FreshNetworks Blog

Online community reviews and comments are increasingly being used in (and by) traditional media. In the last 24 hours I was struck by four examples of traditional media using comments from online communities or social networks. The user-generated content from social networks was showcased in  TV (Sky News), Newspaper (Financial Times) and on two adverts (one TV and one outdoor).

It started yesterday at 11.30am when I was catching a train back to London from Milton Keynes. With winter approaching, I couldn’t resist reading an advert for skiing in Banff. What really caught my attention was the review at the top of the poster:

“TripAdvisor.com calls it the #1 ski getaway!”

In case you don’t know, TripAdvisor is the web’s most popular online travel community, with over 30 million reviews from anyone who cares to write one. Banff was picked out as number one based on the popularity of Banff on the site and the traveller ratings by the community. This makes the review far more powerful in my opinion (and clearly also in the opinion of the Banff Tourist Board) than a review from an traditional newspaper or magazine.

This was the first time I’d consciously noticed reviews of an online network being used in such traditional media as a billboard. What was more surprising was the number of other instances I noticed the smae thing happening in across other media.

The city lawyer, the intern and the strip club
Whilst sitting on the train I was listening to a podcast The City lawyer, the intern and the strip club. I love podcasts and Lucy Kellaway, a columnist at the Financial Times, produces one of my favourites. In this one Lucy discusses the community comments that had been posted on the Times websites and the FT websites about a lawyer.

“Simply stunning”, “Please please see this film”
Having returned to the office I started to prepare for a meeting. This led me to a blog where I chanced upon another recent example of user generated comment being used in advertising. This example has already created quite a stir. Last week, Disney brought out posters for their new film, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and rather than using quotes from established film critics they picked out the best quotes from random members of the IMDB.com movie community website.

As an aside, some people think Disney should not use quotes from unknown bloggers such as Mjavfc1 and Theedge-4 as the reviews may be false and originate from Disney staff. I disagree. Assuming Disney are publishing in good faith (and it would break UK law for them to disguise their own work) then why not amplify fans’ word of mouth? For me the only reason why Disney should not cherry pick user reviews is that cherry-picking flies in the face of the ethos of user reviews - the value of Amazon reviews comes in seeing all comments, the good and the bad, and then gauging who you want to listen to.

The stories you’ve been talking about on our website
Anyway, back to the story. I finished my day off with a quick trip to the gym and a run on the treadmill. Keen not to miss any news about the latest financial powerhouse to have gone under, I tuned in to Sky News. After a few announcements they had a 5 minute segment about “the stories you’ve been talking about on our website”. The fourth and final example of UGC and consumer comments made on social networks or online communities being used in tradtional media.

We’d love to hear of any other good examples of UGC or community conversations being used in traditional media. If you notice any, please let us know.

Advertising Age has today reported on an interview with Mike Murphy, VP-media sales at Facebook. Mike is talking about their newest mechanism for brands to connect to Facebook users.

An aside:
Some people have a go at Facebook for trying so many different ad models. I certainly don’t hold this against them. Right now, they:

1. have advertisers reporting poor returns when using current Facebook ad services
2. are burning cash at a rate of around $150M this year to keep the party going
3. are in a social networking marketplace which is changing very quickly, for which no one has yet figured out the best way to sell users or their eyeballs to advertisers

As a result they need to innovate FAST. Throwing mud at the wall is not the most elegant solution (and as seen with Beacon, it can be dangerous) but it’s a perfectly credible strategy in Web2.0 world where users and advertisers are prepared to try out new things.

Now back to Mike Murphy. So apparently he’s said Facebook is attempting to solve the demand-creation side (i.e. “this is HOT, get one”) of the online advertising equation as opposed to the demand-fulfilment side (i.e. search ads and text links). So that means Facebook hopes to be great at getting you to want a Nike track top because your friend just bought one, commented on one or became a “friend of Nike”. I can totally see how Facebook is well suited to this and why it can work. It’s ironic that a company leading an online revolution is reverting to old-style PUSH advertising: “getting people to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have” but he makes a good point, saying: “the web as a whole hasn’t done a good job creating value on the demand-generation side,”

Facebook has no choice but to veer in this direction because it is a pure social network. Users visit to chat with friends and extend their off-line social lives. Users do not spend time on Facebook when they are tying to decide what car to buy or which hotel to stay at. And that’s exactly why Facebook adverts tend to get poor response and clickthroughs.

It’s a great shame for Facebook and marketeers alike that the site is not a good platform for supporting demand-fulfilment. But that’s because people are simply in a different mindset when looking for something they know they want vs chatting to friends about who they hooked up with last night. Jeremiah Owyang makes this point here using some research from Forester.

This debate goes to the heart of why we, at FreshNetworks, often advocate branded online communities over Facebook advertising campaigns. An online community is not the same as a social network and people do visit online communities when in the demand-fulfilment mind-set. For example they visit Amazon to read book reviews, Tripadvisor to read hotel reviews and thousands of other communities where comments have been posted on every product from nail clippers to luxury yachts.

Demand-creation is very important for growing any business. I do hope that Facebook’s new propositions successfully help marketeers achieve it. I am sure they will. However FriendFeed and Open Social will in time provide a replication of the benefits of this new Facebook model across a broader audience. As a result, it is far better for brands to focus on an online community that can provide the basis for both demand-fulfilment and demand-creation activities. For me that’s why a branded online community beats a Facebook advertising campaign in the majority of cases.

Some more reading

• Facebook Proposes ‘Engagement Ads,’ Educates Marketers
• What Facebook’s New ‘Engagement Advertising’ Means to Brands
• Do Privacy and Advertising Mesh?
• FriendFeed Adds Widgets; Its Path to Mainstream?

I just read a good post by Chris Brogan today called what social media does best. I’m never a big fan of lists, but this is a useful one, making clear some specific benefits of social media (just in case you were wondering - which I know a lot of people are).

My top three points (and the reasons why) are:

1. Podcasts encourage different types of learning, in portable formats - I listen to a couple of podcasts as I cycle to work and a couple on the way home. That’s 30 minutes of learning every single day that I would not have got before the social media revolution. My favourite ones are Business Week Cover Stories, TED talks and Behind the Numbers.
2. Social networks make for great ways to understand the mindset of the online consumer - given that my first business was a research company this ethnographic style of research is of particular interest to me.
3. People feel heard - I think the best way for brands to engage their customers is through conversations. Online customer communities give your customers a platform to make a point and give you the right of reply and ability to say “thank you”.

Some more reading

• What Social Media Does Best
• It’s what’s on the inside that counts
• Definition + Social Media = Need stats to join the conversation?
• Why Are You Investigating Social Media

A lot has been written about the online strategies of Barack Obama’s campaign team, in particular in their ability to drive grassroots support and donations from thousands of supporters. (See our  own posts here and here).

One of the latest outputs from the team is an open briefing to supporters by David Plouffe, Campaign Manager. He’s recorded a short video of himself and some powerpoint slides that detail the upcoming campaign strategy and what’s required if they are to beat John McCain.

I think the video is worthy of a mention as it’s a great example of an organisation moving from polished advertising messages to raw, uncut conversations aimed at driving community engagement.

For fifty years presidential candidates have carefully crafted their messages and tried to give a sense of Teflon-coated invulnerability. Yet here is the campaign manager having a quick chat into the camera. He’s filmed in poor light, from his office chair, in casual clothes.

Now I am not saying this message hasn’t been carefully crafted, I am sure it has. In fact they probably tested different versions with a private online research community to get feedback before sending it out to everyone. But it’s the fact they have chosen to go with an unpolished, real-world feel that I find most interesting and that makes the video engaging.

Also worthy of note is that despite this being a two-horse race, despite the fact that McCain’s people will be keen to pour over the strategies mentioned here, they have still published it for all to see. They know the impact on their own advocates will outweigh the benefit to McCain’s troops. That’s a pretty bold move, but it’s what his campaign has been about all along.

This video is a great example of someone who has embraced the open, straight talking nature of the web to create real engagement and dialogue.

After having struggled for years to reduce its phone support load, Loftus Photography turned to Oddcast to implement a virtual sales rep, enabled with artificial intelligence, to assist potential customers. The avatar, named Kathleen, was taught to respond to user questions with context-sensitive spoken answers. The results were huge: a 50% increase in sales productivity due to reducing the time needed for an average phone consultation, as well as increased customer satisfaction. Click here to chat with Kathleen and see for yourself.

I often get asked to explain why SecondLife (SL) is more than just a geek and sex fest. Millions of people have visited this virtual world only to give up and abandon their avatar on day one (over 10 million according to Wikipedia). I don’t blame them. SecondLife isn’t ready for the mainstream. And nor is it SecondLife per-se that’s important.

SecondLife isn’t the future of life online. But what it is is an indicator of the kind of behaviour online that may soon become as mainstream as YouTube. SecondLife is really a live innovation of means of interacting online. It is used by a relatively restricted number of people and often quite fanatically by these. It isn’t mainstream and couldn’t become so until we all have significantly better computing power at home.

This is what makes SecondLife so exciting. It’s difficult to visualise what it represents; what virtual worlds will become online. It’s the same as how difficult it was to imagine what the internet would be like when the web was just a couple of computers connected together.

I think that the innovation that is being developed through the use of SecondLife will bring real change to our behaviour online. A company will make the innovation leap necessary to extend avatars and virtual worlds to the mainstream. I don’t know who, when or how this will be done, but the ingredients and beheviours typical of innovation are present and so it will happen.

Today I came across a company that shows one potential development of integrating virtual worlds into our online experience. RocketOn turns the entire web into a virtual world where your avatar travels with you. And as you read a page you come across the avatars of others’ who also happen to be visiting. Could this be the future of forums? Or online communities? I think it’s a fantastic idea and it seems pretty well executed (see the Techcrunch post) and watch this video to get an idea of how it works:

Nothing gets a message accross like a good story. If you’re looking for a fun way to help people in your firm understand how the world of advertising has changed from interuption to engagement, show them this…

I was delighted to see Lee win The Apprentice last night. I’m sure he’s not as capable as Claire, but on a personal level he seemed like a great guy who really needed an opportunity like this.

I find that The Apprentice is a bit of a marmite show. In our office, people either shout about how great it is or complain that “this is just another trashy reality show” and “I’d never hire any of those idiots”. I understand the criticisms, but I think there’s something beyond the pure entertainment that makes it an important show and it’s why I love it so much. Here are three great things about The Apprentice:

• It hails the salesman as king - I have always been upset by the prejudice graduates have against a job in sales, yet I think it is perhaps the best possible place for most grads to start. It is so rare to see such an importance placed on selling as a skill. In some ways the show over-exaggerates sales, but for me this is a polemic worth airing.
• It celebrates entrepreneurial drive - both by acknowledging Sir Alan Sugar’s achievements as an entrepreneur (whatever you think of him, he’s done very well) and also in rewarding the team whose business nous wins the task each week.
• It’s meritocratic - OK, so there is a bias from Sir Alan, but in general it puts a wide variety of people with different backgrounds and experiences on an equal footing in an open contest. I can’t think of any employer who’d see such a range of candidates for the same job. Lee was perhaps the least well educated person this time round, yet his drive, ambition and interpersonal skills helped him win through. A great message for the thousands who, like him, never got a degree.

What does it teach us about online communications with your customers? Nothing. But a little light relief never hurt anyone. Well done Lee.

Last night I was at an event organised by Results International called Winning in Changing Times. One of the speakers was Christopher Satterthwaite, Chief Executive of Chime Communications. He gave an excellent talk about how brands and organisations need to change the way they engage with customers. Key points included:

• From Deference to Reference. We’ve left the age of Deference (where consumers yield to the judgement of a marketing message) and moved into an age of Reference (where we can and do check claims against feedback from others who have already purchased or experienced a service).
• He showed a great slide that demonstrated the importance of “What you DO” over “What you SAY”. I think it was called “Moving Annual Targets” (MAT). For each month he’d picked out the brand/person most talked about in the press. E.g. NorthernRock for Sept’07, Alistair Darling for Nov’07, BA/BAA for Jan’08 and Bradford and Bingley for June’08. Each of these had hit the headlines because of something they had done which directed a lot of (often negative) attention their way. you can see the diagram showing this below.
• This led onto a point about Reputation. Reputation comes from what you say, what you do and what others say about you. This has always been true and continues to be true. The change is the importance ascribed to each of those three drivers. The order of importance has now been reversed: what others say about you is paramount, then what you do etc.

It was great to hear about how this large communications group has developed it’s thinking in response to the way consumers now consume brand and political messages.

With a little extra time on my hands this bank-holiday weekend, I thought I’d check out what’s new on YouTube. Wading past a fantastic dance-off video’s by ACDC and the Levi backflip guys I stumbled upon one of Radiohead’s many digital marketing activities.

In case you don’t know them, Radiohead are one of the best bands to come out of the UK in the last 20 years. And they have embraced the internet with real vigour. Their last album, In Rainbows, was released online on a “pay-what-you-like” basis and in addition to selling 1.2 million copies this way, the album recently won a prestigious Best Album award in the UK.

To go with the album, they created a video-making competition. They asked for people to pick a track from the album and then create their own video to go with it. There are some cash rewards, but given the quality of the videos produced (and the time it must have taken to produce them) it’s clear that people are entering for the prestige and the desire to create and show their skills. To share their creations with other fans, or merely to show their support for their favourite band.

This is a fantastic way to increase engagement with and loyalty to the band. If you create a film, you know it’s going to be seen and voted on by other fans, but more importantly by the band. It’s also a way of allowing the fans to put their own stamp on a song (Radiohead’s music is particularly suited to this as each song can be interpreted in thousands of ways).

But what I really love about this marketing activity is that by generating loads of UGC videos it’s getting the songs out there and listened to by more and more people. I have just listened to one song three times - with a different video interpretation each time.

Measuring the ROI and value of social media activities is difficult and still in its infancy, but just the saving of the advertising costs needed to create this kind of exposure is huge.

Some examples

To see the quality and value of the amateur videos produced just look at the three below, all made by amateur fans as part of the online video-making competition.