Customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous.

Not so long ago the relationship that brands had with their customers was a one way street. The brand was the boss. They told their customers what they liked and how to like it. The only say the customer had was the decision to buy. This is no longer the case, customers are very publicly talking back and it is making the management teams of some brands very nervous. Web based social networking platforms give customers power never seen before. Now one voice can be heard by thousands of people. Brands need to learn to deal with this evolution, so here is a primer.

First, some background on how the internet has altered consumer behaviour. The internet, and particularly the rise of social media, has allowed people with similar interests to connect. This is abundantly obvious when one trawls through Twitter where the common social network model of simply connecting with people you know tends to give way to people connecting in groups according to interest. Indeed, people interested in any topic imaginable from all areas of the world are connecting. It’s like subject based forums on steroids. People are forming tribes.

People desperately want to be connected but, even more importantly, they want to be led.

Humans have always formed tribes. Religion, family, sports and fashion are all examples of tribal behaviour. The difference now is that any interest group can form a tribe almost instantly. Social media has allowed any fringe idea to become the basis of a tribe and a movement. People desperately want to be connected but, even more importantly, they want to be led. We are in a time of massive change. This change is driven by everybody’s desire to do things in a new way and to be heard.

Barack Obama’s recent landslide victory is a good example of this. He promised change, he communicated differently and led with integrity. He connected to his audience through social media. He started a movement, formed a tribe and then he and his followers charged to victory. What the world discovered is that you can now make an ad campaign as slick as you want but if the product is poor then it simply doesn’t matter.

So “advertising is dead” in the sense the old methods don’t work the same way they used to. Obama’s opponents didn’t fully understand the impact that social networking has had on society. They continued to use the old and trusted methods of marketing. These apparently transparent methods are diminishing in influence as social networking begins to infiltrate every media touch-point. In two recent articles I wrote for the Anthill blog I talked about how this is already happening to television and how the newspaper industry needs to change to avoid becoming irrelevant (see the end of this article for links).

Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind.

Social media is much more than a passing phase. Human civilisation is built around social interaction. It’s what the people want and this new media is only going to get bigger. It will eventually become part of everything. Individual social media companies might fade away (MySpace seems to be in that category) as better designed products come onto the market, but the world has spoken and it wants to be connected. Brands that don’t adapt to this reality will be left behind. They will become the guy at the party that nobody wants to sit next to because he just keeps talking about himself.

Tribal behaviour

Blogs have become socially and commercially influential. From what started out as individuals chatting on about their lives, blogs have become business tools and money making ventures. They influence groups, buying patterns and fashion. They are modern tribal leaders.

Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’.

Not so long ago commentators speculated that blogging was simply a passing fad. What these commentators didn’t realise was that it was yet to achieve maturation and once it had it would signal big trouble for the large media organisations. Now anyone with a camera or a desire to write is ‘the press’. This pattern is being repeated for micro-blogging, a category of which Twitter is the current market leader. Some commentators question the relevance of utilising Twitter to listen to people “drone on about their lives”. But Twitter, and other micro blogs, are in the early stages of their development. They too will mature, most probably much quicker than the original blogs, and enable much bigger tribes to develop around even more specific subject matter.

The tribal leaders of these new social media can be reached and persuaded to support you, no matter what platform they decide to use. Unlike the old ‘one way’ approach however, they need to be interacted with on their own terms. Provided they have a group of true fans, they can influence hundreds of thousands of people – in a matter of hours. This is what gives them such power.

And this is what marketers in the current environment have to understand. The ‘mass-market’ model is on the decline. What is needed now is a pattern of marketing to the ‘early adopters’ – the guys at the front of the bell curve, the ones that have a true interest in what you have to offer – and form a base of evangelists that will market for you. You no longer have to aim to connect with everyone. This really leaves the field wide open for the smaller brands to break through – the ones willing to challenge.

The age of the challenger

In marketing speak a ‘challenger brand’ is code for ‘the small brand’. A challenger brand is one that is meant to be fast, flexible and innovative in its communications. But in my view the word ‘challenger’ should instead be short hand for ‘emerging leader’.

Emerging leaders challenge the status quo, they challenge themselves and they connect with others who have similar ideas – those people who need a leader to show and inspire them what to do. The market leader wants the status quo to remain just that. They want to speak and be heard in a mass market. No discussion thanks.¬† The challenger realises that, in order to create a movement there needs to be systems in place for everybody in that tribe to be heard, and they commit to leading that tribe with everything they’ve got.

Traditional advertising is not about interaction with the individual. It is predominately a one way conversation to a mass audience. But nobody likes to be forced into making decisions. This is why the traditional advertising model is beginning to fail. It relies on mass media, and this media is itself being transformed by social networks.

What can social networking do for your brand

All of this may sound a bit scary for brand managers. It’s true that it does take time and effort to build a community and to be truly effective you have to obey some rules. Even so, it is not a hard thing to do. It takes far more time and resources to build that fan base with traditional advertising. Be honest, be helpful and contribute to the community and you’ll get supporters fast.

Social networking is far more than having a Facebook profile. It is any platform that gives the end user an ability to contribute. Many companies have realised that developing an internal social media platform can aid in communication but have yet to work out how it can help shape their brand personality.

A good social media strategy accepts you can’t do everything at once. A company can employ a social platform to perform customer service, to connect directly with customers thereby humanising the brand, to obtain demographic information on individuals to improve the effectiveness of direct marketing or to harness a mass of surplus cognitive resource to generate new ideas.

You can’t do everything with social media but as long as you are focused you will be able to do much more than you may expect.

Where to start

In the coming months many companies will try to market through social networks and many will fail.

In the coming months many companies will try to market through social networks and many will fail. There are of course ways of dramatically upping the chances of success, not least of which is making sure you hire a company that knows the space well. Making sure you are across the fundamentals will help move things along quickly.

The first thing any company moving into social networking should decide is the overall goal. Knowing what you want to achieve and why you are doing it may seem obvious but is something that is easily overlooked if you rush into a project too quickly.

Like any good marketing activity you need to know how your customers think and behave. Unlike traditional advertising, marketing online is very data rich. It is possible to know exactly what your customers are looking at, how long they spend doing it and who they then talk to about the experience. Make sure you know as much of this information as is possible before you develop a strategy any further.

From there deciding what channels you wish to utilise becomes a very important choice. You should know where your target market is by this stage so deciding if Facebook, Twitter, Bebo or any other platform is right should be easy. Deciding to create your own platform is a bigger step but can be very rewarding if it is done correctly. Again, make sure you are getting good advice and a solid strategy and don’t just assume that if you make something it will get used.

Measurement is important in all areas of business and social networking is no exception. Developing good metric methods should be an early priority. Remember that it is possible to measure everything but not all information has value. Knowing what you are looking at is vital. If you are hiring a marketing firm to build you a social networking campaign it makes sense to have part of the payment tied to the performance of that campaign. If you are building a network to get staff talking to each other and your customers the quality of the content will go down if you assign KPIs to ‘platforms usage’ only.

Most importantly make sure everyone involved knows what your ‘voice’ is. It is wise to develop a policy around social networking usage but if that policy is too tight then you will lose support. This is about people. Learn that it is OK to give up control of your marketing message and become part of the conversation. Be honest, be objective and be involved. And do not leave your community. You have made a promise to these people to listen to them. If you stop participating they will abandon you in an instant!

Start leading

There is no better time to start developing social media strategies.

There is no better time to start developing social media strategies. All market segments¬† are spending a lot more time on social networks (the time spent on Facebook grew by over 500% in the year Dec ‘07 to Dec ‘08) and in this time of economic downturn it may be wise to attract new customers from further afield. In the not too distant future every company will have a social networking policy so getting in early will give you an edge.

If you can hold a conversation you can market in social media

Marketing in social networks is not rocket science. It may involve technology but, at its core, it is what human civilisation is built upon. If you can hold a conversation you can market in social media.

So get good advice and get moving. The world is changing and the challengers are going to come out on top. They will create movements and lead tribes. They will interact and not be afraid of change. They will know how to listen and realise the greatest power they have is to empower their customers.

If you understand that these networks have all been built because it’s what your customers want, then the challenger, the leader, can be you.

Further reading

http://anthillonline.com/marketing-wisely-in-an-economic-downturn/
http://anthillonline.com/how-social-networks-are-transforming-tv/
http://anthillonline.com/what-the-newspaper-industry-needs-to-do-to-survive/
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc

From the TED website -¬†”Great design is a never-ending journey of discovery — for which it helps to pack a healthy sense of humor. Sociologist and surfer-turned-designer David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images.”

He said that he was ‘mad as hell’ at what he saw as intellectual property theft.

News aggregators like The Huffington Post and Google News recently came under fire from Dean Singleton, the chairman of Associated Press. He said that he was ‘mad as hell’ at what he saw as intellectual property theft. From Mr Singleton’s point of view social networking and search engines are killing the newspaper industry. He sees a future where people pay to log on to their content and other sites pay to link to their articles. Unfortunately for him this attitude is going to put him off side with a large portion of his potential market.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently told the Newspaper Association of America that newspapers were very close to committing suicide by alienating their online customers, the fastest growing segment. What’s more a recent study showed that the generation who grew up with Google and Facebook love news aggregators and free news. The study says “Not only are teens not rushing to pay for content but they also struggle to envision in what realm they would need to pay for content…. Ask teens where they find news, and they typically say Yahoo!, Google, AOL or MSN”.

Frankly it sounds like newspapers struggle to understand the opportunities and rules that govern the online world. There is a whole generation that has grown up with the concept of freemium economics. Try to charge them for something they have always had for free and you’ll lose them altogether.

They need to remember that their main customers are advertisers.

Newspapers are in the business of collecting and delivering information. They have to be agnostic and flexible about the method of delivery if they are to avoid being trapped in outdated and inefficient channels. The old model of monetising this information is on the way out. Even the term “newspaper” is starting to sound like a relic. They need to remember that their main customers are advertisers. If they embrace the new mindset and employ direct marketing principles there is a world of new commercial opportunities out there.

Here’s what we think hold the most amount of promise:

1 – More engaging advertising

One of the most difficult transitions for newspapers going online has been understanding how to sell advertising space online. Banners are OK but many of them are just annoying and get ignored.

Newsprint was a simple platform that advertisers could use to get a message out. Online newspapers need to create a new advertising platform. Develop a collection of tools that not only track users behaviour but allow advertisers to sell their products more easily.

Currently many advertisers create landing pages for banner ads. These pages pass on detailed information, get users to sign up or even make a sale.

If the digital arm of a newspaper were to develop easy to manage tools that allowed advertisers to perform these tasks, thus reducing the overall campaign cost and timeframe, advertisers would be over the moon.

Not so long ago we developed an online application for the Herald Sun’s sponsorship of the Melbourne Marathon. This application, utilising RFID technology, allowed each and every runner to see a video of themselves. With a bit more development time could have added targeted advertising to this type of application and created a platform that could be used for multiple events.

It is this type of thinking that advertisers are looking for.

2 – Utilise the Twitternet

Micro-blogging is here to stay. Twitter is currently the market leader in this space but who knows what will happen in the coming years. What’s certain is that 2009 is going to see the tipping point for Twitter. Well worded headlines can easily drive traffic to the source of the news. Again, The New York Times is already doing this. When this article was written the Times had more than 500,000 followers and this number will keep rising.

There are huge opportunities here to increase overall traffic.

There are huge opportunities here to increase overall traffic. Twitter lets people connect with ideas and information, and ideas and information are what news sources are all about.

3 – Realise that the brand is a social centre

Newspapers are brands with a customer base that identifies with it like any other brand. More than ever newspapers need to remember that fact and learn to leverage it. Connecting with local communities and encouraging them to add content.

Currently many online newspapers are concerned about moderating any user generated content and create rules and dedicate resources to achieving that end. An alternative and much better approach is to get other members of that community to vote on comments or images. Sites like ‘Digg’ do this very well. If a user posts an abusive remark it is very quickly voted out of the time line. Recently President Obama launched a website that did just that. Read more about it here.

This influx of user generated content can then be monetised. The Cincinnati Enquirer has a site that does this. CaptureCincinnati.com is a user generated photo sharing site. They have been selling a coffee table book and a DVD of this content and expect it’s popularity to continue to be strong. There could even be the possibility of users ordering photos to make a customised book through the site.

An online community based around a newspaper brand is a fruit ripe for the picking.

An online community based around a newspaper brand is a fruit ripe for the picking. You only have to look at the comments on any news site to see how eager the audience is to get involved.

4 – Personalisation

Some websites get it right but many don‚Äôt. Personalisation on the web is huge and is only going to get bigger. Google has a product called ‘iGoogle‘ that let‚Äôs you personalise a page. Stuff.co.nz is a news site that lets you order some elements of the page. Underlying these examples is an understanding that the end user has specific interests that they want information about. News site are uniquely positioned to be able to deliver that information in a very targeted way. If they focus on user experience people will flock to their sites.

BBC.co.uk have made an admirable effort with their widgetised home page, taking more than a hint of inspiration from iGoogle. You can drag the sections around, customise them a little, and add more from other areas of the site. However it’s only skin deep.  The big leap will be developing this idea to a point where users have control over the whole experience, not just what they find on the home page.

5 – Open up even more

APIs or application programming interfaces are driving the progress of the web, and newspapers need to embrace them. APIs allow third party developers to connect to websites and deliver customised content. I know this sounds counter-intuitive but it is already being done. The New York Times Developer Network allows developers to create applications that deliver their content to the end user.

What The Times has realised, that many other news sources have failed to do, is that what they really have is an information platform Рrather than an online newspaper, or even a website. Giving third party developers access to this opens up opportunities to deliver advertisers messages in a more direct way, allowing them to increase the size and value of their user database and cut down the cost of developing their own applications by only partnering with developers that get the formula right.

6 – Change the printed material

The news media industry is in transition, one day printed newspapers will be history. The industry needs to think very carefully about how they structure and deliver printed matter now and in the future. Design is paramount. The customer now has a choice. It’s time to respect that choice.

I think this recent TED talk demonstrates the proposition very well.

Further reading:
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/more-bad-news-f.html

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo.

As a tribute to him I have put a few videos together.

BMW Z4 artwork

QBN sessions

10 questions

My personal favorite “Why Random?”

We Love WP has picked our site as one of the best sites for December.

To see view it on the welovewp.com

I recently found this great collection of retro graphic design.

Thanks to Smashing Magazine for their continued work.