Tribesourcing is our strategic work process through which a company can add value to their brand by developing and collaborating through the different tribes connected to the company.
You can get an introduction by looking at the slide show below or read more in details below the slide show on this page.
The American author Seth Godin, who is behind the bestsellers Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, and The Dip, is one of the many to use a traditional concept in a new context: tribe.
”A tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader and an idea. For millions of years, humans have joined tribes.” ”Now the internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time. Those blogs and social networking sites are helping existing tribes get bigger and enabling new tribes to be born-groups of ten or ten million who care about their iPhones, or a political campaign, or a new way to fight global warming.” Seth Godin: ’Tribes’, 2008
An attitude, an idea, a cause, a product or a company can grow bigger and more powerful through a community or a tribe. People who are passionate about a cause or a brand already exist, but they might not be part of a community or a tribe. That’s why our job is to create a community where ideas and commitment thrive. We live in a world of connectedness where we can interact with communities across geographical borders. Because of this, companies have to start viewing their target audience, employees, and stakeholders in new ways. They have to create flourishing conditions for tribes that can help their cause or brand as well as giving back to those committed tribe members that contribute to the brand or product.
Our belief is that companies can add more value by understanding and exploiting the gigantic potential surrounding tribes.
Our definition of tribesourcing, “Engaging, involving, motivating and leading a tribe to co-create and collaborate on performing a task with the ambition to create a desirable and valuable output”.
The inspiration for the sourcing part in tribesourcing comes from CrowdSourcing – using an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call to perform a task. But there’s a difference between crowdsourcing and tribesourcing. Crowdsourcing describes the process of asking a large, undefined group of people for help, whereas tribesourcing describes the process of identifying and analysing different tribes in order to use these in sourcing processes.
A company can have a number of different tribes – for example:
- A tribe of employees who are connected through a company, or a group of employees who are connected through a good manager.
- A tribe of talented people who are looking for new, professional challenges; there are many places to look for new challenges but a large tribe may want to work for Google.
- A tribe of people that think your company’s product is the one and only product that works for them; there are many types of shoes but there might be a large tribe interested in sneakers.
- A tribe that is connected through your brand; there are many sneakers brands but a large tribe may be interested in Nike. -
- A tribe that is connected through social responsibility; there are many beauty brands but a there is a large tribe connected through Doves Self Esteem Fund.
You can add great value to your company through tribesourcing. The right strategy is created by choosing and analysing a tribe, and then finally, the actual sourcing. The thought behind tribesourcing is that you can develop any part of your company through the use of tribes; products, PR, employer satisfaction, recruiting, creating a CSR strategy and so on.
Tribesourcing is all about adjusting to the way in which the world changes and the way that we, as individuals, change with it.
In the highly praised book Socialnomics, Erik Qualman, Global Vice President of Online Marketing at EF Education, describes the change that has happened in marketing philosophy:
Marketer’s Philosophy Yesterday
- It’s all about the sex and sizzle of the message and brand imagery.
- It’s all about the message; good marketers can sell anything.
- We know what is right for the customers – we are doing the customer a service because they really don’t know what they want.
- We develop products and messaging in house and then disperse them into public.
’Marketer’s Philosophy Today
- It’s important to listen and respond to customer needs.
- It’s all about the product; it’s necessary to be in constant communication with all other departments.
- We never know what is exactly right for the customers; that is why we are constantly asking and making adjustments because we usually don’t get it right the first time.
- Often our customers will market the product better than we can; if we can leverage one of their ideas, then it is beneficial to everyone.
Does this make sense? It did for Dell.
Because Dell was one of the first brands to experience how the world has changed and because they have learned the hard way, they are now one of the best cases on how to improve a brand.
It all started with the now famous blogger, Jeff Jarvis, who criticised Dell’s costumer service. He used the term ‘Dell Hell’ which quickly became known in the tribe surrounding Dell and social media. Dell was very slow to react which allowed the tribe’s voice to grow loud and powerful. Ultimately, this led to Dell losing costumers along with their good reputation.
Today, Dell is a very good case on tribesourcing because of the way they interact with their tribe. In the book, Word of Mouth Marketing – How Smart Companies Get People Talking, Andy Sernovits describes some of the initiatives Dell has created:
The Company blogs with a real human voice that makes it accessible and open – in English, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese and Norwegian. Why Norwegian? Because a talented employee wanted it.
- Dell´s 35 ”Community Ambassadors” spend their days online talking, sharing and solving problems. These folks are out on the front lines, building goodwill and finding new friends for the company. The program easily pays for itself by pre-empting or quickly resolving customer service problems.
- Bob Pearson, Dell’s Vice President of Communities and Conversations, makes sure the company stays committed at the highest level and for the long term.
- Dell talks to its customers wherever they want to talk. The Dell Crew jumps into any new community that its customers decide to use, such as Facebook, Second Life, Twitter or whatever comes next.
- Anyone can suggest ideas for the company, comment on them and vote for their favorites. Almost 10,000 ideas have been submitted, and more than 65,000 people have voted for them. That´s a lot of customer love and support, just because the company asked.
Since the before mentioned book was written, Dell has received more than 12,968 ideas which have been voted for almost 7000,000 times. Most importantly for Dell’s product developments, initiatives have given rise to more than 385 idea implementations.
Blog posts with other Best Practice examples of tribesourcing.
Mr. Splashy Pants – Greenpeace.
