Posts Tagged ‘influencers’

February7

Define the (Social Media) Relationship

By: Spike Jones

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Here’s the thing about creating relationships with influencers – or with any customers for that matter: BOTH sides have to want the relationship. That’s just the way any healthy relationship works.

But we live in a day and age where the “professional influencers” are being chased by the love-sick brands like the middle-high school geek desperately wanting to be noticed by the most popular girl in the class (not that I know anything about that). No matter how much he dreams about it, plots about it, creates opportunities for it to happen or downright wants it, she has to want it too. Because one person wanting a relationship does not a relationship make.

And therein lies the rub with social. We see study after study that proves most people don’t want to have a deep, meaningful relationship with a brand. They want a discount. They want a freebie. They want. And they want more. It’s all take and no give. And then on this side, you have a mountain of brands pushing out marketing messages hoping to get a bite on a sale. Again, it’s all take and no give. Not exactly a healthy relationship, is it?

Now I don’t want to lead to you to believe that this is always the case. There are those loyal, passionate folks that DO want to have a deep, meaningful, long-lasting relationship with a brand. They want to learn all about them. To know their hopes and dreams. To know what ails them (and try and help fix it). And, of course, that will stand up for them no matter what. These are those rare advocates. And because they are rare, they need to be treated as such – but that’s another post for another time.

My point is this: let’s define the relationship first. There’s already so much clutter in the social media space now, do you really want to push out more of it to an audience who could are less? Look, DTR talks are hard. But the great thing is that at the end of it, you at least know where you stand, and the hard part is over.

Now the real work begins.

 

Posted in: lessons learned, marketing, word of mouth3 comments

November26

What real word of mouth looks like

By: Spike Jones

Gather ’round, kids because I want to share a case study with you that I just can’t seem to get out of my head. It’s about a year old now, but the lessons you can learn from this one will stick with you for a long, long time. It’s got everything: an unsexy product. An audience in middle America. Oh, and word of mouth marketing at its finest.

I’m talking about the kids over at Fizz and their work with the American Dairy Association of Ohio.

You can read the full, award-winning case study here, but let me give you a recap.

Challenge: Milk sales in Ohio were slumping (just like the rest of the country). If fact, consumption had dropped over 50% since the 70s.

The Legwork: Fizz dug into the ethnographic research and found that 65% of Ohioans live in cities under 50,000 people and 22% live in towns under 10,000. In other words, just like we learned with the teen anti-smoking movement in South Carolina, if you want to reach the majority of people in a rural state, you have to take the message to them.

The next big thing they discovered is that there is a solid case to be made for chocolate milk as a sports recovery drink. Seriously, look it up. “Researchers and nutritionists at Indiana found that chocolate milk, the drink of little kids, was the perfect beverage to drink after strenuous activity. It was, in reality, a better for you, high tech sports drink.”

But the big A-HA moment came when Fizz was identifying their influencers for this campaign. Did they go to food bloggers? No. Health and wellness bloggers? Sports bloggers with big Twitter followings? Nope. In fact, they didn’t use online influencers at all. So think to yourself, who, in rural towns across Ohio, would be the go-to person(s) when it comes to sports, nutrition and performance – all wrapped up in respect and a source of authority?

High school football coaches.

Smart, right?

Think about it. Football is huge in small-town Ohio. It’s an honor and privilege to be on the team. So if you’re on the team, your coach’s word is law. And also if you’re on the team, you’re more than likely a popular kid in the school – so you have people watching and looking up to you. Coach says drink chocolate milk because it’s good for recovery, you drink it. Others ask you why and then they drink it, too. This has a huge trickle-down word of mouth effect.

Results: Straight from the case study:

Kroger’s chocolate milk sales in the Cincinnati region increased an incredible 475%. That is a Kroger system-wide record for increase in milk sales;Kroger management could not believe so much milk was being sold. In markets across Ohio, milk consumption increased 12-28% YTD as verified by IRI Scandata. This was 10 times the rate of the rest of the country. The sales rise was so dramatic that concerned convenience store owners even contacted the agency staff about chocolate milk’s possible illicit use because of the unprecedented sales to teenage boys (remember “Whipits?”).

There is a lot more to the WOMMY-winning case study that you’ll find interesting, so be sure to head over to the Fizz site and take a look.

The biggest take-away for me is this: Influence comes in all shapes and sizes. And it takes carefully planned, insightful digging to find out where your story is going to resonate. The days of making a list of influential bloggers and then pitching them are waning. Because the very definition of online influence is changing on a daily basis. It’s a moving target. And if it’s where you put all your hope (and money), you’re bound to fail. The social media marketing world is falling into a Facebook, Twitter and blog rut. As John Bell said at the recent WOMMA conference: “It’s our job to build belief in the fundamentals.” How true. When we forget the basics, we will fail. When we forget that 90% of word of mouth happens offline, we will fail. But when we combine online and offline in meaningful ways, it opens up a whole world of opportunity. Easier said than done? Of course. Impossible? Not on your life.

Posted in: brands, Featured, lessons learned, marketing, word of mouth2 comments

May15

Social Business Means Cultural Change

By: Spike Jones

Social business. All the cool kids are doing it. Come on, you should do it to. Why? You’ll be POP-uLARRRR!!

Like victims of high school peer pressure, everyone in the digital world is talking about how social business is the next big thing. And I’m not here to argue if it is or isn’t. Brother Armano recently wrote a great post about the evolution of digital that lays it out very nicely and talks about the natural evolution of social media into social business. It’s the next logical step, really. In fact, we’re seeing more and more businesses come on the scene that not only are trying to crack the social business nut, but are actually calling themselves social business businesses.

That’s pretty bold.

In a conversation with Chuck last week, we were discussing the state of the digital industry. It started with the obvious: that social media is just that: media. Tools. Things we can turn on and off and plug in and unplug and dial up or down  – you know, just like advertising. It’s mechanical “things” – at least the media part of it. But social business – this idea that social will come in and permeate every singe section of a company – that’s waaayyyyy different. In fact, it can’t happen unless there’s a fundamental cultural change within a company.

And therein lies the problem. Impossible? No. Hard? Very. To walk in to a company and tell them that in order to become a social business, they’re going to have to fundamentally shift the way they think about everything they do – internally and externally – is a damn hard sell. Because changing the culture of the company is no easy task. Volumes have been written about it. But ultimately it comes down to a willingness to do it from all parties involved and a push from the both the top-down and the bottom-up.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been involved in word of mouth projects that have ignited cultural change within companies. I wish we could say that we set out to do it in the first place, but it was a result of a long-term, sustainable program that started under the PR division and then spread through marketing, advertising, HR, finance and so-on. It was amazing to watch and within 12 months, the entire company had begun to shift culturally.

So maybe that’s how you start. Small. Bit-by-bit. With something obvious that you know will begin to creep into the dark corners of a company and bring them into the fold. Telling a company of 400,000 people that everything is going to change is a lot harder than letting them see how you can take one section of a company, change it for the better and let them wrap their heads around it.

Change is hard. But when the right people (dare I say “influencers?”) within a company are dedicated to make it happen, it’s a beautiful thing. But before we go throwing around the term “social business,” let’s really be clear what we’re talking about.

Posted in: brands, marketing, word of mouth4 comments

February14

Meet in the Middle

By: Spike Jones

Irony can be very entertaining…especially in the social media fishbowl. On one hand, we hear the SM kids shouting from the rooftops that it’s all about one-on-one conversations. How it’s high-touch. How pushing out messages from the top-down is no longer effective. It’s about grassroots and bottom-up now.

And then they tell you to reach out to influencers.

Do you see the irony here? You reach out to influencers in hopes that they’ll broadcast the message to their audience (we’ve talked about before). Which, you know, wreaks of top-down marketing.

When it comes to building communities or ambassador programs, both ways – top down and bottom up – can be effective. But here’s where it gets interesting. We will use influencers to broadcast that we’re looking for a specific type or person – and one of the qualifiers IS NOT which social sites they are on or how many followers/friends they have. The main qualifiers are based on passion. That’s the core that we’re looking for. And believe it or not, most of the time those good folks are what us marketers would refer to as “the bottom” when it comes to influence and status on social media.

So it takes both. But instead of starting at the top and hoping that your message gets pushed down, or starting at the bottom and hoping something magical will happen, you need start at both ends and meet in the middle. It might be counter-intuitive, but it works.

Posted in: lessons learned, marketing, word of mouth2 comments

January11

Solving the “Measuring Influence” Problem

By: Spike Jones

Or maybe not. But I have an idea. Please follow the bouncing ball for a moment.

Working at a global agency and for big ‘ol brands, I can tell you this: in the real world, your online influencer rating will probably get you some sort of special treatment or a one-off sursey (that’s Southern for “free, unexpected gift”) every now-and-again. Apart from that, as you might have guessed, your Klout or Kred score isn’t worth much – if anything. And, as you also know, when it comes right down to it, brands engage in social because they wanna sell more stuff. That’s where all marketing and communications paths lead.

So when it comes to influence, I want to know how one person influenced another person to actually make a purchase. That’s the influence that I care about. Crack that nut and you’re on to something.

Using things that exist on the World Wide Web today, here’s a thought: The Klouts and Kreds need to hook up with the places where people leave recommendations or are actively making a purchase. Think Amazon or even something like OpenTable. Because these people are already raising their hand and actively participating to let others know their actions and opinions. So when they leave a rating or review – or make a purchase or a reservation – why not give them a field to “give credit” to the person that influenced them to make that purchase? This could be done by simply entering that person’s twitter account.

Yes, I realize that this is flawed idea. Because people aren’t going to volunteer their buddy’s twitter handle for fear a brand will spam them. That’s valid. But maybe by signing up for Klout you give permission – or even opt-in to a program- to contact that individual. Then people could really be rated on their true influence as it correlates to purchases. Because, while it’s nice for someone with 10,000 followers to tweet about my brand, I’d rather know about the guy who has 75 followers but his recommendation (online or off) led to people buying my stuff. That’s a person I’d want to engage.

It could work with anyone from Yelp to Amazon to TripAdvisor to Target’s website…and maybe has the potential to open up a whole new world.

Again, I know it’s flawed. But it might be a place to start. And if you do build on it and make millions, I have some requests.

Kthxbye.

Posted in: marketing6 comments

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