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.
Well-designed apps that actually meet an unmet need tend to stand out from the crowd. Countable rises above so many apps out there. If you are a citizen of the United States, I highly recommend downloading it. I have become very active as it has a great alert system, and it answered my big question very early in my use.
Initially, I doubted if my simple input of comments on a particular issue was really visible to anyone. I know that Countable is trying to stimulate a community within the app. I suspect that will be more vibrant over time. Users can follow users and so forth. But that wasnt what I was most interested in. My biggest questions was whether my comments were actually sent to my representatives. Once I voted within the app and entered a few comments, I quickly received an automated email reply from my senator thanking me for my input. The app does deliver the mail.
What it is:
Countable is a mobile app that alerts you to which votes are happening now in Congress and how your Senator or Representative votes on the issues. I gives you real-time access to your government and makes it easy for your POV to be heard. It aims to help make governing more transparent and our congress people more accountable.
What it does well:
Tells you how your congress people are voting on specific bills
Alerts you to pending votes, debates or current topics and solicits your comments to send to your congress people
Increases the value (reach + engagement) of your advocacy by requesting you to create a video of your POV and sharing your POV via social channels
Provides advocacy widgets that can be easily embedded in any Web site
If you are concerned about how your views are represented, the current state of our government, or what can we do to positively affect change and "show up" as citizens, Countable might be a wise download.
Loads of analysts are taking a look at the $19 billion ($16b in cash & stock; $3bn in restricted stock) acquisition of the 55-person messaging company, What’s App. It’s a lot of money. And despite the stories of a deal brokered over chocolate-covered strawberries at Mark Zuckerberg’s kitchen table, no one expects such a purchase decision was made lightly.
Some of the most valuable analysis I have found are here:
“Knowledge@Wharton asked two Wharton experts — Kartik Hosanagar, professor of operations and information management, and Lawrence G. Hrebiniak, emeritus professor of management — whether they believe the move ultimately will pay off.”
“Similarly, the size of a virtual network is dictated by its carrying capacity, only that capacity is measured by utility instead of physical resources. An online social network can only grow as big as it remains useful, and the usefulness of a social network can be measured as the ease with which users can connect and share with friends and (sometimes) potential friends.”
“When Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, it, too, was assailed for a supposedly bad investment. But today, with Instagram thriving and beginning to sell advertising, that deal looks like a bargain.”
Some key points most are touching on:
What’s App is growing faster than Facebook and doing so internationally. Fast growth is always good for public companies. Also, Facebook may face increasing competition from services anchored elsewhere. The explosive growth of China’s WeChat being a great example.
Daily use of monthly actives is higher on What’s App (70%) than on Facebook (61%). Messaging services are that much more essential to their users than even Facebook with a greater frequency of use.
Facebook seems to have learned that their future may be as a “house of brands” vs. a single monolithic service provider under the Facebook “app.” Their launch of Paper, their cultivation of Instagram and now their purchase of What’s App seem to indicate that they do not expect every service they own to be rolled up under the Facebook name and interface. This clearly is a “hedge” against phenomena like the 11 million young users who have allegedly moved off Facebook since 2011.
At $1 a year in fee, What’s App has a different business model and source of revenue. As Knowledge@Wharton reported: “Despite the strong revenue numbers, Saikat Chaudhuri, executive director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton, warns that Facebook has to be careful that its growing ad load doesn’t alienate customers. “Ultimately, Facebook will need to find more subtle ways of engaging beyond News Feed ads,” he says.”
Between What’s App, South Korea’s Line, China’s WeChat, the trending growth of messaging services is clear. Facebook simply would not want such a service to become Google’s (the other recent suitor for What’s App).
There’s another factor to consider that supports What’s App as a good hedge or investment in the future and it has to do with the importance of trust in advertising.
What it may mean to advertisers: leveraging trust
Remember the research around close ties and weak ties? This explains the dynamic happening between users in social networks and how it maps to some enduring characteristics of what we all get from our closely held relationships (the 5 or so people closest to us) and those that are more casual and extended (think 300+ friends on Facebook.)
All friends are not created equal. We trust our close ties and the recommendations they make more than our weak ties. That makes sense. Our family and closest friends know us better. When they tell us we might like the Ford Fusion or the service experience at Lowe’s or the quality of the independent insurance agent in our town, it means more than a comment by our 290th friend on Facebook. Conversely, weak ties are great for exposing us to more new things. That’s how many of us break out of the rut of homophily (only being exposed to the narrow set of similar things that our closest friends will provide)
Facebook is a lot more about weak ties. What’s App is more about close ties.
The marketing world continues to try and learn how to drive authentic customer advocacy. How do you get customers sharing meaningfully about their positive experience with a brand? How do you get more people to share valuable content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more? How do you trigger people to share about a brand via their trusted social graph?
Meanwhile, brands are often abusing the same social network channels by publishing un-engaging content (clutter & spam) or reducing everything to a promotional offer (cultivating deal-hungry, here-today-gone-tomorrow customers). There are limits to how much advertising can be pumped into social networks before we poison the well as what happened early on with email marketing (spam). And even then, our, on average, 300+ friends are not the most trusted network. Our close ties hold stronger trust.
The challenge for a network like Facebook is farmed up by Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., in HBR Blogs,
“The most important element is clutter in the form of a sloppy interface, advertisements, and unwanted connections. The site’s utility goes down every time a user gets annoyed, and that annoyance is the biggest threat to Facebook’s survival. Too many users equals too much clutter. Think of the ant colony: if you threw some Candy Crush invites into the nest, or subjected the ants to the chatter of members of other colonies, they’d probably go postal… right before the colony completely collapsed.”
What’s App connects a smaller group of people who know each other more closely. When a brand delivers a relevant offer to one user and she passes it along to her messaging address book, it will perform better. It will be more instantly relevant. It is more trusted coming through a close tie. It will drive action at a higher rate.
I spent some time with the folks from LINE, a What’s App competitor late last year when I was in Asia. They were very bullish about their advertising prospects in comparison to Facebook. They owned the bottom of the funnel and can measurably drive people to retail or ecommerce in ways that Facebook could only dream of (this is them talking). Brands connecting with users via LINE send out a relevant offer to a customer/follower and that person goes into store at a much higher rate. I am sure Facebook sees the value of close ties and the possibility to drive real commerce not just engagement via What’s App.
As Jeff Stibel summarized when discussing the premature reports of Facebook’s demise,
“Determining what users find most relevant, and providing that and only that, is both Facebook’s greatest challenge and its greatest opportunity for making it through the breakpoint. If it succeeds, Facebook’s network curve won’t look like what happened to MySpace or polio, rather it will stabilize like other successful networks.”
(thanks to Mobile Brain Bank for the terrific image from their study)
We examined brand advocacy across 23 brands in 4 categories.
We looked at over 7 million mentions across China, Brazil, the UK and the US.
We wanted to understand what drove brand advocacy – what do people really talk
about when they share about brands. This is all found in the Social@Ogilvy Brand Advocacy Study: How to Build a Global Passion Brand
And there were some surprises along the way. Apparently
there is a broad social advocacy gap for many brands. For all the “brand
satisfaction” racked up by hotels, for example, they are only driving 1 in a
100 customer stays to an actual brand mention.
Most brands have a lot of work to do to close this gap.
Know what people love
One of our key findings surprised us. In the US especially,
I think we all believe people talk about advertisements a lot - especially the
funny or provocative ones. And people clearly do share about ads.
“We looked at advocacy mentions of ads, benefits, features,
costs and customer service. In all markets, features (e.g. the characteristics
of skin cream) were the most often mentioned. In comparison, mentions of
ads/commercials typically garnered the fewest mentions.”
It turns out, there are big differences across countries,
product categories and individual brands in terms of what people are most
likely to share about.
The table compares discussion breakout vs. category averages
for the two highest advocacy passion brands: Kimpton and Kiehls (US only).
Kimpton Hotels over indexes in the hotel category on
benefits and customer service. Conversely, they under index on advocacy
associated with the more rational based features and advertising. Conversely,
Kiehls over indexes in the skincare category for Features.
The value of brand advocacy is becoming clearer everyday.
Intuitively we believe in the positive mentions and the passion people share
about brands they care about is key to purchase decision and loyalty. The
evidence is mounting that our belief is well placed.
“Brands that do not generate substantial advocacy will need
to pay more for reach and consequently have costs substantially higher
than those brands that drive high advocacy. In an environment where costs to reach consumers continue to escalate, this advantage could make the difference between a
company with outstanding shareholder returns and one that fails to
perform.”
What causes us to share something we have discovered online
with a friend, family member or our modern version of social connections –
those who follow us on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook?
Research has been done to reveal that ideas or stories with
emotional resonance and in particular ‘emotional arousal’ get shared more
often. Tucked inside of Jonah Berger’s book, Contagious, is a particularly
strong section on the specific types of emotional cues that trigger engagement
including this quality of arousal.
Good stuff. But for the marketer how practical on a daily
basis? Also, our lives are a bit more
multi-dimensional that repeated tugs at our heartstrings. Some days we are just
trying to find an easier softer way to get the bison onto the dinner table.
Value Exchange: Have we offered a clear value exchange? Will
the user find some utility, entertainment, or reward by taking the time to
engage with us? What will the brand get from that attention and advocacy?
We often shorthand this in conversation as the reason
someone would “care to share.” Seem like common sense? Then why do marketers
routinely over estimate the fascination people have for some brand experience?
Do people really need another branded recipe guide? A third-rate game that features brand imagery
as the backdrop? A scavenger hunt to unearth the product attributes in a playful
way?
We all need help getting through the day. Why don’t USB
drives have an external display of space remaining? That would be useful.
Brands have the unprecedented opportunity to distill insights from social
listening and other sources to better understand what would be valuable to
people. Let’s do more of that and less post-justification of our snazzy brand
campaign and how much people will dig it.
Disruptive Ideas: Have we surprised or challenged
expectations?
This is the advertising creative’s gift to mankind. Most
award-winning advertising strives to have some cultural tension at the center
of it where the advertising shines a light and even turns it on its head. But
how do you find a disrupting idea? This is the art and science of creativity in
marketing that is difficult to bottle up and sell.
In simplistic terms, first find a cultural tension:
Discover everyday issues and struggles that may illicit
mixed emotions
Use insights from research and social intelligence to get to
a ‘truth’
Next, find a way to disrupt it:
Define a role the brand can play
Offer a compelling point of view
Challenge conventional thinking
I know. Not a very satisfying recipe. Finding that
just-right disruptive idea (like Dove’s Ad Makeover) is a bit like pornography
– we’ll know it when we see it.
Great Story: Do we have a great story with emotional and
rational interest?
Back to emotion. The research tells us that emotion rules
the day in so much of our decision-making. Often, we will post justify the
emotional decision we made with a bunch of facts this the reason we ought to
give both. Still, I am amazed at how many marketers insist on sticking to the
facts. Electronics firms do this all the time when trying to convince people to
but their new mobile phone or laptop. The feature wars are over. It’s all about
the emotion.
My favorite quote recently from a communications
professional was, “Public relations is so much more than storytelling.” You can
just riff endlessly on this, “Marketing is so much more than storytelling.”
“Great presentations are so much more that storytelling.”
Call it the story backlash. What it doesn’t change is the
fact that we all do love a good story. Thinking and communicating in stories
matters when we are trying to inspire people to share or relay our ideas
through their online and offline social graph. It’s way easier to share a good
story then some marketing “messages.”
Douglas Van Praet has a good series in FastCoCreate where he
discovers his own 6 drivers of decisions. A lot of what he talks about is the
power of emotion and the unconscious mind.
“For too long, standard marketing theory has had it
backwards. The most startling truth is we don’t even think our way to logical
solutions. We feel our way to reason. Emotions are the substrate, the base
layer of neural circuitry underpinning even rational deliberation. Emotions
don’t hinder decisions. They constitute the foundation on which they’re made!”
Fresh Interest: Do we have something new or interesting to
talk about?
Who doesn’t like something unusual to share even if about a
product or a brand? Turns out loads of people like that. I remember telling a
bunch of hiker friends about the bug shielding qualities of Avon’s Skin So
Soft. My social capital went “ca-ching.”
If we want people to talk about us, then lets give them
something to talk about and in a form they can share.
Finding fresh interest is every marketer’s challenge. We
wrestle with the truth behind “new and improved” claims when the facts are not
all that much is new. In advertising, the creative can “punt” on this issue.
Seen enough times an advert will make it’s impression regardless of the quality
of the “newness.” Not so much in social. If we want people to remark to friends
about the new lip balm, we may really have to re-design it in this cool little
screw top ball…..
Social Proof: Can people show their involvement such that
others can see?
Robert Cialdini documented significant shifts in behavior
when people were confronted with messaging and/or evidence that others – turned
their thermostat down, recycled plastics, took 3 minute showers, and so forth.
Given a choice between A or B, many times we will look to
how others chose. Sure it’s a form of conformity and we all do it so get over
it. When we display what other have done given a choice or a set of behaviors,
we make it easier for people to decide. This comes to life in the New York
Times most emailed articles and Amazon product reviews (“most people gave it 4
stars”). I would argue that social norms are a related and useful concept,
especially when we are talking about changing behaviors. Being able to say that
most people in Monroe County click their seatbelts on immediately upon getting
into the car in order to motivate others to do so is a form of social proof.
Creative Participation: Do we invite people to play a
creative role?
If we:
Create an experience that involves people
Ask them to be creative
Involve people in the story-telling and content creation
Then they will be more likely to become invested in the
process and outcome and share it. In Cialdini’s work, he talks about the
persuasive power of public consistency. When I publish a badge that declares
my support for heart disease prevention, then I am more likely to give to that
cause (or take a supporting action_ when called to do so. I would argue that
when someone nominates or votes in the Chengdu Pambassador program – all public
actions showing up in our Facebook timelines – that is a form of public
commitment that can spark future actions.
If I took the time to submit my child’s photo to the Gerber
baby contest, I will likely promote that program. These are all creative roles.
We need to be conscious of different levels of commitment. Not everyone will go
so far as to submit the picture. But they may vote on a series of images. Or
they may send an email with a link to friend with a particularly cute baby. We
think in terms of a “ladder of engagement” where there are simple, five-second
things to do at one end and more complex, time intensive things to do at the
other end. The Forrester “Technographics” data set seems to reveal that there
are demographic tendencies for who will do something intensive like create and
submit a video in a contest, for example. That guidance can help set up the
right ladder and avoid common problems like building a program that expects 55+
women in the middle of the country to create five minute video submissions.
Simple Advocacy: Do we remind people to share and make it
easy?
If we want people to share something or even to take an action, we ought to clearly ask them to do so and them remind them to do it. We also, ought to make it as easy as possible. We ought to have a reckoning when it comes to UX and UI design. It's time we set aside all pretensions and embrace the art of making things clear and easy. Remember the Heath Brothers in Switch. They talk about Shaping the Path and within that gestalt, Tweaking the Environment.
Have we been ruthless in our design and persistent (but not annoying) in our 'ask?'
More and more, our jobs as marketers are to drive behavior.
Sometimes that’s getting folks to buy something or more of something. Sometimes
its to spend more time or interact with a brand in the hopes that will lead to
them thinking about the brand in a moment of need. And more and more often, the
behavior we all want is to drive people to advocate.
The best of marketing has always been about behavioral
economics and those proven strategies that ‘nudge’ people to buy or take an
action. Recently, behavioral science has been popularized and, even advanced,
by some pretty smart people.
“Many of them, like ”loss aversion”--the tendency for people
to move more quickly to avoid losing something rather than to gain something of
value--are more like a bolt of fine, durable cloth than a ready-made suit of
clothes. You need to know which ones to stitch together to tackle a particular
problem.”
Practical Principles of Social Design
I am well aware that the Facebook sales and marketing team
popularized the phrase “social by design.” This was used to package up the best
practice approach to using the Facebook platform to drive engagement and advocacy
KPIs from consumers.
Early on, Facebook found themselves having to educate
traditional marketers on brand and agency sides about how Facebook was
different than interruptive advertising. I find it ironic that that same group
at Facebook has latched onto the mnemonic that Facebook is “the new print” to
describe the popularization of clever graphics in use by brand after brand to
generate object “likes.” It’s an old-school concept that any art director can
understand. It just may not advance the people-centricity of the platform like
‘social by design’ did.
Facebook did not invent word of mouth behaviors. They merely
built a platform that takes advantage of a some of them.
We (my team at Social@Ogilvy) have learned from 8 years of
social media marketing and communications and a ton more time in related
disciplines before that. We are sharp students of academics in this field. In
fact, our original work was based upon Robert Cialdini’s six drivers of
persuasion.
We needed a more practical synthesis of the best
research-based ideas that predict why people will advocate (all forms of word
of mouth including sharing content).
Here is how we updated our original drivers into a new, highly useful
“Principles of Social Design”
There are two parts to the principles. The first defines the
messenger and outlines the various networks we might engage with to stimulate
sharing or advocacy. These networks
influence us all in new ways. Some are more influential because the network is
made of family, friends or people with shared interests. The second part are the word of mouth
drivers. These are the ways we design communications such that thye
authentically capture the attention of people and networks of people and drive
advocacy and, even, actions like sales.
Networks of Influence: The messenger matters. Trust in
institutions and traditional media goes up and down (mostly down). And while there are new potentially
influential voices in many markets and within certain contexts, sometimes what
our friends, family and social connections say matters more.
Community Networks: How can we use communities to drive
social behaviors? People come together around different affinities and
interests. Sometimes that can be a brand. More often it’s a topic that matters
to them – think about Maker communities; people who love the Outer Banks of
North Carolina; or first time moms. If we can be of-use and deliver against the
drivers of word of mouth, we can expect ideas and content to spread across the
community.
Influencers: Who are the professional and amateur (and in-between) voices who may have some authority and potential influence on this subject? These may be popular bloggers, celebrities, popular Twitter users. Their subject matter expertise may be narrow like gadgets or raising adopted kids. If we deliver on the drivers of word of mouth, we can encourage influencers to share across their social graph. Sometimes this is akin to a mom reading about new family wellness techniques from a CNN Health editor, and sometimes it is a little closer to them like a tip from a mom you may not know yet who seems similar to you.
Content Network: How can we use our owned and controlled
online and offline properties to extend the model? If for no other reason than
to be found via Google, we need to use our own content network to publish
relevant content such that when someone needs to know
Combine a thoughtful
strategy around using the right Networks of Influence with The Drivers of Word
of Mouth (see FastCo: The Principles of Social Design) and you are now
designing with the Principles of Social Design. That’s what it takes to
reliably spark sharing, advocacy, word of mouth and more.
Next post: An Inside View of The Drivers of Word of Mouth
My colleagues at Ogilvy India alerted me to a social
campaign that aspires to movement status (they worked on this). That means they hope to gain broad
awareness for their issue and presumably see that awareness translate into fund-raising
and other key actions.
In case you were wondering how widespread this problem is
like I was, “Approximately 1 in every 700 Indian children is born with a cleft
lip and/or cleft palate with an estimated backlog of more than 1 million people
living with untreated facial deformities.”
For many, the remedy is a 45-minute surgery at a cost of
about $400.
We recently published an analysis of Social Brand Movements
that compared the performance of movements supported by brands with social
movements supported by NGOs like this one (see paper at end of post). The goal was to understand how big
the largest of movements can actually aspire to get.
Operation Smile aspires to 1 million tweets/retweets with
some number of complimentary video views. By our own review, that is 25%
greater than the social actions supported by GlobalGiving following the Tsunami
in Japan. Big goal. And the kids deserve it.
Is Raising Awareness Enough?
The recent effort to raise awareness has a few really smart
elements.
1. They created a hashtag - #cleftosmile – that is easy to
remember. They also created a graphic logo which uses a clever set of
keystrokes - :{to:) - not quite as easy to remember nor as functional as the
hashtag but still clever. There is a campaign site here.
2. They told the heart-wrenching story in a video that mixes
the graphic animation and photography of affected children. This softens the
aversion people instinctively have to the site of the cleft deformity
3. Users are prompted to tweet to celebrities to capture their
attention and earn their own reach-busting tweets
4. They have a big, hairy, audacious goal of 1m tweets and a
simple call to action
5. All calls-to-action beyond tweets and video views lead back
to the Operation Smile India site. That’s where the clarity of this simple
program softens a bit as users must hunt around for what they can do.
A Big Job-to-be-done
I am certain that the issue of India’s children suffering
from cleft lip or palate lacks broad awareness. Still, there are likely other
problems to solve as well, like making the condition relevant to more people
than the parents and outer circle (e.g. grandparents) of those children
affected. It is also likely a highly
stigmatizing condition for all involved – child and parent. The video takes steps to soften the impact of seeing a beautiful child’s face with the
condition. I don’t want to in any way feed into the stigma, merely acknowledge
that fear and challenging imagery often cause people to shut down in social
marketing (behavior change) programs. That's why the animation works well here.
“The idea is to raise enough of a noise to make cleft
treatment a part of the government's agenda. If this translates into volunteers
and funding, it would be the icing on the cake,” said an official.
When the program is meant to drive fundraising directly, we would adjust our approach. People don’t get pushed down the funnel anymore. The logic
that if we just raise enough awareness a certain portion will donate isn’t sound
anymore. We need to give people actions they can take now. If we are lucky
enough to earn their attention, lets ask them for some money. If they will
retweet then lets get them to ping a celebrity like this campaign does. Hey,
how about pinging titans of industry like those who have big business stakes in
India? What does Warren Buffet’s investment strategy in India look like? Maybe
if I tweeted him, he might rewteet….
Presuming the bigger barrier to more children getting the
much-needed surgery is money, then Operation Smile could take extra steps to
make it easier for all of us to take an action. How can people donate $5 or
$10? Can I start a pot of money and get my friends to give enough until we reach
$400 for one surgery? Can we all give micro-donations via mobile device?
Clearly, one of the biggest innovations from digital in
fund-raising is mobile micro-donations. Within that is the behavioral economics
“truth” that we just need to remove all barriers and make taking an action
easier.
Tweet this
All that being said, no child should struggle with the
challenges of a cleft palate. Any parent can feel some of the emotional
struggle that these children must feel.
Let’s throw caution to the wind. Give what you can. Tell
your friends and social connections about these children. And by all means, copy-and-paste and tweet
this today:
RT now #CleftToSmile and help Operation Smile India
deliver a smile to children who deserve that simple beauty. http://bit.ly/ZgKfRs
Or how to really engage the true brand fans to become more
productive advocates (and save you money while selling more).
So much energy and money is being spent on
building what we all describe as big “fanbases” in Facebook, Twitter, or other
social networks, that we lose sight of the fact that not all fans are created
equal.
In our soon-to-be-released international study on brand
advocacy, one finding is clear – the number of highly active and vocal fans for
particular brands is quite small. So
what are you doing for your best, most connected customers (here “best” might
mean most vocal advocates and not necessarily the biggest spenders)? What are
you doing for the 1-5% of your fan or follower base who are actually sharing a
lot and championing the brand?
Certainly acknowledging them with replies on Facebook or
Twitter is good practice. But if you really want to cultivate strong advocacy
from those most inclined to express themselves you may want to go further.
Fan Loyalty Programs
Brand have run loyalty programs for centuries. Most are
geared towards encouraging customers to spend more. Data programs are run to
filter and identify big spenders with tons of nuance about what they spend on
and so forth. Our own Lasek Group are expert at designing and running some of
the world’s top loyalty programs.
What are relatively new are programs designed to inspire and
drive more focused advocacy from the most active advocates. These programs need
three components to succeed:
A technological platform that makes it easy to deliver
messages and build insightful profiles
A steady stream of content, offers and access that the best
advocates would find worth their time and their social capital
A program design and execution discipline based upon the key
drivers of behavior
Technology platforms
We designed our own Insider Circle as a way to subscribe a
group of ‘super-fans’ to a private club where they receive exclusives – content
before anyone else, access to interesting people and experiences, product and
service offers and experiences. We saw other platforms on the market but none
really reflected the feature-set that we had learned from experience were not
only valuable but also ‘right-sized’ to the market. That means baking-in social
drivers like game mechanics and rewards and making it easy to use other
behavior-drivers.
There are other good choices out there now. Social Chorus is
one. Greg Shove, CEO, has led a great team to create a useful platform that
helps brands identify ‘social influencers’ and then subscribe them via the
platform. There is a significant distinction between fans and influencers.
Clearly having fans who have the attributes of potential influence (i.e.
high-reach and relevance) is ideal. Still, identifying your most vocal fans and
being mindful that they likely span the spectrum of high potential influence
and to low potential influence is okay.
“LoyaltyPlus empowers you to present your customers with
relevant incentives, such as rewards, points, status, recognition, and
exclusive access and promotions. Engage your customers at each stage of their
lifecycle, from the time they become aware of your brand through conversion to
loyalty and ultimately advocacy.”
The platform combines customer rewards, advocacy stimulants
(they make it easy and provide incentives), and a way to capture reviews and
other consumer generated content.
Now, Dropify adds some functionality to Facebook to deliver
content to your community. You can literally lay on an exclusive downloadable
video or white paper to your fanbase. It’s not clear of the platform will
support targeting that to specific members of your community – like your 1%.
It’s also not clear if this functionality is really a step above how we deliver
content now through the Facebook Newsfeed. But its inevitable that Facebook and
or the network of developers working within that environment will try to get
real about the different levels of advocates in the myriad of brand fanbases
out there and develop tools to treat them special.
A steady stream of value
Many brands are redefining budgets and staff to support the
content needed to mange always-on social networks. It isn’t easy or a trivial
matter. But its happening. Now, comes the question of what are you going to
hold back and release exclusively to your best advocates?
Most brands are struggling to keep good stuff in the
pipeline for the mass Facebook fanbase. Choosing to create exclusives for an
even smaller group is tough. They must believe in the power of the ‘super-fan’
over the myth of the mass-engaged fanbase (my bias is pretty clear)
Key drivers of behavior
The more things change the more they stay the same. If your
goal is to drive your most vocal fans to action, then you would use the proven
drivers of social behaviors. Think Cialdini, Health Brothers, Ariely. If you
just start with Cialdini’s ‘6 drivers of persuasion,’ you can see instantly how
we bring those to bear. ‘Scarcity’ is what exclusive and limited run offers are
all about. These are the assets we make available via the technology platform
for a limited time. ‘Social Proof’ lets other advocates see what their peers
are doing this reinforcing their own impulse to share particular content.
As you plan out the rest of your 2013 plan and identify next
priorities on into 2014, what are you doing to embrace and activate your 1%?
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.
The video speaks for itself. I have a soft spot for Pussy Riot. I don’t really know how young Russians see them or their recent 2 year jail term, but anyone with an authentic punk sensibility is generally ok in my book.
Plenty of articles have documented their story as their trial came to an apex this week. You can catch up on the facts in this story from the Financial Times.
If you want to survey their work including the offending video, there is a pretty good inventory of their audio and video releases and public protests here. I actually like the song a bit btter in their music video that protests the Russian version of their 1% - the super rich. These guys have been a consistent thorn in the side of the establishment for some time. Whether they are true anarchists or merely against the abuses of power and the current political leadership isn’t clear. Anarchism is a dead-end street from my POV. Protesting the man is often necessary. So I like them but am admittedly naïve to all that they stand for and how actual Russians see them. Visit their Live Journal site to follow their story including the single they released upon hearing the verdict.
“She (Shayba) counted 11 band members, with names like Balaklava, Cat, Seraph, Terminator and Blondie but said: “There is no fixed number, entrance is not limited – in principle anyone can join.”
Another band member, Garadzha, said musical ability was not a limiting factor in potential recruits. “You don’t have to sing very well. It’s punk. You just scream a lot,” she told daily newspaper Moskovkie Novosti.”
I mean, that’s so Sex Pistols.
But a 2-year jail term for their actions is just wrong as much as it was inevitable. Even though rational, real-politik-ians, would be right in saying “what did you expect would happen”, we can all be outraged at the thought of three young, creative women sitting in jail for a performance.
How to Support Pussy Riot
Amnesty International wants us to donate money such that they can send a “truckload of balacalvas” to Putin’s office. Really? This isn’t Capitol Hill. And this isn’t 1989. I cannot think of what could matter less than a truckload of ski masks at the Kremlin. All due respect to Amnesty International but this just seems like a waste.
There are plenty of other protest actions happening (or that have happened). Some say they collect money for a defense fund. But now that these women are in jail, how can we really help if we really care?
Idea Bar #14 - No, Really. How to Support Pussy Riot
These guys are artists. They aim their art at their view of justice. Rather than vain attempts to use Western advocacy tactics, what would help them the most? No direct pressure will get them out of jail. It’s likely that their sentence could be commuted but from what I read about the Russian justice system, I wouldn’t count on it.
I see two possible strategies that may help them. One is the protest approach, the other is the support-their-work approach. Maybe they can be combined.
Protest approach
Lets raise money for a giant bribe to present to the Russian prison administration to release them. I don’t know the Russian prison system to be a corrupt entity. Certainly, there is an reputation for corruption in some parts of the legal system. But this is just a ploy to keep them in the news. Since Pussy Riot blasts the President Putin leadership and its unhealthy connections with religious, business and justice leadership, lets just go there. (If I have just insulted the Russian legal system, I am sorry. Feel free to pile on about the defects or weaknesses of US culture and politics. I mean it's election season here and there is plenty to find fault in)
Through Kickstarter, we can establish a goal of $300,000. At $100K per Pussy Rioter that’s both within reason (the most money raised via Kickstarter was $3.3M for The Double Fine game). It is the Pussy Riot Prison Bribe Fund. Unlike most corrupt transactions, this one is open to the public. Complete transparency. We all see the number go up as we donate our $100. The plans for delivering it to prison authorities are documented online.
Will it get them out of prison? No. It’s a protest. Then where does the money go?
Support-their-work approach
They get out in two years (hopefully less). Lets make them independent artists but underwriting their work. Now, it’s entirely possible that the Madonna’s of the world already plan to offer material support. I can just see the press photos now. But these women are serious. Their track record of protests makes that clear. Lets give them the means to be creative on their own terms.
The Kickstarter fund will actually be a “Prison Bribe or Rebuild the Band Fund.” When the bribe is not accepted, which it won't be, the effort now goes into building the band a nest egg to help their family’s get by (at least one of them, Nadya Tolokonnikova, has a 4-year old daughter) and most importantly, gives them money to expand the practice of their art.
