Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Answer's to Josh Bernoff's Questions

My friend and former Forrester colleague posted thoughts from a discussion we had to kick off his research for his upcoming book, with the working title Groundswell. He posted 3 good questions (and one somewhat gratuitous one!). Here are answers...

His big question is "what should companies do about what they learn from companies like Cymfony?"

This is a common question we hear, and there are two dimensions that make it difficult to give an easy answer. First, there isn't one narrow application, but many which cross functional areas. There are online discussions that brand and product managers should analyze for new ideas; there are discussions on stock boards that investor relations should monitor for rumors that could impact the stock price; PR needs to monitor bloggers and can also use reactions to stories about the company to track whether their messages are being accepted in the market; competitive intelligence can pick up interesting insights; employee relations can often find employees griping. The second dimension is that these topics ebb and flow -- there may be more product discussion one day, the next day there are stock discussions, etc.

So often what underlies the above question is the organizational question: who in the company should have responsibility for this? And the ultimate organizational question: whose budget does it come out of?

Given today's corporate structure, there is no easy answer to this question. For example, we may find a robust discussion of customer services issues, but brand management is looking for reaction to a new marketing campaign. The finding may never cross the organizational chasms which Forrester's Peter Kim has recommended need to change in this report. Elana Anderson has also noted that marketing and customer service don't work together well.

Those darn consumers -- if they'd only talk about what WE want them to talk about we wouldn't have these problems. And that is also the point -- companies should use social media analysis to learn about the topics they don't know they should ask about. No other research or market tracking data holds up such an undistorted mirror to a company's blemishes and beauty marks.  This data -- in context with other data -- fills gaps in companies' knowledge of the market.

Which brings me to a couple of other questions Josh had:

1. How important is this chatter? How can you tell when it's a bunch of highly verbal geeks and when it's about to explode in your face like a coke bottle full of mentos?

Several question packed in here. First is importance, which is really about relevancy. True, there is a lot of teenage angst on MySpace or disgruntled loners with a grudge. In order to determine what is important, you need market influence analytics, which uses the large volumes of comments available and all the cues available in it to identify when an issue is the rising, collective voice of  a company's customers.

The second question is the predictive ability of the data. Some great work has been done already, such as this paper that correlates changes in the sales ranking of books on Amazon to waves of online chatter. I'm looking forward to more research across more product categories (Researchers: contact me at Cymfony if you have project ideas).

But do you get sufficient warning of an impending crisis that you can avert it? News cycles today are so fast that a story can go nuclear on you in about the length of time between dropping the Mentos and the geyser erupting. In this environment, even brand monitoring may not give you weeks or days or even hours of advance notice. But equally importantly, our services can keep you up-to-the-minute on how your response is being accepted or rejected by the audience, allowing you to adjust and react quickly if it isn't going well.

But there are more applications for these findings than crisis detection and monitoring, which takes me to the next question:

2. How should you use the information you get from a Cymfony or BuzzMetrics?

The first application is greater, more accurate consumer insight. Traditional market research methodologies are having a tougher and tougher time getting adequate response rates, reaching the right consumers, and getting at the real issues that are on consumers' minds. Comments in social media are the top-of-mind thoughts of consumers, untainted by the way a survey is conducted or the group dynamics of a focus group. In fact, the anonymity of the Internet frees people to say what they really think, instead of what they think the interviewer wants to hear. As I said above, this fills in gaps that a company's other research and data sources can't fill.

Second is understanding communication effectiveness. In the Blu-ray study Josh talks about in his post, he notes the "marketing disconnect" here between what the manufacturers are saying and what consumers are talking about. This should give these manufacturers pause to rethink their strategies. But beyond simply telling you that a message isn't getting through, a more careful reading also helps you diagnose why the message isn't effective and what your customers are actually interested in.

For example, Sony touts the 50GB capacity of the Blu-ray disc, but these technically savvy early adopters weren't convinced that any movie would ever need that much disc capacity, so HD DVD's 30GB seemed to be plenty. In a traditional research approach, your brand tracking study might tell you that the 50GB claim didn't have high recall, but then you'd have to go field another study to understand why -- losing irreplaceable time while the ineffective message continued to run.

3. Will this eventually change companies and media plans, or not? And does it vary depending on whether you're Tostitos or Dentu-Grip?

Feedback from consumers is already changing products at Intuit. Go to the Quickbooks "We Hear You" section where they list 28 changes they have already made to Quickbooks 2007 based on comments on their blogs, boards and other feedback channels.

No question some product categories have more discussion than others, and some brands have more discussion than others. But it is very rare that a company doesn't find some valuable insight. But here is where companies must be ready to hear what consumers are telling them. You may begin the analysis hoping to inform your brand positioning. But those darn consumers may not be talking about your brand -- they may be talking about the product category in more general terms. There's still valuable learning that may lead to changes in product, distribution or service that drives value in a different way than you expect.

Back to Blu-ray: The study provides an important insight that Sony should use to change their strategy: A significant segment of early adopter consumers are specifically not buying Blu-ray because of Sony’s past failures with formats like Betamax, mini-disc etc.  Sony should revise strategies, take a back seat and let a lot of the other 170 companies that have endorsed the format take the message of the format's superiority to the market. They should probably even provide co-op ad dollars to encourage their partners.

4. What were they thinking when they named it Cymfony? I keep forgetting how to spell it!

Now, Josh, C and F are the hot letters these days. Try these:

GFC: George Forrester Colony, for one

Compact Fluorescent: Wal-mart is going to sell billions of them, and they're going to save your house from being swamped under the rising sea level as the polar ice caps melt!

Besides, we get extra branding when Spell Check highlights our company name....  ;-)

Doritos Ads -- The Full Review

I promised I would do a more complete evaluation of the five finalists for the Doritos "Crash the Superbowl" contest. Here you go...

For background, go to my first post where I gave a quick reaction and second post where I graded each spot.

My Overall winner: Live the Flavor

This spot earned an A- for consistent quality in strategy, production, and just being a really charming spot.

To sum it up: Boy meets chips. Boy loses chips. Boy gets girl.

This spot starts with a total guy situation. Our somewhat nerdy hero is driving with one hand, while tearing open a bag of Doritos with his mouth. Oh, yeah. Been there, done that. He then gets distracted by a cute chick (who happens to be eating Doritos also -- could this be love?) and crashes the car (at which point the chips go flying all over -- there's an interesting story the creators tell of how they got the chips to fly out of the bag). She comes running to his rescue -- but also trips, showing that, in addition to a junk food addiction, they have a certain clumsiness in common. As he leans out of the car to see if she is all right, THAT look passes between them and you know this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Great script. A complete story in 30 seconds. Situations that are right on with the target audience. And tons of charm. My only reservation (and maybe someone from Frito-Lay would comment here) is if the romantic angle is too chick-friendly for what I suspect is a guy product category. Maybe that's why this spot has received 223 "Love it" ratings to 347 for "Checkout Girl".

But I'll let it slide because as the story of budding romance unfolds, the creator, 5pointp, slips in the selling points with equal charm and style. At each key moment, they cut in a well art-directed graphic frame with a Doritos benefit that reflects the action: when the guy sees the girl, it's spicy. When he smiles at her in his goofy way, it's cheesy, etc. We also get  crunchy and bold.

So you know which ad I'm hoping to see on February 4!

Ties for second: Duct Tape and Checkout Girl

While both of these spots got a B+, Duct Tape edges out Checkout Girl on how dead-on the idea is for the target market: bunch of guys getting ready to head out to do some male bonding. One of them rips a big, long strip of duct tape, explaining, "Gotta keep my roommate off my Doritos". His buddies nod in agreement. So far, a little chuckle. Now comes the kicker: As they head out and close the door...no I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say I got a big guffaw. Check it out, if you haven't seen it already. I expect to see a display of Doritos next to the duct tape next time I go to Home Depot. Herbertbros also get points for coming up with a concept that works with Doritos' "Snack Strong" tag line.

Checkout Girl has two things going for it:  a good (if somewhat expected) situation which allows creator kristidenhert to work in many varieties of Doritos (including some I didn't know existed) and a terrific performance by Ms. Checkout. No, make that a phenomenal performance -- She walks away with Best Actress award in this competition. I found myself watching it over and over to see her transform from the surly cashier type that inhabits my local grocery into the Allurer of Albertson's...the Siren of Safeway...Vamp of Von's. The casting of the sketchy biker-type as customer undercuts the believability of her getting all hot-and-bothered enough to need a "Clean up on register 6".

Chip Lover's Dream, is the most pedestrian idea of all the spots. The title is also used as the tag line, but it isn't compelling or memorable. At least the couch-potato dreaming of scaling lofty heights fits the target. When his piton pulls out of the cliff, he grabs his Doritos, trying to finish them off before he hits the ground (and wakes up). Some nice art directing in shooting the falling scenes and the climber's face stuffing chips in his mouth add extra humor.

Mousetrap has great potential with a simple but surprising story, but suffered from two weaknesses. The guy doesn't seem to be the target audience; a little too Armani with an opera soundtrack to really have the target audience thinking, "Do I have to turn off the game and watch PBS if I eat these things?" And the ending doesn't wrap up the spot completely, settling for far too much time of the fake mouse beating the crap out of Armani Guy -- or maybe that's the point. Maybe MouseGuy is saying, "Go back to your champagne and canape social circles and leave the junk food to us real men, er, mice." But billyfederighi gets an A- for art direction: great job on building the fake wall and for not disguising the fakeness of the mouse suit.

Like American Idol winners getting their choice of record label contracts, will the winner of this contest get their pick of Madison Avenue creative jobs?

Superbowl advertisers are missing the real game

Ad Age reports that many Superbowl advertisers are staying quiet about buying the expensive spots. This is exactly the wrong strategy.

At $2.6 million per spot, even with 100,000,000 people watching, this works out to a $26 cost per thousand, high by any standards. Add the fact that this is a very untargeted audience and any specific advertiser's cost per target audience thousand escalates rapidly. There's no way to get a return on just the 30 seconds of the game alone.

Last year, I posted my thoughts about the right Superbowl ad strategy:

"The only way to rationalize this expense is to use it as a platform for public relations, word of mouth, and other exposure for your spot. Just as the ads have come to almost overshadow the game, the value from exposure before and after the game overshadows the 30 seconds the brand is paying for. "

Ad Age attributes companies' reluctance to promote their Superbowl ads to "accountants and procurement types breath[ing] down CMO necks."

In other words, the bean counters, trying to squeeze more efficiency out of marketing budgets, are accomplishing exactly the opposite of what they intend.

I have expected that the buzz about the Superbowl ads this year would focus on Doritos, the NFL, and Chevrolet who are conducting a contest for consumer-generated ads. It looks like the other advertisers are making this a reality by leaving the field wide open (pun intended)...

Doritos Ads -- More evaluation

Yesterday, I ranked the five final ads in the Doritos "Crash the Superbowl" contest based on my gut reaction. Today I ask more rigorous questions -- and change my ranking slightly...

The first question: Do these ads meet the standards of a "real" agency? To answer this question, I had to travel back in time to put myself in the mindset of my ad agency days, ie, if I were the management supervisor on the Doritos account, would I feel confident presenting these ideas to the client? The answer is a definite yes. In fact, at times I had to present much worse work and try to sell it to my client!

But I don't believe agencies are in danger of being put out of business by Ad Age's "Agency of the Year" -- the consumer. If every brand were to run a contest like this for every new campaign, the novelty would quickly wear off and they would receive no submissions. I do wonder if networks of freelancers will crop up to compete for assignments at a fraction of a Madison Avenue fee.

But agencies will face tough questions about why they need to spend $350,000 or more to shoot an ad when these consumers delivered quite good production values on a shoestring.

The second question: How good are these ads, really? How well do they accomplish Doritos' branding and sales objectives? To answer this, I evaluated the ideas by five criteria; definitions of these criteria and their weightings are below. Here are the grades (click to enlarge):

   

These grades confirm my rating of "Live the Flavor" and "Checkout Girl" as the top two ads, "Duct Tape" and "Chip Lover's Dream" move up but "Mousetrap" drops to the bottom.

In my next installment, I'll do my best to channel Bob Garfield and review each ad.

Here are the definitions and weighting of the criteria:

Strategic fit: 40%. Call me a stickler, I don't care who creates the ad I insist that it fits the brand's strategy. I've made the assumption that their target audience is young men; the rules of the contest allude to attributes like boldness, flavor, and the action the attributes drive.

Quality of idea: 30%. I'm also a believer in the Big Idea: is the fundamental idea driving the ad compelling and engaging?

Art Direction: 10%. Art Directors are responsible for casting, sets, props, and the grapic design of the spot. Grades are based on the quality of these elements.

Copywriting: 10%. Interestingly, only two ads --"Checkout Girl" and "Duct Tape" -- have a spoken script. But copywriters are also responsible for the storyline of the ad. The stronger, tighter, and more complete the story, the higher the grade.

Production: 10%. This criterion includes the quality of the finished video, the acting and direction, and additional special effects included.

Doritos announces final five consumer-created ads

As if on cue following Ad Age's naming of the consumer as Agency of the Year, Doritos unveiled the final five candidates in their contest for consumers to create the brand's Superbowl commercial. Here is my ranking....

Doritos launched their "Crash the Superbowl" contest back in October and consumers have submitted over 1000 ads. After a couple of "playoff" rounds, Doritos announced the final five.

I took at quick look at them, and I rank them as follows:

1. Live the Flavor
2. Checkout Girl
3. Mousetrap
4. Duct Tape
5. Chip Lovers Dream

As an ex agency guy, I can't resist commenting on whether they actually live up to what a real agency would produce. But it's late tonight.

Watch this space for more discussion over the next few days...

Ad Age misses the point of consumer control

First, Time Magazine named "You" as Person of the Year. Now Ad Age names the consumer as Agency of the Year. Time got it right. Ad Age got it wrong....

Time put their finger on the pulse of this change when they said, "It's about the many wresting power from the few...and how that will not only change the world, but change the way the world changes."

In other words, "you" have the power, and society and its institutions must get ready for the changes that "you" will demand.

But Ad Age says, "The question for 2007 will be whether marketers and agencies find ways to harness that consumer-bred creativity...and deploy it to the service of brands."

In other words, big corporations and brands still have the power, they only let the consumer have the illusion they have the power. The marketer may not be able to give the consumer a creative brief and tell them what to do, but if they are wiley enough, they can still manipulate, cajole, fool, and bribe the consumer to do what they want.

I'll concede that you may be able to get a bunch of consumers to suck up to the brand for a couple of months to win the bragging right of having their commercial picked for the Superbowl. But what happens on February 5? There are a lot of other conversations out there about the brand -- praising, damning, complaining, and advising -- that won't be so easily whitewashed by a chance at short-term fame.

Ad Age has been seduced by the lure of the big YouTube pop, and is leading its readers astray with the mirage of viewership numbers that are as ephermeral as the next email.

The lesson Ad Age missed -- and that marketers should focus on -- is how to harness consumer-bred creativity and deploy it to the service of those consumers, by listening and learning what the consumer says makes for a great brand, then delivering it in real, differentiated, meaningful features and benefits. 

The next great marketers will see the real benefits brands can gain in this consumer-controlled world: deriving superior consumer insight to drive sustainable competitive advantage.* They will shape the experience consumers have with the brand to the desires and needs that consumers now spontaneously and directly express. These brands will build a longer-term, stronger bond with consumers based on real value consumers receive, and give up the illusion that the slick sell can make up for the lack of real benefits.

*Thanks to Prof. Robert Lauterborn for sharing his marketing mantra with me!

2007 Prognostications

I've been speculating on what 2007 will hold. Here are links to some of the places I've been quoted. Check them out, plus some bonus thoughts....

Heidi Cohen published my thoughts on how marketers will embrace online video in new ways on ClickZ.

Mickey Alam Khan wrote an excellent recap of a long conversation he and I had at AdTech about what all the changes in the media landscape mean for advertisers and media companies in his recent DM News editorial.

Then, ADOTAS tapped me for an article of crystal-ball gazing, based on the Time Magazine Person of the Year, which should appear soon....

Now, for a couple of other thoughts:

Bubble 2.0 ? -- I don't think so. Earlier this fall David Pogue worried that AOL's switch to a totally free ad-supported service signals the return of the late '90's Internet bubble. I agree, we have some froth in the market, but there is one big difference: online advertising is heading toward $16 billion this year, and it is real money, not VC cash that sloshed through Bubble 1.0. But an even more telling example is YouTube suing TechCrunch to protect their business model. This is the anti-bubble -- content may want to be free (in the popular Bubble 1.0 era phrase), but content owners/creators/distributors are not charitable institutions. For there to be content worth watching, somebody has to make some money somewhere along the line.

Web 2.0 is growing up. Reuters investing in Pluck is a strong signal that the worlds of "traditional" and "social" media continue to converge, bringing blogs to a wider, less tech-happy audience. Moves like this advance the case for Influence 2.0, the intersection and interaction of both mainstream and traditional media. With YouTube safely entrenced in the Google world and striking deals with NBC Universal, Vivendi's Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, the NHL, and others, it is clear that real companies are starting to work Web 2.0 into their business models. Contrary to Steve Rubel's thoughts, there is still a long way to go, but the trend will accelerate in 2007.

The post-TiVo era begins. TiVo taught consumers they could break the control network programming bosses had over scheduling. Then the networks completely gave control over by putting popular shows on iTunes, and consumers learned they could have their video content not only whenever but wherever they wanted it. In 2007 as video-enabled mobile phones become a reality, consumers will have even more freedom to view what they want, when they want, wherever they want. Ads will spread but the real change will come as marketers create more product demonstrations and segments with expert advice. Someone wondering what to make their family for dinner will dial up a 5-minute segment with Rachel Ray sponsored by Kraft.

Beyond MySpace. Marketers will seek sites that are “not your teenager’s social network”. MySpace still grabs all the attention, but social networks have begun to spread, popping up to serve different segments of consumers. Though sites like Gather.com and eons.com don’t have the raw numbers of MySpace, they have the buying power of aging Boomers and the NPR audience. Marketers will discover that novelties like a brand character page on these sites won’t cut it. Instead, brands will engage with consumers on how to fulfill their LifeDreams on eons.com while resurrecting the concept of “cause-related marketing” to support issues the Gather.com audience cares about.

More fake blogs. As a member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Board of Directors, it pains me to say this. But we will see more examples where marketers try to take shortcuts to create buzz by pretending to be someone they are not. Sony launched AllIWantforXmasIsAPSP.com, having missed the lessons of the “Walmarting across America” fake blog controversy that gave the retailer and their PR firm, Edelman, such a black eye just a month before. Pardon the slightly commercial message, but there is still time to establish a New Year's Resolution of engaging in ethical marketing practices: join WOMMA, embrace the Honesty ROI principles, and institute the practical ethics steps that will help you engage in authentic, valuable conversation with consumers.