Today I wanted to write about the relaunch of BrandKarma, which I have mentioned before as one of the examples of platforms that empower customers to be mindful consumers, and therefore help to create a private sector that also functions as a third pillar of social change in support of government and philanthropy. Its site gives a voice to the social community that cares about the world we live in, and the world we leave our kids. What’s more, it recognizes the right of every citizen or customer to have a say in which companies succeed and which are encouraged to change their behavior.

What BrandKarma did was to create a platform that made it easy for you to see the brands holistically, and to share your opinions about them wherever and whenever you want. In doing so, it redefines a customer’s relationship with brands. For too long, advertising has thrived on the basis of media monopolies that basically told us what to think, do and buy. Now, BrandKarma empowers consumers to judge brands on the basis of how good their products are, how they treat people and how they look after the planet. It does this with a view to a sustainable practice of capitalism, which ultimately is in the service of companies themselves because brands cannot survive in societies that fail.

To facilitate this new customer engagement, BrandKarma has done four things:

They give customers the power to rate companies so that brands start to value the social capital and influence that a brand has amongst its customer community.

By extension, it also gives customers a chance to make suggestions about how brands could make their products differently or provide an improved service.

In the third stage, it enables customers to amplify their opinions by leveraging social media to share the brands they support with others using channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Finally, BrandKarma allows you to make an informed purchasing decision by allowing you to compare brands by industry, and choose ethical, socially responsible products when you want to make a purchase.

All this input is then factored into what is an aggregate score for a brand, or what they call a “Karma Score”, and BrandKarma lists the top 100 rankings on its site. It further breaks out a rating for the product, people and planet peculiar to that brand, and tracks the relative standing of each brand over time, incentivizing brands to upgrade their commitment to sustainability.

It’s no accident that a platform such as BrandKarma was developed by veteran brander himself, Craig Davis. The fact that the platform was started by someone who has worked for years in the service of brands is instructive as to the importance of social currency towards profitability and brand reputation in the future. Companies of all types would be well-advised to respond to the drivers that inform BrandKarma, and work with the platform itself to inspire customer loyalty, goodwill and profits. In doing so, they will not only insure their own well-being, they will improve society at large and the sustainability of the planet, not just for themselves, but for generations to come.

Do you think it’s important for consumers to tell brands what they think? What are the best ways you think BrandKarma can get others involved in its platform?

One of the most fascinating aspects about the launch of Google+ is the way it reframes how we, as individuals, interact with our communities. As Brian Solis so rightly points out, the initial Facebook model of creating a single social graph of up to 5000 friends must now be compared to a series of what Google+ calls ‘circles’ that expand and contract as we pass through various life stages, jobs, relationships and experiences in our lives.

This contrast is very instructive as to the future, and is particularly important for brands trying to engage with their customer communities. By now, most brands have overcome their reticence to participate in social media, and have exhausted their knee-jerk reaction to buy their way to a sizable social footprint comparable to their competitors. But brands now face more complex challenges.

The framing of how we relate to each other within and across social media platforms will continue to become more sophisticated and nuanced in their expression of how we structure our relationships in our real world lives. Whether or not users have the time or patience to build out their contacts lists into ‘circles’ or any other format is yet to be seen, but this does change the fact that brands must make sense of these dynamics if they are to engage and expand their customer base online. Ultimately, it’s possible that social media platforms will be designed as templates that the users themselves customize in terms of the best way to express their community and experience of life, and brands will have to simply follow suit.

What this means for marketing is significant. It is already challenging to engage and maintain the interest of your customers in real time across multiple platforms, especially as many brands are still fighting the inertia that inevitably comes with hierarchical corporate structures that were designed with control in mind and therefore don’t lend themselves to real time engagement. But now, as the social business marketplace becomes increasingly fragmented into media specific, micro-communities (for example Path or Instagram), brands face the prospect of reaching an increasingly fractured audiences engaged in multiple conversations within different communities in real time.

Perhaps the most effective way to describe the approach a brand must take is to think of themselves as social cartographers. By that I mean that brands must simultaneously inspire, engage and maintain a series of conversations taking place within certain cultural landscape specific to their business goal. To achieve this brands must define the agenda for the map in terms of their business strategy, identify characteristics of the cultural landscape relevant to the map’s purpose and then simplify execution by eliminating elements that are not.

With map in hand, a brand must then engage in a series of targeted conversations that each achieve sufficient resonance that they intersect and amplify each other to create broad based cultural impact. If one was to create a metaphor for what an effective campaign might look like based on Google+ circles, you can imagine what rain looks like on a pond of water. Each drop creates its own circle of impact and ripple effect, and each of those circles impact each other, creating movement on the surface of the water.

It’s hard to know how long it will be before a new social media platform gains sufficient adoption to reframe how we relate online. And it’s still uncertain as to whether Google+ will reach this threshold. But as the half-life of technology shrinks, the distance between the way brands traditionally use advertising and how their customers like to relate to each other, is growing larger every day. As such, brands need to fully engage with social media, both internally and externally. That way they can play an active role in shaping the way conversations are framed and maintain their real-time share of voice giving them some sense of control in a fast-changing business marketplace.

What’s your image of the future of social networking? Do you prefer the approach taken by Facebook or Google+?

As the individual becomes the filter through which all information must pass, the onus for brands to be defined and social becomes acute. Here’s why.

Till now, search was outward facing. When you wanted to find something you entered its name and in most cases, relied on Google to provide a list of ranked links to that topic.But now search, and the way information is structured and accessed is becoming increasingly inward facing with the individual as the filter. That means when you visit a website the ads will reflect brands, topics or causes that you have demonstrated a past interest in through what you searched and shared. In short, your experience of the web is being built from the individual out, in circles as Valeria Maltioni rightly explains.

With this shift in informational structure and emphasis in mind, what happens to the undefined brand? How does a brand that either stands for nothing, or more commonly, several things at once, pass through the individual filter of the personalized web?

Brands reluctant to do the hard work of defining what they stand for and integrating that within their organization, or brands that mistakes social technology as an end in itself rather than as tools to connect people emotionally, run the very real risk of becoming invisible and obsolete. Put simply, brands must accept that they are no longer the destination. Their customer is. And as such, self-definition is a critical tools through which your brand, and its products and services, can reach it target audience.

If you doubt the importance of this shift, you need only look at how much competition there is for the potential customer’s attention these days and platforms (like SocialVibe) or strategies (like bonuses, rewards or coupons) that are used to command it.

Brands are facing a new competitive landscape in which self-definition, core values and purpose will increasingly define their ability to reach customers that only allow what is meaningful in their lives to pass through their filter.

At the 4A’s conference this year, Unilever CMO Keith Weed asserted that “the customers are in charge” of the conversation. The advent of Google+ and the emergence of the personalized web means this is more true than ever. Brands, and their advertising partners, must wake up to this challenge and define themselves with clarity, consistency and authenticity. Otherwise they just might find themselves shouting in a ghost town.

Do you believe the customer is increasingly in control? How do you think brands must respond to the personalized web?

I recently had the great pleasure of chatting with Maril MacDonald, CEO of Gagen MacDonald, who is spear-heading a truly exciting new leadership program called, ‘Let Go and Lead.’ Any transformative shift in the way business must start with new leadership. Here’s what Maril had to share about the project.

SM: Hi, I’m Simon Mainwaring, and I have the great pleasure of being with Maril MacDonald of Gagen MacDonald, which is a fantastic leadership and employee engagement firm here in Chicago. I wanted to talk to her today about a new project she has, which is all about leadership, and what that looks like in the new social business marketplace. Maril, tell us a little bit about your project, Let Go and Lead.

MM: Let Go and Lead is centered on an interesting paradox that leaders are facing today: the idea of doing your job, doing what you were hired to do while allowing others to participate in that job with you. I became very interested in this working with corporate leaders in all levels, people with a mission and a passion, and who has followers.

SM: What would your definition of a leader be?

MM: My definition is simply someone how has followers. It could be an assembly man on a plant floor, it could be the CEO, head of marketing, someone trying to drive innovation in an R&D land. They are people with a mission, vision, passion and cause, and who want to engage others behind them.

SM: So this Let Go and Lead project is really for any one of those types of people?

MM: Absolutely.

SM: So who are some of the people that you’ve spoken to in this project?

MM: What I was really interested in is getting out of breathing my own air and stewing in my own soup, so to speak. So I thought it would be fun to tap into people from different walks of life, and who were doing a lot of work in the areas that most interested me. For example, storytelling, we talked with Mitch Elbom, the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. We talked with Bruce Mau, who started in Toronto as a designer. First he was in the world of design, now he wants to design the world. He’s been engaging people all around the world through a process called Massive Change, bringing together leaders to make the world a better place. Julio Patino, who is the dean of engineering at Northwestern University, and who’s passion is the intersection of art, technology and science. Stephanie Pace Marshall, who is one of the leading thinkers on education reform. She founded the Institute of Math and Science. There have been very different kinds of people who have been bringing unique perspectives and thoughts so that we can take them and share with one another to create something new.

SM: With the intersection of all these types of leaders, have you discovered things that have resonated with you that you didn’t expect, or are there any commonalities between what they’re saying?

MM: One of the key commonalities is the general acceptance that we have a lot to let go of. That each of us as individuals have a lot of stuff, and a lot of that stuff comes to us honestly because many of us were brought up through a very strict management discipline, which is all about control, it’s about maintaining, harmony and it’s about stability. That’s not the world we’re in now. We’re in a world that’s rapidly changing.  It’s beyond us, it’s bigger than us, and so many of us get stuck because we try to keep the opportunity to a size that we can manage it, rather than growing by busting it open and going with it. It’s been really interesting to talk to all these people.

SM: So as you roll this out, what will it look like? In terms of people wanting to compartmentalize things in a familiar way, what form will it take? How do you hope people will engage with the project?

MM: The interesting thing is that I was really gripped by ‘what would it look like’ but then I decided to let go. It started as a book. It wasn’t taking off in a way that felt right, so I decided to open it up, bring in the best thinking out there, and let the idea go. So the goal is this: I’m going to set up a website, start up a blog, post video interviews online, launch this project with a variety of conversations, invite everyone else to participate in the conversation, and let’s see what we can create for ourselves.

SM: Your hope for the result, the community that builds around it: what are you hoping to offer them and what do you want back?

MM: What I hope to offer them is an opportunity to participate in the struggle we all live in. Then to share with one another a variety of ideas. We set this up around certain topics like storytelling, building critical mass, engaging people around an irresistible idea, and beginning to talk about how we can learn from one another, not only in terms of how we might think differently, but also the practical tools on how to get there. The biggest thing right now is to get people back to the blog and website so we can start a variety of conversations that may be celebrated by me, but not controlled by me.  That’s my ultimate goal.

SM:  So if people wanted to tap into the project and have a look at these interviews, where should they go.

MM:  Go to letgoandlead.com and join the conversation.

Thanks so much to Maril for her time and the whole team at Gagen MacDonald for putting so much energy and heart into such an important topic.

SM: Hi I’m Simon Mainwaring, and today I have the pleasure of sitting here with Guy Kawasaki, who’s tenth book, Enchantment, was a real revelation to me because what he did was to personalize and explain how brands need to humanize themselves in new ways in order to become an enchanting brand. Guy, thanks for being here. What I want to talk about specifically is that a lot of the C-suite and marketing executives are facing a challenge: how do they humanize themselves, how do they make themselves more available and how do they make themselves into enchanting brands? Where do they begin?

GK: The three pillars of enchanting brands are likability, trustworthiness and quality.  I’ll give you three companies that any brand can aspire to.  You want the likability of Virgin or Richard Branson.  First time I met him he asked if I flew Virgin. I said ‘No, I fly United.’ He got on his knees and started polishing my shoes with his jacket. That’s likability. For trustworthiness, think of Zappos. Millions of women trust Zappos enough to buy shoes sight unseen. Think about that. That’s real trust. Then for the quality product, that’s Apple. Great products whether it’s Macintosh, iPod, iPad or anything. So if you question or are hesitant to think of making your company enchanting, just look at those companies. Wouldn’t you want to be the Zappos, Apple or Virgin of your segment?

SM: Absolutely. And what I think a lot of C-suite executives may not realize is that the benefits are often unseen. For example, it makes a big difference to employee engagement: how much they like to work at that company and how effective they will be as word-of-mouth advertisers. What are some of the benefits you see with an enchanting brand with their employees?

GK: I think the key to enchanting an employee is that you show them that, by working for your organization, you acquire what Daniel Pink describes as MAP, which is mastery (go to a company, master new skills), autonomy (working independently with no one breathing down your neck), and purpose (working towards a higher purpose than simply making a buck). So when you have an enchanted employee, that employee radiates that kind of delight to the customer. It’s very hard to imagine an angry employee creating good customer relations. Next time you fly, ask yourself, is this employee enchanted with the airline they work with.

SM: This necessarily implies, both for leadership and for employees, a requirement that they be more available and more human with their customers, which implies a lack of control. This can be very scary for the corporate animal. How would you say a brand can handle this shift, and how would they moderate that relationship in real time?

GK: It takes a leap of faith, particularly for a publicly traded company that is worried about saying anything about earnings or new products. Most companies have probably taken that leap with social media. Once you start down the path of Twitter and Facebook, you’re already giving up or—depending on how you look at it—losing control. The first step is to embrace social media. I can’t tell you that every CEO will have good Facebook or Twitter updates, but it’s the sentiment. You want to be likable and trustworthy and, maybe not the CEO, but the brand has to stand for that.

SM:  And the cost for being disingenuous about this or using it as a marketing ploy would be what?

GK: I don‘t think it will last very long. It may last only until the next downturn where you decide that social media was a fad and you can’t prove any ROI, so you throw it out. Of course, that’s truly burning a bridge. People need to stop thinking of social media as an experiment, or something that you do besides the other marketing. I think it’s core to marketing at this point. An analogy would be that, in the ‘70s, Tom Peters wrote a book called In Search of Excellence.  I think he changed many people’s expectations for what a company should be, from strictly surviving to becoming excellent. What I would like to do with my book Enchantment is change people’s expectations of personal or customer relationships, to go from engagement to enchantment. That’s the next level.

SM:  It’s such an important, qualitative difference. Perhaps one of the things that I found most inspiring about the book was the alignment of brands with their higher purpose.  You see the Wal-Mart Sustainability Index, Starbucks Shared Planet, Nike Green Xchange, Proctor and Gamble Click for Water, and so on. Even with these leadership examples, companies still struggle to get their head around why they need to authentically bring their core values to life. What do you see in the future for brands, and how do they use this?

GK: I think this is one of the least expensive ways to foster enchantment, trustworthiness and likability. I’m not advocating that you create an enchantment campaign. I’m not saying this is the only way to succeed. I’m saying it’s one way to succeed, and it’s one of the most pleasant ways to succeed. It takes less energy to be enchanting. To be disenchanting or arrogant or mean takes way more energy. You have to remember who you screwed, how you screwed them, why you screwed them. Too much energy.

SM: In a sense, technology is teaching us to be human again. We’re empathizing with each other. Brands are becoming more human. If you were to give one piece of advice to a leader who wants to take advantage of the social business marketplace, turn around their company, inspire their community to go to work for them, what would you say it would be?

GK: The starting point is to look at the Facebook fan pages and Twitter streams of companies like Virgin America, Starbucks and Ford to see that these are large, publicly traded companies, and yet they can engage and enchant. If those companies can do it, any company can do it.

SM:  Well, thank you for your time, Guy.  Your book, Enchantment, is so inspiring to me because it really articulates the qualitative difference that we need to see from brands now so that they can take advantage of the social business marketplace.

Can you name some other enchanting brands? Who is the most enchanting for you?

I recently got a great post comment from @mikescheiner that I thought was extremely well put. He wrote:

“What most brands fail to understand is the perception you produce internally is reflected externally.”

This is spot on and I wanted to discuss how social media can be used to rally company employees around their brand, its values and purpose.  For what is often overlooked is that employees are a brand’s first line of marketing, its original sales force that is consciously or unconsciously providing word of mouth advertising as an extension of their job.

So how does a company use social media for internal alignment? Here are a few suggestions:

Video Blogging: Each month a CEO can create a video post that speaks to the company’s progress, employee issues and reiterate the brand’s core values.

Intranet: Using the blog, email, Facebook and twitter, management can create a safe space for employees to have a voice in terms of new ideas, responses to proposed initiatives and, ideally, offer negative feedback.

Employee Content: In line with the core values of the brand, employees should be given the chance to post content that reflects what they care about. For instance, videos of them volunteering at an animal shelter or running for a cure for cancer. If these are consistent with the brand’s overarching values it shows congruency between the company and proves that management values those efforts.

Used correctly these tools can be transformative within an organization both inside and outside the company walls (as Brian Solis discusses in detail here and in Engage.) But let’s take one example of what a company might do to show you how it operates internally.

Leap cr (pictured above) is a fantastic new platform that makes it super easy for corporations to mobilize their employee base in the service of causes that are meaningful to the brand and employees. They’ve created a simple interface that includes a company dashboard that allows employees to choose from over 350 charities and an endless array of simple, fun and one-off  volunteering events. They then manage all the logistics of participation for a minimal fee. Employees can track and interact across the dashboard and social networks about what their colleagues are doing and compete to see who’s on top of the leader board. Then at the end of it all, management receives insightful reporting that they can use internally or for PR purposes.

Concepts like Leap cr are so brilliant because they offer mangement, employees and the community so many benefits. Let’s consider how:

HR: When employees understand their role and the purpose of the company, this improves employee happiness, loyalty and retention.

CSR: The company not only contributes to the world at large but it also creates a healthier business environment.

PR: Employees become a more effective marketing tool for the brand and management gets to market the brand’s contribution.

P&L: Employee satisfaction, effective team building and a healthier business environment all contribute to corporate savings and returns.

Leadership brands are already deep diving into social media to reach consumers. What they must also do is also leverage these tools within their own walls to double the impact of such efforts. To reach Leap cr visit www.leapcr.com and to stay  in touch with their U.S. roll-out, follow @havefundogood and @leapanywhere.

Have you seen any good examples of brands using social media internally? What other ways can you imagine it could be used?