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.
Some brands embrace a higher purpose than shareholder value or simply making good widgets. Unilever has their Sustainable Living Plan which among other things aims to “Help more than a billion people to improve their health and well-being.” Purpose does not necessarily refer to a social mission. Most companies of any size have some type of community commitment. MasterCard has a stated mission, “Every day, everywhere, we use our technology and expertise to make payments safe, simple and smart.” That is bigger and broader than facilitating transactions or driving good returns.
Even Caterpillar – yes, the company that makes big yellow earth movers and cranes – has a belief in the “the Age of Smart Iron.” Like GE, they see their future dependent upon their ability to innovate beyond their mechanical heritage and into the connected future.
There are a lot of benefits for companies that not only articulate a higher or broader purpose but who also walk-the-walk by behaving in ways that demonstrate their true commitment.
Some of the benefits include:
Aligning internal business leaders around a common purpose and mission – this makes even the most decentralized business more strategic and improves the impact of disparate leaders.
Telegraphing growth potential and focus to investors – this attracts the right type of investors who believe in the future of a company not just its next quarter results.
Strengthens retention and productivity of the workforce – this gives us all a better reason to wake up everyday to make the donuts and proudly share what we all do
Attracts the right type of business partner who shares cultural beliefs and values the brand and business – this expands business opportunities by becoming the partner of choice
Expands the impact of marketing by giving more reasons for customers to care and stick with the brand – this improves the bottom line by improving customer value
Expand the Impact of Marketing
Brands that only talk about their product or service are settling for a transactional relationship with customers. They are also limiting their usefulness to their customers to the brief window in which a customer has decided to buy something like what they sell.
As marketers, we now think about a more complete ‘buyer journey’ that starts well in advance of a purchase and continues through the life a paying customer. Before you actually buy that perfect stovetop, you may be thinking of remodeling your kitchen to create that ‘family hearth’ of your home or to have a professional chef-level kitchen to let you express your inner Master Chef.
So, before you start shopping or even start questioning your friends about their choices and experience, you may be reading the SubZero/Wolf blog, Food Notes, after browsing through Pinterest for gourmet kitchens. Wolf’s ‘purpose’ is appropriately bigger than stovetop sales but smaller than solving world hunger. Here’s what they say about themselves, “Together (SubZero + Wolf), we are dedicated to helping you create the beautiful, high-performance kitchen of your dreams.”
This gives them a broad platform to create content and engage people at many stages of their journey from gourmet cooking (the bulk of their stories on the blog) to kitchen design and ‘outfitting’ to inside peaks at other ‘high-performance kitchens.’
More reasons for potential customers to engage, more relevance, more reasons to trust Wolf’s expertise, more reasons to prefer them when you finally do purchase, more reasons to share this content with someone you know who also cares about gourmet food and kitchens.
While the Smarter Planet POV focused on responding to the inevitable growth of cities across the globe, cognitive is more about seizing the advantage in a new era of computing – “Cognitive computing is able to unlock the potential in all data - internal, external, structured, unstructured, voice, and visual - and make it work together. Enterprises can make better operational decisions, understand customer wants and needs, communicate in real time, and optimize business processes – infused with the cognitive ability to understand, reason, and learn.”
They are seizing the opportunity formed by the tension within all business leaders to do something significant with “big data.” IBM Watson has the answer.
This broad (and insightful) platform and purpose will give IBM tons of content marketing opportunities to reach prospects, customers, resellers, employees, influencers and more for years to come. Just look at the wealth of topics on their Outthink site. It sure beats talking “speeds and feeds.”
Being ‘modern’ sounds quaint. It’s one of those baffling descriptors used for architecture and even art that more often than not describes something created a long time ago. But the simple definition of modern means “of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past” and “involving recent techniques, methods, or ideas.” It’s neither futuristic nor anchored in a naïve, Worlds Fair-image of the near future.
The modern CMO is about using the tools of today, sometimes in new ways. This isn’t about Google Glass, neuromarketing or even the Internet of Things. We are talking about near-term realities – the increasing precision in targeting communications, shifting to a “pull” strategy via content marketing, and combining data with creativity to be more relevant to people. Since people’s daily field of vision is hopelessly cluttered with commercial messages, media choices and the routine celebrations of family and friends (just judge your Facebook newsfeed), marketers must earn a place in people’s lives by delivering value above messages or at the very least delivering exactly the right message to the right person at the right time to be of-use.
The modern marketing organization looks and behaves differently, as well. It’s not an advertising factory. Nor is it the loose collection of marketing and communications disciplines intended to intercept people from “360 degrees.” All disciplines must be data-driven or, at least, data-informed. Data tells us how marketing really works. We design communications programs around how journalists use information. Content marketing sparks sharing or the data tells us it isn’t relevant. We optimize the effectiveness of digital advertising by pulling data-connected levers in near-real-time. Integrated marketing doesn’t just connect marcom disciplines long overdue for alignment, it ensures they are responding to similar data, insights and, ultimately, the customer.
Now marketing must be reconnected with sales. These cannot be two, separate functions each in denial of the other’s relevance or contribution to business health and profits. If we care about our customer first and are committed to becoming increasingly customer-centered, then we need to be wise about the entire buyer (or customer) journey – from before they even know us to when they are a valued customer in their tenth year of service.
This is about what it means to walk-the-walk today of the modern chief marketing officer and organization. While ‘digital’ is certainly a part of that experience as is data, speed-to-market and so much more, it is not defined by any one of these. The job of the marketing organization, in the appropriated words of David Ogilvy, is to “sell or else.” How a leading marketing organization does that today is very different than fifty years ago.
11 Ideas Driving the Modern Chief Marketing Officer & Organization
Embrace new digital behaviors – No question that the growing ability to move information across digital networks has and will change our behaviors profoundly. We shop differently. We trust differently. We make decisions differently. In some cases these may be small, additive changes (we still look to an insurance agent to explain our choices even while we research those choices ahead of time via Google). In some cases these will be fundamental and disruptive changes. Predicting which will be which or the speed of change is hard. One tip for actually understanding these changes better? Embrace these new habits within your organization. Employees should be encouraged to interact with the brand and its customers online. How else will we understand these new digital behaviors if not by practicing them ourselves?
It’s a buyer’s journey – Hoping to romance and sway customers at the point of purchase alone will not win. We need to recognize that buyers telegraph their intent earlier and earlier in the journey towards buying something. And that their/our needs are different when we are understanding a problem or need, gathering information or are actually ready to buy. Marketers must adopt the fundamental principle of designing marketing around the customer journey. Understanding what a prospect or customer is trying to get done or decide that leads to initially discovering your product is a very different proposition than prompting them to pick your product now.
Mining data for insights and actions – Big data, little data – what we really need are more actionable insights from data and ways to trigger actions based upon data and insights. Data science is hard. While it takes more geeky collaborators than the creatives who bring advertising ideas to life it is hardly an exact science nor does it need to be. Direct marketers believe the customer can be instrumented to the point of becoming a truly predictable wind-up doll. Or more accurately, they live and die by the numbers with little concern for the prospect or customer save for the action they wish to stimulate. The modern CMO never loses sight nor compassion for the customer. They see data and insights as a better way to empower a test-and-learn marketing machine.
Designed for testing and agility – Building a marketing organization that can plan and create fast while turning on a dime isn’t as it easy as it might appear. It takes the A/B testing methodology of direct marketers, the ability to create content, not just advertisements, quickly and in response to data, and the discipline of deciphering performance immediately. Think about how that affects review and approval cycles. Creative and content are now never “perfect” but simply ready-to-publish. In short, it changes everything.
A culture of collaboration – No one discipline rules the roost and the only way to ‘punch above your weight’ in a world gone made with ad spend is to plan integrated programs and get every discipline to work together. Planning models can help. Fostering a culture where people are rewarded for collaborating with a method of working by which the best collaborators become the best marketers makes all of the difference.
The addressable individual – Not all that long ago, we talked about building addressable audiences. Brands did that through their social channels and through partnering with mysterious companies in the ad stack that could create and maintain custom audiences. Meanwhile, the customer experience team defined an ambition to treat every customer as an individual promising to deliver increasingly personalized services relevant to the individual. The addressable individual – whether they are an existing customer or a prospect – is clearly where we are heading. That means thousands or millions, depending on your business, of micro-segments and ultimately individuals getting customized treatment from the brand. What IBM and Salesforce label “the connected customer” where we evolve past segments to addressing individuals will require a lot of technology and technology mastery to execute.
Being of-use – With an onslaught of media choices, channels, shows, messages and more, the one thing none of us have enough of is time. Marketers cannot hope to sell through interruptive advertising. It just won’t break through. We need to learn how we can be of-use to people such that we deliver welcome value. Great content, better or more complete service, personalized value and even discounts, even new products can all address genuine consumer needs. We can shift from an annoying “push” model of marketing to a “pull” model where even our marketing becomes a welcome contribution.
Content marketing – Content is at the heart of the “pull” ambition for brands. Can we create useful and/or entertaining content that connects with people at the right moments in their journey as customers (customers-to-be)? Most organizations can create the white paper, the how-to video series, even the entertaining content partnership (or more realistically, the content ‘sponsorship’). Building a content culture and machine inside the marketing function is a lot harder. As with many good ideas, the devil is in the doing (or the details of the doing). Applying a data-driven approach where speed-to-publish matters more than creating the one perfect communication is hard. It’s not just a process shift with different job functions (e.g. editors and writers) but a culture shift as to what gets approved and out the door.
Reducing friction – It is difficult to draw lines between a marketer’s job and those directly responsible for a seamless and friction-free customer experience. As marketers shift from pure ad messages to creating content that is valuable to prospects and customers alike, they inevitably will think about ways to reduce the friction people experience when doing any kind of business with a brand. It can be reducing a few button-clicks in a process, standardizing form design, providing some useful how-to content. Every service interaction has the potential to strengthen a relationship and drive advocacy or do just the opposite.
Relentlessly accountable – Building brand for brand’s sake only makes sense in the most marketing-centric of companies. For most other companies, we want to know how marketing drives sales-related metrics. That requires getting more complex attribution models, combining online and offline data, and subscribing to the customer journey planning model. Most modern marketers know they need a “dashboard” – that magical interface that funnels all marketing and sales data into some natural synthesis. Fewer start by designing the measurement model that will facilitate marketing investment decision-making and performance optimization. This step ensures that the dashboard displays meaning not just data.
Building belief – Marketing’s role inside the enterprise is changing. As it becomes more accountable and data-driven, it will be seen with less suspicion and envy within the enterprise. That’s the long view. CMO’s, like any business leader, need to build belief in their fresh view of modern marketing in order to galvanize peer support. That’s what leads to thoughtful budget increases and informed decision-making.
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 [email protected] 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.”
There is no “social” category at the Cannes Lions. I buy the
argument that most marketing will become ‘social’ in the future. Therefore, why have a category? You could say that about a lot of categories like, say, mobile. Today, there
is enough range of best practice and not-so-best practice in social out there that a
category that shines a light on the ‘best’ may accelerate great work.
But we don’t have that…yet.
So, how social was the work at Cannes? The answer depends on
your definition of ‘social.’ A program that merely shows up on a popular
platform like Twitter or Facebook may be a bit social but perhaps only
‘social-by-association.’ A program that grabs a disruptive idea, crafts a
killer piece of shareable content, and clocks high viewing numbers may also be
social. It may under leverage all of the neat ways to promote more sharing and
involvement. But who cares? A winner is a winner.
This year’s Cannes Lions were more social than last year.
The mere fact that 100 Days of Oreo pulled in a Gold Lion is a positive sign.
One can say that a persistent, enduring social program earned the world’s top award
for creativity. That’s great. Period. My one caveat is that it rewards the
simplest, most ‘traditional’ use of Facebook by brands – what Facebook calls
“the new print.” Essentially it’s an artful use of posts to create shareable
visual content. It pushes the creative print design and copywriting
capabilities of adevrtisers and their agencies.
On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is not social and 10 is “full
social”, I give the work a “7.” There is
terrific work in this year’s awards. If I hedge at all to rank it higher, it is
likely that most of the work doesn’t use all of social practices that might scale authentic sharing and word of mouth.
Take time to review the work
Some of the world’s most creative work shows up at Cannes.
You would be foolish not to review as much of it as you can. And there is a
lot. The following ten cases are all award winners yet not necessarily the top
winners. Each had something interesting going on in ‘social’. But dive into the
gallery on the Cannes Lions site before they tuck it away behind the firewall,
it will be time well-spent.
The advertising world descends on Cannes this week. #OgilvyCannes
will be there in full force. I am
looking forward to pretty much what is the anti-Cannes experience – sessions,
seeing the work, valuable meetings with brands and partners and the press.
I know. It’s about parties. That’s often what is described
as the real Cannes. A highly social event where agency and brands, from the
tippy-top of the organization to the creatives in the ranks, get to stay up
late and celebrate hard just as they worked hard to get their work there.
The Business Connection at Cannes
The real reason we are there with the type of investment it
takes to get there, is that we believe creativity sells. While more cynical
minds might disagree, no amount of pomp and circumstance could get so many
agencies and brands to spend all that money. We go because creativity has a big
business impact.
“I have long been an absolute believer in the correlation
between outstanding creative success and outstanding commercial success. In
this year’s marketing platform for Cannes Lions I am quoted as saying ‘If
Cannes has taught me one thing, it is that creativity drives effectiveness. You
can not have one without the other. That knowledge has been instrumental to my
career. I have been going to Cannes for nearly 20 years and can’t help but
notice that the the client organizations recognized as Advertiser of the Year
often enjoy periods of historic financial success at the same time.”
He references the work of James Hurman, who analyzed data on
advertising creativity to demonstrate the connection to effectiveness of that
advertising and the overall business performance of the advertiser.You can see a summary presentation here. He offers some defining characteristics of 'creativity.' And within that he hits on word of mouth.
"Creativity's third effect is that it makes advertising more likely to generate 'fame' and conversation."
Much like Twitter is now being used by television studios and networks as a barometer for success, how consumers talk about and share with their social graph about marketers will increasingly become the indicator of success.
Awards as a Predictor
It stands to reason that quality awards programs like Cannes Lions will put a
premium on the results of a campaign - more objective than subjective - and on
the creativity - more subjective than objective. There should be a
correlation.
The big question is whether this year’s awards are predictive for what may win
and, therefore sell, next year. I believe that we will see a shift towards more
authentically ‘social’ work and more work that doesn’t resemble traditional
advertising nor have an iconic video at its heart. Sure, creativity sells. But
so does social and so does delivering value to people.
How Social Are They
I am looking forward to seeing tons of work. We have a bunch
in there including quite a few that have ‘social’ at the center of their
program. I believe it’s time for Cannes to adopt a super-category for Social.
Next year, perhaps. For now, there are sub categories in other disciplines.
No doubt there will be many campaigns up for awards. Likely,
not that many ‘always-on’ programs will be considered. They often lack that big
piece of disruptive advertising which catches the eye of weary judges. I have
already seen some terrific programs, like the Ogilvy Thailand anti-smoking
videos, that have disruptive video at their heart. While that can be a terrific
hook for driving word of mouth (see “Disruptive Ideas” in the Principles of
Social Design here), too many creative rely solely on hitting a home-run with a
precious piece of content.
We will see how many brands put social at the center of
their programs this year. Meanwhile, the entire Ogilvy team will be sharing
valuable content, sparking conversations and interviewing interesting people
all week.
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 [email protected]) 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
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%?
Eric Schmidt, senior manager-marketing strategy and insights
at Coca-Cola, presented research at ARF’s Re:think 2013 conference that seemed
to indicate that what the AdAge article is calling “buzz” doesn’t drive short terms sales of
Coca-Cola product.
Meanwhile Coca-Cola's Wendy Clark, senior VP-integrated
marketing communications and capabilities, countered via another AdAge article that integrated social
media – social media programs that are integrated in overall marcom efforts –
can be highly effective. The research may, in isolation, be true – that “buzz”
cannot be connected to short term sales lift for Coca-Cola products, but that
is not what any of us are doing in social media. Wendy does go on to challenge
the study pretty directly, “In beta testing with Facebook, we've been able to
track closed-loop sales from site exposure to in-store purchase with very
promising initial results that are above norms for what we see with other
media.”
Even Eric framed up the limits of what his analysis covers,
“…he cautioned against reading too much into the research, noting that it
covers only buzz, not sharing, video views or other aspects of social media.”
The value of social
media to marketers
I hate the term “buzz.” As the former President of the Word
of Mouth Marketing Association and a guy who runs a global business applying
social media to business withmeasurable results, I find the term
one-dimensional and misleading.
What we are all doing online is expressing some form of word
of mouth – and it's not all created equal. When someone authentically recommends
or relates something positive about a brand to their friends, family and social
connections online and off, that is a powerful and trusted source that affects
people’s opinion and their purchase behavior. Still, a customer “gushing” about
great service or a great product experience online is not the same as an
innocuous statement “blah, blah, blah, Coke.” The blanket term “buzz” does
nothing to help our understanding of what is actually happening in social media
– a range of consumer advocacy from subtle and implicit to bold and explicit
recommendations.
If we simply treat online word of mouth – the very nature of
social media – as just “impressions” to be counted and weighed against other
impressions, we will never realize the true promise of word of mouth via social
media. Word of mouth via social media
delivers a scaled approach to building measurably valuable relationships with
customers, activating an advocacy base that drives opinion and behavior beyond
what traditional marketing alone can do and dramatically improving the
efficiency of the complete marcom mix (equal or better result from equal or
less investment).
“Buzz” is almost as bad as “chatter” – two words used in the
AdAge article to dumb down what is a more complex and powerful phenomena. Both
words conjure up an image of clouds of white noise surrounding us like flies.
That’s my friends, family and social connections you are talking about.
Integrated social
media marketing does drive sales
With respect to Eric Schmidt, there are limits to the
research on “buzz” as to its usefulness in guiding our use of integrated social
media. It made a splash and good headlines. It heated up debate even within
Coke.
Our own research via our Integrated Social Media Sales
Impact Study demonstrated the correlation of social media in the mix for quick
service restaurants (many of which, by the way, serve Coca-Cola products). Clearly, the value of positive word of mouth
is highly affected by the product category and context. Our study showed
impressive benefits of social media as part of the overall marcom mix to
driving higher levels of consumption (the things you buy at QSR’s like Coke)
and greater brand-relevant KPIs. It’s all here.
Much like Wendy Clark at Coca-Cola, I don’t want marketers to
mis-read the headlines around this one study. The power of social media is
within an integrated approach. That’s what we do here at [email protected] and what
we have spent 8 years strengthening. And we have done it for many
multinational marketers across categories – including our wonderful client
Coca-Cola.
As we all know, ‘attribution is a bitch.’ In our lives as
consumers, I think it a fool’s errand to try and zero-in on the one
communication that trumped all others and inordinately drove a sale. What we will continue to do is go deeper and
deeper to understand how effective social media marketing and communications integrated
in a multi-channel, multi-screen consumer experience drives business results –
including sales.
