Digital Influence Mapping Project

Becoming Social Leaders at the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels

This past year, I had the good fortune to speak at the EuroPCom Conference on Public Communication held adjacent to the European Parliament in Brussels. This happened concurrent with a EU leaders session and immediately after the Nobel Prize announced that the EU would be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012. One thrill was not only meeting great leaders like Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, but inspiring her to take photos of my presentation from my return monitor.

 

My POV - Government communicators can learn a tremendous amount from the brands, agile non-profits and scrappy start-ups all innovating in digital and social media.  Too often, government communicators feel their circumstance is ‘terminally unique,’ that nothing can be learned from the Nestle’s and Ford’s of the world.

Brands are spending billions to figure our how to engage people via social media. Investment firms invest billions in start-ups attempting to build businesses and disrupt the way we get things done via digital. It would be a shame if public communicators and leaders turned a blind eye to all the learnings from these efforts.

The result? Well, hopefully a good session overall. But more importantly, I walked away with a fresh understanding and appreciation for the innovations and efforts of the folks working for the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament.

Learning is a two-way street.  Who will you learn from this year?  

The Public Leader’s Dilemma - How to Become a Social Organization from Social@Ogilvy

Social Media Lessons for the Public Sector at EuroPComm 2012

I will be speaking during the closing session at EuroPComm 2012 this week in Brussels. Hundreds of communication specialists from all levels of EU governments will be there for the third year. This time the agenda focuses on four areas:

• "restoring public confidence
• communicating Europe
• e-communication and social media
• dialogue with youth, senior citizens and ethnic groups"

 

Apples need to learn from oranges

Too often, government communications experts see their job as unique. The legislative, regulatory and political conditions under which they operate drive them to tune out lessons they might learn from the commercial sector. What can the Ministry of Health in France learn from how brands like Nestle or Unilever are using social media? What can it learn from the Diabetes Foundation? How about from SparkPeople?

Brands are spending billions of dollars understanding how to use social media to drive behaviors. Driven by expediency, the world’s nonprofit organizations are experimenting with the effectiveness of digital and social communications to push their missions forward. And startups around the world are gearing up to disrupt how we used to get things done.  In this case, it’s time for us to stop insisting that the public sector is so different that it cannot find valuable lessons in a number of directions. 

If I break down some of the conference goals and topics, I find us all convening around:

• Building trust between government and citizens
• Deepening engagement with citizens
• Driving people to action and advocacy
• Listening to better understand needs
• Understanding efficacy of communication efforts

While there are terrific examples from the government sector around the world, my job will be to draw connections to the work of:

• B2B and B2C brands committed to innovating via digital and social media
• Non-profits like Greenpeace and Amnesty International who are mastering social media for greater efficiency (see this infographic on the top nonprofits in social media from Craig Newmark)
• Start-ups who use technology to solve problems in new ways

 How can public communication specialists find valuable lessons in this world and maintain a steady flow of new ideas worth considering? I will be interested to hear how 700 of the European Union’s top communications experts manage innovation in social media.

Can Austerity Drive Social Media Growth in Business?

It’s easy to pay attention to the fast growth markets for social media – the Philippines, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, China and a few more.  Its like being in that growth company that keeps opening stores. Let's just focus on the markets that are going great guns. Let's "open stores" where it is easiest. What about the established markets where people are already connected and where Facebook is 'old hat?' 

Coming back from Portugal and Brussels – both trudging along in their own ways under the weight of “austerity” – plenty of business people were asking whether social media has relevance in a time of stress and crisis. Often in times of crisis, business pulls back on marketing and relies generally on accepted practices.  You know, the stuff you were always told that works and won't get you fired.

4 reasons social matters in a tight economy like Europe

Here are four reasons why I think social media will grow in Europe even now when the region struggles to gain the financial stability it needs.

 

1. Some of the big social success stories were born out of crisis

Dell, Ford, and BP each committed to using social media at a time of crisis not when things were going great. Ford, specifically, faced a global financial crisis that suppressed car sales pretty much everywhere. In 2008/9.  Each of these brands could have pulled their head into the shell waiting for the smoke to clear. They didn’t. The got busy. They knew they needed a new way of doing things.  

 

2. Integrated social media is more efficient

Just look at the Integrated Social Media Sales Impact Study we did last year. Combining social media to the marcom mix can drive up consumption and sales for categories like quick service restaurants (QSRs).  If you are a C-suite leader for a company doing business in Europe, I would think you would be deeply concerned with getting more out of the budgets you do have as you work to drive sales back up.

 

3. People’s behavior is changing

About 70% of Portugal is connected to the internet. Of those north of 90% are active on social media. Mobile penetration exceeds 100%. Belgium is similar. Almost 82% of the populaion is online. Almost half the population is on Facebook.  People are changing how they form opinions and purchase decisions and it won't go back to the way it was before the financial crisis. If business wants to build enduring, profitable relationships with customers, they are going to have to shift to socially-enabled customer service, customer advocacy programs and building more value for customers through digital channels.  What Forrester calls the “always connected customer” has become the new reality and we must understand what that means not hide from it.

 

4. The competition is weightlifting during the crisis

Not everyone’s business is down. I spoke to one of the biggest food companies in Brussels, mobile service providers in both Brussels and Portugal, and several banks. Sales were up. Usage was growing. Innovation was introducing new competition. During any crisis – even a large financial one – not everyone is hurt the same way. Some businesses continue or flourish. The pressure of innovating in the face of competition never really recedes. The smart money is on those companies who know they are playing the long game and know they have to work just as hard now as in flush times to engage, satisfy and delight their customers.

Just-in-time or Too-little-too-late in Social in Mexico? - The Agency Side

Agencies have their own too-soon and too-late conundrum. Almost all marketing and communications firms are paid to deliver business results today. Maybe, maybe they are working towards a 2-3 year horizon on a brand project. Too few are independently investing in the future but rather look to client initiatives and projects to justify a new solution in mobile, community marketing, employee advocacy or any of the other innovations that stand to radically change how we market.

The rapid growth of new behaviors like those in Mexico will not likely change, meaning, we are all ‘settling in’ for a bumpy ride of non-stop change for the foreseeable future.

Agencies have to choose if it’s their role to lead clients towards change or simply be responsive when the client comes around to changing. There are advantages to each choice. My bias is to be the agency thinking ahead and thoughtfully advising clients how to lean forward and do things that will help them for years to come. 

I have heard too many agency marketers around the world say, “our clients aren’t ready to innovate via social media; they aren’t asking for it.” We need to be stronger business people clearly distinguishing between innovation with its benefits to the business and efficiency with its role to improving the bottom line today. 

 

Will you be Just-in-time or Too-little-too-late in Social in Mexico?

Marketers around the world are trying to figure out when to divert resources to use social media behaviors and technology in their marketing, communications and customer service. Too early and the best conceived plans on Facebook or customer communities will not produce enough results to survive the next budget season. Too late and an organization can find itself chasing after consumer behavior and losing reputation, if not business, to competitors. 

We have big multinational clients who are deploying Facebook community management as quickly as possible in 50+ markets. Many of these countries don’t come close to having even critical mass adoption of internet access never mind consumers flocking to engage with brands via social networks. Still, the brands have no question that the velocity of social media adoption around the world will be faster than we have all been used to. 

Mexico is a Real-Fast Growth Market

And there’s good reason for this. Just look at Global Web Index’s summary of the real growth markets in social network usage. Mexico outpaces the US and that isn’t just because the US is saturated. A lot of behaviors in Mexico outpace other markets. Smartphone (45%) and tablet (16%) adoption in Mexico also outpaces the US.  Habits are shifting now.

According to Forester, “Brazilian and Mexican (connected + urban) consumers spend more time online than they do watching TV.” Where people spend their time, what they are trying to accomplish and where they focus their attention should matter to marketers. 

As for internet usage, “By 2016, Forrester expects online adoption to increase in Brazil to 57% and in Mexico to 48% – vs. the current 47% and 38%.” Half the population online. 

The Biggest Change for Marketers

As people like you and I adopt apps, adapt to being always connected and discover new ways to combine communications and content, how we form opinions and make decisions (including purchase decisions) is getting more complex. When buying a new bed, I am likely to reach out to my social graph throughout the buyer journey to get recommendations, check my decision with friends and post-justify my purchase with celebratory image via Instagram. Sure, I will visit retailers and manufacturers Web sites and pay attention to targeted and even non-targeted advertising.  

But two things the customer journey is not is neat nor linear. Attribution is a beast. It is likely more important to gain an understating how social works in combination with other owned and paid media choices to help consumers towards their decision and willingness to advocate. 

The biggest change is learning how to use social media as part of a strategy to drive business not simply add it to the channel mix. As a channel, social disappoints. As a powerful, new set of consumer behaviors it will continue to change how we market for years to come. That new learning will take some time for big brands. We see this everyday as major global marketers try to scale the learnings in social from one market to many, embrace new digital measurement models and provoke “old dogs” in charge of marketing around the world to try out the new tricks. 

Innovation Not ROI

Brands in Mexico should be aggressively deploying social media strategies and increasing their spend. Consumers are changing fast and organizational change takes years. It is time to innovate and accrue an understanding of how a brand’s use of social media behaviors and platforms can drive customer advocacy, raise meaningful awareness and discovery and, yes, even drive sales. Set aside our well-intended focus on ROI for now. We will get there. Not its time to innovate.  

 

(image: thanks to Upper Playground for their image from the Mexico Contemprary Art Fair (MACO)

Welcome to Social@Ogilvy!

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Two Trends in US Social Media – Saturation and Segmentation

Social Media usage is getting more complex. While social platforms continue to expand in markets like India, Brazil and Russia, certain parts of the social Web may be cresting in the US. If you take a look at Global Web Index data (GWI) for October 2011 in the US there are two important insights that immediately pop out:

Saturation and the Importance of Content

Twitter and blog publishing seems to be staying flat and niche. The complexion of Twitter users, while niche, do represent influencers from journalists to marketers. Expecting to significantly expand consumer conversations (beyond customer service triage) may not be realistic. Brands will get more by providing content worth sharing via Twitter. GWI  puts it, “Future engagement on micro-blogging will be less about conversations and more about content”  

As for Facebook, membership in the US seems to be reaching saturation point, and people are dropping some of their more involved behaviors like creating content in favor of sharing existing content

“Social Networking is saturated in the US and behaviour is shifting into a more passive usage. Visitation remains high, but users are doing less”

The big exceptions seem to be an increase in posting images and even video to profiles. Historically creating and publishing video even in the era of Flip Video camera (sadly, the era continues without that particular camera) has been a niche activity with a high barrier to entry. Is that changing?

Even a year ago, 30 billion pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) were shared on Facebook per month. With people less likely to create all of that, they are on the lookout for great stuff to pass along.

“One consequence of real-time social is a move from creating content to sharing other peoples content. We call this the rise of the “transmitter ecosystem””

The opportunity for brands as creators of remarkable and relevant content will grow. How many brands will embrace a content marketing strategy as their way to engage customers and stakeholders? 

 

Creating a Segmented Strategy

Age, income, region, interests and more are showing up as differentiators in terms of how people are using social media. US social network users lag behind the globe in terms of using Facebook to express themselves or networking for work. My Space continues to serve a predominantly less educated audience with less income. And Twitter grew the greatest amongst a younger user base – 16-24 year olds during this last period while still catering to a smaller influencer crowd. 

Combine these distinctions with what people seem to be doing on platforms and differences per country and it is more important than ever to create a social strategy that is segmented and informed by this research.  Looking to use Facebook globally and with a single approach across 30 or 50 markets as a new, “one-strategy,” channel may not be realistic. Marketers will have to pay close attention as they roll out acquisition and engagement programs in diverse markets like the US, South Africa, Indonesia or Mexico. 

Interview with Anton Nossik on Russian Social Media

 

I caught up with Anton Nossik in St. Petersburg at SPN Ogilvy's Baltic PR Weekend last week. I had met him 3 years ago as well as some colleagues from SUP who purchased LIveJournal from Six Apart in 2007 and has a spread of other online media properties. 

Anton is a bit of a celebrity because of his involvement in several Internet companies and his own publishing discipline.  I love that he continues to write and publish as I believe there is a lot to be said for longevity (and quality). 

He speaks about his own social media habits from Instagram to Google+, the tension between publishers and bloggers, and whether Facebook stands a chance to overtake Vkontakte. 

Very useful to understanding social media in Russia....

Social Media 3 Years Later in Russia and the Ukraine

Social Media in Russia and Ukraine 2011

View more presentations from John Bell.

I was first in Russia three years ago. My social media teams in St. Petersburg and Moscow were training for the first time and yet already had experience. Vkontakte was hot on the scene and Facebook was not in the market in any significant way. 

I have just returned from a fresh round of black belt training for our teams from Kiev, Ukraine;  Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. Social media has taken firmer hold in the population - especially in the urban centers where you would expect. Facebook has grown to  about 4.5M users but is still dwarfed by Vkontakte at almost 65m.  Our teams are doing some terrific work for brands in those markets. One of our 360 Digital Influence leaders from Kiev - Irina Manukovskaya - put together a brief snapshot of the state of social media. I added a few things that I noticed. You can see it here and download.  

Here's a preview:

"Vkontakte is purely Russian. What started as an unabashed ‘hijack’ of Facebook’s dna has turned into a service that uniquely meets the user needs of most Russians. It’s a source of some national pride. But “global Russians” prefer Facebook – where they can connect with like-minded people around the world. But now that Vkontakte is vk.com, they may have global plans…"

A Marketer's Look at Social Media in Vietnam circa 2011

I met up with Thu An Nguyen Ha at our Hong Kong Summit.  She leads strategy for clients out of from our Vietnam 360 Digital Influence team. I was struck from her by how fast social media is being adopted in Vietnam. Combine that with the economic enthusiasm in the country and I would guess we will see big leaps forward there. 

I asked her about what is hot and happening there now in relation to brands and social media.

 

Q: What would you say are 1-2 defining characteristics of the social media world in Vietnam today? 

A:  The social media world in Vietnam today is going through an experimental phrase for all those who embrace it: users, developers, and brands.  Adaptation from successful global entities kicks off with some interesting platforms like social network ZingMe (facebook inspired), linkhay microblog equivalent of twitter, two.vn answer to foursquare, and recently in the last 6 months we saw an aggressive development of group buying sites such as nhommua (similar to groupon).  

Vietnamese social media users are loyal to their platforms. This might sound obvious as we’re community creatures but this basically means individual blogs, bloggers and influencers don’t exist or stand out without being attached to a mass and popular community.  And yes it’s true, to be fair, Facebook has replaced the Yahoo!360 phenomenon and 'facebookers,' anyone really, who has more than 2,000 fans can be considered an influencer. 

Social media in the eyes of brands and marketers in Vietnam today is starting to be ‘noticed’ – with the same mentality of discovering what platforms can bring to their integrated digital communication plan. There’s a feeling of almost ‘testing the water’ and trying out different ways to engage in social media effectively.

The majority of social media ‘pro’ brands are the FMCGs or consumer goods companies such as Unilever, Dell (technology & communication industry), Coca-cola, etc. All the development seem to be in-sync together: platforms are setting up while brands are also still figuring out which are the best and where audiences and users are also choosing to base their own social graphs. Although I must admit Facebook in most cases still wins over the mentality of the current ‘best’ preferable platform. If we didn’t suffer the limited access, I have total confidence that Facebook would have grown well beyond the current limited 1.4mill users. 

Q: More and more brands are experimenting with social media for marcom purposes. For a typical B2C marketer what would your top three recommendations be? 

A: I can't stress enough the importance of developing a strategic approach to social media. Some brands consider it’s just production, an add on to their digital communication plan. Most don’t have a clue what the role of their Facebook page should be, while others can't think of anything else but creating a Facebook page.  The normal pattern we see would be brands jumping straight onto the social media wave without understanding the nature of it. So I would say think hard on a strategy and the objectives that would help a brand drive their total brand goals or communication goals. 

Secondly, content. Brands, by large, are still thinking of one-way communication and not really thinking from a consumer perspective. The standard behavior of wanting to push out messages, campaign and programs without having a good story or asking the basic questions like how can I involve my audiences, what value do I bring to them, and how can I be a part of my consumers' conversations.  Conversations in social media require solid, interesting, relevant and almost unique type of communication where content is at the core of everything. Develop a social media conversation/content plan to tie in with your audience's behavior and preferences and then marry these with your branded content. Alternatively, create content uniquely for social media as those are actually quite cost effective.

Be Brave – I would say. Brands should at least start to realize and take up the belief that social media is changing the way they’re operating, do business and communicate with their audiences and customers.  Companies who are already doing digital work, especially great work, need to move fast into the area of social media, get a good advisor/agency and embark on the social media path. 

Typically PR managers – who would normally view digital as a brand manager or marketer job, should have the courage to do ‘social’. The ‘social’ territory might seem vague and mysterious, probably due to the fact that PR managers are not familiar with the possibility of having proper, effective measurement for social media programs. In addition, brand managers can start to venture into the area of applying social media to drive business impact that goes beyond brand awareness. 

 

Q: Which brand(s) is doing something interesting in social media in Vietnam and why? 

A: I would say Coca-cola (Coke). Instead of using the globally aligned Facebook platform, Coke in Vietnam has identified its target audience locally: targeting a younger crowd, focus on a teen to the first-jobbers market that is also the biggest internet users segment in Vietnam. 

Coke connected with the young spirit of online users and most of the population who loved to be entertained, via the most popular SNS platform ZingMe. Using the already massive user database and network, Coke built a site that sits within the community. With the new direction of ZingMe going less gaming and moving into more communication, it would be interesting to see how the Coke community within ZingMe grows. 

A few international brands in Vietnam have started to plug-in their global/regional program of establishing Facebook counts despite the difficulty in access. We see Dell, Adidas, HTC, Ford, Vietnam Airlines etc… operating here. Hence the question very soon would be which brands have the successful Facebook cases and doing great things in this platform.

Q: Any new technology/platform  that excites you?

A: To be fair, ZingMe development kinda excites me a bit as they will be growing more towards the direction of communication rather than just games. ZingMe has a perceived perception as a very young, teen-like platform where nothing serious is going on there, this will soon change. We already see a few big brands taking the interest in building brand presence within the community and I would be keen to see. 

Geo-location based is another one that I keep my eyes on. Since Foursquare we now see services that mimic this global trend being adopted here. Brands have not been ‘brave’ enough to invest in this, but Vietnamese users favor location & activities sharing and the mobile communications, and this will push these platforms forward. I do hope to see great mobile campaigns!