Social Markets

Authentic, net-centric, media-independent

Assume your markets are social—people talk. Should you hire a PR firm to Twitter on your behalf? There's a conversation about your products online, but can you respond appropriately? Perhaps your brand is eroding because customer service levels are sub-par—do your customers think of you as a cinematic experience or a commodity transaction? How resilient is your customer connection?

Earning trust—far more difficult than earning a sale—requires more active listening than message broadcasting. Representing your organization online is a tricky business, how do you know you're on the right track? We've been using online social media daily since 1988 and building community collaboration tools since 1997. You won't need a map if you know the territory.

Social market case studies

  • Forging customer trust from a standing start
    First as a consultant and then as VP Product Development at a direct marketing information and technology provider, I helped launch the company in 2000 and the first products in 2001. I defined and delivered the market launch materials including a four-color brochure, product sheets, brochure website, trade-show booth, and promotional email. I positioned the company, wrote or co-wrote most of the marketing copy, and created strong relationships between a brand-new Internet startup and an established business marketplace. I researched and co-wrote a five-year product development strategy and managed emergent customer feature requests and engineering resources against that plan. The company simultaneously launched two advanced web applications that got great raves from the first customers which quickly brought the company to strong initial revenue. Today they thrive while three competitors have closed.
    Product management at the center of customer service
  • Building a social obligation machine
    I co-founded and co-created GiftEcology.com, an Internet-enabled Web 2.0 Kula gift exchange. This idea was based on Bronislaw Malinoski's 1922 anthropological study of reciprocal traveling gifts in the South Pacific islands. Although formed as a startup, the true work was deep research in two areas: 1) understanding the experience and limits of Internet communities acting in the physical world, and 2) understanding the human experience of de-materializing gifts through increased meaning-making and descriptive self-awareness. This effort laid the foundation stone for Open Museum Online, a non-profit participatory online exhibit space at OpenMuseum.org.
    Unintended consequences drive a solid follow-on product
  • Brand roll-out via emergent website development
    A project for an engineering school at a small Ivy League college developed a web communications development strategy to help align internal stakeholders (administration, faculty, staff, current students) and present a unified view into the unique character of the multi-disciplinary experience for external visitors (prospective undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, corporate recruitment, and government research sponsors). After a year-long re-branding effort a project was engaged to produce a rich, complex, and intensive 600-page website redesign as the first application of the brand.
    Bring everyone along with transparent design iteration
  • Representing institutional identity online
    For several non-profit organizations as well as several higher-education institutions, departments, and institutes, projects were launched to design, develop, and produce complex website presentations. Website work cuts to the core of an organization's internal and external identity, so website development workflow is informed by advanced processes used in organizational development. Websites are software, so website development applies the lessons learned from significant software development experience to complex web work. Research experience is useful in determining visitor expectations and testing for usability and accessibility.
    Websites are an organizational mirror where everyone sees something different

"Thank you for you excellent work on our redesign project. We are thrilled with the outcome and continue to receive positive feedback. Your insightful advice helped us create a user-centered architecture and navigation that make our site much easier to navigate. The user-testing sessions you helped run provided data that prompted us to make significant improvements. This user feedback gave us confidence we were headed in the right direction." —Alison Findon, Thayer School of Engineering

To learn more contact Michael J. Yacavone by email or telephone +1-802-526-2203.