interaction vs proximity graph

Brands are no longer able pitch the credentials of their products to the current social media generation. Push is almost out, but pull is sky rocketing in. Buyers and consumers want trusted and real information from people like themselves and know where to go, to get it. They need it stamped as trustworthy and good for usage (with extra features) not by any company that dreamed up the slogan at a coffee shop meeting, but by the members of a social network that they can see, interact with, and most importantly something that they chose to join. They all have an appetite for the real interaction that generate buzz in which they are a part of. Facebook’s 350 million user posts and its shared 3.5 Billion different content per week, is what these consumers want.

Talk about a lot of possible brand awareness and brand management. People know the members of their social media networks and trust what they have to say. They can access all this information quickly and easily to help them learn about the product, and step into a shop knowing more about the goods compared to the shopkeeper himself.

Social media is about investing in relationships that create more economic value than they cost. It is about engaging with the people who decide whether to buy or not buy what you are selling, like it or dislike it, recommend it or trash it, and even to mould it or to throw it out the window.

A great (and very fun) way to show the power of social media marketing is to enter “(BRAND NAME) sucks” into Google. Put into consideration the fact that around 80% of the information read on the Internet today is not read on the site that it was originally published, but through social media, the word is spread to different websites, blogs, forums and networks. It is no longer just a fad for kids or a way to spread the word about your fart app; social media is evolving as a powerful and a fast paced low-cost, high-reward tool for making the sales, turning profits and taking home the big prize.  The price tag is appealing and it is no holds barred.

Understanding online

What are your thoughts on Benn’s idea’s?

one dimensional chart showing media influence on consumers

A Marketing article from last week covered the new Deloitte report on media influencer on consumers. Unsurprisingly TV is listed as the most influential media for consumers. Even less surprising are the old school media people scoffing at online ‘scraping in’ at third place – after magazines. The sad fact is that a lot of (but thankfully not all) marketing and brand people will look at these results and not consider the following:

• Cost of Online vs TV
• Potential reach of Online vs TV
• Indirect support benefit of Online with TV
• Consumer awareness (how many times do you remember Googling a brand? It’s just part of web life now and does not have the recall value of an advert)

The sad thing about this is that despite the fact there has never been a more exciting, dynamic and interesting time to be in Marketing, to many budget controllers believe it’s ‘business as usual’ and pour money in to TV without applying a contextually relevant figure to Online.

I loathe stats like this. Sales increase of £12m thanks to ad spots on Coronation street - what about the other activity? And how much did it cost to get amonth of ad spots on Coronation Street! I appreciate Thinkbox is TV focused but come on.

At Neoco, we’ve been saying for years that Online/ Digital is not a silo and should not be treated as such. Don’t look at these media in isolation; Digital works best as part of an integrated campaign. Integrated campaigns work best with Digital.

stats chart for UK consumer behaviour on holiday searches vs. most things recession based

It’s official. We are in a recession. So in this time of crisis, where the latest news announcements can make a massive difference to the UK consumer, what are they searching for? News on Banking Crisis? Recession? Debt? Switching Suppliers?… or Holidays?

Yes, it appears that when the sh*t hits the fan we all decide to jump ship or at the very least fantasize about what might be (if we were not sitting in negative equity on a £400,000 broom cupboard in central London). In fact, Holiday searches are actually 14 times more popular than the nearest recession term. This may sound trivial but there can be real value for brands who use aspirational or escapist campaigns to promote their product or service during these tough times. Terry Cooney in his book Balancing Acts identifies the power and role media during the American depression of the 1930’s:

“Whether [media] offered visions of order restored, affirmations of work-centered values, or celebrations of a culture … they also held out images … that might be entered through mimicry or consumption.”

People do not want to be confronted with the depression of their daily lives or the fear of tomorrow. A successful campaign would help them focus on the ‘better tomorrow’ (or at least an escape from the ‘worse today’) that they can reach via the brand. With this in mind, one wonders if there has been a better time for the BA, Virgin Atlantic sales (environmental issues to one side)? There has always been a place for aspirational marketing to consumers but for the foreseeable future it’s a space that can be inhabited by more than just the aspirational brands. Now if only my bank could make me think about when it would be good to start saving with them again…

Why not have a play with the Beta of Google’s search insight tool for yourself and see what interesting facts you can find on UK or global search behaviour.

Rich and Judy

This week, Neoco attended a WOMUK Expresso Briefing about why marketing should now be aimed at finding and engaging the “adfluentials”. The starting point of the discussion was a consideration of effective marketing in an environment where the brand-consumer relationship is increasingly complex. For one thing people are discerning between products and services with reference to new sources of authority. Online, peer reviews are becoming more important than any direct marketing. Even in traditional media people are listening to TV personalities for non-expert guidance. Publishers need to understand the Richard and Judy effect as much as fashion lines need to understand what Gok Wan will do to their industry. In terms of digital, however, these new sources of credibility are even more important for two reasons; firstly advocates and detractors a-like can get their voices heard easily, without regulation; and secondly they can be more easily engage with by brands, creating a real two way conversation.

To effectively get a message out there marketers need to identify and work with the people that have the greatest potential to influence others but who also are passionate about the brand or at least the sector.
These are the “adfluentials” and they already want to be found. Engaging with adfluentials in the first instance should ensure a more natural, relevant word of mouth reach. This allows brands to reach
their target audience in an organic way. From these ideas the issue that arises for me, someone starting out in marketing, is how active agencies need to be to achieve this. Surely working with influential brand advocates is about listen – taking a more passive role to empower consumers. And at the end of the day isn’t
this just a case of handing over more power to the consumers. Great if you have a cool brand, or a really solid product, but potentially a way to come across as pandering or directionless or even a way to open up
to more criticism. If this model becomes the predominant way of approaching marketing campaigns, agencies will have to consider brand strength and whether a product will genuinely stand up to scrutiny
before working with it.

Maybe we are generally moving towards a more honest approach to what the customer can add to the discussion. What is more, empowering people that want to have a dialogue with your brand doesn’t have to mean tipping the balance away from internally driven vision. Listening, after all, really means listening to the right people – finding ways to align brand vision and consumer needs. Involving highly targeted people
in the first stage of a campaign has certainly proved successful for Neoco’s clients, and even across brands that don’t have an immediate ‘coolness’ grab. It also seems that this approach is a great way to dissipate negative word of mouth.

Top 10s are important for people in Marketing

Part of the service we provide to our clients are opinion and thought leader articles. After a period of time we make these live for the public. Coming soon is an article about the difference between social networks and online communities – as people often confuse these very different models. In the meantime, enjoy the obligatory ‘Top 10 tips’ related to developing a successful online community:

1. Make sure the community needs are inline with the brand needs – look at Trip Advisor above.
2. Address the social challenges, not just the technological ones. Online communities and social networks are about people. Ignore the fact these people are online – do they still resonate with the audience social trends?
3. The community owns the community. If a brand wants a community, it needs to be part of it – look at Trip Advisor example.
4. Growth takes time and effort. Starbucks launched mystarbucksidea.com to build a community that looks to enhance the Starbucks experience. It’s taken a lot of financial resources and several months to get to the stage it is and currently requires 48 Starbucks staff to manage that community. Which leads on to…
5. Communities need managing. They are about people and wherever you have a lot of people you need someone to manage and police activity – even if those people are like the 100 Trip Advisor contributors.
6. Look at new ways to measure success. There are always the obvious benchmarks of page impressions and users but a community is not just a website. Set the targets outside of the obvious. Starbucks measure success on the goodwill they generate and new innovations from their community.
7. Appreciate the many types of communities. Whilst there are similarities, a private community is very different to a public one. Restricting access, limiting numbers and increasing engagement creates an entirely different conversation with users. GSK and P&G are known to use closed/ private communities for huge amounts of R&D across their products.
8. Consumer communities are a form of marketing. It’s a different form of marketing with new rules and etiquette. It’s always best to consult marketers who have a wealth of knowledge regarding community marketing (conveniently neoco can help). As a basic litmus test, put yourself in the shoes of the consumer. Would the activity work for you?
9. These are social environments, so the general rules of social engagement apply. A good marketer would never crash a friends party and just start shouting about their brand all night – so why should that work online? Be respectful, honest and conversational – you will find it goes a long way.
10. Make sure the community is connected internally (at your brand). Communities can be a goldmine for consumer insight and innovative ideas. Make sure these fulfill their potential by enabling conversations across your brand.

There are two approaches to a consumer crisis.

1. Put your fingers in ears, close your eyes and repeat ‘la-la-la-la-la’. This is what we now call the ‘BA’ approach or ‘T5′ syndrome
2. The alternative is to actually engage with the consumers. This is the braver but ultimately much more competent approach. Look at American Airlines ‘Crisis’ blog: http://www.womma.org/blog/2008/04/a-look-at-american-airlines-crisis-blog/

This week was the launch of the new improved MeasuredUp site. MeasuredUp is a consumer review platform, where users can critique companies from big corporations like Wal-Mart to much smaller businesses like local travel outlets or restaurants. The range of subject matter varies greatly – covering everything from ad agencies to Web services to medical establishments to political figures (guess who was in the limelight this week? Hint: his first name is Steam, and his last is roller).

At its current state, MeasuredUp certainly isn’t the best-looking site on the Web – although we’ve seen much worse! It seems to have an external flavor that connotes a basic database devoid of any cool new-age assets. On the right, there is a list of featured companies, followed by a search field and a directory of around 20+ categories. On the left, there is a list of recent customer reviews in snippet form. Other information is also found on the front page, though some is secondary in importance. On the whole, it is really just the supply of reviews and the attention given to these by users that makes MeasuredUp what it is.

Another point about MeasuredUp that has been made, is that it seems to be trying to do something that might not be possible. Without going into extensive detail, MeasuredUp can be summarized as an attempt to bridge the gap between consumers and companies. Which is, ideally, an honorable thing. But do consumers really want to sort out their grievances with companies via some neutral halfway house? Surely they just want to not have to deal with those grievances to begin with. And when they do come across issues of concern, they either consult an earpiece of significant repute, like Consumer Affairs or Consumer Reports, or suggest a more guerilla campaign against a corporate body through sites like Consumerist.com. After all, those tactics have proven reasonably effective.

However, we don’t think that MeasuredUp is useless. With the right amount of public promotion and critical mass, it may well turn out to be a force for good; an effective mediator to bridge the company-consumer divide. But even with the press given the domain by names like Time Magazine and TimeOut New York, MeasuredUp is likely to face numerous hurdles as it tries to grow.

• ‘Optional omelette’ actually means you have to pay more
• ‘100% flamegrilled’ means microwaved
• ‘Thick cut sweet-cure bacon’ means gristle and inedible fat
• ‘Or Cumberland sausage’ means anything as long as it is the bacon described above
• ‘Served until 11am’ means served cold, limp and crap

The best part is how they dress it up as ‘Proper Breakfast for Proper People’ without any sense of irony.
Enjoy your meal.