The age of Consumer Generated Media and the unhappy consumer

In an article on Comcast must die Bob Garfield on Ad Age, solicited ideas for a consumer jehad against digital and internet cable company Comcast!!! As a hapless consumer out to get back at an erring organisation, Bob's post garnered umpteen comments and suggestions. Some interesting ideas he received , specially from a Web 2.0 and CGM perspective ranged from posting on technorati, adding flickr photos or youtube videos of any damage done, choosing tags and suggesting that folks tag their own blog posts and videos with same to forming a Comcast service group on Facebook.

While other ideas included spreading good WOM for Comcast competitors, sending posts to equity analysts who follow Comcast, or calling up Comcast Corporate headquarters,
the most interesting comment however, was to buy the web domain ComcastMustDie.com, establish a blog and issue a press release(to drive traffic) so that all dissatisfied Comcast customers would have a forum to voice their opinions!!!!...sounds so much akin to a DELLHELL in the making...Comcast....are you listening???

Online videos and the marketer

An article by Jill Griffin, on Leverage the six stages of Customer Loyalty at Customerthink drew my attention...
"
In today's "connected" world, ideas drive buzz when they are:

Simple
Word-of-mouth friendly
Supported by tools to facilitate customer conversation

This three-step success formula worked exceptionally well for Blendtec, a small, Utah-based maker of high-end home and commercial blenders. The fledging company needed more business, so executives brainstormed: How do we earn more market awareness on a shoe-string budget? Their answer? Online videos with a simple, word-of-mouth friendly premise: CEO Tom Dickson, dressed in white lab coat and goggles, blending up a host of everyday objects (baseballs, a Tiki Torch, Transformers, an iPod, a video camera) in a light-hearted, don't-try-this-at home presentation schtick.

‘By Week 3, the company had dropped all other search engines from its budget.’
How did Blendtec facilitate online awareness and conversation? By posting the video on YouTube! Within a week, the Will It Blend? videos became a YouTube hit. Uploads followed on such other sites as Revver.com and Digg.com. At the end of the first seven days, the Will It Blend? video campaign had six million views. But that's not all. Other product makers, anxious to leverage the campaign's popularity, began paying Blendtec on average $5,000 to film promotions for their firms using the Will It Blend? format. Bottom line, the videos became a revenue producer in their own right. Awareness went way up, along with sales. Blendtec reported a 43 percent sales increase for 2006. "

The features of Web 2.0 have definitely added new dimensions to the way organisations can reach out to prospective clientele. With 36,594 subscribers and 1,192,464 channel views, brand visibility is a forgone conclusion!!!!

Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads

An ADAGE article on Marketers start to use social networks for CRM instead of ads strengthens my understanding on the uses of social media as a tool catering to customer engagement, loyalty and satisfaction. The key objectives of CRM, at the end of the day are Customer Aquisition and Retention, and social media has offered tools to cater to each of these objectives by strengthening relationships, building networks and starting a two way communication process with the customers.

While the ad age article traces how first time product users can connect with experienced ones on these networks, creating a rich customer experience sharing platform, my article on how Corporate Blogs can make organisations customer centric had focussed on how auto giant General Motors had used its blog to maintain and nurture its relationships with its customers. By allowing companies to build product brands, create a customer-centric image, and by giving people a contact point by attaching a face or name they can interact with, corporate blogs serve as for a for consumer redressal and help build intrinsic relationships between the company and it's customers.

Social media and it's contribution to CRM maybe a subject of discussion today...but will definitely provide companies with a competitive edge, in the long term!!!

The 5th P of marketing-Participation

After Product, Price, Place and Promotion, Mario Sundar aptly talks about Participation being the 5th element of the marketing-mix.

"If you were wondering where does Social Media Marketing fit into the classic “4 Ps of Marketing” model, check this out. Traditional 4 Ps of Marketing encompass Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Social Media as well as social networking sites enable the Promotion aspect, especially the Word of Mouth part of it. (Related question I posed on LinkedIn Answers — 44 answers). Subsequently, the Word-of-Mouth component enables the 5th P of Marketing - Participation."

As the Web 2.0 mantra-
Create, Publish, Share, Connect, Influence and Collaborate, focusses intrinsically on Participation, the same is fast emerging as a tool for marketers to promote products, build brand equity, engage customers, and track customer satisfaction.

Consumer Reviews and the brand.

Effect of Consumer generated reviews on web site metrics, for a few selected companies , as per a Social commerce report, 2007, from e-consultancy and bazaarvoice, reiterates my earlier post on 'Peer reviews and consumer behaviour'.Consumer generated reviews are becoming an important source of consumer product adoption process.

As per the report, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-

77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

At least 73% respondents felt that these reviews resulted in Improved customer retention and loyalty, while Improved site conversion rates and Better search engine optimisation stood out as the other benefits accrued with these reviews.

Social media is decidely fast emerging as a tool for organisations to gain competitive advantage over others.

Product reviews and the collaborative web

As customer/consumer reviews gain importance,and become an intrinsic component of the product adoption process, by influencing consumer behaviour, a google trend graph on these key terms looks like this-


Customer Review is denoted in Blue while Consumer Review in Red and Product Review in Yellow. The regions included in this trend chart are U.S.A, U.K., India, Australia and Canada.

For market intelligence to collect and disseminate information across the organisation, finding relevant information on products strengths and weaknesses can be undertaken through the following ways-

Independent customer goods and reviews forums-Epinions.com, Consumerreview.com, Rateital.com, Bizrate.com.

Distributor or sales agent feedback sites-Amazon.com

Combo-sites offering customer reviews and expert opinions-
The advantage of this type of review site lies in the fact that a product supplier can compare opinions from the experts with those from consumers.A search for the 'iphone' yielded 1015 resources while the 'Apple iphone' yielded 655 results!!!

Customer-complaint sites-

Putting Customer-reviews on company websites-As per a social commerce report,2007,published by e-consultancy and Bazaarvoice, surveying retailers in the U.S., the U.K. and Europe, the findings were as follows-
77% reported site traffic increases
56% reported improved conversion rates
42% reported higher average order values

Consumer Generated media and it's impact on Brand visibility, product purchase and increasing customer-share is a foregone conclusion.

Brand Monitoring Solutions and Corporates

Following my post on Building Brand Equity through Social Media my feedburner stats showed an incoming link from a Brand Monitoring Tool from Unilever.

As Consumer generated media, thanx to the interactive and engaging web, raises issues with respect to brand vulnerability, it is increasingly important for organisations to have mechanisms to manage their brands and respond to consumer dialogues. If companies fail to do so, others will, and in the process also create oppotunities for brand damage.

A case in point here is 'Activestandards', an automated brand monitoring tool, created by Magus, for Unilever to manage it's brand standards across it's global web presence.

Building Brand Equity through Social Media

Paul Legutko's discussion at Customerthink
"......, but simply the fact that someone is staring at your company logo and creative for a certain period of time. This has an inherent branding value, and "branding" is something both marketers and management understand......high-volume sites can have significant brand-equity."
and Jim Sterne's response regarding brand impact, awareness and brand character attribution, can further be applied to the way major corporates are using the power of social media to garner brand dividends.

Coke, Hindustan Unilever Limited, Proctor and Gamble, Nike, Nissan, Pepsi are part of a trend where a large number of corporates are creating online communities and social networking sites, taking advantage of the interactivity that the internet as a digital medium provides, to capitalise on the huge number of cybersurfers.

With humongous volumes of visitors on these sites, organisations have successfully mingled customer engagement with increasing brand familiarity and distinction and focussing on solution importance, to try and create customer loyalty.

Hindustan Unilever's( India's biggest consumer goods company) brainchild Sunsilk Gang of Girls, promoting the shampoo brand Sunsilk, has a total of 579899 members in 34122 gangs. This has evolved into a huge medium where people participate, give their views and are really bonding with the brand. By discussing commonplace issues like hair care, shampooing and conditioning, hair tips, hair biology and hosting hair gurus by tying up with hairstylists like Javed, Sunsilk GOG has struck a chord with the readers. By tying up with leading magazines like NewWoman and Cosmopolitan,and Marjorrie Orr at Astrology.com, Sunsilk GOG has been able to delve into areas of interest for women ranging from beauty tips to love quizzes to astrology and with Monster.com to cater to their career aspirations. Typically catering to the youth interests of today, members can even watch funky music videos, download wallpapers and screensavers and participate in exciting contests, Sudoku and word search games.

With a traffic rank of 25,500 the Proctor and Gamble brainchild Beinggirl aims at engaging the female segment for P&G's products targetted for the female community. By giving females an opportunity to discuss issues close to their hearts, without giving up their identities, P&G has been able to provide a medium for interaction and developing relationships with its customers thereby facilitating brand loyalty. About 62% of the clientele of beinggirl is from China and 14% from the U.S.

Most of these sites, especially those catering to niche audiences, use the skills of online community managers to nudge the conversation, seed chat forums with threads, recruit others to take a lead in various topics, and monitor the dialogue

Nike's joga.com for football lovers, Coke's mycoke.com and Pepsi's pepsizone for young adventurers out to network, share photographs,videos,music and have fun, Nissan's community for car lovers discussing car models and their features......the list is endless......

Agreed that there are no ways to quantify brand loyalty as a result of such ventures, but as Paul said, as long as larger number of visitors can identify brands , logos and products, garnering brand dividends as a result of such ventures is a foregone conclusion.

Harry Potter Marketing

Graham Hill's reference to the concept of "Harry Potter Marketing", while talking about marketers not taking the passage of time into account when marketing to loyal customers made interesting reading.The insensitivity of organisations in changing their product offerings to their loyal customers as they age is appalling.

The Harvard Business Review's February edition had a long article about Breakthrough Ideas. One of the ideas was keeping the brand (and its marketing) relevant to customers as they age by changing its value propositions, marketing messages and delivery capabilities. This the authors called 'Harry Potter Marketing' in recognition of the way the character both stays the same (at the core) but changes (in behaviour) as he ages.

Harry Potter Marketing defined-The concept of changing value propositions, marketing messages and delivery capabilities to loyal customers with time, while keeping the brand loyalty intact.

Businesses need to do the necessary cleaning up and updation of data time and again to keep abreast of developments. Besides, it is high time organisations stopped taking their loyal customers for granted!!!!

Walmart-Embracing CGM for better Search Engine Rankings?

Another new addition to the world of Consumer Generated Media...Walmart allows it's consumers to post product ratings and reviews
'Real Opinions-Smart shopping-See what walmart customers from coast to coast are saying about our huge selection of products.'

Chief Marketing Officer Cathy Halligan was quoted in a Reuters report as saying the opportunity to review products is the No. 1 customer-requested feature. Being the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart has been putting up efforts in the last few weeks to integrate its Web site more closely with its stores.

According to the Wal-Mart estimates, roughly 130 million customers visit one of its stores or its Web site every week and 75 percent of those customers are active online.

So what are the benefits Walmart can hope to accrue from this move?

1.Better Search Engine RankingsAs per an adage article, the real outcome maybe an improved performance with respect to search engine rankings-a crucial factor in the performance of online retailers.

The reviews give Wal-Mart thousands of additional pages of content to be indexed by major search engines, which look favorably on unique content, such as reviews, compared with pages with basic product details that any retailer could have.
"Searches related to product reviews typically get a high volume of queries, so Wal-Mart could see a material increase in organic search traffic to its site," said Peter Hershberg, managing partner at the search-marketing firm Reprise Media.

2.Increased consumer loyalty

3.Encouragement to consumers to return to the website more often.

4.Incorporation of consumer feedback to facilitate product-decisions.

5.Influencing consumer purchase as large no. of consumers depend on peer reviews

The above endeavours usually lead to better consumer engagement which eventually leads to increased purchase intentions. How much these will impact sales, only time will tell.

The correlation between Consumer Generated Media and Sales

As the democratisation of consumer expression leads to a viral proliferation of information online, the newage communication ecosystem has prompted the need for a careful evaluation of the potential of CGM or buzz as it is called. With each passing day, consumers find innovative ways to express their satisfaction/dissatisfaction about a product or brand.

An investigation of the relationship between blog buzz, market promotion and sales in the Consumer Packaged Goods(CPG) industry, by Nielsen Buzzmatrix revealed the following-

1.CGM has the potential to influence and generate incremental publicity for products, enough to effect their commercial prospects, specially in the CPG category.

2.CPG Marketers should consider the role of Buzz in their Marketing Mix, with respect to New product communication plans.

3.Ad spend is a large factor involved in generating CPG buzz.

4.There is a strong correlation between buzz and sales.

5.Buzz helps in generating accurate forecasts.

6.Buzz Magnitude: Top 10 % of products were responsible for over 85% of total buzz generated. Buzz is higher

7.Buzz Timing: Buzz usually precedes product launch and sales and is usually highest in the initial stages

As the above reiterates the prime motivational factor for consumers to create and post CGM-To be on the forefront of something new, it is profoundly clear that CGM will need to be an intrinsic component of the new product communication plans for marketers.

Interesting way to express Consumer Dissatisfaction

Expressing dissatisfaction over the way cheese is inserted in a sandwich at Subway, this cartoon from Lefthandedtoons is an interesting way to use the power of Consumer Generated Media. Source:ADAGE

Food Marketers and the society

More society concious corporates are venturing out to publically pledge their resolves not to advertise food products not meeting requisite nutritional standards to children under 12. As per an adage article on More Major food marketers establish food advertising limits', several major corporates like Cadbury Adams,Campbell,Coca-Cola,General Mills, Hershey,Kellogg's ,Kraft, Mars,McDonald's,Pepsi and Unilever are the coalition of companies who have decided to curb spending on unhealthy foods....

Consumer Behaviour-Engagement and the purchase decision

A comment on my post on Peer Reviews influence Consumer Behaviour, on my blog at Customer Think yielded an interesting discussion- That accepted that social media influences consumer behaviour, but are consumers really concerned about developing relationships with companies..while Graham Hill thought otherwise,
John's theory on the value of customer engagement and his citation from the Economic Intelligence Unit Study,

"Increasingly, executives are finding that the winning differentiator is no longer the product or price, but the level of engagement—the degree to which a company succeeds in creating intimate long-term relationships with the customer or external stakeholder.
…engagement refers to the creation of a deeper, more meaningful connection between the company and the customer, and one that endures over time. Engagement is also seen as a way to create customer interaction and participation."

was thought provoking.

My take on this....

The value of product features and pricing cannot be disregarded at all, but engagement definitely adds a measure of trust to the buying environment and the payoff yielded by this engagement eventually is increased purchase intention.

Besides, why would consumers not be interested in building relationships with the companies?
studies reveal that in the case of the B2C category, emotional associations create a comfort,familiarity and convenience, leading to purchase decisions and in the B2B category, consumers want to partner with businesses that are reliable, fair, consistent, and cooperative-the key outcomes of relationship building.

NDTV more courageous than IBN?

As discussed earlier, Consumer Generated media, the voice of the empowered consumer and what he feels about products procured from companies has another dimension to it. When the product under discussion is NEWS, MEDIA and INFORMATION, another form of CGM is being tracked...Termed as 'Citizen Journalism', this form of CGM allows people to share their views about common issues and participate by contributing their thoughts on a particular subject.

As per Wikipedia,

"Citizen journalism, also known as "participatory journalism," or "people journalism" is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information," .....
Citizen journalism is a specific form of citizen media as well as user generated content."

Browsing to take a look at how Indian News Corporates had taken to this form of CGM, I came across the NDTV Blogs-NDTV allows users to host their blogs, upload content, videos, photos etc.From serious political analysis and literary criticism to frivolous personal chatter and over-the-top protestations, blogs allow you to create your own private niche in the big and not-too-bad world of the Internet." Interesting!!

With sections across business, health, education etc. etc. etc., NDTV appears to be hosting a multitude of bloggers. Haven't taken a look at the content, but this definitely appears to be a positive act of NDTV in the wake of rising criticism of bloggers, as a community and the quality of content they generate, by journalists per se.

The IBN blogs have contributions only from CNN-IBN employees. Is fairly impressive...but that's what the job of a journalist is-to be articulate and informed. However, as knowledgeable citizens from the elite qualified communities adopt this media, to share and voice their thoughts, journalists are no doubt sitting up, fearing a competitive tirade.

The quality of content as produced by a qualified/enlightened journalist and an ordinary citizen may or may not differ, however, it is the voice of the common masses which matters more when companies need to evaluate CGM from a strategical perspective.

Journalists have jobs that are bound to stay, but here is a breed of consumers of media who want to be heard and there is no way the echo of their voices can be submerged, considering the offerings of collaborationware leading to technology facilitated network building.The more condescending ones like NDTV simply embrace this voice. Maybe the other counterparts need to take note!!!

Wikipedia's popularity

As google trend analysis indicates the volume of usage of a query,it can at times be interesting to see how the search of certain terms has evolved over time. A google trend for the word ' Wikipedia' yielded this graph.


Absence of data on the vertical scale does not give the exact number of searches in 2007, but definitely is indicative enough of how the trend has caught on.
Had to be so..Wikipedia is the primary source of information on various issues today and the very fact that it is positioned as an encyclopedia, adds to the credibility factor. I do understand debates are on over the relevance and accuracy of content hosted at the site, but that is beside the point.

Digging deeper, a Technorati search for wikipedia yielded 375,522 blog posts and a blogpulse trend for wikipedia indicated an interesting trend.


The jump in April 2007 probably coincided with April Fool's day-Wikipedia's thorough compilation of April Fool's day coverage across newspapers, websites, magazines.It also included television shows corresponding to the day. The single page dedicated to April Fool's day had 436 outbound links.Considering that wikipedia's article structure encourages linking within and outside wikipedia,and that the prime factor in Google's search results algorithm is the no. of links connected to a given webpage, wikipedia gets a shot at very high rankings on keyword queries.

No wonder then, that the Report published by Pew Internet and American Life Project in conjunction with Hitwise lists Wikipedia as one of the most heavily visited websites on the internet, courtesy the vastness of data on the site, the American affinity to search engines and the convenience of search.

Maybe someone can still throw more light on why Wikipedia's blogpulse graph shows the upswing in April 2007.

Consumer Generated Media - How peer reviews highly influence consumer buying behaviour

Here is something which corroborates my thoughts on Opinion Leaders and CGM and The era of the empowered consumers-
A report published at ReportonBusiness.com about Online Buyers scouring for deals

The findings of the report include-

1. More and more online buyers are turning to peer-reviews for product related advice, before adopting a product.

"When asked to note their most trusted information source, sixty per cent of online buyers said consumer reviews compared to 31 per cent who said newspapers or magazines."

2.Large no. of online buyers indulge in comparison shopping and use social networking sites to do so.

3.Online buyers are early adopters of social networking such as writing or reading blogs, customer reviews, and community websites. They're more likely to share their opinions and give reviews online than people who shop the old-fashioned way.

4.As social netwroking sites abound with users, they will be areas of most potential for e-commerce.

5.Embracing advertising in the web's community sites appears to be very promising for marketers.

Hope the heads of the organisations (The customer was king....)hesitant to adopt CGM as a promotional tool are listening!!!!

Social media and the iphone

The Apple iphone has been an explicit example of how social media was used to create a buzz around a product, in the pre-launch phase, as a marketing strategy.
Blogpulse graphs are a clear indicator that the buzz about iphone at the time of launch was higher as compared to the one around the time of release. With as many as 244,626 blog posts about the iphone being tracked by technorati as per date, it will be important to monitor the for the same post-adoption by consumers, as CGM will come into play to showcase the positive as well as negative reactions as product-users.

Case study on buzz created through social media for iphone posted by Nielson Buzzmatrix,is a graphic account tracing the amount of impact of social media as a marketing tool for a product.

Consumers can make or break brands

In the words of Chris Ward, Commercial Director, Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions,

"Social networking has changed the rules of the game and consumers now have the power to make or break a brand. This type of relationship provides a two way dialogue where the brand receives feedback and the social networker could be monetised for their efforts – positive or negative.”

It is common knowledge now that the huge traffic on social networks has made them very interesting marketspaces for marketers ineterested in brand building and product positioning. The changing attitudes to social communication and research figures hugely indicative of the potential of these networks has not only made these social networks important components of the value chain but also a complete market segment that needs to be targetted.

As advertisers move to understand the dynamics of this media,the consumer demographics and behavioural aspects, it is important to understand that groups of people interacting socially observe an etiquette and targetting them will need to be sensitively planned and executed.

Some recent usage trends of social media by corporates have been -

1. The Apple iphone has a myspace profile and as of date, already has 469 friends.It may be recalled that the Apple ipod pink nano which had a profile to promote the product, had amassed as many as 80,000 friends on myspace, before the site was removed. Nice promotional strategy by Apple

2.UK based Topshop by maintaining an online profile on Myspace through a participation in the community, special offers and discounts was able to generate a sizeable amount of visits, as per a report from Hitwise.

3.SouthWest Airlines has a group on myspace,having over 1000 members for those working/associated with southwest airleins. This includes the loyal southwest fyers.The idea is to form a community to share information, plan trips, share travel tips and network.

4.Creation of virtual spaces by VOLVO and MSN on windows live spaces.Consumers were invited to write about their exciting experiences and adventures in a Volvo-brande "What's your story" area.
Here Volvo was able to tap into the motivational factors behind an individual seeking to be an opinion leader feeling like anempowered consumer.

In view of the need to engage the online consumers,Microsoft has released the ‘Word of the Mouse’ Advertising Guidelines recommendations for usage of social networks for proliferation of their brands.

1. Understand consumer’s motivations for using social networks
- 75% of British users use the sites to keep in touch with friends and family
- Approximately half use it to express opinions and views on topics of interest
- 49% use social networks to deepen relationships with like-minded people.

2. Express themselves as a brand
People are using social networks to express their individuality. Networks can be used to express a side of a brand people don’t normally see and encourage them to interact with it – but it needs to remain authentic.

3. Create and maintain good conversations
Individuals are powerful in this environment – they are the content creators, conversation creators and community creators. Brands that are willing to have a dialogue could benefit.

4. Empower participants
You are entering a world of empowered participants who control their own content, are expressing their individuality and would welcome having this power over branded properties on their Space.

5. Identify online brand advocates
Advertisers need to identify relevant networking sites i.e. a site which includes people who already use/buy a company’s product and align to this audience and existing customer segmentation models.
By researching blogging habits or comments on a product in this environment, advertisers can reach out to influentials and begin a dialogue, for example by offering free samples or advanced product releases.

6. Behave like a social networker
A fundamental principle is that the best advertisers on Spaces will behave like the best Spaces owners by:
- Being creative
- Being honest and courteous (ask permission)
- Being individual
- Being conscious of the audience
- Updating regularly

As Advertisers understand that they need to gradually focus on the networked aspects of these communities and use them for spreading messages virally, these social networks provide profound relationship building opportunities with the consumers.

Opinion leaders and CGM

As a consumer's pre-purchase research finds more value and credibility in an informal source of information,rather than a company's advertising campaign or it's salespeople, CGM and opinion leaders are fast becoming forces to reckon with.

Opinion Leaders (Schiffman, Kanuk)have an informal influence over consumer behaviour and impact consumer acceptance of new products and services and Consumer Generated Media has provided a new source of communication for these opinion leaders.

The question is-
What drives an individual to be an opinion leader?

Desire for Self-Actualisation-
A feeling of superiority or status by demonstrating expertise by generating content and on being considered an authority on a subject.

Desire for Self-Projection-
Desire to build a credibility for himself. Research shows that individuals categorised as opinion leaders are four times more likely to be asked for advice/voice their opinion on any subject under discussion.

Need for Self-Confirmation-Try to reduce own post-purchase dissonance or self doubt regarding a purchase, by discussing the product features in a medium which will garner some comments, which if positive, will reassure the concerned individual regarding the appropriateness of his purchase.

Need for Social involvement-
Some people love sharing product related experiences and use these conversations as a means of being part of the community.

As the keen desire for knowledge and information drives an opinion leader to be an innovative consumer and share his experiences, his gregarious nature and access to the community coupled with the fertile opportunities provided by the collaborative web, can be utilised by organisations to generate favorable conversations about their products and services.

It is upto the consumer marketers to decide how to 'identify ' these opinion leaders or 'create ' 'CUSTOMER EVANGELISTS'