Hang on: 10 years! Where did that go?
When you’ve been doing something for a fair while it often takes something momentous to get you thinking about it with fresh eyes.
For me that was seeing the budget for our 10th anniversary party and nothing freshens the eyes more than a budget to feed 150 people and get them steaming drunk.
Once I got over the initial shock (I’m not telling you how much it’s costing!), the realisation of having run a profitable company for ten years struck me, as did an over-whelming sense of pride. Not just because ten years in itself is an achievement, but because I’ve pretty much enjoyed every single day. Well OK, some days were bloody awful, but out of 3,650 days, I can think of less than 10 I’d rather forget.
It all boils down to 2 things: people and ethics.
I am lucky enough to have worked with, and continue to work with, some of the nicest and most talented people you will ever meet. Yes, Tempero family reading this – I MEAN YOU!
That team ensures we do great work which is never at the expense of our moral code. Anything other than that will have certainly meant joining the ranks of those that do business purely to win at all costs, at the expense of anyone that gets in their way. We don’t do that and it’s fundamental to my sense of company pride. Unfortunately we know a few that don’t share our views and they probably know who they are. Shame on you!
Anyway: 10 years. A fair bit has changed since 2003. We started out before ‘social media’ existed, (Zuckerberg was just 19), Tony Blair was in charge (we interviewed him in Maggie’s old No. 10 office), Big Brother was on Series 3 (we still moderate it, coming up to Series 14), Man U won the Premier League (yup, we work with them too), the BBC was in black and white (that may be a lie, but we’ve worked with them since 2005) and a little music service called iTunes launched (guess what? Yup, we work with them too).
For us, social media has been evolution rather than revolution, but for brands the rule books on customer service, marketing and research are being re-written by the day. Our foundation in Community Management and enterprise level projects means we have the experience to handle it. And thank god. It’s a potentially scary place for brands, and being responsible for the reputation for many of the world’s largest companies would be terrifying if we didn’t have that grounding and the best people possible looking out for our clients.
Tempero began its life as as a pure-play moderation company, actually within Granada in 1999, moderating large-scale forums for Coronation St., Emmerdale, Popstars, Liverpool FC, Arsenal, Boots and Flextech Television. Added to that was a rash of text-to-screen SMS services for Big Brother and Pop Idol. Ah, those were the days, sitting in a TV Studio on a Saturday night translating the semi-legible ramblings of our great nation and publishing them to millions each weekend. I would put money on me having read “so-and-so is fit” more times than anyone else on the planet.
2005 saw us win the contract to moderate the BBC’s forums and shortly after, their extensive blog network. One thing that still amazes me about Auntie Beeb is you’d think it would run shy of criticism and close-to-the-bone content but no, our aim is to leave as much content live as possible within the (very fair and open) guidelines. That’s an incredibly tough call when you’re dealing with news stories such as Madeline McCann, The Hutton Enquiry, Israel Palestine, Jimmy Savile, and on and on. Moderating the BBC is another level and the team have brains the size of planets, and the combined patience of a saint.
As time went on, we expanded our moderation and community management services to include engagement, insight and now strategy. In fact, the other day I pulled out a company review presentation from 2004 detailing ‘Knowledge Network’, a community research division. Nine years on we have an Insight and Strategy department that provides social analysis and monitoring for Sony, Pokerstars, Reckitt Benkiser, ACCA, IOC and many more.
I think we’re going to need another office, as this team also have huge noggins, filled with bucketfuls of data and brand analysis gold.
As I said earlier, it all comes down to people and our latest service takes the power of the moderation team, adds the analysis from the insight division and mixes it with strategic thinking that creates a magic sauce to inspire.
We can now show how to build social capital, create useful empathy, share the point of view of your community and all from a base of real experience and knowledge, not wafty ‘well this might work’ thinking. Practical strategy that gets stuff done, not pretty graphs that mean sweet FA.
This is our ethics at work as the wafty stuff is easy. Strategy that you can implement and not throw away in 6 months isn’t. I’m quite proud of that as I hope you can tell.
I should wrap up now as I could bang on for ages, but I’ll leave you with one of my favourite moments of the last ten years that I’ve just been reminded of. Nico, our incredibly lovely and bonkers client from Sony was visiting us and Kelda, our New Business manager made him a posh coffee. Kelda makes good coffee and even does that latte art stuff. ‘Oh’ Nico said when he got said coffee. Kelda had accidentally drawn a rather impressive phallus in the foam.
Moderate THAT!
Cheers to ten years!
Tempero on Google+
