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Well, here's the new $64 question in the communications industry. I was prompted to write this particular note when I read David Cushman's blog on the diminishing trust that punters have in brand comm.s.
And I've come across Edelman's "trust barometers" before, but I seem to be hitting the same brick wall with clients time and again. It goes something along the lines of:
"Yeah, Chris, I understand the reports and I would love for customers to recommend our brand, but how do you measure this success? Buzz Metrics may show more positive chat about a brand, but how do you turn that into money? I know what I'll get out of a press ad but not out of creating content and amplifying that content ... and the times they way they are, I have to account for every penny."
Does this seem familiar to anyone? So what's the answer? Not sure I have the answer, but here are a few thoughts:
i) Is it looking at another 'verbal' metric like Net Promoter Score ... so tracking buzz over time and seeing how other marketing activities improve over time: is there a correlation?
ii) Breaking the 'conversations' down into component parts: so crowdsourcing gives you quite a lot of feedback: what would the equivalent research budget be? Do the ideas generated results in brand activity/new products ... so what's the value there?
iii) Is it simply eyeballs seeing positive statements about the brand? Is there a metric for how much more likely someone is to buy something on the say-so of a mate v. on the back of brand communications?
I'll keep plugging along, but if I'm being dumb and this has been cracked, then drop me a line.
AI And The Killer Robots!
10 months ago
Here's a view...why do social networks need to work to the same dimensions as other media when the way the channel works is different. Is it an issue of ROI or is it a broader issue of audience engagement. Every corporate that trys to monetarise the social networks seems to get into trouble. Instead recognising the channel in its purest sense and living with it [like how a real community works] will result in a benefit - its old fashioned brand awareness but in a pure form and without an ad!
ReplyDeleteFair enough fella, but there's still a value placed on brand advertising: correlation between brand metrics and success have been calculated by most clients.
ReplyDeleteSo if we go down that route, what I would love to know is how much of a multiplier we should put on brand engagement "advertising". 'Cos until the majority of clients think the way we do, we've still got to give them the ammo to sell it in internally.
H'mm need to talk to some media planners to work out how they assign media spend to audiences who do not consume traditional media. If they do not assign a spend, then the company does not reach them thus no awareness/consideration which would start to get picked up on brand tracking studies. We are then into the definition of spend [I was asked this after a presentation I gave] and my view is that for a company to hire a person and build a social network strategy with content, messages, interaction etc needs to have a cost assigned to it just as traditional media does. The CFO does not care [too much] whether the dollar does to ITV or the headcount of a compay, a cost is a cost. Not sure we have got there yet! So a multiplier could be 2.5 times cost of employee time as a cost and it then be measured the same way as TV or radio and put onto a media schedule. What do you reckon?
ReplyDelete