Digital Influence Mapping Project

Like Minds 2010: A Conference Apart

I had a great opportunity to keynote at Drew and Scott's Like Minds Conference in Exeter UK last week. While I had made the decision to attend quite a while back, a certain part of me didn't know exactly what to expect.

Here are the 5 highlights of my experience (in no significant order):

1. Molly Flatt, 1000 Heads and President WOMUK: I knew Molly from WOMMA and it was great to see her. Her comments on the final panel of the day were one of the many bright spots. Talking about the #uksnow meme that sprang up around the unusual snowfall in London (should of been in DC 2 weeks ago!), she made a really pressing point about how brands could be more reactive and responsive to what was happening vs. trying to conjure up their own "brand experience." Her example - with people tweeting up a storm and even writing #uksnow in the actual snow, why didn't a brand like Gap make snowmen outside their stores, dress them up in Gap and post photos via Twitter/flickr? The insight for me is less about the tactical suggestion - a good one - but rather that brands could be ready and responsive to what is already going on. Remember that great (and ironic) video that EA created with Tiger Woods published on YouTube that showed him walking on water after a user found a bug in the Tiger Woods XBox game that did the same. EA jumped into an existing meme and in some way rewarded those who were sharing about the game glitch with an extraordinary video featuring the man, himself. 

2. @joannejacobs had a great style which the crowd responded well to. Her message was clear - there are good uses of new technology (like augmented reality) and there is gratuitous or bad implementations. She used an Ikea implementation as a good use - they allow you to overlay items in your space to test drive them, so-to-speak. She challenged the delightful (perhaps) but somewhat silly uses of augmented where you place a 'code" in front of a camera and you can watch an animation come to life (so long as you are in front of the camera etc...). At the heart of what she was saying - embrace a discipline of being useful and actually think through what problem you might solve with the innovation.

3. @jonakwue did a great bit equating social media with the life and death of hip hop. being a DJ, he found analogies in the remix culture of music with that of social media. he referenced and advocated for the book - The Pirate's Dilemma.  He had a process slide that I snapped.

4. Exeter UK is a hidden gem. Okay, hidden form me perhaps. Two and a half hours outside of London, who would have guessed that such a cool little town existed. It is a place that you could actually imagine living in (if you have kids) and you can actually buy stuff there as well. @scottgould and @drewellis did a great job of luring us all there and John Harvey aka @exeterccm  - the City Centre Manager was a terrific host.

5. The dueling views of media from the Guardian and the Telegraph. @kate_day from the Telegraph didn't exactly rave about that companies embrace of "digital" but I sensed that she felt encouraged about how they were making commitments. I mean she is the communities manager there - a job you wouldn't expect at a new company. 

There were a lot of other great moments. Chris Brogan was funny during his personal story/presentation. The crowd seemed to really appreciate that he was there. There was a great mix of public and private organizations, small and big businesses there (like Orange). Scott and Drew did a great job. 

3 Ways P&G Drives Traditional Marketers to Social

I had thechance to speak with Lucas Watson from P&G last week. He spearheads digital innovation on the marcom side and leads a small team of digital and social experts who work across the brands (Global Team Leader for Digital Business Strategy). Clearly P&G has an earnest commitment to applying social media and other digital marketing innovations to their way of marketing. I have been reading Design of Business from Roger Martin and believe their efforts in terms of applying 'design thinking' to their business has created a culture that makes social easier to embrace.

3 Ways to Get to the Hard Cases

I asked Lucas how he has seen the most entrenched traditional marketers become more "willing" to use social. What does he do to help them? He gave me the following three things;

1. Get them out of the office. Take them somewhere provocative like to a startup's office or to the Googleplex or somewhere where they can feel and see the excitement of doing things differently. Don't try and convince them in a conference room at P&G behind a Powerpoint slide

2. Get a digital champion on the brand. Every team needs an enthusiast who will push and keep challenging the usual way. We constantly shift between making digital everyone's job and embedding it via true experts. Truth is both are necessary and the balance will change over time as more people make digital a part fo their jobs.

3. Show them the ROI to inform marketing modeling. P&G is know for their marketing modeling. This simply confirms what each of us not inside the company would guess and that is that you have to have a 'pretty good' story of both the performance and ROI to convince hard core marketers like those at an FMCG (fast moving consumer goods).

Many brands and many, many social media consultants underestimate the power fo this last point. No doubt that ROI is far harder than performance measurement (knowing if a social strategy is working better this time around). And the full benefits of a social media-based marketing approach has positive impact beyond the short term sales impact. Still it can be done and and it is one of the key ways to get break down barriers to adopting social media-based word of mouth programs. Check out WOMMA's Measurement and Metrics Guidebook for more.

Is It All Just Word of Mouth Marketing?

Is the marketing affect of social media synonymous with word of mouth marketing? Do we use social media just to drive some form of word of mouth or are their other reasons we use it?

At the risk of jumping willingly down a semantic rabbit hole, I would say this:

Everything an influencer or average user can do online via social media - that marketers really care about - involves some form of word of mouth.

and this:

Innovations in digital marketing allow brands to engage people (keep involved) via multimedia and social channels in order to involve them in a marketing relationship (okay, just say deliver marketing messages)

Social Media-Driven Word of Mouth Matters Most
Why do brands want lots of Facebook fans? To simply market directly to them or is it to leverage their social graph? The latter of course and that is word of mouth. As fan to Zara, the Spanish department store, when I "like" the wall posting about their new mobi app, all of my friends see that in my news feed or on my Wall. While not an explicit recommendation it is an implicit one.

And that seemingly understated endorsement might be more powerful than if I simply shouted "I love Zara's" in a blog post. Emanuel Rosen touches on this in his book, Anatomy of Buzz Revisited, where he talks about the value of implicit recommendations like branded wall paper a user applies to their MySpace page.

If I send a video link to a friend, favorite a video, comment on a post, tweet about a special offer at Starbuck's, become a fan, a follower or favourite a photo in Flickr - it's all an endorsed "share" and that is word of mouth. Marketers who want huge viral-like impact are crazy. It wil leither happen or not. Marketers who want to engage people such that they will pass along are after a form of word of mouth. Thats not crazy, that's why you would bother.

Innovations in Digital Marketing Engage and Lead to WOM
So many great innovations in digital marketing from episodic video programs to new iPhone apps like  Zipcar's utility to location-based offers via Loopt are meant to reach and engage users to drive them to some action or increase prefernce for a product. They are also, 9 times out of 10, meant to activate some form of WOM where I pass it along to a friend, post it effortlessly to my Twitter stream or Facebook wall. We care about the direct relationship with the "one" but count on the effect of the one passing along to their many either explicitly or more subtly. We know that peers connecting with peers are most often more relevant than our marketing messages. So, social media may not be completely synonymous with word of mouth marketing but its sure why most of us use it to solve marketing challenges. 

Is Twitter Usage Always Meaningful

During the SuperBowl, @kevinweil and the others on the Twitter analytics team tracked SuperBowl and Brand tweets to create the seeminmgly insightful graph below. I love graphs and infographics.If I had my way, half our R&D budget would go against visualizations.

But what does this one actually tell us?

Communal Chatter

It is one thing when Twitter helps us see a grand (and terrible) event like the Mumbai attacks from many perspectives or when it allows us each to share a personal pov or experience that others may find useful or relatable. It is another when we are all watching the same edited TV broadcast. Sure the polling function of how many folks liked the Google ad is kind of interesting.

As Kevin shares:

"The second half began with a bang as @TheSaints recovered a surprise onside kick, and for the next minute 44% of all worldwide tweets were about football. Chatter around brands had meanwhile dropped to much lower levels until @Google's Parisian Love commercial sparked viewers once more. Excitement around the game grew steadily with large peaks following scores and turnovers up until the final moments. As the game ended, one out of every two tweets on Twitter was about the Super Bowl!"

I was much more active on Twitter during the game last year. This year, I knew there woudl be a broad community of Twitter users commenting on game highlights and commercials but it just didn't seem that interesting to tweet, "I liked the Google advert - clever and with a lot of heart..." even though I did.

Still, I love a good graph.

The Psychology of Influence and Sharing

The NYTimes recently covered researchout of the University of Pennsylvania to understand the drivers of the NYTimes "most-emailed" list which appears on their site and reflects what stories readers are sending around the most.

I continue to believe that psychology is the next rediscovered territory for marketers. With all this talk about behavioral marketing you would think psychology is downright passe. My team at Ogilvy has been spending a fair amount of time re-examining Cialdini's drivers of influence and persuasion in relation to social media. Here is a crude juxtaposition of Cialdini's concepts against a social media context.  

Influencers Share

How does influence get played out online? Through some form of sharing or word of mouth. It's useful to understand what really drives people to share.

The Penn researchers, Jonah Berger and Katherine A. Milkman uncovered some pleasant surprises.

"People preferred e-mailing articles with positive rather than negative themes, and they liked to send long articles on intellectually challenging topics.

Perhaps most of all, readers wanted to share articles that inspired awe, an emotion that the researchers investigated after noticing how many science articles made the list. In general, they found, 20 percent of articles that appeared on the Times home page made the list, but the rate rose to 30 percent for science articles, including ones with headlines like “The Promise and Power of RNA.” "

Sharing articles or any digital content or references is a form of word of mouth. The implicit or explicit endorsement of a peer packs a lot of trust and cuts through the "message shield" that we all form around ourselves.

"They used two criteria for an awe-inspiring story: Its scale is large, and it requires “mental accommodation” by forcing the reader to view the world in a different way.

“It involves the opening and broadening of the mind,” write Dr. Berger and Dr. Milkman, who is a behavioral economist at Wharton."

They dive deeper in the study itself which you can access here.

"Awe may be linked to social transmission for a number of reasons. First, awe encourages people to connect with others and spread the word. People who have had epiphanies through drug use or religious experiences, for example, seem to have a deep need to talk about them or proselytize (James 1902; Keltner and Haidt 2003). Other types of awe-inducing experiences may activate the same psychological mechanisms evoked by epiphanies. Second, awe inducing stimuli also tend to be entertaining, inspiring, and contain a great deal of information. Each one of these aspect in itself is a reason that people may share things. Third, because awe-inducing experiences are characterized by the accommodation of existing mental structures, they should be particularly likely to drive people to talk to others to understand how they feel (Rime, Mesquita, Philippot, and Boca 1991). Finally, awe-inducing experiences encourage people to look beyond themselves and deepen connections to the broader social world (Shiota, Keltner, and Mossman 2007). All of these factors suggest that awe should lead
people to want to share."

One of Emanuel Rosen's key drivers of Word of Mouth is "story." Now lets add emotion and awe to that list.

When is a Social Media Strategy Not A Strategy

A self-promoting headline from the trades last week claimed a coffee brand in the UK "develops first social media strategy."

Here's how they describe the "strategy:"

"To target students and give the campaign an anti-corporate feeling, the brand will launch simple games on Facebook illustrated by DJ fly-poster and Nike T-shirt artist, Mark Ward.
The games, ... include ‘Pet the Puppies' and ‘Flick the switch', which time users on how many times they can hit their space bar within 10 seconds."

Now, this is just a report in Brand Republic so in all fairness there may actually be more to the tactic than described here. Still, knowing how much brands - especially FMCGs - want to succeed in social media, you would think they would be more careful in terms of how they describe their efforts via press release to the marketing pubs.

Plug-and-play Tactic

As described, this is a plug-and-play tactic to "check off" the social media box - create (or more likely, repurpose) some game apps, plop them in Facebook and hire a hipster the kids will like to offer a draw of sorts. What this has to do with a coffee brand beyond their desire to reach a younger audience is not clear.

Their communication goal may be to raise what we call "relevant awareness" - the top two levels of the funnel: awareness and evaluation. In social media, you would rarely set out to just achieve awareness. More likely, you would be laser-focused on a segment of folks by traditional demographics or some type of affinity ( younger folks who like drinking coffee for example) and then try to educate them to some preliminary evaluation. This presupposes that you have achieved some level of relevance - hopefully in relation to the product.

If all you want to do is achieve a superficial level of engagement - people playing a game that has little to do with the product, you are really approaching social media as an ad channel.You hope that the catchiness of the game will get them to play and pass-along. Your brand is the "host" of that game, logos emblazoned everywhere, and you hope that you "impress" upon them the brand name. That approach misses all of the true value potential of 'social' - sustained and relevant word of mouth.

The other watch-out in the story include the following words and phrases:

• "target" - time for a moratorium on the ancient use of warfare language. The use of words like "target" may reveal how little the brand is interested in social media
• "an anti-corporate feeling" - presuming they mean all the negatives we associate with corporations, then they may want to try "anti-corporate behavior" and not just a feeling. Brands can be genuine and personable - even big FMCG brands. That way they might earn the "feeling."
• "how many times they can hit their space bar within 10 seconds." - makes it sound like all they are doing is providing mindless finger-candy when I am sure (hope) it is so much more.
• "Facebook" - note to self: don't promote new Facebook-based campaign when you only have 146 fans, little true engagement and a different, unpopulated brand page comes up first in Google. Better to wait until your platform looks and feels more robust

Too Critical?
Perhaps I am being too critical. Maybe we should be satisfied as more and more brands - big ones - start experimenting in social media.

On second thought, lets not be satisfied with this approach. These experiments will blow-up for brands. Many will be ill-conceived or executed and the results will turn CMOs off to social. Social media is not a channel. It is a fundamental shift in consumer behavior. It is time for even "first-timers" to adopt a true social media strategy.  

Getting Serious By Segmenting Influencers

We manage databases of influencers for particular subject areas and clients that are 500 influencers strong. We know them all in one way or another. We respect their authority and their interests. And we only want to engage them for things that make sense to them (and our client). We want to respect their time and expertise.

We segment our influencers in absolute categories and in categories that are specific to a particular client project. Ever try engaging Food bloggers over a frozen food? You quickly realize that there are many segments of food bloggers. Some will put convenience on the front burner and be receptive. Others would just as soon burn you at the stake for ignoring their "pure" interests in food and presuming that they would ever engage with an FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) product like frozen peas or prepared meals.

I have spoken about our approach toSocial Influencer Relationship Management (Social IRM) which is really the grown-up management of our influencer relationships for their benefit and the brands we work with.

Everyone goes in the database. We track the following types of data:

1. who they are - we love to get to know the influencers we connect with often
2. how influential they are following our 6 measures (it ain't always about "reach")
3. what are their interest by categories and subcategories
4. what have we learned from talking with them about their interests (some really want to hear from brands on certain things and not on others)

There is nothing diabolical about keeping track of this information. Influencers who want to engage with relevant brands appreciate the disgression this breeds. Everyone hates indiscriminate "pitches."

Here's an example of a visualization of a segmentation we have done for a food related project (note to anyone featured here - don't worry, we are not targeting you. This list merely notes your authority and influence):

Segmenting Green

Jacquelyn Ottman had a great post on segmenting green consumers on HBR Blogs. This is the  type of useful segmentation that helps both us, the marketers, and the consumers or influencers (note: our online influencers range from professional witers to proam experts who are essentially regular consumers who have earned some authority in a certain area of interest)

Here's how she sums it up

"Ask: To which environmental organizations do members of our target audience belong (The Appalachian Mountain Club or Greenpeace)? Which types of vacations do they take (hiking or the beach)? Which environmental magazines and websites do they read or visit? (Sierra or Animal Fair?) Which types of products do they buy? (green fashions or energy-sipping light bulbs)? Which eco-labels do they seek out ("USDA Organic" or "Energy Star")?

In observing green consumers over the past twenty years my colleagues and I have found that asking questions like these allows companies to distinguish between four subsegments, which we've dubbed "Resource Conservers", "Health Fanatics", "Animal Lovers" and "Outdoor Enthusiasts." Of course, there are some overlaps among these groups, but discovering which subsegment your customers mainly fall into can sharpen your marketing. The following descriptions are generalizations, but they capture the spirit of each type of consumer."

She continues in describing each segment and importantly some ways marketers can be relevant to them. Here's an example fo her description for Outdoor enthusiasts:

"Outdoor Enthusiasts spend their free time camping, rock climbing, skiing, and hiking. They vacation in national parks and plan their next adventure using tips from Outdoors Magazine. Whether they're purchasing Dr. Bronner's Castile Soap to reduce the impact of washing dishes while camping, or toting reusable bottles like Kleen Kanteen to avoid littering the trail, they seek to minimize the impact of their recreational activities. When shopping, they look for FSC (sustainably harvested) labels on their products, are also likely to purchase outdoor gear made from recycled materials, such as Synchilla PCR (post-consumer recycled polyester) from Patagonia.

Some ways to appeal to outdoor enthusiasts:

1. Conduct a joint promotion with national parks or manufacturers of boots, reusable bottles, and trail mix snacks.
2. Advertise in Sierra Club magazine or online at Backpackers.com."

How do you segment and organize your online influencers?

My Event Strategy Starts With: We Are Like Minds - UK

While my colleague, Thomas Crampton, winds down his annual pilgrimmage to Davos (see some of his coverage here), I am planning out my next event - keynoting at an unusual conference/summit/workshop in Exeter, England called We Are Like Minds. Every year, I re-evaluate conference and meeting opportunities to make sure I am doing all I can to make these significant time commitments - whether I am speaking or just attending - worthwhile. We are still in a recession and regardless of that who has time or money to travel to an experience that doesn't provide some superior value?

My Core Criteria
There are some practical considerations for me when I get involved in an event. Some are basic and some are new for this year:

• Will I likely learn something substantial that I can apply to my business within the next 90 days (I learn something no matter how poor a conference event and I am talking about "substantial learnings"
• Can I connect with clients or brands during the trip? The "killing two birds with one stone" approach helps justify costs and time. Likewise, can I connect with my global team and deliver off on part of my business mission with them (e.g. new training, business development, their client meetings)
• Do I have something substantial to contribute as a teacher? Beyond the 'thought leadership points' of stage-time, is there an opportuntiy for me to share something highly useful with colleagues, something they can meaningfully apply to their business within 30 days? (I hold myself to a slightly higher standard which I hope to meet) I don't waNt to speak just to speak - too many folks burning us out with that.
• Can I meet a concentrated group of social media and word of mouth marketing practitioners for the sake of current and future recruiting needs? Meeting colleagues who are actually doing the work and sharing from experience is usually very valuable.

My 2010 Criteria
Beyond this base there are a few new criteria which draw from where I am at professionally - both on a personal level and as a leader at Ogilvy. Some are qualifiers on the above criteria, others are new criteria. 

• Will the event give me considerable opportunity to meet and talk with professionals in one of the core areas of my business focus this year? We have set priority areas of expansion for our business - social media platforms, geographies, business verticals. For instance, we are tremendously bullish on the use of the Facebook/Twitter social crm model for brands in a few markets around the world. We specialize in integrated social media programs that scale. Can I advance these expertise/offerings even further? Can I find or establish a "community of practice" even?
• Does the event go deep on any form of meaningful measurement? You might argue this is just another facet of the previous criteria yet it is a singular focus for us and worth calling out. Ever since we introduced Conversation Impact (or really when we began working on it), we are insatiably hungry for the best thinking on measuring impact and performance. Also, events that have a solid focus on measurement - marcom, business impact - tend to be more rigorous in their agenda - less fluffy talks/sessions.
• Will I learn new ways to innovate in a "bootstrap" environment? I was thinking about this the other day when talking with Andrew Nachison from WeMedia, another great conference coming up. My team at Ogilvy innovates all of the time coming up with new, more effective and impactful ways to use social media marketing. We embed that innovation in our day, so-to-speak. I am always eager to learn new ways of doing that.
• Is it provocative? Will the session likely challenge my own view of how the world turns in social media? This one is a hard one to gauge and yet can be the most compelling and impactful.

We Are Like Minds
Get info and register here
Dates: February 26-27, 2010
Place:Exeter, England

This conference will be provocative. It will also bring together professionals in core areas of business focus for me, practitioners for current recruiting and brands - local, national and global - that interest me and the I respect.

My session? It's new and it's something practical that brands and others can apply to their business today.

Time for a Comprehensive Social Media Strategy
Brands and organizations have been experimenting and getting sharp in social media marketing. That's good because in one way or another social media and the impact of word of mouth has become a global change. But this experimentation risks becoming social media tokenism. Little trials that may be ineffective or worse, it could burn out your organization's enthusiasm for the possibilities of social media before the miracle happens.  Brands like Intel, Ford, P&G, Unilever, Vodafone and others are trading up for a more comprehensive social media strategy that really delivers results. We will review a framework from these experiences that maps out how to develop a strategy today. And the 'watch-outs' - what do we need to be careful of as we develop and roll this out. What will this deliver for your brand? A disciplined approach to using social media to achieve the biggest impact on your business (and your oarganization) possible.

Join us. 

Three Reasons Not to Use Influencer Engagement

Influencer Engagement is when you identify a collection of medium-to-high influence social media publishers - people with their own blogs, Twitter handles or communities - and you invite them into play a role with a brand or organization via social media. Simple example is identifying the top 50 bloggers in a relevant segment or affinity and you invite them to HQ as part of a process to build a relationship with the brand. This is a bit different than simple "pitching" to top media bloggers.

The goals of influencer engagement
There are three fundamental communications goals for engaging influencers:

1. Getting their feedback to inform a marcom effort or product or service development
2. Inspiring them to become outbound word of mouth advocates (e.g. you want them to post authentically positive things about your brand, issue or organization)
3. Building relationships for longer term reputation management (i.e. "putting good will in the bank")

Role this plays
There are three roles and influencer strategy can play in a particular marcom initiative:

1. Strengthening and approach to a larger marcom campaign or product initiative by incorporating the feedback and insights generated through talking with these key influencers. Your product or campaign will end up more relevant and therefore more successful in the marketplace. We all "test" - this is another, effective way to get useful feedback
2. If Influencers talk positively, you earn third-party credibility for your brand. If their activity achieves any kind of reach or sparks substantial grassroots discussion (more WOM), you can influence the purchase decsion or opinion of the customers or stakeholders that you are trying to drive to action.
3. Allys can protect the brand in times of crisis and add value to the brand at all times. Admittedly, the digital influencer contribution to this is difficult to measure but not impossible.

Why you shouldn't use influencer engagement

Most marketing clients want to set up influencer engagements to inspire people to share word of mouth. If they are interested in feedback, it is by far a secondary benefit. As for building up long term relationships that may pay off for brand or reputation goals, while I would like to say that is a primary goal, that too is a nice-to-have. So, when should you avoid these types of programs:

1. Don't proceeed if you plan to ask for feedback simply as a demonstration that you are listening with no real intent or interest in acting on anything you hear from influencers. Many marketers will through in a listening activity with a group fo influencers as if it were a step to earning trust (it kind of is). If you don't plan on acting on anything you hear from these folks then don't set everyone up for disappointemt by asking them what they think of the new ad campaign or the way the product feels in their hands.
2. Don't proceed if you do not plan on amplifying their word of mouth to achieve some real impact. If you want your influencers' content - blog posts, tweets, videos, images - to reach an appreciable number of folks, then you should be prepared to do what you need to to add that scale and reach. Aggregating that content and then promoting it via paid media is one approach. Forming a partnership with a media entity (e.g. NBCu, Sugar Network, etc...) is another approach (almost always pay-to-play). Both are enhanced with some attention to an SEO program that does what it can (white-hat tactics only, please) to elevate these third-party listings in search. Without these scale efforts, will you really be happy with a few posts and tweets out there? It's authentic (or can be) but will your customers notice?
3. Don't proceed if you are not committed to delivering a true "value exchange" with your influencers. This principal (see more in this post) outlines what the influencer "gets" for their time and attention. Don't presume they are fascinated with your product nor ready to be rabid advocates. Also, don't presume you know what that value is for them. Carefully and discretely reach out to afew influencers and run your ideas by them. Could save you a big disappointment later when nobody bites). As you think this through, be clear about the new disclosure issues related to the FTC guidelines on endorsements and testimonials (see this post).

Not every brand is ready to reach out to influencers.They are other ways to use social media. You can drive yourself crazy pursuing such a program when you aren't ready to do what it takes. If there was an easier, softer way believe me, we would be all over it. One more myth-bashing proof point ( the myth that social media marketing is free). It actually takes work and commitment.