Social Networks and the Ah Ha moment - from Serendipity to systematic research

Remember your first focus group. I'll admit that my memory is a bit fuzzy. I think it was sometime in 1985 when I was working at Foote, Cone, and Belding, an advertising agency. We were listening to people discuss laundry detergent, looking for that "Ah ha" insight that would help us reposition Dynamo and make it relevant again. As the respondents gave their feedback on different positioning concepts (recommended by DuPont as effective at preventing future stains!), we sat in the back room eating M&M's and hoping for that great quote, that key moment when someone said just the right thing for us to move forward with advertising.

Now 25 years and literally hundreds of focus groups later, it all seems so quaint in the world of digital social networking. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Survey Monkey, and a host of other tools, we no longer have to rely on the serendipity of catching an individual respondent at just the right moment. You can survey virtually all of your customers, or at least the ones that matter most, and get their insights in a systematic way through sentiment analysis or harvesting verbatim comments and organizing them by keywords. The biggest challenge is no longer collecting - every customer comment about your brand or product is captured digitally for all eternity. The challenge now is sorting. At 1800flowers.com, we did bi-weekly customer surveys with thousands of respondents, and the challenge was always how to review the answers to open ended questions. Like Google, algorithms are being developed to sort, parse, and refine the customer comments, like panning for gold in a stream. These algorithms can help provide a ranking system to be used systemically for product positioning, new product development, loyalty building programs, and improvements in customer experience. Qualitative has become Quantitative, and as a result we now have "Ah ha" moments to choose from as long as we are willing to invest the resources to find them.

Intimacy and your mobile phone

No, it's not a joke about the vibrate function. The relationship people have with their mobile phone (or device, since 40% have smart phones with the number climbing rapidly) is a much closer one than with their TV, Computer, video game, ipad, or any other consumer electronics product. It's part of their wardrobe, an essential item they won't leave home without. One former colleague of mine used to joke that her husband and son called her Blackberry "the precious", reflecting that it was as important to her as the famous ring was to Gollum in Lord of the Rings. If I want to discipline my kids, the only thing that works is threatening to take their phone away (Losing TV, Internet, video games, dinner - all are ineffective in scaring them). Your mobile device has your carefully selected ring tone, your music, your contacts, your long running IM or BBM conversation with your best friend (two years and counting!), pictures of your kids, funny videos, and all of the information you'll need to find a restaurant, buy clothes on sale, or settle a bet on who was the female lead in "Dirty Dancing" (Jennifer Grey). Based on several surveys (including one indicating 2/3rds of people sleep with or near their cell phones - http://bit.ly/aK50yf ), people would be most disturbed to lose their phone above any other possession - over house keys, car keys, or even their wallet.

So what does this intimacy mean in terms of marketing? It means the expectation of personalization and relevance is higher for a cell phone than any other device. Spam text messages are intrusive, not just irritating. Irrelevant ads annoy - they aren't just ignored. An advertiser has to earn a relationship with a cell phone customer. That means giving them something relevant and of value. It means recognizing what's relevant to THEM, not just what you want to push. On virtually all smart phones, there is no way to identify and track the user, making it very difficult to do targeted advertising (I'm on the advisory board of a company called Collider Media that has patent pending technology to solve this problem by identifying customers through matching the device ID to an individual via a database look up, all while adhering to the strictest privacy guidelines. For more information, check out www.collidermedia.com). Successful mobile advertising will provide relevance and create a tighter relationship with existing customers by providing personalized service, offers, and information. Perhaps it's a coupon specifically for a product the customer frequently buys ($2 off a Venti Carmel Frappuccino for me please - sorry, its a weakness). Maybe a geo location play (the $2 off offer is good at the Larchmont Starbucks on Palmer Ave). Finally, information relevant to me (My friend Steve is at that Starbucks right now - would you like to let him know you'll be stopping by?)

Looking at smart phone advertising through the lens of its intimate relationship with its owner raises the bar for the advertiser in terms personalization. But the payoff is increased effectiveness. Now I'm off to pick up that Frappuccino :)