Communispace

               While reading the Harvard Business School case on Communispace, I was really drawn into the question the CEO was struggling to answer—whether or not to accept the Simmons Word of Mouth (WOM) campaign that Amy Williams turned to Communispace to launch.  Because I had never heard of Communispace before, I initially questioned why the company wouldn’t follow through with the campaign, because of the widely recognized nature of Simmons and the success it could bring to the corporation.  As I continued reading, however, I was glad that I was able to explore examples of other businesses that used Communispace and what their purpose was, because it enabled me to recognize why this decision was something for Diane Hessan, CEO, to grapple with before taking action.

                The two major points that I would like to address from this article are very disjointed and basically have nothing to do with each other, so bare with me on this week’s post. The first point I would like to discuss is about something that grabbed my attention more than anything else in the article. It changed how I think about communities and how they work best, as well as provided me with a new perspective on how communities should form. As I started reading about Communispace, I felt that it was a useful development and that it was built upon great principles for the purposes it intends to serve—to allow “employees of a client company [to] more easily communicate and collaborate.” In order for this to work and to encourage members to participate in sharing information, the ideas that immediately came to mind (solely based on what I’ve learned and clearly not from experience) included listening, engaging, and supporting. The author of the article provided evidence for the existence of each of these features embedded in the core values of Communispace as a whole.  But it was the part that said that Communispace has a subscription-based model, requiring all clients to commit to a 12-month contract that intrigued me the most. When I first read that, I wondered why Communispace would hold clients to such a requirement. When I read the explanation for why the company does this, I wondered if every similar community-making platform has the same requirement, and decided that if they don’t, they should. In explaining the rationale behind this, Hessan asserts that “communities are not one-time projects the way surveys or focus groups are. We don’t build them and then take them down a couple of months later. Communities provide a continuous flow of information, not a snapshot in time.”

                From this point stemmed so many thoughts in my mind that I literally couldn’t keep track of them. I didn’t know what I wanted to say first or what I thought to be the most important implication of viewing a community in that light. I realized that more patience on part of the companies depending on these communities is needed than I originally thought or considered.  Feedback, insight, ideas and support will not generate overnight simply because an effective community will not either. Because the communities created via Communispace are driven by a purpose, they must consist of particular individuals, hence the reason why they take time to form before they can prove useful to the client. This is why requiring 12 months of participation is reasonable, because it accounts for the time needed to recruit community members as well as convince them to stay involved. Once the community is formed, though, the 12-month subscription is even more useful beyond just providing the client with a meaningful and appropriate brand-focused online community. It enables them to see how people’s perceptions change over a long period of time, rather than offering what Hessan calls a “snapshot” of information that wouldn’t be as useful for tracking trends and answering questions about business processes.  The most important point I took from that quotation was that, in dealing with technology and online platforms, businesses need to give them a chance.  Part of adopting these technologies that are growing in prominence is embracing the reality that progress and results will not develop instantaneously.

                The other aspect of this article that I found interesting was the actual debate at the end that compared the two options that Communispace has for dealing with the request from Simmons.  On the one hand, I think it would be valuable for them because of the opportunity for a long-term client with widely-recognized brands. On the other hand, while I don’t know a lot about business, I can’t imagine that deviating from typical culture would serve any organization very well. As Wittes Schlack, co-founder of Communispace, says, “taking on this WOM assignment risk(s) compromising the company’s promise of authenticity and transparency,” so it may backfire. Similarly, creating communities for word of mouth campaigns turns the “listening platform” of Communispace on its head—it would inevitably become an advertising platform, which diverges from the purpose and values of the tech company. So, my question is: what would you do if you were faced with this decision (or a similar one)? Would you accept the request based on the rationale that the market is heading in this direction anyway? Or would you stick to the traditions that have been ingrained in your company where you have already established distinct advantage?