WWRD – 36 things Ronnestam would do differently if he had control of brand that delivered broadband, telecom and television services

I am sitting on a plane between Chicago and Hawaii reading Jeff Jarvis book ‘What Would Google Do, WWGD’. (after seeing a recommendation on Daytonas site). This got in me in the mood to write a blog post that gives you my point of view what the big triple play telcos should do differently if I were to decide.
Comcast, Orange, RoadRunner, Telia, Comhem and all of the other telco that got their triple play services wired. These are all brands that got the consumers wired. They’re selling telecom, broadband and TV. However, very few of these brands got future marketing covered. They’re all stuck in history and outspending one another in traditional marketing, much to the joy of traditional advertising agencies that doesn’t do shit for them.
If you are among the top spenders in your country you can be sure that you’re being ‘recalled’. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the advertising you’re broadcasting.
After having worked with some of them and since that time my wet dream has always been to get control of their total budgets. The big telco’s has everything you need in your product portfolio when it comes to modernizing communication. But on the downside they have the most traditional set up and their management people seems to be born before the dinosaurs vanished from the face of the earth.
So, here are 36 things that Ronnestam would do if we had control of a telco brand

WWRD – ‘What Would Ronnestam Do’ ›› Telcos.

1. The first thing I would state would be – We are in the entertaining business, let’s act as such!
2. The second thing I would state is – We need to try new things, fail, fail again. But we need to learn and change.
3. I would force my brand to mentally go from selling products & services to sharing knowledge that was relevant from a communication perspective.
4. I would build a network of marketeers including people from Facebook, Nike, Apple, Dior, Porsche, WE, Bollywood etc. We would meet once every 3 month somewhere exotic and change ideas.
5. Our IT department would not be allowed to control anything that had something to do with communication. No more building interfaces on already decided technology. Technology should be build on interfaces that connects us with the consumer.
6. We would launch social press rooms much like the one Electrolux has.
7. The CEO of the company would have to treat social media better than he treats the finance market.
8. I wouldn’t have a marketing director on board that first and foremost didn’t understand what digital communication is all about.
9. I’d force the board of directors and the management team to look at Kevin Kelly’s 5000 days at Ted.
10. I’d make our company place a new communications guru like Seth Godin or Jeff Jarvis on the board and I would demand to be placed in the management group of the company.
11. Our customer service would be educated in social media and networks. Once they’re up and running I would rename them to customer friendlies.
12. I would compete with Hulu.com
13. I would compete with Google Docs & Gmail
14. I would compete with Rebtel & Skype
15. I would compete with Dropbox
16. I would compete with iTunes
17. Our start page would the entry to the tools we provide to our customers, not a portal where we sell stuff.
18. The brand I worked for would develop offline products and services that were connected to social networks.
19. At least 50% of the media budget (probably more) would go into creating an online presence where we offered people, small and large business help on how to use communication services to be more efficient, keep contact with friends and family and evolve as human beings.
20. I would make sure ever single piece of information on our own sites were searchable for bots.
21. I would have both management and people ‘on the floor’ blog on our sites
22. I would create a video driven help section that solved most problems people have (based on social interaction) with computers and mobiles. All videos would of course be found on YouTube, Vimeo, Blip etc etc.
23. I would focus on creating a presence everywhere online not a presence on our own website
24. Search optimization would be considered in everything we do. Even the naming of products.
25. Statistics manager would be strategic competence who would report to the board on a weekly basis. Every activity in the company should be taken from a statistics point of view.
26. We would monitor social networks, we would interact with them and we would listen to what they had to say.
27. I would initiate crowd sourced support. Probably through Get Satisfaction or similar.
28. I would implement open source in every possible place.
29. I would have our management team chat with customers via Bambuser once a month. They should be on Twitter on a daily basis.
30. We would not do press releases but instead do events where bloggers would be treated as bloggers. This means we’re putting on a show and people can download the material in whatever format they like.
31. We would offer all our own produced content to be distributed under Creative Commons agreements.
32. We would aim to set a profitability target for the company. Anything above that would be given to organizations and partners that supported our sustainability policy.
33. We would aim to cut the costs on every service we have.
34. Every marketing activity would initiate a process that generates automatized effects in social networks.
35. Our invoicing would include an up time quality index. If our services would not have met our goals our consumers would not pay 100% of their bills.
36. To interact with our company would be consider fun and entertaining.

So, there we are. Some thoughts on how to change the world of telecom. But why 36? Don’t know, i sort of felt it was time to press publish.
Ah, and I heard a great quote in a movie (that I can’t remember the name of) on the plane:

“Let’s focus where you end up. Not where you are and were”