The Conversation Manager [Paperback]

The Conversation Manager - Steven Van Belleghem

A networked world
The conversation manager discusses how the internet evolved from an information platform towards a social phenomenon where people easily find like-minded people to share their daily experiences with brands and companies. The post-modern nomad builds the online image of brands together with other customers and together they have a great impact. Today, everyone is a medium.

Traditional marketing is dead
Together with this, he describes how traditional advertisers are very aware of this, but they have barely changed their attitude. They keep on making advertising on the traditional way. Instead the author discusses, they have to become Conversation Managers.
The new decision making process of the consumer requires a new sales strategy. Conversation Managers do not use the traditional approach where one assumed that the consumer does not have a lot of information about a product.

They have learned from the past, where mass media created a gap between sales persons and their customers. When customers were informed with `smart' information about a product, and where customers who didn't agree could not express their voice.
Today a company that isn't transparent in their business, having authentic good intentions with their customers will pay cash in the nowadays networked society. Today mass media should be used differently, but it still can be used to strengthen the word-of-mouth-message tremendous.

From transparency to conversation

Bridging this gap, advertisers will have to get to learn their customers again. The task of the Conversation Manager is to have a continuous dialogue with the customer, who has become a starting point of advertisement. Together with their customers they have to co-create a long-term conversation instead of executing one-way advertisement.
In this long-term conversation, one must try minimize the gap between brand identity and the (aspirational) identity of the consumer, this by listening to important customers who express their voice. If a consumer perceives his voice is being heard, the online narrative and the general perception of the brand will improve which in turn will effectuate in higher sales.

Activating instead of advertising
Also different from the past is that the main target of the Conversation Manager will be activating people instead of advertising the brand. They have to try to convince the selected target group to spread the message within their own network, and in some cases to personally produce the content.

The biggest danger of this is activation because of the activation. This will not improve the sales of a brand. A campaign with a big viral effect, just because of the viral effect has to be avoided. Activation is successful when following dimensions are present:
- the `right' consumers have to spread the message
- they have to spread it because of the right motivation
- and the subject of the narrative has to be brand or the product

To spread the advertisement, the message has to have a certain sticky-factor. It has to be a story that people easily remember by making it authentic, surprising, simple, emotional and concrete. These elements make it easier to transmit to a friend.

The Conversation manager versus Imagineering
Conversation Management has been conceived enthusiast in the Belgian marketing world. The name Conversation Management (capital C, capital M) is smart, and everybody can imagine what this can mean for his or her own organisation. It has as lot of common ground with Imagineering I will discuss bellow.

Co-creation vs conversation
Together with imagineering, the Conversation Manager acknowledges the growing power of the new consumer, whose voice grew tremendous in a networked world. While imagineers value co-creation with their customers, the Conversation manager also puts - as the name says - the conversation with their customers central in their activity.
The artefact and the high concept take a central place in the Imagineering process. These concepts are designed to create focus in the narrative among all stakeholders. Opportunities emerge because it allows actions of individuals.
This is also the case in companies that put Conversation Management in practice. Ideas can come from the bottom of organisations and more importantly from outside the organisation.

Organizational change
The book was written very approachable, and the smart naming made it very popular among senior managers who every since have been using it as a guideline for their business.
Hence, the introduction of Conversation Managers is not experienced as an add-on but has gone along with organizational change that affected companies as a whole. The introduction of Conversation Management shares this with the Imagineering roadmap that takes businesses trough a whole roadmap of organizational change.

Artefact versus the Conversation manager
So both sciences advertise organizational change of companies in a networked era. But while they have a lot in common, they have an important different focus.
It is the purpose of imagineering to create an artefact or high concept, based on shared values of all stakeholders. This mostly goes along with a creation process based upon old values and existing high points of an organisation.
Conversation management focuses on how marketers should become internal Conversation Managers. It created an awareness of the importance of the online narrative that exists about brands and companies, which goes along with new job descriptions of people inside the company.

Andy Bunarto

A great read. The book is packed with tips and strategies designed to help marketers start their new roles as conversation managers.

I learnt that this book is now also available as a book app for iPad. The app provides marketers with pictures, videos, presentations and interesting web links to be even better equipped to enter into conversation with consumers. The app also features exclusive videos in which author Steven Van Belleghem provides a brief summary of the chapters of the book.
The app can be found at [...]