Crowdsourcing a revolution

On February 11, a revolution in Egypt culminated in President Hosni Mubarak resignation as President. As stated by CNN, "Inspired by a revolt in Tunisia and a page on Facebook", over 18 days mass protests coordinated predominantly through social media and cell phones (Twitter, Facebook, texting) brought down a dictatorial leader who had been in power for 30 years. The role of Social media in Mubarak's downfall has been hotly debated. On the one hand are the legions of news media outlets and bloggers who view Egypt as the first (but not the last) crowdsourced revolution (see The Instrumental Role of Social Media in Egypt on http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20030611-503544.html and E. B. Boyd's How Social Media Accelerated the Uprising in Egypt in Fast Company http://www.fastcompany.com/1722492/how-social-media-accelerated-the-uprising-in-egypt). They argue that the speed and efficiency of the revolution was directly attributable to the social media tools available to the drivers of the revolution, disenfranchised 18-24 year old Egyptians. If not for these tools, Mubarak would have rounded up and captured the leaders of the movement before they got traction with the general populace, and he'd still be in power today.

On the other side of the debate are those who feel social media's role is grossly overstated(see Malcolm Gladwell's article "Does Egypt need Twitter" in The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/02/does-egypt-need-twitter.html#ixzz1CwFMDA3b, and Jaikumar Vijayan of Computerworld at http://blogs.computerworld.com/17810/is_the_role_of_social_media_in_egypt_being_overstated). They point out, quite rightly, that crowd based revolutions have occurred throughout history (French Revolution anyone?) without any electronic social media tools.

While both sides have a valid point, it is clear that crowdsourcing and social media tools played a key role in the overthrow of the Government. With the speed of news dissemination and the ability to engage others quickly for protests, social media played a key role in moving from first protest to resignation within 18 days while providing a level of anonymity for the leaders until momentum clearly pointed to Mubarak's downfall. The key point here is anonymity for the leaders of the movement. With obscure Twitter and Facebook ID's, Mubarak's secret police didn't know who to round up. Traditionally despots have found and silenced opposition leaders before they could gain traction. In this case, without cooperation from two US based companies several thousand miles away, they couldn't find the individuals to arrest and interrogate. Finally, Social media tools are public (Twitter is publishing "Tweets from Tahir", a book of tweets that occurred during the revolution), which provides international support, sympathy, and ideas to help a movement succeed.

It took 4 years for the French Revolution to move from the storming of the Bastille to beheading Louis XVI. Wonder how much faster it would have happened today?

Why The Daily will work

Newscorp launched the first iPad specific media property, The Daily. It's the first major news publication to be designed from the ground up specifically for the iPad, and while its success or failure will be determined in the marketplace, I think it will work. Because it is designed from the start to present information the way the reader/viewer wants it, with video, pictures, text, and interactive elements seemlessly woven together, it will be more engaging than a series of articles. While the business model matches the offline world (dual revenue stream from subscriptions and advertising), the design isn't linear. It was built to move where your interest takes you, and you can drill down into stories and images for more detailed information (see the video at http://www.thedaily.com/). The only thing that needs to be enchanced are the social media aspects (you can post to Facebook and Twitter, but I'd like to see reader comments added), but that is a nit.

Bottom line - The Daily is the start of a new wave in publishing, and I applaud Newscorp for making the investment and taking the risk.

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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 :)

Engagement - who cares how many fans you have if you're not on their newsfeed

According to AllFacebook.com (touted as the Unofficial Facebook Resource), Starbucks (14,748,880 as of 10/8/10), Coca-Cola (13,262,027), Oreo cookie (10,693,331) and Skittles (10,289,154) have the highest number of fans (technically number of people who like the company/brand and link to it like a friend) of any non entertainment company or brand. They are the only consumer brands in the top 30, and all have done extensive marketing and promotion to attain their lofty status. But what does it mean for a company to have millions of fans? How does it generate value? Can you calculate an ROI?

Certainly there is some tangible value to having fans as a company or brand. Starbucks leverages their Facebook page to provide special offers to drive store traffic, get customer feedback, tout events (Pumpkin Spice Latte photo contest anyone?), and engage customers in product development and promotions. They also use it to tout their social good advocacy efforts (as does Coke). Interestingly enough, they don't push you to "friend" them. Coke, Oreo, and Skittles all route you through their app page which requires you to friend them, allowing them to see your profile and friends. The applications are fun (Create your own DRSL team on the Oreo cookie page , Fan downloads and contests on the Coke site, and Mob the Rainbow on Skittles), but based on the numbers only a small percentage of the fans (less than 2%) seem to be participating. More telling, the Wall comments (which would get exposure on fan pages to their friends) are relatively sparse given the number of fans. While all of these sites are adding friends at a rapid click, how is it impacting their sales and brand?

The key to social networking and engagement is not the number of fans, but their level of engagement. How often are they interacting with the brand? What are they posting about their experience with you on their own walls? Are they using other social networking channels such as Twitter to spread the word about an app or offer? These metrics are far more important that the number of fans who "friended" a brand to enter a sweepstakes or get a discount. The true success of social networking for a brand or company is to provide a forum for brand advocates to communicate with you and influence others into behaviors desired by the company. At 1800flowers.com, we started a "Spot a Mom" movement last year with bloggers which we spread to Facebook and Twitter. The goal was to get people to "spot" different types of moms (Green thumb mom, Pet lover mom, Mom of a mom, etc.) leading up to Mother's Day, as part of our marketing strategy to leave no mom behind and ensure all of them get flowers on the highest transaction day of the year for the Floral business. While we only had around 25,000 fans, we were able to influence over 6 million potential customers and exceeded our projected business goals by 9%.

The key with Social Networking is to connect and marshal your core, loyal, passionate fans to get the word out and influence their friends. Whether that's 6 people or 6 million, those are the fans you truly want to be your "friend".

P-Comm - Participatory Commerce and the next wave of Social Marketing

Its been called Crowdsourcing, Social Merchandising, Social commerce, and a host of other names. My favorite name for it is Participatory Commerce (P-Comm), which I'd love to take credit for (I will take credit for the shortened version - P-Comm), but Mark Pincus (founder of Tribe Networks and Zynga, which counts Mafia Wars, Cafe World and Farmville among its addictive online games) coined the phrase in October of 2005. Essentially, it means that the classic one way model of the marketer developing his/her product or service in a lab or back room, and then using mass marketing with a lowest common denominator messaging strategy to sell it to consumers is quickly disappearing in several categories.

In the era of social networking, everyone is not only a critic, but can also become part of the product and marketing process. Some of the key aspects of Twitter reflect P-Comm, as their users created or defined many of the key elements of the service (including the name Tweets, #tags, and retweeting). The founders stepped back and let the users decide how their service should evolve, and then fostered initiatives that seemed to gain traction. Data indicates that ratings and reviews improves conversion rates on E-Commerce sites, as 70% of online consumers indicated they trusted opinions posted by other visitors (Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, 7/09). Blogs attract over 80 Million unique visitors, and mommy bloggers have become a key marketing partner for advertisers looking to reach mothers (At 1800flowers.com, we worked with Mommy bloggers to launch our Spot a Mom campaign last year, with strong results). Youtube has enabled anyone with a digital camera (or digital phone) to create their own mini-movies, and the world is a better place now that everyone can share the antics of their adorable pets. Last, but certainly not least, Facebook has reconnected millions of former roommates, boyfriends, girlfriends, and stalkers while providing a steady stream of what is going on in their lives.

P-Comm will take social networking and E-Commerce to the next level. How about asking your customers to create a new product or service for your company? Or asking them what offer they'd find compelling? Maybe they could develop your logo as part of a contest? We've already seen user generated commercials which advertisers have aired on the Superbowl, so why not outsource your advertising to your most loyal customers? The opportunities to have your customers create products, services, offers, and messages that are relevant to them turns one way marketing around and creates ownership. And if customers feel part of the process of creating and marketing your product or service, they'll be more loyal and more likely to provide the most effective marketing ever created - positive word of mouth.