Essentials of Web 2.0 Community

I’ve found myself writing a lot about community lately, and I have several other things I want to cover in days to come. This material has gotten me thinking and I’d like to suggest a couple of ideas.

The basic one is that “community” in the broadest sense, seems to be the uniting theme of the social web. That’s true in both B2C markets, where it’s easy to see, and also in B2B markets, where there is strong motivation for community building and participation.

If community is the uniting theme, what are the special elements of the social web in each marketspace? In the B2B space it seems obvious that collaboration—again broadly speaking--is the key benefit of focused social networks. For example, while I was writing this I got an update from LinkedIn guiding me to the activity of the Social Media group where people are asking questions, passing along information and looking for jobs and business. That’s a public network; the collaboration that goes on inside corporate firewalls on shared documents, wikis, and so forth is a major productivity enhancement, especially for global corporations.

In the B2C space the key element doesn’t seem—to me at least—to be as clear. I’ve called it User-Focused Communications, to include both relevant marketer-initiated communications as well as user-generated content. Do you have a better/another idea?

Whatever terms you use, I would argue that community is the common thread. What should we be thinking about in terms of “community strategy” if there is such a thing. A concept that has been circulating on the web for several months is the 4C’s of Community. They are:

• Content
• Context
• Connectivity
• Continuity.

Think about those and read this Ad Age article. Content, context and continuity are all things that require organizational commitment and resources. In the way it’s used here, connectivity is more than just the technology, and therefore it becomes an organizational issue also. More about that tomorrow.

There’s a lot of fun technology out there, and I enjoy that as much as anyone else. More important to marketers, though, will be the emergence of a strategic framework for thinking about the social web. Your comments on this broad-brush strategic concept are welcome!

Is It the End of Surveys?

You may have noticed an article in Ad Age last week, “The End of Consumer Surveys.” It is based on an ongoing program by the Advertising Research Foundation that aims—not to do away with consumer surveys—but instead to integrate conventional marketing research and social media metrics to give a clearer picture of how well brands are doing to get their message out. “Out” is meant in the broadest sense; not just how much is being spent on brand messages in conventional media but how well that is translating into (unpaid) online chatter favorable to the brand.

ARF is being supported in this effort by marketing research firm TNS and its Cymfony Division, which specializes in social media. TNS has a number of resources posted on their site. The ones I was especially taken with were a 2007 white paper “Making the Case for a Social Media Strategy,” (chart at right) and the ARF webcast ”Social Media Analysis for Consumer Insight: Validating and Enhancing Traditional Market Research Findings.” I’m going to hit some of the highlights and try to bring them together for you. The webcast runs about 40 minutes and is worth listening to in its entirety (access it from this page). There’s another in this series coming up on November 12 and other related webcasts on the ARF events page.

Using brands of HDTV as their basic case study, the researchers from TNS used what could be called marketing research triangulation to look at brand impact. They used:

• Conventional marketing panel research to understand conventional brand metrics like favorability
• They used projective techniques to uncover the attitudinal (“emotive”) dimensions that characterize brands in the category
• They used convention web metrics (e.g. visits to websites) and social media metrics (e.g., brand mentions in blogs) to measure online activity and chatter.

Two key metrics which they report—and which they find to be interrelated—are share of market and share of discussion.


One of the products of their analytics that I found most interesting was a list—ordered by “contact clout”—of various contacts points that affect consumers’ decisions about brands. Experience with the brand is really important—points 1, 2 and 4. The first mention of traditional media ranks 9th—articles in newspapers and magazines. This probably reflects the innovative and technological nature of the HDTV product. TV comes in at number 14, but remember the metric is “influences brand decisions” not “creates awareness.” Nevertheless, the preponderance of personal and in-store information sources is striking.


But the main theme of the ARF/TNS collaboration is the need to combine conventional marketing research and social media metrics. Their argument is that just looking at brand activities is not sufficient. It is also absolutely necessary that you look at what consumers are doing and saying. The tough part is bringing the two together. I’ve argued the point in a somewhat different way; use behavioral analysis—first—to find out what people are doing; then conventional marketing research adds value by finding out why. The TNS analysis adds to that argument by demonstrating that you can get some of the whys from online chatter.

Their recommendation for effectiveness includes two kinds of communication—marketer generated and consumer generated. The marketer needs to work at nurturing (“spinning”) social networks and generating real online dialog between consumers and marketers.

The ARF has long been known for serious scrutiny of marketing research issues. This is an important effort to move marketing analytics in a direction that is essential to marketing effectiveness in the Web 2.0 world.

Have You Been Pingged?

I’ve been evited, but I’ve never been pingged. Presumably the name of this new site is a play on the technical term ping—clever!

Pingg came to my attention as the result of a story from DM News’ Sara Holoubek. It’s a good story that has an important marketing point. I was initially intrigued by the complete “party management” service she described, so I looked at the two sites and found a lot going on.


Evite has been around for awhile and according to the site has 18 million registered users. Evite has recently added the ability to send and receive invitations from your cell phone (assuming that you want to. . .). It also has a photo page to which you can upload pics of your parties, so they are clearly adding social networking apps.

Pingg is new, having been launched in March of this year. It is obviously designed with social networking in mind. It’s surroundSend functionality lets you get your invitation to the recipient, wherever he or she may be. The event management function provides all the basics and some cool Internet apps. The gift and charity registry allows you to embed your Amazon Wish List or to ask your guests to contribute to a charity instead. If you’re selling tickets to your event like Sara was, invitees can purchase their tickets with PayPal. If you are doing this for a worthy cause, you can show the fund-raising target on your personalized event page. Not only cool, but useful!

Back to Sara’s point. If your goal is to draw an audience, just putting something out there, even to your handpicked guest list may not be enough. “Searches and online transactions all originate within the physical world.” Right! And with all the clutter in both physical and cyber worlds, it usually takes more than one communications channel to get your marketing message to its target audience!

Operationalizing Trust

A recent article in MarketingVox describes a UK shopping site that takes consumer recommendations a step further. TouchLocal is a directory site for local businesses all across the UK. It recently added “circles of trust” to its consumer reviews.

We know that consumer reviews are important when Internet users are researching projects. But, truth is, most reviewers are unknown quantities and readers often wonder if they are trustworthy. Maybe even more important, “Is the person using the same criteria I’d use in judging the product?”

The user identifies groups that she wants to join. Then she can invite her friends to join the groups. TouchLocal makes it easy to export the entire contacts list from an email account—a good way to lose friends, in my opinion! The user can be more selective by entering addresses manually and can also identify friends who are already registered with TouchLocal.
Then, according to the M2 PressWIRE service:

Using its custom "Circles" social networking engine, TouchLocal users put other members into circles of trust that are graphically represented on screen. For example, a sibling or close friend is likely to be in the highest circle of trust whereas a colleague or acquaintance may be in another circle. These circles then combine to give users both expert knowledge and increased confidence in choosing the local companies they want to work with.

Apparently the user assigns friends to the trust levels based on how well she knows them and their levels of expertise. Sounds good to me!

I don’t know of any product comparison sites using this particular model in the US. There are a number of sites where users can easily communicate with one another, and they seem to be growing rapidly.
Well established sites like TripAdvisor not only provide reviews but also allow the user to ask questions of other users. Again, respondents are likely to be unknown quantities, lessening the value of their advice.

Users like to review products and their main motive appears to be helpfulness, pure and simple. Recent data from Forrester (Marketing First Look newsletter, January 23, 2008)shows many recommendations but relatively little taking place on the web. In situations where users who are known to one another have experiences in common—and local shopping seems to be a prime instance, adding trust to the mix may well increase the number and value of recommendations. It seems to be worth a try!
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Doing Good by Working the Web

A colleague recently brought a Facebook post by Alnisa Allgood to my attention. It describes the efforts of two brothers (who, for a year are communicating only via their vlog, but that’s another story) in behalf of the Project for Awesome. Hank and John Green’s basic idea was to get people (Nerdfighters) to post videos in support of their favorite charities on December 18. By all posting at once they would attract more attention.

It worked! The project had virtually all of the most-viewed videos on that day—shared only with Mike Huckabee, according to one of the brothers--Hank, I think, in this video. It’s about 4 minutes long, but worth watching completely for the ending.View the video here.

The project made its big splash on December 18, but it’s ongoing. There are about 4 thousand videos uploaded under the Project Awesome channel. It’s worth scrolling through several pages to see the diversity of causes represented. It’s also worth watching a few of the participant videos.

This effort reminds me of two things. One is the post I made in October in support of Blog Action Day, which focused on the environment. According to their stats, over 23 thousand posts were made that day. Some were targeted blogs like ours; but some of the best-known blogger names as well as corporate blogs also participated. This, too, was a volunteer effort, although it appears to have had back-end support from Google. So this kind of “flash mob” on the Web works in the short run. Does it create engagement with causes in the longer run? I don’t see how it can do anything less, when a person goes to the trouble to write a blog post or create a video.

The other reminder was my interesting class experience with the Gap participation in Project Red. Young people are looking for causes to believe in and support. Non-profits won’t reach or engage them by traditional methods. Both the New York Times and the Financial Times have recently written about the importance of web-base efforts to a variety of organizations.

Non-profits have work to do. Corporations and local businesses can help and support. There are two questions:
1.How to engage young people on their own ground, on their own terms.
2.How corporations can help—and how non-profits can take advantage of their help—without seeming (being) crass.

Witness the frenzy over “green” at the moment and the hype and misinformation that sometimes accompanies it. How can we do better?

Your thoughts?

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Consumer Needs and Social Media

Today’s newsletter from the Center for Media Research references an interesting new study from marketing services firm Communispace. They’ve used a framework of personal needs and motivations to explore the benefits that consumers can gain from various types of social media. This chart summarizes their framework and benefits of various types of social media.
If the categories sound familiar, that’s because they are based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, which we’ve all met in social psych and marketing courses. The hierarchy itself is rather global in nature, but when applied to specific subject matter it becomes interesting. Their adaptation produces five social needs people can meet by participation in social media and points out that they are increasingly seeking to fulfill these needs online. Meeting deeply-felt needs results in an increasing sense of connection to the site or business that is responsible for the community.
Two points are especially worth noting:

1.Different social media are used for different consumer purposes. Blogs are by definition a means of self-expression. Community requires groups of some type, whether they are consumer generated or formed by an outside entity.

2.From the marketer’s perspective all the social media represent the voice of the customer and we should be listening intently.

I’ve repeatedly noted that the social media give marketers the ability to engage customers in ways that are mutually beneficial. If communities form, either spontaneously or with marketer sponsorship, it is because the interaction fulfills a real need. The CMR newsletter says that:

People want to be reassured of their worth and value, and seek confirmation that what they say and do matters to others and has an impact on the world around them.

I agree with that perspective on consumer needs. From the marketer’s perspective, I suggest that we develop online spaces where like-minded people can meet, interact, support one another, and—in time—perhaps become evangelists for the sponsor.

This strongly implies that social media initiatives cannot be—or be perceived as being—a heavy-handed promotional activity. Each one has to meet one or more basic consumer needs in order to be welcomed and integrated into customers’ lives. That requires a kind of delicate sensibility that is the opposite of traditional advertising and promotion. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard for many marketers to grasp this new way of interacting with their target audience.

You can access the complete report here.
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Singing Pringles Usher in the Holidays

What could be more appropriate for the holidays than singing Pringles? You might have ideas of your own, but if you’re Procter and Gamble the answer is, “Nothing.”

Yesterday Ad Age reported on the Pringles Christmas contest P&G held in the UK. They started out looking for a new jingle. They liked this video so much they declared it the winner and will air it on Christmas Day. Here it is; it’s season-appropriate and perfectly charming. The page has other finalists as is common in these contests.Enjoy the video here.

I agree with the comment on AdAge.com—why not play it in the US as well as the UK? I don’t know if that has to do with the non-standard length—40 seconds—or with the cult-like popularity of Pringles with young Europeans. Whatever the reason, it is an engaging way to sign off for a few days of family fun and fellowship.
Best Holiday Wishes to All!
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Mr. Clean Makes A Video Splash

Here’s another contest to think about. Procter and Gamble’s Mr. Clean has a line extension of Magic Erasers. I’ve tried them and they really do work—to the extent that I’ve recommended them to friends. The warnings suggests they are full of some pretty strong stuff, but that’s another (important) subject.

The contest is similar to others featured in this blog. Create a video for the Magic Eraser line. The contest is now closed and the winner is to be announced on December 8. You can choose your preferred video if you like; they are all posted. It will take you awhile because the contest drew 96 official entries. There were a lot of daily prizes (Magic Erasers, I think) that kept the interest level high.
It also spawned some that can best be described as disgusting (I found 90+ videos on YouTube, many of which don't appear to be contest entries) and another that was too late to qualify but funny.

If my new media model is on track, these people are brand evangelists, most of them with a positive message. Does this kind of activity create a bond with the brand—a feeling of ownership, even? I think it might.

At the very least a lot of people have Magic Eraser samples. And Procter and Gamble has a lot of consumer insight for relatively little expenditure!
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Should Marketers Stop Talking About Advertising?

Several recent studies have documented the persistent movement of marketing attention and dollars away from traditional media to interactive and social media. Highlights include a report from Forrester Research predicting that spending on interactive marketing will be over $61 billion by 2012. As a yardstick, their estimate of interactive for 2007 is in the neighborhood of $20 billion while TNS Media Intelligence estimated total advertising spend at over $152 billion.

These estimates vary hugely, depending on what media are included and the forecasting approach. For instance, Jupiter Media forecasts about $35 billion in online spending by 2012. eMarketer is in the middle, forecasting roughly $42 billion by 2011.

Whichever set of absolute dollar figures you subscribe to, the actual flow of dollars from traditional media to interactive is well documented. It is generally agreed that interactive is growing by double digits while many traditional media are experiencing actual declines in advertising revenue. The TNS figures are representative.

What is most interesting about the Forrester chart is their prediction of continuing strong growth in search marketing and huge growth lumped into “emerging channels.” Since they explicitly include online display ads, email and video (which also is forecasted to experience explosive growth) it’s clear that the emerging channels are other social media from blogs to social networks to advergaming and beyond.

Two other recent reports give perspectives on how this will change the advertising industry. A report by Accenture, quoted here last month, asked marketers to identify their top three areas for increased online spending. The choices are fairly conservative. Even so, they will create changes in how marketers carry out their interactive spending. Amateur content owners are new to the survey; the only growth area from the previous year is professional content owners. The “emerging channels” are content hogs and other content providers aren’t positioned to meet the needs.

The report with the provocative title “The End of Advertising as We Know It” is from an organization not known for frenzied speculation. IMB surveyed 2400 consumers and 80 advertising executives from around the world. Then they sounded impending doom for traditional advertising agencies and broadcasters as well as for traditional direct marketing. Advertisers themselves (DIY?), consumers and interactive agencies will create the most economic value.
This isn’t news to the traditional advertising agencies who are scrambling madly, through acquisitions and partnerships, to bring interactive services under the same corporate umbrella as their traditional services. This didn’t work well in the heyday of direct marketing back in the 1980s, it is proving problematical in the heyday of interactive.

There is a world of content creators out there—from the young man who created the iTouch commercial to residents of virtual worlds to the millions of people everywhere who post videos and photos. Savy marketers are learning to harness their own creativity and that of loyal customers in support of their brands. Let the learning continue unabated!
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Coke, Virtual Thirst, and Second Life

According to Coke, even avatars get thirsty!

Whether you believe that or not, Coke has just concluded its first contest in virtual world second life. Called “Virtual Thirst” it invited people to create virtual vending machines for Second Life. The machines were to vend experience—the essence of Coke—not cans of Coke product.

The contest had a couple of interesting aspects; participants could submit entries in a variety of different formats and Second Life avatars would be the judges.

According to the contest rules,

You may submit your idea in any of the following ways: - gift an object to us in Second Life - teleport your avatar to http://www.virtualthirst.com/launch (link no longer active; see graphic below) and use the drop-box to gift us your object
- share a video in YouTube - visit http://www.youtube.com/virtualthirst and use the "Connect with VirtualThirst" function to send us a message and attach your uploaded video
- share an image/description with us in MySpace - visit http://www.myspace.com/virtualthirst and use "Send Message" to post your idea as a message to us
- US residents only can also e-mail us your idea - send an email to Entries@virtualthirst.com with the subject line, "Virtual Thirst Entry" and attach your idea to the email. Please do not use the body of the email to describe or to link to a description of your idea. [emphasis mine]

The contest took place across several media channels, opening it to more participants and giving Coke insight into channel usage. It probably also increased the difficulty of picking the winning entry. Judges were avatars, members of Joseph Jaffe’s Crayon marketing services company. A blog entry by Greg Verdino, a member of the firm, shows how comments were used to implement “listening” as part of the program. He also makes available a screen capture of the submission process on Second Life, complete with avatars.

The winning entry was a video and the announcement gives a good idea of how the contest played out. Coke doesn’t appear to be talking about their perspective on the contest—at least not yet.

There’s been a lot of criticism of Second Life in the marketing and tech trade press lately. Second Life itself offers metrics for its use, which of course makes their credibility suspect. Second Life may or not have the sustainable model; time will tell. There are many virtual worlds now; Tech Crunch (see complete table here) did an overview recently.
The time may come when most Internet users will have a presence in a virtual world for social or business purposes. It’s another thing marketers must learn about, must experiment with. It looks to me as if Coke’s first try turned out pretty well. I’m sure they learned lessons that will stand them in good stead as they consider other interactive ventures.
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Dove Takes Another (Small) Step

Dove has received much positive buzz for the Campaign for Real Beauty that began with a Super Bowl ad in 2004 and has continued in many forms since. Ad Age(graphic on left; subscription required) recently suggested that sales of the brand have slowed in spite of the (mostly) postitive vibes about the campaign, but Dove is continuing to innovate within the framework of the Campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self Esteem Fund that is part of it. The positive message of this campaign is attractive to many of us.



I get excited when I see something new, so when I saw a Dove video described as “customizable” with an alt tag that said it could be personalized, I thought it was a great step forward. If you play the video, you’ll find it in the charming/warm/fuzzy genre that is typical of the Dove ads. The boy shouts for Amy, who he thinks is beautiful. Can you change the name in the video? No, you can’t. Can you add a personalized message? Sort of. You can’t add it to the video, but you you are encouraged to add a personalized message telling someone how beautiful she is. (I was sending it to myself, so I didn’t go that far; see below).

When I looked at YouTube the video had been viewed 5,147 times: I couldn’t tell how many times it had been shared. There were many comments, most of them positive, so the Real Beauty campaign continues to resonate, even though the advertising may have faltered. But I don't find anything that I consider really "customizable." I do find something that could go viral, and that's pretty good for now.

Another link that you can find either funny or scary, depending on how comfortable you are with the consumer-generated content. “Scary Dave” posted his personal video tribute to Dove as part of a contest several months ago. He can’t spell, he can’t sing, and he has no taste whatsoever. You may get all you want from this blog post. If you have a strong stomach you can watch the video. Either way, think about whether Dove should have reacted. I don’t think they did—or should have. It’s crude and tasteless; ignore it and it will go away sooner, except when bloggers like me choose to resurect it.

It’s not a nice, tidy world for marketers and I doubt that it’s going to get any neater. Our customers have found their voice and we have to listen to them—even when it pains us!
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