Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Memo to Bob Parsons: You are so wrong!

Dear Bob:

I read that you have decided that it is not worth it to promote GoDaddy's Super Bowl ad ahead of the game as you have in the past. I say, the strategy of promoting early isn't wrong -- your execution last year was flawed! Tune in to my webinar tomorrow with the Advertising Research Foundation and I'll show you the proof!

Bob,

A recent Brandweek article, quoted you as saying that you won't promote GoDaddy's ad as aggressively before the game as in year's past:

What we learned is that doesn’t really pay off because people are going to watch anyhow. So while that might work for other occasions, that doesn’t work for the Super Bowl.

Our analysis (to be published in the December Journal of Advertising Research) shows that advertisers who promote their ad aggressively before the game (whom we dubbed "Play Action Advertisers") got 10 times the coverage and consumer discussion as those who didn't.

10 times!!

We calculated that Doritos got a minimum of 40 million impressions even before the coin toss. That's almost half of the audience that the game gets. Stick that in your ROI calculator!

And those who showed their ad online before the game got 4 times the coverage of those who announced early, but did not show their ad. You can download an abstract of this (and some other analysis we did at our site

Bob: The lesson you should take away from last year is that you can't do the same thing two years in a row. It was boring and seemed a lot more contrived than the 2006 effort. (see my 2006 post in which I awarded you the "They Really Get It" Award). Scroll down to the bottom of this post to read my review of your brilliant strategy.

So promote your ad aggressively ahead of the game -- if your really have something new to say!

PS. I take back what I said about questioning your reason for being on the Super Bowl at all, both in last year's and my 2005 review (where I gave you the "Load up the Cannon with Gerbils" Award). I recently started a blog about my other obssession -- LED lighting -- at http://ledlightsathome.com . When I decided to do it, GoDaddy was top of mind and you got my $14 to register the domain (actually more like $80 because I also registered a few variations thereof).

(cross-posted at www.superbowladvertisers.com )

The Road to Super Bowl XLII

With the Patriots steamrolling through the NFL this season, many people here in the Boston area are thinking a lot about the Super Bowl coming up this February.  But here at Cymfony, the Super Bowl has become a year-round obsession – but for a different reason:  It is the perfect example of Influence 2.0.

We tracked discussion of last year’s game and conducted several studies on the audience impact of the media coverage and consumer discussion of last year’s Super Bowl advertisers. Over the past month, these studies have been published in a variety of publications.

• Visibility vs Surprise: Which Drives the Greatest Discussion of Super Bowl Ads?  To be published in the 12/07 issue of the “Journal of Advertising Research” from the ARF.

• What This Year’s Super Bowl Advertisers Can Learn from Doritos. Published in the 11/07 issue of Media Magazine

• Is There No Such Thing as Bad News? - How controversy drives word-of-mouth around Super Bowl advertising and how it can bite the brand. Published in 11/07 “Measuring Word of Mouth Vol. 3” from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association

I encourage you to buy the WOMMA and JAR publications for the full story (and other great research as well).  We've also compiled some of the insights from each of these studies in a brief informational abstract that is available for download on our site now.   

The gist of our findings: Last year's success of advertisers like Doritos and Nationwide changes Super Bowl advertising -- it's no longer about great buzz after the game, pre-game media coverage is just as important, maybe more so.

(Disclosure: shameless plug coming) In response to this change, we are stepping up our analysis and launching a new product: the Super Bowl Advertising Audience Impact Report. Check it out at www.cymfony.com/superbowl.asp Clients will get a timely, in-depth analysis of the media coverage and consumer discussion of Super Bowl advertisers each week leading up to and immediately following the game on February 3.

This report will address:

• How much coverage is each advertiser generating? 
• Which ads are consumers discussing online? What are they saying?
• What is the quality and tone of the coverage?
• How is the event impacting consumer engagement with the brand?
• How are pre-game promotional strategies influencing coverage?

After the post-game coverage peaks on Monday after the game, our Super Bowl analysts will lead a detailed online briefing Tuesday afternoon to discuss the ad winners and losers as reported by consumers and the media. This will all get wrapped up in a comprehensive report a couple weeks later when the coverage is complete.

Some of us around here are as excited about this new report as we are about the steamrolling Patriots.  (OK, we admit it, we're social media geeks!)

New White Paper Addresses Regulatory Issues in Social Media for Pharma Marketers

I'm pleased to announce the newest Cymfony Influence 2.0 White Paper: "Connecting with Patients, Overcoming Uncertainty". We've collaborated with other industry experts to help pharmaceutical companies navigate the complexities of launching social media initiatives within the restrictions of DTC promotion regulations.

We're often asked by our pharma clients and prospects how to engage in social media given the strict FDA regulations around direct-to-consumer marketing. The FDA hasn't issued any guidance (in fact, they haven't issued guidance for Internet marketing). For a long time we looked for others who had made suggestions or analyzed the issues involved, to no avail.

So we've put a stake in the ground -- you can download the paper here. I had two great co-authors on this project: John Serio, a lawyer with Seyfarth Shaw LLP who specializes in food and drug law and regulations, and Fard Johnmar of Envision Solutions, a healthcare marketing communications consultant.

In the paper, we propose a framework for identifying the key issues across the entire spectrum of social media types. We review the core principles that are the foundation of DTC promotion regulation and discuss how they should be viewed in light of social media's unique characteristics. We zero in to show how to assess adverse event reporting requirements, off-label promotion risks, and fair balance when designing a social media initiative.    

Of course, nothing substitues for detailed FDA guidance. But we believe drug companies can participate in many types of social media without undue risk. We hope this paper will give marketers, regulatory compliance, and legal professionals in healthcare companies a common understanding of the issues, and ideas on how to mitigate the risks and become part of the active conversation that patients are having every day. 

My co-authors and I will also present these ideas in a webinar on September 11 at 1:00 eastern time. I hope you will register and join us on the call.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first paper of its kind. I hope it will stimulate a lot of discussion and that you'll share your thoughts with me here.

Social Media Forecast: Looks a lot like online advertising 1994 - 2000

Mediaweek, citing an eMarketer report, states, "User-generated content on the Web is set to rapidly shift from a budding consumer trend to a serious business over the next five years." For those of us who have watched the adoption of online advertising, we are seeing history repeat itself.

This eMarketer report states that UCG sites will earn $1 billion in ad revenues this year, and $4.3 billion by 2011. Mediaweek goes on to state, "Plus, users have shown no indication that creating their own Web content for others to consume is a passing fad, found eMarketer. By 2011, the researcher estimates there will be 95 million Web users creating content online, up from 64 million last year."

The analogy to Web 1.0 online advertising is this: 1994 is usually cited as the birth of online advertising, and in 1997, the medium's fourth year, the IAB reported $900 million in ad revenue. Arguably, 2005 was the first year of social media, so 2007, the third year of its existence, will see $1 billion. Very similar growth curve. Online advertising hit $4 billion in 1999, its sixth year; UGC will hit this landmark in its 7th year. Since UGC growth isn't being propelled by a bubble that was starting to inflate in 1999, the curve again looks similar.

At the same time eMarketer also published an article "UGC not Critical for Many Marketers" in which only 12% of survey respondents said UGC was "very important" to their marketing efforts. The top reasons according to eMarketer "lack of clear ROI was often named as an objection. Other reasons listed included "management doesn't embrace it yet," "we simply haven't given it enough priority to consider it at this point" and "we've had difficulty in getting the establishment to understand it."

Nonetheless, over 40% are either using it already or considering it for next year. emarketer explains, "respondents understood the benefits of using UGC. A third of respondents said UGC was cost-efficient compared with traditional marketing and advertising, and 31% said it was useful because the credibility of traditional advertising and marketing was declining."

This is really deja vu for me: I wrote the following in an October 2001 Forrester Report titled "Online Advertising Retrenches":

"Marketers wrestle with opposing forces that alternatively urge them forward and hold them back from adopting Web site display advertising. They sense the Web's potential but recoil from the risks of being a pioneer and so wait for proven metrics and ad formats to appear."

In a nutshell, consumer media consumption habits are changing faster than marketers can learn and adapt. But year by year, from dipping a toe in the water, to pilot tests, to full adoption, the shift is on an inexorable course. The only question is whether the shift will be faster or slower than the prognosicators think.

I have an obvious bias, but my money is on it growing faster. Being a former prognosicator, here is how I would think about it:

1. There is no VC-fueled dotcom spending here, so the growth is unlikely to be interrupted for 3 years as happend to online advertising.
2. Senior marketing executives and industry observers like Bob Garfield have woken up to the reality that the age of mass marketing is in decline and they no longer need to be convinced to move beyond the tried-and-true tactics of the past. Traditional advertising spending is slowing and "below-the line" (I've always hated that phrase) on CRM, interactive, direct mail, etc. is growing.
3. Social media represents a bigger change than online advertising was. Banners were another format to push messages through; blogs and social networks require a much more dynamic relationship with consumers.

IMHO, the biggest drag on the growth of online ads in the '90's was lack of urgency because marketers still had total confidence in TV and mass marketing. Without that comfort, marketers will be much more willing to invest in the necessary learning to add new social media tools to their marketing arsenal.

iPods, Pacemakers, and a brewing crisis for Apple

A storm of coverage has erupted in the last 24 hours over reports that an iPod can cause a pacemaker to malfunction. Both the traditional media and social media are buzzing....

Mickey Khan of DMNews tipped me off to this story.

The first report appears to be in the Pioneer Press and then was quickly picked up by blog Ars Technica and is spreading globally to the UK, Germany, Australia, India. There are about 165 traditional media stories (as of noon eastern time) and about the same number of blog posts. And it is starting to rise on Digg, with 26 votes.

So far, no response on the Apple site (in fact the last press release about the iPod celebrates selling 100 million of the devices), either in the media info section or the support section.

I'll let you check out these stories and assess the facts behind it for yourself. This event raises some interesting questions that will play out in the next hours....

• Will this become the next example of the Influence 2.0 world damaging an iconic brand before it can organize a response?
• Or, as many bloggers suggest, is this no big deal because any electrical device can interfere with a pacemaker?
• Will Apple be forced to respond? If so, will their response make matters worse or reassure iPod lovers?

Stay tuned...

A Blue Christmas for Blu-ray

Consumers are talking about next generation video formats: Blu-ray and HD DVD. This new Cymfony report gives the edge to HD DVD, but not for the reasons you may think.

Here are a few highlights of the study, which you can download here:

• Talk is evenly divided between the two formats, but postive comments about HD DVD are 46% higher than positives about Blu-ray.
• Over twice as many post authors say they are impressed by HD DVD than are impressed with Blu-ray.
• Sony, a leader of the Blu-ray consortium, inspires skepticism and resentment among a significant segment of post authors. They cite a string of Sony-led formats (such as Betamax) that have failed and accuse the company of arrogance.

This was a surprise to me. Much of the mainstsream media coverage of these high-def formats talks about the "format wars", drawing the analogy to the videotape format battle between VHS and Betamax. Our research shows there's more going on with consumers: it's not that consumers are waiting for one format to win before they purchase, but they actively doubt Sony's ability to win the battle. Here's my favorite post:

"Sony, on the other hand, has a track record of starting format wars, and losing them too...but they just don't seem to learn their lesson because they're so greedy."

A key point is that most conversation is still among early adopter videophiles and gamers. So far, both audiences have similar downbeat assessments. This doesn't bode well for the word-of-mouth that is likely to guide mainstream consumers.

One point also came through clearly: people don't see much difference between these two formats, and don't discuss the higher storage capacity or "next generation interactivity" that Sony touts as Blu-ray advantages.

In the report we steered away from making recommendations, but let me make this suggestion to Sony here: issue a movie that really struts Blu-ray's stuff. The few movies out on Blu-ray have the usual extras: added scenes, director interviews, etc. and in some cases post authors note that the Blu-ray version has fewer extras than a standard DVD! This hardly provides a reason to throw out my DVD player that is only 3 years old...

Disclosure: Jon Fortt at Business 2.0 blogged about the report, expressing concern about who was behind it. The answer: nobody. We did this as an independent research project, none of the companies involved in either format paid for it, had any input to it, or even were aware we were doing it. None of the lead companies for either format are clients of Cymfony.

I think this is a good example of the insight companies can and should be tapping into to understand what is truly driving the success or failure of their marketing.

The Rapid Monetization of CGM

It is inevitable, and it is by and large a good thing. If someone creates a compelling piece of video that ends up attracting hundreds of thousands of views, the YouTubes of the world that host the video make a lot of money off ad impressions and click revenue. It only makes sense for companies to share the wealth. That’s why I love sites like Revver that pay 50% of any click revenue generated from the video back to the video owner.

New tools are enabling video creators to embed tags in videos that link to an ecommerce site where the featured product can be purchased.  This product linking practice, called “plinking” is great for streamed clips of TV shows. I’d love to click on the NBC.com stream of “Friday Night Lights” to buy Coach Taylor’s sunglasses. (I’m not getting paid for that link, I just love that show and want more people to watch it so NBC keeps it on the air.) 

Product placement has long been a part of commercial television and movies, so this is a great way for brands to capitalize on the emotion generated around a product and increase the return from that placement investment. 

But when it comes to plinking in consumer-generated videos, this doesn’t feel quite as good. This goes against the whole spirit of consumer-generated media. The beauty of CGM today is that is it “real” and free from corporate biases. We love seeing the honest and unfiltered ideas, opinions, and emotions that people are thinking about.  When a video creator is trying to make money off product in a video, they instantly lose that inherent “CGM credibility”. How would you feel watching a video clip celebrating only products that offered the creator the highest rev-share?

You’ll view it like you view any other big-media generated commercial today.

There is no doubt this will fuel the creative juices for consumer-generated advertisements, which is great news for brands. We’ll all have a lot of laughs watching people doing funny stuff to sell the latest iPod, but where will the line be drawn? How far will these e-commerce influences go? What if I referenced “Monday Night Football” here instead of “Friday Night Lights” just because I could make more money from ESPN than NBC for this link?  What if that famous AOL customer service call video pushed a link to sign up for Verizon DSL link in your face, or if that sleeping Comcast rep video ended with a Satellite TV offer? How much sincerity and credibility will consumer-generated video lose when everyone has the same biases as the good old fashion TV commercial?

Plinking is going to take consumer-generated video-osphere in some new directions. With money-making opportunities more immediately available, the quest for dollars will drive an increase in the quality and quantity of these videos as more professional efforts are applied to the creative and production processes. At the same time, the door will be wide open for anyone with a video camera to try to sell you something. Now those rambling video blog monologues will really have something to opine about - the jeans they are wearing, the music playing in the background, the poster on the wall, etc. Whatever gets you to click and buy something.

One thing we know for sure, world of influence for companies is going to get a whole lot more complicated. 

Tell me what you think. How do you think plinking will impact videos?  …and can anyone please suggest a better term than “consumer-generated video-osphere”? Now with Google firmly in control, maybe we’ll just call it the Tubeosphere.

 

I'm not writing another post about SoaP

Aside from the occasional editorial comment, I'll shut up and let the viewers tell New Line Cinema how to monetize SoaP further:  instead of a traditional post-release marketing strategy, New Line must continue to expand on the social media marketing strategy by:

1. Exploiting this campy B-movie with special fan showings,
2. spicing up the DVD with an audience participation track,
3. packaging "how to throw a home SoaP viewing" kits, and
4. Stocking offical Snakes Gear in the online store, like official SoaP rubber snakes, masks, and snake puppets.

Jim: Forget the movie -- the fun is in the social experience.

Zubkavich: Is it a "good" film? Hell, no! The core premise...is completely ridiculous and mind-numbingly stupid. Does it make for a fun B-movie worthy conflict? Yuppers."

Martini Republic: "...the enjoyment had only 50% to do with the movie itself, which is not up to par with the director's previous effort. The beauty of the evening ... was the fun of listening to a sarcastic, cynical, ruthless audience."

A Bunch of Us: "I think the cash I laid down was the best Hamiltons I ever spent. The movie in and of itself won't be good unless you see it in a crowded theatre....the best parts were the really the crowd antics:

• There were dudes running around with snake masks on before the movie began, and started alternating crowd chants of "snakes!" vs. "planes!"
• Whenever there was a lull in the film, everyone hissed. Like snakes.
• When Sam Jackson delivered THEE line, the crowd went nuts. People stood up and cheering and whistling, and people threw rubber snakes at the screen.

Jim: Give us more of this social experience

BrillBuilding: "Hisses and snarky jokes were already going strong by the time the trailers rolled around...When the snake-timer counts down and the snakes were free...those who brought their own snake toys threw them into the air for what seemed like a solid two minutes....There was certainly a Rocky Horror aspect to all of this."

AimlesslyWandering: "I would only recommend this movie if they have a fan showing after this weekend, like a Rocky Horror midnight showing. I would assume that these will start in the very near future."

Jim: Give us cool snake merchandise (PS. the stuff in the official online store is pretty lame in comparison to what fans came up with on their own)

Queencallipygos: "I met my friends...and [they] presented each of us with a snake hand puppet, complete with a little squeezy thing inside the mouth to make it flip out a rubber tonge and hiss...someone else seeing the movie came up, looked at the size of the line, and saw us standing ther giggling and playing with snake puppets. 'Wow,' I heard one of them mutter, 'and I thought we were obsessed.' "

Jim: Watching the DVD won't cut it...

Kungfurodeo: "Good mindless fun, with or without the hype, and I did jump in my seat a couple of times. I don't think I'll ever watch it again -- seeing it in my living room will never compare to a packed Staten Island theater filled with 15 year olds."

Zubkavich: "Home video viewing will take the wind out of this thing's sails like nothing else."

Jim: ...unless they add special features to it

Bigmaki: "I just don't see it playing nearly as well on DVD as it does with a (mostly)full theater. I'd put money on an "audience participation" track of some sort whenever that DVD does come out."

A Bunch of Us: "The movie in and of itself won't be good unless you see it in a crowded theatre, or alternatively, on DVD with your drinking buddies (playing one of the drinking games that will inevitably pop up on the internet)."

new line cinema SoaP marketing strategy social media

New Line Cinema: Stop Your SoaP Griping!

New Line Cinema's apparent disappointment with the box office take of Snakes on A Plane shows they have missed the point of WOM.

Since everyone else in the blogosphere has written a post about SoaP, I have restrained myself. Until I saw this article in the New York Times with the headline "Snakes: A Letdown After Hype on the Web." The following facts in the article pushed me over the edge:

• "The film was still the No. 1 draw at the box office during the weekend."
• "It basically performed like a normal horror movie." said David Tuckerman, president for theatrical distribution for New Line.
• The article notes they only spent $20 million on marketing
• Box office was $15.2 million on the opening weekend.

So let me get this right -- New Line spent about half the marketing budget they normally would ( Hollywood Reporter notes $36.5 million is average), drove the same amount of revenue they would expect from this type of movie, and still grabbed the #1 slot for the weekend.

And they're disappointed?

They make a consciously low-budget, B-movie and are surprised when the alchemy of WOM doesn't turn this lead into gold. Duh!

Count your profits, go home, and plan the WOM campaign for your next movie! (and fire half of your marketing staff since you don't need them anymore).

work of mouth new line cinema Snakes on A Plane

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.

influence web 2.0 social media marketing public relations customer service

Internet’s Increasing Influence

Now that it is so easy for consumers to find and interact with sites rich with information on the specific topics they care about, they are becoming more involved with the conversations occurring on these sites and building trust in the community.  Out of this trust, consumers are getting the guidance, personal experiences and product recommendations to help them with some of life’s biggest decisions.

We know this influence is occurring, but where is it making the biggest impact?

The researchers at Pew Internet & American Life Project have some interesting findings on this question.  Back in ’02 they conducted a study to measure the internet’s influence and they ran study again this year to see how it has changed over that time.  Over this time, they found “striking increases” in the number of people who say that the internet plays a crucial or significant role in various aspects of their lives.

The topics with the biggest increases were with people seeking information and guidance on health care issues, investment and financial services, buying a car, and education/career training.  For example, 54% more people said the web played a major role in helping others with health conditions. The growth in the other categories is equally as compelling, see the stats from the report here on pewinternet.org.

To explain these “striking increases” the report stated, “the internet’s largest impact comes in connecting people to other people for advice or sharing valuable experiences.” “Online communities often function as information clearinghouses that let people compare options, find experts, or share information among people who have recently encountered similar circumstances.”

This is powerful stuff, enough to make any internet marketer smile.  But the real opportunity here is about more than just buying more search keywords or banner ads, it is about listening.  Think about it for a minute, for people to place so much importance on the internet for these huge life decisions, there is some real valuable information being exchanged here.

The great thing is that this stuff is easy for you to track. Listen to it and learn from it. Getting your product teams, client service managers, sales reps, and all your PR and advertising execs to learn from this will do a whole lot more for your business than just getting you more click throughs.

I’m new to Cymfony, but I’ve been in the online marketing business since it began.  With new technologies letting users take control of the web and connect to other people like never before, I’m more excited than I’ve ever been about what the internet can do for businesses.  Tell me what you are seeing. Where have you seen the internet’s influence increase the most?  How have you seen companies adapt to it?

Controlling Consumer Control Goes Out of Control

Jackie Huba’s Church of the customer blog has hosted a lively debate whether the Chevy Tahoe Apprentice campaign – in which consumers select from Chevy-provided video clips to create their own commercial --  is consumer-generated media or not. Consumers have settled it once and for all: technology trumps the corporate powers who would guide, constrain, and compel the “wisdom of the crowd” to do their bidding. But maybe Chevy should consider these ads as a new kind of ad testing mechanism for the images they associate with their vehicles.

Chevrolet thought they had a way to harness the power of consumer-generated media to further the Tahoe’s marketing goals: give consumers a carefully selected inventory of video and audio clips that they can assemble into their own commercials, cherry-pick the ones that best fit Tahoe’s strategy, and voila, consumer-generated commercials. If a consumer created something the brand didn’t like, no problem, it would simply be suppressed.

Problem is, the consumers haven’t followed by the script. They have come to create commercials, but many of them depict the Tahoe as a gas-guzzling, global-warming-gas-belching, earth-destroying behemoth. These ads are now cropping up on sites such as TotalTactics, Heavy on the Chevy, and You Tube. The story has even made the New York Times advertising column.

As a professional marketer I think there is more to learn than just that technology has made consumer control absolute. These commercials are a virtual Rohrschach test – or maybe a Zaltman brand co-creation collage -- of how the typical images used in SUV commercials strike consumers. Instead of communicating freedom to explore the wilderness, they communicate the power to trample it. Instead of confidence, arrogance. Instead of protection, destruction.

Being a Prius-driving, save-the-planet kind of guy, I love this, and perhaps this may turn the tide on the popularity of SUVs (my favorite ad is “What Will You Tell Your Kids You Drove?). People buy cars to project an image about themselves to friends, neighbors, colleagues. So far, the car companies have been able to wrap their vehicles with the image of their choice; now the friends, neighbors and colleagues are setting the agenda for the associations that will attach to SUV drivers. This kind of peer pressure may accomplish what nothing short of a $1-a-gallon-gas-tax could do: destroy the market for SUVs.

If you think I am over the top, check out the commercials on YouTube – then go back to Jackie Huba’s blog and read her analysis of the growth of this site. Watch a few of the consumer-created Tahoe commercials and see if you will ever look at an SUV the same way again.

Chevy Tahoe marketing advertising consumer-generated media

Dispatch from the ARF Engagement Metrics Panel

Yesterday morning, the Advertising Research Foundation ReThink! conference explored in depth the idea of “engagement” as a consumer-centric metric to supplement if not replace the traditional media-centric metrics of impressions, GRPs and reach/frequency.

I’m biased of course, but I see the analysis of consumer-generated media playing an important role as marketers move toward the future of engagement as a central principle.

Joe Plummer, the ARF's Chief Research Officer, kicked off the morning summarizing the work of the committee and presenting this definition of engagement:

Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhance by the surrounding context.

He went on to define "turning on" as "activating associations and metaphors so the prospect co-creates brand meaning."

So here's the central paradox of the idea of engagement as a metric: it is fundamentally a “soft” concept in a world demanding more and more hard metrics

Jean-Louis Laborie, Global Research & Development Director for Integration Marketing & Communications, demonstrated some progress toward resolving this paradox. He granted the point that engagement is attitudinal, and as such, can only be a relative measure, e.g., this consumer is more engaged than the other consumer. An objective scale of engagement is probably impossible. He showed indices his company is developing for consumer engagement with media and brands.

Why CGM has a role: CGM is a qualitative data source in high volume. Applying the right analytic tools and techniques can identify brand associations with quantitative rigor.

Other notable comments from the session:

Ted McConnell, Manager of Interactive Marketing Innovation, P&G, quoted this excerpt from the World Federation of Advertisers’ Blueprint for Consumer-Centric Holistic Measurement:

We know our consumers beyond demographics and get info about them in a very timely manner. We truly understand their multi-media behavior and respect their privacy.

Ted also had one of the most quotable quotes of the day: “We should measure share of choice, not share of voice.” He didn't elaborate on what he meant, but I interpret it to mean simply counting the number of impressions we deliver in an ad campaign is inadequate; we need to shift the perspective to the consumer reaction or behavior that is the result of those impressions.

Why CGM has a role: CGM is both timely and revealing of consumer attitudes and habits: it is available continuously in real-time, and this spontaneous voice of the consumer provides insight into consumer feelings. And because Cymfony analyzes both CGM and mainstream media, we can track how mainstream media is impacting these feelings.

Greg Smith, EVP Media Insights, Planning & Analysis, Carat Fusion, had one of the other most quotable quotes: “Today’s media choices allow us to paint our brand story in color; current metrics only measure black and white in b/w.”

Why CGM has a role: Greg is agreeing with the WFA vision of understanding more about consumers than dry facts. In CGM, consumers share their motivations, needs, wishes and other  colorful details. Extracting the essence of these emotional characteristics from CGM and overlaying it on the demographics statistics will put flesh and bones on our statistics.

market research Advertising

Giving Voice to Passionate Customers

Cory Treffiletti of Carat Fusion wrote an interesting article about the richness of user generated content in today’s OnlineSPIN newsletter from Media Post (registration required). Cory provides links to content created by passionate consumers about some of their favorite brands. In some cases, the content is hosted on websites sponsored by the brand’s owner such as the Catalog of Pain Short Films website hosted by McNeil Consumer & Specialty Pharmaceuticals, maker of Tylenol.

Even when there is an obvious connection to a corporate sponsor through contests or hosting, if the content is clearly user-created and uncensored by the corporation, the positive brand effect on viewers can be tremendous. Finding ways to give your most loyal customers a platform to share their creative ideas is a great way to reward them and build even stronger brand loyalty. It can also have an added effect of creating new communities of loyal fans and maybe even some brand converts.

Marketers should become active daily readers of blogs, discussion boards and user groups to identify customers who are talking about their brands. Even if some commentary is negative, you can gain valuable insight on what needs to be done to improve the brand experience. While you’re at it, you’ll probably learn a thing or two that you didn’t know about your competitors.

Tags:marketing, branding

Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing from the American Revolution

Here’s the analogy: a small group of undisciplined, poorly trained, poorly equipped average citizens takes on the most powerful Empire in the world and defeats it through the sheer force of the passionate belief in their cause. Sounds kind of like bloggers vs traditional media to me. But there is more to the story: Word of Mouth was Washington’s secret weapon in defeating the British Empire.

John Trumbull’s painting “Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown”, 1797

I drew the analogy to the American Revolution in my speech at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Basic Training conference last week. Andy Sernovitz asked me to kick off the panel on “Word of Mouth 101: Core Strategies and Tactics” by introducing the philosophy of WOM: listening to consumers, not pushing messages at them.

I began by noting how different this philosophy is from what I was taught as a young Account Executive at Ogilvy & Mather: create a compelling message, distribute it broadly to drive high reach and frequency, and repeat in consistently over time to build awareness. Listening to consumers turns this approach around.

And then I remembered from my high school American history class that after Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown and the British Army marched off the battlefield, the regimental band played a tune named “The World Turned Upside Down.” In this example from Intuit, the Quickbooks Online Edition group asks their users to vote on a new tag line. Having our target audience approve our ad copy? Truly the world turned upside down.

But there is more to the story.

Cornwallis’ army represented only about 25% of the British forces in America. Even after the battle, the British held key strategic cities including New York and Charleston. The analogy here: consumer-generated media doesn’t have to destroy the entire traditional media empire, nor even defeat its largest, strongest troops (e.g., television) to become a major world force.

And here’s the final, and most compelling, part of the analogy.

Yorktown was a significant victory but on the face doesn’t seem a strategic, devastating blow to such a powerful empire. So why was this the decisive victory in the five-year War for Independence?

The answer is Word of Mouth.

Washington’s original plan was not to meet Cornwallis: he was on his way to New York, believing that the war could not end while the British held this major city and important port. But Ben Franklin, ambassador to London, had his finger on the pulse of British public opinion and was convinced that if the British forces suffered another loss, the public would turn against the war.

Hearing this, Washington changed strategy, avoiding a difficult and uncertain battle in New York for a more certain victory at Yorktown. Cornwallis surrendered, the British entered into peace negotiations, and the prime minister, Lord North, resigned in disgrace.

Such is the power of listening and adapting your strategy to your consumer. Such is the power of Word of Mouth.

word of mouth, Marketing

Marketers Need to Reach Consumers Through New Media

The New York Times published an article today on media convergence providing a strong argument for companies that are not actively listening to online consumer discussions to get started today. It’s already late. Traditional media is falling far behind the wave of innovation in digital media that is driving the growth of consumer created content from blogs to podcasts to videos and online TV programs. Millions of consumers are forgoing traditional media to create and exchange digital content directly with each other – without advertising support. Over 50 million people have created personal pages on MySpace.com over the last two years sharing their likes, dislikes and desires. They are directly influencing their friends’ perception about what to buy, or what not to buy, leaving many advertisers almost completely out of the influence cycle.

"There is this primordial soup brewing of more bandwidth, more storage, more devices and more people creating content which is inherently digital," said Ted Leonsis, the vice chairman of America Online. "The lightning that struck is that the people have rapidly adopted all this even faster than we in the industry conceived, and bypassed the traditional media."

As Gadgets Get It Together, Media Makers Fall Behind

By SAUL HANSELL

Published: January 25, 2006

New York Times

Marketers need to stay on top of this dynamic media universe in order to listen to consumer commentary and understand what mediums are most effective in reaching their target market segments. Even if you are not yet reaching consumers through the new digital media, you can learn a tremendous amount by analyzing consumer discussions and then engaging with people online.

Questions for marketers:

• What do consumers think about your product?
• What do they want? (features, related products, services, information, help…)
• What is the best medium for sharing information about your product?
• What are other innovative companies doing to reach like audiences?
• What new media can you provide to happy customers that will get them to talk about your products and connect people to your website/video/blog/podcast/tv program etc.
• What can you do to satisfy disappointed customers and reverse negativity?

Consumers are providing answers to these questions for free everyday online.

Tools for Searching, Monitoring and Analyzing Blogs

Cymfony's Julie Woods recently spoke at a Boston-based conference called "The Pulse of Technology" for local small to mid-size businesses.  She was asked to talk about how companies of this size were using blogs.  Realizing that more than half of the attendees were not going to be familiar with blogging, Julie and I decided to start with the basics and pulled together a hand out for the attendees entitled "Tools for Searching, Monitoring and Analyzing Blogs."  Based on a number of conversations we've had this year, there still seems to be confusion around the different tools and services used for searching blogs vs. creating blogs vs. monitoring/analyzing blogs (and other types of user created content for that matter) so I thought I share a high level portion of the hand out that includes some of the hundreds of tools now available.

Tools for Searching Blogs

• PubSub - Unlike traditional search engines that store indexed news and blog content, PubSub is an ad-supported matching service that allows users to enter terms to be matched against any new content created on the 16 million+ sources that PubSub watches. PubSub matches your terms against the new content and notifies you when there is a match. PubSub is used by many marketers and product managers to track mentions of their brands and competitors. As a free service, it provides a very useful competitive intelligence tool for anyone who wants to keep a pulse on a diverse range of topics and companies.
• Google Blog Search - is a newer Google search technology that is primarily focused on blogs. Any site that publishes content via an RSS or Atom site feed can be searched by Google Blog Search. That includes news sites as well as blogs in English and many other languages. The search interface is very easy to use but it’s important to use the “Advanced Search” option to limit content to filter searches by language, titles, authors and more. When your results are returned, an additional link is provided that allows you to switch between displaying the results with either the most relevant or the most recent results at the top.
• Yahoo! Blog Search - Yahoo! News now provides access to blogs as well as news. In addition to blog posts, they are providing links to Flickr photos and My Web, which is a large grassroots media network. Another new service from Yahoo! allows users to search podcast, which are self-published audio programs often created by bloggers. You can download podcasts into your computer or MP3 player. You can also subscribe to podcasts to quickly receive new episodes of programs when they are published.
• Podscope, is an online service from TVEyes that searches every word within a podcast using audio indexing technology. TVEyes is a leader in broadcast search. This service is available free today in a beta version.
• Technorati is a real-time blog search engine that determines the relevance of a site by the number of other sites that link to it. Technorati automatically receives notification from weblogs as soon as they are updated, so it can track the thousands of updates per hour that occur in the blogosphere, and monitor the communities (who's linking to whom) underlying these conversations. Technorati currently tracks over 23.9 million sites and over 1.8 billion links. Technorati is one of the oldest blog search engines with a massive archive of historical blog posts. Technorati is very useful for marketers that want to understand how the perception of products and issues has changed over time. While some links may be expired or irrelevant (and now spam blogs have become an issue), the tool provides a very useful starting point for performing blog research.
• IceRocket  - is a search engine providing new ways for to find blog and news content. There are no ads displayed on IceRocket results. IceRocket also provides several tools that help marketer’s track links from site to site, identify quick trends in online discussion and uncover current blog topics.
• Feedster is a search engine and advertising network that indexes over 19 million syndicated feeds per hour. This includes millions of blogs and over 75,000 professionally published news sources such as CNET and The New York Times. Feedster searches for the most recently updated news and information so the service is very useful for finding breaking news from both blogs and news services.

Tools for Creating Blogs

• Blogger is a free blogging service owned by Google. Blogger provides templates to help you quickly set up a blog and share it with others. As one of the first blogging services, there are millions of Blogger sites but many are not updated actively. However, many individual bloggers have started with Blogger as their first blog-hosting platform.
• LiveJournal from SixApart is a free blogging service for creating personal journals. The service hosts over 2 million journals. According to SixApart, LiveJournal's innovations include friend pages -- pages that enable users to easily view the recent journal updates of their LiveJournal friends. Additionally, with LiveJournal, users can have custom control over who can view their journal posts as well as join interest-based communities. LiveJournal is a good service for people who want to start blogging with friends about everyday topics. 
• Typepad is another personal weblogging service from Six Apart that is used by many companies as well. Typepad allows you to create a blog for yourself or to share. Blogs can take on any form from personal journals to corporate blogs with multiple authors. You can easily set up a Typepad account for free. For a small fee, Typepad provides a professional edition that allows you to have more control over design elements of your blog as well as comments and other features. The Typepad website also provides many useful links to resources about blogs and blogging.
• Movable Type - Also from Six Apart is a blog service called Movable Type that provides more advanced site design and development capabilities. For instance, Movable Type has the ability to store entries in a SQL database or create applications to solicit and receive input from visitors. Movable Type is a good option for marketers who have multiple audiences and blogs to support however it requires more advanced technical knowledge for installation and configuration.
• WordPress is a semantic personal publishing platform that has a reputation for being very easy to work with for developers of more sophisticated blogs. In addition, WordPress provides many useful features for customizing your blog as well as managing comment spam that can be a huge problem. WordPress is a free service, however you can donate both money and time to assist with hosting, documentation development and other costs of supporting the service.

Tools for Monitoring/Analyzing Blogs

• Bloglines is a free online service for searching, subscribing, creating and sharing news feeds, and blogs. Most people use Bloglines as a blog aggregation tool to track updates from their favorite blog sites. This can reduce the amount of time you need to spend searching blogs to see if there have been any updates. The new posts are listed with links back to the original content. You can set up a Bloglines account for free and start monitoring blogs and news immediately. Bloglines also provides recommendations of top blogs to help you get started.
• NewsGator Online is a free news aggregation service that feeds content from news and blogs into Microsoft Outlook. If you spend a great deal of time using Outlook every day, this service can be very useful for monitoring industry news and key blogs without leaving Outlook.
• BlogSquirrel is a blog searching and clipping service from CyberAlert. BlogSquirrel’s online services reach over 5 million blogs each day. While the service is not free, many people like the idea of having a low-cost service organize and search for a set of mentions of their brands that can be combined into a Digital Clip Book and delivered via email daily.
• BlogPulse is a blog search engine by Intelliseek that also provides quick buzz tracking and trend charting tools. Like Technorati, BlogPulse has access to historical blog mentions for the millions of blog sites they have access to. This tool is useful for a quick glimpse of online discussion trends however it does not filter out duplicate or irrelevant mentions to a level required for marketing research and analysis.
• Memeorandum is a specialized news and blog search aggregator focused on politics and technology. It has a very clean user interface similar to Google News that shows hot topics and related posts grouped together. You can even choose to view related discussions on topics.  This tool can be useful to marketers who need to know what the hot topics are in politics, current affairs and technology at any given moment. It leverages many of the other blog and news search tools to gather content.
• Orchestra - Cymfony has been providing media analysis solutions to Fortune 2000 clients for several years. We started integrating blog content into an automated and custom research solutions in 2004. Because of the tremendous impact of blogs on journalists and traditional media, the firm now offers an integrated media analysis dashboard application that automatically monitors and analyzes mainstream media (MSM) as well as blogs, usenet groups, online forums and other forms of social and consumer-generated media (CGM) under one converged Web-based service platform. Cymfony also provides guidance from experts on the blogosphere to assist companies and agencies with blog analysis strategy, product launches, event analysis, reputation monitoring and customized research. Large corporations and agencies as well as medium-sized companies with highly visible brands are the most common users of Cymfony’s products and services.

NOTE:  There are certainly more tools and services available in each of these catagories.  This is just a general list and resource to help get started.

blog analysis, consumer generated media, blog marketing, blog monitoring

Next Generation Content - What's going on at the Syndicate Conference

Next generation content--RSS, blogging, podcasts, wikis… These are the center of the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco, CA. The Syndicate Conference is a business-to-business conference providing clarity and education for everyone who suspects their business will be transformed by the syndication of consumer-generated media (CGM). Cymfony is a solution showcase sponsor so I have spent most of my day in the exhibit area, but I did manage to slip away to one of the keynote sessions by Larry Weber of W2Group (who happens to be a partner of ours).  The session was on Pandemonium and The Rise of Unpaid Media.  Weber brought up many interesting facts about the future of blogging, how marketing is changing due to blogging, and strategies marketers should take to monitor and adjust to the changing environment.  He believes that although this is a revolutionary change, you can’t look at CGM or as some are now calling it, citizen or user generated media, in a microcosm. You need to use this in relation to click though data, mainstream media analysis and advertising effectiveness.

One major difference Weber highlights is that unpaid media is often uncontrollable. Before the rise of unpaid media we were able to control everything… Now it is not as easy.  According to Weber, it is going to get more confusing before it improves.  Marketing strategy and marketing mix allocations are going to get more complicated before it becomes easier to know where to put your dollars for effectiveness.  Weber, from the viewpoint of a well established PR leader, lends further validation to the importance that this new media is part of the daily tasks of the PR professional.

It’s Good To Be Sentimental

There's growing awareness across public relations and marketing that just knowing where something is being mentioned, or how many people saw it, is not sufficient information to for determining campaign ROI, or performing any sort of solid market research. One needs to examine the substance of what's being said, not just its metadata (where, when, how many times, etc.), to extract real value from research. Which was why I was very interested to see this post (via The Basement), about the first publicly available weblog search/data mining tool to take sentiment into account.

As sentiment analysis is a service Cymfony has offered for some time (at a price), some have wondered if it undercuts some of our business model, and if Cymfony did nothing for the past few years, the answer would be yes. As technology advances the marginal cost of performing complex tasks tends to eventually fall to zero, at which point such services will be offered as free or fairly close to it. The only guards against this for any technology-based business are innovation and superior execution.

In this case, opinmind highlights both the opportunities and challenges everyone faces with this sort of analysis. For instance, just before writing this, I went to the site and typed in "apple" for Apple Computer Corporation. The first positive link I get states  "I LOVE apple pie!!!!", quickly illustrating the disambiguation problem, found where a word has more than one meaning. Next I typed in Chevy, to do see what would be revealed about Chevrolet. Ignoring people's opinion of Chevy Chase, I came across "I personally love the Chevy SSR", which is accurate, but probably not representative of all the positive commentary about Chevrolet, the precision versus recall problem. To elaborate, what happens if a person says, "I love the SSR", or "Chevy's have fast pick-up." In the first case, a system has to know that "SSR" means "Chevrolet SSR" and in the second that "fast pick-up" is a desirable automotive characteristic.

No solution can address these issues perfectly, but Cymfony tries to solve them through extensive research and customization. That effort, the associated ongoing support, as well as the addition of different content streams, publication segmentation, post organization, momentum highlighting, analysis and strategic advice, and a host of other services, are what we really charge for, and where the company adds value. Eventually the above problems will become more easily resolved, and Cymfony will have to find other ways to add value. In the interim, we're not going anywhere, and are glad to see people given the tools to begin to unravel the blogosphere.

Should You Care About Splogs?

Steve Levy, the technology columnist at Newsweek wrote an article over the weekend about spam blogs or Splogs.  Although splogs are relatively new, they have been a hot topic around here for a while since we are working with clients to identify what is important and relevant for them to track and analyze. Never mind worrying about blog spam, email spam or instant messenger spam (spim), we now have to worry about splogs or fake blogs that often don't make sense. It seems that anyone publishing content on the web can have their material show up on a spam blog, even if the content is not the blog topic.  Take Steve's example, he wrote a column on mitigating technological incompatibilities which showed up on a blog called "Relationships". The blog posted an abstract from the column on a list of relationship-oriented articles.  In a nutshell, it just didn't make sense.  So why do these sites exist and should companies care about them?

According to Jason Goldman, product manager for the Blogger division of Google, "It's due to the fact that readership of blogs has grown so much. The blight has sprung out of nowhere this year, confusing anyone who stumbles upon them, and dramatically gumming up search results, especially on services that focus on tracking blogs."  And David Sifry of Technorati believes they exist because of the same motivation as any spammer - money. 

For companies monitoring blogs and other forms of social media for insights and market intelligence, splogs can be a major nuisance.  Should they be tracked or filtered out of the equation all together? 

I spoke with Cymfony's business analysts to understand how we are dealing with splogs internally for clients.  First, as with any measurement or monitoring strategy, it's important for a company to determine and understand all the places where their company or brands are mentioned.  Companies should know if their content is showing up on a fake blog.  As such, we suggest that sites shouldn't be disregarded at first glance.  Recently we worked with a client who had their name associated with a pornography post.  In reality the company had nothing to do with the site, but people finding the site by way of search engines may or may not know that fact.  Its important for any marketer gain a deeper understand of how customers or prospects might think about your company, products and competitors. 

Since there can be thousands of sites and company mentions online on any given day, Cymfony uses the Orchestra dashboard platform to automatically aggregate and organize content.  A key piece in this analysis is categorizing the data sources and sites into different buckets.  For example, blogs and forum posts should be seperated out from online news.  Cymfony preforms media audits to help our clients figure out how to monitor and analyze information.  Additionally the audit helps determine what they want to track and what they need to track.  Since technology is not perfect, we have a team of in-house professionals on staff in our consulting services practice that add a level of human analysis, conducting editorial audits to filter these sites. 

There is still a lot of issues that need to be defined around splogs and spam in general (including regulation) but with Cymfony's guidance and technology we can help our clients determine the relevance of a mention in their overall media analysis program so that it doesnt turn in to a threat and/or shift perceptions. 

marketing, Blogging, pr

Measuring Your Brand Buzz in Consumer Generated Media

Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein is off to Ad:Tech New York this week.  Besides attending the event he's participating on a panel tomorrow at 3:00pm entitled "Measuring Your Brand Buzz in Consumer Generated Media."  Organic's Mark Kingdon is moderating with Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek, Jonathan Carson of BuzzMetrics and Dave Balter of BzzAgents rounding out the panel.   The panel is being produced in conjunction with WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) to address questions such as "How can the impact of word of mouth be quantified?"  How does WOM impact the brand? And how does WOM impact your marketing mix?"  Additionally, the panel will discuss social trends that are birthing big changes in how companies do business.

"If you can't measure word of mouth, you can't measure the rest of your marketing efforts, either." 

In preparing for the panel, we pulled together a few Cymfony case studies on how we help clients develop a program to begin to measure, benchmark and analyze online discussion and consumer generated media.  Although we are unable to identify the client, I believe the following example is a good illustration of how company can take the first step in setting up a measurement and analysis program and some general results. 

One of the world’s leading electronic payment brands asked Cymfony to analyze all mentions of the company on blogs, usenet groups and forums.  In a nutshell, they wanted to gain insight in to the collective consumer conversations to tailor product development, marketing and public relations campaigns. 

We started the project by conducting a media audit or "discovery analysis" to determine what was being said about the company across all targeted media.  We needed to determine the volume and frequency of conversation as well as the major topics and the relevance to specific product groups.  One of the major goals was to be able to quickly view positive and negative feedback over a period of 15 weeks and use the intelligence as feedback to the product development, marketing and PR functions.  Once we agreed on the goals of the program we needed to determine what type of CGM tracking should be performed on an ongoing basis. 

Cymfony worked with the company to establish core metrics for a baseline consumer generated discovery analysis program.  Online conversations containing mentions of the company were identified and analyzed weekly for subject matter and negative or positive sentiment.  The volume of activity and key themes were analyzed and were aligned by relevancy with the company’s product groups.  Volume and content of discussion was then monitored to determine residual consumer reaction to competitive developments.

Over the 15 week period, the company found no residual negative reaction to competitive announcements.  Using Cymfony's automated dashboard platform and onoing reports from the consulting services team, the company is now prepared to see the actual conversations as consumers begin further scrutiny.  They will be able to see the real-time volume of activity compared to weekly norms.

The company was able to identify negative discussions about certain electronic payments not being honored by some merchants, and the lack of notification shown by the merchants who DO accept payment.  These comments were shared with the product group action was immediately taken. 

Additionally, the company was able to monitor a crisis situation about a news story that broke involving a corporate customer.  The company watched closely through real time postings and comments and were about to quickly learn that no direct negative feedback was associated with the company in online conversations about the incident.  The company was then able to establish baseline metrics for typical weekly conversation containing references to the company, and has monitored spikes in volume above the weekly norms.  And the company was able to get a glimpse of consumer goodwill they earned based on calls performed by its fraud protection service.

CGM for CRM

I know, you’re thinking “Oooh! Acronyms!”, and yes, I’m excited by acronyms too. They’re even alliterative acronyms. CGM, as you’re probably aware, stands for Consumer Generated Media, which I sometimes rename participatory media. (What to call the aggregate of blogs, discussion boards, forums, usenet groups, etc. is the fodder for another post.) CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. And the overlap is the big C. Consumers are, by definition, customers.

Largely due to this overlap, CRM vendors, and more abstractly, people responsible for customer satisfaction within a corporation, are starting to think about how to integrate CGM into the bigger picture of customer relationships.

While CGM might be thought of as outside the realm of traditional CRM, with increasing frequency customers are not even bothering to contact a company with their problems. Fearing the trap of labyrinthine phone systems, or the futility of attempting to explain an issue to someone who barely speaks English, individuals are relying more and more on the internet community for assistance. Not only is this generating increasing traffic levels about a given product or service, but it is also taking a large part of the customer experience out of a company’s direct control.

As a result, forward thinking organizations are starting to expand the concept of customer relationship beyond a direct feedback system and into the greater ecosystem, anywhere customers or potential customers may have touch-points with brands.

CGM for Market Research

Some of the most challenging questions I get asked come from the market research space. Researchers want to understand everything about who’s posting.

“Are they in my target market?” (Hard to tell.)
“What are their demographics?” (No way to know for certain. We can take a stab a psychographics though.)
“Where are they located?” (Difficult to pin down.)
And perhaps most importantly, after listening to some of my answers to the previous questions, “How can I make any recommendations with confidence without knowing any of that?”

To be completely forthright, it’s not an easy question to answer, but there is in fact an answer.  

Unlike traditional market research methods, such as telephone surveys and focus groups, the quantifiable analysis of vast bodies of unstructured, unsolicited consumer feedback is a relatively new concept. It lacks the forty or fifty years of rising sophistication accumulated in classic research practices; it might even be better described as an art than a science. CGM analysis techniques are improving rapidly, with significant enhancements in metadata extraction over the years. Links can now be tracked, advanced mathematics used to perform relative influence calculations, more information about the person posting can be gathered, locations better identified, and likely most noteworthy, the active posting base has expanded greatly, with a much wider cross-section of individuals participating in the medium. That said, even with all these advances and the diversification of the user-base, the analysis is still are not as refined as it could be; CGM analysis still can’t yet tell you if the prevailing opinion expressed online is representative of your target market, or only present in a different group.

The key to using CGM analysis data with confidence is thus to recognize that it’s a compliment complement (thanks Paul) to traditional market research, and not a replacement for it. CGM analysis can surface previously unknown issues, provide deep insight into the buying cycle, and generate very rapid real-world feedback, along with a whole host of other things. While it can’t confirm a hypothesis, it can generate one, and that may be its greatest feature.

There is however one other very important thing to keep in mind which bridges market research, PR, and traditional marketing functions. Sometimes, many of the traditional research questions just don’t matter. You may sell to 20-year-old white women from Kansas, and the poster may be a octogenarian man from California, but if your potential consumers type your product name into Google, and the octogenarian’s commentary comes back first, that commentary is going to have a strong impact on product perception. Due to the interconnected nature of weblogs and message boards, and the way search engines determine link rank, CGM postings often have disproportionably high standings in search results.  Combine this with the ever growing the number of people doing pre-purchase research on the internet, and suddenly CGM’s weight grows appreciably, and the whole concept of target market needs to be revaluated.

In short, smart market researchers will use CGM analysis for it’s strengths, even if the results don’t fit neatly into a traditional model, and shouldn’t forget that opinions on the internet do more than reflect consumer perception, they influence it.

market research, marketing, public relations, media, blogging