At Internet World, Julian Ormerod, Wunderman's Chief Digital Officer, was part of a panel discussing how to protect and maintain brand value, ‘personality’ and reputation online with the rise of social networks.
Here are some of Julian's thoughts and advice.
Erosion of consumer trust in brands
Consumer trust in brands is the lowest it's ever been. According to Y&R’s BrandAsset™ Valuator, average trust levels have fallen by more than 50% since 1997 in the US. There are now unprecedented demands for transparency and responsible corporate ethics. In a recent survey, a staggering 51% of consumers in the US stated that they would boycott products for social, political or environmental reasons (DYG Scan, November 2007). Brands have never been under such scrutiny.
What this means is that customers are trying to read between the lines of marketing messages, filtering out the truth about a brand, product or service. Does the product do what it says it will do? How does it compare to the competition? Where can I find the best price?
Sure, they'll go to a brand site for specific product information and that's an important role, but a corporate sites' influence is limited. For authentic brand truths most people will go to who or what they trust - their friends, colleagues or even Google.
As marketers we have to be much more aware, and ready to take action, in the face of potential damage to brand perception. Today’s challenge is finding a way to engage with customers who are disgruntled about a product or service, because it's now very easy for them to make their voice heard through social media. Ignore bloggers at your peril!
There are a few things we need to do:
1. Listen
We have to listen – understand the conversations, understand where they are taking place and understand who is influencing them.
The most important aspect to managing brand perceptions is listening first. To assess your brand’s reputation you have to first understand what people are saying about your brand, where they're saying it and who the main influencers in the debate are. There are two ways you can do this; the simple way and the more sophisticated.
The simple way
Anyone can track conversations online by:
· Setting up alerts for brands or people using tools like Google or Yahoo Alerts.
· Monitoring blog posts through sites like Technorati.
· At the simplest level, by searching for brand names on Google, MSN or Yahoo and seeing what appears. By looking carefully at search results we can check our own properties and keywords are optimised for 'natural search'.
The more complex way of listening
Taking this to another level requires investment in a listening tool to assess what's happening online. Numerous studies show that an increase in brand 'buzz' = greater market share. Consider these two types of tools:
- Corporate reputation management tools
Designed to assess developing problems that might become issues. They are successfully used by brands, such as pharmaceuticals, and the algorithms of these tools are designed to find issues.
- Influencer tracking tools
The second type of tool determines both the topics of conversation about a brand and, more importantly, identifies the influencers and agenda-setters in the conversation. At Wunderman, we use this type of tool to develop more impactful conversations for our clients.
Importantly, these track influence rather than popularity. For example, take juvenile obesity. People naturally think Jamie Oliver is one of the key influencers. However, Jamie is actually not even in the top 10 most ‘influential’ people on the subject. Popular, but not necessarily the most influential. The real influencers are the British Medical Journal and National Obesity Forum; organisations that are determining the agenda and influencing the largest audience.
2. Organise
We have to organise ourselves in a different manner and dedicate staff to monitor and manage social media. A Burson-Martsteller survey in 2008 identified that only 15% of Fortune companies communicate with their customers via blogs.
As Erin Byrne, Chief Digital Strategist @ B-M, says, "I think the reason…why it still isn't higher is that companies are still grappling with how they participate in the conversation when they don't have control over the message."
Brands that are trying to organise in a different way are Pizza Hut, by recruiting a Summer 'Twintern' – a chance for a regular social media fan to manage Pizza Hut’s output.
Another good example of brands changing their approach is Ford in the US. Scott Monty, Global Head of Social Media, has a role to engage Ford with Social Media sites. He has a blog and a twitter account (www.twitter.com/scottmonty) with over 19,000 followers. So brands are taking a step forwards – are you?
3. Participate
We can build credibility and gain the right to participate in the conversations by being engaging and interesting. Brands should think about developing application, content or conversations that are useful, relevant or entertaining.
Developing interactive content and services is good way of entering the conversation and generating value from:
• Digital services that make life easier – Nike +, UPS desktop widget (http://www.widget.ups.com/en-gb/index.html)
• Entertainment – virals, games
• Helping consumers become creators of content or ideas. Dell’s Ideas Storm is a great example of this. They have also recently developed even more interesting innovation challenges with Dell Social Innovation Competition, which has developed some interesting social innovation ideas. (http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com/)
Consumer trust in brands is the lowest it's ever been. According to Y&R’s BrandAsset™ Valuator, average trust levels have fallen by more than 50% since 1997 in the US. There are now unprecedented demands for transparency and responsible corporate ethics. In a recent survey, a staggering 51% of consumers in the US stated that they would boycott products for social, political or environmental reasons (DYG Scan, November 2007). Brands have never been under such scrutiny.
What this means is that customers are trying to read between the lines of marketing messages, filtering out the truth about a brand, product or service. Does the product do what it says it will do? How does it compare to the competition? Where can I find the best price?
Sure, they'll go to a brand site for specific product information and that's an important role, but a corporate sites' influence is limited. For authentic brand truths most people will go to who or what they trust - their friends, colleagues or even Google.
As marketers we have to be much more aware, and ready to take action, in the face of potential damage to brand perception. Today’s challenge is finding a way to engage with customers who are disgruntled about a product or service, because it's now very easy for them to make their voice heard through social media. Ignore bloggers at your peril!
There are a few things we need to do:
1. Listen
We have to listen – understand the conversations, understand where they are taking place and understand who is influencing them.
The most important aspect to managing brand perceptions is listening first. To assess your brand’s reputation you have to first understand what people are saying about your brand, where they're saying it and who the main influencers in the debate are. There are two ways you can do this; the simple way and the more sophisticated.
The simple way
Anyone can track conversations online by:
· Setting up alerts for brands or people using tools like Google or Yahoo Alerts.
· Monitoring blog posts through sites like Technorati.
· At the simplest level, by searching for brand names on Google, MSN or Yahoo and seeing what appears. By looking carefully at search results we can check our own properties and keywords are optimised for 'natural search'.
The more complex way of listening
Taking this to another level requires investment in a listening tool to assess what's happening online. Numerous studies show that an increase in brand 'buzz' = greater market share. Consider these two types of tools:
- Corporate reputation management tools
Designed to assess developing problems that might become issues. They are successfully used by brands, such as pharmaceuticals, and the algorithms of these tools are designed to find issues.
- Influencer tracking tools
The second type of tool determines both the topics of conversation about a brand and, more importantly, identifies the influencers and agenda-setters in the conversation. At Wunderman, we use this type of tool to develop more impactful conversations for our clients.
Importantly, these track influence rather than popularity. For example, take juvenile obesity. People naturally think Jamie Oliver is one of the key influencers. However, Jamie is actually not even in the top 10 most ‘influential’ people on the subject. Popular, but not necessarily the most influential. The real influencers are the British Medical Journal and National Obesity Forum; organisations that are determining the agenda and influencing the largest audience.
2. Organise
We have to organise ourselves in a different manner and dedicate staff to monitor and manage social media. A Burson-Martsteller survey in 2008 identified that only 15% of Fortune companies communicate with their customers via blogs.
As Erin Byrne, Chief Digital Strategist @ B-M, says, "I think the reason…why it still isn't higher is that companies are still grappling with how they participate in the conversation when they don't have control over the message."
Brands that are trying to organise in a different way are Pizza Hut, by recruiting a Summer 'Twintern' – a chance for a regular social media fan to manage Pizza Hut’s output.
Another good example of brands changing their approach is Ford in the US. Scott Monty, Global Head of Social Media, has a role to engage Ford with Social Media sites. He has a blog and a twitter account (www.twitter.com/scottmonty) with over 19,000 followers. So brands are taking a step forwards – are you?
3. Participate
We can build credibility and gain the right to participate in the conversations by being engaging and interesting. Brands should think about developing application, content or conversations that are useful, relevant or entertaining.
Developing interactive content and services is good way of entering the conversation and generating value from:
• Digital services that make life easier – Nike +, UPS desktop widget (http://www.widget.ups.com/en-gb/index.html)
• Entertainment – virals, games
• Helping consumers become creators of content or ideas. Dell’s Ideas Storm is a great example of this. They have also recently developed even more interesting innovation challenges with Dell Social Innovation Competition, which has developed some interesting social innovation ideas. (http://www.dellsocialinnovationcompetition.com/)
4. Don’t duck the issues
We have to deal with any issues as we would bad PR. Developing and owning a plan that directly involves the person at the centre of the issue is a powerful response.
5. Protect
We need to cover all the emerging social media and ensure we are at least protecting our brand by claiming any brand credits. A recent example of a brand that failed to pay attention was South West Trains, who had their twitter identity (www.twitter.com/southwesttrains) taken over by a rather disgruntled commuter with funny but damaging postings like:
“This is a passenger announcement – we hate you”
“Had some good rail fail this morning….. skipped a few stations to make up for it. I don’t think anyone noticed…..”
And finally...
On one hand, social networks offer fantastic opportunities for brands to engage with new and existing audiences, influence conversations and develop online content that positively contributes to their brand perception. On the other, neglecting this important sphere can (and does) prove costly.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments about protecting and maintaining brand value, ‘personality’ and reputation via social networks.
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