Cymfony's Influence 2.0

Some Sanity Comes to the Hype Cycle

The PQ Media forecast of the size of Word Of Mouth Marketing injects some needed discipline into the crazy projections floating around about the growth of WOM. Putting this study side-by-side with some other reports and it becomes clear that social media is about a $1 billion industry.

My post about whether social media is climbing the hype curve brought Paul Chaney by who wanted to stir up more discussion about the state of adoption of these new tools.

There have been a plethora of studies on how much money marketers are spending in these emerging areas which are zeroing in on the billion-dollar number.

There may be some definitional differences between "word of mouth", "social media" and "conversational" marketing in these studies. But let's set those aside for the moment and try to triangulate these different data points to get close to a real number.

• PQ Media says marketers will spend $1.35 billion on WOM this year. Disclosure: I'm on the Board of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association which participated in the PQ Media study.
• An eMarketer report quoted by Jim Tobin on his Ignite Social Media blog says that "social media marketing" is 7.8% of online marketing spending. eMarketer's online advertising report pegs spending at $21.4 billion -- so social media's 7.8% share of this equals $1.67 billion.
• Forrester pegs online advertising at $18.4 billion and social media at $600 million.

While the range from $600 million to $1.6 billion might drive the statistical purists crazy, as an ex-analyst I look at it and say it's all in the same ballpark. The differences are likely due to 1) the different definitions that I set aside 2) the emerging nature of the market which makes it devilshly hard to come up with any numbers 3) different assumption each analyst necessarily makes. 

So, let's call the size of social media marketing spending a billion. As Everett Dirksen was famous for saying, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money."

Social media is reaching the point of being a real item in the marketing mix. I'm willing to accept this wide range of numbers because that high-level conclusion jibes perfectly with my experience in talking to our clients and sales prospects.

And as I said in this post, marketers need to keep their eyes on consumers, not the VC world, and gear their spending accordingly.

Thoughts on the Social Media Value Proposition: What kind of friend are you?

In yesterday's post I summarized the key learnings of Coca-Cola, Digitas, MySpace and YouTube in how the social media value proposition is evolving. Today, I'll share my reflections on it.

Conclusion #1: The ROI of letting go of control is huge

I revealed this conclusionyesterday. As a classically-trained marketer I admit to fear in the pit of my stomach at the thought of not enforcing strict and consistent brand image and messaging. But the data is compelling. This finding inspired yesterday's title: "How to learn to stop worrying and love losing control"  (All you movie buffs out there will know what I'm alluding to! If you don't, leave a comment and I'll explain.)

Conclusion #2: The nature of branding has changed. Really.

Something that struck me in all the case studies: there was no discussion of what my classical training tells me are the core elements of branding: positioning, the key brand message, the differentiating benefits and features. As I look at the examples, though, these elements still exist, they are much more subtle in these campaigns. Putting these front-and-center in social media would smack too much of advertising, which 27-year old LA guy, Rob whom Heidi quoted yesterday doesn't want.

In my Forrester days, I wrote a report that stated that interactivity changed branding because you had to add the experience dimension to the brand image and brand promise dimensions (you couldn't just say what your brand was about, you had to prove it in the experience the consumer has on the site, etc).

But this feels different than that. The experiences I talked about were bringing the brand promise and benefits to life. All of that stuff is way in the background as you try to be a "friend" and be "authentic". Social media experiences aren't about what the corporation wants the consumer to think/feel/do about the brand, they are about how the individual relates to the brand on a very primal level. The brand becomes less and less about the physical and performance characteristics of the product and more and more about the values it represents and its personality -- and how the consumer uses those to express a dimension of his or her own values and personality.

Conclusion #3: What kind of friend are you?

So the "Robs" of the social media world want brands that are friends; but what does that mean? And as Matthew summed up -- and all the panelists touched on to some extent -- authenticity is essential; but what does that mean?

And so I got thinking about the different friends I have: some I go drinking with, some I debate the great issues of the day with. One is the guy I rely on as a source for great new jokes; another is my guru and conscience whom I turn when I need help putting the important things in life back in perspective.

So maybe this is the authenticity a brand needs to seek. Not an authentic reason why they are better than their competitor. But what kind of friend the brand can credibly be: the pal, the coach, the class clown, the one to turn to in hard times. Figure that out and build the right participatory experience to deliver on this type of friendship, and maybe, just maybe, the social media world will build stronger brand relationships than the mass marketing world ever could.

The Remaining Question: scale

There were some impressive reach and purchase intent numbers in the presentation:

• Cherry Coke gained 64,000 Facebook friends
• Adidas reached 21,000,000 MySpace members and increased purchase intent at at cost of only $.25 per viewer who indicated they "definitely would purchase" Adidas
• Electronic Arts reached 22,000,000 MySpace members and increased purchase intent at a cost of only $.33 per user
• Heinz generated over 10,000,000 views on YouTube.

But is this sufficient to drive the kind of volumes that will be more than a blip on the sales curve for these huge brands?

Pardon my old-fashioned comparison but 10 - 20 million reach is one or two nights of a prime-time TV buy. But then, we know awareness/recall measures decay over a few weeks after a flight ends. Will these kinds of brand relationships have more enduring impact?

And I don't think TV drives these kinds of purchase intent results. How much of it will translate into real sales? (PS: if anyone knows of any research that gives a ratio of purchase intent to actual purchase, I would love to know about it). Will the percent who actually purchase compared to the percent of those who say they will purchase be higher for a social media brand engagement? 

And if these are the right 10 - 20 million target audience members, maybe we finally have an answer to the old "half my advertising is wasted"....perhaps that's why the cost of the purchase intent impact is so low.

But that's what I love about this emerging space -- we're learning fast but there are plenty more interesting and compelling questions out there that we still need to figure out!

How to learn to stop worrying and love losing control

At yesterday's AdTech, I moderated a panel that wrestled with the topic of "Has a Value Proposition Emerged for Consumer Generated and Social Media?". A great group of panelists began to crack the code on how marketing and media can thrive in this new world.

As I told the panelists, this was the best session I have been part of at any conference in years -- real examples and great insights into the early learning that leading companies have gained through innovative approaches.

I learned a lot at the session really stimulated my thinking. Today I will summarize the session; tomorrow I will share my thoughts on what it means for how marketing and branding need to evolve.

Defining the problem

The old media/marketing model (media companies create content, audiences flock to media companies, advertisers pay to get in front of the audience) breaks down when the audience is creating the content, aggregating their own audiences and come together not because they want to read expertly written content but because they want to socialize with other people.

After two years or so of experience, what have we learned about the important questions:

• Will brands even be allowed into these environments?
• If they are allowed in, will they be tolerated but ignored?
• If they are allowed in and under the right circumstances consumers will engage with brands, what new approaches must marketers learn in order to be successful? What must media companies do to help the marketers?
  

Summary of each speaker's key points

I'm vastly boiling down each speaker's comments to try to get what to me were the most compelling points. My apologies to them because I'm leaving out a lot of good stuff each one brought to the session.

Shane Steele, Coca-Cola's Director of Emerging Media got us right to the point: we have moved from the mass market one-way, lean-back model, past the Web 1.0 interactive model to the participatory model. Interactivity like click-throughs or time spent mousing over a rich media ad are fine, but now the audience wants even more involvement. But not everyone wants the same level or participation, so a campaign must give a range of participation opportunities to engage the maximum number of people at the level they are willing to engage. She showed a great chart of the process of Awareness -- Engagement -- Immersion -- Momentum that must be built into a social media effort. Her example of a Cherry Coke campaign on MySpace brought these ideas to life.

Heidi Browning, Fox Interactive's SVP of Client Solutions went deep into their Momentum Effect research. It shows that the ROI (in terms of increase in purchase intent) of letting go of control (by distributing brand assets that people can include in their profiles) for Adidas and Electronic Arts is 15  - 20 times that of online advertising in general. In other words, letting go of control has HUGE ROI. In addition, she showed an intriguing quote from the qualitative part of their study in which 27-year old Rob from Los Angeles said, "I don't want companies to advertise to me. I want them to be my friend." More on this later...

Jonathan Adams, VP Media Director of Digitas, brought more examples to bear. Delta, emerging  from bankruptcy this year, has done some great work to reengage travelers with the brand in their "Change" campaign. Videos of flight attendants giving tours of foreign cities give personality and demonstrate their caring attitude. Animated cartoons of some of the things people hate about travel show that Delta isn't oblivious to the stresses that passengers endure and show they can poke fun at themselves.

Matthew Liu, Product Manager at YouTube, nicely summarized many of the themes of the day as follows:

1. Create commercials that are content
2. Let users know that you understand the context (don't intrude where people are really deeply engaged with friends and ads aren't welcome)
3. Encourage engagement and participation
4. Have a thick skin and use the site as a huge focus group
5. Be authentic

His case study of the Heinz Top This TV Challenge made these points concrete.

Social Media: Hype Curve or Big Bucks?

The definitive answer will be at the WOMMA Summit in Las Vegas next week. Come find out!

A recent study raised fears in my mind that social media might be hitting the Peak of Inflated Expectations on the Hype Curve.

But now, WOMMA will bring us the real answer -- the dollars to be spent over the next 5 years -- with a new study from PQ Media.

Read the press release about the definitive study of the size and structure of the WOM industry, then register for the event and come out and hear the results first hand!

This is one of many reasons and a ton of learning you will gain by attending.

See you in Las Vegas!

Two Awesome Keynotes at WOMMA

The WOMMA Summit is going to be great....it kicks off with Jeff Bell of Microsoft and Lionel Menchaca of Dell.

Disclosure: as many of you know I am on the Board of Directors of WOMMA.

So here are the facts about the summit that I think support my statement that it is going to be great:

1. Jeff Bell of Microsoft will present a case study of the Halo 3 launch.
2. Lionel Menchaca of Dell will describe Dell's journey from Dell Hell to being a company now recognized as one that has embraced the social media world.
3. Cases studies from other great companies: Southwest Airlines, Petco, Toyota, and more.
4. An agenda addressing the latest changes and opportunities in WOM: social networks, measurement, best practices.
5. Tackling the tough questions: Who should own WOM in the corporate organization? Is the Influencer model or the Network model a more effective approach to WOM planning? How to implement ethical WOM campaigns (disclosure: I'm plugging my session here ;-) ) What's the next big thing?

Clear your calendar for November 14 - 15 (and if you are a numbers junkie, November 13 as well for the Research Symposium to see all the presentation in the soon-to-be-released WOM Measurement Volume 3) and come to Las Vegas.

PS. If you ping me I'll send you the secret code to save $75 on your registration.

Free Webinar - Analysis of Aggressive Online Behavior Targeted at Companies

We’ve teamed with John Palfrey of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to present the findings of a new study analyzing aggressive behavior targeted at companies in a free Webinar on May 16.

Ironically, the same social media technologies that strengthen your company’s relationship with consumers also make is easy for a single critic to mount an aggressive campaign against you.  To help our clients become better prepared to respond to an online attack, we worked with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to analyze some of the most prolific online attacks against companies in recent memory.  This study profiles the three types of online aggressive behavior targeted at companies and summarizes the unique patterns, personal motivations and objectives of each.

Jim Nail and Harvard’s John Palfrey will discuss what drives corporate attacks so you can minimize the impact of an attack target at your company and keep it from building momentum and damaging your brand.  The Webinar will take place on May 16th at 12:00 Eastern and registration is free.

Everyone who attends will receive a free copy of the “Analysis of Aggressive Online Behavior” report and case studies.

Register Today!

"Fallibility adds credibility"

This was a notable quote from David Weinberger at the WOMMA WOMBAT 3 conference in New Orleans. Well-known as co-author of The Cluetrain Mainfesto, David is always provocative and this is a provocative statement for marketers and PR people.

We communications professionals are taught that our messages, our positioning, the production values, etc. etc. should be perfect and we work very hard at it. But in the social media realm, striving for perfection is wrong. David cited Wikipedia's "warning labels" on articles where there haven't been enough contributors or there is a real debate among contributors; these articles contain a label that discloses that the article may not be 100% perfect. Rather than undercutting the authority of Wikipedia as an information source it enhances it.

I passed on this advice yesterday at the American Strategic Management Institute's Branding Excellence workshop. An attendee stated that his company wanted to engage in social media, but wanted to be sure to do it "right". I said not to worry so much, get started, and just be ready to take some criticism, adapt and change as required and move on.

Why is striving for perfection so wrong in this space? It is inauthentic. I spent Tuesday afternoon at the Business Development Institute's Authentic Communications conference, where we had a lengthy discussion about what authenticity is. I riffed on David's statement, saying that as people, we all know no one and no thing is perfect, so perfection, by its nature, isn't authentic. PS Fast Company has a good article on authenticity in the May issue.

I do depart from David on one point: at the Society for New Communications Research conference in Las Vegas, he said that spelling, grammar, etc. don't matter, that speed is more important, and that those little imperfections add to credibility. A couple of minor typos, OK (I know I find them in my old posts when I go back to re-read them). Occasional tense disagreements -- maybe. But total stream of consciousness with no self-editing doesn't cut it with me. It may be self-expression, but it's not communication. Too many grammatical violations will confuse the reader, and if they don't understand what you are trying to say, you as a writer have failed.

In summary: do the best you can, don't obsess over every little detail, be ready to fix something when you are called out, but forget perfection. As Martin Luther advised, "Sin boldly!"

WOMBAT 3 -- Day 1

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Basic Training (affectionately dubbed WOMBAT) got off to a great start yesterday with Chip Heath, author of Made to Stick. This book has been sitting on my desk for a couple of months, and I just haven't gotten around to reading it. Now, it moves to the top of the stack.

The book sprang from a question that intrigued Chip for a while: why do urban legends and other stories that are often false (like the "fact" we only use 10% of our brains) spread so far and become so engrained in our society while more important messages like the benefits of eating a healthy diet don't stick?

Like many of these books, he has an acronym made up of the first letters of the six criteria he discovered: SUCCES, for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories  (Fortunately, he apologized for such a corny acronym).

I was most struck by his discussion of the criterion of Concreteness. Working in a new area like WOM, it is often hard to explain what we do in a way that people unfamiliar with the field say, "Oh, I get it!" We often try to make grand conceptual statements that encompass the entire breadth of our knowledge.

Wrong.

He gave examples of concreteness that invariably invariably involved seemingly small details: like the power management technology company whose products were used on the Mars Rover, or retailer Eddie Bauer who was able to exemplify their dedication to quality and service with story of their founder sleeping in a butcher's meat locker to ensure his new Artic Tundra sleeping bag worked.

What are the details that bring the new "consumer in control" and "2-way dialogue" aspects of the new marketing world to such vivid life?

PS. Seen all over New Orleans: T-shirts that say "FEMA: Fix Everything My A**"

A Shameless Plug for WOMBAT 3

The Word of Mouth Marketing Associations' Basic Training conference is coming up in two weeks.

You know you really need to find out the newest and best techniques in WOM. Register today and save $75 with our discount code: guestofcymfony. Details are at WOMBAT3 page on the WOMMA site.

As a WOMMA Board member, of course I'm going to plug the event! But I can confidently say that there is no other place where you can learn as much, across as wide an array of WOM tactics, from as many experts and practitioners, in as much depth as you will learn here.

What's really great about this conference is that this is all about rolling up your sleeves and doing it. No grand "future of Marketing" theorizing (well, OK a little), but detailed discussion of tactics like:

• How to use YouTube
• How to create customer evangelists
• How to Integrate WOM into your advertising
• How to use blogs to keep the buzz going

You get the idea! And that is just day 1!

Day 2 is all about the marketers and is jammed with case studies by:

• General Mills
• JetBlue
• Petco
• Intuit (my personal poster child for the company that is doing it best)
• Coca-Cola
• Nintendo
• Jaguar

And more!

If you can't come for both days, you can just come for one at a special rate.

See you in New Orleans (and if you register from this blog, let me know and I'll personally buy you a cafe au lait and beignet at Cafe du Monde!)

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...

Virtual Ethnography Webinar Rescheduled

We’ve had to reschedule Cymfony’s November 1st Virtual Ethnography Webinar.  The Webinar will now take place on Wednesday, December 6th at 1:00pm EST.

If you've already signed up you will receive an email notification of this change as well as a reminder several days prior to this new date.

We apologize for the inconvenience and we hope that everyone can still make it. 

If you haven't signed up and would like to, click here to register. 

ARF BabyCenter Virtual Ethnography CGM

Free ARF Webinar

Next Wednesday, November 1st, 1:00pm EST Cymfony’s CMO, Jim Nail, will co-present an Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Webinar “Drawing Insights from Consumer-Generated Online Content – Virtual Ethnography,” with Jessica Lilie of BabyCenter.

Register Now!

Come learn:
• How new media are a voluntary, spontaneous, and authentic voice of the customer
• Techniques for turning massive volumes of blog and discussion posts into a meaningful data set
• How qualitative data analysis can lead to actionable customer insights
• How to use consumer-generated media analysis in conjunction with other research data to complete the picture of the target consumer

To register for this FREE webinar click on the link below:

https://cymfony.webex.com/cymfony/onstage/g.php?d=309445739&t=a

Hope you can join us!

ARF BabyCenter Virtual Ethnography CGM

Don't miss this WOMMA event!

Register now for the single best conference on word of mouth marketing on Dec 12th-13th in Washington DC.  Over 70 experts will be presenting practical “how to” instructions on word of mouth, viral, buzz and blog marketing at WOMMA’s Word of Mouth Marketing Summit

Enter discount code: guestofcymfony to recieve $75 off of your registeration! 

Visit  http://www.womma.org/summit2/ for more information and to register. 

WOMMA

ANA Masters of Marketing -- Quotable Quotes, Part 2

Mini Cooper's Jim McDowell and Burger King's Russ Klein had some memorable quotes...

Jim McDowell on how Mini creates community among their owners: "We fuel it by not controlling it."

Russ Klein on emerging media: "The lack of measurement of emerging media keeps other marketers on the sidelines. I hope they stay there."

ANA Masters of Marketing -- Quotable Quotes

This morning's sessions included some thought provoking nuggests from P&G's AG Lafley, Kaplan Thaler Group's Linda kaplan Thaler, Wal-Mart's Stephen Quinn and Charles Schwab's Becky Saeger that shed light on the conference's theme: "Reinvention & Innovation"

AG Lafley on how to deal with the fact that the consumer is in control of media and advertising consumption: "We've learned a paradox that the more in control we are, the more out of touch we are with our customers."

Linda Kaplan Thaler on why "being nice" is the next wave of consumer marketing: "Being mean is so last millenium. It only takes one person to take a company down."

Stephen Quinn on marketing's role in making sure that every consumer touchpoint delivers a consistent brand experience, especially in the store: "Marketing has to tell the brand story so compellingly that the associates know intuitively what to do, how to manage the touchpoints, what merchandise to buy, and how to treat the customer."

Becky Saeger on what it took to revive the Charles Schwab brand: "There is a reinvention paradox: Reinvention requires staying true to who you are."

Masters of Marketing Kick Off -- Marketer of the Year

The ANA's Masters of Marketing conference kicked off naming Jim Farley of Toyota Grand Marketer of the year. Well deserved and a good choice, but I was pulling for Yellow Tail wines.

The Scion brand has been extremely successful and was a tough marketing challenge to make Toyota appealing to young car buyers.

But, IMHO, Yellow Tail pulled off a bigger coup. First they found a niche of affordable, unpretentious beverage that wine had been unable to penetrate. Leveraging the somewhat rebellious image of Australia to make wine acceptable in that niche and coupling that with packaging that made the brand fun, cool, and understandable. And lest I forget, delivering a product that is quite good quality for the price. That's a really strong marketing package.

Other nominees were:

Comcast -- The Comcastic campaign is OK, but it is just that: a campaign, a tagline. Not the breadth of marketing thinking of Scion and Yellow Tail.

Lunesta -- Ditto above. The glow-in-the-dark butterfly image is certainly a strong mnemonic device in the ad, and the category faced a lot of challenges. But is it more than just an ad?

City of London -- I just didn't get this one....

Walt Disney -- Certainly a good come-back story.

Vans -- probably the next strongest contender, successfully balancing the demands of expanding distribution and demand for their footwear while retaining the image of being hip, niche and cool.

Wal-Mart -- A modest repositioning which for a company of Wal-Mart's size has lots of challenges. A case of some good work that doesn't seemed to have helped their financials.

You Tube -- Was marketing really involved here? A very cool product that clearly struck a chord with a large segment of the population. I don't want to downplay the importance of being in tune with the market, but this seems to me more a case of being first to stumble into a market no one else had found yet, and being as surprised as anyone by its success.

Rachael Ray -- Great line extensions that stay true to her core values and personality. But going from one show to two to four and then rolling out a magazine and some books seems like a pretty well-trod path with little truly innovative in the approach.

Time for Creatives to Engage with Consumer Engagement

In my post on September 28, I said that media companies and clients should disengage from the consumer engagement discussion because their use of the term had gotten far ahead of the ARF’s development of it. The opposite is true for ad agency creatives: two core concepts should lead more directly to Big Idea for their clients’ brands.

An all-star panel of major ad agency creative directors at the ARF/AAAA Engagement Conference revealed that they still rely on inspiration, intuition, and luck to find the Big Ideas for their clients. Such it has always been and agencies struggle for ways to increase the percentage of truly great ads. Consumer engagement may help in two ways:

1. Consumer engagement is a new “mental model” in which advertising works first on a subconscious, emotional level and only later on a rational level, according to ARF Chief Research Officer Joe Plummer.
2. The concept of “brand co-creation” details what exactly is going on at this subconscious level. Gerald Zaltman, a member of Harvard University's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Interfaculty Initiative, demonstrated how consumers respond to an ad by attaching metaphors and associations that give the brand more personally relevant meaning. Using a Heineken beer ad, he demonstrated his technique for drawing out these subconscious elements.

These new ways of thinking could lead to a more disciplined approach to increase the likelihood of unearthing one of these Big Ideas.

Why is this so important? As the panelists described the Big Ideas they had created, such as the Staples Easy Button, the Geico Gekko, and the Burger King king character, they admitted to a large dose of luck, accident, and serendipity.

Don't get me wrong, I believe inspiration is real. And David Ogilvy, a great proponent of research-based advertising, advised that after learning everything you possibly can about a product, its customer, markets, etc. one should go for walk or garden or any other sort of activity that would let a big idea bubble up from the subconscious.

These creative directors operated similarly, mentioning the input they use from focus groups, quantitative studies, direct consumer observation, and current culture immersion. But all these techniques rely on too superficial, rational responses from consumers or are too removed from the engagement moment to reliably deliver the Big Idea.

If engagement is indeed the new "mental model" that drives marketing planning, techniques like Zaltman's that apply a more rigorous, disciplined approach should help marketers find what makes consumers tick.

Even so, it will still take a keen eye and a true empathy with the consumer to pluck a core idea out of the many different associations, symbols and metaphors offered by consumers. But at least the odds will be in marketers' favor.

Consumer Engagement Agency Creative Director Advertising

Free Webinar: The ROI of Blogging

Next Tuesday, October 3rd, from 1:00pm-2:00pm EST we will be hosting a webinar on the ROI of Blogging with Charlene Li of Forrester Research.  This webinar will help you gain an understanding about the benefits, costs, and most importantly, the risks of blogging.   Sign up now

Quips and Quotes from Advertising Week in NY

Read on for the three most memorable moments, IMHO, from New York this week...

Best bit of trivia: Mike Hughes, president of The Martin Agency, revealed that the Geico gekko character is named Gary.

Best one-liner: Bob DeSena, director of Active Engagement at Mediaedge:cia stated during the Mediapost Forecast 2007 conference's Engagement Debate, "Women 18-29 is a good target for college-age males, but not for marketers."

Most revealing: Mark Tutsell, Chief Creative Officer of Leo Burnett said at the ARF/AAAA Engagement conference panel "Big Ideas Instead of Ads": "Our agency creates probably 25,000 ads globally each year and maybe a dozen are truly memorable."

Advertising Advertising Week

Help WOMMA Plan Their Next Event!

The WOMMA Summit 2 is Dec. 11-14 in Washington, D.C., and they need your help to assemble the best speakers on the best topics possible.

Take a few minutes to give them your feedback:http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=53582584588

Craig's List Lawsuit: Free Speech vs Social Goals

NPR reported this morning that several months ago a suit was filed against Craig's List over apartment listings that violate the Fair Housing Act non-discrimination laws. Should operators of sites be held to the same standards that newspapers are? If this succeeds, what does that mean for negative comments people make about companies or products?

The gist of the NPR story was that listings for renting apartments on Craig's List often include criteria such as they will or won't rent to gays, minorities, Christians, etc. etc. etc. Years ago, newspapers were forced to screen their classifieds and reject ads like this. So far courts have held that the Internet is different than a newspaper, and is not bound by the same legal requirements. But as classified ads increasingly move out of newspapers and online, should this change? And if it changes for Craig's List, how will it affect all the Blogger.com, Typepad, etc. Will they be responsible for editing and removing offensive, illegal, etc. information?

The extension for word of mouth marketing is that these services might have to monitor discussions of companies/brands/products for accuracy. If a company didn't like a blog post or a review, they could claim inaccuracy and sue or threaten to sue. Most blog and review sites, being small companies, would probably take the posts down rather than incur the cost of the suit. The word of mouth world would be a much poorer place.

But being a Child of the '60's, I believe these laws serve a laudable social goal of creating a truly free and equal society. Beyond that, as a country, we decided long ago that property owners don't have the right to discriminate whom they sell or rent to based on their personal biases. On the other hand, living in New England and going to my town's Town Meeting every year, there is a great tradition of each individual having the right to stand up in public and state his position. The Internet has expanded that to the world and it would be a shame to lose it.

Censorship to serve the greater good vs free speech is a paradox as old as the country. It looks like it will continue on the Internet.

What do you think? A quick search on Sphere and Technorati didn't turn up much discussion of this yet....here are a couple of other posts:

TechnologyTalk

Technology and Marketing Law

I'm off on a week's vacation and celebrating the big 5-0 birthday. Some of my colleagues will be posting. I'll be back the week of 7/17 -- at which time I will be in my second half-century!

Seth Godin says: Take the New Road

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

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

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

1. Spend a lot of money on TV

2. Get more distribution for your products

3. Sell a lot more product

4. Buy more ads

And keep going around and around this cycle.

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

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

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

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

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

word of mouth WOM Marketing Advertising Public Relations PR

Digital PR Webinar

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

A Giant Leap for the Word of Mouth Marketing Industry

I am very excited to be serving on the Word of Mouth Marketing Association Board. The knowledge, talent, and energy of the newly expanded Board will accelerate the growth of this new industry.

First off, let me thank and congratulate Pete Blackshaw, Dave Balter, and Jonathan Carson for all the work they have put into founding WOMMA and building it to the point where it needs this expanded Board. You guys have accomplished an amazing amount in just a couple of short years.

I also want to thank Andy Sernovitz for the vision, drive, and enthusiasm he brings to the task of creating a respected marketing discipline out of something as intangible as word of mouth marketing.  I've been involved with a number of marketing associations over my career and none have accomplished as much in as little time.

Congratulations to my fellow Board members. I feel a little like when I went from high school to college: I went from being top of my class to middle of the pack! On the WOMMA Board, I am among  the smartest, most visionary people in all of marketing. I know it will be a challenging and exciting experience.

And thanks to all the WOMMA members for electing me. I'll work hard to keep the momentum going and to educate marketers on how WOM will help them adapt the forces which are changing marketing so rapidly.

word of mouth marketing WOMMA consumer-generated media

Blog Panel in Boston

On Thursday, February 23th, Cymfony's own Pat Fennessey will speak at a Boston based panel for IABC on navigating the blogosphere.  We've taken a different approach with this breakfast meeting and have asked pre-registered attendees to submit questions prior to the event directly to the speakers.  I thought I'd share some of the questions that the panel will be discussing. In talking about consumer-generated media, word of mouth marketing, and blogging on a daily basis I often forget that many people are still learning about this new form of communication. 

Questions for the Panel:

General questions about blogs:
 
-What criteria can you use to assess the reliability of information on blogs?
 
-What is the profile of people reading blogs and how do we reach loggers who are reaching our audiences?

-How do you decide which blogs to stay on top of?

-How can I get people to COMMENT on my blog, rather than just reading it? I've tried posing a question at the end of my blog postings.

-How do you monitor blogs without getting overwhelmed by the volume?

Managing Risk:
 
-How does an organization combat negative or unauthorized blogging that can potentially be hurtful?

-What are the potential risks associated with having a blog in corporate communications?

Internal Use of Blogs

-How are companies using employee blogs? Are there specific case studies of successes?

-How do you measure the success of a blog and whether it's worth the return on investment?

-For those with CEO/COO blogs, who actually writes them?

Dan York, CISSP, and a Yankee IABC member, will moderate the panel discussion. Dan has been blogging since 2000 and was recently chosen as one of the “Top Voice-over-IP (VoIP) Bloggers of 2005”. He is also a weekly correspondent to the “For Immediate Release” podcast where he comments on how tools such as weblogs, wikis and podcasts impact the world of communication and PR. With over 20 years in information technology and as the author of several books, Dan reports to the CTO of Mitel Corporation evaluating new communication technology and leading Mitel’s public communication on VoIP security issues.

John Cass is director of Internet Marketing Strategies, Backbone Media, Inc., a search engine marketing and web design agency based in Boston. He was lead author of “Corporate Blogging: Is It Worth The Hype?” a 70 page study and website on the value and benefits of corporate blogging. The study reveals how such companies as Microsoft, Macromedia and IBM are using blogging. He is the 2005/6 President of the Boston Chapter of the American Marketing Association and a Research Fellow and Member of the Advisory Board for the Society for New Communications Research Cass has been blogging at his PR Communications blog since 2003 and now runs blogsurvey at Backbone Media.

Patricia Fennessey is vice president of Professional Services and Customer Support at Cymfony, Inc., a market intelligence and media analysis company based in Watertown. She has more than 27 years of experience in technology, strategic planning, large organization management and consulting. Prior to joining Cymfony, she was a partner at USWeb/CKS and a managing partner at marchFIRST.

Tony Sapienza, is a senior partner at Topaz Partners, communications consultants in the technology industry. His background includes agency, corporate communications and journalism experience. He served as president of Miller/Shandwick Technologies, one of the world’s leading PR firms, and was global practice leader for Weber Shandwick Worldwide. In his 11 years with Miller and Weber Shandwick, he launched a worldwide technology practice that helped clients reach across geographic markets, in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

A breakfast buffet will be served at 7:30 a.m. and the panel discussion will begin at 8:00 a.m.

Discounts to New Communications Forum

The New Communications Forum is taking place in Palo Alto, CA from March 1-3, 2006.  Only in its second year, this event appears to be shaping up nicely.  The title "Explore, Discuss & Discover New Strategies for PR, Marketing, Advertising, The New Media & The New Face of Journalism" sounds a bit aggressive, but the event is bringing together many of the right people to help move some key conversations forward.

Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein is speaking on "Managing Information Overload in the Age of Digital Influence" on March 2nd at 11:30am.  Producer Jen McClure is offering "friend of the speaker" discounts.  Enter NCFR200 for a $200 price break when registering online at www.newcommforum.com. 

Managing Information Overload in the Age of Digital Influence

11:30am - 12:30pm

Every day we are bombarded with new studies, survey results and benchmark reports intended to shed light on industry trends and consumer opinion. Add to the mix the new realm of online consumer discussions found on blogs and in user groups, forums, wikis and other unfiltered social media, and you are faced with a valuable but overwhelming wealth of information and data. Digging into this data and understanding what is meaningful and interesting is critical to determining effective marketing strategies, keys to customer retention, consumers' perception or new opportunities for revenue generation within target demographic and geographic segments. This session will teach you how to use new tools and techniques to manage the information and turn overload into valuable knowledge.

Panel Participants

• Anita Campbell, CEO, Small Business Trends
• Andrew Bernstein, CEO, Cymfony
• Ron Rasmussen, CTO & VP, Product Development, KnowNow, Inc.
• Salim Ismail, chairman & co-founder, PubSub

WOMBAT and IDC's MPM Summit Summary

As Jim Nail was speaking at the Word of Mouth Basic Training (WOMBAT) Conference in Orlando last week, Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein held court at the IDC Marketing Performance Measurement Summit for Business to Business marketers.

To expand on Jim's post about Thurs. session at WOMBAT, Steve Rubel has few nuggets and Josh Hallett, Marianne Richmond, Dana Vanden Huevel and Toby Bloomberg did an excellent job summarizing the event on the official WOMBAT blog.

Meanwhile in Santa Clara, Rich Vancil, VP of IDC's CMO Advisory Practice and chairman of the MPM Summit suggested tech marketers are embracing measurement practice out of economic necessity.  This is a shift from last year where he emphasized that the high-tech sector was woefully lacking.

According to Rich, marketing costs have grown to 6.5% while worldwide IT industry growth has only risen 5.5%.  Sales costs have increased and sales cycles have lengthened.  Additionally, media has fragmented leading to complicated marketing decision-making. 

As expected, most of the speakers talked about the need for measurement and the strategies used to implement.  Andrew's luncheon discussion on "Measuring and Analyzing MSM and CGM to Gain Critical Market Intelligence" was the only session that touched upon the need to integrate CGM into the mix.  So I'm not surprised that I couldn't find much discussion about the event online.  Opportunity for IDC perhaps?

There will be a similar east coast event in New York City in April.

WOM, Marketing, marketing measurement

Monitoring before a Crisis

Hey marketers - are you prepared for a brand crisis? Today I participated in a session about crisis monitoring at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco with Rob Key from Converseon. Most marketers are aware by now that bloggers can spread facts and rumors like wildfire but many are still unprepared for a crisis that involves bloggers. Steve Rubel and Shel Holtz have long been vocal advocates about being prepared for a crisis by monitoring blogs before an issue arises. But many companies are still struggling with the question of “who owns blog monitoring” delaying formal monitoring programs and leaving themselves exposed in the event of a crisis. That’s irresponsible in my humble opinion. Bloggers can impact every aspect of your business so blog monitoring should be a corporate initiative championed from the top down.

Unlike the Forbes article that condemned most bloggers as evil-minded antagonists, I believe that the majority of bloggers are not out to attack companies for the fun of it. But if they hear about a product problem, social injustice, unfair practice or rumor about a company they care about it’s going to get their attention.

According to Chief Legal Executive, Vol 3 No 1, Winter 2004:

-         81% of e-Influentials posted, discussed or forwarded hearsay about a brand, company or CEO to friends, family or colleagues in the past year

-         91% confirm hearsay information before passing along to friends

‘Fact checking’ from a blogger’s perspective is usually not as extensive as a professional journalists, but it’s important to note that they often do seek validation before posting. Validation may come in the form of examining the growing discussion on this topic at credible blogs or actually investigating the issue directly by attempting to contact the company involved. If the company doesn’t take bloggers seriously and respond to inquiries, they are missing out on an opportunity to set the record straight – or at least to participate in the conversation.

The best approach of course is to monitor blogs, message boards and user groups for discussion about your company, products and industry and to join the discussion as a fully disclosed participant. But if you haven’t started your own blog yet, you can still engage with bloggers to listen to their concerns and respond openly about the issue at hand. As Rob Key pointed out, single blog post on a hot topic can turn into a blog swarm, that raises the exposure of the original post quickly in search engine results. A negative blog post that is perceived to be factual can quickly outrank your company’s web pages in search engine results. Ignoring the power of online discussions is a missed opportunity to engage with people who are passionate about your company or products and could quickly damage your reputation and revenue streams.

Be prepared. Get involved. Engage with all of your audiences: customers, employees, partners, investors. It feels really good to be connected - the way it felt when you first started marketing and someone told you they loved your product or some event you ran. Passion is addictive. Engaging with bloggers is a great way to get back to that buzz you felt when you first entered marketing. When you were really connected to users. Back when you were wishing that someone would listen to your great ideas to change the world. Bloggers listen and they like to be listened to just like you do.

Discounts to Syndicate and WOMMA Events

The Syndicate Conference is being held this year in San Francisco on Dec. 12-14th.  As a sponsor and speaker at the event, Cymfony is able to offer its clients and prospects a 30% discount on current registration pricing (ranging  $495-1,495).

Additionally, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is hosting its next big event on Jan. 19-20th in Orlando, Florida.  Cymfony's CEO Andrew Bernstein is speaking at this Word of Mouth Basic Training Conference. 

Contact me directly if you're interested in a discount pass to attend either of these events.

Forget the Lawyers, Learn to Join the Conversation

The BlogOn Social Media Summit ended yesterday with mixed reviews in the blogosphere, primarily because of the poor WiFi connections.  As an exhibitor, Cymfony was fortunate not to have any problems and we were thrilled to be selected as one of the 6 companies to conduct a live on-stage demonstration.  Julie Woods opened the show with the first demo of Orchestra, Cymfony's new product that integrates mainstream and consumer generated media in one converged web-based platform.  Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the show but Steve Hall over at Adrants did a bang up job in summarizing the event.  Steve suggests that there were four key messages to come out of two day event:

• LISTEN to the ongoing conversation, enabled by blogs, chat rooms, forums, IM, Wikis, podcasting, social networks and innumerable other methods with which consumers can achieve a voice as powerful and widespread as marketers
• JOIN the conversation by participating in these new media
• Do not attempt to CONTROL the conversation with bullhorn marketing communications methods of old
• No LAWYERS.  If a marketer has an issue with a person denigrating the brand, speak with that person like a normal human being and find out why that person is saying what he is saying. Don't slap a ceases and desist on his ass because all he'll do is post that cease and desist on his blog making the brand look even more stupid, idiotic and out of touch with reality.

No surprises here. Just look at a recent public case study Cymfony put together regarding FedEx vs. fedexfurniture.com incident.  You can read about it here.  Besides FedEx not LISTENING to the conversation they also never chose to JOIN while also trying to CONTROL content by bringing in the big dog LAWYERS to stop it.  How's that for hitting the nail on the head?

marketing, Blogging, media