Friday, October 21, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
The Problem with Brand Social is That Brands are Doing the Talking
Digital has profoundly changed
our ability to share and spread the word on things we care about. The
democratization of influence is such an important cultural force that its
ultimate impact is nigh on unpredictable. We know it will be huge, but as to
how huge and how it will alter the human order, we haven’t the foggiest idea.
Progressive brands have been
relatively quick to jump on this band wagon. Hundreds of brands have attracted
huge numbers of followers by tapping into the human desire to be a part of
something they care about.
Yet the interaction and
participation rates in most brand social programs are abysmal. Which means we
need to ask why there is such a drop-off in consumer excitement between the
moment they sign up and how they feel in ensuing weeks and months.
I think one of the big reasons is
that in most cases, it’s the brands themselves that are credited with the
commentary delivered in service of their businesses. People don’t want to talk
with brands, they want to connect with people.
Would you choose to try to have a
conversation with your tomato paste? Your PC? Your smart phone? Of course not.
Even if these items could speak with us, we probably wouldn’t be much
interested in what they have to say.
The appeal of social is rooted in
authenticity and personal experience. The idea that a real person is sharing
their thoughts and ideas with you. When a brand speaks, its authenticity and
motives are naturally suspect. For a half dozen reasons:
1. Brands aren’t people. They are business
entities with a single objective: maximizing profit. There is no personality or
complexity to such an objective. Only a single minded focus on delivering
revenue.
2. Brand speech is and feels vetted and
milquetoasted. Since most major brands are owned by multibillion dollar
multinational companies, the messages issued on their behalf must be carefully
constructed and scrutinized. The operating principle in such a process is to
offend no one, and ultimately therefore to say very little that is
controversial.
3. Brands have communication objectives.
Well, I suppose people do as well. But whereas most person to person speech is centered
around opinion and a quest for the truth, brand speech revolves around benefit
messaging and copy points. Not exactly a riveting read, at least in general.
4. Brand speech sounds corporate. Whether
written by PR agencies, ad agencies, or internal teams, the “sound” of brand
speech is generally hollow and formal. Like reading the collected works of
Enver Hoxha.
5. Brand speech is anything but candid.
When people write about brands, their comments are often laden with immediacy
and emotion. But because emotion is slippery territory for brands, most brand
social teams fob off emotional commentary with throwaway lines like “Please
know that we take your concerns very seriously.”
6. Brand speech is often disconnected from the
brand. When companies outsource brand speech, even the tenuous connection
between a brand’s “authenticity” and what is said in social venues is suspect.
Outsourcers are by their very nature very conservative exponents of a POV.
Agencies generally don’t get fired for boring speech – they DO get fired every
day for saying interesting things that put a stake in the ground about a topic
or issue.
In my view, brands need to
rethink the desire to have a brand “speak” on its own behalf. Instead, brand
messages should be delivered by real, on the record people. Whether employees,
or endorsers, or self identified evangelists, the folks that deliver
information about a brand, and at brand expense, need to have the credibility
that comes from authenticity, candidness, and passion. Recognizing that brands
must be careful about what they say, it’s important that we start promoting
real individuals as brand representatives – people who express their own POVs
as part of a larger effort to involve users in the strength and future of
brands.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Is Social Strategy As Simple As Who What Where Where Why How?
For
many years, the core of my job has been taking seemingly complicated things –
like how companies should approach digital, and simplify them into simple
ideas, steps, and processes that make the projects less scary and more immediately
actionable. I’ve been thinking a lot about Social lately, and how it seems to
be such a gnarl of opportunities and objectives and metrics. Here’s my stab at simplification.
If
we start with Forrester’s Groundswell model of seven types of social users, it
seems clear that brands must first think about social as passion media not
scaled media. Social gets its scale
organically rather than through complex engineering.
First
and foremost, I think brands need a set of “supercreators” with three
characteristics that make their brand-connected content eminently socializable:
1.
Who:
Very high credibility voices. Brand content is and
probably should be a little suspect in social. You need to empower great PEOPLE
to deliver the message, because no one really wants to socialize with a roll of
toilet paper or even a high performance car. It’s just paper, or metal. Social
is about people.
2.
What:
Real, Vivid Opinions. Social is ultimately about perspective. You
want to read and interact with people who have something relevant, intriguing
and dare I say dramatic to say.
3.
When: Timely, current voices. With the
plethora of topics and environments in our digital midst, we tend to care about
things as a result of events occurring in our world and our lives. Timing is
very important.
In
my view, finding the right people to speak on behalf of a brand requires an
examination of your own team as well as people with existing category
credibility beyond your organizations. Worry about the people and content
first, THEN their current range of influence. The third is addressable, the
first two have to be there in spades first.
Let’s
review the Forrester Groundswell model for a sec, and how it can be relevant
for brand social. In the current model, there are seven categories of social
users:
1.
Creators:
Makers of long and short form content – the nucleus of thought
2.
Conversationalists:
People who discuss content and points of view in social
3.
Critics:
People who rate content
4.
Collectors:
Users of tools like RSS that collect and distribute content
5.
Joiners:
People who join content and opinion communities
6.
Followers:
People who read social content but generally do not create
7.
Uninvolved:
Nuff said
My
emphasis on “supercreators” is about finding the best people with the most
interesting and compelling opinions, which are then processed, shaped,
commented upon, spread, and consumed by people in other groups. That’s how a
program gets scale.
So who
are good supercreators for brands?
I
believe in long form content creators like bloggers because they can deliver
considered stories and viewpoints. Media like Facebook and Twitter are, to me,
more about dissemination of message than origination vehicles. They are really
about the Where. I concede however
that there is certainly a real possibility that I underestimate these forms.
People
interested in your message within each of the various Groundswell segments play
different kinds of roles in your social distribution. Through their activity
they expose people in their circles to the messages as well as the discussion
and commentary that they drive.
Great
high credibility content ultimately drives the Why. Why people care and consume and process the content that is connected
to your brand. Why they care relates back to your supercreators and their
ability to create content that people find relevant and involving.
Finally,
the How. In this model, How relates
back to the manner in which the ecosystem of content and commentary serves
brand objectives. How is it impacting the brand, and how you are measuring it.
I’m
not saying developing a social strategy is an easy peasy 10-minute exercise.
But I am saying that by distilling the process into these broad question areas,
you can go a long way toward demystifying the medium and pointing yourself and
the team toward a real, credible, and long lasting program. To summarize:
1.
Who can
I find to develop and deliver highly relevant and compelling content?
2.
What
sorts
of topics and opinions help me communicate and connect and engage with
consumers?
3.
When
will our messages best resonate with the larger target audience?
4.
Where, or
what platforms will be relevant to the creation of a robust ecosystem, and how
can I ensure that the content is consumable and spreadable in these
environments?
5.
Why
will people care? Are we certain that the content supercreators conceive and
deliver will be relevant to people?
6.
How
will it impact the brand and its objectives, and how will we measure?
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