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?

 

Why I Published a Blog for 15 Years

My first blog post in 2005 was a short few paragraphs on the Power of Fans. While hardly deep, it did ask a question that remains relevant today – “Why don't more brands leverage fans?” The rest is, literally, history. 

I started The Digital Influence Mapping Project to figure out how digital and social media was changing us and would alter business. I am intellectually and insatiably curious but hardly brilliant. By writing posts, I was sketching ideas and points of view that simply helped me form cogent thoughts (mostly). For me, this is a part of lifelong learning. This led me to connect with other bloggers and marketers wrestling with similar issues.

I blogged to make connections with people. The blog became a great device for an introvert to meet like-minded people (equally curious) as digital behaviors and social media swept the world.  Lucky to have a global position at Ogilvy, I met fellow bloggers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Portugal, Brazil, the UK, Turkey and many, many other fantastic places. We held ‘blogger meet-ups’ where I got to shake hands (remember that simple act?) with someone I had only known virtually.

I felt (naively, perhaps) that blogging and social media would connect a community of people, open channels of sharing, and weaken nationalisms.  I fancied myself an aspiring ‘citizen of the world’ vs. an American. I still feel that way today although I do recognize my indelible “American-ness.” I cannot shed that programming any more than I can pretend to not be a white male in a culture that affords privileges based upon superficialities and chance. No flag-waving for me, I’m afraid. I long to simply be another person on an Earth that values and is curious about all people.

The answer to “why did I publish The Digital Influence Mapping Project for fifteen years?” is really just those two things: to learn how digital technologies and behaviors would change us and to meet interesting, smart people from all over.

Curiosity and connection.

Luckily, many of the people I have met I remain connected to today. I wish I could name them all here in gratitude, but I would inevitably screw that up.  Check my connections on LinkedIn (and Twitter). I am guessing most of these smart, fantastic folks are there.   

So, something new is next and it won’t happen on The Digital Influence Mapping Project. Still, fifteen years of blog posts. That’s something.

Three Ways to Scale Humanity in Marketing Technology and Automation

For those of us trying to scale marketing’s impact via new technology and data solutions, one of the big tricks is holding onto some humanity in these approaches. Marketing automation quickly gets, well, automated and devoid of personality. What can you do to retain and apply humanity at scale? How do you avoid the pitfalls of marketing that tries to be more human and personal but ends up reeking of stock phrases and machine-made personal touches.

The problem may not lie in the new technology so much as the habits of big companies. Just think about all of the stars of Fast Company extolling the wisdom of personal customer service and human touches. They are almost all small companies. And the big guys who get held up as poster-children of the personal touch - Zappos, Neiman Marcus and the Ritz Carlton - are the same service-side players that always get featured. It’s hard for big companies to embrace their humanity and address their customers in colloquial, conversational language that reveals a bit of the humanity of the people behind the scenes.

That being said, marketing technology can aggravate this tendency. Here are three examples where marketers are trying to use technology to strengthen that human connection.

 

Show me my field rep

We recently launched a new approach to email marketing with our independent agents. Two of our marketers could see what a truly great email approach could be, one that strengthens our relationships with these agents while at the same time drives actions that mattered to them and to us.

They designed each email to start with something quite simple: a photograph of the field rep from our company that represented that independent agent. The emails were personalized to the agent and the sender was their field rep. This type of personalization is foundational to good email marketing. The photograph was that extra touch that made the difference. It wasn’t easy to pull off and my hat’s off to our internal team who connected the images associated with employee profiles on our intranet to serve up via the email system.

The gymnastics needed to make this work might cause many to question, is it worth it? The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ anything we can do to share our humanity with our agents and customers helps us make the connection we value most – being trusted partners who genuinely care about our customers and our communities.

 

Handwritten notes at scale

I had a boss who would send me handwritten notes 3-4 times a year to acknowledge some accomplishment. Ultimately, I really appreciated these notes. Rarely do I receive a handwritten note from the CEO of a partner company (I refer to the companies we use for various functions and technology in marketing as ‘partners.’ I don’t like the word ‘vendor’ or its implications). Actually, I cannot remember ever getting a handwritten note. Emails, sure. Handwritten notes deliver a different impact.  But how would you scale that?

Bond has figured it out. They have created a web-based service for sending out handwritten notes at scale. You can see the rows of handwriting machines on their web site, each capable of a variety of writing styles. Now, I doubt the recipient is fooled into thinking the CEO of a company wrote them this perfectly printed note. Combine four things and I don’t care: the note card format, a sender who is a real executive, the script lettering and, most of all, a human, conversational message.

It’s funny that it’s this last piece, the actual copy, itself that companies likely struggle with the most. If we all just wrote a bit more conversationally and friendlier, we might achieve more humanity in our Web sites, our direct mail, even our advertisements.

 

Chatbots: friendly but not chatty

Too much has been written on chatbots. If you want to catch up on the whole concept, here’s a decent summary from Deloitte Digital.

We have been developing AI-fueled chatbots over the past year or two and one of the biggest learnings has little to do with the whiz-bang artificial intelligence and machine learning that promises to make these chatbots sharper with their answers. A tricky piece has been weaving in a friendly, conversational tone that doesn’t become too chatty and get in the way of the communication. Everyone interacting with a bot should know it’s a bot. Trying to trick people into thinking they are interacting with call center rep is not cool (and not likely to work.) Making the interactions pleasant, more than ‘just the facts, m’am,” and even with a bit of a smile can go a long way to reveal our own humanity in a simple interaction.

Mya is a chat bot developed for the talent acquisition field that conveys that human touch well. The folks behind it began running a recruiting service for college grads called First Job and then pivoted to develop Mya as their core gig. The dialogue style is conversational and meant to help nurture talent and update talent databases. The humanity is subtle and doesn’t get in the way of the communication. Think about it – the best way to add humanity is with humor or story, both of which would make interactions too long. Short and sweet and human.

 

Humanity Builds Trust

If we want to strengthen trust between brands and customers, one way we will do that is by revealing our humanity. Think about the classic equation for trust which I first learned from David Maister:

Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy / Self-Orientation

The intimacy in the equation comes from our willingness to reveal our humanity. Think about how you are doing that in your marketing. And think about how that can scale via martech.  

 

From NextNow Digital:

The Next-Gen Digital Marketing Strategy Framework

For small and midsize businesses who want to create an effective digital marketing strategy for their business that responds to these changes, we’ve put together a new strategic framework and toolbox. Click the link or the framework. 

The Next-Gen Digital Marketing Strategy Toolbox

is the distilled and essential toolbox to allow any business and/or marketing leader to develop strong marketing with measurable impact. This is built on the simple “Next-Gen Digital Marketing Strategy Framework” where a test-and-learn culture and capability serve as the keystone. Click on the link to get the toolbox.

The Next-Gen Digital AdvertisingToolbox

A lot of businesses may be wasting their money on digital advertising. They struggle to use it well and gain enough efficiency for a positive return on their media investment. Here's a toolbox that works in the face of higher ad costs and lower effectiveness. Click on the link. 

The Agile Marketing Strategy for Small Business

The importance of strategy in marketing can’t be overstated. Today, though, we need simpler strategies that can be tested and optimized. Click the link. 

Two ways to always be thinking about customer behavior

As marketers, we are paid to get people to take an action, usually one that improves the financial or mission performance of an organization (sales, money-donated, customer retention, etc…). We are trying to get people to buy, buy often, support our cause, tell others how great our organization is, sell our products better if they are in the sales channel.

 

Driving People to Action 

Direct marketers often see the problem as all about the data. Data is their truth. Test enough tactics long enough and you will have refined a profitable approach. Brand marketers too often talk about changing people’s attitudes or opinions. Social media marketers rely heavily on driving forms of “engagement” as an end onto itself.

But in the end, we are trying to drive people to take actions. One of the best improvements to the Creative Brief was adding the simple question “What do we want people to do” as a result of our communications. That’s the one we use now.

If our job is to drive behaviors, then we must be students of behavior. I grew up on all sorts of great behavioral economics POVs from the Heath Brothers to Dan Ariely to Robert Cialdini. They translated research and often complex psychological topics into simple yet meaningful principles. One of the biggest challenges is how to move from what is a growing list of principles into a full-proof, one-size-fits-all planning model for communications. And while the Heath Bros came up with the SUCCESs model and Robert Cialdini focused on the six principles of persuasion (pictured above), it is almost impossible to get beyond a growing collection of testable principles.

 

 

The Small Big

Now Robert Cialdini has a new resource which compiles many of these principles into one place written with Noah Goldstein and Steve J. Martin). The Small Big inventories many of the research-driven findings about what makes us make choices and actually do things.

Dr. Paul Marsden does a great job of compiling what he calls “Speed Summaries” of The Small Big. It’s worth browsing on your way to buy the book. Here’s some of what he captures:

Nudge 1: Nudge people to buy/pay using social proof by telling them about the large number of people who have already bought/paid (UK tax authority HMRC used this to boost payment from late-payers from 57% to 86%)

Nudge 11: Nudge people using stories that illustrate the positive ’significance’ of purchase on others – rather than personal benefit.

Nudge 12: Nudge people by linking the desired behaviour (e.g. buying) to that of someone they know, whilst linking non-compliance (not buying) to losing (not losing is often a greater motivator than winning)

Nudge 15: Nudge people to buy now because they owe it to their future selves (moral responsibility to one’s future self)

Now, these one-liners may seem cryptic. They are also deceiving because the book is a real book, not just a book of tips. You have to read and figure out the relevance of the study or point it is talking about to your work. But that is what students do – read, analyze, interpret.

 

4 Facts about Decision-Making

The Neuromarketing blog by Roger Dooley (et al) is a consistent source of strong thinking that applies behavioral economics to practical digital marketing. A recent post from guest blogger, Jeremy Smith, does a great job of applying core concepts like confirmation bias and narrow-framing to actual digital marketing choices in his post:  4 Facts About Decision Making That Will Improve Conversion Rate Optimization 

The post is worth the read and the conclusions are valuable:

“Customers are only considering a few options. Make sure your option is one of those.

Customers will reject data that conflicts with their decision. Use emotional arguments to persuade them otherwise.

Customers make emotional decisions. Influence these emotions to help them move easily towards a conversion.

Customers crave post-purchase confidence. Affirm them in their decision.”

 

I find it valuable to be constantly reading and learning about principles that drive behavior even if they are some of the same lessons packaged up differently or rediscovered as if they were fire. It’s how I keep them top of mind and try them out just as we apply other variants in marketing to see what works best. The best combination seems to be a clear understanding of what principles drive behavior and then the practical application of them in a direct marketer’s testing routine.

 

(image: thanks to Iliyana Stareva for the visual image of Cialdini's six principles)

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The Principles of Social Design Unpacked #1

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.

Robert Cialdini has the six drivers of persuasion (neat compressed summary here). The Heath Brothers have the “Rider” and the “Elephant.” Jonah Berger has his own six principles (“STEPPS”). Dan Ariely has his stuff. Paul Adams from Facebook has his own synthesis of what drives people to action.

There are great concepts born from research across many of these works. In fact, sometimes there is just too much in the behavioral canon to practically apply to a business problem today. In my article for FastCo Create last week outlining The Principles of Social Design, I made a point,

“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

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Getting the 1% to Do More

Getting the 1% to Do More

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:

1.  A technological platform that makes it easy to deliver messages and build insightful profiles
2. A steady stream of content, offers and access that the best advocates would find worth their time and their social capital
3. 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.

500 Friends sounds more like a loyalty-minded firm or as they would call it, “LoyaltyPlus”

“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%?

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Big Brands Need to Understand Word of Mouth

“…the average American talks each day about roughly ten brands, and that the typical brand conversation lasts between three and five minutes. More that two thirds of these conversations involve a recommendation to buy, consider or avoid the brand,” from The Face-to-Facebook, Ed Keller and Brad Fey, 2012

“Typically, messages passed within tight, trusted networks have less reach but greater impact than those circulated through dispersed communities,” quoted by Keller & Fay from a 2010 McKinsey study on Word of Mouth.

 

The impact of positive word of mouth about products and services on purchase decisions and opinions is growing. This has been a disputed trend for some time now.  Some simply say that word of mouth has been around since the dawn of time and there’s nothing much new to respond to. Others claim that the efficacy of traditional marketing has forever slipped off of a cliff never to regain its footing. The truth lies in the middle – things have changed, word of mouth is more important today.

Often attributed to the flood of marketing and media messages beyond a manageable flow, a skepticism and distrust for institutions, and the added social connectivity to our network of close and weak ties via social media and mobile access, word of mouth or earned personal media is increasingly seen as the future of marketing. Still brands remain preoccupied with mastering social media and more recently with developing efficacy models that blend the performance of owned, earned and paid media. Very few admit that the real interest in social media is due to the earned media or word of mouth potential by disruptive ideas and customer engagement programs. Even those that are trying to measure owned, earned and paid start by treating the earned media – the positive word of mouth and even recommendations of friends and family – as just more media with an impression value.  That’s crazy.

Still, I get it. We learned how to scale advertising. We are just learning how to scale word of mouth. That means we have an institutionalized machine to create, distribute and measure advertising. While we create methods for scaling the use of word of mouth, we will be required to compare that efficacy with advertising. But brand marketers should be looking at the real shift in the marketplace. That is the word of mouth. Within that simple discipline lies some of the most important concepts to modern marketing: influencer marketing, influencer scoring, community management, brand advocacy, content marketing, fan management and more. How should brand marketers get smart about word of mouth? 

Read Face-to-Face Book

One of the best reads this year on Word of Mouth is The Face-to-Face Book by Ed Keller and Brad Fey.  Ed Keller can be one cranky bloke. He wants a fight. He knows that 80-90% of word of mouth happens offline in face-to-face conversations and he’s tired of all of the fanfare falling to the 8% that happens online.

The thesis of the book is solid if told in provocative way. Integrated programs that feature compelling advertising, products that have talk value, and a art-and-science-driven approach to sparking word of mouth online and offline will drive sales.

Along the way he bashes social media. The Pepsi Refresh Project is called out as failure of marketers too ready to believe that social media could replace advertising. Certainly Pepsi came to the conclusion eventually that they were under-spending in advertising. Regime change. Budgets shifted. But social media did not get taken out of the mix. It remains relevant to Pepsi and thousands of other marketers around the world. Social media may get out-sized attention from brands, but what if we just used social media as a synonym for word of mouth? Isn’t the shift that media has become more social?  

There is no good argument for why brands do not focus on generating relationships that drive positive word of mouth online and offline. Keller and Fay do a great job of uncovering facts and ideas that marketers need to be successful in this space.

Influencers do exist and are important

“The average American keeps in close personal contact – meaning real-world offline communications – with approximately 16 friends, family and acquaintances. Infleuncers, meanwhile, have a social network that is twice as large: thirty-three friends, family and acquaintances with whom they communicate often.”

“Whereas the average American has about 65 conversations per week about brands, Conversation Catalysts (their phrase for influencers)have nearly two and a half times as many: 150 conversations per week.”

"Pursway’s analysis (a research company) finds that these influencers can generate ten times more sales within their social circle than an average consumer.”

 

People talk about products, experiences and about advertising

“…word of mouth basics – being recommendable, easy to talk about, worth talking about, and something people feel proud to share with others – are far more important drivers of word of mouth than being new, unique, innovative or entertaining.”

“Yes, great experiences get people talking. Innovative products do, too. But to a surprising extent, ads are a tremendous source for conversational fodder (25%)”

 

The scale of social networks mask the real numbers

Here’s a place where my conclusions diverge from Keller and Fay. Their basic premise is sound: that of all the people who friend a Facebook brand page, only a minority are active. I see that as a community ‘power-law’ and not a hidden defect of social networks as part of a marketing model. You simply must think of segmenting fans, followers and then counting on action from an active minority.

Facebook routinely says that about 16% of a brand page fanbase sees an update in the news feed of the brand. Keller and Fay’s “informal experiment” in the book points to 10%.  Either way, we know that the steady flow of Facebook updates is never seen by all and we should plan accordingly.

“…a fall 2011 study found that of the total number of (Facebook) fans, only a very small percentage (typically 1 percent or fewer) are active.” 

Integrated social media works well

Even while the authors emphasize the importance of advertising to drive word of mouth and that the offline word of mouth dwarfs online, they also acknowledge that social media done well can drive big results.

 “The campaign’s success (Old Spice) was immediately interpreted as yet another victory for social media over traditional media. But you don’t have to look too hard to see that’s not entirely the case. Put simply, the success would not have been possible without an integrated approach that involved smart consumer research, and an excellent creative idea delivered in a heavy broadcast presence with a smart social media component.”

 

As brand try and get the most out of social media, they will likely come to realize that a more holistic effort to drive word of mouth is really what they are after. Keller and Fay’s book, Face-to-Facebook is an important read along that journey.

 Key word of mouth event in November 2012

You can dive into an immersive two days on this subject at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s Summit in Las Vegas. Join Ed, Brad, myself, and a few hundred-brand marketers to see and learn best practices from our peers.  See the Summit Agenda and register here.

The Art and Science of Social Media 3.0

At the heart of our work over the past 7 years in social media and digital marketing is a collection of behavioral economics and network science. We needed a way to understand and therefore plan how ideas move across networks and what drives people to some type of behavior change in response to engagement in social activities. We frequently simply this to just say ‘ what causes people to care to share.’

We looked to researchers and “synthesizers” like Robert Cialdini, Dan Ariely, the Heath Brothers and Charles Duhigg amongst others. We took ideas like the Drivers of Influence and made them into heuristics – rule of thumb models – that teams could use to plan and execute predictably great programs. This “art and science” also served as the antidote to the unrealistic expectations of marketers who were shopping for "viral videos" – assets that would magically inflame an epidemic of sharing and retweets. To reliably spark word of mouth experience proved there are some rules to follow.

A New Model

Our science grew as we gained experience that needed to be codified or discovered new research to inform our approach. While all of this was quite relevant, it became a bit unwieldy. We ended up with a list of lists. Meanwhile, Facebook began promoting the concept of “social by design” amongst its brand and agency partners. This was a fairly random subset of what we were using to design against. They also talk about it two ways - as a POV on product design and as an approach to creating marketing solutions driven by Facebook advertising. We think of t as a new way to design completely integrated solutions. Still, their exposition ratified that what we were doing was “designing” great programs. So, we have simplified our approach to designing successful social media-based programs into the Principles of Social Design. 

The Principles of Social Design

The new model has two complimentary parts: The Network Influence Model and the Drivers of Word of Mouth.  The first explains how ideas move through influencers or networks. The second combines the most useful rules of behavioral economics into sets of descriptors that explain why people share. In their simplest form they serve as valuable rules for evaluating ideas. They can also serve to build belief across an integrated team about the strengths of designing creative ideas meant to stimulate word of mouth. 

The Network Influence Model

• Influencers: who are the pro-am, relevant influencers who we can engage? 
• Community: how can we use communities to drive social behaviors? 
• Owned ecosystem: How can we use our owned and controlled online and offline properties to extend the model?
• Paid eco-system: How do we use our advertising channels and tactics to extend the reach of our influencers + network? 

The Drivers of Word of Mouth

• Value Exchange: Have we offered a clear value exchange?
• Disrupting Idea: Have we surprised or challenged expectations?
• Great Story: Do we have a great story with emotional and rational interest?
• Fresh Interest: Do we have something new or interesting to talk about?
• Social Proof: Can people show their involvement?
• Creative Participation: Do we invite people to play a creative role?
• Simple Advocacy: Do we remind people to share and make it easy?

 

Each of these ideas has a simple set of qualities in a list that help guide program design. Not every program needs all the boxes checked. But the more the merrier. Trying to design and deploy a great program without enough of this stuff is guaranteed disaster. 

Our model will continue to evolve. It is constantly fed by our own experience with what works and what doesn't not just teh great academic research going on out there. 

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.