Cymfony's Influence 2.0

WOMBAT Conference Takeaways, Day 1

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association Basic Training conference (affectionately known as WOMBAT 2) has lots of great content. Here are my three favorites, plus an interesting Diet Coke/Mentos moment...

Ed Keller of Keller-Fay group presented data from his new TalkTrack product, which surveys consumers about their offline word-of-mouth behaviors. He wrapped up with a list of the 10 most positively buzzed about brands, one of which was Wal-Mart. Cymfony's analysis of consumer-generated media discussion about Wal-Mart will appear in the July issue of Media Magazine. Ed's data and our analysis agreed that there is a lot less "Wal-Mart bashing" going on than one might expect.

I moderated a panel session titled "Practical Word of Mouth: 43 Word of Mouth Ideas You Can Implement Tomorrow." They were all great, but Allison Gower of qtags showed how to "Make it easy for people to find you and tell people about you." For a non-profit organization's annual fundraising dinner, she had created a small business card holder, but instead of business cards, it contained cards with information about the organization, its mission, programs, etc. So every attendee could put this in their purse or briefcase and when they told friends about the group, could hand them one of the cards.

Scott Wilder of Intuit recommended that companies "close the loop with customers, to let them know you heard and acted on their suggestions." He pointed to the section of QuickBooks Groups called "Better Because of You." The site lists 64 changes the company has made to QuickBooks 2006 based on user suggestions. Because of ideas like this, Intuit continues to be my "poster child" for the company that is most effectively implementing an Influence 2.0 strategy that relies less on pushing messages at people, instead engaging customers in a dialogue.

The interesting moment came at the end of the day when Stuart Sheldon, director of brand activation for Coca-Cola North America, was asked why Diet Coke hasn't picked up on all the buzz surrounding the viral videos of the Diet Coke/Mentos experiments. Clearly stating he was giving his own personal view, not an official Coca-Cola company statement, his first response was, "We like to think people drink our product." He went on to say that it didn't fit Diet Coke's sophisticated brand personality, the "Hollywood of soft drinks," while it did fit Mentos' "tongue-in-cheek" image.

Scott makes a good point: one key criterion a brand should use to evaluate participation in online buzz is whether it is relevant to a brand's essence, core values, and unique selling proposition. If it is, whether positive or negative buzz, the brand should be involved; when it isn't, it is optional to get involved.

On the other hand, Hollywood has a sense of humor, too, so even a sophisticated brand should be able to have a little fun once in a while IMHO....

word of mouth marketing social media WOMBAT 2

The Dawn of the Age of Influence 2.0

Welcome to the new Influence 2.0 blog. You may be asking "What is this new name all about?" Let me explain:

The worlds of marketing, public relations, customer service and all market-facing functions know that the old mass media/marketing models are broken and major change is afoot. There are myriad new formats, channels and tools, but no new framework to make sense of it all.

So Cymfony is putting a stake in the ground: we are brashly declaring the Dawn of the Influence 2.0 Era.

Why Influence? Because, despite the different ways marketing, public relations, and customer service professionals work day-to-day, their fundamental goal is the same: to influence the perceptions of, and preferences for, their companies and brands.

Why 2.0? Because we believe this isn't solely about new channels which companies can use to push one-way messages. It's about the creation of what the Wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 calls “market conversations”. This will require far different approaches than the Influence 1.0 world.

Why now? These changes have been emerging for a while. They seem to be accelerating. Traditional media and social media, which used to be separate and distinct, are increasingly converging. The pace makes it hard for professionals to step back, look at the macro trend, and develop new kinds of thinking to fully take advantage of these changes.

Cymfony plans to play a central role in helping business understand the new strategies, tactics and practices needed to harness the new dynamic of market influence. We hope to kick-off an industry-wide dialog around this idea to expand it clarify it, and capture the best thinking about how to respond.

So in addition to this blog which will report our findings and perspectives, we are launching two initiatives:

The Influence 2.0 eBook: The first chapter is available today at (link) that will present our first attempt at putting a framework around these changes. We have three more chapters in progress which will be released over the next couple of weeks.

The Influence 2.0 wiki: But I consider this only a draft. I know these changes are bigger and more complex than I alone or even all my Cymfony colleagues can fully explore. So we will post the entire eBook to the wiki and invite all interested parties to read, contribute, expand, revise. Like a martial arts master, we want use our opponent’s strengths to turn the encounter to our advantage: the great strength of the Web 2.0 world is the ability to harness the collective intelligence of the community to fully explore and understand how Web 2.0 will change our professions.

Come back often to see how our thinking evolves and our understanding deepens. Check out the wiki as new chapters, examples and ideas are added. Join us on the wiki to contribute your knowledge and learning.

Welcome to the new Cymfony blog. Welcome to a new era. Welcome to Influence 2.0.

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The last post on Cymfony's Marketing Insight Blog

This will mark the end of Cymfony's Marketing Insight. But don't worry -- we'll be back on Monday.

We've been working on some stuff we think is really exciting. We're making the transition over the next couple of days. Monday we'll have new announcements, new resources, a new approach and a new look.

We have a lot of work to do yet, so I have to get back to it. See you Monday.

Clear Channel Gets Lost in the Fog

Clear Channel is contemplating selling one-second ads. What could they possibly be thinking?

I couldn't believe this when I saw it in Ad Age today:

"Clear Channel, the country's largest operator of radio stations, is discussing the idea of one-second radio spots with marketers and media buyers. Called “Blinks” the new format is being promoted as something that could be used between music tracks by, say, McDonald's to play part of its “I'm lovin' it” jingle or Intel to play its chime..."

Where have they been? Is this really the same enlightened radio company that announced that they were reducing the number of commercial minutes per hour? (check out this link and read CEO John Hogan's quote in the sidebar.)

This strikes me as the audio equivalent of pop-up ads. Did they sleep through that consumer backlash?

And in the age where the entire industry is talking about learning to live with consumer control, is this the only thing they can think of: to try to sneak in ads that are over before the listener's finger has time to hit the “Seek” button.

Surely there's a better way than to keep pushing ads at consumers who don't want them, using any trick in the book to sneak them by consumers' defenses.

Surely in a medium like radio that has proven it has so many ways to create a two-way relationship with its audience -- call-in shows, on-air personalities' involvement in local events, broadcasts from local shopping malls, fairs, community events -- they can find ways to increase the participation of their audience and monetize that.

I have two recommendations for Clear Channel:

1) go read my post yesterday about Seth Godin's view on the state of marketing

2) come back to this blog on Monday.

advertising clear channel

Seth Godin says: Take the New Road

In his speech at the BrandSlam conference in West Palm Beach, Seth asked: Do you want to be American Airlines? Or JetBlue?

This was my first opportunity to see Seth live -- anyone who has seen him knows he is entertaining and has great examples to illustrate his concepts of being remarkable, telling stories, and conducting permission marketing.

But what caught my attention was his phrase "the TV industrial complex", which he described as a cycle with four phases:

1. Spend a lot of money on TV

2. Get more distribution for your products

3. Sell a lot more product

4. Buy more ads

And keep going around and around this cycle.

As we all realize, this model is broken. Seth challenged the audience that we are at a fork in the road, and we must choose whether to "bear down using the old rules or cheat, and come up with new rules." Now here's the airline analogy: "If you're American Airlines, you give passengers fewer peanuts and lay off people. Those are the old rules. If you're JetBlue, you give them more peanuts....and video at every seat...and more free stuff. Which one do you want to be?"

Let me broaden his analogy to the Mass Media Industrial Complex to encompass the full range of the marketing and PR tools we use to influence perception and preferences. The Mass Media Industrial Complex let us push messages through all these various media channels -- in Seth's words, marketers believed "I can interrupt anyone I want anytime I want."

Now, consumers intercept these messages, remix them, and redistribute them. These remixed messages often show up right alongside the "authorized" version when people search for a brand on Google. And these messages may bear little resemblance to the original message by the time other consumers see them.

So the question we face is: do we bear down using the old rules of influencing the market, and keep trying to push messages into an environment that hijacks and detours them? Or do we cheat, and come up with new rules to let go of some of the control we have insisted on, let the media remix culture co-create the message that fits the market, and listen to our customers rather than broadcast at them.

I'll have more thoughts on this next week...

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Cymfony and Sphere -- a perfect pair!

Cymfony and Sphere share the same vision that traditional and social media are converging. We're really excited about our partnership!

Sphere is the hot new blog search engine that is getting rave reviews. They have great relevance scoring technology and great spam detection. If you haven't used them, check it out. I think you'll really like the results you get.

You also have to try their "bookmarklet" called Sphere It! Download it onto your toolbar, go to a news article, click it and it brings up the relevant blogs to that article. Or go to Time.com, who has already embedded Sphere It! at the beginning of top stories.

Cymfony innovated the monitoring and measurement platform that combines both traditional and social media content, so Sphere is a great partner for us. We'll use this relationship to develop even more sophisticated ways to track how the traditional and social media world influence each other -- and help our clients track the influence they are having on the market.

PS. Sorry to have "gone dark" on you for the last two weeks. This is the first of several exciting things we've been working on. You'll see more over the next couple of weeks....

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Digital PR Webinar

On June 27th, PR News is hosting "How to Leverage Blogs, Podcasts & Other New Media to Boost Market Share and Mind Share." Hear from experts Steve Wilson, Senior Director, Global Web Communications at McDonald's, Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s Technical Evangelist, and Steve Cody, President of Peppercom. Cymfony's Jim Nail will be moderating this webinar that will help you navigate the digital terrain and determine best paths for your organization. As a sponsor of this webinar, Cymfony is offering a $75 discount off the registration fee.  Click here to register online and use Promotion Code: prweb to receive the discount.