The Advocacy Dial
“Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.” Albert Einstein
At numerous conferences during 2008 I showed a slide that was a screenshot of a social networking site. This showed a page that contained an application and a comment box where 3 people had written of their experiences.
The first post shown on the slide was pretty harsh, damming the application for not being free of charge and suggesting it would be better to ‘just Google’ the information the application provided as they believed by doing so, they could find the information without charge. Without intent to slander, I labelled this contributor on the slide as a ‘Hater’.
The second post was positive, liking the application (saying it’s “awesome”) but mentioning the charging structure as an unfortunate but seemingly necessary component (”it can’t be helped”). I labelled this contributor on the slide as a ‘User’.
The third post stated that the share button froze whilst trying to share with others and they stated their desire for this to be fixed so sharing could continue. I labelled this contributor on the slide as an ‘Advocate’.
Depending on the atmosphere of the conference delegates, I ask, “Who is the advertiser?”
After scanning the slide for some form of commercial message from a brand, it is quickly realised that the choices are of the three contributors.
The Advocate gets the most hands up. The User has only ever had a single hand up and the Hater sometimes gets a few. I also give a choice of ‘all three’ but by then the hands of the audience are almost always down.
Repeatedly, over many conferences, this was the pattern of the results.
The advertising prowess of the Advocate in the example is fairly obvious. They have shown their intent and preference to advertise to others and indeed have taken the time to write a comment pointing out the share button issue.
I concur with the few who say the Hater is an advertiser. Not only is the negative publicity there for all to see but the Hater post is blatantly an advert for an alternative solution. Look again. The Hater is advertising two services – one is the application and one is Google.
What I try to illustrate with this example is the fact that all three contributions are advertising the application, albeit in a good, neutral and bad way.
The appearance of these contributions on the home page of the application is advertising in itself. The contributions are zero-spun truth (assuming the contributions are genuine) giving us a fairly good indication of what we can expect from the application.
It tells us that the application seems pretty good but its not free and it’s problematic to share with others. If that is the kind of application you are after – this is the one for you.
Sadly, the makers of the application either didn’t immediately see the comments or were unwilling to respond for an extensive period of time – these posts were alone on the application page for a considerable time. We cannot know whether the application makers were aware that their product was being advertised by people other than their marketing department (if they exist) but they had every opportunity to respond – especially if they managed to fix the share button and were able to justify the charging model by perhaps pointing out that this was a premium product – or offering some incentive for recommendation to others.
The contributors’ perception equals the reality of the application – a truism explored in the chapter ‘Perception = Reality’.
I believe there is nothing more powerful in advertising terms as personal recommendation. One can recommend to another that something should be used, engaged with or bought as easily as recommending that something should be avoided.
If the dialogue is with someone with whom there is respect and trust, this advertising is remarkably effective – so much so that once the messages are out there, it is sometimes impossible to re-engineer the brand perception.
Clever brands do however have an option to focus on the perception as a unique selling point. As we know, Pot Noodle is not a premium product and I hear from qualified sources that it is best consumed after alcohol when, I presume, ease wins over nutritional value.
One can imagine that Pot Noodle advocacy would kick in at the end of a long drinking session where one tipsy drinker says to another – “Man…Pot Noodle time….”.
For Pot Noodle, there simply isn’t a more effective advert than being intrinsic to the end of an evening – where friends ask “What Pot
Noodle do you have?” rather than “What food do you have?”
Another example is Hoover who were so successful in becoming a verb that people would say that they were going shopping after they had “Hoovered the house”.
Just think about the incredible power a brand has had when someone walks into a domestic appliance retailer and asks for a Hoover. Not a vacuum cleaner but a Hoover. Faced with a range of vacuum cleaners, the bias toward models with the name Hoover on would be monumental.
Dyson have created a similar effect now – many people now Dyson the house rather than vacuum the house using a Dyson. When the Dyson needs to be upgraded, the obvious move is to buy a better Dyson – not a better vacuum cleaner.
Ironically, people now say they are looking to buy a Dyson Hoover. It wouldn’t be too random to hear about someone Hoovering with a Dyson.
What happened there!?
By becoming a verb, the brand takes on a part in people’s lives that ‘self-advocates’ itself. Increasingly we discuss our lives using verbs that used to only be humble brand names.
I fear that marketing communication is publicly seen as something that is inflicted by gluttonous corporate enterprise but I believe that it’s predominantly executed by the public in normal conversation.
We should take a glance at synonyms too, which are as powerful as verbs in this instance.
Check out the groups of young people on a train discussing what tracks they have on their iPods rather than discussing what tracks they have on their portable music players.
At the time of writing the vast majority of all web searches are carried out using Google. This facility is synonymous with search to such an extent that if you asked most people how to find the best price for a portable music player I would wager they would suggest that you ‘Googled’ ‘Cheap iPod’ or similar.
Vacuum cleaners used to be Hoovers but now they are Dysons.
Portable Music Players are used to be Sony Walkmans (remember them?) but now they are iPods.
Internet Search used to be Yahoo or Alta Vista but now it is Google.
The brand has already been chosen – our advocacy is apparent in daily conversations. You simply couldn’t buy that level of advertising off the shelf.
But what does it mean if the most powerful advertisers are each other? When real influence is transmitted amongst peer groups and inspirational icons, where is the power of the traditional advertiser? Is it possible that the ‘best’ advertisement for a brand could come from the consumers?
These are some of the questions facing many people in the media industry today and there are several, fairly serious, consequences depending on your viewpoint on customer control, experience and ownership.
It is perhaps the most natural option for those who have been used to ‘controlling’ the customer experience to look now at the proliferation of user-generated content/advertising and to view it as a risk. After all, how can experience be controlled when it is in the hands of the public?
It is surely ironic that the public who are buyers, users and advertisers are those that are often seen as problematic considering they are the primary force behind the strongest brand loyalty and repeat purchase.
If the brand, product or service is ‘right’, the public will use these mechanisms to be powerful advertisers. This isn’t something that should be limited this is something that should be sought after.
I feel the ultimate place for a brand to be is within the recommendation of individuals and communities. Some may say that the role of an advertising agency is to creatively and strategically enable brands to travel further up a ‘dial’ that starts with us ignoring communication, progresses to reviewing it, potentially engaging with it and ultimately/ideally recommending to others. As communication travels further up the dial, impact increases.
I believe it is the duty of marketers to leverage, encourage and facilitate the journey upwards through what I call The Advocacy Dial.
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We live in a world where negatives are spoken of more than positives so how can we ensure that the commercial communication we let out into market will be advocated positively to others?
To answer this we need to trace patterns of negative expression and see which parts we can possibly address.
Here is an example of 3 types of reason for negative expression:
- I found that the thing doesn’t work in the way I expected or wanted it to
- Someone I know said that the thing didn’t work in the way they expected
- Someone I didn’t know said that the thing didn’t work in the way they expected
So, we have a typical 3 ‘person’ split between ‘what I think’, ‘what someone I know thinks’ and ‘what someone I don’t know thinks’. At first glance it is feasible that if the person you know is someone that you don’t trust, the propensity of you then using his or her opinion as the basis of yours, is low – obviously due to the fact that you are unlikely to believe them so much.
However – in the ultra-connected world in which we live, we often see these opinions within environments (e.g. blogs) that are universally trusted as stand-alone operations, almost regardless of the non-core contributors. These environments manifest as oracles of truth despite justification.
As I write this I have received an email alert directing me to a blog containing a post about a phone network that is being slated for what one person is reporting as “horrendous customer service”. Others are writing responses as if the reporter is totally correct – blatantly without knowing the reporter or being on the same phone network.
For readers of this blog who trust the environment, the reporter’s thoughts are sympathised with, empathised with and ultimately, believed. This extends the factor of ‘people of trust’ to ‘environments of trust’ and adds a whole new dimension to how commercial communication must be strategised, created and marketed.
Advocacy seems not only to be something that people do but also what the creations of people do. Every single one of us can create a web log free of charge – it takes seconds. Then, over time, thoughts, feelings and beliefs can be written and shared with the world. The marketing of your thought can be done without any expenditure (if you know how) and it is not outrageous to consider what we in the trade see as ‘consumers’ to in fact be a network of billions of individuals, personally connected to a network of billions of individuals.
Marketers have an equal opportunity to use the above reality in their facilitation of communication. Tools allow people to communicate often (and unsurprisingly) result in communication amongst people, but yet again – what if the communication by individuals is against the messages we struggle so hard to create?
Judging by the above reasons for negative expression, it would seem that the brands and creators of products and services need to ensure that the thing that is sold does what it is expected although expectations are rarely unified.
In ‘Flipping the Funnel’, Seth Godin suggests an ideal:
- turn strangers into friends
- friends into customers
- and then (most importantly) customers into salespeople
In the early years of the 21st century, Apple continually made products that ‘just worked’, our portable music player of choice, iPod, was one. Public expectation started as nothing other than expecting some form of novelty or change away from mini-discs that theoretically superseded CD systems that superseded cassette players.
But what a market entry – people’s positive advocacy of the iPod populated the chat rooms, forums, blogs and boardrooms, meaning that the next shift of expectation was for the user experience to be brilliant and the technology to ‘just work’.
Subsequently, even those without an iPod were be hard pressed not to mention the reason why people loved the product so much when asked.
The promise of the iPod was physically created prior to the realisation of the promise itself. When people realised how incredible the iPod was, it became the advocacy and thus the expectation – but the important thing is it was built this way.
Now lets take an alternative example.
A few years in to the reign of the iPod, Microsoft announced plans to create its own media player. The company had very high hopes due to the popularity of its Windows operating system and the bold statements about the device, called ‘Zune’ were soon floating around the technology papers. Uh-oh Apple…the big boys on the block are coming to take their ball back. Surely the software giant with (at that time) over 90% of the personal computing market sewn up would likely produce a personal media device that was as popular and ubiquitous as its other mass products?
Yet rather than wildfire reaction to the news of the imminent ‘Zune’ arrival, the chat rooms, forums, blogs and boardrooms seemed notably muted. It wasn’t that there were strongly positive or vehemently negative opinions – it was that there were few opinions at all.
Ebullient senior executives talked up a storm and the world was under no confusion that the miraculous ‘Zune’ was soon to be released. Comparison charts of the likely interactivity that ‘Zune’ boasted were proudly displayed by the countable Microsoft fanboys. The potential of the world’s largest software maker creating a personal player created merely a ripple of expectation prior to it being launched.
And then it was launched.
And then..not alot..
6 – 24 year olds looked at their iPod playlists and at their friends’ playlists, largely unaware of a ‘Zune’ and if they were, they had no idea what the car or game looked like.
24 – 50 year olds had their convenience in a box and even though the occasional report mentioned ‘Zune’, they were happy with what they had. After all, Zune was a film starring David Bowie right?
50 – 70 year olds had only just got their iPods and were unlikely to make another change in behaviour.
70+ year olds read about iPods and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Just because there is a gap in the market doesn’t mean there is a market for the gap.
Competing with something requires an in-depth understanding of what it is you are competing with.
As Sun Tzu in ‘The Art of War’ speaks of the extreme importance of knowing one’s enemy – not simply the fact that you have one, nor the fact you know where they are, but their behaviour, their emotions, their eating patterns, their sleeping patterns, their personal issues. Only then can you be prepared to attack or defend.
Competing against the iPod would take significantly more than thinking that the competition was about personal media devices. That was simply the casing. This competition was about deep user experience, intuitive interfaces, product variations to suit all, peer group belief and personal advocacy in the most positive light.
This is a competitors’ nightmare and not in any way helped by the fact that the question on the street wasn’t “what player have you got?” but “what iPod have you got?”
For all of the above reasons I believe that identifying the advocates in social groups is vitally important. I find it surprising that this isn’t heralded as a primary objective amongst every single company that communicates with members of the public – for whatever reason. I am stunned that companies like Xtract need to outreach to companies and convince them that ‘Social Advertising Intelligence is the Black Gold of the 21st Century’.
Currently, many advertisers think that social advertising is buying banners around social network sites. Once these misconceptions have been eradicated I believe that companies will beat a path to the doors of those whose services interrogate community personalities.
Engagement via social media marketing is often discussed as something that can ‘be done’ but I believe its something that needs to ‘be earned’. Authenticity is critical but little focus is currently placed on it.
Joining discussions in the community requires mandatory integrity on the advertiser side. In ‘Small Is The New Big’ Seth Godin writes: “amplify the happiest fans but without the kernel of truth, you’ve got nothing but a short-lived packaged-goods campaign”
If we look at the effectiveness of marketing when the advocates are known, we see an incremental weighting toward communications with those that have a natural viral effect. Godin also clarified the 4 reasons that viral effects occur are:
1. The person who has engaged with an idea, understands it
2. They want to spread the content to other people
3. They believe that spreading it will enhance their power/reputation/income/friendships/peace of mind
4. The effort necessary to send the idea is less than the benefits
On the receivers side we can add that no one gets an idea unless:
1. Their 1st impression demands further attention
2. They already understand the foundation ideas necessary to get the new idea
3. They trust or respect the sender enough to invest the time
In summary, ideas never spread because they are important to the originator, the transparency of offering, relevancy of communication, value of incentive and ease of interaction need to follow throughout the chain.
The tertiary benefit of positively communicating with those who have a social group that listen is far more powerful than the benefit of communicating with those who don’t. This isn’t to discount the reason to apply excellent communication principles to everyone!
For advertisers, the effect of positive or negative interpretation is remarkably hard to monitor and, more importantly, learn from.
In ‘Join The Conversation’ Joseph Jaffe present numerous ways in which brands and marketers can be part of the dialogue that consumers have with each other. If there ever were a way to inspire advocacy, being part of the advocacy itself would make sense.
One day these methods will be centric to the strategy of all successful brands.
One day, harnessing the power of citizen advocacy will eclipse traditional reach and frequency desires.
And it won’t be a day too soon.
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Discuss
