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Can you believe TripAdvisor?

October 1, 2010 by wordofmoss

I’m off to Venice for the weekend. It’s an important wedding anniversary and I thought I would get into the “good books” of you know who.

Have you used TripAdvisor recently? In a moment of boredom I’ve just checked out the hotel I’ve booked. Helpfully this is the review…

Don’t waste your money..try a 2 star hotel instead. Customer service equated to 0% the place lacks any soul and warmth and actually was exhausting to stay in, the breakfast was medocre for the rating and found all of the staff extremely unfriendly, our air con was not working requested 4 times for it to be looked at with no avail, was ignored when asking about the internet facility

Hmmm…..what to believe?

Social media advocacy was of course supposed to be the dawn of true power people, allowing us to cut through others agendas and get us directly to the facts. Unfortunately as this weeks Marketing magazine highlights it’s not yet quite as perfect as we had hoped.

Marketing reports that several hundred hoteliers have given strong indications that they are planning a group defamation action against TripAdvisor after less than flattering reviews. One included  ”owners dog urinating on grotty carpet as we checked in’. Their point being that many of these reviews are malicious. Ebay of course have had the same problems.

Advocacy is clearly coming of age. Today most reviews are still filled in by honest good intentioned people who want to help others. There are clearly a few out there however who have other intentions. As with the traditional media environment these individuals have to be tackled, there must be the right of reply and wherever possible the true intentions of these individuals should be exposed.

The advice to anybody looking at customer reviews is to look at average scores rather than the extremes. The advice to companies or individuals that have been unfairly criticised is to answer this criticism and where possible tackle the intentions behind the reviews.

Thankfully my Venice hotel has a five star average rating …. but let me get back to you on the reality!

Posted in Advocacy Insights | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Is it right to pay a brand advocate?

September 25, 2010 by wordofmoss

An interesting question is raised by the Times this morning in an article about the Richard and Judy Book club. The club was started as part of their C4 TV show, but now apparently is being relaunched in a solo deal with the book sellers W H Smiths.

The article claims that to get recommended by the club, authors need to pay W H Smiths up to £25k. In return it seems they get not only a recommendation, but a best seller (the first book they recommended by a debut author, went straight into the best sellers list).

The above may clearly show the effectiveness of advocacy but is it really ethical?

I have a simple belief here….as long as Richard/Judy have total editorial control i.e. they make the recommendations, it’s fine. The fact that W H Smiths then go to the authors and request monies to get this recommendation promoted and sold, is simply commercial sense.

Posted in Advocacy Insights, Community Building | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Does word of mouth advocacy drive FMCG brand sales?

July 11, 2010 by wordofmoss

Earlier this year I launched a research study, Leading by Recommendation, which I conducted together with Alain Samson of Enterprise LSE. It aimed to identify how actively UK brands are being recommended and the characteristics of highly recommended brands.
As an ex marketer of everything from lager to puppies (sorry Toilet Paper) it was the results from the FMCG sector that I most eagerly awaited. I’d always understood that the FMCG sector was intrinsically low interest and hence mass scale awareness strategies were always the most effective. Our results indicated something different.
Using the Net Promoter Score as our base, we isolated those who claimed to be strong promoters of individual FMCG brands (at a brand by brand level) and then looked at how often these individuals actively promoted that brand. We found that on average, across the 50 or so brands we researched, more than half (55%) had actively promoted their recommended brand to someone over a three month period.
This was interesting. What was even more fascinating was who lead the way in activating their advocates. Our most actively recommended FMCG brands in the UK turned out to be:-
1. Activia Yogurts (76.9%)
2. Kelloggs Special K (76%)
3. Lucozade Sport (72.7%)
Looking behind these results and those of the other 120 brands in our study, we found that the leaders in just about every industry sector met a set of clear criteria. We called these criteria the 4C’s of advocacy activation – Cause, Community, Contagious Stories and Coverage.
We believe this study has many implications but probably the most fundamental is that it conclusively demonstrates that brand advocacy (recommendation) can be systematically built. With a 7% increase in NPS score equating to a 1% increase in growth this we believe has profound implications for FMCG marketing strategy in the future.

Posted in Advocacy Insights | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

The future of journalism?

May 16, 2010 by wordofmoss

I’ve just been sent a free copy of Superbike magazine. Great timing actually as I’ve just bought myself a nice little runabout. Interesting letter attached saying that after a great deal of research they are relaunching to give over more space to readers own editorial. Is this the future of journalism….us?

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Belief based business branding

April 10, 2010 by wordofmoss

Occasionally, you read something that catches your breath, stops you in your tracks and makes you re-evaluate everything that has gone before. It happened to me at 10.25am this morning as I was reading an article in the Times magazine about Jamie Olivers attempts to conquer the USA.  Read this…

Rather he (Jamie Oliver) has come round the belief that “the healthiest thing in the world is a commercial business with a massive social heart. Having something you believe in and stand for and say we are going to give 5% of our revenue to this pot, to spread the great stuff”

This is Jamie Oliver (the cook) telling us about the importance of belief based business branding … a concept that many CEO’s haven’t yet understood. No wonder Jamie’s business has declared pre tax profits of £6.8 million!

Belief based branding is built on the premise that in this cluttered cynical age, the only way to grab the attention of your stakeholders (consumer, employees etc.) and turn them into advocates is build your business/brand around a cause. By a cause we mean something that has meaning in society …. a fundamental angst that exists amongst your stakeholders that you (as individuals, a brand and an organisation) can authentically champion. Think of brands like Harley Davidson, Innocent and Apple. They are businesses that are built on belief …the belief of their CEO’s and management teams…and take day-to-day actions that are the living embodiment of these beliefs. These brands have real followers, highly active advocates and outgrow their competitors.

The journalist who interviewed Jamie, asked him whether he had political ambitions. Jamie replied “the time isn’t right”. I’m sure it’s not. I don’t know the age of the youngest Peer in the House of Lords however, but Lord Oliver…don’t you think it’s a real possibility?

Posted in Manifestos | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Marmite Branding

April 5, 2010 by wordofmoss

If you’ve made a million and want to be to leave a legacy,  a clock isn’t the most remarkable of choices you can make. Ask any 15-year-old … they’ll yawn and say who needs clocks today when everybody has a mobile phone in their pocket! Clocks are boring …unless of course you spend a million designing something quite as hideous as the corpus Christi Clock in Cambridge.

My Mother took the family on an outing to see this yesterday. It had become quite a talking point in our family, the neighbours, the Cambridge WI …………… As I stood there, desperately trying to tell the time, I started to think of Marmite…a simple, insignificant and quite boring spread that manages to get itself talked about almost as much as this clock. Think about it, I bet sometime in your life you have felt compelled to say to somebody you either love of hate Marmite. Today, they even have the Marmarati, a group of loyal advocates who are encouraged to spread (excuse the pun) the word in exchange for limited edition pots of the black stuff.

Over the years I’ve heard many FMCG marketers say that word of mouth or advocacy strategies are less relevant to them. That their products don’t have the same potential to generate spontaneous involvement and discussion as other sectors. This of course is untrue. Any object can be involving as long as it stands for something and stands out. Go on a day trip to Cambridge at some point ….and you will see!

Posted in Ambassador strategies, Surprise and Delight | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment »

How do people search the web?

March 7, 2010 by wordofmoss

Is the Encyclopaedia Britannica still going? I remember as a child marvelling at those red volumes gathering dust on the shelves of my old school library. Imagine carrying all of that knowledge in your head I used to think…exams would be a doddle.
In early 2001, the knowledge of the world came a little bit closer to all of us with the introduction of Wikipedia. The free on-line Encyclopaedia, still funded today by donations rather than advertising, immediately became the killer application for a generation of students and struggling parents. Concerns about accuracy or plagiarism swept away by the overwhelming realisation of the time we could save by pressing a few buttons.
Wikepedia changed the way we search for information, but as we are beginning to see today, it was only the start of our new journey rather than its conclusion. Today, any analysis of search shows that the web has become one big Wikepedia. Increasingly our searches go beyond one or two word voyages into the unknown. Today we are increasingly likely to engage the web in a conversation asking it “what is the best exercise to lose weight” or “how to cook a turkey”.
Of course, the way we treat the results of these searches has also changed. A few years ago we needed the authority of an institution or brand to give us confidence in our search results. Today, we are more likely to believe the recommendation of a person like us. Did a 40 something man like me lose weight as a result of his new exercise regime…was his Turkey moist?
The way we access knowledge has changed enormously in the ten years since the birth of Wikepedia, but possibly the biggest change is still around the corner. Current Smartphone penetration is around 15%. Forecasts suggest it will grow to almost 40% by 2013. Soon it seems my childhood dream of carrying an encyclopaedia in my head will become a thing of the past as, quite simply, all of us will be carrying one in our hands!

Posted in Advocacy Insights | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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