Examing Language : Sketch 1

The Millennial Generation, promotion and pitfalls

The rules of marketing have changed dramatically in the Web 2.0 era and while the capabilities that advancements in technology have brought cannot be ignored, their impact should not be viewed without acknowledgement of the enormous changes in social attitudes which have evolved with them.

Foursquare, pioneers of utilising crowd marketing

Perhaps the greatest levels of social change have occurred within the millennial generation, adults now in their twenties whose lives have developed concurrently with the evolution of the internet. They are able to remember a time as children when the internet had little to no fixture to today where its influence has grown to an extent whereby for many it dominates both work and social lives.  

This segment coveted heavily by businesses for their high levels of disposable income and trend-setting capacity, behave in radically different ways to the previous generation, utilising technology and brands in ways never previously witnessed. 

Perhaps the most radical departure from a marketing perspective is the willingness to openly share information with not just a close group of friends and family but a far wider audience of online followers whose personal connection is considerably less well established. With Facebook friends and twitter followers numbering into the hundreds individual tastes are shared with a far wider audience than ever before leaving a digital imprint which will outlast even their own existence. 

Although personal content remains a leading priority for the majority of social network users, it is evident that this generation is happy to align itself more strongly with brands than ever before. This extends far beyond the personal identifiers of clothing and FMCG to promote wide ranging products and services for travel and entertainment, technology, media and even utilitarian products including mobile phone providers and educational institutions.                                   

                 

Whilst this increased sharing capacity and acceptance of products in to their personal world obviously has great value for brands, the millennial generation brings two personality traits which need to be well understood in order to maximise the possible benefits which may be reaped from the increased capacity for crowd based promotion.

Stratos, a defining attention grabbing campaign.

Firstly a short attention span, rather than purely a symptom of laziness or a deterioration of mature behaviour, short attention within the online environment is born largely out of necessity. With such a huge quantity of information being streamed through, speedy filtering of key words, visuals and linked content has become a real necessity in the toolkit of this generation of web users and adept marketers have been quick to adapt with attention grabbing campaigns.                             

Brands need to understand that now more than ever their content needs to be assessed for its relevance, value and ease of understanding, however achieving high initial impact is now a key contributor to a successful campaign.

Secondly is insight, with far greater brand acceptance among the millennial generation there is also conversely a downside of far more visible brand rejection. Those companies whose message is viewed as insincere, whose promotion is seen as cheap are at far greater risk of exposure, with ridicule for poorly contrived campaigns now being commonplace. For example Waitrose’s recent twitter campaign which invited users to incorporate the hashtag #Ionlyshopatwaitrosebeacause showed a clear lack of insight given Waitrose public brand perception combined with the main demographic engaging on twitter.

 

What is clear then is that although the communication channels with millennial audiences are far more open than with any previous generation, this should not make the message any less considered. With such wide streams of conversation, understanding the language to use and the way in which it is delivered is now more important than ever!

Sam Wolf , Digital Account Manager, Liveinsights

An Introduction to Speaking The Customer's Language

Nowhere has speaking the customer’s language been more important than on social media! We have moved from an era of preparing carefully crafted marketing communications to one of having ‘spur of the moment’ conversations where we need to be instantly on the customer’s wavelength!  Scary? It certainly seems that way - what if we miss the point they are making or say something in the wrong way? We could lose the connection with them forever! 

Well thankfully because we now know so much about linguistics, we can learn how to spot customer language patterns straight away and ‘match’ them in our responses - creating instant rapport!

Over the next few months we will be introducing a series of key language patterns that can be picked up from social media tweets, posts and comments and from customer blogs to help you to make sure you are ‘speaking the customer’s language’.

Move Toward or Move Away From conversations?

 ‘Move Towards language is about what customers what do want in their lives. ‘Move away from language’ is about what customers don’t want in their lives and it’s important not to mix them up! If you see customers talking about what they would like to have, get, gain, achieve, include or about results, benefits respond with the same type of language. If you see them talking about what they would not like to have or do, what they want to avoid, get rid of or exclude or about problems then use this type of language in your responses. In short use the same type of language as they are - don’t try to change them from one to the other!

Take a look at the following examples:  

Towards – They are thinking about what they do want;

Is it sad that I get really excited to drink my Starbucks? It makes my day.

Its friday gat to av some bottles of HeinekenIf only I could reach for the cake through the laptop screen.

I just want lots and lots of chocolate for Xmas (Cadbury)

Focus on what you can help them achieve and use words like get, have and actions that will move them towards pleasure. 

Away From – They are thinking about what they don’t want:

Feel like such a loser when I get my coffee & walk out of Starbucks instead of busting out my laptop & working on my "novel. 
“Full fridge? No problem. Store your beers outside to keep them extra cold.(Heineken) .....and hope they don't get thieved....... ;-D 
Don't like chocolate as a drink but eating it totally different experience altogether. I don’t like dairy milk anymore what have you done to it?

Focus on what you can help them to avoid and use words like won’t have to, don’t need to and actions that will move them away from pain

Do this and customers will feel that you are really empathising with their way of thinking Watch this space for more social media communication tips to come.

Di Tunney, Managing Director at LiveInsights

Visuals in Social Media Marketing, a 2012 perspective.

If in 2011 the online buzz was all centred around “checking in” and providing information on your whereabouts via social media then 2012 has seen the focus move towards the visual.

While preceding years saw an emphasis on copy whether through blogging, tweets or status updates the last  12 months has seen a major shift towards pictorial content. Two major success stories being Instragram and Pinterest, sites firmly focus around the sharing of pictures within online communities.

Facebook's timeline launch puts photos’ right at the centre of it's user experience brands can  make use of several new features that rely heavily on bold graphics and visual storytelling: the cover photo, the timeline itself, and larger images on wall posts.

A 2012 study by ROI Research indicates that when friends engage with each other over social media it's the pictures they enjoy most with 44% stating that they would be more likely to engage with brands who use photo's as their prime communications platform.

                                        

For brands in a time of information overload, with news feeds and updates containing streams of irrelevant information visuals act like trailers to users for what they represent, providing a snippet of easily digestible information to convey a message or invite a user to delve deeper into the brand

A key strength of the visual medium has been the ability to create a user led community around a product, with several key FMCG brands having strong successes through inviting users to send pictures of themselves using the product in return for prizes.

Dunkin Donuts going as far as to highlight their fan of the week on their display photo.

 The American rock group The Smashing Pumpkins took the concept of community building through visual representation one step further with a social media campaign titled “Imagine Oceania.” Fans were challenged to design artwork for the band's new album and promote the pieces through sharing across social networks, with selected fans having their work turned into limited edition posters .

The campaign showed an astute level of awareness in understanding that a large segment of their audience were tech savvy enough and sufficiently passionate about the group for the final content to be sufficiently high quality enough to produce print runs.

General Motors were quick to recognise the shifting site usage of its younger demographic and the need for restraint in marketing across across social platforms created an Instragram account that instead of showcasing glossy pictures of the latest car models embraced the nature of the platform. Presenting a series of arty industrial themed shots showcasing the company’s impressive production facilities and Detroit heritage.

To generate greater traffic, they created a competition offering the winner a free trip to the UK and to be the next “GE Instagrapher” shooting photos at a General Electric Jet Engine plant.

However brands choose to achieve it, what is clear is that visual identity creation is now vital to any profile. With search engines now basing ranking on conversations and sharing within social media in addition to website hits embracing visual content, clearly offers huge benefits through it's proven record of generating engagement.  The old maxim a picture is worth a thousand words never rung truer.

Sam Wolf , Digital Account Manager, Liveinsights

4G Is Arriving, Three Ways It Will Effect Social Media Content

From the end of this month mobile phone users in the United Kingdom will finally be able to sign up to 4g through the Everything Everywhere mobile network, with the remaining networks offering competing services from Spring 2013.

This new mobile network standard offers speeds as fast as a wired internet connection with up to 100 Mbps download speeds. How will companies capitalise on the superfast internet soon to be in the hands of consumers?

Live Streaming

The ease at which companies can stream their own live-events to the web will be greatly enhanced. Just a smart-phone and a tripod are all that will be required to stream HD quality video online to be consumed in real time by viewers . This opens up the possibility of live broadcasts from all manner of events with smaller business’s no longer hindered by the requirement for expensive broadcast equipment or a stable Wi-Fi connection.

Expect far greater integration of live streaming in to the news feeds of search engines and social networks as viewing live video over mobile increases in popularity. Will Youtube be as dominant as it has in recorded video or will a new rival take significant market share?

Mobile Apps

Mobile applications will be able to become more data intensive allowing a greater level of interactivity between businesses and consumers. No longer will a reformatted web page be considered sufficient for a company’s mobile application. Games and social interaction between users will become the norm. Expect to see the integration of live feed customer support, an increase in the complexity of social media games and an overall increase in the quality of video and images accessed through mobile applications in the coming years.

With download times greatly reduced users will no longer have to wait until they reach a Wi-Fi connection to download large applications, Live events or attractions can prompt users to download an app as they wait in line or while there is a natural break in proceedings, prompting even greater levels of interactivity between brand and consumer.

Mobile Advertising

Screen real estate is in short supply on mobile devices and so far this has meant key players including Facebook and Google withholding advertising from their mobile optimised websites. 4G could well offer a solution in the form of interactive , high quality adds. With no buffering times to disrupt the experience short videos played before entry to a site or interactive features providing informative content tailored to the users individual likes could become a real option for those companies desperately seeking ways in which to monetise vast sections of their business.

Those brands with better skills in using film and animation to deliver brand messages will gain a competitive advantage and because users won’t be twiddling their thumbs waiting for pages to load, we might expect better click though rates too. Brands that invest now in creating involving high data content are likely to be better prepared for the new opportunities that 4G could offer and gain significant advantage once critical uptake of network is achieved in 2-3 years time.  

Sam Wolf, Digital Account Manager at Liveinsights

The Golden Nugget Chronicles

Golden Nugget and Big Data

 

Golden Nugget had been living quietly in the pond of Insights for many years. He kept himself to himself but was happy when he was occasionally discovered by a well-meaning Market Researcher who would turn him, if only briefly, into an insight for one of the Big-Clients in the Cloud.

For a while he would bask in the glory of being an “insight with business impact”, not many insights got that privilege, but then after a while the glamour would fade and he’d return to his mundane but happy existence.

Up in the Cloud the Big-Clients had been busy however, gorging themselves on data – social media chatter, email, videos, mobile research, GP etc. The Cloud was reaching saturation point. There was no room for Nugget, where would he fit in with this instantaneous malarkey? And how were the Big-Clients even supposed to know Nugget existed? They were just going where the ‘big data’ took them. Whereas before the population of the pond had been measured by megabyte, (something Nugget had tried but failed to comprehend) it was now talked about in terms of zettabytes. This dizzying progress left Nugget sore and he had no idea how he’d ever fit into this. Every second his little friend Dustie the Data came past to inform him on a “newbie”.

Nugget was not impressed.

“Nugget stop whining about it. It’s the brave new world! The Big-Clients just want to use all these insights to engage with their customers. And rather than giving them what they thought they wanted they’ll deliver what they really want - improved product quality, new innovations, better customer service and better delivery. This is good Nugget”

And so Dustie left Nugget to stew.

All Dustie had said seemed irrelevant to Nugget. No benefits would be coming to him, not at all.

The Cloud was brimming now. It had become a sea of information that even the Big-Clients were struggling to comprehend. The Market Researchers couldn’t keep control of it. They were just trying to keep on top of it, let alone make something of it.

They struggled with how fast it came, bombarding them second, by second.

When they did manage to capture and store it they weren’t sure what to do with it. They had to rely on machines to analyse it … machines that constantly misunderstood irony and sarcasm and gave entirely the wrong meaning to the information.  It was all coming from different places as well and they hadn’t been trained in comparing apples and pears.

When the client finally received this information it wasn’t the Holy Grail they had hoped for but a mass of mismatched, out of date and wrongly interpreted data that didn’t help them with their strategy at all.

In the far corner of the Cloud was a group of Market Researchers who knew how to look at “big data”. They had a big tool box of online tools to capture the data and other tools such as video diaries, online focus groups and mobile surveys with which to delve deep into and understand the data. They had the human analytical skills that could turn the information into useful insights. They liked to match make and marry different pieces of information together so that the combination was greater than the sum of the parts. Most importantly, they were trained to mine for the information that would be useful for the Big-Clients in the context of their business strategy, and truly make a difference.

And so little by little the data got captured, organised and turned into truly impactful insights and order was restored to the world. And everyone, including Nugget who married a very attractive YouTube video, started to live happily again……..

 

 

 

Catch me if you can – Researching the Mobile Consumer

As Chris Horton recently reported for Social Media Today ‘The world is going mobile at an exponential rate. In 2011, Apple sold more iOS devices (156M) than the total number of Macs sold in all 28 years of its existence (122M).

Google recently announced that 850,000 new Android devices are activated daily and the total number of Android devices around the globe has surpassed 300 million

It has been estimated that there will be one billion smart mobile devices in-use globally sometime between December 2012 and June 2013.

This rapid proliferation of smartphones and tablets is changing how consumers make purchase decisions and interact with brands’.

Increasingly, purchase decisions are being made with the aid of user-generated content such as online reviews and peer opinions found on social media and this is being accessed at or close to the point of purchase. Indeed 48% of consumers say their mobile is a significant influencing factor when making a purchase decision.

This means that it is now vital for businesses to approach marketing and research through a mobile lens. The future of online is mobile!

Understanding the consumer in the moment

The opportunity this presents to harness the smartphone's ability for instant media consumption and real time customer insights is key.

Mobile devices integrate and change touch points. Mobile is so immersed in our lives we barely notice it. Behaviours will change further, more and more devices will be connected our children won’t know anything other than smart devices. 

This means that mobile research offers a real benefit in generating real time insights. Traditional ‘recall’ surveys can be inaccurate with their reliance on human ‘memory’, but by using mobile to turn recall surveys to immediate point of interest surveys the data can be more reliable.

So, mobile research is actually contextualised research allowing researchers to get a better overall view of respondents’ natural behaviours.

IKEA customers have a higher than usual smart phone penetration. They created the ability to capture customer unique experiences at the time they are interacting with the brand, which was ground breaking for IKEA. It even allowed customer issues and concerns to be addressed before the customer even left the store!

The way consumers feel has a direct impact on how they behave, and mobile also presents an ideal tool to harness this, capturing the contrasts between what consumers say they do and what they actually do!

What are the advantages of mobile research?

It’s not just early adopters that have online access via a phone, the new wave of mobile users means it’s increasingly becoming mainstream.

And mobile research has numerous advantages over traditional methods

• Immediacy - consumers record their interaction with brands as they happen
• Timeliness – research projects can be sent out when it is appropriate to do so with instant access to power reporting and analysis
• Less recall issues – real time feedback
• Shorter surveys – less onerous for the consumer
• Contextual richness – feedback ‘in situ'
• Better engagement with younger target groups
• Convenience - it’s easy for consumers to use and always there
• Better response rates  -  as high as 40-45%

·    The opportunity to get more creative about rewards. e.g. free gaming apps that will encourage them to participate in more research.

Where next?

We are moving into a new era for marketing and research – the era of the ‘Connected Customer ‘ Customers are now connected to their own social networks, have ‘direct access’ to companies and brands on an on-going basis and are living an ‘always online’ lifestyle.

Marketers and researchers must realise that current methods and guidelines may not work to engage the Connected Customer or to understand and report on such engagements.

This connectivity means that the next step from mobile research surveys is mobile research communities that could involve customers, stakeholders, even shareholders!

In the UK mobile is used to alleviate boredom (39% in downtime), which presents an opportunity for researchers to experiment with new ways of incentivising.

InSites Consulting use a gamification system to allocate points to participants that share content to “level-up” and unlock incentives. They also run challenges, asking members why their city is the coolest, sparking a flood of images, video and other content.

The more content they share, the more engaged consumers become with the platform and the more they want to share in response.

So how can research respond to the challenge? The cloud is everywhere and big data is an opportunity not a challenge. The future is bleak for those with blinders on, but extremely bright for those that can help design it!

Why Marketers don’t get Social Media

Seems that we are nowhere as marketers nowadays unless we are ‘getting down and digital ‘and throwing around words like social map, edgerank and hashtag.

But keeping up a social media presence is hard work – right? Creating the company policy, finding the right people to implement it, generating the content, engaging in conversations, checking the stats....phew!  No time for real work!

So how come it’s such a breeze for the millions of individuals on social media to market themselves? No marketing budget, no training, no slick digital agency and yet they still build a good network of people that they influence and who influence them - every day.

Well IMHO, there is one very good reason why marketers don’t ‘get’ social media, we are approaching it with the wrong mindset!

In the old days of media advertising, we were all very clear that as marketers our job was to promote our brands and products to as many customers we could possibly get to by buying time and space and then hoping a small proportion would actually buy

But, in the social space our role is very different because the people in network are the ‘product’, promoting themselves to the many expecting a response from a few.

Let me explain my thinking here. In traditional media, entertainment and advertising is provided for the public - often at great expense - and exists whether the audience is engaged with it or not. Social media, on the other hand, wouldn’t actually exist without the engagement of the public. So when we attempt to reach people on social networks we need to remember that we are connecting with the product itself and not just an existing or prospective customer.

OK so what if we are? I hear you say!

Well this actually makes use of Social Media much more of a strategic alliance than a marketing campaign. For sure some networkers that ‘like’ or ‘follow’ our products and services will buy them,but many are also our partners because they are promoting them through their networks. 

So what does this mean for social media marketing? Well if we are to behave like true strategic partners we need to:

• Change our mindset from ‘promoting’ to ‘partnering’
• Adopt the ground rules of the network
• Focus on the relationship as much as the outcomes
• Align our values with those of our promoters
• Make sure we are ‘at one’ in the eyes of their networks
• Relinquish control and work organically with the members
• Share the risks and the rewards

This is a very different modus operandi for marketers but if we don’t adapt our thinking quickly our new partners will soon jilt us for a more attractive playmate!