The Consumer Driven World

One of the most visible trends in marketing over the last few years has been the shift from the corporate driven world to the consumer driven world.  Essentially this means the consumer is no longer accepting the terms that companies dictate.  Consumers now demand that they be part of the equation; they want transparency, communication, and personalization.  They want to give feedback and see it reflected.  They don’t want companies to create bland cookie cutter experiences for all, they want companies to recognize the value of each customer and show real interest in wanting each specific customer to come back.

 

This trend is illustrated in the 2008 Yankelovich Consumer Insights Report from a unique perspective.  The Yankelovich report highlights “consumer needs and vital signs.”  One set in particular points to consumers following an “inner compass” and this being projected by the “need for personal authenticity.”  This means consumers overall will not be satisfied with brands that don’t show real interest in connection and don’t leverage the brand/consumer relationship.

However, brands don’t have to feel like they are conceeding control or being forced to put in more work per person.  Consumer involvement with the brand is a personal investment by the consumer, and enables a higher ability for the consumer to relate to or self identify with the brand.  The consumer is then more likely to come back if the relationship is reciprocated, as well as more likely to evangelize the brand.

This partnership also produces a stronger product that is more valuable all around.  The brand now has a source of free feedback, testing, and insight; the consumer reaps the benefit of a better product that is, ideally, more tuned to their tastes.

A side theme that is developing from the consumer driven world is the return to the values of the mom-and-pop product.  Chris Brogan higlights this insight through his experience with his local book store.  He is relating it to the experience he hopes to feel from social media, but I think the point goes farther.  The woman who runs his local book store designs a personalized experience – she makes recommendations by knowing her customers, converses with her customers, makes them feel at home and gives them added value (in her case, food while her customers browse).  Social media can be one of the conduits for brands to cultivate this type of experience with their customers, but the lesson is greater than just social media – it’s the new formula for success.

A key example of this transition is being seen right now with Starbucks.  The giant that created a standard for quality throughout their chain and grew to great heights on that dependability is loosing market-share due to impersonalization.  As a result, the company is scrambling to find ways to turn their stores into communities that better embrace their customers.  They are participating in social media and developing online networks, but the shift will also have to take place in their stores.  Right now if you go into Starbucks they ask you to fill out a short online survey in exchange for a free tall drink of your choice.  One of the questions they ask is: Is the Starbucks where you purchased this cup of coffee a central part of the local community?  I don’t know if many people right now will say yes – but by this time next year I think this question will be seen as a driving force behind many changes we expect Starbucks to make this year.

Making a Market vs. Taking From It

Another good post from Seth Goden, this time discussing the difference between Making a Market vs. Taking From It.  His examples are clever in that they illustrate his point but may not be the obvious way you would think about the concept.

Making the market: “By combining protein and chocolate, we’ve developed a new food that’s both dessert and dinner” - The first thing I think of here is the Snickers Marathon bar; I’m not sure I totally believe it’s invented a new market, but then again maybe I just didn’t buy into it.

Taking from it - “This has a touch screen, too, but you can get it from Verizon” - Since the iPhone came out, there have been a number of these that all feel like runner ups for people that can’t get out of their contract or don’t want to leave Verizon for the better service.  Pretty much none of them, though, have pushed the market forward (though the BlackBerry Storm might).  On the other hand, the T-Mobile G1 is the cell phone version of making the market – by taking some of the best of the iPhone and the Blackberry and creating a hybrid market that appeals in a different way.

The decision to make a new market or take from it will be based on many things – how strong your product is, how appealing it is, whether it is only ready to piggyback on existing success – there are probably more brands & products that piggyback (and to success) but it’s the inventors that we’ll remember.

Learning From Seth Godin’s Gravity vs. Evolution Marketing Theory

This week my team has been in an interesting discussion about the different lessons we’ve taken frfrom Seth Godin’s recent piece Gravity is just a theory. The basic premise, naming something that people already believe in is very smart marketing, lives both in reframing existing ideas (such as Gravity) and answering existing wants (the iPhone as an answer to everything we already knew we wanted in a phone).  On the reverse side, evolution faced an uphill battle because it required people to abandon their current school of thought, as well as because the timeframe of the message was longer than the attenion span (in the case of evolution, the lifetime) of the audience.

I originally introduced the article to my team and presented the idea that relaunching the ONDCP’s Anti-Drug  message as the Above The Influence message in November 2005 was a powerful marketing tactic that repositioned the message to fit Godin’s “gravity” outline and away from his “evolution” outline.  In essence, the Above The Influence framework took Anti-Drug and reframed it in a way that most people already think is a good idea – to be yourself, be the best that you can be, by being above the influences in the world.

Someone else took an alternate lesson from the article.  He pointed out Godin’s principle that the timeframe of the message relevancy in fitting with the audience’s attention needs to be paid close attention to.  This leads us to consider whether the campaign needs more pro-active in showing how being above the influence can benefit people in real ways, directly within the window of time that the decision is being made – either tangibly or emotionally.

Still another person reading the article took away a completely different learning.  Focusing on the line Persuading someone to start a blog is evolution marketing. Lots of people have been brainwashed that they have nothing to say, or can’t say it, or aren’t allowed to say it. And you rarely see someone become an overnight blogging success, we discussed how mindsets have to change to really believe that contributing content to facebook, twitter, yelp, etc, really have value and matter to our social graph.  This lead me to read up on Chris Brogan’s opinions of The Annotated World, essentially pushing us all to see the value in incremental contributions (another discussion for another time).  The discussion doesn’t relate to my job as much as it relates to the evolution of communication and social interaction in general, but it is significant none-the-less.

All in all, I highlight this because Godin’s article on Gravity vs. Evolution Marketing really stood out to a variety of people in very different ways, and generated internal marketing discussion in a way that rarely happens on a higher level above our day to day work.  I will look to highlight more of his thinking and the critical analysis it instigated in further posts.  I invite comments.

Case Study: Social Media and the Ad Council

This is a really interesting example of tapping social media for social good.

Deep Focus, an innovative ad agency, created a viral social media campaign for Ad Council basically asking people to sign up to host widgets for a particular cause of their choice, to “donate their social media”. It’s similar in a way to what we ask Teens to do when we offer “Frank” or “ATI Wall” badges for Above The Influence. Here’s a slideshow case study (though you’re missing the commentary):

Social Media for Social Good

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: social media)

and here’s the CEO of Deep Focus, Ian Schafer, speaking about the initiative on his blog.

Now that virtually everyone is a content producer to some extent, everybody has a platform to spread their message – brands can leverage this in many ways. One company that is helping brands that don’t have a product themselves that they believe consumers want to evangelize is SocialVibe; SocialVibe connects brands with causes, and the pair with consumers that want to spread the word. Consumers can pick a sponsor and a cause and place a badge on their social media page, which generates awareness for both. For every person that chooses a specific advertiser, the advertiser donates money to the cause – it’s win/win for all parties. It’s giving big brand advertisers the opportunity to leverage the power of social action and social media, and it’s enabling people to raise money for causes they care about.

Marketing Advice: Tailer Content to the Medium and the Audience

Richard Edelman reminds us that doing a single mass campaign with no regard to the nuances of your different potential audiences can result in you missing a connection to any of your potentials:

Content should be customized to the medium and the demographic group. For example, according to Fox, both Latino and African American young men use their mobile phones “like Swiss Army knives” in that they use them for everything. Therefore, to reach that group, content must be in easy to access text format. Here are statistics from Estupinya: among Hispanic English-dominant speakers seeking health information, the web accounts for 53% of total media interaction while radio is 35%. Among Spanish dominant speakers, the web accounts for only 17% of media interaction, while radio is 53%.

This is important to remember – consumers want brands to speak to them, and that requires the brand to communicate with them in their voice, and in their environment.  It may take more investment, more time, but it will give your brand the authenticity that is needed to connect.  Otherwise you might end up wasting all of your efforts.

Marketing Advice: With Information Overload, Opportunity for Trusted Sources and Reliable Currators

On his blog, Richard Edelman speaks about the need for trusted sources and curration in the age of information overload:

Information overload is causing paralysis and poor decision making. Professor Schwartz’ book, The Paradox of Choice, points up the need for trusted sources to break through the morass. He contended that there is more concern for influence than veracity, adding that with the need for speed comes inaccuracy and lack of peer review. “You retain trust by making sure those who receive information understand what you are saying.”

The opportunity is there for brands to position themselves as trusted authorities and curators of valuable content, to provide a valuable service to their consumers, and reap the benefits of staying top of mind, as well as a valuable voice in the relevant conversation.  Urban Outfitters is trying to fit this niche by developing local blogs in a hip web environment that calls out the cool culture things to do in major cities.  It’s giving their consumers another reason to come to their site, a valuable one that just might increase their brand affinity and ultimately increase sales.