2009 February

how to merge CRM and CIM without getting too much information

/ February 26 2009, 0 comments

For the past few years CRM (Customer Relationship Management) has been the obvious model for any business interested in creating customer satisfaction. Today’s article in Dagens Media is however pointing out that the next step, CIM (Customer Involvement Management) is crucial for addressing the next generation consumers, that is – people that grew up with the opportunity to design their own identity and therefore there own brand identity. CIM is new, it’s in development. The term has just recently and sort of insufficient been addressed in Wikipedia. (I’ll give it another month or so and then we probably have a good account of the term.)

As much as I get excited about companies increasing interest in consumers, I am worried that they will take the easy way out by assembling focus groups or in some other “creative” way have …“to many chefs spoiling one soup”. An in depth ethnographic study will merge both CRM and CIM and instead of having a chaotic group of layman experts getting you puzzled about the waste amount of information you will receive, you will have experienced “translator” disentangle the material and pinpoint segmentation, positioning, development, communication, and so on.

a pleasure to “go native” with teenagers

/ February 19 2009, 0 comments

A current Inculture project have once again focused my attention on youngsters of today. As much as I get annoyed by the excessive commercial interest in youth culture – it is always a pleasure to “go native” with teenagers on the verge of becoming adults. They always, quite elegant, manage to simplify complicated issues. For instance, there are several debates about how difficult it is to define the term “knowledge”, it is… facts, skills, experience, good judgment, and so on. When I randomly asked that question to my informants, Hakan had no problems answering it:“Knowledge is what my father teaches me every day. He gives me genuine knowledge, tools to be a human being, just trying to get by in everyday life.” (Hakan, 16 years old)

the downside of the information society

/ February 13 2009, 0 comments

I talked at Daytona Session vol 2 yesterday. One of my themes was generation noll koll (in English it would be something like the generation that don’t know what’s going on, and it’s an allusion to their own definition of media, namely “to know what’s going on”, or in Swedish “att ha koll”). There are some studies published now that look at the affect of using the digital media technology. I mentioned for example The dumbest generation written by a professor in English at Emory University, Mark Bauerlain. Bauerlain talk about 18 to 30 years old Americans and that they lack in knowledge. Also in Axess number 9/2008 there was an interesting article about how the human brain is transformed by the overload of information. Nicholas Carr writes that in spite of the fact that the information is endless today many studies show that the knowledge is lowered. The super fast media (internet) lead to problems with concentration and deep reading and therefore also deep thinking. Why did I talk about this? Because when we do our ethnographic studies we can see this. In society in general the idea is that technology will improve and make things better, especially the media technology will lead to an “information super highway”. To talk about the downside of this media technology is not really political correct. But the thing is that we have to start to consider this. Most older people (35+) and companies today think that the digital generation is IT-literate; that the youngster without problem can orient themselves in all different types of web contexts and find information. That is not the case. Some of the young media users know perfectly well how to use MySpace, Facebook ect, to communicate with their friends and upload photos, but have severe difficulties finding information outside their “bubbles”. It’s a “generational cocoon” as Bauderlain writes. What I try to highlight is that companies who want to communicate with this group need to understand this and don’t say “let’s use the internet” as the only place to be. And in the long run it will of course be interesting to see if the knowledge capital will be lowered. But to say that a generation is dumber is to take it too far… But some media seems to like to make this connection (realtid.nu)!

the multicultural riddle

/ February 12 2009, 0 comments

Neither I can ignore the recent event in Rosengård. In short, currently there is a huge debate in Sweden about the values with in our police force. The incident that fueled the discussion was some recorded racists police statements, aimed at young people in a Swedish suburb populated by, well let’s call them “people with foreign background” – pretty much like my self. All of the sudden (and I guess finally?) Sweden is officially aware of, and might I say in a state of shock, that everyday racism is pretty common, especially amongst people with the right to practice power.

What interests me the most in this, is the simultaneous debate that goes on by many of us that belong to the categories that are being degraded. That is, “Why are people so surprised?” Cause the matter of the fact is we knew,(I am sure that there is some exceptions but) we have always known. And we have been trying to tell, but it never seems to be relevant enough. It’s on the agenda but is never prioritized. I understand that this multicultural riddle is difficult to tackle in Sweden but it’s not that tricky. The sooner you let us in the system, make sure that we are represented in all levels of workforces and so on, the sooner the alienation and segregation that creates hostility from both sides (no one is completely innocent here) the first steps of solving the riddle has been taken. Don’t just talk about it – do it!

daytona session 2

/ February 8 2009, 2 comments

The 12th of February Daytona Session Vol 2 will take place at Rival. I think everyone is welcome, but hurry, it is soon fully booked. Read my guest blog here.

the essence of “time” and “place”

/ February 5 2009, 1 comment

When doing ethnographic fieldwork the understanding of time and place is one of the most essential tools for a cultural analysis. I think it was Stuart Hall, and probably a whole bunch of other cultural theorists, who said that everything that people say is contextual and therefore positioned. So… in order to fully understand a statement, a reflection or an idea, the framework for that thought should be as interesting as the actual statement. That’s cultural analysis.

being in the known with the consumers

/ February 2 2009, 0 comments

Young consumers are extremely adaptive in their behaviour. They listen to their surroundings, social networks, media, celebrities ect, and learn how to consume. What other say is authentic and real is perceived as authentic. It is the social construction of real that is incorporated in their identity and their actions.

I never read the newspapers any more, why should I… so boring and uninteresting. But every day, several times actually, I read my favourite blogs. Only girls writing about what to wear, and what to buy … I know, it’s shallow but it’s so fun. Look here, today I saw that Blondinbella [a popular blog in Sweden] wrote about those pair of jeans [she shows a picture of jeans] and how authentic they are in US … for example, Paris Hilton have several pairs. Hope I found them today. (Elin 22 years out shopping)

To give a perception that consumers think they have taste by virtue of the fact that they are consuming something associated with good taste. Sometimes this perception is the only thing that the consumers experience as different!

Anna is surrounded by the ‘right’ brands, her clothing, her cosmetics and her technology. She puts the cosmetics in the room so all friends can see her good taste. She likes to hold her mobile phone in her hand instead of in her bag. “When I have it like this everyone can see that I have an iPhone, I mean, it’s important for me”. Her struggle with her parents to get an iPhone was not that hard, Anna only said the old magic words “everyone else has one”. (Anna 17 years)

The “symbolic creators”, describing those who make up, interpret or rework stories, songs, images, can by using the imagined and shifting perceptions of authenticity create a new authenticity out of a brand – to play with norms but totally related to the wanted target group. We do not need to assume shared understanding or shared frames of reference in any act of communication and/or consumption. All we need, and may assume, is that there are rough structures of equivalence between creators and consumers. It is all about being in the known with the consumers.