Nice blog post about brand positioning in the post-cluetrain world by Francois Gossieaux over at EmergenceMarketing.

Led me to contribute a rather over-long comment about how we (MotiveQuest LLC) approach brand positioning questions for our clients today.

In the old days we had a product with rational and emotional benefits, and we made up a story and then pounded this story into people’s heads with $$$ (advertising). This worked pretty well until the fragmentation of mass media and the rise of the networked individual.

Today the way to approach this question is to first understand (using MotiveQuest of course – online anthropology) what people care about most. Then examine what they already believe to be true about your brand and your competitors. Finally, you figure out how to connect your brand to what people are passionate about in an authentic (consistent with what they already believe to be true) compelling (relevant to what they are passionate about) and helpful (helps them achieve their goals, not yours) way.

Everyone says that branding is more like politics today, but that is because it’s true. You should always connect to something passionate and true (it’s the economy stupid).

TO’B

Yesterday BL Ochman published a blog post titled: 10 Things Social Media Can’t Do. This post went viral among a certain community on Twitter – you know who you are. BL was surprised that this post got something like 4,000 ReTweets which is remarkable.

Why the huge response? I think it is because one of the primary themes around SM is the (negative) myth of the SM Guru/Expert. This post lays bare that myth, and exposes all the hard work it takes to make SM into something meaningful that drives ROI and contributes to an organization’s success.

Most of us working in this business aren’t walking around pretending to be experts, but we are working hard on behalf of our clients and companies to do a better job connecting with customers to drive sales and profitability. BL’s post is an acknowledgement of the hard work hundreds of people (consultants, agencies, companies) are doing all over the country to drive organizational success using SM as one of many tools.

Let’s re-imagine BL’s list as requirements for SM success, because that is what they are:

1. Coordination with marketing strategy.

2. Top management buy-in.

3. Long-term commitment.

4. ROI model reflecting long-term commitment.

5. Requires a professional team of agencies & experts.

6. Must be coordinated with PR and products efforts. SM can’t substitute for either.

7. SM Requires multi-year budget commitment.

8. Don’t expect to guarantee sales or influence.

9. Must be led and staffed by senior internal people who understand the over-arching strategy.

10. SM should always be coordinated with PR, Marketing and Product.

My $0.02

TO’B

Two weeks ago I was on a panel for the AC Nielsen Center for Marketing Research at UW talking about social media and market research to executives from Wal-Mart, General Mills, Kraft, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and 50 or so others. I was asked to share some lessons learned about SM – from the perspective of a brand marketer.

Here are my lessons learned personally and professionally over the last 10 years working in this space.

1. What people say to each other is more important than what we say to them.
2. People no longer rely on brands for information.
3. Advocates are more important than influencers.
4. Brand mentions are just the tip of the iceberg – somewhere between 5% and 30% of the relevant category conversation. You should listen to the whole conversation.
5. If you want to participate be helpful, human and humble.
6. When you participate, put the community’s interests & motivations first.
7. Connect to existing passion, don’t just make stuff up.
8. If you want new ideas, look beyond your category.
9. Brand advocacy is the most important metric today – are people recommending your brand to others.

I could elaborate – for a long time on each of these, but  you get the gist.

TO’B

We (MotiveQuest LLC) have just completed the third report in our series on the Health Care Reform debate. Because we think brand advocacy is the most important metric for brand health, (we used this to predict the outcome of the 2008 Presidential Election) we decided to take a look at Obama’s advocacy over the course of this very rancorous HC reform debate.

What we see is that the overall level of conversation is down, and some topics have faded (rationing) while others have continued to increase (insuring the uninsured).

Regarding advocacy, we thought that perhaps Obama’s HC Reform related advocacy would be lower than his overall advocacy – but when we compared the two, we found that they are both dropping at similar rates. Since

we have proven the link between changes in advocacy and changes in

sales in a number of categories (Cars, Cellphones) we decided to compare Obama’s advocacy to his approval ratings – the lines are a pretty close match, with advocacy seeming to lead approval ratings by a few weeks. If so, watch out below.

What do you think? Will Obama’s approval ratings plummet further in the next few weeks?

TO’B

We (MotiveQuest LLC) have decided to start tracking & analyzing the healthcare debate using our online anthropology tools and techniques.  The first report in this series can be found here:  The Raging Debate

For this series we will be monitoring & analyzing the online conversation around healthcare and providing weekly updates as to what is driving the conversation, advocacy for different options and the emotional tenor of the chatter.

Here is one chart from the report showing the key topics and drivers of concern – you can see the landscape has changed significantly from June through August.

You can see that rationing shows the biggest increase from June through August.

We will be posting a follow-up report next week which will reflect today’s speech by President Obama.

If you are interested in more information you can contact me at tobrien at motivequest dot com.

Thanks – TO’B

Hey There -

I’m on vacation until September 8.  Won’t be checking voicemail or

email, so …

If you need …

• something urgent, please contact my office: 312-932-9000
• some BBQ, call Corky’s in Memphis: http://www.corkysribsandbbq.com/
• some cheesecake, call Carnegie Deli in NYC: http://www.carnegiedeli.com
• some shiny shoes: http://www.zappos.com/mens-allen-edmonds-shoes
• to rent a mechanical bull: http://mechanicalbullchicago.com/
• to rent a real bull: http://www.movielivestock.com
• to rent a balloon: http://sky-view.com/balloon-rental.htm
• to rent a buffoon: http://www.clownsforhire.com/
• to put 25 smileys on a lawn: http://www.outdoorexpression.com/Smiley-Yard-Display.htm
• to see some awesome graffiti: http://www.flickr.com/groups/banksy/pool/
• to see some awesome packages: http://www.thedieline.com/
• to rock:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c05E6kyHu8E
• to groove:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7m_y3wBzF0
• to funk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fdesO8CdC8
• to blow your mind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-E6FDf9GkA

Cheers,

Andy

_____________________________________________

Andy  Sernovitz
www.twitter.com/sernovitz

Blog:  Damn, I Wish I’d Thought of That!
www.damniwish.com

Book: Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
www.wordofmouthbook.com

Work:
GasPedal – www.gaspedal.com
Social Media Business Council – www.socialmedia.org
Northwestern’s Medill School – Faculty, teaching WOM

For some time I have been arguing that what brands need is advocates not influencers.  Somehow this meme has recently gathered steam in the marketing discussion (see great post here from Jeremy Epstein – influencers vs. fans)

I don’t think fans is quite the right word for what brands or movements need, what they need is advocates.  Advocates are different than fans because they will do something.  They will recommend you to a friend, they will tell someone else to buy your car.  They are taking positive action.   Moreover, they don’t do this because they are “influential” or because they are being paid by the post or enticed to write nice things b/c they are getting free stuff.  They are telling their friends (online and off) to do something, because they believe.

We (MotiveQuest) have studied Brand Advocacy in some detail and I am confident in saying that increasing levels of advocacy (online and off) are correlated to increasing sales or share.  We have studied this in automotive, food, cellular, spirits and other markets with some variability (how much of the change in share or sales are explained by the change in advocacy; time lag) but always with a strong positive correlation.

When we work with brands, key questions are how many advocates do you have (compared to your competition) is the number increasing or decreasing and why?  Also, we examine what your advocates love about you most, and figure out how to leverage these things to grow advocacy.

Contrast this approach with Influencer marketing.  With adovocacy research and marketing we are trying to discover why your authentic brand fans love y0u most and how to make more advocates.  With influencer marketing you are trying to find those few people who will influence lots of other to do something.   Now like most things this works great if you get the right influencer, on the right topic.  Clearly Oprah Winfrey recommending a book to her audience is a guarantee of a NYT best seller.  Every other influencer works less well than that.

The other day I had a tweet with Guy Kawasaki about this very subject.  Guy has somehow wrangled a Corvette from GM to drive and tweet about as an “influencer”.  I respect Guy for lots of things, but is opinion is irrelevant to me as a car guy.   (Though Guy did confirm that it is fun for him!)  This is but one of many, many influencer strategies being deployed by big companies, and some of them will work.  But to me it feels more like Viral Marketing than anything else.  Rather than engaging your REAL brand users on the level of their personal brand experience, you are looking for a few influencers who will tell the rest of us sheep what to do.

What if instead of giving Guy (and I’m assuming a bunch of other “influencers”) a Corvette GM spent the resources engaging with the people over at the non-GM owned Corvette Forums which has 30 million posts from some 223,000 members?  Those are the Corvette advocates, and the care and feeding of the Corvette advocates (even if they aren’t famous) should be the #1 job of the Corvette PR and Marketing teams.

<RANT OFF>

TO’B

We are getting lots of questions from our clients about how to scale social media.  At first, the discussions are “tools and tactics” focused.  Then it quickly becomes apparent that “doing social media” is a major commitment that will take real people and real funding over time.  No freebie here.

The other day Scott Monty the SM guy for Ford blogged “A Year @ Ford – Part 1″ and I knew this was one to share.  (A year ago Scott quit his agency gig and moved his family to Detroit and joined Ford to head up digital communications – and what a year it was.  Can you think of a more turbulent year for the automotive Industry?)

Here are my takeaways – but if you (or your clients) are trying to figure out how to do SM – then read the whole thing:

1. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork: Scott didn’t set out doing, he set out meeting everyone he could across the organization and learning what they needed.
   
2. Inventory: All big companies are doing something in SM.  Find out what it is and leverage it.
   
3. Sr. Management Support: Without this you are doomed to failure.
   
4. Stakeholders: Marketing, PR, Product, Customer Service, Legal all have a stake in SM initiatives.  Figure out what it is and how to incorporate it.
   
5. Strategy: Before tools comes strategy.  What is the organization trying to accomplish.
   
6. Horses for Courses: Different SM channels for different Ford constituencies.  Mustang fans don’t care about the same thing as Fusion Hybrid fans.
   
7. Help: Once the strategy was in place, Scott brought in some really expert agencies (advertising, PR and SM) and people to help execute.  That means budget.
   

While this is a long term initiative, the early returns are quite good with very positive press coverage for Ford, and significantly improved perceptions of the brand. 

As an outsider, I’d say that Ford has stopped relying solely on mass media & big advertising and they are taking the Ford Story direct to the people.

What will your clients do?

(The other day a client was probing about our methodology. They were asking lots of smart questions and as we worked through the answers, they asked me to send a write-up. Technically, it isn’t a social media cake, but a social media analysis and insight cake. Here it is.)

During our discussion, you asked how we bake this cake – here’s my diatribe answer to that question. (BTW, baking a cake turns out to be a great analogy!)

To bake a cake you need ingredients (data), mixers and pans (tools) and cooks (strategists).  Your questions were focused on developing a better understanding of each one of these. (Disclaimer, I’m not the CTO or the head of research, so my answers may be a bit shallow.  I promise that I’m happy to get both/either of those people (cc’d above) on the phone to dive into more detail.)

Any good cake starts with the right ingredients.  For MQ this means starting with the right data.  The right data is always category, project and client specific.    Here are our thoughts about data.

1. Including the data you want while excluding the data you don’t what is hard.  We discussed the Visa example, and you have experienced this with your brand.  De-spamming and de-duping is an important part of the job.
   
2. Brand mentions range from 2% to 30% of the relevant data (depending on category, so only collecting brand mentions will miss most of the relevant conversation.
   
3. It isn’t helpful to get all of the data.  (Splogs – or spam blogs have LOTS of brand mentions – but aren’t real and VERY hard to eliminate.   Focusing on and gathering the sites where the most people are participating virtually guarantees the elimination of Splogs.
   
4. 5 years of expertise in solving the challenges above with a combination of technology tools and linguistic programming expertise provides MQ with a significant advantage over most of our competition.
   

You can’t bake a cake without measuring cups, mixers, whisks, spatulas, pans and an oven.  We can’t do our work without a broad sophisticated toolkit.  One of the fundamental challenges in analyzing large amounts of unstructured text data is that you simply can’t make sense of it in any sort of manual fashion.  Sophisticated software tools are the answer, but how those tools are developed and deployed makes a difference.

1. Language is fluid over time and across categories.  Tools must be too.  Every one of our tools is parameter driven and allows the strategist to adjust the linguistic model and other parameters for the category and project at hand.
   
2. Simple measures (counts, brand mentions, sentiment) are not useful for understanding why people do what they do and without understanding, we don’t gain the insight of what to do next.
   
3. Understanding requires more sophisticated tools.   That is why we have tools for passion peaking, measuring motivations, word association, brand advocacy and many, many others.
   
4. We have many tools available, but the tools used and the order of use is very project dependent.
   

Finally, you can’t bake a cake without a cook.  Well, I guess you can use a box mix from the grocery store and bake a cake without a cook, but if you have a special occasion and hire a chef to bake a cake, you don’t expect to get something from a box mix.  You expect a cake cooked to your specifications for your occasion.  You expect something unique, professional, surprising and delicious for your special occasion.  In our world, the dashboard and organized data providers are the box mixes.

MotiveQuest brings the experienced professional chef who will design and deliver a custom cake according to your exact interests, needs and specifications.

1. Experience matters.  We have very sophisticated toolsets and it takes at least 6 months to get a strategist (most of whom have advanced degrees and backgrounds in consulting or planning) trained and productive.
   
2. The tools are complex because the problems are complex.
   
3. A single strategist is responsible for the entire project including data collection, organization, analysis, insights and recommendations.
   
4. Each project has its own specifications and requirements.  Communication, solid project management and client involvement are all required to achieve good results.
   
5. MotiveQuest Senior Leadership is deeply involved in every project to ensure results that meet your needs.
   

I will send the MQ capabilities presentation in another email.   Our case studies are very marketing (not data or technology) focused for a reason.  We don’t get hired to provide data or technology, but instead to solve real world marketing and communication problems.  I’ll be happy to provide more detail about any of them.

Thanks very much for your time on these issues, and I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

TO’B

Does that seem like a provocative title? Well it kind-of is. Communities do care about brands, but perhaps not in the way you like to think. Communities are self organizing groups of like-minded people who gather to share information, opinions, and suggestions, make friends, get together, etc. Sometimes, a brand sits at the center of the community, but more often it doesn’t

(Here’s my deck on How Communities Work.)

We have done hundreds of projects over the last 6 years harvesting and analyzing community conversations to understand why people do what they do. Across all these projects, brand mentions are typically a fraction of all the community conversation. In food, brand mentions are in less than 5% of the conversations. In a highly brand involved community, like cars or cellphones brand mentions are rarely in more than 30% of the conversations.

If you are “brand monitoring” then you are missing between 70% and 95% of the relevant conversation.

If you (Mr. Brand) want to “connect” with communities what you need to do is study community issues, motivations and drivers first. Once you understand the community motivations, then you are ready to participate. Just remember this rule of thumb. Everything you (Mr. Brand) do in the community should go through the filter of community motivations.

Are you serving the community or are you using the community?

YMMV

TO’B