’s advice is to get informed, and quickly. “You need to
be online, talking with other professionals. People need to sus-
‘
pend their competitive and proprietary thinking, and just join in
This is no longer the age the conversation within the industry.
of mass communications;
“You’ll find things that are both fascinating and scary out there,
but when your CEO or client calls you and says ‘Look
this is the age of niche
what our competitor is doing on Facebook’ or ‘I’ve just seen this
Qik video’, you don’t want to say ‘I’ve never even heard of
communications’ the stuff’.”
26 Marketing Age May/June ‘08
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