Unexpected this morning, an apology and explanation appeared in my inbox. Great piece of follow-up from a company that realise they handled the situation badly. Here is what Easyjet said:

Dear ANDREW BROWN ,

We are writing to say how sorry we are for the delay of your flight on 05/02/2012 to PRG airport. Regrettably this was caused by an unplanned airport closure which affected the schedule of the aircraft planned to operate your flight.

We recognise the significant inconvenience that this will have caused you and would like to assure you that we strive hard to provide the best possible service to all of our customers and hope that you will give us another chance in the future.

Yours sincerely

easyJet Customer Services

Apart from the fact that they are giving a totally different reason for the delay, what also strikes me as odd is that this kind of email would typically come with some monetary indication of their “regret” in recognition of the “significant inconvenience“. It’s no skin off my nose – Summit paid for my ticket – but I just think this rings a bit hollow.

So have Easyjet made matters better by sending an unsolicited apology and explanation or have they made it worse because it really was massively inconvenient (I arrived at my hotel at 3am and had a meeting at 7.30am) and yet they’ve made no effort to recognise this properly? The fact that I’m blogging about it might be telling – but I’d be interested to hear your views.

My wife – who is the global web content manager for a Swiss firm in Geneva (effectively Head of Global Web Content if the Swiss used those kind of titles) – recently received a really impressive and genuine recommendation. It’s worth reading: “”Having worked on web content projects for almost 15 years, I have never come across a project of the size and complexity as this: thousands of pieces of content to be tracked, a new content management system, stakeholders from around the globe to coordinate, and dozens of copywriters and translators. Beverley (Brown) has managed this effort with grace and intelligence, produces high quality content, and on top of that, is an absolute pleasure to work with.” May 31, 2011. Cindy Blue, User Experience Lead / Project Manager, Roundarch worked directly with Beverley at SGS.”. It’s a well deserved comment about Beverley who has made a massive contribution towards the delivery of a complex project.

It got me thinking about LinkedIn and particularly the value of Recommendations. Cindy – who was the project leader for a US web dev agency used by Beverley – is a credible source of a recommendation. She worked with Beverley on an agency/client basis until her phase of the project was completed. Cindy works for a large and very well-regarded US web development firm which again adds more weight to her words. The Recommendation isn’t (at this time) reciprocated, which suggests that there was no bartering or trade-off involved. The one-way recommendation indicates that these words were freely given. So, above and beyond the nice warm feeling it engenders, does this LinkedIn Recommendation have any value to Beverley?

We are living in the reputation economy. Reviews, unsolicited comments in blogs, forum discussions and social network sites all matter to businesses – and to people. Recruiters and HR departments crawl all over LinkedIn and similar sites to glean insights into a candidate’s suitability for a role. I know of some companies that even trawl personal Facebook pages to see what kind of person they might be letting lose inside their firm. So logic dictates that a Recommendation on LinkedIn should have some value.

A few years ago I set up an independent and impartial holiday cottage review website called MyCottageHoliday.co.uk. It’s been a reasonable success with around 5,000 UK properties and thousands of cottage reviews left by holidaymakers. I get great feedback from owners who tell me that the reviews often contribute significantly in the guest’s decision making process. Because holidaymakers can add a cottage to our system if it not already listed I occasionally have to field an irate phone call from an owner demanding that we remove the comment and claiming that the review is going to bring down their business. Of course we take this seriously and take whatever steps we must to ensure fair play. Once things are resolved I ask the owner if they would like to list their cottage themselves. The benefits include a more comprehensive description, links and contact details, a picture, automatic notification of new reviews and so on. I’m still staggered when the owner declines. Apart from the fact that we offer this for no charge, the most normal reason for refusing is something along the lines of “we don’t think reviews matter”. That’s odd – reviews mattered a few minutes before when one comment about the rickety furniture was going to put you out of business! So I know from first hand experience that online reviews matter and most of us in digital marketing know they matter too.

Coming back to LinkedIn then. Do I believe that Recommendations on LinkedIn matter? yes. Do I believe that they influence employers and recruiters? Yes. Am I convinced that all LinkedIn Recommendations are equal? No. I have no scientific reasons for believing this – I can just share with you my reactions to recommendations when I see them on a LinkedIn profile:

- Quantity. I’ve been on LinkedIn a long time. In my work I meet a lot of people and I like to think I do a pretty good job (just yesterday I received this completely unsolicited comment from a client “I wouldn’t want to do a pitch without you any more!”). But I only have a handful of LinkedIn Recommendations. If I come across a profile that is chock full of nice comments I get suspicious. We could be looking at a Recommendation Farmer.

- Reciprocation. I’ve noticed that some people with a hat full of recommendations often dish out as many as they receive. This makes me suspect that there is a certain amount of bartering going on – a you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. In Beverley’s case I’d like to think that she could give Cindy Blue a recommendation back if she deserved one (and by all accounts she’s shit hot at what she does). After all, LinkedIn is a social network and this is how it should function. But if each and every recommendation had a reciprocal comment ……. it just lacks credibility somehow. Mind you – if someone makes a nice comment about you and you don’t give one back, are you suggesting that they are too weak to deserve one and thereby committing a new social faux pas? We’ll see how that develops.

- Relationships. Who left the recommendation? Are they all colleagues? Do they all work for you (or are they dependent on you for business)? Some recommendations are easier to garner than others. So I look out to see if the glowing reference is coming from (a) a credible individual who is (b) well connected and (c) not likely to be making the recommendation for anything other than a genuine reason. I like to see recommendations from all angles – from the persons boss and their staff; from their colleagues and from suppliers; from industry specialists and from people outside the sector.

- Source. I give more credence to a comment from a credible industry source than to the persons family members. When a well connected and well respected individual makes a recommendation, it’s normally worth noting. After all, they are posting their reputation alongside that recommendation.

- No Recommendations. We all live in the digital world. Most people I come into contact with on a day to day basis are intimately involved in the digital space. If they don’t have ANY recommendations, that says as much about their sensitivity to the importance of social and business networks as any recommendation might.

- Givers & Takers. Tis better to give than to receive. A well balanced, socially sensitive, generous person is probably making more recommendations than they receive. Not just reciprocating, but recommending people who haven’t recommended them [note to self - sort this out]. Just a feeling I have, but someone who has freely issued a number of considered and helpful reviews to people with no obvious hope of anything in return might be quite a good person to deal with?

- Recommendation or Resume? A more subtle point perhaps, but you can tell a lot about a person by the way they write and by the content of their recommendation. I’ve often looked at LinkedIn Recommendations left by someone to get a feel for their style and approach. Some recommendations are staggeringly badly written and illogical. While others are little works of literary genius.

- One Voice. Closely related to the above point. Have you ever scanned someones recommendations and noticed – or just got the feeling – that they all have the same voice? A little like a Grey’s Anatomy script, every person leaving a recommendation seems to speak in the same way. Why might that be? I’m all for asking people who are going to recommend you to leave a comment that will help build a coherent picture of your skills, but writing all your recommendations yourself (and then perhaps getting your staff to add them to your profile!)? Not sure it’s a good plan.

So, back to Cindy’s recommendation of Beverley. Is it a lovely, flattering comment? Yes it is. Is it also credible and useful to people who might be considering working with or employing Beverley? I would say so. It’s one of just a few recommendations, so Beverley is not a farmer; it’s not reciprocated (which is no reflection on Ms Blue); there’s no obvious relationship, so no reason why Cindy would feel compelled to give a recommendation for anything other than a genuine reason; Cindy is clearly a very credible industry expert whose reputation is on the line if she recommends a dud; Beverley has recommended some other people already, so her approach to recommendations seems plausible; and finally, the tone of voice is very clearly different for both comments she has received. Given that Beverley’s line of work is copy-writing, she’s either very versatile (and therefore employable) or these are genuine and spontaneous comments. I know her quite well, and I can assure you that in this case they are genuine. But I won’t always be here to corroborate LinkedIn Recommendations for you.

Do LinkedIn Recommendations have a value? I think it’s clear that they do. Are all recommendations made equal. Very evidently not. Common sense and a pinch of salt are required ingredients when considering these bon mots. Now I’m off to send out some “spontaneous” and generous natured recommendations to balance my books a little!

My goodness though – he hasn’t been kind. If you know his work you’ll know that he has a keen eye for a flaw and a waspish sense of humour. And he didn’t go easy on me. Personally I think he has the chin too big. My wife tells me that the eyes are spot on (Really? REALLY!!!). Whatever I think, you can certainly recognise me in the drawing.

So I plan to use the image – after all, not everyone has a Morten Morland of themselves – as my profile picture. One day I may look back and think “Did I ever look that good?”.

***************************

Hi Andy, Hope the pitch process didn’t end up too exhausting!

My comment is broadly that…I felt that the brief was concise and instructive – and as such it provided the right platform for us to demonstrate how our skills and experiences would compliment the clients’ need. This is by no means always the case – we see too many briefs which feel like they’ve been designed to try and catch an agency out, and not showcase why we’d do a good job.

I also felt that your facilitation during the pitch was helpful from both agency and client perspective. You prompted for clarification when it was clear we’d not provided an answer that had been properly understood by the client – which is obviously useful for us presenting our case, but also for the client’s understanding of our offering.

Whatever the outcome of the pitch, you’re welcome to use the above. I’d support anything that promoted a less painful RFP process for the industry! [And no, sadly, they didn't win this particular piece of business, but they are a top search agency]

The Future of Privacy Forum who produced this data make the point that opt out rates have traditionally been low, so there is no surprise here. So will ad tracking grind to a halt? Will web users be gliding unmolested by highly “targeted” ads and messages? Of course not. But, does this mean we should stop looking for better ways to serve appropriate and highly relevant content to users. No. The day when legislators insist that the default setting for DNT’s is “on” rather than “off” will come.

Google began rolling out the international update in Feburary apparently with the intention of reducing rankings for sites of poor quality or with unoriginal content. Also called the “farmer” algorithm change, Panda may have been set loose in order to target content farms.

Demand Media recently denied that its traffic had been affected at all, but Experian Hitwise reports supplied to Forbes suggest that it’s declined by 40 percent since the beginning of the year. This seems to back up earlier data produced by Sistrix.

PC Mag report that in January, 0.57 percent of people navigated to a Demand Media site after visiting Google. But as of this month, that figure has shrunk to 0.34 percent.

Some got hit really badly – traffic to Answerbag down 80 percent. Traffic to eHow, Demand Media’s largest site, has dwindled by 29 percent, comprising just 0.29 percent of Google’s downstream traffic.

The slump has hurt Demand Media in other ways, too. The company’s stock has slipped by 40 percent, down to an all-time low of $14.05 per share on Tuesday. Business Insider turned the data into one of their ever-helpful charts:

PC Mag confiorm that other sites have been burned by Panda, too. “For example, Mahalo’s traffic from Google has dropped by 78 percent. Associated Content has seen a 61 percent decline, and Examiner.com traffic has decreased by 51 percent. Interestingly enough, tech news site Mashable has also seen a 40 percent slip in traffic”.

Demand Media have kept quiet but have a quarterly earnings report on May 5, and will be required to elaborate.

To see it done really badly – take a look at Land Rover’s full page ad from The Times. There self-levelling tax disc holder is neither funny nor smart. They have obviously thrown money at it and you get the sense that they all found it very amusing – but it misses for me. See more about the Land Rover Self-Levelling Tax Disc Holder.

“It’s United’s year, vote rival bosses.

The majority of Premier League managers believe Manchester United will win the title this season. A survey of 15 of the 20 top-flight bosses by the League Managers’ Association sponsor Barclays revealed that 80% backed United to land a record breaking 19th Championship. Only 7% felt Arsenal would overhaul Sir Alex Ferguson’s men, whom they trail by five points with a game in hand. The same proportion (7%) backed Chelsea to complete one of the great comebacks in championship history by closing the nine point gap – again with a game in hand – to United.”

Now correct me if I am wrong, but if one manager out of the 15 voted for a particular team, that would be 6.66% – or if you round it up, let’s call it 7%. So what the article above may be saying is that Arsene Wenger thinks Arsenal will win, Carlo Ancelotti thinks Chelsea will win, and all the others are backing Man United.

Unilever have a global digital roster that I believe includes Razorfish (Publicis), Euro RSCG, AKQA , Lean Mean Fighting Machine and Sapient [I'd be happy to hear from anyone if this is incorrect]. On top of this they have regional rosters as well.

I can entirely understand why Unilever want to reduce the number of relationships. They’ll be able to work more closely with agencies, bring them much closer to their way of seeing the world. As a company Unilever have always had long standing agency relationships – that they have been known to fight for if things threaten to go wrong – so it was bound to happen in the digital space too. This is bad news for many of the smaller or  regional digital agencies – having Unilever brands on the books gives you unileverage on your business development, but as always with big clients, these agencies should have had a plan in place should the worst happen.

In my past I was appointed to work with an agency who were entirely dependent on one major (though multi-brand) account. The brief was simple but challenging – reduce the dependence of the agency on this one client from 80% of revenue to less than 30% (it’s a whole other story about how the client became so disproportionately big and how we got the share of revenue below 30%). The agency (and particularly the brilliant CEO) back my strategy fully and ensured that everyone in the company understood what was going to happen and what the steps would be to get there. I have to say that the GADs on the large client account were also brilliant – they didn’t let the agency repositioning and the new account wins unsettle their client and kept the key decision-makers very close.

Within 12 months of these changes the client who had previously been so important for the agency did restructure. A major part of the marketing budget went ex-UK. It was no one’s fault. No one had done anything wrong. But a global restructuring meant that budgets simply evaporated. Of course this hit the agency (although they were in a position to retain more than some others on the roster) but they survived and were more stable because they had worked so hard to spread the client base and reduce their dependence on one mega account.

I suspect that Unilever will be helping the agencies they are going to let go. But if they have been on the ball, they will already have plans in place for this event.

I’d be very interested to hear the views of agency teams who have gone through the loss of a major brand/account. What did you do – or could you have done – to lessen the impact of the loss?

A few days ago the site was in trouble – it was timing out and appeared to users to be down. The problem was intermittent but cleared when the server was rebooted. We’ve been adding a lot of new functionality (much of it in the back-end) to improve site search results for users and to allow us to provide owners with far better stats (this with a view to adding a premium, paid service on top of the existing free service).

The problem was so bad that the tech guys couldn’t even get onto the control panel to see where the problem was in the log files. It turned out to be an SQL database issue where some routines were getting into a loop and jamming up the entire server. But that’s not the issue that really struck me the day we fixed the problem.

The 1and1 dedicated server support guy – a man in the US called Marc – was superb. I don’t just mean that he helped us sort out the issue, which he did, but also in the way he managed to calm everyone down. At one point I apologised for chewing up his time and putting him below his call rate stats. “I don’t even know if we have a call target” he told me. “If I sort out the issue first time, you won’t need to call back – which suits everyone”. Interesting! So we carried on in this manner for over an hour. In the long pauses whilst he accessed the server, painful step by step, I mentioned that he sounded a bit like Stephen Wright, the dry American comedian (if you don’t know him – you should give him a try). Without a pause, back at me came a classic SW gag delivered in voice that could have been the man. “I spilled spot remover on my dog” he told me. “Now he’s gone”.

It was a change of pace and a breaking of the tension that was comedically worthy of Stephen Wright himself. I couldn’t help but quote back my favourite, “I bought some powdered water, but I don’t know what to add”. Couldn’t do the voice though.

It turned out that not only was he a good mimic with superb comedy timing (and a voice over artist in the US it turns out), but he was a superb server tech head. If only all customer services departments could deliver this level of support. Server disaster turned into object lesson in customer support. Superb.