Public relations, social media and word of mouth
Marketing
Fast Company: Five steps to earn social currency
May 6th
Fast Company has a fascinating article on ‘Five steps to earn social currency’, looking at the results of research by Vivaldi Partners (an international brand consultancy) and Lightspeed Research. The study examines more than 60 companies and assesses customers’ brand affiliations, advocacy, and sense of community, among other factors, for how they create true value for the companies, no matter whether it’s online or off.
To me what’s most interesting about the findings is how it confirms many of the things that we’re always explaining to client. Lots of the ‘big number’ gimmicks – such as apps, games and viral videos – might generate volumes of ‘buzz’, but achieve very little. Public relations practitioners have always had to focus on providing ‘something of value’ – the story, content, event or whatever has to benefit the recipient. That’s why many of the ideas suggest are designed with ‘social currency’ in mind.
Simply achieving more and more Facebook fans, Twitter followers or YouTube viewers achieves very little in itself. Erich Joachimsthaler, managing director at Vivaldi Partners, explains "There is a lot of wasted effort in social media. We forget that these programs have to pay into something, a shared value or a social context where the product actually gets used." What’s valuable isn’t mere buzz but what Joachimsthaler calls "social currency."
Fast Company has helpful pulled out some of the most interesting findings including:
Dunkin’ Donuts ‘advocacy approach’ is more effective than Starbucks’ big numbers approach.
Beer drinkers care about totally different things to big brewers who are potentially wasting millions of pounds of their advertising and marketing budgets.
Axe’s (Lynx) over-the-line risqué humour is just seen as a goof, whereas Clinique’s instructive approach (YouTube videos showing how to apply make-up) has earned it stronger social currency with its consumers.
Burger King and Wendy’s help demonstrate why gimmicks marginalise trust. Wendy’s ‘You Know When It’s Real’ makes the product the hero, while Burger King simply relies on stunts created by advertising agencies which might get lots of attention but as Joachimsthaler says: "it doesn’t motivate me to have a hamburger at Burger King today." Indeed they probably do more for the ad agencies’ ‘social currency’ than they do for the poor old client that is paying for it all!
Dolce&Gabbana and Sony Ericsson use online to bypass traditional TV advertising
Oct 23rd
The Wolfstar team is currently hard at work on a project with Dolce&Gabbana and Sony Ericsson to launch the new Jalou mobile phone. Instead of traditional television advertising commercials (TVC) the campaign is focused around a promotional video conceived by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, which is available exclusively online. The social media news release that we’ve created includes the video as well as behind the scenes footage and an interview with the director, Cyril Guyot.
My thoughts on the #socialmedia chat
Oct 6th
Have you ever been to a great party where you’re just arriving as everyone else is leaving.That’s what it feels like this afternoon with this afternoon’s #socialmedia chat. As I’m too late to participate on Twitter, I thought it might be better to add some slightly longer thoughts to some of the sound bites on Twitter. The recurring theme that I picked up on was the debate about who ‘owns’ social media. If you read a lot of the tweets one of the main problems is that a lot of the people talking don’t actually really understand what either PR or marketing is. They use their personal misunderstanding of the disciplines to come to understandable but ultimately ill-informed conclusions.
- JonClements: @TDefren #socialmedia It should be a team effort. It’s the jostling for position that will sabotage SM. #socialmedia
- carlainsf: @ckieff Agree that many depts help in execution, but 1 dept needs to hold the keys, drive process w/execs/co, be accountable. #socialmedia
- vedo: Absolutely! RT @BlakeGroup: SM works well w/ team approach. PR, sales, cust service, mrktg, etc. Cross-silo. #socialmedia
Absolutely agree that it should be a team effort, but that still means someone has to lead the team. Public relations or corporate communications are perfectly positioned to do this. It’s a media neutral discipline which uses the channels that work best for reputation management. It’s a two way discipline as much about listening, understanding and responding as it is talking. Social media also needs to include marketing communications, customer service, sales, human resources and legal, as well as to a lesser extent others, but PR is well positioned to lead and co-ordinate.
- DoctorDigital: @wordymouth Possibly, integrated agencies are common. But think PR & Ad guys need to keep an eye on dedicated ‘digi agencies’. #socialmedia
- DoctorDigital Nobody owns SM. And that’s why agencies from different sectors are competing against each other #socialmedia
It is a real threat is that public relations consultancies might lose business to digital agencies. But in reality digital just isn’t geared up to do it, they might win the business because they can do a slick online presentation with lots of metrics and exciting, cool looking things, but they can’t necessarily deliver. They don’t understand corporate communications strategy, so if they are to compete long term they have to recruit PR people that do. Public relations should be looking to own the strategy, some of the tactical delivery can be farmed out to digital agencies who are great at building and measuring.The challenge for public relations is getting our voice heard as other disciplines frequently have much bigger budgets and can therefore do things like diverting a percentage of it to ‘experiment’ with social media. PR budgets are much smaller and therefore a greater percentage needs to be diverted.
- ckieff: @ShannonPalmer excellent point- and a challenge for marketing b/c they’re used to absolute control. #SOCIALMEDIA
- Sue_Anne: More than ever PR folks need to realize that they don’t have "control" over the message or the medium. #socialmedia
Control, that hoary old chestnut. That’s one of the main concerns of marketing people, that they won’t have control. And they are absolutely right to be concerned, because they won’t have control. They just have to change and learn to live with it. For public relations people it’s just not a concern. PR people who ever thought they had control are fools – they didn’t. And nothing has changed in the new world, you can still manage, influence, interact and persuade
- ScottDeYager: @Tdefren SM is the catalyst that is driving the merge of PR and marketing. Needs to happen. #socialmedia
- btrandolph: RT @ckieff: @TDefren I think the new PR skills will cause PR and Mktg to merge into a single "outreach" discipline. #SOCIALMEDIA
- TDefren: @ScottDeYager In many cos, PR was always part of the Marketing group.#socialmedia
No, no, no and no again. Public relations is NOT part of marketing and NEVER should be (YES I’m SHOUTING!) You can and should use lots of public relations tactics as part of a marketing communications campaign, but it’s an entirely separate discipline. We also look after CSR, investor relations, internal communications and public affairs. Marcoms is just one small part of what we do. And that’s perhaps what best illustrates why public relations should lead on co-ordinating social media and planning strategy.
- DoctorDigital: #socialmedia Who are we to decide who should own it? Isn’t that the client’s decision?
Disagree with this one as well. If you’re a consultant it is your job to provide strategic counsel to your clients. That’s what they pay decent fees for. They aren’t going to pay high hourly rates for tactical implementation of monitoring, blogger outreach, media relations etc. So yes the client decides, but with your help. It’s also your role to help your clients create a social media strategy internally and help them to get all the different departments and disciplines around the table.
Thanks to Todd Defren for sparking the #socialmedia debate.
