Convergence Culture

I’ve had a hugely busy couple of weeks, but in those discretionary moments when I'm not typing furiously into a laptop – usually while waiting for subway trains, streetcars or buses – I have been reading Henry Jenkin’s Convergence Culture. This is a core text for understanding the communications channels, forms, and communities in which brand culture is practiced.

The first two chapters are must-reads for those interested in brand culture. Jenkins opens his book with analyses of Survivor, The Apprentice, and American Idol, looking at the structure of the shows and the participation of their audiences. The engagement of the fan communities were engines for a broader, mass market enthusiasm. Of special interest were the ways the show creators interacted with the audiences, entering into a multidirectional/multimodal conversation played out across many channels and generating a vast knowledge and countless hours of involvement with the entertainment brands, and the sponsor brands as well.

The rest of the book is pure gold, too, but I’m going to massacre his elegant presentations with my summaries so you should probably just read it.

Dell Spot

At the YourSpace conference a few weeks back I learned about Dell’s experience with “the conversation economy”. Nearly three years ago blogger Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine wrote his "Dell Sucks" entry (with apologies to Dell for linking it again - this time it's meant well).

Jarvis had purchased a lemon and received poor customer service which he carefully documented. His post touched a nerve in the Internet population and was so highly referenced and linked by others that, for two years, when you searched "Dell" on Google, it returned the "Dell Sucks" post.

I’m sure they explored all their options first (probably including a number of calls to lawyers, search result gurus, and professional "cleaners”). In the end, though, Dell responded with a rational and focused improvement on customer service, launched the "Studio Dell" community and the "Ideastorm" innovation conversation. Three years after that post, customer satisfaction is up from 58% to 84% and negative blog posts down from 49% to 22%.

Enter Facebook. Dell has created their own "fan" page, called "Dell Spot".

There are only three conversations, with some 40 posts. 37 of those posts are in the conversation "Why Dell sucks".

Consumers who have had poor product and customer service experiences are venting loudly (as they would have any way) and arguments are being advanced in Dell’s defense. The dialogue seems to be resolving in to two camps. One group is portrayed as apologists for “poor customer service” but present a position that "cheap technology is just that: cheap. Pay more and expect more". The other is being portrayed as “whiners who want quality at no cost” but their shoddy customer service experiences cannot so easily be discounted.

All this is happening on the Dell page - it's quite amazing. There is a blast of criticism right there under their ads, but there are also Dell employees, happy Dell customers, and even tech support from other companies making cases quite often consumers are rude and entitled boneheads. Ironically, it was one of Dell's employees' responses that impressed me the least. Post #33 in reply to a good natured jab at Dell was met with the response "it was sony battery...fyi...dont talk with little knowledge duh!! LOL." Fortunately the two involved in the exchange were adept in not engaging in flame wars and resolved things amicably. Still, I would hope that people at my company would not insult a customer, but would rather meet a criticism from someone who is not an enemy – only re-stating headlines about known product problems – with something a little more balanced, and invite the person to join Studio Dell.

This is another example of how companies like Dell, who are playing in the conversation economy, need to invite these dialogues internally as well so their employees become well-informed, rational, articulate brand ambassadors.

Work is engaging

In the “engagement” grail quest, many companies confuse people having fun at work with a need to make the workplace more fun. The result is too often things like “Hawaiian shirt Fridays” and other good-time obligations that hum with awkwardness rather than any successful and sustainable “fun culture” initiatives.

Fun is what happens when we play. At work, having fun is not the objective. We come to do a job and to get paid. Sometimes we are lucky enough to get a sense of accomplishment, involvement, or even doing something good. We know how to have fun and do so in our own lives and it can be insulting when your company tells you that you aren't having enough fun doing it and then gives you some arbitrary new bar to jump so that you can prove you aren't just competent but that you're also a "team player".

That said, having fun at work is a possible outcome of a well-functioning workplace where people feel confident in themselves and their teams, clear on their role and how it delivers on “the big picture”, aware of their priorities, and recognized for their successes.

As a leader, you can make the workplace more fun by ensuring your team understands what it is to be focused on, that they have the tools, training, and structure to do it, that communications are clear, that dialogue is encouraged, and that you celebrate your successes. When this happens, the activity that is “the work” has the potential to become more play-like and fun grows organically from the relationships of the individuals involved.