The Power of Influence

Me being interviewed on ADOI TV

A little while ago I spoke at the MMC09 - here is an interview done by the team just after the conference.

In the interview I cover the relationship between WoM and Social Media and how my company (Vocanic) approaches the planning of a campaign with its Groundswell(tm) methodology.

Here is a post by Andy Sernovitz, the ex head of WOMMA, who is now off doing his own thing called Gaspedal  and authoring books  and writing his Dam, I Wish blog

What I loved ( and got his permission to repost, thanks Andy) was the simple way he got rid of lots of the confustation (new word ...like it?) that is being weaved around WoM and Social Media.

To put Andy's sentiment into our own (Vocanic's) parlance .... its all about earning the recommendation.

Big Hairy Idea #1:  It's Not ALL About Social Media

Social media is an incredible tool.  It enables fast conversations, it enables widespread conversations, and it connects people who would rarely see each other.  It gives speed and scale to word of mouth.

But social media is not word of mouth marketing.  It's a tool we can use for the online portion of word of mouth.  But it's not even the main tool there. I would argue that more recommendations go by plain old-fashioned email than all the social networks combined.

On top of that, offline word of mouth is so much bigger than online word of mouth.  A tweet still doesn't beat a personal recommendation from a close friend.

So why are we talking about social media so much?  

1.  Because real word of mouth is hard.  It requires big ideas, long-term commitment, and an honest dedication by a company to earn the respect and recommendation of its customers.  You can't just call your agency and order up some WOM.

2.  Because social media gives us an action step.  It's fairly straightforward to do a campaign on Facebook or Twitter.  You can call your agency and order up a social media campaign.  And your agency, who is totally freaked out by this WOM stuff, can deliver a pretty good campaign.
Then you can show the results to your happy boss.  Everyone feels good and gets paid.

Except...  we completely miss the point.

The point of word of mouth isn't ecommerce; it isn't to count clicks and CPAs.

The point of word of mouth is to be a brand worth talking about.  To be a company that people are proud to tell their friends about.  It's to replace paid marketing with personal connections.  To replace cash with love.  To be fantastic.

Internet overtakes TV in the UK to be the biggest advertising medium

UK INTERNET AD SPEND GREW 4.6% TO £1.75 BILLION IN H1 2009 Online advertising expenditure overtakes TV for the first time IAB figures show ad expenditure online up £82m to record market share of 23.5% www.iabuk.net

In the first half of 2009 internet advertising weathered the recession and grew by 4.6% to £1,752.1m, despite the entire advertising sector contracting by 16.6% during the same period.

According to the bi-annual online advertising expenditure study from the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) - the trade body for digital marketing - in partnership with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC) - , the internet has now overtaken TV advertising to become the UK's biggest advertising medium.

The UK remains the world leader in terms of market share for online, with the medium accounting for 23.5% in the first half of 2009. The results signal a significant restructure of marketing budgets as advertisers follow their audiences online and look to the internet for even more measureable and accountable methods.

Technology, telecoms and finance leading the way

 The study breaks down the online display market by industry category, to identify the top spenders and how investment is increasing or decreasing across sectors.  The results show that Technology is the biggest spender, accounting for 19.1% of the market, followed by Telecoms (13.3% rising from 9.7% the previous year) and Finance (13.2% up from 11.9).  Entertainment and Media was fourth with 11.8%, while Consumer Goods saw significant growth up from 6.2% in H1 2008 to 8.1% in 2009 as FMCG marketers steadily increased digital budgets.

Marketers, wean yourself off the addiction to Celeb endorsements .. it is damaging your brand

Those of you who have heard me present will remember my position on the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements.  A waste of time and worse, money.  Lazy markeing.

“Make your brand the hero, don’t buy someone’s reputation and put your product next to it hoping some of it will rub off” is my sometimes seen as controversial line. Which often gets a reaction as Celeb endorsements are such stock in trade for so many brands and agencies.

“Take the money you would be wasting on the Celeb and invest it in doing something remarkable for your customers” I propose instead.

Well here is some research to back up my position When asked “When you see a Celebrity in a product advertisement does it make you? ”  78% say no effect and 12% say less likely ie 90% of people say it either has NO effect or actually makes the LESS likely to buy the product.

Lest for one moment ignore the total waste of budget and effort on a campaign that has no effect and just look at the people that it does effect.

If 12% say LESS likely and 8% say MORE likely – the net effect of the campaign is a market 4% LESS likely to buy the product. 

You would be better off going to beach / golfing and giving the money to charity than running the campaign.

So – STOP IT already. 
 
Though the media feeds consumers a constant stream of minutiae about celebrities’ private lives, and celebs who Tweet seem to have legions of avid followers, a new study of LinkedIn users by AdWeekMedia finds that most US consumers say they are not at all swayed by celebrity endorsements of products.

When respondents in the survey were asked whether the presence of a celebrity in an ad makes them more likely, less likely or neither more or less likely to buy the product, nearly 8 in 10 (78%) said it doesn’t sway them one way or the other. In fact, only 8% said the presence of a celebrity spokesperson makes them more likely to buy a product. This compares with a  significant 12% who actually say it makes them less likely to buy a product.

Additional findings by demographic group:

• Older respondents are especially likely to reject celebrities as spokespeople. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of those ages 55+ say seeing a celeb in an ad makes them less likely to buy a product, vs. just 4% saying it makes them more likely to buy.

• Men (15%) are slightly more likely than women (11) to say a celeb deters them from buying a product.

• 20% of business owners vs. 11% of people with jobs in the “management” category say the presence celebrities in ads make them less likely to buy.

• While 19% of survey participants in “creative” roles said a celeb in an ad makes them less likely to buy. This compares with 8% saying it makes them more likely.

A recent survey by Harris Interactive found that Americans do not consider the occupations of actor, entertainer and athlete to have a great deal of prestige.

About the survey: The survey was conducted online in July among a sample of 4,778 LinkedIn users.

 

Razorfish report makes clear the critical importance of Word of Mouth & Social Media

Your audience is skipping your TV spot with a DVR. They’re talking about your product on Twitter.

They’re chatting about you on Facebook. They’re searching for you on Google.

In a world that is increasingly empowered by social media, connected by screens, out of your control and enchanted by innovation, all that matters is the story your customer tells about your brand — your brand’s value, in 140 characters or less. Is it a good story? A bad story? Or just no story at all?

We respectfully suggest that what you say — or your agency says — about your brand or your product matters less than what your customers say about you. And what matters most to them is what your brand does.

Does your product delight them? Does your service annoy them? Are you useful and new, or boring and
difficult?

Forget the funny tagline or the award-winning TV spot — what does your brand do for your
customers? If the answer is “I don’t know what you’re talking about” or “Not much,” then
you can stop reading now. B

ut if you’re interested in brand innovation, if you’d like to transform your
brand into a new set of products, services and experiences, if you’d like to get your brand to stop
talking and start doing, then Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report is for you.

 Download Razorfish SIM Report July 09

The YouTube dilemma

Perhaps there is no better example of modern day word-of-mouth then the now iconic site youtube.com.  Popular videos, posted by members, can get millions of hits.  But a lot of the time, the content being posted isn't original; in fact, it's copyrighted, to companies such as NBC or TimeWarner.

Therein lies the dilemma - amazing buzz is being created at a grassroots level about various content, but often times that content shouldn't be shown without licensing in the first place.  Big studios aren't stupid; they understand the advantage of having that buzz created.  But at what point do you stop it since it's illegal?

NBC has three full-time employees that do nothing but surf youtube.com looking for infringements - they send around 1,000 requests per month to YouTube to take down videos.  Google, which owns the site, reportedly set aside $200 million dollars to cover future litigation expenses.

YouTube; a media dream or nightmare?  Read the full story here.

so you really want to quit?

The word-of-mouth about smoking has always been straightforward: non-smokers lecture smokers about how bad smoking is, and that they should quit. 

The problem?  Smokers already know that.

So in a new twist, GlaxoSmithKline, the manufacturer of NicoDerm patches, is producing spots for TV and internet that feature real-life smokers - but instead of preaching about how bad cigarettes are for you, the smokers are telling their own stories of desperation and cravings that make smoking seem ridiculous.

In one clip, a woman describes how she would jump out a window just to snag a cigarette.  The psychology is to appeal to smoker's social consciousness and self-awareness as a rational person, instead of another health lecture.

Will it work?  Only time will tell.  Full story here.

Make it or break it

Last Friday was the day after Thanksgiving in the United States - a holiday for most, but for retailers, essential.  It is by far the busiest shopping day of the year in the USA; this is the day that can make or break the Christmas retail season.

Not surprisingly, women are doing the bulk of the shopping.  But one surprising statistic is 91% of those women enquire with friends and family beforehand about the best places to shop, and the best things to buy. 

These essential women (25-54 yrs old) have very little time for traditional advertising, and tend not to believe it.  What they do believe is their influential friends, who they perceive to be experts in a particular segment of retail.  It's a perfect and important cross between word-of-mouth and influencers.

Read the results of the survey by Ketchum.

the most powerful man in television

Turns out the most powerful man in television isn't the President of ABC, or an anchorman on CNN.  Instead, it's Brian Selter, a 21 year old university student who writes the blog www.tvnewser.com.

One might ask, how can a blogger, whose exam schedule interrupts his job, carry so much weight?  That's the world we live in now, where traditional journalists are no longer opinion-setters, but  merely the followers of the real trend-setters: the public.

Mr. Selter's blog is certainly not the most outstanding piece of written word ever conceived - instead, his strength lies in the creation of word-of-mouth among the 'right' people in the television industry.  Now those people come to his blog for news before anywhere else. 

Simply put, Mr. Selter reached his tipping point, and now has the mobile phone number of the President of CNN in his rolodex.  As they say, the pen is mightier than the sword...

Read the full story here.

another blow for traditional advertising

A recent survey by the American Advertising Federation reiterated what a lot of people already know - that traditional video buys are not going to be getting the money they used to from advertisers and marketers. 

'Industry executives expect a significant share of their broadcast and cable TV advertising budgets to shift to online video buys within the next few years, according to results of an annual survey on industry trends released Tuesday morning by the American Advertising Federation. More than half (53%) of the 168 respondents said they expect 20% or more of their TV advertising budgets to shift into online video by 2010.'

"The determining factor will be the sheer volume of online opportunities," said one agency executive participating in the survey. "Will there be a handful of sites that rise above the fray or will there be so sites to choose from that the media dollars can't possibly cover enough bases to be effective?"

This is simply more evidence that the best way to reach audiences will not be the same as before...read the full article here.