Digital Influence Mapping Project

Visit NextNow Digital…Now

In 2020, I launched a new digital consultancy, NextNow Digital. All of my new ideas and insights can be found at the new site. The Digital Influence Mapping Project has been a labor of love since I started it in 2005.  This blog may continue to live on in some form or another.

For now, visit NextNow Digital Insights & Ideas. You will find fresh POVs on digital marketing and transformation to help startups, small and mid-size businesses, as well as continued thoughts for enterprise marketers.

Start with this post: Why Launch the Next Digital Consultancy…Now?

 

Five Priorities for Marketing During the Next Phase of COVID-19

How do we market and manage our businesses as the country experiments with “opening up?” How do marketers balance their original growth strategies for 2020 with the new, much different reality? Is this about post-crisis or merely managing intervals in a crisis? It's a lot to untangle. 

There used to be an adage business folks bandied about in the early aughts, “the only constant is change.” Well, that could now be rewritten as “the only thing certain is uncertainty.” We just don’t know what will happen between the behavior of a virus, the impact on the complex system of global economies and the changes in political leadership to come.

Still, we have to make progress. Humans are, by nature a planful bunch. Clearly the key today is to adjust strategies and remain nimble to shift given circumstances. Based on the last fifteen years of experience associated with social media adoption, brands have become nimbler. In March, brands put marketing programs on hold, made huge operational shifts and adopted crisis communications to respond to employees, customers and financial stakeholders.

Here are five priorities for marketers as we emerge from the first phase of this crisis and segue into the next, marathon phase:

Re-align Marketing Strategy to Business Goals

Don’t throw out your strategy. Adjust and re-align it to business goals that respond to new realities. Some businesses will suffer greater or longer-lasting disruption. The airline business and travel, in general, will suffer for a prolonged period. Movie theaters may not recover as the businesses they were before the crisis. People will still buy homes, fewer perhaps, but that business doesn’t just stop. That being said, shopping for homes may shift as people rely on virtual tours as they seek ex-urban places to live now that virtual work (and the threat of compressed populations) is more possible.

Chances are before COVID-19 (BCVD), you had a growth strategy in some part of your business. Now, you may need to shift to improving retention. That’s a reasonable shift in goals. Now, re-align your marketing strategy to that priority.

Kathy Bachmann, GM of Americas with the consultancy Analytic Partners Inc. told Paul Talbot in Forbes about the type of strategic shifts some brands are taking in their business:

“Here are some examples of the types of shifts we’re seeing and expect to see in marketing approaches and investments:

• Directing investments toward marketing tactics that drive online sales.

• Reducing marketing investments on campaigns to drive short-term sales or business outcomes, while keeping brand-building campaigns live – essentially saving dry powder.

• Shifting budgets to promoting at-home and delivery-based options (i.e., at-home fitness solutions/equipment/apps, grocery delivery, restaurant delivery, etc.)

• Shifting focus from promoting premium products to entry-point or everyday items….”

 

Our businesses will change in big and small ways. Consumer habits will change temporarily and permanently. We need to adjust, and we need strategy to align our organizations to do more than react to crisis. Don’t settle for just reacting to the crisis.

 

Join with Research for a 3-Legged Marathon

Think you know what your customers want or are worried about? Wait a day and it might change. Now is the time to adopt new practices to get constant input and insight about customers and sales channels. That certainly means strengthening any voice of the customer programs you have (grabbing feedback from customers during dozens of interactions). We are running a series of consumer and distribution channel surveys every two weeks to keep a pulse on how people’s attitudes and behaviors are changing (e.g. a rise in ‘fear of the unknown’). This is on top of our real-time feedback from social media, regular insights from search behavior (e.g. “what DIY projects are people planning/doing based upon Pinterest and Google searches”), and our VOC programs.

For anything new, we are engaging customers in qualitative co-creation sessions virtually. We need their current views to help us bring something to market that makes sense. One way or another, join with research at the hip and keep them embedded in your efforts for the foreseeable future. Embrace the 3-legged marathon.

 

Demonstrate What Your Brand Believes in and Distinctly Delivers

Many brands stream stories through their social channels and even via paid media of their support for the healthcare front line, the service workers delivering packages and their own employees who do their job in the face of adversity and uncertainty. Unfortunately, there is a sameness to all of these montages. They are largely being done to benefit employee morale and assure the rank and file that their work has meaning. Nothing wrong with that.

Still, as we emerge from this first phase of the crisis, brands will benefit from demonstrating what they believe in and what distinct role they can play in people’s lives. This may sound like the usual call for brands to invest in “brand” or embrace a purpose. Sort of. Post Covid-19 (PCVD), brands will need to demonstrate how they are helping people live their lives under the oppressive uncertainty we all face. The question is what does your brand mean now.

McKinsey takes a look at what marketers need to do during this immediate crisis and afterwards:

“Our analysis of consumer decision-journey behaviors showed that 87 percent of consumers shopped around: they were willing to consider other brands. We believe that behavior could be even more drastic given the scale and nature of this disruption…Marketers should begin revisiting what their brand means to customers. Agile marketing practices—typically focused on performance marketing—will need to be adopted at the brand-building level, with communications managed rapidly in test, learn, and refine cycles of continuous improvement.”

That notion that we apply rapid test-and-learn practices on brand-building is new. Having a static notion of your brand position won’t cut it anymore.

 

Put Some Jet Fuel into Digital Transformation

Clearly this jagged-edge “zig” we are all living through has demonstrated the urgent need for more digital ways to deliver products and services, customer experience and manage ourselves. We need to make digital change happen faster. But it is not as simple as green-lighting all those digital transformation projects that your business couldn’t find a way to fund BCVD. Funding will be scarce.

This is the time for leadership to step forward, roll up their sleeves and work with their most innovative business leaders to place some bets. You cannot delegate the selection of digital transformation projects/initiatives to the next tier. Digital transformation most often requires participation across the org chart. It’s up to the C-suite to declare big priorities to stimulate true collaboration and commitment.

Where to start? Accelerate that part of the customer journey that current circumstances reveal is more urgent. Double-down on that CRM implementation or expansion that will quickly make a fully remote field force more productive. Choose those projects that are so foundational, they can no longer be ignored (e.g. fix customer data) and those initiatives that will help the most people interact with your business digitally.  

 

Be Generous with Your Customers

What do your customers need most right now? If you ask them (see the 3-legged marathon above), you will find out that what you ultimately sell or deliver to them is actually helpful. If you are a bank, you can offer them guidance on managing their finances in a recession. If you are a restaurant, you can go beyond take away to allow them to subscribe to a meal-a-week delivered to their door. Yes, touchless or whatever makes folks feel more comfortable. If youy are an insurance company, you can recognize that people are driving lsss and give them a break on the car insurance bill.

When business locations open again, what do we all want to know? That you care enough about your customers to have special cleaning protocols in place to reduce the chances of your doorknobs and surfaces carrying the virus. “Generous” means “liberal in giving or sharing; unselfish.” Call it doing the right thing; demonstrating empathy; simply caring enough about your customers to listen closely and aim to serve them in a generous way.

Like a lot of folks, we tried to order from local restaurants regularly to keep their businesses going.  When I would pick up, I noticed a range of safety behaviors from the pizza place that hadn’t changed a bit and forced nervous dads into a small takeout pickup room where no one wore masks or gloves to the other Italian restaurant who arranged curbside pickup from masked and gloved staff. This second experience demonstrated a business who was empathetic to the concerns of many of their customers.

Think about what would really help your customers now. Do that. Then optimize for efficiency. People need brands who care about them.

 

Here are 4 useful POVs on how brands are leaning into PCVD marketing:

• How The Coronavirus Pandemic Impacts Marketing Strategy – Forbes
• How Marketing Leaders Can Both Manage the Coronavirus Crisis and Plan For The Future - McKinsey
• Preparing your marketing plans for the Coronavirus downturn – The Drum
• Brand Marketing Through the Coronavirus Crisis – HBR

 

Zombies Bite Off Half of Digital Advocacy

 It’s a great idea. Unleash well-produced zombies as mailmen, first-responders, shoppers on the streets of city, capture the ‘freak-outs’ of passerby’s and then cap with the meaningful, action-inducing message.

“Put Zombies Back on TV” is the flag we are waving. AMC Networks is the one doing the waving. We have seen these disputes before between content publishers/networks and the distributors. Usually it is about money. Who gets what slice of the pie. It is usually pretty complex and impossible to decipher who is “in the right.” Essentially, it is two big corporations battling to protect their business needs. The consumer’s interest doesn’t enter into it unless you count the enjoyment we get from watching their programming (which we pay for one way or another). And this is where this corporate advocacy program falls apart. The best that they can do is to try and trigger AMC show fans (e.g. Walking Dead, Mad men, Breaking Bad) to scream bloody murder.

The Zombies are great. Of course, I am exactly who they are trying to reach….almost. I love Walking Dead and all of the combined zombie canon. Problem is, I am not a DISH Network customer. Best that I can do for them is share the video or share the message of the campaign. The DISH network customer, on the other hand, they want them to literally switch to another provider who does carry the AMC shows.

 

Three problems

The issue is too complex and I really don’t know who to support in the battle.  AMC hasn’t done enough to simplfy the issue, if that is even possible. Here’s how they explain the issue on their microsite:

“DISH’s decision to drop AMC, WEtv, IFC and Sundance Channel had nothing to do with our fees, or our shows. In fact, unlike almost every other dispute you see between providers and programmers, and despite DISH’s misleading claims to the contrary, this is not about fees.

The simple truth is that DISH is using their consumers as pawns to attempt to gain leverage in a lawsuit involving an old and unrelated business venture that has nothing to do with AMC, nothing to do with our shows or fees, and certainly nothing to do with DISH subscribers, who just want to watch the shows they love and are paying DISH for. You will not see any AMC Networks’ shows on DISH any time soon.

In other words, since DISH’s reason for depriving you of AMC programming is based on a lawsuit that won’t be resolved for a long time, this problem won’t be solved shortly, unlike other disputes between programmers and providers, which typically are resolved in a matter of days (weeks at most).” 

 

Huh? What “old and unrelated business venture?” Without simplicity and transparency I cannot possibly form a view as to which profit-making enterprise is worth supporting. AMC’s claims that the only way I see my beloved show is by voicing my discontent or outright switching (to one of the cable providers who are not likely to be bastions of customer goodwill, themselves)

If you are a glutton for detail (it won’t help sort it) then here is how Chip Lebovitz at CNN Money summarized it:

“The two companies have waged a legal war for over four years. In 2008, AMC Networks and its then-parent company, Cablevision, sued Dish (DISH) for $2.5 billion for breaching its 2005 carriage contract with Voom HD, a suite of channels created by a Cablevision (CVC) subsidiary. The dispute centers on whether Dish violated the contract when it dropped Voom because, Dish claims, Voom didn't spend enough money on programming. A trial is set for September 18th in the New York Supreme Court.

The timing of Dish's decision to drop AMC seems retaliatory. Dish first threatened to drop AMC in May, a week after it lost an appeal in the Voom lawsuit…

This is a litigation strategy. By not renewing [AMC Networks], Dish gained leverage in the underlying lawsuit," says Thomas Claps, an analyst at Susquehanna Group. "It highlights the fact that Dish faces significant headwinds in the [Voom] trial."…

According to Nielsen, in the last six months The Walking Dead had the highest rating in the key 18-49 demographic among Dish's basic cable subscribers. The network also has popular shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Any Dish blackout of AMC, regardless of its motivations, hurts AMC significantly more than it does Dish. Without access to Dish's 14 million subscribers, AMC ratings and ad revenue will drop, weakening a company already struggling with net debt of over $2 billion.”

 

I feel like a zombie on the wrong end of one of Darryl’s arrows from the show The Walking Dead. My head hurts.

 The second problem I have is a simple social design and messaging one. They need my advocacy even if I am just a fan and not a customer. The video has a proper ‘throw’ to the “putzombiesback.com” site. Okay, I’ll bite (so-to-speak). But once there, my actions are not as clear and simple as they could be.  If I am a customer, they want me to switch. If not, I can either go to the @AMC_Assist  Twitter handle (>750 followers) or click on one of the ubiquitous social network share buttons at the bottom of the page (only 15K Likes on Facebook and only 5 Tweets?).

I want to share content not pages. Crafting a fan-oriented message that links to the video yet still carries a message of the campaign is what we need. Instead, the auto-fill on the tweet-share says something flat and not action-oriented. 

“DISH Customers have lost AMC, WE TV, IFC and SUNDANCE Channel.”

Why not, 

“If you luv Walking Dead, don’t let DISH Network keep it from 14 million fans. Join the Zombie swarm (link).” 

This lets me be a part, keeps the focus on the show I have an affinity for, and  drives me to deeper content as a collective action. 

The thrid problem is hardly that simply because I dont know what they have done to market this effort to the right people. But I hope that are using Facebook's Connections Analysis Tool (CAT) and other targeting efforts to deliver stories with clear calls-to-action to people who are fams of the shows, live in Dish customer regions, have affinity for similar programming, are big TV lovers and so forth. They could run this more as an advocacy program and less like a corporate issue deserving of a newspaper ad and, in this case, a cool video wth a mcirosite support.

Half a job done, I think. 

But wait, then there is the response from Dish Network Chairman Charlie Ergen, not much a fan of AMC programs. he essentially recommends that we just watch our video programs through iTunes. Not sure what kind of advice that is from someone who runs a satellite network:

"He was also dismissive of AMC which has acclaimed series includingMad Men and Breaking Bad. “They’re critically acclaimed but not viewed as much by our audience”, he says. “And our customers can go to iTunes and get Mad Menthe same time it’s on. We could pay the entire iTunes bill and it would be cheaper”

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.

Are Social Media Ethics About Actions or Intentions?

What is your social strategy? Are you trying to increase the amount of positive consumer generated media (CGM) for your brand or are you trying to inspire and manage brand advocacy? The media mindset thinks in terms of CGM. How can they make more of that and put it in all the places where customers will find it. How they “make” that media happen is a means to a simple end. 

The social mindset thinks in terms of genuine brand advocacy. How can we give customers, employees, stakeholders a reason and a means to share a sincerely positive point of view about a brand with their friends, family and people ‘like them?’ How they make that advocacy happen is more than a means to an end, it is indivisible from the end. 

The VIP Deals Deal

It’s not just semantics. Look at the recently reported case of VIP Deals offering free iPad covers (their product) to customers who submitted a favorable review on Amazon. The NYTimes covered this recently and even posted the deal memo sent to customers here. Their goal was to generate overwhelmingly positive reviews. They offered the value of the product price ($30-$35 retail?), told the customer the action they wanted to take and insinuated the tone of that review. Can you split hairs and say that they did not require a favorable review? Perhaps. But there is no mistaking their intention. They wanted to “buy” favorable reviews, consumer generated media, to dominate a channel, Amazon reviews. 

The review space has long been suspected of abuse. Employees giving their own hotel, restaurant, lawnmower a positive review. We imagine  pay-per-review farms in off shore locations and more incentive programs like VIP Deals than are ever revealed. It is not clear what most consumers think of product reviews. I would guess that there is a large amount of skepticism even while we all still look at them to make quick judgments (who wouldn’t download the 4 star weather app on iTunes over the 1.5 star – presuming similar price?) 

Media or Advocacy?

Brand marketers must decide what their intention is – media or advocacy. That choice will inherently guide their actions. Big, multi-national brands need to make this choice more than any small business. What they do in one market will quickly infect another. It’s not as simple as saying “when in China….” All local activity is now global.  The danger in a pure media mindset is the possibility of losing sight of what makes social media so powerful – its ability to earn people’s advocacy and share that at a large scale. 

Getting the right actions and intentions

• One of the best resources for brand and business leaders on practical social media ethics remains the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (disclosure: we are a governing member and I remain as a non-voting board member). Their ethics code and disclosure guidelines  are a foundation that any brand marketer can apply with confidence. 
• We have just updated our Ogilvy Social Media Engagement Code  which is being reviewed in draft form but I have shared here. We have had a social media-related  ethics code in place since 2005 and find it invaluable to rally our global network around. This is how we roll. 

8 Questions to Answer Before Activating Employees as Advocates

Very few people are against the conceptual idea of having employees advocating on behalf of the brand. After all, employees have skin in the game - they are invested in the success of the company. They are the best experts available about the products and services the company sells. And you know how to reach them to engage and inspire them to advocacy. 

Then why is it so hard? 

Many companies have employee brand advocacy programs just not at the scale we all pine for. They are often organized around corporate social responsibility issues rather than dead-on product and service issues. Few programs scale even at the level of Twelpforce which is a hybrid between customer service and employee advocacy. 

The Dream

What if we could introduce new products and services to our employees first and each of them told 5 friends or shared via the average 130 Facebook friends? What if during a crisis a collection of rank and file employees were prepared to defend the brand publicly therefore increasing positive word of mouth? That's an appealing vision and admittedly naive. The implications of employees as active external advocates at any scale are pretty big.

The Questions: The following are 6 questions that may help you plan how you can develop this 'super-advocacy from the inside.' 

Are you more interested in building up advocates for tough times or in evolving your marketing mix to include employee advocacy? 

Just because we all intuitively are attracted to the idea of employees as advocates doesn't mean we shouldn't be clear about our objectives. Nor ar these two examples mutually exclusive. More and more brands believe in the power of word of mouth and not just from their customers. Still you would likely choose a different strategy if your primary goal was to identify a group of addressable employees in a crisis than if you wanted to enlist employees as transparent insiders (i.e. they are treated as insiders, given social capital to share and they are transparent with their friends and followers that they are employees) in all proactive marketing programs. 

 

Do you want broad advocacy from the entire workforce or do you want to create an exclusive club?

 This is pretty much about scale. Getting 300k employees (or realistically, some percentage of them) to share about a new product is different than training and "badging" 50 of them. The latter model is best suited to enable a group of employees to talk about more complex issues. Many brands now want to create a system that is more open to the workforce and holds the promise of preparing and activating many of them. This is less about too complex training programs and more about applying a communications model often found in political campaigns. Still, anyone who is encouraged to share about the brand must go through some training and receive accreditation. Too much is at stake. 

A good overview of the building blocks to prepare a work force to be strong brand advocates can be found at this JRS Consulting article and in this Interbrand paper. 

an example from JRS: "If top leadership within an organization lives and breathes the brand, employees are much more likely to embrace it as well."

AT&T's infrastructure for internal collaboration and approach to converting internal critics outlines (see this video)  an approach to building an internal socila infrastructure that inevitably helps external advocacy. 

 

Do you have a well thought out employee advocacy and social media policy? 

We are on our 3rd round of social media policies for employees. The first version was the easiest It's getting harder and more complicated. Once you have moved past the exuberance of the social media 'evangelist' which likely drove your social media policy 1.0, you realize there are some big questions that need answering (e.g. should hiring managers review a candidates Facebook page? Can an employee talk about the brand so long as they disclose they are an employee and that the opinions are their own?)
Here is a bit more information from a legal perspective - the Association of Corporate Counsel.


How much of their job do you want advocacy activity to take and are you expecting it to happen during work hours or outside?

 Many of us in social media everyday get frustrated with the myths that social is free and takes no time. I am holed up on a sunny Saturday writing this. Conversely, we are sometimes the first people to gloss over the implication that training and then activating employees to "advocate" (i.e. create content) is time-consuming and that not every employee is willing to sacrifice their Saturday to do it. to feel good about your decision here, you must have some sense of the value that will be returned to the business. Why else would you allow staff hours to go towards a new activity?

 

Do you know what the range of social media aptitudes and networks are within your workforce? 

 Even though most word of mouth happens offline at the pool, in the checkout line or wherever, the social graphs of employees can be powerful. Much of their social activity can accumulate to have a positive impact on search results. Just as you want to know what social platforms your customers use such that you can engage them where they prefer to spend time, the same is true for your employees. Do a survey. 

 

Do you already have a cgm listening solution in place to track this new employee content online? 

If you are going to encourage employees to talk about the company or brand, you need to listen to them and measure the impact. The same infrastructure you invested in for online monitoring fo social media can be leveraged here. 

Is your measurable objective clear enough and do you have a means to evaluate progress and value? 

Like a lot of social media-based programs, employee activation via social is a pretty new way to market. To sustain any effort in this area, you will inevitably need to demonstrate value n the near term as well as longer term . Establishing goals around positive word of mouth in the marketplace, lead generation or customer referrals, and even sales on the marcom side will help. Workforce engagement can drive up retention, aid in recruiting and deliver some softer cultural benefits that appear in employee satisfaction surveys. Whatever your goals, be clear about them, benchmark and track. Budget time is never far off any more and you need to knwo if these new effrots are paying off.  

Do you have a market or business unit more suitable than others for a pilot? 

Plan as you might, you just don't know exactly how a employee advocacy program will work. It's best to implement 2-3 pilots in different markets to gather learnings and adjust a program before a wider rollout. Find a "market of innovation" where the business owners are a bit more entrepreneurial, the workforce somehow more open to this activity. When we were testing classroom innovations like wireless handhelds and school social networks back in 2000, we would always find what Scholastic called "schools of innovation" - essentially schools with entrepreneurial teachers and principals willing to be a part of something new.

(The image at the top was created using the Friend Wheel.)

Two Specialties that Could Change Public Relations

I used to think that social media would radically transform the public relations discipline. In a way it will. Getting great at using social media to deliver business value via marketing and communications forces one to re-appraise established models of measurement and analytics and managing content.

Measurement & Analytics

Advertising Value  Equivalency (AVE) is laughable. Even considering that as a workable metric ignores the challenge digital and social media arethrowing down at the whole marcom measurement world. We know have access to people's opinions and preferences like never before. What's missing? A few good studies on how that leads to sales for a particular brand and ultimately a data connection between online and offline sentiment and conversion (sales). Why shouldn't PR take up that challenge?

Paul Holmes wrote a post about the concept of a Chief Analytics Officer. His conclusion:

"...Two or three years from now, every public relations firm that wants to be taken seriously in the C-suite and/or a lead marketing role with have someone like Marshall (Marshall Sponder) in its senior leadership ranks, a chief analytics officer responsible for ensuring that account leaders think more deeply about analytics and that the firm works with the best available outside suppliers to integrate analytics appropriately."

PR has long suffered the reputation at delivering soft metrics which is a euphemism for KPIs that don't really matter or are not business-disciplined. If I were making investments in the comms function, I would heavy-up on a world class analytics team. That's my only distinction to Paul's recommendation. I would put a team together who could incubate disciplined measurement across the entire PR function inside an organization. A single officer may not be enough.

Content Management (i.e. Content Activation)

I had a recent experience on a big multi-agency corporate brand project. This was all the disciplines at the table to solve a client brand/reputation problem. The strategy called for a results-driven use of content to establish a clear thought leadership position. The best thinking from search intent modeling to creativity to social distribution came out. But when it came time to own the process of not just creating content but ensuring it moved people to action, no one in the discipline mix had a process to do that. Clearly, the traditional creatives were equipped to create beautiful content. The Search folks could ensure it would meet consumers' stated needs (what they "asked for" via Google). The PR folks were ready to create thoughful POVs and content in a variety of formats.  But approaching content in such a piecemeal way doesn't completely leverage what is possible today with content.

Arun Sudhaman from Holmes Report published a post on how 'content creation' was becoming disputed territory for the marcom disciplines. He was citing a recent report. Looking only at content creation is a mistake.

We call it 'Content Activation' and the process includes:

• Content Strategy
• Content Creation & Curation
• Distribution
• Evaluation
• Optmization

This model is designed around delivering executable strategy that drives behavior. It does not stop short of creating a remarkable video. Nor does it simply state that we ought to be publishing on YouTube vs. our Web site. It starts with business goals and follows the use of video all the way to measurement and the routine optimization of content to meet the objective.

Who's going to take the lead in this new discipline? The Web team? We are talking about all sorts fo content distributed online and offline, through paid, owned and earned channels. The Web team is designed to fuel the Website. The advertising folks? They are great storytellers but this process must be driven by impact not simply the wonder of terrific content elements.

We all hear the speeches that brands need to be more like publishers. I believe the public relations function could well step into the drivers seat of this next, most important chapter. They have a special appreciation for the requirements of earning people's attention and the voracious needs of content platforms. (check out Arun's post on the opportuntiy for PR in content)

Hear From FTC on Privacy: WOMMA Webinar

The FTC has recently announced their intention to "guide" how marketers are using behavioral targeting and other forms of advertising to reach consumers online. Consumers have a right to privacy of their data and this may lead to some convention like a "do not follow" feature. We have a choice to either self-regulate or see what legislation might be cooked up to protect consumers. 

This week, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association has a webinar featuring Manas Mohapatra, Attorney, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC. Before freaking out about the implications, join the webinar to learn directly from the FTC. 

WOMMA Webinar - December 15

Exploring Privacy: What the FTC Wants You to Know When Building Your Social Platforms  

Cost: Free for Everyone

Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010  Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM (CST)

Speaker: Manas Mohapatra, Attorney, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, FTC

Register Here

 

Background

• NY TIMES: F.T.C. Backs Plan to Honor Privacy of Online Users
• NY TIMES: Technology Outpaces Privacy (Yet Again)
• NY TIMES: Legislators Support Internet Privacy, but Question How to Achieve It

Influence Planning Requires New Discipline: Part 2 Tools & Skills

This is Part 2. Part 1 is here.

Any good planning discipline develops tools and methods to make planning more effective. Influence planning is no different. Over the past five years or so, we have been creating tools and processes that help us deliver a more predictive result. Instead of relying on publishers and broadcasters self-reporting on audience demographics or independent databases to then place messages as in most media planning, we are looking directly at what people are thinking, saying and doing and then engaging with them around ideas, tasks and ambitions that are important to them.

Influence planning is on the rise as a complete discipline and serves as an alternate or companion to media planning. This latter function has dominated marketing budgets and therefore has become a self-fulfilling practice where all innovation is some form of paid media. "Iinfluence" is more complex than that. People's hunger for transparency from the brands they do business with and the advice of their more trusted peers calls for a different marketing model.

Here's a quick survey of tools and skills for influence planning. This Part 2 in a series that started with a new  research focus. 

Listening for insights
Clearly "listening" serves research. It goes beyond what we usually think about when we plan research, though. It is more than that preliminary step you take once or even periodically to inform your messaging. Today, listening is its own discipline that can constantly pay attention to what people are saying and searching for across the Web. This 'always-on' practice pays dividends everyday by delivering consumer feedback and trends that can guide not just messaging but overall strategy. When we started noticing how one of CNN's twitter handles vastly outperformed all fo the traditional media outlets jumping on Twitter last year, we added simple @andersoncooper(for example) outreach to our own efforts to keep these folks informed and fuel the significant retweeting from that handle. That's an example fo a simple action taken from ongoing listening. Marketing has done a form of this for years via direct response marketing. You put messages and offers into the marketplace, see what people respond to and then adjust.

The analogy in communications and PR is typical crisis management where you manage a live listening post for media and consumer generated media (cgm) and make adjustments on a daily or even hourly basis. Does it pay to apply this same intense listening to brands not in crisis?

For a typical brand with 3-4 relevant topics and a collection of 20-30 keyword combinations, a weekly report complete with action steps can be drafted and delivered in about 3-5 hours.If your effort the following week gains in effectiveness it is likely worthwhile.

We do the same thing with search. Consumer Intent Modeling has been fine-tuned by our search group, GSI. They know how to quickly analyze what people are searching for and we can then use that information to fuel our strategy and content development.

Influencer mapping & segmentation
There are a lot of schemes for analyzing the most influential voices online and rank that influence. Some are good. Some are suspect. Some are just plain silly. Many of the syndicated listening tool and service providers - Visible, Radian6, SM2 - have some type of proprietary rank for "influence." My only suggestion is to always unpack the recipe they and others use. If you don't understand and respect it, don't use it.

We create Influencer Maps. We look at 5 data points to tell us that an online influencer is, well, influential. We look at another 4 to determine how relevant theyare for our brand or project. We have fine-tuned this model a few times over the years as new behaviors and platforms have come online. It will always be evolving like Google's algorithm.

So much of what we do is contingent on great matchmaking between brands and influential people online that we have gone to great lengths to adjust and improve our approach. We put influencer public datainto our database and the net result is that we have developed a substantial directory of great bloggers, Twitterers, forum participants and more. They are segmented based upon their stated affinities (design aficionados, green enthusiasts, parents, etc...) Our database is another tool-of-the-trade.

Engagement planning
What 'creative' is to media planning, 'engagement' is to influence planning. Figuring out what influencers and grassroots consumers will find attention-grabbing and worth their investment of time is hugely creative. It is also where there is as much art as science. 

Are we simply inviting people to experience our product? If so, how does it arrive? What is that out-of-the-box experience that contributes to the talkable moment? Have we created the world's largest tweet-up? Are crowdsourcing a movie for dad's day of "one thing my dad taught me"? The sky is the limit. the guiding principle is always how we can deliver value to the end user.

Tools we use:

• To help plan, we have developed "value exchange" criteria to understand if we are delivering enough value
• We have adapted Emanuel Rosen's drivers of WOM to use as a checklist for activation (will our program drive influencers to share, participate and recommend?)
• Conversation Calendars plan our a la editorial calendars what we plan to release to our followers and influencers that they will find valuable enough to pass along or otherwise participate with.

Conversation management

This is really a form of engagement. I call it out here as it has evolved considerably with the emergence of Facebook and Twitter. Brands now have the opportunity to manage an ongoing relationship with customers and constituents. This is not necessarily about diehard fans. Nor is it quite the same as serving a distinct few by stewarding a community.  Both of those efforts can be hugely worthwhile.

Conversation management is that "everydayengagement" most easily recognized in Facebook walls and great email CRM programs. The Conversation Calendar mentioned above is a staple tool. Two others include the actual role of theConversation Manager and the social content management system (social CMS), we use to make publishing across platforms more efficient.

Next up: Measurement

Why Facebook Community Pages Are No Big Deal For Brands...Eventually

I had been getting emails from clients all week. They were noticing new pages spring up on Facebook under their brand name. Only problem is they had no apparent control of these pages which seemed to only feature a Wikipedia article and aggregated wall post comments from people. Some seemed to feature company logos. When I asked one of my Facebook contacts in our WPPDigital meeting about them, he kind of shook his head in acknowledgment and said, "Yeah, there have been a lot of questions about that. I'm told we are working on a memo that explains it. They plan to have it by tomorrow." It's been a few days and no memo. But for those of you who have dealt with Facebook directly, this delay is not all that meaningful. (almost every inaction from Facebook is met with the same explanation - 'With a 1000 people to serve 500 million, they are just swamped.')

Here's what is going on and you can jump to the end where I suggest 4 things brands should do today.

On April 19th, Facebook announced the creation of Community Pages. You can see their blog entry explanation here. Essentially, they are a new breed of topical page tied to user's stated profile interests. I am a fan of Denis Johnson's book Tree of Smoke and put it in my profile a while back. Now that test links from my profile to a page dedicated to the bookand featuring the Wikipedia article as well as facebook user wallposts. Most of the reaction from critics so far has been from the users perspective. But there is a risk for brands, as well.

It Matters Today...
Brands are upset. This is a bit of a slow rollout or test depending on how you look at it. These pages aren't everywhere...yet. Some feature logos. Some show up for the brand in Facebook search. This makes them a threat to brands who are spending a lot of time, if not advertising dollars, on Facebook developing their own brand presence. They get in the way, potentially confuse users, and, especially those featuring logos, suggest that they are brand sponsored pages. I like staying at W Hotels (and Marriott, Intercontinental and Kimptons). Is this Community Page featuring the Starwood logo"sanctioned" by Starwood (that's the W Hotels group)? What would it mean to sanction to the point of featuring the logo? Also, the language at the top of the page is just phrased wrong as it seems to come from the brand:

"Our goal  (my emphasis) is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic. If you have a passion for W Hotels, sign up and we'll let you know when we're ready for your help. You can also get us started by suggesting the Official Facebook Page."

Most brands in Phase 2 of their Facebook use have spent a fair amount of energy culling the english garden-growth of brand related pages. They have gone through and brought the miscellaneous pages from employees in the Phillipines, the franchisee in Lubbock, and the factory in India into alignment with the brand. Many have "taken over" unofficial pages that infringe on copyright from miscellaneous fans. Now, all of the sudden, Facebook seems to launch a new wave of brand clutter.

Did they do it to spawn more pages for advertising? Is this a mild form of brandjacking like Seth Godin's Brands in Public or BzzAgent's Bzzscapes? Are the pages meant to motivate brands to buy advertising to sit alongside the user-generated content to get their side of the story in front of folks?

It all seems to fly in the face of Facebook's business interests (i.e. avoid poking sharp stick in eye of he/she who pays you). Facebook has a dual allegiance - the user and the advertiser - and, rightly so, the user's interests most often trump the advertiser. That's as it should be. Still, the user benefit of the Community Pages is not clear. If you want to see what facebook users are posting about a brand inside Facebook just use www.youropenbook.org. 

But It Won't Tomorrow
There are three reasons why this troubling development won't really matter to brands tomorrow.First, Facebook has demonstrated its "Ready, Fire, Aim" approach to innovation many times before.They are conditioning users to the idea that they will deploy something, hear from their constituents and revise their position accordingly. They did it on Beacon, they did it this weekend on user privacy. Given enough brand feedback, they will likely change their approach. I would certainly expect that not only will logos go away but there will be some type of framing statement on pages clarifying that these are not official brand pages. Many businesses will demand this as anything less presents a liability and potential threat to their customers (think pharma clients where users post off-label uses that may be dangerous).   

Secondly, look at all the attention Facebook is paying to major brands.They routinely have them fly out to Palo Alto to hear the roadmap and the advertising sales pitch. They are doing all they can to convert brand fascination and dabbling into full belief in the compound effect of engagement advertising within Facebook. The "go-public" strategy for Facebook will only be strengthened by a thriving advertising-fueled business model.

Lastly, read the Fortune excerpt of David Fitzpatrick's book on Facebook and its founding.It supports the idea that Mark Zuckerburg is earnest about figuring the business side of his business out. The fact that he is making adjustments on the engine as the car races around the track is just their way. The stories of the early entry of the company into the valley suggests that he has a level business head and is hungry to learn.

Ultimately, Facebook will position community pages correctly and people will determine if those pages are useful. You can bet they will become a staple of the brand ad buy but will those pages really become valuable to the end user?

Four Actions Brands Can Take Now
Rather than bunker in to crisis mode, brands can do four things:
1. When you travel to Palo Alto to meet with the gang at Facebook and discuss why your minimum spend should be at least $1M per brand/product this year, make sure to blurt out at a critical moment, "Hey, what's up with those community pages?" The more they hear from brands, the more likely they are to change their approach. It works when users speak up.

2. Next, call your Facebook sales rep (they tend to be regional) and tell him you want your brand marks off the community page (assuming you object). I am guessing that they can make that happen pretty quick and are obligated by law to take care of that.

3. Third - take renewed interest in your Wikipedia page. Chances are you are already doing that and have done all that is possible to cause it to be factually accurate.

4. Most importantly, do what you have hopefully been doing all along, keep pushing your proactive social media program to activate positive word of mouth and keep making great products and services. Are the Community Pages really that much different than a Google search that returns a bunch of blog posts, the Wikipedia article for your brand, use-created videos and more? 25% of the top Google search results for the top 100 brands are user generated content.The strategy for improving those results is to do all that you can to generate positive third party endorsements. Do more of that. It works.