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Blog, Insights, Planning, Pulsar, Social Data, Social Media

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Small Networks Trump Influencers

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With all the talk about online influencers over the past few years, you’d think they were the holy grail of online marketing. Klout has made a business of it and many bloggers use sponsored posts to help pay the bills. But, the funny thing is, if you want to get the word out about your brand, product, or cause, influencers aren’t actually where you should be focusing your efforts. Let me explain.

Yes, influencers do help – I’m not going to deny that. Get Lady Gaga to tweet about your charity or fashion statement, and tons of fans will go out to investigate it. Want mothers to start using your diapers? Yes, try to get the mommy bloggers to write something up about them. But that tactic will only do so much. It leads to a spike in sales, but not a long-term trend. As a word-of-mouth marketing strategy, it’s limited.

Oprah Winfrey

This has been known in the publishing industry for quite some time as an effect of book clubs. An initial spike is launched by one large book club, like Oprah’s book club (she’d be your influencer), but the long-term trend continues as smaller book clubs pick up the torch and then those readers pass on the good book to their friends in turn.

This phenomenon becomes traceable as a long tail. It’s not just about the niche topic, it’s about the niche communities, of which there may be several for each topic.

We did a joint study with our sister agency Blonde not too long ago that illustrates this nicely. This study was actually where we developed the concept for the content tracking feature of Pulsar TRAC, our recently launched advanced social intelligence platform that pushes social media research beyond keyword tracking.

Meet Irn-Bru

Irn Bru

Irn-Bru is a soft drink that’s spectacularly popular in Scotland. So much so you wouldn’t be far off calling it the national Scottish drink. In fact it is one of the rare carbonated beverages to outsell Coca-Cola in any market.

Coming from such a position of strength in its main market, the marketers at Blonde decided to do something a little different when launching a recent commercial. This allowed us to demonstrate the power of small groups in spreading something – and even compare this with the power of influencers.

Releasing a Commercial

Blonde released this commercial by giving it to just one person: a regular young woman on Twitter who had won a competition. Rachel Orr (@larachie on Twitter) started out with just 153 Twitter followers – bang on average. Irn-Bru promoted her account and managed to increase her follower count to 329 – still not exactly Lady Gaga levels – before they gave her the link to the YouTube commercial.

But a few of those followers were “influencers”. Blonde encouraged some of Scottland’s top tweeters to follow @larachie with the incentive that they’d use this as a way to measure their influence. Some of these people included @AndrewBurnett, Head of Social at Yard Digital, and the band Bleed from Within (@bleedfromwithin).

After @larachie tweeted the initial YouTube link, the video reached 100,000 views in one day, led by her but amplified by these influencers.

Small groups trump influencers (at sustaining growth)

So, we have learned that influencers are really awesome at jump-starting an ad campaign. Likewise looking back to my book club example, influencers jumpstart sales. (Thank you, Oprah!)

But how do you keep those sales growing? This is where small groups trump influencers. Small groups, not big influencers, are the Holy Grail of word-of-mouth marketing. Sticking with our book club example, these key groups are the smaller book clubs, the ones that hear about a book from the big influencers and then bring it to people in their community, who then carry the book to another gathering or tell a friend who is part of another book circle, and so on. This is how something goes from an initial spike to a burgeoning trend.

We can see this play out online. In the microcosm that is Twitter, that Irn-Bru commercial continued to grow even after the influencers had played their initial role. Over the next 21 days, the commercial’s YouTube stats increased from 100,000 to 650,000 views. That’s about 26,000 people per day. This coincided with the commercial being passed around smaller, interconnected groups.

The visualization above  depicts not the number of shares or mentions, but the number of connections each account has with other accounts that have also mentioned the YouTube video. As you can see, quite a few are really small – those would be the small groups. Those are the ones that are apparently behind the growth in views for the next three weeks after @larachie launched the commercial.

Yes, the influencers were really helpful. Yes, they probably jump-started the whole thing. But the ones who kept it going, who probably got the video mentioned on the Poke’s Viral of the Day three days after the launch, were the small groups.

Here’s the difference:

  • Influencers: Contribute a big spike, good for a jump start and initial push
  • Small Groups: Contribute more sustained engagement and spread, good for the long term

Find content small groups can get behind

This commercial managed to appeal to many small groups because it was funny, original, and took creative risks. And, of course, because it was Irn-Bru and in Scotland.

This won’t always be the winning content recipe (especially if you’re not Irn-Bru and in Scotland). You need to find content that appeals not just to your audience, but which appeals to specific niches and communities within your audience – the more the better.

Once you do that, your content has a higher chance of spreading naturally – virally. You may still want to include some influencers in your release strategy, of course – It’s not an either/or situation. But if your content isn’t something small groups can get behind, it won’t travel.

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In May we’re releasing a substantial new study into the dynamics of viral video. Sign up for our mailing list here to be one of the first to know.

Blog, Brand Insight, Strategy and Positioning, Co-Creation, Conferences, Emerging markets, Face Asia, Meet Us At, Planning, Research Methods

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Brands without Borders – Face at Esomar 2013

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ESOMAR’s Asia Pacific 2013 conference in Ho Chi Minh City has already kicked off (keep an eye out for my summary blog with all the highlights), but even if you can’t make it, I wanted to share a piece of work we’ll be presenting tomorrow.

Written by myself (Andrew Ho) and my American counterpart, the head of our New York offices Philip McNaughton, this presentation will be all about how co-creation can help build stronger cross-regional brands throughout Asia.

ESOMAR Asia Logo

We were working with the beverage brand, Mizone, which had already grown strongly in the APAC region – but with independent brand voices in different Asian markets. The key business challenge was to develop a consistent and differentiated brand voice and vision that worked across markets, supported the growth of the brand, and yet was still relevant and attuned to consumer mindsets and aspirations.

There were two key challenges to this project:

  1. How to effectively bring consumer voices directly into the development of a high-level brand vision?
  2. How to identify one common vision and higher-purpose for the brand that could support pan-regional growth, without losing the flexibility needed to cater to the individual nature of each specific market?

Bringing consumer voices into brand vision development through Co-Creation

At first glance it seems counter-intuitive to ask consumers what they want a brand’s point of view on the world to be. If we have to ask, aren’t we missing the point? Should we be asking consumers to intervene in the magic and craft of marketing? We know that this point of view should be rooted in an understanding of our audiences – we know that research and data must play a role – but can we go beyond this?

The answer lies in moving away from the research paradigm of question and answer, ‘them and us’, and into a framework that invites collaboration  to harness the skills and vision of marketers alongside the creativity, truth and passion of consumers.

This was a 4 phase process:

  1. We started out with a phase of more ‘traditional’ ethnographic research with consumers – spending time with them in their places and spaces both offline and online and talking to them about their passions, motivations and aspirations for the future. This involved blogging communities, consumer connects and researcher lead interviews to develop a rich insight base about the target audience in each market.
  2. We then use this research to develop a number of insight platforms, and from those we developed a number of brand vision statements.
  3. We then took these ideas into a co-creation workshop where we worked with leading edge consumers in each market – Indonesia and India – to explore the potential for and relevance of our insight platforms and brand vision statements.This was not about asking people what they thought or whether they ‘liked’ or didn’t like the insights. It was about allowing them to tell us through a mix of storytelling and creative game-play what the insight platforms and statements meant to them, what was most resonant, and how they related the vision and insights to their own lives. Through this process we learnt not only where the central heartland of each potential brand vision lay, but also we saw (rather than asked) which of the potential areas generated most warmth and connection.
  4. Following the consumer work, we then ran sessions with the local agency in each market to identify the strongest insights and how they played into the strongest brand vision statements. We used the raw material generated in the consumer workshops to hone and craft impactful language that expressed a brand vision articulated directly from a human and local perspective.

Identifying one common vision across markets

While the co-creation sessions allowed us to articulate rich and relevant visions and points of view for the brand in each market, the larger challenge of finding a consistent and coherent vision for the brand in the region required a further step.

This involved client and agency teams coming together from across the region in a workshop inspired by insights and vision statements generated in previous phases on the study. While this allowed each market to give its own point of view, the principle was to bring cross-cultural teams together to develop cross-cultural perspectives for the brand.

On a simple level this process was about trying to find consistencies between markets, but more important was identifying fundamental human truths that could power the brand emotionally and functionally, and allow it to stand for something differentiating and purposeful in consumers lives.

Crucial to the success of this was the fact that stimulus brought into that workshop combined real insight from the markets, but also incorporated consumer inspired language and points of view that related directly to the purpose of generating big thinking for the brand. The consumer outputs from the co-creation gave a compass, a direction for the most powerful routes the brand could take – even if they did not map out all the stages of that route.

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Like our thinking? View more of Andrew Ho’s blogs on research in Asian markets, or connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter to say hello.

Blog, Communities, Community Management, Planning, Research Methods

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How to Use Community Research to Tackle Taboos

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Face-to-face research has severe limitations when it comes to addressing sensitive issues. Whenever researchers have to tackle topics such as suffering from mental health problems, the decadence of high net worth individuals, the awkward stages of puberty, or when we need to cut through the bravado and self consciousness around discussing sexual relations, traditional face-to-face research is far from easy – though it can be expertly executed by a deft and experienced hand. Online communities are not only convenient, but can actually deliver consistently deeper and more transparent insights.

For taboo topics, the usual enemies of research are amplified. People are too often compelled to say what is expected, socially acceptable, or feel pushed be agreeable. This is particularly true in Asia where participants will try to “save face,” as I’ve described previously in When Focus Groups Fail in Asia.

asian diary

Image by Flickr user by cliff1066™

Online communities are uniquely placed to get the most accurate and honest responses. In order to get the best from respondents, Q+As and NDAs are simply not enough. The entire insight process needs to be re-engineered from top to bottom to make respondents feel not only safe, but encouraged to give their best.

Here are 6 factors that can make communities the most effective and delicate of insight instruments:

1. Online and the freedom of anonymity

This is well documented: online provides a safe environment – an essential element for people to be able to express themselves. Given the recent boom in online self-expression in closed societies such as China and the Middle East, consumers are well-practiced at pouring their thoughts and feelings into a computer or mobile.

2. Research conducted and relationships formed over time

The nature of communities means the researcher-respondent relationship is formed over time (usually 2 weeks), not just in 2 hours. This creates a whole new paradigm –  researchers can build a dialogue and ramp up to more challenging/intimate tasks with sensitivity after establishing trust (versus simply leaping into a provocative line of questioning). As the respondents become more comfortable with the moderator and the platform, they open up more.

This also creates more time to find your insights through more projective techniques (see further on).

3. One-to-one engagement from recruitment to execution

As above, trust can be best formed through a consistent and human relationship during the research process. This is why, wherever possible, respondents should (be seen to) interact with only one recruiter/moderator contact. This creates a professional, discrete and transparent relationship. This also allows the contact person to use a personal and human tone of voice that is both warm and consistent.

4. The privacy of mobile

Mobile is growing fast, and our growing mobile research capabilities mean that mobile now plays a much stronger role when we tackle delicate subjects, by providing an extra degree of privacy and allowing for emotional expression in the moment. The interactions are now removed from the home or work computer where they can be accidentally shared or where respondents feel exposed. Because mobiles are often never far away, we can interact with consumers in any occasion.

5. Combine multiple data sources

When you have a category that is rife with mis-claimed behaviour (e.g. the frequency of exercise we do, or how strong our religious faith is), you can verify consumer behaviour by comparing from a number of sources that you can collect through communities. Researchers will be able to tease out the differences and probe on the discrepancies in the data. For example:

    • Social vs. individual tasks: Imagine how differently a man would claim his number of previous sexual partners in a group versus in an online interview. Understanding the difference may help calibrate your understanding of other research. For instance, men might over-claim their number of partners by 20%…
    • Direct respondent response vs. their peer responses: Talking to a mental health sufferer then his care provider or family will give you multiple perspectives on a single issue – illuminating any variations in perceived attitudes and behaviours
    • Passive vs. active capture: With mobile’s ability to mine the phone for indirect data (i.e. track your location, browsing data, messaging etc.), there is an opportunity to compare this passively-acquired intelligence with direct questions and tasks
    • Face-to-face qualitative follow-ups: After an online exercise, following up face-to-face interviews with key respondents allows researchers the opportunity to probe deeper on the community work – as well as verify and challenge facts

6. Community technology allows projective techniques to get creative and deep

Depending on the topic and challenge, the most modern communities allow you to be creative about how you gather the insights required. Projective tasks (unlike direct questions) allow for a less invasive and more insightful approach. A third person story-telling method that asks them for “advice based on their own experiences” is more comfortable but still draws on their personal experiences.

We’ve had enormous success with the above principles and continue to build our thinking and capabilities. It is the ultimate demonstration of how online qual is breaking away from panels and surveys, and how in this instance can usurp the traditional insight model.

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Interested in more of our Asia research insights? We’re speaking about building ‘Brands Without Borders’ at ESOMAR Asia Pacific 2013 next week (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 7-9 April 2013).

Connect with Andrew Ho on LinkedIn or Twitter if you’d like to say hello to us there.

Planning, Social Media

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Content is like an onion, it has layers

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Do you remember how in the movie Shrek, the title character compares ogres to onions, saying that ogres have layers too? (If you don’t get the reference, go watch Shrek again!)

Well, like onions (and ogres), content also has layers. There is the first layer, the layer you see without engaging with the content at all, and then there’s a second layer which is what people see when they investigate. This could be clicking on the tweeted link, playing the banner ad video, going to the originating Facebook page, or anything else that expands the message of that content. And there could be more layers beyond that, depending on your consumer journey.

Shrek explaining to Donkey that onions and ogres have layers

The holy grail of content marketing right now seems to be making content into bite-size bits that we can engage with and pass on, supposedly furthering the ends of the content creator. Many brands are trying to piggy-back off of popular web memes, like Wonderful Pistachios and their Psy/Gagnam Style Superbowl Ad.

But this misses out on that second layer of interaction. People see things and pass them on, frequently without reading or investigating them first. Just think of all the fun or interesting images you’ve seen on Facebook in the past week that you’ve then reposted, liked or commented on. How often did you read the full description of the image and click on through to the originating Facebook page? If you’re like me, and many other folk, probably not too often. After all, what you’re sharing is that image, not the page, right? This type of behavior is encouraged, too – One click sharing is common on all social networks.

People also can add layers to the content, adapting it to their own purposes. When I re-share images on Facebook, I often add my own message. But am I furthering the purposes of those brands? On a certain level, yes. I am literally forwarding the link on to my friends. But will my friends click through to those pages, or just admire the image and my witty comment?

Facebook image shared on Facebook with a comment.

So on one side, people often add layers to content already in existence and otherwise engage with it by sharing and liking, but on the other, they are not investigating. The danger with this is that their knowledge and understanding of your brand has not been expanded. In order for that to happen, they must investigate your content, click through and explore the second layer, and possibly other layers beneath that. But at the same time, sharing is probably the best way to increase your brand profile.

So how do you create content that will help your brand transform engagement into investigation? Here are 4 tips for the marketing content creator:

  1. Make every layer self-sufficient. If your image has your main message, then it’s okay if people don’t click through to see your Facebook Page, or even read the descriptions you’ve attached to it. It’s right there in the image. This can be tough though as you are forced to perhaps hit people over the head with your brand, limiting the content’s shareability. This is the tactic that Wonderful Pistachios has taken. You just watch the fun videos and you know what their message is.

  2. Make content that people want to investigate, not just engage with. I like Kraft Foods as an example of this. Their Pinterest Page is full of lovely images of yummy foods – as a foodie and cook it’s hard to resist sharing these images. At the same time, they are clearly labelled as recipes – and are just a click away from the recipes themselves on the Kraft website. So not only do they encourage engagement (sharing) but also investigation (clicking through).

  3. Piggy-backing off of point 2, use the data and tools you have at your disposal to make content more personally relevant for people. For instance, you can use real time data such as weather and time of day to present people the type of ads they are going to be more interested in. If it’s rainy, show me sunny vacation destinations. Or a rain coat. Technology is becoming a third part of the classic Art and Copy creative team. Take advantage of it.

  4. Don’t be limited by your industry. Yes, some industries seem more prone creating content people should investigate rather than share, such as the real estate market. But, Zillow has managed to make real estate and home maintenance fun, with a top layer of Eye Candy and Tips and Advice columns that combine information with pretty pictures. Their articles are fun reads and easy to share, getting their message through quickly and clearly: Zillow is a fun place to talk about real estate (and they’ll also help you find or sell a house, too).

Augmented Research, Blog, Co-Creation, Communities, Mobile, Planning, Research Methods

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4 Tips to Liven Up Live Event Research

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Here at FACE, we live for the moment – and we especially like to do it in the name of research. Researching live experiences used to be a matter of showing up, doing interviews at various points, and taking down notes throughout, maybe a survey here or there. But that’s not our style and things have changed (we love change!). Now, people can experience everything the world has to offer in real time while simultaneously contributing and sharing experiences with others through mobile and social media. It’s been great news for us, because we get even more opportunities to delve into understanding what is happening and why.

We’ve been doing more and more research in this area and are fascinated by it. So in the spirit of experiencing and sharing, here are some tips that have helped make our live research live up to the definition on Urban Dictionary: “jumping, full of people, exciting!”

World Cup Stadium
Image by Flickr user Shine 2010 – 2010 World Cup good news

1. Focus

When going into any kind of live event (whether physical or digital, or both) having a clear objective and a plan are incredibly important. Whether we are looking at engagement with a message, understanding behavior in context, or identifying opportunities for improvement, having a focal question helps to narrow in on exactly what kind of information the research should prioritize over all of the other (distracting!) aspects that make live events so fascinating.

2. Technology

Even a few years ago, asking people to do things while they were doing something else was fraught with difficulty (think paper diaries, and intercept interviews). But now, online behaviors have really shifted in our favor in regards to collecting data during live events. Liveblogging, livestreaming, updating, checking in, – all of these methods act as shortcuts that help participants get their thoughts directly to us without getting in the way of the experience itself.

And the best part is that people are already engaging in these behaviors in their personal lives. We’re just extending an already existing behavior into a research situation. Just be sure to choose your technology medium carefully. Make sure that it fits within the situation you’re looking at. For instance, check-ins are useful if you’re studying gym-workout behavior. But they’re not really that useful if you’re looking at the experience of a live concert.

3. Real-time integration

This should go without saying, but I am going to say it anyway. In order to capture what happens ‘live’, the research simply has to be happening at the same time. The information you get from people experiencing something in the moment (even if it doesn’t seem relevant at the time) is extremely powerful and should not be left out of the picture. When people look back on experiences in retrospect, it is often lacking a lot of the rich contextual information that is key to understanding what is really going on in the moment.

4. Thinking about dimensions

Live experiences are akin to animated objects – constantly changing in look, feeling, and experience. There isn’t always a clear beginning, middle, or end, and things can take dramatic turns. There is a lot of reading between the lines.

Where traditional research might normally have limited perspectives across a few points in time, a live research approach gives us the opportunity to explore multiple vantage points over the entire duration of an experience. The added dimension of change over time means that we can better understand the subtleties of live experiences in ways that people might not be aware of in the moment or even after the fact.

Ultimately studying live experiences can be a whale of a proposition but it is always worth it. We are looking forward to the next opportunity to lose ourselves in the moment.

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