With Valentine’s Day approaching, NetBase analyzed consumers’ social media conversations about eight chocolate brands over the past year (Jan. 31, 2012 through Jan. 31, 2013). Turns out that Hershey’s has been getting the most social buzz, but Ferrero Rocher’s chocolate hazelnut products are most “loved.” NetBase, an enterprise social intelligence platform, analyzed social conversations for Cadbury, Dove, Ferrero Rocher, Ghirardelli, Godiva, Hershey’s, Lindt and Neuhaus. All eight brands fell into the “like” or “love” quadrants (as opposed to the “dislike” or “hate” quadrants), based on NetBase’s Brand Passion Index analytics. Hershey's generated 30% of the overall chatter for the eight chocolate brands, and saw 84% positive chatter, but had the lowest “Passion Intensity” score (45 out of a possible 100) and the second-lowest “Net Sentiment” score (68). While online consumers chat in high volumes about Hershey’s many products, some complain about overly sweet taste or aroma, or express the sentiment that Hershey’s products will “do in a pinch.” Ferrero Rocher generated just 1.3% of the overall buzz among the brands, but showed the highest consumer social “love,” with a perfect Passion Intensity score of 100. It also tied with Ghirardelli for highest Net Sentiment score (87). Consumers “raved” about the brand’s classic, gold-wrapped, hazelnut-flavored chocolates, calling them the “perfect gift” to give and receive, according to NetBase. Buzz-wise, Hershey’s was followed by Lindt (19% of the approximately 777,000 total conversations), Godiva (17%), Dove (14.6%), Cadbury (9.3%), Ghirardelli (8.7%), Ferrero Rocher (1.3%) and Neuhaus (less than 1%). Following Ferrero Rocher, the Passion Intensity scores ranking was: Lindt (76), Dove (69), Ghirardelli (61), Cadbury (59), Godiva (53), Neuhaus (48) and Hershey’s (45). In Net Sentiment rankings, Ferrero Rocher and Ghirardelli were followed by Neuhaus (85), Dove (82), Lindt (74), Godiva (72), Hershey’s (68) and Cadbury (66). The percentages of positive buzz for each brand: Ferrero Rocher, 94%; Ghirardelli and Neuhaus each 93%; Dove, 91%; Lindt, 87%; Godiva, 86.5%; Hershey’s, 84%; and Cadbury, 83%. NetBase’s release offers some verbatim consumer comments on the various brands.
A surprising survey reveals that a non-profit tops the list of brands with the most loyal Facebook fans. LoudDoor, a Facebook Insights preferred marketing developer, compiled millions of responses from Facebook fans of over 15,000 Facebook pages to determine the Top 20 brands with the most loyal fans. The company used Brand Satisfaction, a new dashboard powered by over 1 million monthly survey responses. Brand Satisfaction tracks every major brand on Facebook and how likely fans are to recommend those brands to friends or colleagues. The top brands are: 1. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital 2. Facebook 3. Google 4. Walt Disney World 5. ALDI USA 6. Xbox 7. Starbucks Frappuccino 8. Google Chrome 9. Duncan Hines 10. Adobe Photoshop 11. Tim Hortons 12. Hershey's 13. In-N-Out Burger 14. Dove Chocolates 15. NFL 16. Portillo's 17. BRAVO 18. Disneyland 19. Dollar Tree 20. AMC Theatre Demographic and behavioral data is the cornerstone to understanding a brand's Facebook audience and powering game-changing marketing decisions, says LoudDoor CEO David Guy. “Rather than relying on highly subjective social chatter or experimental 'listening' technologies, Brand Satisfaction does the hard work of asking brands' Fans directly about their attitudes, behaviors and motivations,” Guy said in a release. “We then package this powerful data in a simple dashboard interface to empower brands to harness their Facebook asset." Starting Jan. 1, Brand Satisfaction asked consumers to rate how likely they are to recommend a brand page they "like" on Facebook. Participants also completed a demographic, behavioral and attitudinal survey. Millions of anonymous responses are summarized in a user-friendly Brand Satisfaction insights dashboard currently in limited beta release. "We'll be conducting our study every month and releasing new brand insights and tips with the goal of making marketing professionals that follow brands on the Brand Satisfaction platform the smartest people in the room about the brands they care about on Facebook," Guy said. Eligibility for the Brand Satisfaction Top-20 list requires that the brand page have at least 50,000 fans and a minimum of 300 completed surveys on the brand. Rankings are based on the brands' Net Promoter Score which is calculated by the participants' likelihood to recommend the brand on a 0-10 scale. Respondents rating the brand at 9-10 are considered "Promoters," 7-8 are "Passives" and 0-6 are "Detractors." The percentage of Promoters is subtracted from the percentage of Detractors to determine the Net Promoter Score utilized to benchmark the Brand Satisfaction of Fans of a Facebook page.
While there’s no denying that consumers are increasingly using social media in just about every area of their lives, they still aren’t into shopping there. A new global study from PwC, the global consultancy, reports that last year, only 12% of consumers bought anything through social media. Nor does social media buzz do much to drive sales: Only 18% of those consumers active in social media made a purchase as a result of information they got via their social-media connections. “Our survey data shows that social media will, for the near future, remain a backwater sales channel, if you can call it a sales channel at all,” the report says. “While about half of respondents say they’re checking out social media sites daily, only a tiny minority uses the sites frequently to shop. In fact, seven out of ten online shoppers who took our survey say they never shop this way. That should remain the status quo for the immediate future.” But the survey, based on 11,000 people in 11 countries, did highlight a fast-growing willingness to interact with brands via social media, with 59% saying they follow brands through social channels, up from 49% last year. And 27% say they’ve discovered brands they didn’t know about this way, compared with 17% last year. One big exception is China, where one in four shoppers has already made a purchase via social media. PwC has classified them in three different groups: *Brand lovers - This segment offers the most potential for future shopping, and includes the 38% of consumers now following brands and retailers, up from 33% last year. And they are the fiercest shoppers, with 53% going into an actual store at least weekly (compared with 45% of the overall sample), and 45% making at least one online purchase per week. *Deal hunters - Nearly half of the survey fell into this category, and will click through to online stores if they think they’ve spotted an appealing offer. *Social addicts - While the smallest group, this minority uses social media “to talk about their experiences with brands, learn what their friends like and recommend, find customer service answers, and submit ideas and product feedback to companies,” the report notes. Failing to include these evangelists “carries significant reputational risk, as these very active online users tend to have huge social media networks and wield an outsized influence.” Its slow start as a commerce channel notwithstanding, social media continues to be a critical component of brand building. “Despite its inability to lead directly to a purchase, social media activity is a pretty strong indicator of how much some shoppers will buy, both online and in stores,” the report says, “so...the impact social media has on the brand needs to be part of every multichannel strategy discussion. It’s clearly a robust marketing and communications tool for retailers and consumer product companies.”
Despite some concerns that customers might resent being on shared data plans, consumers who are on the plans are more satisfied with their customer service than those who are not on the plans. According to research from J.D. Power and Associates, which measured wireless companies’ customer service through three contact channels (telephone, walk-in/retail stores and online), overall satisfaction among customers who subscribe to a data share plan was 778 (on a 1,000-point scale), compared with 750 among those who subscribe to a more traditional data plan. “All in all, it’s turned out well,” Kirk Parsons, director of wireless services at J.D. Power, tells Marketing Daily. “They’re reinventing the wheel about how [customers] think about data. Before, it had been about individual usage. Now they’re thinking about it as a group dynamic.” Among full-service carriers, Verizon had the highest customer care rankings with an overall score of 766. AT&T followed with a score of 759, while Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile rounded out the list with scores of 746 and 715, respectively. Among non-contract carriers, MetroPCS topped the list with a score of 733, followed by Virgin Mobile (729) and TracFone (729). These satisfaction rates may be as much about the customer as they are about the telecommunications company, Parsons says. Many of the customers who switched to the shared data plans are early adopters who may have already had some higher affinity to their wireless providers than those who came to the plans later. “They feel they’re getting a great deal,” Parsons says. “Those who’ve made the plunge and gone over -- they’ve become more satisfied.” The wireless carriers, however, still have to follow through on customer service for these customers, Parsons points out, and they seem to be doing a good job. Among full-service customers, those with mobile data plans contact their carrier more often than those who don’t have sharing plans (51% vs. 42%), according to the study. And even though these customers also spend more time on hold than those without shared data plans, they still come away more satisfied.
Editor's Note: This week, Marketing Daily brought you exclusive coverage of the Brand Keys 2013 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI). Each day, we delivered a full report on key product/services categories from among the 54 surveyed for this year’s study, including automotive, electronics, retail and technology. This final installment focuses on highlights from automotive categories and summarizes an assortment of categories from the full report. And we're off! Time to drive into the Brand Keys auto races. And here's how the auto brands passed the checkered flag:
In the second part of Marketing Daily's conversation with Chrysler Group, LLC CMO Olivier Francois and head of Fiat brand in North America Tim Kunistis, the focus is Fiat. (The first part is here.) Q: You pointed out that every auto brand has both a certain volume and revenue potential. Along the lines, where does Dodge stand?Francois: It's our biggest brand, but actually the bigger you are, the less potential you have, statistically. But I think there's still a lot. Dodge has a complete range of cars, going from Dart, to Avenger to Durango, Charger, and Challenger. So we are competing in most of the segments. Q: Do you believe in sponsorship and product placement? Francois: I think it can be a huge waste of money, unless it really speaks to the brand, unless you are able to say "yeah, the only brand in the world who could partner with that event is Jeep or whichever." What I'm trying to do each time is find that relationship and say, "Okay, why this brand rather than that other brand?" Take Chrysler's sponsorship of [new Broadway musical "Motown"]. Could it work for Jeep, Dodge, or Ram? Fiat? No, it's obviously Chrysler. Then Jeep: we partnered with Newsweek's "Hero Summit" to celebrate the return of veterans and troops. What brand could tie to that if not Jeep? Q: Last year you launched the "Immigrant" campaign for Fiat. Past campaigns have been celebrity-focused, with stars like Charlie Sheen. Are you thinking of bringing him back? Francois: Should we? Charlie Sheen would be an interesting one. It's funny, we were talking about this last month. Q: His whole persona has changed.Kuniskis: When we used him, he was ... he had his issues; now he's cleaning up and is accepted for who he is, so he's on his third phase now. Q: What's the ceiling for Fiat brand potential? Is it limited?Kuniskis: You have to be careful with that because you are putting Fiat in a segmentation box. Certain cars break out of segmentation. Think of the original 300: When we launched that, we thought we knew the customer, but the next thing you know, the car exploded to bringing people in from minivans and other categories. Fiat is doing the same thing. Forty percent of buyers are not coming from the A and B segments (sub-compact); they are C and D segment (compact and midsize) because it's people going, "I really like that. I want one." Q: What's Fiat's biggest market in the U.S.?Kuniskis: Twenty-five percent of buyers are California but it's growing every day in other markets. New York is growing for us. Q: What's the buyer profile? Kuniskis: The average consumer makes $93,000 per year. That's a highly enviable demographic to be selling a $16,000 car to. Which tells you it has nothing to do with price, they just want the car. The average age is 46, but the reality is there's two groups of people: young people and 50-year-olds. The younger group makes $50,000 and the other group makes $200,000 on average. The fastest-selling car we've had is a $27,000 Gucci convertible. We couldn't keep them on the lot.
Last year, Chrysler won the Super Bowl with a powerful, head-turning spot that seemed to sneak up out of nowhere, as opposed to those prelaunched on social media. Created by Wieden & Kennedy, it featured a grizzled Clint Eastwood delivering a half-time pep talk for America, a message that, as it turned out, could have doubled as an ad for Obama’s reelection. And perhaps the dawning awareness of the spot’s essential liberal-osity sent Clint over a cliff. So he in turn talked to a chair at the Republican convention. In advertising, there’s always a pendulum swing. My theory for this year is that Chrysler wanted to repeat the surprise, emotion, and beauty of the previous year’s Big Game successes, except this time without the messy excess leftyness. So it chose two agencies other than Wieden & Kennedy (GlobalHue for Jeep, The Richards Group for Dodge Ram) to deliver a more conservative view. My colleague Bob Garfield had a pretty strong dislike for the Jeep work, but loved “So God Made a Farmer” for Dodge Ram pick-up trucks. But I hated it. Granted, every still photo is incandescent, including the opener, featuring one black cow and so much snow in milky white space. The power of those images, combined with Paul Harvey’s old-timey radio voice on the scratchy soundtrack made it the one commercial that was literally a showstopper. (Aside from the blackout.) But unlike my compadres who work as creatives in advertising, and worshipped the spot, I was put off from the moment the name “Paul Harvey” appeared on screen. The spot is exquisitely art-directed, so his name in black letters was delicately dropped on top of all that beautiful snowy white space as if this were a memorial to a great American poet, like Robert Frost. (“Two roads diverged in a wood...”) Or a healer. Or ahem, a saint. Much as his heroic voice is a powerful nostalgia-builder, Paul Harvey was a very divisive figure in his day. He was sort of a Glenn Beck for a pre-Fox Network time, a right-wing commentator whose rantings (full disclosure) my father turned off as soon as Harvey's voice came on the radio during family trips in the car. So I was predisposed to recoil on impact. (Not as much as my physical recoil from the GoDaddy kiss, but a more intellectual recoil, I guess.) If Harvey were only a voiceover, his politics wouldn’t matter. But given the prime placement of his name, and use of a speech he presented in 1978 at a Future Farmers of America convention, the spot is totally imbued with Harveyitis. I’m not the first to see a metaphorical whitewash coming out of all of that white space. Most people know that the farming industry has largely been taken over by Big Ag industrial farming corporations, and precious few family farms hold on. (And the smaller farms, reborn, are more likely to be pursuing greener pastures, like raising llamas or making artisanal cheeses.) The Atlantic revealed that at present, more than 70% of U.S. farm workers are from Mexico or Central America -- many of them here illegally. These people were not pictured. Obviously, no expense was spared by the agency in hiring top photographers to capture contemporary farmers. But they sure weren’t shooting in California. The ad seemed to want to capture the snow, and Marlboro-Cowboy-type rugged individuals who live in, say, Montana. (Indeed, the only person who could buy one of these expensive Dodge Ram trucks would be a gentleman farmer who uses his Montana property as a vacation home.) Further, the cognitive dissonance I was feeling while listening perhaps has something to do with the fact that this “poem” was not really written by Harvey. He “adapted” it from a 1975 article he wrote, which was loosely based on a 1940 definition of a dirt farmer published in a farming journal. The original included a bit about a farmer “strong enough to rustle a calf, yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.” The spot skipped the home delivery of the grandbaby, but kept in all the religiosity. There are shots of a Christian church, a family saying grace, and a farmer praying in a pew. (Not to mention that the whole speech is based on Creationism!) I found this offputting-- but I guess it’s meant to resonate with a few rich Christian white guys with spreads in the Midwest. Another controversy about the spot -- which Slate's David Haglund was quick to point out -- was that the whole thing, voiceover and all, with much less sophisticated visuals, appeared previously on a Farms.com video on You Tube. It turns out that Chrysler is working with Farms. com and the Future Farmers, and pledging to raise $1 million to support the FFA in 2013. So I guess that partially ameliorates the redo. While “So God Made A Farmer” is a lesson in reality that’s mostly a fantasy, still, it’s not a documentary, it’s an ad. And indeed, it’s the most dazzling array of photographs matched to text since “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” the book of iconic photos from Walker Evans and text from James Agee that chronicled poor white tenant farmers in Alabama during the Depression. This combination of interviews and imagery was so powerful that it led to the passage of the Farm Security Act. We have the opposite argument here. Never mind John Deere: Let your individual gentleman cowboy ride high on his Ram.
Baby boomers represent the largest percentage of business owners in the United States. Thus, it’s safe to say that a majority of the top leaders in the PR business are baby boomers -- in their late 40s to mid 60s. This is all about to change. The first group of baby boomers turns 65 this year, and a new poll by the Associated Press and LifeGoesStrong.com reveals that nearly half of all baby boomers now work for a younger boss. If 2012 was the year of the social media surge, 2013 will be the beginning of the end for our baby boomer PR compadres. The media landscape is evolving rapidly, and baby boomers are about to be left behind because of their inability to keep up with technology and the changing times. The days of the self-proclaimed experts (those who profess to be "thought leaders" as a result of reading and hearing about new advancements that clients can take advantage of) are long gone. Media today is all about authenticity -- and largely dominated by participatory media and consumers, who see right through advertising and marketing hyperbole and shut it out. Participating in these media is the only way to gain a "true" understanding of how and which work, and which don’t. Clients are demanding that their PR counsel and support teams are in the conversation, and that they themselves use the media where their content is being created and distributed. Take, for example, the use of social media for online business networking or lead generation. As the saying goes, "it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks." The old dog in this instance -- baby boomers -- use traditional, in-person offline meetings as their primary source of building their business networks, while the younger generations are building their own brands and businesses more quickly, and reaching a much wider audience by leveraging new digital tools like LinkedIn and Twitter to run full-on campaigns. Baby boomers’ misgivings about modern technology are countered in the workplace by their younger-generation counterparts who grew up with technology and are eager and quick to adapt to innovations. While many baby boomers have begun using social media and other new technologies at home, few have transferred this use to the workplace. Some companies are now asking Millennials -- a group of individuals ranging between 18 and 35 years old -- to mentor baby boomers. At Edelman Public Relations, the Rotnem program matches young employees with older colleagues who need tutoring on text messaging, navigating Facebook and Twitter, or using iTunes. I applaud these companies for attempting to save the technology dinosaurs that exist within the confines of their conventional offices, but question the effectiveness of such programs. Understanding and managing social media issues (the balance between personal and professional use) in the workplace is a major challenge that many companies face. A recent study titled The 2012 Kelly Global Workforce Index), revealed that among the different workplace generations, baby boomers are most skeptical, with almost half (49%) believing social media negatively impacts work productivity. In the PR business today, the old saying "you have to be in it to win it" has never rung more true. There are a number of free webinars available that can help baby boomers effectively communicate online and on various social media platforms and more importantly, stay relevant. It is essential that PR industry professionals become knowledgeable about the latest tools and trends if they want to succeed -- or they will fall behind and be consumed by the ever-growing technology and social media boom.
Wednesday's announcement from Google promises to make a real impact on advertisers. These changes will undoubtedly meet Google's primary goal of increasing the adoption of mobile search advertising, but unfortunately, this threatens to be at the expense of their most sophisticated marketers. On the plus side, being able to schedule different extensions based on time of day (for example, using phone extensions only when your call center is open) can be valuable. The concept of "smarter" ads -- mobile-preferred ads, sitelinks, etc. -- is nice, yet many marketers already manage these through separate campaigns. The notion of separate campaigns (or accounts) by device type is part of what Google is trying to cut down on. Google hopes to make it easier and require fewer assets to manage -- one campaign for all devices with a handful of modifiers as opposed to duplicating or triplicating campaigns. It will certainly make it easier to spend more across device types – something I'm sure Google is aiming for. For smaller accounts and/or those with limited resources to manage paid search across devices, this has the potential to make things easier, although not necessarily as efficient from an ROAS perspective. But for larger marketing teams with the bandwidth and knowledge to manage their accounts with a more granular approach, these changes will inhibit some of the control they are used to. These sophisticated marketers take advantage of a device-type structure to easily control spend by device type or target specific transactions or returns. That will no longer be possible. Instead, marketers will need to adjust the mobile bid multiplier for each campaign. And even then, that will not impact spend on desktops -- just on mobile. Even more troubling is that marketers won’t be able to advertise just on mobile. They will essentially be required to advertise on desktops even for mobile app downloads, for example -- with a bid at least one-third of their mobile bid. We feel there will be a lot of pushback on this, and Google will likely need to reexamine. The other big change is doing away with tablets as a targetable device type. Google makes a strong argument for the blurring of the lines between laptops and tablets (Just see Larry Page's comments on mobile design during last month’s earnings call). And while we agree there's some truth to the idea that users are finding laptops and tablets more interchangeable, there’s still quite a difference. There is great value in being able to target, bid and design for different screens. As our Q3 report showed, tablet users spent 30% more time on-site and had 20% higher Engagement Scores than PC users. This is a significant difference in behavior. These changes will require some significant reworking of accounts, particularly for more sophisticated marketers with larger, more granular structures. The good news is that none of it has to happen overnight. Google is announcing this now to make sure everyone has time to be comfortable with the new structure by Q4. Advertisers should pay very close attention to these changes and take the time to be sure they completely understand them before transitioning. That said, it’s imperative they migrate their accounts themselves or with the help of their agency or SEM partner before Google does it for them. The auto-updating of legacy accounts this summer is not likely to be in anyone's best interest.