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

Customers are doing it for themselves

Tired of mass marketing, product development without consultation, retailer supremacy and being asked to take part in tedious and irrelevant surveys customers are taking things into their own hands. They are ‘following’ brands they like, co-creating new products, buying through whatever distribution channel gives them what they want in a cost effective and convenient way and sharing customer reviews.

Problem is, with a few notable exceptions, brands have not kept up and Marketers are still banging the old drums!

True Insight is allowing customers to tell us what they want to tell us when they want to tell us and how they want to tell us. Anything else is just false validation.

If you ask a customer a question, chances are they will oblige you with an answer (especially if you're paying them to! ) but this doesn’t tell you:

•  how much the topic/issue really matters to them (if at all)
•  what influence it will have on their buying behaviour (if any)
• what the words and phrases that you use really mean to them (if anything)

This means that a lot of money spent on collecting customer insight is currently wasted because it is asking about stuff that is not relevant, important or motivating for the customer

It is time that we turned flawed and dated approach on its head! The way in which customer insight will be gathered in the future will require us to do

•  Less talking and more listening
•  Less questioning and more elicitation
•  Less promoting and more responding
•  Less developing and more evolving
•  Less leading and more following

Customers have already taken the situation into their own hands and what remains now is for us swallow our pride, accept this and start playing by their rules not ours. Otherwise we will be joining the growing list of the  ‘ignored’ ‘removed’ and ‘unfollowed’!