Digital Influence Mapping Project

Rethinking the Marketing Spend Towards Driving Advocacy

This month's Harvard Business Review blasts "Social Media and the New Rules of Branding" in that corny laundry detergent typeface that folks use to connote, well, branding. David Edelman from McKinsey writes an anchor article in the issue. Clearly, we are starting to see the depth of McKinsey's interest in social media between this, their June 2009 research paper on how companies were benefitting from Web 2.0, and last months presentation from McKinsey at our WOMMA Summit. They clearly believe that social media has a significant business impact and are gearing up to counsel clients accordingly. 

Trick is that so much of social media strategy is informed by execution. It is near impossible to simply deliver strategy without the capacity to execute, refine strategy and iterate. But that doesn't mean that McKinsey has it wrong. In fact, the HBR article has a lot right.

The Consumer Decision Journey

David and his colleagues challenge the traditional one-dimensional read on the sales funnel. (i.e. where you see the funnel as a linear progression from awareness to conversion and loyalty. They offer their own view which they argue reflects consumers real experience. They have their Consumer Decision Journey while we at Ogilvy have Customer Journeys.  Both are doing the same thing - paying attention to the influences on purchase behavior and, increasingly,  advocacy. Their model breaks the consumer experience into 4 stages:

• Consider
• Evaluate
• Buy
• Enjoy, Advocate, Bond

They argue that marketers should not waste energy (and money) by allocating spending across media. Rather they should focus on stages in the decision journey - those stages where they can have the best impact.According to David, their research reveals that 70-90% of spend goes to advertising and retail promotions to reach consumers at "Consider " and "Buy." Consumers can best be influenced at the Evaluate or Enjoy, Advocate, Bond stages. The power of word of mouth or advocacy in this "influence" is large:

"In many categories the single most powerful impetus to buy is someone else's advocacy. Yet many marketers focus on media spend (principally advertising) rather than on driving advocacy"

Imagine what might happen if the largest part of an integrated marcom plan was geared to drive and amplify advocacy...

4 Takeaways from the 2010 WOMMA Summit

Just back from an all too brief stop at this year's WOMMA Summit and I wanted to share 4 quick takeaways:

1. Big Brands are sounding serious about social media/word of mouth marketing

There are some terrific folks leading the charge at their company's equivalent of the social media 'center for excellence' - Petra Neiger/Cisco and Ekaterina Walter/Intel to name just two. They have identified a framework for applying and governing social media at an enterprise level. They each have some version of the "7 Responsibilities of the Center for Excellence" on their agenda. They have a system for training, delivering 'best practice' consulting or solutions,  have determined how to govern use of social networks that actually support the business. In most cases they have made preliminary bets on technologies that can help them scale like listening technologies and social CMS systems like Buddy Systems and/or Vitrue. 

I say "sounding serious" vs. getting serious only because most companies are dramatically underspending in social media in terms of staffing and overall budget commitment. I see many indicators that that will change in 2011. Brands will not only support the small social media strategist team within the enterprise, they will start staffing and funding at appropriate levels.

2. There really is a difference between a historically ad-centric view and a public relations view of social media

I live and work in a completely integrated universe at Ogilvy. We talk about solving client business problems. Discipline expertise is key yet social media clearly transcends any one group. So, I am naturally inclined to want to be a little "blind" about where social media specialists come from. Still, I have been reminded recently that there are some prevailing attitudes towards social media depending upon which discipline you are steeped in. PR or communications professionals who really embrace social media tend to put a high premium on using the discipline to drive true "earned media" (aka word of mouth). Advertising professionals often tend to look at the paid, owned, earned triptych as equal contributors to driving metrics indicative of engagement which is on the path - hopefully - to increased consideration or even preference. 

3. Value metrics are moving from incidental to explicit

We have good data and good models for understanding the business value of social media and word of mouth marketing. It is not just marcom campaign performance but lifetime customer value, recruiting and retention, reputation and more. Between our own efforts at Ogilvy, the slide that MKinsey showed at the WOMMA 2010 Summit correlating word of mouth to sales (for Sony) and the collection of information gathered by WOMMA in the Metrics Guidebook - we have accumulated enough valuable models and results to drive sound business decisions. Problem is that it is still hard. Brands who want to bridge the delta between their conviction that social is important and their willingness to spend will have to invest time and energy aligning to the best models. There is no shortcut. 

4. A community of practitioners is priceless

I also learned the value of participating in a community of folks who are committed and experienced in a discipline fueled by passion and brains. In the daily grind of getting work done and the assault from so-called social media pundits everyday, I lose sight of how important it is to connect with the true experts in the field. That's the biggest benefit to membership in WOMMA. That's why my team will also attend WOMMA's School on WOM in the Spring (disclosure - Ogilvy is a governing member and I continue to serve on the board)

Brands Get Personal to Drive Word of Mouth

"Personal Media" used to be a synonym for social media. That fell by the wayside a few years ago. Still, so much of social media is captivating because we reveal our personal interests and opinions, allow and invite personal connections with others and, in general, look for a more personal approach in our communications. 

Brands should not lose sight of this when using social media and trying to get ideas to scale. Royal Dutch Airline, KLM, knows this. Here's how The Next Web (great resource) describes the program:

"When passengers check in at KLM’s Foursquare locations, the KLM Surprise team then uses social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook to find out information about the passenger...The KLM Surprise team then uses this information to come up with a personalized gift to surprise the passenger with. The team follows up after surprising a passenger by monitoring the conversation generating on social networks by that person and their friends. They also take photos of the people they have surprised and post them to the KLM Facebook page."

@AmericanExpress (cl) is known to do the "twitter fairy" from time to time. That's when a brand listens to customers talk about their experience with a brand and surprise a customer with a personally-relevant gift (e.g. "I saw you redeemed points for a trip to NYC, here are 2 tix to BonJovi on us..."). That the surprise is made public through facebook pictures or other amplification of social media adds reach and if done well, is not disingenuous. This is a brilliant way to generate high-quality word of mouth and is a great part of an overall strategy in social media. However, it will die under its own weight if mistaken for a stand-alone strategy.

Does it scale?

Naysayers can kill a great tactic by insisting that everything deliver on all of the needs of a marketing plan. They would criticize these types of programs saying they cannot scale to a big enough program to have a positive impact on business. Public displays of customer appreciation can easily reach more than the customer, herself.  Other Twitter followers see the Twitter fairy do her thing. Other KLM customers in the terminal or on Facebook see a brand getting personal and caring. Still, that's not te type of scale that hard core marketers want to see. 

Then advertise. Then build a great social media strategy that includes the Surprise team and social grassroots (our approach to activating large communicties to 'care to share'). Add scale through complimentary tactics and ideas. Dont make every individual idea carry all of the water for a program. 
The best, most effective social media is integrated social media. The best strategy weaves together the complex strengths of different social media platforms and behaviors. Offering a genuine personal touch is one of the great things brands can do thanks to the amount of personal preferences and tastes we are all sharing out there. 

Make getting personal part of your strategy. 

The State of the Enterprise Social Media Strategist

Today, Jeremiah Owyang at the Altimeter Group released a research paper, Career Path of the Corporate Social Media Strategist. I, along with many colleagues in social media marketing, were interviewed to offer a snapshot of the social media strategist in major B2C and B2B enterprise. The report offers great insight from a certain vantage point within business - namely the guy or gal holding the social media title or responsibility.  It's interesting as I had participated in a much higher-level forum hosted by Jon Iwata at IBM for C-Suite executives two weeks ago on social business and its impact on the enterprise. That was a closed door session and I will only reveal that many senior executives take social media very seriously even if they do not have a complete vision as to how it will impact their business. 

3 Key Parts of the "Corporate Social Media Strategist" 

Help Desk vs. Scalable Social Business Programs: Jeremiah contends that the Corporate Social Media Strategist has a decision point where s/he can either fall underwater with a growing set of tactical requests they cannot hope to fulfill within the organization or they can reach "escape velocity" where they start to lead some significant change. I am not surprised to hear this. I would argue that more and more of their bosses are coming to the conclusion that they must double-down on their social commitment and make more senior, disciplined hires to really reap the benefit of social media. Some of their first hires may be swimming in a pool of too many requests and may just not have the business experience to work 'soft power' within the organization to overcome it. 

The report outlines the skills needed at various stages in the development of social media within the organization. It may be that the evangelism that is helpful at the "Awakening" phase does not serve the strategist needed at the maturing phases. There the business really needs a disciplined business person who can align social media enthusiasm with business reality. 

The Hub and Spoke Model Dominates: There is a great summary of the organizational models for different groups. We, ourselves, see a consistent phenomena - the "center for excellence." This is almost always a matrix federation from different departments brought together by their common interest in social media. "Center for excellence" is essentially a hub and spoke solution. Since adoption of social media requires so much education and interdisciplinary collaboration to really work, the "hub" model is a workable short term model (3-5 years?). 

Hiring Standards Are Sound Benchmarks for Success: If you want to set up your organization for "scalable social media programs," the report offers 10 useful guidelines for hiring the right person. No major enterprise needs the social media "evangelist" in my humble opinion. That ship has sailed. They need someone who can navigate the matrix, make advances and inroads through "soft power," integrate social media with traditional business functions and more. This is the last section in the report and offers a great checklist for business leaders. 

The report is very useful. It gives us all a mid-level view of the state of enterprise social media not just the job of the corporate social media strategist. The C-suite may have a different view. A growing number of business leaders know that social media will affect their business in big ways and are actively searching for ways and people who can up their game and go beyond social media experimentalism.  

Report: Career Path of the Corporate Social Strategist: Be Proactive or Become Social Media Help Desk

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang.

3 Benefits and 3 Examples of Social Advertising

In a great Mashable article about how news organizations are exploring social advertising, Vadim Lavrusik captures the entire promise of social advertising in two succinct statements:

"Social media, which effectively has infiltrated all corners of the web, has great potential in not only bringing in revenue but also making ads more useful to readers while also satisfying the needs of advertisers aiming to effectively reach the public. The social web can change the way we think about ads, by making them social and personalized to create utility for the user."

"Doctor (Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics) said he sees social media optimization as a driver of audience and engagement, and that engagement getting monetized through targeting, rather than blasting social marketing pushes. Being able to get more sophisticated in targeting individuals and specific communities will make monetization efforts easier."

Guiding principles for social ads

In other words: 

A. Ads that are useful - because we design them to serve the need of the user vs. repetitive "impressions"

B. Ads that are relevant - because we have successfully delivered them to the people who will value them most (i.e. properly targeted)

Social advertising as my colleague, Sean Muzzy at Neo@Ogilvy, would say is either defined by the environment, the quality of the advertisement or how it is targeted. 

1. On social platforms/streams: We can deliver via a social platform like Facebook, YouTube or Twitter thuis reaching people where they are increasingly spending time. 
2. Include social content or functions: We can make the ad itself somehow more social by including social content from the brand or consumers or by integrating social features like Open Graph connectivity from Facebook (i.e. social sharing)
3. Target delivery via social data: We can deliver based upon interests and affinities (I like contemporary literature like Peter Carey and J.M. Coetzee) or based upon our social graph (who our friends are)

Examples
Realistically, we should combine all or some of these to produce even more impactful advertising. We would rarely just drop advertising in Facebook or YouTube without targeting it in some way. Here are three interesting examples of social advertising:

Promoted Trend on Twitter - The Washington Post "bought" the hashtag #elections during the recent elections. That means there tweets appeared at the top of the search stack for the hashtag. I would have found that useful. It all depends on the content of the tweet and the alignment of the brand to the trend. IBM buying #cloud (i.e. cloud computing) makes perfect sense presuming they are tweeting useful content. 

Real Time Ads - we are big fans of designing social ads such that we can change the content at will. Whether swapping in a new consumer generated piece fo content or a timely offer, dynamic publishing can help us make the ad units more relevant and useful. Vadim points to the Minnpost's RealTimeAds as a great example. Companies like Alchemy Social are building systems to deliver highly dynamic ad streams

Social targeting - The biggest difference I find in the concept of social targeting vs. how we used to place advertising is in our ability to target based upon stated interests. InsideFacebook has a great summary of the ten ways to target in Facebook. 

• Location
• Keyword
• Connection
• Relationship
• Age
• Birthday
• Education
• Sex 
• Workplace
• Language

IMPACT 

Think about these key points  that clarify the impact and potential of social advertising (and of social media, in general):

• From Vadim's article: "For many, social sites like Facebook and Twitter account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth. The results are even more heavy on social for news startups like CapitalNY, Doctor said, who get 40% or more of their traffic from social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often better than those readers who come from search. They yield better conversation and are more likely to become regular users of the site, he said."
• We have found a compound effect when combining advertising with earned media content significantly improving the ad performance
• The social environment begs for a new definition of "advertising" which is far more important and useful to people today. If we can offer customers solutions when and where they most need them, then advertising becomes useful and is not seen as purely interruptive.

 

(WaPo Twitter image borrowed with respect from Mashable article)

Don't Count Me Completely Out of "Generation C"

Early on in the Nieslen post on the presentation given at their Indonesian summit by Dan Pankraz, Planning Director/Youth Strategist, DDB Sydney, they state clearly that

"Unlike Gen Y or Gen Z, Gen C is not an age cohort."

Of course they immediately peg it to an age segment - teens and twenty somethings. When I look at the characteristics of the "Connected Collective Consumer" - their version of Gen C -  I see a lot of truths that transcend an age group. Certainly my peers who are a bit north of the high end of the bracket (a wee bit older than 29, let's say) have almost all of these characteristics.  

"Tribal behavior: Like many youths, Gen C form their identities by belonging and expressing themselves within “tribes” reflecting the desire to “connect” around interesting ideas, cultural objects, causes and movements. Brands need to get into conversations that are happening within and across tribes. This will give their messages more credibility and attention compared to external sources."

counterpoint: Think about any research on networks and clusters. Maybe youth is more likely to align themselves with recognizable "tribes" but all of us exist with clusters of affinity groups (shared interest or identity)

"Social status derived by what you share: Gen C gains credibility in their friends’ worlds by expressing opinions, sharing ideas, observations and thoughts. Their influence depends on what they share and how often they share it."

counterpoint: In many ways this defines what we all do via Twitter and Facebook. It is not generational per se. 

"Bee-like swarm behavior: Powered by social media platforms, Gen C members mobilize as one with their tribes like bees around topics that interest them. When it comes to buying decisions, 85 percent of youths rely on peer approvals. Everything is reviewed and rated, making decision-making a team sport. Marketers must talk to “we”, not “me”. Marketing successfully becomes all about “talking to the community, not the individual”, and creating a conversation for the swarm to run with."

counterpoint: I find this fascinating and worth a much deeper look. I do believe that our social shopping habits have more to do with age than many of the other items on this list.

"Social oxygen: Gen C thrives on constant connectivity via social media platforms. Mobile devices have become “social oxygen”, enabling them to connect, create and share opinions and thoughts with their tribes. The mobile phone acts as a lifeline to the world, connecting not only with people they want to talk with, but also shielding them from those they do not."

counterpoint: Again, this is a quality of many folks who are constantly checking in, scanning their Tweetdeck display, texting their friends and family. 

"Continuous partial attention: Teens today consume 13 hours of content daily and have constant exposure to new ‘news’. As experts at managing content and information, they engage in never-ending conversations, constantly “livestreaming” their experiences to the world."

counterpoint: finally a stat on content consumption not advertising or a single platform like TV. 

"Chameleons: Gen C consumers are “chameleons”, constantly changing and morphing their identities to simultaneously belong to as many different tribes as possible. One-dimensionality is not an option for Gen C."

counterpoint: this makes sense as an attribute of youth. While us fogey's theoretically have long since come to terms with being 'who we are,' young people are developmentally more elastic 

"Co-creators: The social web has brought out Gen C’s creativity, leading to what Mr. Pankraz calls the “democratization of creativity”. They no longer consume ideas, but actively participate, play and collaborate. They demand to be part of the brand story."

counterpoint: I buy this. Just look at an Technographics slice and you will see that younger cohorts are more likely to play an active, content creating role online. They walk in expecting to co-create with brands even while some of us do also appreciate it. 

After all is said and done, I believe there is a new, "Connected Collective Consumer." many of these characterics transcend age and have more to do with the profile of social networking/social media usage, mobile and broadband connectivity in a particular market. Still, when you assemble all of othese characteristics, they do seem to describe a new generation, after all. 

Will Starbucks Digital Network Get the Wifi Access Portal Right?

I travel a lot. It gives me a chance to live on the road where I become dependent on the places I do business to take care of more than what I am there for. Hotels, planes, rental car centers. Each offers a customer experience. Some are tied directly to delivering their core product. Most of what I get from Hertz is about streamlining the rental experience. Some expand their core service. I have become a fan of the wireless service from GoGo while on Delta. Obviously, it has nothing to do with getting me from point A to point B. It does allow me to be more productive. 

Starbucks just launched their new in-store Digital Network. They realized that they could enhance the customer experience by extending the concept of the "third place" to the Internet. When a user logs on to wireless access in the store (made more simple via one-click access), they arrive at the Digital Network main screen which gives them local information and access to paywall content made free for the customer. 

A View from the CIO

Robert Scoble captured a great interview with Starbuck's CIO Stephen Gillet that explains the service in brand terms. One datapoint he delivers is that laptop usage in-store remains flat while mobile devices (iPhones most of all) are growing fast. There is something super-smart in Starbucks mining of the network usage data to better understand their customer. It's impossible to comment on the economics of this offer. We all know that bandwidth can be expensive to dole out especially as many of us gobble up more video wherever we are. 

Customer Experience

But from a pure customer experience POV, this is a great and smart move. They have already seen session-time increase with the advent of free wifi (up to 12 minutes). The paywall access - subscription editions of The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today - may even increase that and one would hope for Starbuck's case that means at least another tall latte at the register.The service is a partnership with Yahoo. I assume they provide some of the infrastructure, content and hosting. 

Think of all the places you get wireless on the road (usually for a fee). Hotels, airport lounges, airplanes and more. Have you ever logged onto a protal that had any value for you whatsoever? Usually it either defaults to a web page (hotels) or to the service provider portal or to some white label version of same. They are all near useless and appear to have been designed with about as much user experience care as an airport security line. When you think about the customer experience that Starbucks is trying to grow, they have a pretty good chance of getting it right.

What could they do to tip the design in their favor (some they may do or may be planning):

1. Daily song giveaways (they used to do this in-store)

2. Continue with the paywall content 

3. Keep it simple - most people are logging on via laptop to get something done. Give them some quick value and let them move on. 

4. Connect the experience to the smartphone app so when I move between devices I am not learning a whole new universe

5. Give out random coupons to surprise us when we log on

6. Recognize me when I log back on

7. Let me check-in to Facebook Places and FourSquare from within the interface