Digital Influence Mapping Project

Battle of the Brands

Noah Brier released Brand Tags back in May. Until it accumulated some usage it was the kind of quick hit that could be forgotten. I presume he has pulled in some decent traffic over the past few months as there seem to be a lot more brands and a lot more tags.

A recent addition and frighteningly entertaining is "battle mode" which pits two well know brands against each other and you decide in a "Blink" who would win. The interactivity is infectious. And while it is easy to dismiss this as trivial and "non-scientic", I was surprised at how insightful it reall can be. Check out the entry for John Deere. I added "sturdy" as that was my association. But how many people must have added "Redneck" to make it so big?

The more people use it, the more insightful it will be. I hope that Noah makes an app or widget - I would definitely add it to my blog!

What else did the crowd do for John Deere?

• JohnDeere in del.icio.us
• John Deere in Wikipedia
• John Deere on Flickr
• John Deere on YouTube

Are Social Media-based Programs Scalable?

There is a general perception that advertising is thoroughly scalable and that public relations is not. But how about social media-based word of mouth programs?

You can develop a $5m, $10m and $100m ad program. You will get increasing "returns" for your investment. Reach and frequency can both go up. There are limits but they are pretty out there. It is predictive and incremental. The media relations side of PR can only be dialed up so much before traditional media shuts down on additional coverage for the same brand & message. Now, there is a lot more to public relations that just media relations. The value of public relations goes beyond (yet includes) short term marketing goals to include enduring brand reputation. It seems that PR's role in supporting short term sales such as a new product launch is more limited than the scalable "burst" of awareness available via paid advertising. PR's impact on reputation is almost infinitely scalable. But we are now talking about word of mouth and social media-based word of mouth.

Scalable: Reach

At WOM University, we held a roundtable discussion on the scalability of WOM programs. Keep in mind, my position that most social media-based programs are ultimately WOM programs. The table's focus fell on both online and offline programs. Walter Carl of Northeastern University and Chat Threads presided over the table. He introduce the group to his measurement model which, while complicated, suggests a method for understanding overall performance and then being able to dial it up or down accordingly. Walter modeled out his generational pass-along effect which I will call the 'multiplier effect.' A recent Fast Company article on NING rechristened this a "viral loop." I am not sure that new definition adds anything to our understanding. The multiplier effect tells us how many people we will reach and convert into "relayers" once we give Gen '0' something to talk about. Walter can match back G0 and G1, for instance, to verify that G0 actually passed along their story to 6, 8, or 12 people. It is the same logic he used to support BzzAgent's impact and make it meaningful to the media planners of the world (who rely on scalable "channels").

It's great stuff but a little complex. It speaks to the "reach" capacity of a WOM program. I need to simplify the issue to make it useful in my daily life. If there were predictive models for the multiplier effect, that might help.

Scalable: Frequency vs. Multiple Voices

Walter's model is a great way to understand the reach of a WOM program. The problem is that it remains very complex and requires a self-reporting procedure itself needing an incentive to motivate participants ("Tell us who you talked to and you might win an iPhone or we'll give $5 to charity or...").

The best value of a social media-based WOM program is scaling through time combined with the slower growth of more relevant reach. "More relevant reach" is a loaded phrase. I am suggesting that one's 'social graph', is a more powerful channel than the audience of a particular media property (TV channel, show, magazine, newspaper, etc...). I also assume that when I hear something from a colleague, friend, or "stranger with expertise," it sinks in without the same need of message frequency that we expect with advertising (i.e. need to hear something 3-5 times for it to be memorable, never mind actionable). My client, Gerry, recommended a reasonably high-end coffee maker a few weeks back. I Will eventually buy that coffee maker without any other input save for some model-browsing on the Web.

There are plenty of purchases or decisions that I need to make where the number of 'promoters' matter. On most book purchases, I will scan the reviewers to make sure there are more positive reviews than negative. I scan the negative comments quickly to see if the complaints resonate. But I don't let a few negative comments dissuade me from purchase. There is a name for this behavior which I don't remember. I'll call it a simple 'disaster-check.'

It takes fewer positive voices to drive me to purchase consideration and even purchase than the number of ad impressions it takes to persuade me. In fact, beyond direct-response offers, no advertising really gets me to the same deep level of consideration. This begins to speak to WOMs place in the "funnel" - the deeper end of the purchase/advocacy decision.

If I spend $100K more on my WOMM program, what do I get?

Classic marketer question. Will you get more reach? Will you get more brand/product advocates? Will you get a deeper bond with a select group of enthusiast influencers? And the kicker: will it sell more product?

The answer to all questions is yes, yes, yes and yes. The problem is that I need 30 minutes of your time to explain how. If you intuitively believe in the strengths of WOM and the sales impact of a great Net Promoter Score, you will give me that 30 minutes. If all you care about is a proxy metric like site traffic (i.e. cpg brand marketers online), than you will glaze over right after I tell you this is a different measure than traditional advertising.

You can use Walter's model to answer the $100K question. But I have to ask is that model practical and itself, scalable?

We need simplicity based upon reasonable and shared assumptions. How do you show that WOM is scalable?

Relevant Links:

• Walter Carl's Post on "Communication Value"
• WOMMAs Measurement Books
• Jeremiah's Measurement Tag (for good measurement resources)
• Rachel Happe's Long list of Metrics

Marketing: War Metaphors Should Surrender to Community Development Metaphors

Many of us complain about the use of war metaphors in marketing: target audiences, campaigns, strategy & tactics, KPIs (not sure this is really a war thing it just sounds like KIAs). We really attack our problems. We report out campaign success with McNamara-like data devoid of much humanity. Try as I might, I always come back to calling people like myself "target audiences." I do it so the different marketing teams that I work with will know what I am talking about. The war college vocabulary is that ingrained.

We need a new model that we can teach at B-school and start using in the marketplace. I don't have the ultimate right answer but I think it has something to do with community development.

I don't mean community online. I mean like urban, suburban and rural community development. I remember designing a town in 5th grade complete with streets, buildings for government and businesses. You know - ice cream cone shaped ice cream stores, schools that looked more like amusement parks (I remember one boy designed a strip joint into his town that looked like a pair of breasts - 5th grade!). Anyhow, the ideas behind designing communities are very positive and appealing on some level.

The Ol' In-and-Out vs. a Committed Effort
Campaigns come and go. We dial them up and then close them out. We always "win" in marketing campaigns as we cannot admit defeat. Community development is a long term play. When we think about how to design and support a community, we spend time observing what's important to the people in that community - what are they talking about, where do they spend their time, what are their shared values.

We design to bring value to their lives, sometimes to make their lives easier. We try things that may serve the people. What if we add a community center with a gym since the schools sports programs are underfunded? If we insert a road here will it spark more commerce between neighborhood A and B?

What is the language of community development? I am no expert despite my fascination. I would guess we talk about "the public," community groups and citizens. We talk about community enhancements, projects and initiatives.

If the ultimate goal is selling ("We sell or else!"), does selling have to be such a conquest? Can it be not just a transaction but part of a relationship, a long term commitment to build up communities?

Links of use:

• What are KPIs
• Eric Petersen's Great Book on KPIs
• The Dashboard Spy
• Peace Magazine - History of Military Metaphors

(Photo CC from AtomicShed)

Influence vs. Desire

A lot of advertising tries to trigger desire. We portray products as critical to filling a painful gap. e.g. that toothpaste will make my smile whiter at the same time as preventing cavities; a whiter smile will make me more attractive to people, etc and so forth. With an abundance of choices - products, services, issues - "brand" is more important than ever. What a product or service promises to its customers beyond the price-for-perfomance often becomes the deciding factor in purchase decisions. All basic stuff. But what about the scientific understanding of influence? Has that changed at all with the explosion of digital media?

At the recent Verge conference in NYC, we were talking about new measurement models. I had John Batelle from Federated Media, Nick Denton from Gawker, and Owen Van Natta from Facebook on the panel. Most of them catering to the existing advertising media-based model. John Batelle - especially - is trying to go beyond that with different ways to value ...eek, that word....engagement.

Old Models

Our old models of what people find persuasive need to be recalibrated. In a frequency-based world we count on repetition to make an impression.  That and the relevance of the message may drive customers to buy or take an action (or prefer the brand). In a click-through world, we operate based upon direct-response principles which appear a little cruder at the surface but with a hardcore "conversion" result.

In the word of mouth or peer-recomendation world - what is the best way to measure effectiveness of marketing efforts? Like a lot of marketing, we have a brand benefit as well as a sales benefit. In the former, we establish a stronger connection with customers by participating with them on some level - conversation, co-creation, being of-use. In the latter, when 81% of US customers find WOM more trustworthy for purchase decisions - we have a powerful conversion story. So why is it so hard to tell the marketing value story to trained brand marketers?

As described before, there is a great temptation to compare WOM to advertising to try and simplify the brand marketers dilemma: how to compare strategic approaches to make wise marketing budget decisions.

We need to get back to the science of persuasion
I'm talking Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I am talking about books like Robert Cialdini's Influence: Science and Practice. To some extent, Made to Stick, offers a contemporized digest of ideas that motivate people - kind of like public relations-lite.

There was a time when advertising agencies employed academic types: anthropologists, psychologists, deomographic number-crunchers. It's hard to see that this was anything but a fad. But now, we need to get back to the science of influence. If we are truly going to understand how the vast array of word of mouth approaches can motivate people to buy or act and how they can spread, we need to also be able to document how different types of word of mouth from different sources actually forms opinion and drives action in others.   

Are marketers ready to talk psychology or do we all just want a simple way to count like the one proposed by BzzAgent? They cam out with a little white paper a month ago that basically said, "let's just call WOM a $300 cpm." I am not sure I disagree with their approach. But it is sacrificing some very interesting learnings about how WOM can be persuasive for the benefits of actionable simplicity.

How can we re-examine our assumptions about how influence is applied in today's social media-infused marketing without getting mired in an academic black hole for the next 5 years?

Social Media Visualizations

I have become a quick fan of MITs Technology Review. Not sure why I am just paying attention now, but I picked it up a few months back in an airport and rediscovered a great pub (nicely designed to thanks to Art Director Lee Caulfield).

Erica Naone has a great article in the April edition about different schemes for social media visualizations. As a Creative Director, information design has been a long-time love. Now, with digital data, we are seeing interesting approaches to creating pictures of the abstract dynamic of social connectedness. Tools like Visible Technologies help us understand the network path of ideas across bloggers by showing graphics - bubbles, lines, connections.

New Visualizations
Two visual schemes that stand out to me include the work of Mathew Hurst at Microsoft's Live Labs ( I am a regular reader of his Datamining blog)  and the Comment Flow visualization from Dietmar Offenhuber and Judith Donath at MIT Media Labs. The Live Labs work demonstrates the clustering we all sense exists amongst blogs. The image below shows even more centralization than I would have guessed. Is it a 'blogosphere' or a 'blogoclump'?

Comment Flow displays that wonderful mosaic of pics and favicons connected in hubs of comments around core posts or conversations.

On the MIT site, Dietmar describes it as such:

"We have designed and implemented a flexible tool for the content driven exploration and visualisation of a social network. Building upon a traditional force-directed network layout consisting of nodes (profiles) and edges (friend-links), our system shows the activity and the information exchange (postings in the comment box) between nodes, taking the sequence and age of the messages into account."

They have a movie (64Mb) and an application file for download (26Mb) here - could be interesting.

It reminds me of the display of the Vizster project that Danah Boyd had a hand in.

   So where is all thi sgoing? These research-based and somewhat academic models must become the tools for us marketers tomorrow. If we want to track, demonstrate and prove the flow of WOM and the influence of person X over person Y in a particular conversation, having visual displays of the network and the spread of an idea will be very compelling.

As marketers, we live in a world of 'dashboards' that try to make complex data around campaign performance easy to get quickly and to provide meaning if not insight that can be acted upon. 

Social Media 201, 301 and AP-level

David Churbuck had a great post this past week decrying the need for deeper nutcracking in social media marketing. (No, not that kind of nutcracking. Okay, maybe a little of that kind.) Enough flag-waving about openness, conversations, and how we should all be blogging - enough fundamental basics. The bar for rigorous social media marketing or word of mouth marketing is much, much higher. He lists 10 things that need more deep thinking (and doing).

I like this one 'cause it challenges the organizational voice that we all use to deflect focus on the "me" sometimes for generous reasons ("we, the team, did this great successful program") sometimes to deflect accountability. He really found the granular behavior that is telling of one of the challenges of getting into "personal media".

"2. Pronouns: I have a bug up my you-know-what about the overuse of the Royal We in addressing one’s audience. Am I alone in viewing “we” as an attempt to dilute personal accountability for an organization’s actions? How many corporate SMM, community managers take accountability and responsibility on their shoulders by using “me” and “I?” "

And this point is close to my heart (almost said "our hearts") as you will see by my comment on his blog:

"Metrics: this is a 101 topic that is a 301 headache. SMM has no Internet Advertising Bureau or Web Analytics Association to codify a set of uniform measurements, and as all of us have to bow to the God of Accountability, how ROI is proven is going to be debated forever and ever. Let’s get off the “engagement” thing and go to the next level. Is it comment counts? Rank and influence? Pageviews and gross tonnage? Net Promoter Scores gathered through surveys?"

Check out his whole list. It's good. Hallelujah, brother.

Why Comparing Social Media to Advertising is a Must

Ever have one of those projects where you think you have successfully positioned the value of a social media-based WOM program and then in the 11th hour, someone decides that all they want are click-throughs to the ad campaign microsite?

Okay, that's the same intro to another post. It illustrates a truth. In the case of brand marketers who need to sell product or "convert" in some way (vs. social marketers who are changing behavior or corporate PR folks trying to manage reputation), they need to understand how WOM compares and interacts with other marketing and communications efforts. 

If the best advertising is judged by whether it "sells," so must word of mouth be judged. I attended a very senior cabal today of digital smart thinkers. Someone made the joke about spending 20 years putting definition around all sorts of proxy metrics to avoid reporting against sales. While I know it was meant in jest, there is a truth at its core.

The studies tell us that some people trust word of mouth over and above other communications, media and marketing messages in some cases. I have added the "somes" because the context, the product in question, the degree of familiarity and trust with the source will impact the WOM impact. Lots of annoying variables. Even still, what someone I know tells me about a product or service is much more impactful to me than all the advertising in agency-land.

Time to prove it.

Why Comparing Social Media to Advertising is a Mistake

Ever have one of those projects where you think you have successfully positioned the value of a social media-based WOM program and then in the 11th hour, someone decides that all they want are click-throughs to the ad campaign microsite?

Don't use WOM for awareness alone
Don't get me wrong, the right WOM program can drive traffic. But that should never be the sole KPI. And looking at WOM as a channel is a BIG MISTAKE. WOM's best value is at the lower half of the funnel: engagement - loyalty - advocacy. You can combine that with some solid marketing goals like conversion and, even, raising awareness, but if you do not value the benefits of deeper enagagement for a particular initiative, then you might want to stick to the traditional bludgeons like advertising.

Frequency vs. Attention
Advertising, in general, is measured by GRP or gross rating point. Reach x Frequency = GRP. Pretty simple. That's how it is valuated for 'sale" so-to-speak. Marketers plan against target GRPs based upon the belief that a certain frequency of ad impressions on an individual make an impression on that person. That belief is based upon studies that demontrate that multiple impressions have an effect. That potential effect can be a higher consideration for purchase. Pretty basic stuff.

Alternatively, other studies show higher trust for different types of WOM and a preference for recommendations from other people over one-way marketing in purchase considerations. That would suggest that WOM has the capacity to grab our 'attention' more than ad messages or even multiple ad messages. In a long tail-world where everything is in abundance except our time and capacity for attention, grabbing attention is valuable.

In most WOM campaigns, we cannot report "frequency." We cannot say that some number of people (reach) read 4 blog posts or comments (frequency) about our brand-related topic. Can we say that a single positive WOM mention grabs attention better than an ad message? Yes. Better than 4 ad impressions? Now I am starting to slide down the slippery slope in an effort to compare the impact of advertising and WOM. I suspect that the right answer is that advertising will never garner the same attention that authentic WOM will. (Strangely enough, the advertising industry is trying to co-opt both 'engagement' and 'attention' by applying those same concepts to one-way advertising. See an interesting ARF paper here)

So What?
I feel like my train of thought has been a little academic. I am trying to get somewhere. Simply put, to define how WOM programs are scaleable, we want to say what some unit of WOM is worth. So we pine for our own version of GRPs which would answer the question, "If I throw $100K more WOM into the mix, what do I get?" Problem is a GRP-like model requires a companion assumption that describes the impact of WOM. Just like GRP says that reaching a number of people multiple times produces a impact on attitude and behavior, we need the analog for WOM. Is it that a WOM unit is 4 times, 8 times, 12 times more likely to impact our attitude and behavior than an advertisement? Again, I am back to the slippery slope.

I suspect that we need a few more, very focused studies that will tell us the following:

• Is positive WOM (please define) x times more likely to affect attitude and behavior in relation to product consideration and purchase. We need the "x" even if we have to get multiple "x's" for different product types if they behave differently (is a WOM unit about a high-engagement product like a car more or less impactful than one for, say, soda?).
• Is here a tipping point in "personal share of voice" (what I hear about a movie, car, cause from other people) that drives a person to consideration and finally conversion?
• What is the trust or attention differential between people I "know" and those I do not?

Some of these studies may exist in various forms. I may have even read them. I think some combination may be key to acheiving the "Attention Rating Point" or whatever we use to evaluate WOM for spending purposes.

Warning: I am trying to work out some thinking about social media measurement. I may be onto something useful or I may just have drunk too many cups of coffee. I need your feedback but if you think it's the coffee, just be kind.)

The Next Evolution of Social Media Measurement

What we do is different than advertising. It is different than traditional, narrowly-defined PR. It is different than direct. But what we do - word of mouth marketing using social media methods - must be comparable to the more established disciplines or our programs won't grow beyond enthusiast clients and "try-and-learn" scenarios.

There are those who believe that social media marketing initiatives should not be measured quantitatively. They must be measured that way. the problem is that we are all missing a "value" or a set of values that we can all agree on.

I started by saying that what we do is different.  Here's how:

• We activate third party word of mouth - neutral and positive mentions of a brand, experience, issue. Those mentions produce "impressions" that are more valuable than traditional display or search advertising because someone feels strongly enough about the topic to "relay" it along. WOM ranks higher in almost every measure of trust than advertising and media.
• Much of our work is more "engaging" than other means of communication or marketing. That means that people spend more time with it, often participate in some way and can become more "invested" in our experience due to that time and contribution they make. That is more valuable than simply "seeing" an ad or seeing that ad 5 times.
• Our programs offer deepening levels of participation and engagement. We have different approaches for different clients and different marketing challenges. And at the far end of the engagement scale, we can involve customers so deeply, so authentically, so personally that they become brand advocates or loyalists. All you have to do is look at Virginia Miracle's "Brands for a Weekend" thread to get that.
• Certain types of word of mouth programs can develop greater trust between a company and its customers. We exist in the nexus of marketing and communications - relevant to both brand marketer and corporate public relations practitioners.

All of this is hard to measure. Harder still is making it a predictive model - "If I just ad $10k more budget to my WOM program I get this..." But this year, we will see the next evolution of social media and word of mouth marketing measurement.

Attention

For us, that will start with an assesment of an "attention" factor - to what degree will you pay attention to a advertisement, media-mention, or word of mouth recommendation/mention for a certain product or service. All of the research on the broad category of WOM suggests that personal WOM commands more attention. Now we want to demonstrate that on a client-by-client basis. That will start to illustrate the greater value that WOM provides - over and above the value of advertising per se.

Next we need an ad equivalency model. I wish we didn't but based upon all of the conversations I have had with clients on the marketing side, we need that.

That leaves making WOM more predictive. Only experience will give us enough data and even then, the discipline will behave more like public relations - we can put all the best conditions in place to activate and amplify talk and it will either happen or it won't. Still with more complex case studies under our belt, we will continue to build a strong knowledge base of what works best.

A lot of folks are exploring measurement. Here are some interesting posts and resources:

Beth Kanter on Success Metrics for Non Profits

Jeremiah Owyang on Success Metrics

Krishna De on Measuring Success

WOMMA on Measurement and Metrics

What's your model?

 

My Private Digital Focus Group

I read a great post by Fred Wilson over at A VC. He reflected on his kids (3) media behaviors as an imperfect yet still insightful barometer of trends. Sure it's not a great sample but his observations are still quite meaningful.

I look at my own tribe and what they do everyday. They are 10 and 13 so, they haven't advanced to too much independent consumption (buying DVDs, CDs, indpendent movie-going). Still, I look at the average week and find some interesting habits. But before I catalogue their consumption, here's what I make of it:

Digital Trends: The Bell Report

Personal devices - phones and portable game players - will grow in importance. My kids want their tech with them wherever and whenever. They will prefer these smaller devices over the larger user experiences available to them. I am guessing they feel a more intimate ownership of these devices. I may laugh at all the add-on services that Sprint tries to jam into our phones but I think mobile devices will be big. And not just phones.

TV shows are "filler" for them (this is different than what Fred finds with his children - who are older). They like movies equally well on the TV or in the theater. The drama of movies really does it for them. So there is probably a good future in great writing.

Music remains a passion. Whether on CD or downloaded MP3 files - it just doesn't matter. The appetite for music will not go away. How it's sold doesn't really matter to this next generation. 

They consume books like they grew on trees (which they sorta do). Both read a tremendous amount. Boy also like comic books like Judge Dredd (a classic). Girl has not really discovered magazines yet. Newspapers and magazines are on the ropes.

Tweens are not diving into social networks as vigorously as teens. Now, this might just be my kids as I am sure others are hip deep in MySpace. I am guessing that in a couple of years this will change and they will both have a sophisticated online presence.

The data is in the details:

Each are given 1.5 hours of digital or screen time a day. That includes TV, computer and Wii (we have become a Nintendo-loyal house). Boy (13) does about 1/2 Computer, 1/4 Wii, 1/4 TV. He routinely sneaks in some TV later at night with us but rarely pushes for any particular programming. Girl (10) splits it between TV and Computer.

Computer Games

Boy is a big PC Gamer and can spend hours with his friends either in the room or online playing multiplayer games - e.g. Rome Total War and Star Wars Empire At War (not necessarily MMORPG, although he's begging for WOW). Online he browses YouTube and game sites like Next Level.

Girl spends most of her computer time in various online sites like TY Girls (think WebKinz for dolls), Miniclip (games), and an occaisional friend-recommended site.

Email

Surprisingly, neither is deeply committed to email. Boy uses his everyday in a fairly utliitarian way. Girl has all but abandoned hers. I expect this to change.

Mobile

Only boy has a phone. He uses it routinely as his buddies have phones. He relies on the phone for most communications. We get charged for texting so we had to strangle that at the beginning. Otherwise, he would text all the time.

TV, Movies & Video

Girl watches Disney shows - the live action ones and re-runs of Full House. She also likes Project Runway, American Idol and America's Next Top Model. Boy would like to watch Family Guy and the Simpsons. He has a serious thing for MythBusters and Hell's Kitchen. Both still watch movies (DVD and pay-per-view). Both go to movies several times a month. I don't see much difference in their going to see movies at theaters vs. on teh TV at home. They seem equally interested in both.

Game Platforms

We have had a Wii for about a year and it remains Boy's favorite platform...alongside the DS, that is. He actually seems just as interested in the DS. Girl now has DS but steers clear of the Wii (that's HIS).

Books

Boy reads 1-2 books a week. He re-reads The Zombie Survival Guide all the time. Girl reads 2-3 books simultaneously and has a thing for Nancy Drew.

Magazines & Newspapers

Both read the comics but otherwise the newspaper is useless to them. Boy will read Nintendo Power. Girl has not tuned into magazines yet.