Monetising peer-to-peer activity

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.

What's your brand glue?

No, I haven't been sniffing it and it isn't a typo ... brand glue: every brand should have it but few do. Some call it brand engagement but examples of that tend to be a bit too campaign based and lack longevity.

Now, there are quite a few sceptics of "brand engagement" ... apparently no-one wants to engage with a brand - just with each other, so all a brand should do is facilitate networking ... and nothing else. But I think they're falling foul of just dealing with semantics and rebelling against buzz words.

Let's take Nike + ... sure it facilitates networking, but it's also a very personal tool for users; and this is brand glue. It gives me a reason to use a facility or tool that I find useful ... but is linked to the host brand product.

So when you're creating customer or prospect programmes, ask yourself what communications, content or tools can you provide your target audience that will, in some part, stay in touch with the brand until they're ready to purchase ... and this is not the typical selling or MGM communications.

Ask yourself: "how can I be useful" outside purchasing mode to keep yourself top of mind. Nike, Johnson and Johnson and Huggies have done it successfully ... despite the nay-sayers.

Bankers ... or just footballers under a different guise?

So being a young "about town" dude, I spent a couple of hours on Saturday night watching a re-run of the HBOS/RBS quartet being grilled by the Treasury committee (Note to self: get a life!).
Other than Sir Tom McKillop (the ex-RBS chairman) being asked whether he had taken legal advice for a charge of criminal negligence (ouch), I am not sure it revealed anything particularly interesting.

But it's clear that us ordinary mortals are a little irritated by news of bonuses being awarded to various folk from banks as pointed out by Jon Howard. The answer that came back from Lord Turner on the Andrew Marr show this morning was along the lines of :"we have to attract talented people, so getting rid of bonuses would be counter-productive".

OK, so what will change? Answer - fuck all. There'll still be large cash sums/pension contributions paid irrespective of performance. Now I, like most others, only get bonuses based on company performance ... company does well = employees do well. It's a basic maths equation that seems to be overlooked by these financial bods.

But the thing that bothers me most is: why are bonuses paid out in cash rather than shares/share options ... the senior folk at companies are judged on shareholder return (which means share value and level of dividends), so why aren't there bonuses inextricably linked to this metric? I suspect this would mean that the level of bonuses would be smaller or more difficult to achieve ... well, tough shit.

Or even easier ... just give them a higher salary: because the current bonus structure doesn't seem to be really based on above-expectation performance.

Or are the senior finance bods just the commercial equivalent of footballers ... doesn't matter what they do, they still get paid a bloody fortune.

The old left, right again

A smidge of excitement mounts as it's time for a new mobile phone ... excellent, it's like a mini birthday present.

So I decide to go with Vodafone. Virgin, my current provider, obviously think it's better to spend £100+ to get a new customer than spend less than that to keep me.

So look on the web, find what I want and then give Vodafone a call ... good so far, offer is still remains the same between the two channels. Onto delivery ... they won't deliver to my office; for security reasons they have to deliver to my home. But I have to work so I have to wait a week and stay in next Saturday for delivery.

Bang has just gone the 'honeymoon' period. So why can't I pick up the phone in one of their stores, local to my office?

"Oh no Sir, I'm sure you appreciate that we have our security precautions."

Not when it's inconvenient and I could take proof of residence like bills or passport, credit cards etc. into of their stores. They seem to be OK security measures for other companies.

C'mon, let's not have the left hand and the right hand not connecting! This is not exactly new news as I covered another instance on my company's blog.

Get rid of these silos and think about the customer journey. 'Cos I'm almost thinking ... might cancel and go with comparable O2 offer.

I wish I was on the wagon ...

Oh dear, a little too much drink too quickly last night ... so nothing terribly intellectual today.

Always wondered where "on the wagon "came from. There seem to be various definitions so I'll choose the one I like - well, "it is my party and I'll do what I want to" ... you'll have to be my age to know where that lyric comes from. So here goes ...

In days of yore, those folk who were being lead to the gallows through the centre of London were given drinks from pubs en route ... they walked behind a carriage/wagon to which they were tethered . The only person not allowed to have a drink was the "prison officer" who was driving the wagon ...

Hence "on the wagon" meaning ... not drinking.

C'mon Airlines, get with it

So the snow arrives and the UK goes into a tailspin.

3 of the girls in the office were due to fly out today from Luton to go skiing ... so much gnashing of teeth when they couldn't get through to the airline this morning to find out whether the flight was cancelled.

Let's face it, there's a real easy way of defusing this angst. They booked on-line so your e-mail is captured when booking, so the airline know your e-mail and what flight you're on.

So why not a simple e-mail (or text message) to the girls giving them an update rather than letting the phone ring off the hook and irritating customers.

So c'mon, what about a little proactivity! It would cost less and customers are happier ... or am I missing something?

PS. EasyJet actually offer the service, but it's not automatic ... you have to tell them.

Energising your advocates ...

Recently read Forrester's Groundswell book ... definitely worth a read: just opens up a different way of approaching marketing problems. We've been doing off-line versions of identifying advocates for ages ... the old Member-get-Member (MGM) programmes. But they always seem to be tactical "dip in and out" initiatives.

So when I came across the article about Lulu Community Centre on Forrester, it got me thinking a little bit more.

Now there are various initiatives that I've discussed with clients but that's a confidential, so I'll apply the same approach to a sector where we don't have a client ... petfood (this is a different slant to one of the case histories in Groundswell).

Identifying potential advocates is fairly simple ... via purchase data, on-pack promotions, buzz metrics, the aforesaid MGM technique (and preferably all four). So next step is getting them involved in how a brand and its products evolve ... ideas for new SKUs, new products, what others are doing that they think is worth knowing, testing new products (and the list goes on). So, why would pet owners want to do this:

Well, 'valuing my opinion' is one of my 6 key customer loyalty tenets: buy me a beer and you can have the other 5 ... yeah, I know I'm cheap. Anyway back to the blog ... so massaging ego is one reason (and watch those fingers type and tongues wag when these guys get going), tapping into a passion point like their dog or cat is another. But what else?

A more tangible 'reward' perhaps something different to the norm ... like a dedicated line of petfood for these customers. So a line/flavour (preferbaly an identified favourite of the advocates that is not available in retail outlets but just sold direct (yes, sold not given away) ... just wonder what that would do to word-of-mouth and see how those advocate numbers might grow as more want to be involved.

And could it be a different way to launch new lines: build customer demand through advocates by selling direct and then potentially switching to the retail channel. Being careful to replace that line with a new exclusive line for the advocates.

Might go and find out ... always liked dogs.

Is the brand wheel, onion, doughnut really that useful?

Perhaps a somewhat heretical question coming from a planner, but challenging convention is seldom a bad thing.

Now having seen (and done) a countless number of these "precious" brand assets, I really am starting to question their use v. other approaches.

Yes, I think the brand essence is a useful tool in setting a benchmark for communications but frankly there tends to be so many words (personality and values) that surround it that you'd really be hard pressed to work out what the hell a brand's focus is ... and I mean beyond simply communications - it just seems to end up being a catch-all set of sentiments to pacify all the stakeholders. Yes, I know you use them to get to the essence, but my point is that they then become pretty redundant ... and therefore so does the wheel.

Why have such a generic tool? An alternative to the "onion layers" is the 5Es: economy, ease, expertise, empathy, experience. Particularly useful for service sectors such as finance, utilities etc.

By focusing on these elements, it is a hell of a lot easier and clearer to all stakeholders which areas the brand is seeking to excel in (and I mean stakeholders that are not necessarily marketing folk). When I have done Net Promoter Score (NPS) research on financial companies, it is no fluke that companies such as First Direct, The Co-operative and Nationwide score well.

It is clear they have a particular focus on one or two of the Es (I'll leave it to you to pick them) ... the others major institutions are non-descript because they simply do not have sufficient focus (in all stakeholder departments) on what they stand for ... but I bet you they all have brand wheels, onions (and all the other descriptors) coming out their ears.

PS. Before someone gets on their high horse ... 5Es is not my idea. I believe it emanates from one of the big consultancies. Shame on us agency planners for not thinking of this and just re-inventing the wheel (sorry, couldn't resist it!) so that we can pretend it's really that different/better to anyone else's!

Customer-centric? Let's see ...

When I tripped over this particular anecdote, it reminded me of loads of meetings that I've been in (yes, I'm getting on a bit) and keep hearing the phrase "Customer-centric marketing".

Let's see how many companies fall at the first hurdle ... posing the following question to a customer or site visitor: "how would you like us to keep in touch with you: mail, e-mail etc, etc ?"
So what would a company say, or at least think to that - something along the lines of:

"Good God, that means we'll have to do what customers want ... well ,we'll go as far bunging them an incentive to purchase but that kind of thing opens a can of worms: that's not easy and may cost a load of money having more than one channel communication at any one time".

So please, don't use the phrase if you can't get past this first hurdle. I have also seen more focus groups than soft mick ... and the amount of times I've heard people raise this is unreal.

So c'mon, be brave, be wise, be customer-centric.

Creating value in cinemas

Was having a chat with a colleague ... or was it a client - I'll soon find out when they accuse me f nicking the idea! Anyway aforementioned client/colleague was talking about the experience in quite a few Aussie cinemas which I thought was simple but neat.

You can get at-seat service ... a sort of concierge service. So you don't have to go through that long queue for a hot dog (a personal weakness) ... or anything else that's hot and unhealthy.

You just go straight to designated seats and the order is taken ... and if you run out of stuff (don't the films seem to be getting longer!), you don't have to abstain or miss part of the film.

Just their version of an airline's or train's trolley service (and can you remember when the ice cream lady used appear in cinemas in days of yore ... mmm?). With revitalised cinema audiences, it's something worth thinking about ... generating extra income by creating value is always a good thing.

Out of the mouths of babes ...

So my daughter hands over her school report somewhat sheepishly ... oh dear, here we go!

The normal array of the cliched and familiar teacher comments ... "must try harder, lacks focus, too much chat in class", so I ask my daughter:

"So what do you think school is about? Why do you think you go to school?"

After a brief pause for reflection, the answer comes back:

"I go to school to socialise".

I'll get my coat.