Social Media

Boomers Go Online to Stay In Touch

As I’ve posted on this blog about two years ago, social networking sites are not just for young people. According to a new report on this subject by eMarketer, baby boomers check out social media sites as they’ve always been good communicators, as proven by their presence at sit-ins, protests and demonstrations in the 1960s.

About 47 percent of online boomers maintain a profile on at least one social network, according to several sources. Their contacts include family, friends and co-workers of all ages. Burst Media reported that 47.5 percent of online boomer respondents had a social network profile in June 2009. Last September, Deloitte found 46 percent of boomer respondents said they maintained a social network profile. Both comScore and Anderson Analytics data show that Facebook is the favourite social network for boomers.

And the numbers keep growing. While millennials’ use of social profile remained fairly steady, boomers’ social network presence has actually grown since a 2007 survey, when only 30 percent said they maintained a profile on a social network. Boomers are expanding their networking efforts to include both online and offline connections. They will be interested in online marketing messages that help them build on their connections and make new friends.

Early Adopters and the Mass Market

A well-established principle of marketing says that a small group of early adopters can spur mass-market acceptance of a new product. But how do early adopters react when its brand is accepted by the mass market? And do mass markets react the same way that early adopters do to the same brand? Marketers assume that dominating the first market (early adopters) will also help them dominate the second market (mass market).

Wharton marketing professors David Reibstein and John Zhang have explored the topic and say that a company could experience a backlash as early adopters move on to other new products. An example is Porsche, a successful brand for sports car enthusiasts. The brand saw a decline in sports car sales after it entered the SUV mass market. The backlash was significant.

In fact, as The New York Times points out, teenagers would rather text their friends a message rather than post it on Twitter. Instead, Twitter has been embraced by an older demographic. Twitter’s success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. The brand has proved that an offering can take off in a different demographic than you expect and become very popular. Twitter is defying the traditional model.

So why do marketers assume that success with early adopters will lead to quick adoption by the mass market? The "early adopter" concept is flawed because they aren’t always a good indicator of the growth potential of a brand nor do they have an extended Customer Lifetime Value. Most early adopters move on to the next big thing and may not be loyal to brands.

What is more important is to identify your most profitable potential customers. These profitable customers will eventually be the core of your growth strategy and profitability. The important indicator is the rate of adoption - the relative speed with which the most profitable consumers adopt an innovation. Success depends on an organization's ability to build and maintain loyal and valued customer relationships. Therefore, it is essential to build refined strategies for customers based on their value to the organization. The best marketing strategies pursue long-term relationships with profitable customers.

Two questions for you: (1) Who is your most profitable customer? (2) What is their lifetime value to your organization?

Please email me for our "View from the Top" series on best practices in customer satisfaction strategies.

IDEO Shares Learning

I had the opportunity to attend a Rotman Lecture on the TOPIC: “Knowledge Sharing at IDEO: Designing for Social Interaction” January 28, 2010. The guest speaker was Gentry Underwood, Head of Knowledge Sharing Domain, IDEO

Gentry described a series of tests that his organization had conducted to learn how to design the optimal knowledge sharing system that can be implemented at companies. Much of this learning can be applied to the selection of social media programs and strategy development. Note that he cited as key to consider openness of company culture to collaboration.

Assuming that this is in place, he described the following top 5 considerations in designing the optimal knowledge sharing system as the following:

1. Building pointers to people, different from old school systems management. Service capability companies find this especially valuable. Shared people database
• Similar to facebook people like sharing about themselves
• Integrate available systems, like HR systems for office location and contact information
• Include your personal interests and your external blogs
• Tell your story in no more than 3 bullet points
• Upload documents related to your recent projects
• Team can share what they liked or not about their projects

2. Build rewarding systems, reward individuals - How to build rich people and project pages
• Three main sociological motivators
• Recognition: human nature
• Project staffing: help build better teams
• Career development: connect feedback through the system
• Able to look at individuals in the context of their peers.
• Compliance is not mentioned but included with an animated character in the system named Milton. This animated character appears as a man dressed in a suit and tie; he pops-up on the user’s screen if inappropriate information is being shared or vulgar language etc. The appearance of this character is almost comical as he waves his finger at the system user. In keeping with the intent of increased collaboration and sharing; Milton serves as a reminder rather than a harsh admonishment.

3. Design Intuitive interface, for example, iphone
• Must be really easy to use
• Reduce blocks to usability
• People already had account in system, did not have to set it up
• No training, not set-up, no hand holding->make it as easy as possible
• Information already existed and just needed to be bought together in an easy-to-use format

4. Take the road more travelled - Integrate with existing work flows
• Bring information to people through their in-box
• Public gathering place, in-office cafes now include large wall screens with the 20 most recent people page status updates. People paid attention to people pages and felt more connected. This encouraged passive and ambient connection between offices

5. Iterate early and often - Try lots of stuff and see what sticks
• Learn early and change fast
• For clients, develop software prototypes
• Social software is complicated the human factor is added to the computer interaction. Intuitive and understandable but appropriate social preferences integrated. Social software is in its early stages. Computer and human interaction integration is challenging.

Interesting, at the end of the presentation, the speaker reminded us that none of these on-line collaboration or social networking tools replace face-to-face communication. This may appear obvious, but we really do have to remind ourselves of this.

Patricia McQuillan

Digital Wild West

I’ve had the fortune of blogging here since the inception of this blog and deliberately never wrote anything marketing-related with regards to my current employer. Today is one exception I hope you will grant me.

So I’m not accused of 'ambush shilling' or taking 5 minutes of your time that you will never get back - I’m warning you now. You can close this browser and get out of Dodge. I won’t take offense. I promise.

Still here? Thank you. So let’s saddle up ‘pardner’ and we’ll mosey on out for a little ride!

Some may know I have the fortune of working at Harlequin Enterprises. Yes, that Harlequin. The Harlequin that is one of the leading publishers of women's romance and fiction around the globe.

Recently we launched a new campaign promoting our HQN imprint series ‘The McKettricks’ by author Linda Lael Miller. So what's so special about this online marketing campaign?

Last fall our Creative Director Margie Miller teamed up with our Director of Digital Content & Social Media Malle Vallik to create a unique behind-the-scenes video that shows the making of a Harlequin cover. We had never done anything like this before. Take a look.

Now I’ll admit I’m not a big cowboy fan but I appreciate good content. And although I’m biased, I think this documentary is terrific. As Malle points out in her blog, it gives you a greater appreciation of the work that creative directors and photographers do on a regular basis.

How has the campaign done? We’re very pleased with the response so far. We took some excellent content and promoted it via various online marketing and social media channels by directing people to Take A Cowboy Home which features the video content, sample editorial, cool contest and (most importantly) where to buy the books.

We also got some great support from the fine folks over at MSN who created a unique section promoting this campaign. Not to mention many friends/fans/authors/bloggers who spread the word via various social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

So everything is perfect and we ride off into the sunset, right? Not so fast. There were a few things I learned from this campaign. Call them the '3 Cowboys' like the McKettrick brothers:

1. Many companies work in silos. Often campaigns are created and other teams such as Social Media, PR, IT and/or Legal are left out until the end and then added like a check-box. Do not make that mistake. Involve key groups from cradle (so they become stakeholders) to the grave (so they share in the successes and learnings).

2. It will not always be utopia. There will be hiccups. The issue is not ‘if’ they happen but ‘when’ they happen. And how your team reacts to quickly address them and ensure they don’t happen in future. We started creating a ‘list of oops’ so we include them in our campaign post-mortem report.

3. This is my biggest takeaway. Regardless if you sell books, lotion, laptops or luggage - it's my view you must have a good combination of strong content and promotion for your digital campaigns. They are not mutually exclusive and together make them all the more stronger. Especially in the digital wild west.

Who is Arianna Huffington?

Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of seeing celebrated author and blogger Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, speak at the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning in downtown Toronto.

Chatting with a good friend just prior to the event, I tried to explain to her who I was going to see. The conversation was a fraught with difficulty, as my friend was not really familiar with the Huffington Post – or online news aggregators or blogs or the internet, in general. It was an uphill conversation.

After all, if my friend wasn’t familiar with the Huffington Post website, how could I describe the woman at the helm? Who is Arianna Huffington? Is she a dedicated journalist? Is she a left-wing politician? A rich business owner? A media darling?

The answer: yes.

Arianna is fascinating speaker and eminently quotable. Once she started her lecture, I found myself frantically jotting down notes, scribbling madly as one bon mot after another came flowing effortlessly from the podium. The event was billed as “The Brave New World of the New Media: How technology is changing the way we think, learn, play, work and vote”. Well, yes. That about covers it.

The agenda was lively and diverse. Arianna covered a variety of topics, switching hats from journalism to politics to lifestyle, each time cleverly conveying jewels of wisdom:

Wearing her Newspaperwoman and Journalist Hat
Journalists sometimes get seduced by access. They get the “fly on the wall” detail, but miss the story. Example: China shut off the internet and gave access to select reporters. This was a significant moment in journalism. It's easier to snow a few reporters than thousands of internet users.

Why be citizen journalists? Why do all the online stuff? Answer: self expression is the new form of entertainment. This does not undermine the role of professional journalism. Media will always need journalists to edit the content, frame the stories and give them context.

What we need is a hybrid; a world that brings together the accuracy, fairness and content of traditional journalism as well as the immediacy, accessibility and transparency of new media.

Wearing her New Media Advocate Hat
With regard to traditional media vs. new media: we need to be better at biopsies, not autopsies. Old media is acting like nothing has changed, merging into traffic using a horse and buggy. We can't use an analog map in a digital world.

Traditional media is ADD: breaks the story and then...nothing. New media is OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder): stays on the story day after day after day.

Content follows the user. As a media outlet, we can't expect the world's eyeballs to come to us. We need to go to where the eyeballs are.

People don't consume, but share news. Citizen journalists contribute to the national conversation. New media gives a voice to the voiceless.

Wearing the Politician and Liberal Pundit Hat
The American middle class is in trouble. Wall Street got bailed out, but Main Street did not get the same treatment.

In the U.S., the markets are treated like a Victorian lady - “she” can't handle bad news.

Not everything is Right versus Left – that's a lazy way of looking at politics. We need to take responsibility for our content: objectivity not stupidity.

Instead of Hope, we need Hope 2.0. It's not enough to just cast your vote, people need to stay engaged and contribute if they want to realize change.

Wearing her Lifestyle Guru Hat
Surrounded by our devices, we must learn to disconnect too. Technology can move ahead of social adaptation. We should use technology, but not let it use us.

Unplug and recharge, especially at night. Remove your wireless devices as far away from the bed as possible. Create your own oasis and retain your humanity. Our most precious resource is ourselves.

Arianna had dinner with a man who bragged about only needing four hours of sleep a night. She quipped, “That's too bad. This dinner would have been a lot more interesting if you had gotten five.”
----
So if you ask me now, who is Arianna Huffington? I’d answer: she's an author, a syndicated columnist, a new media advocate, a blogger, a humanist, a politician, a public speaker, a liberal pundit and a businesswoman. She’s the ultimate “all of the above”.

By Kerin Donahue, marketing coordinator at the Canadian Marketing Association

Time to Talk Community

Communities can take on many shapes and can be formed for numerous different reasons. Some may share a common interest in bird watching while others may congregate to discuss computer programming techniques or even dating tips. Although, when discussing communities in the context of brands, trying to understand the motivations that drive consumer involvement becomes slightly more complicated.

What do you mean by “Community”?

What’s the difference? We should begin by defining both an online community and a brand community as follows:

online community: is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. (Wikipedia: online community )

brand community: A brand community is a community formed on the basis of attachment to a product or marque. Recent developments in marketing and in research in consumer behavior result in stressing the connection between brand, individual identity and culture. (Wikipedia: brand community)

According to the definitions above, an online community is focused on how people form and nurture relationships online while a brand community is all about why people/consumers choose to affiliate themselves with a particular brand. This distinction is very commonly overlooked and may be a key reason why many brands who attempt to build a strong following are unsuccessful in doing so.

Consumers are not inherently associated to any one brand. They build an affinity to them when they feel a connection; a certain passion for something that the brand values embody or represent. To simply build the infrastructure to allow consumers the ability to congregate and communicate with each other without understanding what they may be passionate about would result in an environment that lacks cohesion.

The 50th Anniversary Party

Use the example of a 50th anniversary party. John and Sally have been married for 50 years and have a large network of friends of family. They’ve decided to have a large catered event with live entertainment and are thinking about who to invite. Since it is such an exceptional milestone, they thought it would be nice to have an open event where anyone could attend.

In theory it sounded like the event would be a gallant affair yet how would they spread the message to let people know about the occasion? The message would be sent to family and friends as well as to strangers looking for an enjoyable night out. To some the concept of free food sounded appealing while others were looking forward to a night of dancing or even the prospect of meeting an eligible bachelor that they could click with.

Now the question is would people attend because of the couple who were celebrating their milestone or for the freebies that had nothing to do with them at all? If the couple were to host subsequent parties in the future, would people continue to attend and possibly bring their friends along with them? They might, although what would be the common thread that would connect everyone together? What similar interests would people share who were attending these events?

The same could be said for the creation of online communities. To create a series of tools (“freebies”) enabling consumers to congregate online without providing the common thread upon which they may have a unique experience would be similar to inviting people to the party as mentioned above. When developing communities online it’s important for brands to identify the theme or values that will not only connect those who participate but to also bring them closer to the brand.

CCM Takes a Shot at Online Communities

Take CCM Hockey for example. In speaking with Ross McCracken, Senior Brand Manager he mentioned that hockey fans are a very passionate group and that they have a natural tendency to organize themselves and form groups online. CCM recognized this and has been leveraging the web to form meaningful relationships with their consumers since the late nineties when they would respond directly to consumer enquiries via e-mail. Their level of responsiveness and shared passion for the sport allowed them the ability to establish the foundation of an online brand community which has continued to grow and evolve ever since.

Although ROI is not currently being tied back to their online community initiatives, the organization recognizes the power that the social web brings not only to their marketing communications but also in their focused product development efforts. “Key influencers are a big part of our success,” says McCracken, “we look to them to provide valuable input into our new product innovations while helping to create excitement for them when they become market ready. Our communities have enabled us to build a stronger relationship with our consumers while simultaneously positioning our brand as a category leader”.

CCM has done a great job of listening, communicating and connecting passionate hockey fans with the brand, although Ross states, “we still need to do a better job at linking all of our approaches together. The web is constantly changing and we’re continuously looking for ways to keep up with the times so that we can remain relevant to our consumers and be perceived as a trusted partner who understands their needs.”

The organization has embraced the medium and has developed a corporate culture where virtually everyone in the office is involved in social media at some level, not necessarily all working on the brand, albeit, the first step truly is about understanding the channel before being able to realize its full potential.

Is Your Company Ready?

Organizational cultural readiness is a critical success factor for any company seeking to leverage the power of the social web and this is where I will begin my next topic...

By Jeff Pontes, Director – Digital Strategy, FUSE Marketing Group

Recessionary Marketing Theme #4

Our firm conducted research over the past year on the topic of marketing in a recession. This is the last of four themes that we uncovered as input to our CMA Marketing Blog with the hope of stimulating more dialogue.

The Need for Integrated Marketing & Measurement

Marketers will have limited success with ‘silo’ marketing tactics - for example, solely using social media or traditional advertising. In order to maximize the impact of marketing communications, brands need a combination of new, social media tactics and more traditional, mass marketing tactics.

According to a recent Booze Allen Hamilton study, 80% of marketers are spending more on digital marketing than in the past. This statistic is not surprising as marketers increasingly understand the need for integrated marketing communications planning to create a better experience for consumers by incorporating new media into their communications tactics.
Industry experts agree that there are two streams of marketing communications, (1) tactics targeting the masses (fixed, long-term focus) and (2) the more immediate stream addressing market opportunities as they arise (tend to include digital media). For example, the Doritos Guru campaign maintained their traditional mass marketing but added a social, consumer co-creation element to allow a pocket of their core customers to easily engage and contribute to the brand – supporting the idea that ‘brands belong to their customers’. Essentially, the campaign allowed a community to live online, and it also created general awareness. The fame attached to your brand helps.

Nissan Canada chose a different strategy to launch the Nissan Cube through their ‘Hypercube campaign’ as the launch campaign only used social media. The campaign was based on a contest that awarded 50 individuals with a Cube based on individual creativity and social networking abilities (participants must audition). The auditions gave the Nissan marketing team real user-generated content that can be leveraged in future communications.

It is difficult to measure the impact of social media compared to traditional media in integrated marketing communications planning, and as such, it creates additional challenges for marketers to clearly define the ROI of new, digital tactics. Just as marketing communications planning has evolved to become increasingly integrated, marketing tracking and measurement will evolve to measure the impact and relationship between traditional and digital media.

What has your firm's experience been with measurement of integrated marketing campaigns?

It’s the Pace of Change That’s Disruptive, Not Social Media

The way we receive and distribute information has always changed throughout history. As marketers, why would we expect anything different going forward?

Initially, the predominant flow of information from community to community, and generation to generation, was by ‘word of mouth’. Early written communication consisted of pictures and paintings which told a story to be interpreted by the viewer. As language and society evolved, information started to be recorded in the written word of scribes. The origin of the word history (or ‘his story’) likely stems from each scribe or artist taking some creative license to adapt the subject matter to the times, the views and expectations of their respective patrons, and their own their own beliefs and biases. And then there’s the arrival of the printing press which enabled the age of mass communications, a precursor to today.

Personal communications have also seen radical change. Up until the early 20th century, the predominant, most efficient and effective way to communicate when face to face was not possible was to send a letter. The first telephone poles erected were met with the same doubt as the Orville brothers’ flight plans – now nary a day goes by without one’s mobile acting as a body appendage. The fax machine was something out of a Star Trek episode and email was an internal only communications tool supported with memos and formal business letters.

Social media has enabled the age of mass personal communications - everyone can create, distribute, and receive multimedia content on demand. However, the existence of social media is no more or less disruptive than its forbearers – the printing press, radio, telegraph, telephone, computer, internet, and so on. What is different is the pace of change. In the past four decades, we have seen more change in how we communicate en masse and personally, than we have in the last 500 years.

While change is a constant, three truisms have emerged that marketers need to pay attention to:

• Each time a new communication vehicle takes hold, the middleman or messenger is relegated to a lesser role. From a marketer’s perspective, that means less and less control over the message.
• Old channels don’t burn out, but fade away. As the pace of change in the way we communicate continues to accelerate, the resulting communication channel is increasingly splintered. For marketers, that means social media should be part of the mix, not the whole mix.
• While individual forms, platforms and service providers, may come and go, once a groundswell is created for a new mode of communication, resistance is futile. The question is not whether to adopt, but how if you haven’t already and to keep your eyes, ears, and fingers peeled for the next disruption because I guarantee you it's coming.

Change is the disruption, social media is the effect.

By Jenn Markey, a principal with M3C Group

Social Media Pollution

Consider the following scenario: Your plumber approaches you after completing a repair in your home. He seems like a nice enough guy, so you give him a chance when he begins speaking to you. He asks if you’d be interested in receiving his weekly newsletter. You are confused and a little bit uncomfortable. You decide to play along, though, and ask him what the aforementioned newsletter would touch on. He responds, “Oh, various items on plumbing and how you can get the best out of it. I have different tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your toilet-water… I also review new fixtures and pipes that are hitting the market.”

At this point, you awkwardly decline, allow him to leave, and lock the door. Why did this happen? It’s simple; there is no need for an exterior relationship between the service (our weird, hypothetical plumber) and the consumer (you). When my water pipes are busted, I require the service. Beyond that, it’s not really part of my world – and I’m okay with that. So why do so many marketers try to force the same kind of irrelevant content down the public’s throat on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? As these sites continue to grow in popularity and international reach, uninformed marketers are latching onto their coattails and, consequently, making a fool of themselves.

When done right, many brands have been quite successful utilizing this young medium. Clothing company H&M posts photos of their new seasonal collections and other interesting materials that their close to1.5 million fans on Facebook legitimately care about. As marketers, we are obligated to understand and properly take advantage of the trends that affect our consumers. There is no doubt that social media provides an opportunity for branding. However, that opportunity isn’t open to every business out there. You must have something unique to offer the consumer - beyond a price listing or link to your website. If there is no demand for additional material, don’t provide it. You’ll just be polluting an emerging media that consumers are still interested in.

So before you hop on the social media bandwagon, please take a minute to consider if anyone wants you going along for the ride. After all, it’s already pretty crowded out there.

Brook Johnston @marketingman.ca

Green Marketing and Brand Strategy

The latest research indicates that uncertain economic conditions have resulted in a decline in the core group of “Green Involved” consumers who would pay a premium for green products (17% in 2008 to 15% in 2009). The study (nationally representative sample of 2,465 adults, ages 18+) indicates that 2.7% of shoppers account for 70% of “informed and conscious green” purchases. Moreover, only 1 in 10 “green” shoppers is an “organic” shopper. Grocery transactions tend to be larger when green products are in the cart. In addition, 38% (45% in 2008) of Canadian consumers feel "highly concerned" about environmental issues. Even though consumers who feel “highly knowledgeable” about these issues increased to 29% (26% in 2008).

Transition to the mainstream

The transition has been driven by mainstream brands. Today, green has become another product attribute in a matrix of good-better-best benefit hierarchies. Tide has "biodegradable" ingredients. Others are labelled concentrates and cold water detergents. These are add-on benefits and enhance the core value proposition of the brand. They do not replace that core value proposition (superior product performance).

Today's customers are more demanding. They don’t believe all the claims being made by marketers- a fall out of greenwashing. Consumer scepticism has led marketers to include eco labels in their communication strategies. North America has over 350 eco-labels offered by trusted third parties. Marketers have laucnhed blogs and social networks with "fans" who contribute new product ideas. Method has its own Facebook page complete with a wall of comments from many of their 7,415 "fans" and a Twitter following of 3,284 users. Tide has 104,235 Facebook fans.

Please email me for additional insights from Arcus Consulting Group's studies on changing market drivers & successful strategic responses.

"Confirmation Bias" and Brand Loyalty

Our minds hate change. Several studies have shown that people are twice as likely to seek information that confirms their beliefs than they are to consider evidence that contradicts them. This "confirmation bias" can influence how consumers and marketers make decisions.

Henry Ford famously said, "If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have asked for a faster horse." In other words, the road to true innovation is rarely illuminated by customers telling you what to do next; they may often not know what they want next or rely on a "confirmation bias" about their preferences.

Most innovative marketers say that fighting confirmation bias is a never-ending battle. But if you can't conquer this gremlin of your own mind, you don't stand a chance of outwitting your competitors.

We see this behaviour in all our decisions. A case in point is how retail investors hold on to stocks in a falling market, believing that the markets will rise, without any empirical evidence that this is likely to happen. Consumer confidence is a big driver of purchase behaviour. If consumers believe this recession will last a lot longer than it will because they recently lost their jobs, they are likely to scale back discretionary spending even after they find a new job because of a "confirmation bias".

In short, the human mind acts like a compulsive yes-man who echoes whatever you want to believe. Psychologists call this mental gremlin the "confirmation bias". A recent analysis of psychological studies with nearly 8,000 participants concluded that people are twice as likely to seek information that confirms what they already believe as they are to consider evidence that would challenge those beliefs.

Why is a mind-made-up so hard to penetrate?

Psychologists say its easier for consumers to repeat decisions than to take new ones. Whatever decisions consumers are inclined to make, are the decisions consumers are likely to go about justifying. It's simply easier to focus our attention on data that supports our preferences, rather than to seek out evidence that might disprove it. "Confirmation bias" is one of the biggest drivers and often under reported influencers of brand loyalty. It transcends the usual influencers such as product performance, emotional empathy and brand recognition.

It also is easier for people to rationalize than to be rational. Consumers and marketers are very good at cooking up post-hoc explanations of why our predictions didn't work or why we made some decisions. We tend to reinterpret our failures as near-misses.

The more you learn, the more certain you become that you are right. While gathering more data makes people more confident, it doesn't make their predictions much more accurate. Each new fact makes you more inclined to find another fact that resembles it, reducing the diversity and value of your information.

Confirmation bias contaminates the thinking of brand preferences of consumers. A lot of psychological traps can be combated with humility, but on this one, that doesn't help. For example, several North American auto companies missed the significant growth opportunity in fuel efficient cars because they clung to outdated strategies for gas guzzling SUVs and eroded brand value with carrots such as 'employee pricing'.

So how can marketers counteract confirmation bias?

A way to approach it is to imagine that you have looked into a crystal ball and have seen that your strategy has gone bust. Next, come up with the most compelling explanations you can find for the failure. This exercise, which some of the most innovative and successful marketers have integrated into their research process, can help you realize that your beliefs regarding why consumers might or might not prefer your brand might not be as solid as you thought.

Try estimating the odds that your analysis is wrong. Let us say that you reckon there is a 20% chance of an adverse outcome; that is like saying you will be proven wrong one in every five times. This way, if the investment does go awry, you will be less likely to dig in your analytical heels and desperately try to prove that you are still right. This procedure provides "psychological cover for admitting that you're wrong."

Show your ideas and strategies to another person you respect whose ego isn't already invested in the decision. Ask: If you didn't have to take this decision, would you still agree with it?

Run an imaginary strategy alongside your real one. There, you can change it at will, with no risk to your brand portfolio. On that blank slate, would you do more—or less—of your existing approach to strategy and consumer engagement? Some organizations require each team member to run a stress test of their brand portfolio and to justify any differences between their paper strategies and the company’s real-world plans. It helps senior executives know what people really think.

Before you decide on a marketing or business strategy in the first place, write down a statement of what would compel you to change your view of the strategy. If any of those influencers come to pass, the written record will make it harder for you to pretend nothing has changed or that you don't have to do anything in response.

Please email me if you would like to receive Arcus Consulting Group's series on "Better consumer engagement strategies".

Watch This...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Are you in?

5 Free Fantastic Social Media Monitoring Tools

Working in the social space is about more than just connecting, networking and broadcasting. You also have to listen so that you know where and how you can improve your brand's reputation. Conversations will inevitably happen with or without your involvement, so even if you’re not active in the social space, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t being talked about.

The good news is you don’t have to rush out and purchase an expensive software package to manage your social monitoring for you.

You can do it yourself… FOR FREE!

There are a number of tools available on the web to help marketers with their social media monitoring.

Check out some of these tools to help you with your listening objectives:

www.search.twitter.com
Perhaps obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people DON’T know about the Twitter search tool. Twitter search allows you to search by keyword and monitor recent tweets.

The search tool also has a “reply” option as well as a “view tweet” option, which is great for presentations and social media monitoring reports.

www.backtype.com/
Backtype is a conversation-monitoring tool that allows you to search conversations on blogs, social networks and various other social media sites so you can find out what people are saying.

The great thing about Backtype is that it extensively monitors comments on blogs, which a lot of listening tools do not.

http://boardtracker.com/
Boardtracker is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening on forums. I like how specific it is, especially because a lot of important conversations happen on forums. It’s an important medium that should not be overlooked.

Boardtracker recently released a 2.0 beta version, however, I would recommend using the original version FIRST, as the results may not be the same.

www.socialmention.com
Social Mention is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening online in virtually any social web property. It searches blogs, microblogs, forums, comments, video and more.

While I like to use this tool a lot, I don’t recommend using it as your ONLY source of monitoring. You should use it in conjunction with others. It also tends to be slow at times.

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ (or .com if you’re from the US)
Google Blog Search is a staple. It helps you find relevant blog posts and blog authors who discuss your brand and have influence on the web. It’s important to know who these people are, so that you can engage in conversation with them or at the very least, know what they are publishing about you.

So these are just a few of my favourite tools. Of course there are search tools available on practically every social site as well. I routinely scour Digg, BlogCatalog, YouTube, and Facebook during my monitoring programs, in addition to the ones mentioned above. It's all about using the tools that you are comfortable with, that give you the best results.

Have fun out there!

Consumption smoothing - how to stress test your marketing strategies

Will a cut back in consumer spending have a dramatic impact on your business performance? The key to succeeding in these challenging times is to explore scenarios that you haven't looked at in the past because business cannot use the same strategies for a different set of economic conditions or marketing outcomes. Consumption smoothing is an emerging trend that may be of interest to marketers. It’s a popular approach used by consumers to insure their consumption in the presence of risky and variable incomes.

What is Consumption Smoothing?

Consumption smoothing is an economic concept which seeks to balance spending and saving to attain and maintain the highest possible living standard over the course of one's life. This idea is notable because of its difference in approach to common knowledge about consumer behaviour during periods of economic growth. However, in uncertain times, the concept can have a significant impact on the growth and profitability of your brands if you identify customer groups who are most likely to experience consumption smoothing.

What does this mean for marketers?

Here are five ideas on how senior marketers could approach this emerging trend:

1. Explore new consumer segmentation models.

Account for risk profiles of your most profitable customers. Adding a variable that measures attitudes to risk may provide an indication of how consumers will react to changes in household incomes, economic conditions and pricing changes.

2. Revise price elasticity models.

Research indicates consumer behaviour in a crisis is characterized by consumption smoothing at various levels. In sum, these behavioural adjustments result in significant reallocation of consumption expenditures depending on the profile of your most profitable customers. Brand portflio pricing strategies that account for potential shifts in purchase patterns can deliver more profitable growth strategies.

3. Assess the potential impact of consumption smoothing on your brand portfolio.

Consumer smoothing is accentuated in some categories and for some brands that have specific profiles that make them more vulnerable to changes in economic conditions and consumer spending patterns. Using scenario planning techniques may result in increased visibility of potential strategies.

4. Ask the right questions.

Often marketers take the approach of looking at their competitors for cues on superior strategies. This could be a suboptimal approach if these strategies do not undergo rigorous stress testing for emerging consumer behaviour.

5. Look at best practices from past recessions.

Explore successful strategies adopted by brands with similar profiles in past recessions. The analysis may shed some light on opportunities for initiatives that can lead to superior results.

Please email me if you may have any questions or would like to receive more information about consumer smoothing trends in your product category.

Facebook and the 300 Million Number

You may have heard the recent news ,the impressive reveal that Facebook now has a staggering 300 Million users worldwide. Even more impressive is the news that they are cash flow positive, with a 2009 revenue forecast of $500 Million.
Wow. 500 million in revenue from a business model that is consistently under heavy scrutiny is not bad, or is it?

What I mean by this is that Facebook makes money selling adspace and sponsorships, just like any other online destination. The biggest selling points for Facebook are the sheer scale of its users and the stickiness of the site.

But what does this mean for marketers if Facebook is making money? To me it reinforces the widely accepted belief that many of us are still struggling with how to integrate the powerful reaching social media phenomena into our plans.

Buying an ad on Facebook and contributing to their positive cashflow is not a viable tactic to engage in social media. So if you have been feeding the beast in this manner, please stop. Here is some research that discusses the impact of ads on social networking sites vs. other sites. Although the data is from Nov 2008, the findings are widely accepted.

It is important for most companies to be involved in social media but the level of engagement depends on the relevance of the various platforms to your target and the reason why you would like to be involved in the first place. Are you looking to drive sales? Are you looking to learn more about your potential customers? Are you looking to interact with your current customers? These are all questions that will help guide your strategy, which in the end should be tied to a business objective.

One must avoid the GMOOT at all costs (see The Return of The Brand as King). Dove Canada is a great example of how social media, in particular Facebook can be leveraged. Read some of the comments that are posted by some of the 2,309 fans - who wouldn’t want their brand to have these fans…