Chapter 22
Rethink Marketing, Media, and Advertising
Social media conversations are transforming the very nature of media and marketing. In some quarters, conversations are becoming considered as a new form of media that blends content, community, and chatter. Social channels like Facebook and Twitter, blogs, forums, and review sites encourage people to talk with one another and with companies, express their views, amplify their voices, and provide the means to do so. As we saw in Part II, marketers as diverse as JetBlue, Comcast, Gatorade, Provo Craft, Fiat, and Naked Wines have committed to relating with customers—informing and entertaining, providing service, smoothing transactions, solving problems, consulting them and learning from them. That's a big change from the bygone era of “make and sell” companies of the mass media era who talked more than they listened. By bringing the voice of people into companies, listening to social media conversations has been central to these transformations, and will continue to be. This chapter's essays examine why they will.
Kantar Media's Richard Fielding and Networked Insight's Dan Neely engage in a virtual dialogue centered on the evolving role of conversation in marketing and advertising. The primary implication they set forth is no doubt both revolutionary and controversial: Marketer-controlled advertising will recede as companies engage in experience-driven and open-ended conversations, some of which—the ones that move through social networks with a momentum of their own—will be monetized by advertisers. As Neely claims, “Today we pay for media placements. Tomorrow's rewards will shift toward the actual users who carry the content and messages.” Understanding, monetizing, and effectively manipulating “the ripple effect” of those conversations for the benefit of companies will alter media strategy and drive social media listening over the next few years.
Carat's Mike Hess and Michelle Lynn tackle several media-related issues that are critical to every business that advertises: evaluating “earned” media, understanding social networkers through their behavior, and learning how social networking influences the time people spent with other media, such as TV. They believe that listening sheds light on the question, “What did people do with our content that earned us a place in their media world?” The answers are not as simple as “they linked to us” or “they embedded our video.” Social networkers are not all alike, and Hess and Lynn explain that segmenting networkers by their participation styles can quantify the impact of earned media and pave the way for planning social media strategy.
Hess and Lynn also dissuade those who think that social media is a never-ending trend of that notion. The “hockey stick” growth period appears to be ending, portending a shakeout in social media properties and vendors. When growth spurts end, the competitive game shifts, from growing in size to battling for market share. Changes in media behavior will exert additional pressure on the competitors, since time spent with media does not constantly expand. People appear to have daily media allowances that they adeptly manage. Although old and young people may have the same overall time allowance, they allocate it differently across their screens and different services. Consequently, media strategy is becoming more complex, requiring deeper insight into people's media behavior and the shifting social media landscape. Social media listening now, Hess and Lynn argue, plays a vital role that will be even more important in the coming years.
Leaving media and moving toward marketing, VivaKi's strategy and innovation chief, Rishad Tobaccowala, reveals the game-changing effects social media and listening are rousing, and that are challenging marketing thinking and practices. Tobaccowala sees the role of social media as creating a new marketing system he calls “the people's network.” Emerging from interactions among people and between people and companies, this network becomes larger, more interconnected, increasingly global, and more mobile each day. The people's network generates, channels, and broadcasts word of mouth. Listening enables companies to place people at their centers, effectively turning their companies inside out. Tobaccowala helps professionals apply this to their own situations by sharing the eight rules he has established for effective marketing within the people's network.
Conversations, the Ripple Effect, and the Future of Media
Richard Fielding, Chief Client Officer, Kantar Media, and Dan Neely, CEO, Networked Insights
Note: Richard and Dan originally contributed individual futures pieces. After reading them, I realized how complementary their points were and thought that they should be combined—not by cutting and pasting—but by working their ideas into a dialogue to which they could then respond and advance with comments. Richard, a media agency executive, appreciated Dan's additional perspective. Dan, an executive at a listening company, did some additional riffing on Richard's ideas from his. This essay results from that give-and-take.
Richard Fielding, Kantar Media
Brand relationships have traditionally been framed by marketers, directing one-way communication from company to consumer based upon functional and emotional attributes. However, this relationship is now evolving into much more of a partnership based upon communities, with brands delivering experiences, not just marketing messages. In the future, brands will not only behave differently; they will communicate differently. The brand will become a facilitator, participating in conversations with its consumers that are experience-driven, open-ended, and nonlinear.
Media is constantly evolving to enable this new paradigm. It will continue to move from a system built upon a “push” mentality that's primarily focused on media investment efficiency measured by CPMs, reach, and frequency. It will gradually become a “participation” model focused on the optimization of brand value delivered via utility and content that are driven by experience and that involve consumer communities.
This new marketing is propelled by dialogue that starts well before purchase and ends long after the transaction—something that's already happening. If the late 2000s were the era of the social network, the future will see the rise of the “social graph”—that segment of a network focused on you, your friends, and the friends of your friends. New services will emerge that use social graph data more aggressively. We will stray further from the destination Web, and toward a social Web, whereby consumers get more and more information through their networks, rather than a specific Web site. Successful brands will tap into existing communities and create new ones. In this new world, success will not be measured by old-world metrics like reach and ratings, but by the breadth and depth of conversations.
Dan Neely, Networked Insights
Richard, I'm putting my money down on what I consider the single most important area of development for listening over the next few years: the understanding, monetization, and effective manipulation of “the ripple effect” of conversations that you discussed. Its simplest expressions are water-cooler talk and word of mouth. It wasn't invented by social media or listening; however, both trends accelerated the dynamic. In the coming years, marketers will willingly pay for messages that travel through social channels with a momentum of their own; and they'll demand proof, via measurement, that the ripple effect has been delivered.
Today we pay for media placements. Tomorrow's rewards will progress toward the actual users who carry the content and messages. Marketers and advertisers need to understand this, because Web sites and similar properties will cease becoming destinations in themselves. Instead, their value will be in the quality, nature, and kind of the conversations held among people connected to them. We see this already in Facebook: Some fan pages are getting millions of hits per day. Why? Because people are looking to converse with friends and the like-minded who are in their lives. They don't merely want to view ads, watch silly videos, learn new product facts, or get coupons.
Simply put, the ripple effect takes place when an event (e.g., a product launch, advertisement, TV show, etc.) registers in the consumer space. For a TV show, conventional ratings provide a static assessment: eyeballs on sets during the show, or merely the fact that the TV was on. But measuring the impact of the same show in social media gives you a more dimensional view. The best listening platforms can already measure this ripple effect. This metric is revaluing ad inventory and entertainment properties as I write. The coming years will bring great improvement in how we track the progress of messages and memes across sites and people so that we can predict the ripple. This will give marketers, advertisers, and agencies more powerful tools to plan communications and engagements, and to anticipate and adjust in ways that maximize their effectiveness.
The Triple Alliance of Social Media, Social Networks, and Social Listening
Mike Hess and Michelle Lynn, Carat USA
These days, it seems like anything with the word “social” in it is hotter than a New York sidewalk on an August afternoon. We have social networks, social media, and, more recently, social listening.
To determine the future of this phenomenon, we need to begin with the present. Social listening is a method of obtaining information and reading about what participants in social networks say about products, services, and people. We assume that what people say is authentic or objective when they participate in such groups. As such, we like to think that we “listeners” are like the proverbial fly on the wall that is hearing what participants “really think” about us, and our brands and services.
At present, social networks have 70 percent participation by those who are online. And since about 80 percent of the United States has online access, this means that over half of Americans are involved in them—definitely critical mass. No wonder marketers and advertisers are so interested in finding out what these people are saying.
An Integral Part of Today's BOE Media Environment
Certainly, a big part of the overall future for social listening lies in the role it is beginning to play as part of the bought/owned/earned (BOE) media paradigm that has emerged as we begin the new decade in 2010. To break it down:
- Bought media is what agencies have always provided: planning and buying television, radio, print, and, increasingly, digital, to address client media objectives.
- Owned properties have, of course, always been part of branding, in the form of the package, label, and store. However, they have become increasingly important as the firm's Web site has been added to the list of such owned vehicles to touch the consumer.
- Earned media is where social networks and listening play their own critical roles today.
Earned media is an example of good news and bad. The good news is that it's free, and you've therefore earned it from other activities that you've done. The bad news is that its content isn't really in the brand's control, but rather in that of the shopper and consumer. This dual nature as an “earned” entity will ensure that social listening will remain an important part of media and market research for years to come. In addition, we predict that one of the keystone attributes of the brand manager of the future will be how well he/she adapts to the ever-changing social feedback on the brand.
Segmentation and Quantification
Social listening is anything but static. It allows us to monitor consumers’ interests and passions as they find their self-expression through blogging, forums, online communities, and video. We have learned through CCS, Carat's proprietary Consumer Connection Study (an online study of 10,000 respondents fielded annually), that social networkers can themselves be segmented based on level of their digital participation and sociability.
This is especially true when we drill down to specific categories. A social networker who is passionate about skincare, for example, may choose not only to comment on a specific brand experience (good or bad), but also to build his/her own Web site, author his/her own blog, or create his/her own content/video to be uploaded on someone else's. This so-called amateur may end up garnering considerable influence.
On the flipside, when looking up consumer reviews for a new facial moisturizer, another consumer might be hesitant to trust a bad review from a faceless person who writes without punctuation. That consumer might also be reluctant to believe a glowing review that sounds more like an endorsement than an honest, unsolicited review from another consumer.
The point is that not all social networkers are created equal. We can address a need for increased granularity—to better understand and navigate through the social media landscape—by segmenting consumers. At Carat's, this means that we distinguish among four active groups, all of whom participate in social networks:
- Authors
- Commentators
- Connectors
- Spectators
Segmentation may be the first step in increasing our ability to quantify the value of contributors’ feedback and what it ultimately means for a brand. Once we have done that, we can then more confidently begin to buy and sell social media programs. In addition, we will be able to truly activate these consumers to comment, raise their hands, or make an online purchase.
Limitations on Consumer Processing: Information Overload?
While there's no doubt that all things social—the triple alliance of networks, media, and listening—are here to stay, there is one truly critical aspect of these phenomena that almost no one has discussed: the ability, or lack thereof, of the average consumer to handle increasing amounts of information without making any trade-offs. Indeed, the way that social networks are regarded these days can make one think that there are almost no limits to them! Can a person really join 10 to 15 social networks, hold a day job, watch prime-time television after work, and have 500 friends on Facebook, all at the same time? At least two major pieces of research of which we were part suggest not.
The first of these is the “Video Consumer Mapping” study, published in 2009 by the Council for Research Excellence (CRE). Among its major findings was that all demographic age groups, except the 45–54 age cohort, average 8.5 hours of “screen time” every day, where screens are identified as television, computer, mobile, and all other (such as movie screens). The 45–54 age group engages in even more: 9.5 hours of daily screen time. And while the segments of 18–24-year-olds and 55–64-year-olds, for example, both use 8.5 hours of “screens” daily, they do so quite distinctly: The younger segment watches about 2 hours less television every day than the older segment, while using the computer and mobile screens more, to reach their own 8.5 hours.
This clearly outlines the limits on what “can” be done by the consumer, as well as reflecting limits on “how much” they actually want to do. After so many screen hours, perhaps it's time to play some touch football outside, or just go for a walk. Anything but more staring at screens!
The second study is Carat's own 2007 research, conducted in partnership with MySpace, and named “Never Ending Friending.” In it, we clearly found evidence of what we termed “crowding out.” Specifically, after controlling for age, we learned that social network users watched 2 hours less television every week than those in the same age group who did not belong to a social network.
These two important findings suggest that while the future is indeed promising for social listening, there is not unlimited growth potential in this space. We believe that what is likely to happen in the next few years is continued growth, followed by a shakeout and consolidation into a few core providers.
In the interim, we have already started to evaluate the decision to use a social listening provider, such as BuzzMetrics and Cymfony, based on a combination of the attributes of those services, as well as how well those fit the objectives of a given media plan. We know that some agencies have decided to go with just one social listening provider, but we feel that it's too early for that, as the market continues to grow and reshape itself.
To summarize, we believe that the future of social listening is very bright. As part of the BOE media environment, it will continue to play an essential role in evaluating and quantifying earned media. We believe that a big first step in this direction lies in the area of enumerating the different segments, because authors, commentators, connectors, and spectators each have a different weight, depending on the category.
Beyond this, social listening can be of critical value in the generation of thematic material that enhances the understanding of a category and its brands. As such, we see listening as increasingly replacing some, but not all, focus groups (especially when timing is tight).
Finally, we expect that, due to information overload and the related problems caused by increasing consumer participation in social networks, there will be an eventual plateau in these groups’ growth. This will be followed by a decline in both the networks themselves and those who glean, or “scrape,” the information flow from those groups. In the long run, however, we fully expect social networks, social media, and social listening to occupy an important role in the media landscape for all marketers and advertisers. Understanding and capitalizing on that role will be an essential factor in their success.
The Rise of “The People's Network”: Why Listening Will Grow More Important and Change the Way Marketers Think
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer, VivaKi
Word of mouth has always been a potent form of marketing. Technology is now allowing word of mouth to be broadcast and to scale.
The broadcasting of word of mouth takes several forms. It can be liking or disliking an action or a post. It can be a comment that resonates against a social graph. It can be publishing a tweet, a blog, or a video. It can be passing along a positive or negative comment that one comes across. Importantly it is not necessarily initiated or contained in the digital world. It can start offline, move online, and then accelerate offline or vice versa.
This scalable broadcast word of mouth now creates a potent new marketing network, which we refer to as “The People's Network.” Engaging with “The People's Network” is significantly different than most other activity marketers have become specialized at.
1. First engage, and then market: Most marketing efforts begin with a campaign, which is then modified as results filter in. Marketers must realize that today technology allows one to listen to what people are saying about your product and services independent of your marketing efforts and deciding how to react to these efforts is predicated on careful listening. How you decide to “engage” is more important than deciding how you “program” a response. Unlike other “networks” like broadcast or publisher networks, The People's Network rewards responsiveness, flexibility, and customization. It rewards conversation as communication. Conversational marketing is different than broadcast marketing.
2. It's what you do, not just what you say: Oddly, the most powerful form of conversational marketing is not what you say or how you say it, but what you do and deliver. Positive word of mouth is predicated on convincing folks that you are taking action, delivering a superior product or service, or fixing their problem (versus talking about fixing a problem). “Social media” is often less about media and advertising, and is more about customer service, product quality, and value creation. It is about giving a “gift” whether it is lessening a pain, providing a discount, or offering valuable content, among other things. Don't spend money on telling folks how cool your company is…invest in being cool.
3. It's voices—not just users—who are important: Most marketers focus on heavy and frequent users since this group drives a disproportionate share of profits. Often we confuse heavy influencers with heavy users when the opposite is often as true. There are two types of influencers: Advocates who speak positively about your product and detractors who complain about it. Our research has indicated that detractors are four to six times more likely to speak than an advocate. Thus, not only must marketers “arm the advocates” but also “defang the detractors.” The detractor is likely to be a lapsed or non-user. Thus marketing today requires paying great attention to the non-user and light user as much as to the heavy user. Influential voices are not the same as heavy product and category users.
4. Engaging The People's Network is as much a bottom up as a top down effort: Every marketer is now preparing a central listening post and customer response unit somewhere central and at headquarters. While this is important, it is critical to note that a driving force of social is mobile. And mobility is really about place, location, and retail. It is about what happens at a restaurant, at a store, at an event. Marketers must train and empower their local and retail efforts to engage, and not just run things from some central command post far away from the action and often too slow in response.
5. It's about people and authenticity rather than technology platforms and buzz: Technology is especially important today. Technology allows for broadcast of word of mouth, and technology is allowing us to better understand and listen to what people are saying and sharing about our brands. It is understandable that many marketers are investing in technology platforms and creating “Facebook” and “Twitter” strategies. But it is like being in the water business and focusing on the plumbing and forgetting to pump in the water. Social media or conversational marketing is first and foremost about people and about being real. Machines are not real and will not be for some time. Marketers must invest significantly in people. Training people to respond. Training people to think and market differently in this age. Investing in additional people in customer service. Real people, real voices, and real conversations are the only way of being authentic.
6. Earned media is the most expensive form of media and needs to be integrated with paid media to be impactful: Earned media is not “free.” The only way one gets positive word of mouth is by actually delivering value through products, services, or experiences. This is expensive and limited in scale, but the positive word of mouth reflected in posts and comments, called “earned media,” often has great impact. Those online and offline conversations can then be scaled via “paid media” to reach broad audiences. In fact a majority of times people hear about great “earned media” through “paid media.”
7. It's not just about social media marketing, but all marketing: Often the insights you get from social media listening platforms will impact all your marketing efforts—not just your social media efforts. Make sure your social experts work closely with the rest of your marketing team. Avoid creating social media silos.
8. Not all social media experts are expert; separate signals from noise: Vet your experts and get sound advice: It's astounding that there are so many social media “experts” out there in an area only about five years old. LinkedIn's Social Media Marketing Group has nearly 94,000 members. Be careful when some “social expert” comes selling you snake oil for free.