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.

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!

Have the banks ever heard of NPS?

Whilst I don't believe Net Promter Score is by any means the only metric a brand should use, it does show what we all think ... that just about all the banks are much of a muchness.

When I carried out a bit of quant' research on the relative NPS of leading consumer banks... sure enough First Direct were way out ahead with Nationwide and Co-operative also scoring well - the other were nowhere to be seen, all logging minus figures.

Now when they're rebuilding, let's hope they do better with differentiating themselves and paying a bit more attention to individual customer preferences.

A start for them (and some other sectors) is to segue from these vanilla 'extras package' like the one offered on NatWest Gold to building personalised packages. They try to offer all things to all men and succeed in just giving a series of discounts on a) things you can easily get elsewhere, b) stuff that you're just not interested in.

Try taking a leaf out of O2's book = simple bolt-on options (like mobile banking or 1 month payment holiday when overdrawn ... put your mind to it and you can easily add to the list).

More to the point ... a little data capture to uncover the passions of their customers in order to serve a deeper set of benefits (rather than just a broad scatter-gun style of benefits). And above all engage with customers ... let them help build the benefits.

But I suspect that this represents just a little bit too much work ... too many times you see things which can be classified as 'it's easy, so let's do it'. It's not going to work anymore with the emerging power of peer-to-peer.

Give customers what they truly want and just watch those fingers type, mouths move and the herd starts moving ... the payback is free and 'trusted' advertising by an emerging band of advocates.