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Take Nielsen's new undertaking, Hey! Nielsen. From what I can gather, though I haven't actually used the system still in "stealth," Nielsen is creating an online social media community that will be able to better capture the data of the dialogue occurring on its social network about new television shows, celebrities, etc. Fantastic!
Social media, at critical mass and when facilitated and monitored correctly, is the voice of the people intending to consume, and influence others to consume, entertainment content (and all other goods and services, for that matter). And all of this feedback is in real time. Today this might mean deciding what TV shows to do more marketing for, and how to shape that marketing message. But, going forward, it could mean deciding even what shows to produce, or what story line to take with popular shows.
It doesn't take much to apply media's usage of social media to brands' abilities to leverage social media to improve product or services. Brands have been using focus groups forever; social media just allows brands to increase the size of that focus group to a much larger population.
The issue, of course, aside from capturing and interpreting the data, is creating a critical mass of social media dialogue around your brand or offering to begin with. For this reason, the key will be finding the balance of properly incentivizing participation and discussion from your own social media communities, focused social media communities (such as Hey! Nielsen) and, to the greatest extent possible, creating and monitoring dialogue within social media communities that already posses the critical mass necessary to provide effective feedback.
Again you can see media companies spearheading efforts in this area, but in the end we are still in the early stages of understanding how social media will affect brands' ability to deliver messages, and are only just beginning to attack the challenge of unlocking social media's ability to shape effective brand messages. But, in the end it may be that all the messaging in the world won't prove to be a competitive advantage for brands when faced with competition from those that can effectively shape their products and services by creating conversational marketing campaigns and listening to consumers through social media.
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But what we refer to today as social media will soon simply just be media. The growing adoption and encouragement of public conversation by the 'traditional' media is proving this point. From a marketers perspective this evolution is incredibly exciting for the reasons you highlight - a vast, growing, searchable, measurable and influential library of consumer experiences and sentiment is completely changing the way we work to build our clients' brands and businesses.
For many this content is a starting point for strategic development and communication planning with research that reveals actionable consumer insight. It's also now a channel of communication and customer services with customers and potential customers through blogs, forums and the like. And finally it's a reflection of brand health providing metrics such as sentiment or even Net Promoter Score that can measure the effectiveness of a company's efforts in near-real time.
The future of brands is in the hands of consumers and the future of brand management is in social media.
-Matt Cronin www.consumergeneratedinsight.com
Referring to the following, context is drawn from the masses ability to be pushed towards compliance, consciousness, and consumerism. 1 -Recent market conditions (housing & financial) 2 -Century of the Self - Adam Curtis' Freudian slip 3 -Social Technographics - Forrester Study by Charlene Li 4 -Jung-Myers-Briggs Personality Test 5 -Scientific Advertising - Hopkins
The push model has worked in socio-political climates for centuries pacifying civil unrest (Freudian view). And today, while it appears the consumer has the ability to influence media, the voice of the consumer is still dominated by relatively few posting elitists (referencing the Forrester study). The masses still follow the market (lest we forget Greenspan endorsing ARM's) and the public's lumpen personality is based on social acceptance (INFT).
All this to come full circle to what Hopkins said nearly a 100 years prior. Paraphrasing - strip the message to its core and make sure it sells. Advertising is always about selling.
Taken out of context, marketers will spend more time to engage the customer in conversation and continuously prototype their ad plans to speak with prospects - convincing some and incentivising others to join the conversation that will help shape a brand in what would be the longest running multivariate test ever.
In context however, saavvy markers have the ability to quickly react to what they hear through social networks and craft mass messaging that is on brand point - at least thematically - in order to continue asserting their reign over consumer influence.
Finally, though it takes time, effort and resources to capture and understand the posted ideas, emotions, and criticisms of the few; for those who own this data, in turn, they will own their audience.
Great post. You correctly identify one of the most important aspects of social media - which is hard to do given all the clutter and confusion in this space.
All these newsgroup and forum conversations and blog posts/comments ARE the voice of the customer. Almost any marketer can learn a lot by listening to them. A lot about their category, their brand and their competitors.
All sounds very *Cluetrainy*, but the internet has enabled a great peer-to-peer conversation among consumers - to be ignored at one's peril.
Tom O'Brien http://humanvoice.wordpress.com/
The emerging market portals are the individuals personal networking portals currently dispersed throughout numerous social networks. Soon the individual will be aggregating all their profiles and activities within numerous networks into their own network portal. Thus creating the means for what we’re calling The Relationship Economy.
This shift will be significant and disruptive and turning researchers and media on their heads. Individual allegiance moves away from portals, firms and toward networks and network platforms where individuals create collective affinities. What seems obvious to those outside an existing system is not seen by those within existing systems. Systemic change comes from the outside and it is the individual who has been left out of established systems.
What say you?
For more on related issues read: www.relationship-economy.com