Well the tide seems to be turning

Well today i noticed for the first time that there seems to be a new pattern emerging of people publishing their success stories onto If vahinkovakuutus's wall. This has happenned a few times now but it seems to have increased in response to my actions.

Well this may mean that i have alienated my audience to the point where they themselves want to actively defend If vahinkovakuutus. Or if have been very clever and carried out their own counter campaign?

Why would the Finns turn agains me? I have not only been trying to overturn my claim decision but have also tried to get if to change their own terms and policies so as to protect other customers. It seems to me if anything they should be getting behind me.

Well i think again there are factors at play outside of my control. This is namely the Finnish culture. Finns are very patriotic and truely believe in all things Finnish and Finland. Finland is the golden land. BTW that is why when Finns leave for foreign jobs they often say they are never coming back ;-)

Anyway with the rise of  the True Finns political party and the increasing resistance to immigration of foreigners to Finland by the native population there has also been a clear switch of national attention to multiculturalism in Finland generally.

Well as a foreigner in Finland it may very well be that i have singled myself out as someone who goes against the tide, is not afraid to question and try something different. Also as a foreigner in Finland and with the sentiment to foreigners in this country i myself may have managed to portray myself actually as the bad guy in this story. Finns unite against the foreigner?

You may think this silly but it is probably true at least to some degree. I have encountered this so many times here almost to the point of stupidity.

In Finland there is a common dreaded word by all "putkiremontti". Basically it is when your appartment needs to be rennovated and have all the drains, water and often electricity replaced. This is usually carried out through all apparments simultaneously. Finland runs all its appartment buildings as independent companies that are run as democracies so when this happens there is a vote on the subject.

Well having been through this experience this is my story of Finns and Finland. At our housing company meeting we were presented with a proposal by the chairman's friend to do the work for an absolutely obsorbitant fee. I stood up and said that this was an absolute joke as the appartment building next door had paid half as much and that this was clearly a ploy to help the chairmans mate out. An old lady turned around and said to me "he does this work all the time, i am sure he knows what he is talking about, you should listen to him". The vote was passed and we paid double the price we should have.

Finns are very trusting, they do not like people who question, go against the tide, try something different or are of foreign origin. Unfortunately in this situation i am the entire wammy and as such perhaps have come in for a backlash from the Finns in spite of the rational argument that actually would benefit them if I am succesful.
However this would require a degree of empathy something that in my personal experience Finns are not good at.

If you are a Finn and are reading this you may not like what i am saying but consider this, what has happenned to me as a foreigner to actually make me think this way? We are formed by our experiences. We do not arrive with this impression of Finland it is programmed into us.

Adoption of Twitter in the Insurance Industry in Finland

As part of this story i first attempted to engage If vakuutus through Twitter. I discovered that If vahinkovakuutus had no twits and only a few followers and did not follow anyone except their Norwegian counterparts.

You can read more about If' Vahinkovakuutus's social media performance via the blog Post If Vahinkovakutus Social Marketing vs If Sweden Social Marketing.

In any case i decided to have a look at whether or not this pattern was reflected by other insurance companies in Finland.

So in short i took a look at the above. Finnish insurance company's presence on Twitter.

Good news, they were there!!! but..........

Pohjola

Well enough said a big company in Finland. There is no description, the default image, no following, only a few followers, not even a link to the website, no tweets. Well there was not any other. My Evaluation is POOR

Well enough said another large insurance provider in Finland. There is no description, the default image, no following, only a few followers, not even a link to the website, no tweets.  Well there was not any other. My Evaluation is POOR

I have never heard of this company but they seem to have at least added their website and a description but that is about it. Strategy seems simply to drive people to their site not to engage them via social media. Performance is also POOR

Maybe the largest insurance provider in Finland. Well just the same as the others sadly, no content, no following, no followers. Performance can only be described as POOR.

Well If vahinkovakuutus are the only insurance company i have heard of to have a link to their website at least. They also have the most followers but that is artificially high as i have drawn attention to thi sprofile through my actions. It was about 12 followers when i started. There are no twits and not even a description. They only follower their Norwegian colleagues. Performance is POOR.

 So what can be surmised from this. Well it is clear that Insurance companies in Finland have not understood Twitter. For the most part they see it as their own channel to drive traffic to their website which concidently is such a turn of the century strategy. They have not even tried to push out their own marketing content. BTW another prehistoric strategy. This indicates to me that they clearly and simply,

1. Insurance companies in Finland Do Not Get Twitter
2. Insurance companies in Finland do not have Twitter in any real social media strategy
3. Insurance companies have not attempted to engage customers through Twitter in Finland
4. Insurance companies in Finland are behind the rest of the world.

But Why?

Why would Insurance companies in Finland not be present actively here in this media?

Insurance companies in Finland do not value Twitter as a marketing and engagement channel.

But Why?

Well from my own experience during this experiment and when i consider my own twitter followers related to this experiement i see a trand.

Of the followers i have only around 5-10% of them are from Finland. This suggest that even though the content of this experiement was targeted at Finnish people in Finland, they did not follow me as often as people from other countries. Of course language may be a factor here but let's consider the average Twitter user.

The average Twitter user is under 40. In Finland pretty much everyone under this age can speak English despite what they may think themselves. Finns are pretty bashful when asked "can you speak English?" The usual answer is a little but then you proceed to have a fluent conversatipon.

In anycase we are left with the situation where perhaps the level of adoption of Twitter is low by both the companies and the population as a whole. In this case i will not enter into the "which came first the chicken or the egg" type conversation but will simply state that, perhaps Finlands reputation as an early adopter and innovator of new technologies is not justified based upon the populations behaviour regarding Twitter. Or perhaps it is just that Finns are not that "social" which is something that does fit the sterotype of a typical Finn.

Who knows why, but the pattern is clear and i believe is indicative of many Finnish companies performance regarding social media and Social CRM and in part explains If Vahinkovakuutus's slow and not very "customer orientated" response to my own Social Media Experiment.

Using Advertising as a customer empowerment strategy.

Some of you may have noticed that i have this morning added advertisements to the blog.

As a first impression you will probably think i am trying to profit from this endeavour and social media experiment. Although i must admit that would be nice, we all dream of being millionaires ;-)

Unfortunately I don't think it is going to happen. Just to be clear profiting from this endeavour is not the goal of the experiement.

See below.

I think that you can see from the above that this is not a profitability strategy.

As such why would i add advertisements to the blog?

There are a couple of reasons for this. Partly i am curious and want to learn what this is all about and how it works but also and more importantly as alot of you have seen Google have changed their privacy policy recently. The idea of which is basically so that they can target you more accurately with advertising.

Now as i understand it the advertisements that will appear on the site are going to be targeted at visitors based upon their previous history of searching google, other web behaviour, their referring source destination to the blog and the way in which the site has been indexed by Google themselves. In this way google adsense should target visitors with relevant advertisements.

This is something that companies of course have been doing for years and i have seen already that If Vakuutus are doing this themselves. As such the question is.

Can I use existing advertising in the Insurance Industry to apply additional pressure to If Vakuutus? 

What i mean with this is,

Wouldn't it be great if one of my site visitors upon landing on the site was presented with a Tapiola or Pohjola advertisement to take insurance from them. As i am getting alot of traffic from If's own facebook pages. I am able to effectively place advertisements specifically for If's own customers or stakeholders. I am sure that If vakuutus in particular would not like that there own customers are firstly visiting my blog but then also being presented with advertisements for their competitors products.

Imaging what would happen if If vakuutus started to lose customers as a result of this advertising. In this experiement this has much more value as a pressure tactic than a profitability technique.

With this in mind how can i influence which advertisements are being presented on My blog? See my later post regarding SEO (search engine optimisation) and Google's affiliate network.

Let me know how succesful i am, let me know are you getting insurance ads? Once again i will update you as to how this pans out later.

If Vakuutus have re-engaged me!

Well thank you If vakuutus. I had almost given up on you. After two days since their last response i have had a new response from them. I do not know really why they have chosen to re-engage me, you would have to ask them, but i am grateful as it means i can still believe in them.

I have been a little critical of their approach in my blog and i have also adopted a strategy of interference on their own Facebook group. I have also added content to If Insurance's other local Facebook groups in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Latvia. Perhaps this has influenced them? Or perhaps it is the growing influence of this blog?

In any case this is what they have to say.

View the entire conversation on Facebook

I think this is quite self explanatory they have agreed to my earlier request to review my feedback which is positive and indicates that they are listening. They are still refusing to settle the claim or reimburse me for the additional costs that i incurred caused by their mis-communication.

Most importantly though now that they have implied that they are considering my feedback it means that perhaps we can actually help protect the other If vakuutus customers from this happenning to them again in the future.

I think that this is the biggest measurement of success of this experiment and if we can achieve that then i will be extraordinarily happy. We will have proved that customers engagin through social media can influence a company so as to change their behaviour. Also from If vakuutus's point of view it will mean that they can still sell and spin this as a success story for themselves. I am once again optimistic and hoping that If will live up to my expectations.

For those who cannot remember my original demands here they are. You can access the entire thread from here.

View the entire thread on facebook

Well amazingly i have now had another response from If Vakuutus. Correct me if i am wrong but i think that this is the first time this has happenned. Here is the new post from If Vakuutus and my own response.

View the thread on Facebook

To be fair If vakuutus are being pretty apologetic but they still refuse to act in terms of settling the claim. However they do seem to be showing some movement in their attitude to re-evaluating their customer support practices which is part of what i want to hear.

I would also like to hear about the request that i made for If Vakuutus to change their terms and conditions so that If vakuutus are responsible for customer costs resulting from their incorrect or misleading information and not their customer.

BTW i should state that the requested phone call conversation was held entirely in Finnish between If and my Finnish girlfriend. We wanted to make sure there was no miscommunication as the phone call was very important to us. I am of course English so thought it was better if the conversation took place between native Finnish speakers. Shame If were not so dilligent in ensuring the competency of their 24hr emergency service number.

Let's see where If Vakuutus go from here. It seems to me that they are trying but without action they are just digging a hole for themselves.

IF Vakuutus Seem to have lost their opportunity.

As i mentioned previously If vakuutus had a great opportunity when this case was first started. They could have turned this into a true success story of customer engagement.
However they have chosen not to take that route. Their line is simple this is how it seems to me.

Yes we admitteldy made a mistake but those additional costs you incurred because of our mistake are your problem not ours.

They are sticking to the line that our terms and conditions tell us not to pay when airlines go bankrupt. This is not in question and never was, even though i do not agree with that policy.

There current strategy seems to be: We are not going to talk to you now and hope you go away.

What does this strategy mean for If Vakuutus?

1. IF are not participating in the engagement process this means that they lose all control of the conversation they are unable to defend themselves.
2. IF further dilute their own messaging as i will continue to dirsrupt their own social media marketing channels. They have lost control of their own media.
3. They will continue to incur costs for having to deal with this claim which are actually way above the original costs of the claim.
4. They risk alienating their own customer base themselves through their own actions or inaction in this case.
5. There is day on day damage to their brand image and reputation. The interest in this story is growing day on day.

This is a very nice strategy well done ;-)

What does this strategy say about If Vakuutus?

1. They do not care that their customers have to pay for their mistakes. That is a nice message to send out. They are also promoting this message themselves on their own social media by not responding to the claim.
2. They do not think that they have to engage with their customers on social media even on their own Facebook group in particular. That is great Social CRM.
3. They do not see what i am doing as a risk to them. They do not understand the power of social media. I thought Insurance companies were all about risk.
4. They risk being perceived as childish and stubborn. If Vakuutus refuse to even outline their case what else can it say? I am happy to engage them in discussion why are they afraid to do this publically?
5. Do they know what to do? Does their crisis communication strategy include social media channels.

I actually welcome this strategy because it reinforces what i thought about them. They do not care they do not help despite what their slogan says.

End of Day 5 Summary: Where are If Vakuutus?

Ok so it is the end of Day 5 so where are we. Today is a day of two topics. Growth of support and then an absence of input from the other main player the big IF.

Lets start with the BIG IF

Well in the last reply i received from If Vakuutus they seemed to have accepted responsibility but did not want to act upon that. The customer is responsible for their errors apparently. As such this is still waiting and is once again at the top of their facebook group wall. I will not go away. Social media is easy it does not require much effort unlike standing outside their office with a loudspeaker. It also reaches alot more people. If have questions to answer and i want them to answer them publically.

Tomorrow i think i will write a little bit about what i think they are thinking but, for now that is where i will leave it. BTW this is the first week day that If Vakuutus have not responded. Does this mean that they have stopped communicating. Let's see.

Growth of Support

Over the last few days and again continued today we have seen growth in the number of followers. In this experiment i have also been learning by doing and as it is not a normal thing to try and get alot of folllowers quickly (at least for me) then i have done some things that i see are mistakes.

The biggest mistake i have made so far is to assume that if you follow a person they automatically follow you back or at least a large proportion (i am just nice like that). This is total rubbish and may work if you follow one person but when you follow many and have only a few followers you just appear as a "junk follower" it is just as bad as spam mail when you see twits from these people. As such i stopped and stopped following anyone who i didn't know or didn't follow me. You will now see my follows and followers are roughly in balance.

Furthermore to try and help to reach out to people in Finland i have also started to use Finnish language hashtags. One thing that i have learned through email marketing analysis is that people respond much better to content in their own language even though the body of the message may be in another language. Finns are pretty good at English although they often wont admit it so i am not worried on that score especially as those who are active in social media tend to be younger anyway. As such it means that my tweets are often tweeted now with English and Finnish tags.

Well this has meant that today i have now managed to reach 100 followers which i am honestly quite proud of because i have never had 100 followers before :-)

On the blog we have had record traffic today and with the exception of a slight blip on one day where we did not grow (i was not able to spend time at the computer that day and add that much content) we have continued to get more hits day on day.

The traffic is coming from all over the world but mostly Finland roughly 50% (the domestic market so to speak), the UK and the US (English speaking countries and very active with twitter in particular) and then a mixture of countries. We have also appeared on Russian blogs but i cannot read anything there so have no idea what they are talking about.

Today i also for the first time posted some video content. It was quite funny to watch but actually makes a serious point. This is not the first time this has happenned to If Vakuutus. They have been publically humilated and attacked previously and this is one of their videos. There are others.

I would love to hear from the guy in the video to hear his story and how that went. If you are out there make contact. I will look into that and get back to you. Interestingly this video received the most hits on the blog today and the most retweets. Comedy never hurt anyone. It may also have helped that the content was in Finnish though?

To continue with the video discussion, i can also say that i have now made my presence visible on the If Vakuutus YouTube channel where there televesion marketing material is held. They have quite a large push with television and radio advertising in Finland at the mo so check that out if you want to. As i was unable to add links in the comment boxes i have commented as my own YouTube channel which links to the blog and  @IFinsurancetwitter but that is currently being used only as a through channel and i will not actively promote it. You can get to the IF videos from it though if you are interested. I want IF to know that there is nowhere that they can hide in Social Media and if they will not engage me and answer my valid questions on Facebook then i will engage them whereever they are present in the electronic jungle.

Note i am NOT attacking them I am trying to Engage them. I have not bad mouthed or slandered them. I am just trying to bring this conflict to a justified end within a public space. I still want a resolution and my demands are in place so as to protect their other customers with ammendments to their terms and conditions and a review of some of their practices.

They must air their dirty laundry in public even if they do not want to.

Guess i am not the only person disatisfied with If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö

View this from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjVBdkT_7r0

The more i read about IF the more i realise why i am having to fight this battle. It is clear that i am not the first to try and fight IF.

Channel Performance Analysis

Well after four days i thought i would write something about how succesful the channels that i have been utilising in this endeavour have been.

As a recap the main channels i have created are:

A dedicated Twitter Account @IFinsurance (surprised i was able to get this user name)
A dedicated Facebook Group IF Vakuutus Social Experiment
This blog, no link required ;-)

The pre-existing channels that i am utilising are:

IF's Own Facebook Group. If Vahinkovakuutusyhtiö I am particularly trying to draw attention to mine and If vakuutus's conversation there.

As described earlier i plan to expand upon the utilisisation of If vakuutus's own social media later. Read on to understand why.

Twitter as a Channel

Prior to this experiement i was a Twitter user and had been for a few years. However admittedly i was that kind of user who was just a "follower" i was not a contributor other than the occasional retweet of content i found interesting. In all honesty i think that summarises most Twitter users. I used it as a way of getting up to date info about the things i was interested in, when i wanted it. On twitter there is always something new.

With this in mind i understandably did not have many followers around 50 of mostly people i already knew based upon around 300 tweets of my own (sorry retweets, the occasional tweet from services i had subscribed to and those that i had connected other social media to) Unsuprisingly then that my followers were low.

Just as a quick point i just do not get people who post things like "I just ran 30minutes hard via heia heia" Quite honeslty who cares! I don't even care about what my "real friends are doing". Anyway back to the point.

Well having started the new Twitter account @Ifinsurance for the sole purpose of publising this blog and story i am pleased i have been more succesful. For a while i did ponder if i should carry this out through my own @daniel_miles account but decided against it. I decided to have a campaign specific twitter account for people who just want to follow the story and not my other tweets. I also was afraid that i would annoy some of the followers of my personal Twitter account with the changed content of my account. So having balanced this against the advantage of already having a starting base of followers i decided to start from scratch.

So how has my new Twitter account performed.

Well with Just 100 tweets i managed to gain 75 followers in less than 3days merely by tweeting the story. This is 50% more followers than my personal Twitter account in roughly 1 3rd of the tweets and in 1% of the time. In this sense then i would certainly consider this a success if you were to measure this against my prior performance.

This has well been publisised else where in the blogosphere but Content is King, contributors get more followers! As well as just publising my story i have also tried to add content that may be relevant also to people who simply follow social media. Hence for example this post which has nothing really to do with the story with IF directly.

I have also managed to have the blog republished on other news sites each day. I have been retweeted countless times and have had several @mentions. I have also gained a couple of followers who seem to be pretty closely following me and retweeting a lot of what i tweet thanks for that!!

In this sense it seems i have managed to at least generate some interest among the twitter crowd. Further more by looking at the traffic statistics to the blog i can see that around 45% of the traffic has been coming from the shortened bit.ly type of link which indicates a lot of traffic from Twitter. More about the site traffic in the other sections.

On the whole then i have been pretty happy with Twitter as a channel, well at least based upon my previous experiences.

My Own Facebook Group.

This has been less of a success in terms of gaining members, i am now at 4 :-). I desribed my reasoning behind this in a previous post so won't go into it in too much detail here.

Generally though i felt that facebook groups needed to be known about and were better suited for companies than individuals as a channel to garner support for something.

In any case lookin at the traffic coming into the blog I can see that the top contributor for traffic has been facebook so although the Group has not gained members perhaps it has contributed to traffic. However i believe that the biggest contributor to the referring site was probably If Vakuutus's own Facebook group. See below.

If Vakuutus's Own Facebook Group

In my opinion this has been the best channel to utilise, even more so than Twitter. This is why,

1. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media and existing following you are able to piggy bag on If vakuutus's own success.
2. By Utilising If vakuutus's own social media you are able to reach out to their own stakeholders. Who else would be on their social media?
3. By having a constant presence there and maintaining your position at the top of their wall you are able to get a regular stream of traffic to your blog and to your story.
4. By placing your content directly to If vakuutus's own facebook wall you are able to disrupt or interfere directly with their marketing messaging, branding and campaigning. This dilutes the power of their own social media as a tool and increases the risk and pressure upon them to act.

40% of Traffic is coming from Facebook and most likely alot of it is coming from If vakuutus's own group page.

The Success of My Own Blog

Well as i tweeted early i have now had more than 1000 visitors to the site so in that respect i am really happy.

The blog has been tweeted and shared directly from the blog in all, around 100 times so roughly 10% of visitors have spread the word further. Of course i cannot really tell how many times outside of my own social media the word has spread. I am sure though that for the 1000 visitors i have had many more have had some contact with the story even though they may not have visited the blog.

Coincidently i would like to know if If vakuutus's own traffic to their Facebook Group page has increased. I did note previously that they got 250 odd new members there after i started. This trend seems to have slowed now though.

Anyway i see the main strengths of the blog as:

1. You can have a media that you can control and tell your own story.
2. You have a single location where you want to drive traffic to (admittedly it is nice to drive traffic to the converation with IF also)
3. If If vakuutus's decide to start boycotting me or deleting my posts from their social media then there is a complete record of the story outside of their control including the Facebook conversation with them. Deleting it does not make it go away. 
4. If vakuutus cannot control this media, they can only contribute. BTW they are free to do so). It would be nice to see them trying to tell their story on my blog.
5. Long after this story is dead people will still be able to find the blog. It will be a constant reminder to If vakuutus of this event. And who knows from time to time it will get retweeted, shared or even posted back on If vakuutus's wall. In this respect If vakuutus particularly should be aware and think how they should act. The degree to which this occurs i feel is dependent upon how If vakuutus react to it postively or negatively.

Summary of Basic Stats to Date (First 4 days)

1. 1100 Blog Vistis
2. Blog republished 4 times in other online news papers (that i know about, i was tweeted to be told)
3. 40% of Traffic from Facebook and mostly likely If Vakuutus's own Facebook group.
4. 45% of Traffic from Twitter or bit.ly type links
5. 10% of Traffic from Direct Links implying they have saved the blog to their favourites
6. 75 New Twitter Followers on the new account (gained 25 on my personal) 150 people following my Twitter media related to this then.
7. Countless retweets and mentions and several avid supporters
8. 45% or so of blog traffic coming from Finland despite the English Language.
9. Only about 10% of Twitter followers are from Finland though interestingly.

End of Day Four Summary

Well after actually not such an eventful day today in terms of actions. The blog has continued to attract traffic and we have increased the number of twitter followers again today by 50% or so. We also have been retweeted several times and again republished on other sites and the likes of the conversation with If vakuutus are increasing (like the post to get live updates and show support).

We are continuing to grow and draw attention to the cause.

The main news today was If vakuutus's response

"I’m very sorry that you feel disappointed. However, that doesn’t affect the claims decision and the compensation line that we have – otherwise it wouldn’t be fair for the other customers in the same situation. I hope you understand this."

Well I hope that the same situation never appears again (see what i have asked from If vakuutus below in my response).

My whole argument has never been with their terms and conditions. They ARE pretty clear but my case is based upon the fact that they said they would cover it (or at least implied it was ok), we acted on that information at additional costs to ourselves and then they never paid.

If have already accepted they were at fault for the miss communication (on Facebook) so it seems to me simply that.

IF still want the customer to pay for their mistakes and shortcomings that they have already admitted.

They did not seem to get this so i posted this very simply for them to understand..

I also wrote a post today about how i felt that Finnish culture in particular influences this experiment. (sorry it is a long one i got a bit carried away)

In short the conclusions are that Finns were not able to break away from their rule book to see an opportunity and to avoid the risks of continuing this course of actions. Something i feel is a characteristic of a lot of Finnish companies.

Since If vakuutus have not taken the opprtunity to get a "great marketing story" then they are now in the realm of assessing what are the risks of continuing.

This is much to my regret, because i wanted to show that customers could resolve their issues quickly and easily through social media... when there is a valid complaint. I do not want this to become a "hate" blog because i do not hate IF. The money involved is a principle thing. I have already spent much more time on this than it is worth to me personnally. I belive in social media. I belive in ethics and i believe that when consumers are being walked over they have options other than costly legal ones.

I just find it hard to believe that If vakuutus will not pay for something they themselves have publically stated is their fault.

Simply i believe that becuase this is a new situation for them and there is no precident or rule book to follow, other than the one that is in place i.e. there existing terms and conditions.

It is ammusing that If Vakuutus would rather risk their reputation and continue to incur costs much above what the value of the original claim was (about 500 euros) than to get a fantastic marketing story for a bargain price and change the way they behave towards their customers.

I think that they are worried about setting a precedent here for other persons with an axe to grind but in this situation there is a valid case and i have asked for actions to be put in place so that this wont happen again. In this respect i am actually giving them positive input for how to be better.

For an insurance company that is all about risk assessment and assigning costs the ROI on this claim for If vakuutus must be horrendous. It makes absolutely no sense from them to continue with this from a financial point of view, a marketing point of view or from actually the ethical point of view.

Tomorrow i will again post about my social media strategy, some statistics and evaluation of the channels and of course the daily update. See you then :-)

Engaging Companies in Social Media Channels Politely Does Not Work

Well after the latest If vakuutus's response it seems clear to me that If vakuutus have missed their opportunity to turn this into customer service and marketing success story. Something i wished that they had because this alone would have shown that social media has empowered the consumer and that companies have recognised this and have changed their behaviour accordingly. This has not worked.

As such previously i was playing the role of a customer who was merely trying to communicate and engage with a company in a public channel with the hope that this combined with a growing support and interest base via this blog and the @IFinsurance twitter account would change their behaviour.

In this Experiment: Using a company's own Social Media as a channel to engage a company does not guarantee success even with a valid case and a growing social media presence.

As such a change in strategy is required so as to apply more pressure to If vakuutus through publicising the case and further damaging their brand image.

I will continue to try and engage with people in Finland, the conventional media, persons interested in social media, the insurance industry and PR and Marketing Generally. I will do this primarily through Twitter @Ifinsurance.

I have also expanded my use of Twitter. I decided that instead of just posting my own content i will redistribute content created by others writing about relevant subject material. I realise that social media is not only about pushing your own messaging but also spreading the word and collaborating with others. If i do not spread the message of others how can i expect others to spread my word. As such i have started a process of retweeting other relevant content via my twitter account.

I will adopt a new strategy of Interference Against If vakuutus.

Actually i am not sure if this is wise but i feel that at this point in time it is the only option really left to me. To try and increase the pressuse on IF i will interfere with their other customer dialogue on their own facebook group page and expand on this later to further increase the pressure if IF continue to resist.

This is a risky strategy as i risk alienating my own audience. I hope that this is not the case.

I have communicated very clearly with IF via their facebook wall what i hope to achieve and what will bring this to an end. If know what they need to do to stop this.

I have started the policy of interference see IF vakuutus's Facebook group to start with....... more to follow if necessary.

Please note i am not telling any lies about If vakuutus's, i will only post truthful comments. IF are very welcome to comment. I will continue to promote my own story via the blog. This is a very important fact, i do not want to do anything that could be conceived as slander. This is and always will be an entirely legal endeavour!!!

My primary goal is to publisize my story and disrupt If vakuuts's own brand messaging through factual story telling and interaction with people who are posting on the IF Facebook group.

I do not think that this is unreasonable. What do you think?

You can get live updates of the conversation on the Facebook thread by liking it. http://t.co/JlbiA65M Liking will also show support. Comments of course also appreciated. Follow the conversation live also on Twitter @IFinsurance.

The Human and Cultural Aspect

Within this experiment there are other factors at play that have not yet been discussed. Namely the behaviour of the people involved in the experiement and in particular culture.

Within the experiement there are 3 main players whose culture can have an influence on the experiement.

Me and My Cultural Perceptions

I am English, i have lived in Finland for 8 years. I have studied here worked here for Finnish companies and I during this time i have had relationships with Finnish women.

Despite these experiences i am sure i still retain my English culture and still behave as such. However i do also have a unique view of Finnish culture and behaviour that Finns themselves (outside of academia) probably do not.

As an English person or at least as me. I question things, i am passionate, if i get it into my head i am right i do not back down even though the "rules" in place suggest otherwise. I am not passive i am proactive and am not afraid to question, learn and improve myself. I am certainly not afraid to try things that others would not.

In short i feel that these are not generally Finnish traits and i think that Finns and IF do not know how to deal with this as a Finn would not have done what i am doing. This is something new and i am not sure how the Finns will react inthis situation.

Social Media and the Social Community

Social media has helped globalise industries even though the companies themselves may be domestic. Finnish companies (with the exception of Nokia and the paper industry) generally have at least  80% of their business in Finland. People here ask why there has not been another Nokia "miracle". Is culture part of it? Is psyche part of it?

Finnish companies may be even unaware that with the invent of social media and even the internet they are not just visible to Finns alone they become global even though their sales do not necessarrily follow suit. As a marketing professional it is important to maintain their brand not only in their own country but abroad and to all people who may have an interest (customers and stakeholders alike). By doing what i have done i am clearly putting IF onto the global stage. As such in this blog and on IF's wall i am communicating deliberately in English so as to evoke a wider interest than just in Finland. Finland only has a 5 million population that i can target. The globe has 7 billion and growing.

In terms of the members of the social community who are participating in this endeavour their culture also pays a part. As we have had visitors from many countries it is difficult to apply cultural theory here.

However from the data i can see that for example on Twitter most of the followers are from outside of Finland. However if i look at the traffic to the blog 50% is coming from Finland and 50% from outside.

This says something about culture or at least the adoption of Twitter. Although Finns have visited the blog they have not subscribed or started to follow on Twitter. Instead they have chosen to remain anonymous and passive. Why? It could very well be that they totally disagree with what i am doing, a Finn would never do that ;-)

Others who are following on the blog are commenting and sharing on twitter, retweating and liking on Facebook. If this is indeed conducive with If's responses and expectations and hence behaviour this would say much about my increasing frustration with them as perceived from my English perspective.

Finns would not behave this way so they do not know how to respond effectively. They need to understand they are dealing with an Englishman who has different expectations from a Finn. I am their customer though and as such they should adapt to service my needs and expectations. Do they realise this?

Finns and Finland

As an English man i have much higher expectations for customer service than an average Finn.

Finland is not an hierarchical society and in my opinion this in itself  means that Finns do not naturally accept a master and subordinate relationship. People here are always equal and that is the way Finns like it. In my opinion this has a detrimental affect on the level of customer service you receive here. The average Finn working in customer service considers the customer their equal, they do not naturally accept that they are there as a subservant in that relationship. I have experienced many examples of totally unacceptable customer service here, of course as perceived from my English perspective.

It seems often to me here that the simple customer service principle "the customer is always right, even when they are wrong" has not been widely adopted in Finland. I think this is clearly demonstrated by this experiment and IF's responses. I should say here though that is not always that case, i have had excellent customer service in Finland. I will just briefly mention Iitalla who have given me excellent customer service in the past when they themselves have made mistakes with orders and faulty products.

As an Englishman I am more likely than a Finn to interpret rules and apply them based upon the situation. This is often in combination to what we often refer to as common sense. This is especially valued when the rules in place do not apply to a situation, the situation has not been planned for or the whole thing is in flux. A metaphor for this could be that of a football referee (soccer for the Americans).

The football referee has a clear set of rules that apply to the game. The rules are written to give clear black and white guidance that the referee is there to apply. Applying these rules word for word and perfectly will not make you a good referee.

The referee is there also to control the game, violence, anger, the fans the players the coaches and at the top levels the media. If the referee fully applied the rules to every situation the game would very quickly get out of control. Top referees understnad this. They use common sense to apply rules where appropriate.

For example:

If we consider penalties. Many times i have heard, "if that was outside the box, it would have been a foul". That is true, but why was it not given, because the referee wants to control the game, avoid controversy. If he gave the penalty he would potentially affect the game, come in for criticism himself and lose control of the players and fans, especially if he was wrong. In this case the referee interprets when it is best to apply the rules and only does so when he is sure.

When the foul is outside the box it means less in terms of effecting the outcome of the game so he is more likely to give a foul even when he is not sure that it is. This is especially true for example when there have been a series of strong tackles that have not technically been a foul. In this case the referee often blows to give a foul so as to regain control of the game and to calm the players down before a serious injury or bad foul does occur. In this case the rules are applied liberally.

Other examples for the game are, players not getting booked early on in the game for a foul that would get them booked later in the game. Contact with goalkeepers, referees protect them to avoid controversy.

As such a great referee knows when to interpret the rules and apply them to the situation and when it is appropriate to do so. In this way rules are interpretted, bent and applied to situations as appropriate. In this way at some level rules become guidelines and common sense is applied.

In my opinion, Finnish culture does not readily adapt to what English people refer to as common sense. Finns like things nice and black and white they need a rule to apply to a situation to be able to resolve it. As such when a new situation occurs that their are no rules for or when the rules are not suitable finns will often continue to revert to the rule book instead of questioning it and using common sense to resolve the situation. This often causes problems for me personally in other walks of life when compromise and conflict resolution skills are required between parties. It is true that sometimes the rules get changed after the situation occurs so as to avoid the situation next time but for most part the situation acts as precident and the rules will be applied again in the future as in the first case.

Through the media of this blog, i have communicated with IF, i have tried to describe their opportunities and risks early on in the experiment to them. They did not listen. I recognised this Finnish trait described above and i tried to influence them. I obviously failed. If are afraid of setting precident rather than measuring the risks and benefits in this unique situation that they probably do not have any specific guidelines or rules for.

At this moment I have had getting on to 1000 visitors to the blog (and growing daily) as well as what i feel is a valid argument for challenging the claim. In response to If i have clearly outlined what i expect from them and how i wish them to respond so that they can have a framework to work with. Let's see what happens. Next

Conclusion

Characteristically of Finns, in the eye of criticism or conflict they shut down, become defensive stop listening and stick to their guns no matter what.

I am sure that this post in itself will prompt at first a negative reaction from IF and the Finns reading this. If will want to stick to their guns.

I am writing this though as i feel it is valid for the experiment and should be written even though it will probably have a detrimental affect on the outcome from the point of view of changing IF's mind about overturning the claim.

This is after all an investigation into the effectivenss of social media to empower individual customers against organisations and as such it would be foulish to ignore this content as a variable.

However Finns have one more interesting characteristic they seem to be very interested in what people think of them and Finland. I hope that this characteristic will counter act any hostility that may be felt and people of all nationalities will read this and think and maybe change their own behaviour.

Culture is a major factor that affects all business everywhere and in my opinion is often neglected or underestimated.
You can get live updates of the conversation on the Facebook thread by liking it. http://t.co/JlbiA65M Liking will also show support. Comments of course also appreciated. Follow the conversation live also on Twitter @IFinsurance.