There have been a plethora of reports on social media, eBooks and trend watches which have come out over the last couple of weeks. Some of which we’ve already covered. However, this survey research by Jennifer Leggio (AKA Mediaphyter) of ZDNet, stood out in my eyes for the new data which it supplied. I have thoroughly enjoyed reading and re-reading the five pages (Couldn’t squeeze it into a 140 characters), which summarize results from the survey.
The 642 respondents, who were surveyed between November 2008 and January 2009, included top PR decision-makers at companies with 1,000 or more employees, with small business / start-up owners as secondary targeted respondents.
There were many takeaways from this research, many of which Jennifer notes, however I wanted to highlight a few key takeaways that I caught. Please take the time to read her full synopsis on the findings, if you haven’t already.
Traditional PR still needs to be the main focus for most clients: I recently blogged about how real PR value (PR that leads to sales / leads) is still driven by securing the right story (i.e. right message penetration to achieve corporate objectives) in one of the heavyweight print publications (i.e. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek). Yes, we need to understand social media and digital media relations, but agencies can’t loose focus of how important traditional PR is in retaining clients. The results of Jennifer’s survey seem to back up this point. Clients don’t want new social elements, introduced into ongoing PR campaigns, to take away from core traditional components. For example, one respondent to the survey stated: “My agency seems to use social networks but our traditional PR is suffering. While social media is important to the company’s objectives, the base capabilities are still most important. Not surprising to hear that in the current economic period, but it was surprising to hear just how dissatisfied respondents were with their current traditional media results. According to the survey, clients seem to be most worried about not getting stories (in traditional media) that assist them in meeting their corporate objectives. 54 percent of the respondents indicated that the opportunities which their agency was securing for them didn’t hit on key messages, which support their business objectives. These numbers scream to me that clients are looking for results that can be measured against key message penetration. I wish Jennifer got a little deeper into respondents thoughts on measurement, but hopefully she’ll tackle in future surveys.
(Source: Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet)
Current clients want to be educated on social media: While respondents indicated that they don’t need social media to be the main focus on their PR campaigns they do want to be further educated on social media and the changing media landscape. More than 81 percent of respondents indicated that they would attend a social media training center managed by their agency, with 35 percent of those willing to pay for it as an added expense. Jennifer tries to present this as a reason to offer educational programs for free – as part of ramping-up a new business engagement. However, I think the overwhelming response really points to clients overall interest in being educated. As agencies, we really have to be better at educating and that all starts with finding the best approach to implementing these types of training sessions into core practices.
(Source: Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet)
The expectations set during new business pitches, are more important than ever: Only 38 percent of respondents indicated that they were getting the quality of coverage they were promised during new business pitches. Setting expectations is more than half the battle. As agencies begin to make measurement their top priority – especially during these tough economic times – we can’t loose track of what was mentioned during that first meeting. We need to be well educated (with qualitative and quantitative data) on the dialogue that is going on around prospective clients and their market, in order to successfully predict the results we aim to deliver from the onset.
There is no doubt the economy has been felt by professional sports. Just today the NFL announced layoffs (about 15 percent of league employees) and selling tickets has become an issue for some teams as well. Apparently, one sales person for the Los Angeles Dodgers got a little too desperate (or as he explains, excited) and decided to market the signing of Manny Ramirez as his key selling point. In the age of the internet – beware.
The sales person (who remains nameless) left a voicemail for a potential Dodgers season ticket holder during which he said “I wanted to be the first to tell you the Dodgers are on the verge of signing Manny Ramirez! A little insider info!”
Unfortunately, this isn’t true. The person that received the message decided to post it online, and then the Los Angeles Times picked up the story giving it some national attention. We know times are tough, but imagine trying to get someone to purchase season tickets because of a rumor – especially one that isn’t even true! An interesting marketing strategy indeed…
However, Elliot made a more interesting point by drawing parallels between this Tropicana’s latest incident and what Facebook and Motrin went through recently with consumer uprisings.
“There will always be people complaining, and always be people complaining about the complainers. But this makes it easier to put us together. Twitter is the ultimate focus group. I can post something and in a minute get feedback from 700 people around the world, giving me their real opinions.”
To his credit, Peter made a very good point. There has always been, and there will always be people complaining about the actions of companies. However, the adoption of communication technologies like Facebook and Twitter, now allows consumers to really get their voice heard (both by the media and the company). Not just as one individual, but as as a powerful group of consumers, who can garner real leverage over the corporations that they are addressing.
With so many corporations adopting and embracing the use of these technologies (Zuckerberg created it for crying out loud) for building and listening to their brand perception , it amazes me how they aren’t able to take advantage of them. Facebook, for one, prides itself on being a democratic community (look at its proposed bill of rights), but somehow it always manages to act before listening to the feedback of its users. Newsfeeds, Beacon and now this.
The same goes for Motrin. They decided they wanted to launch a “viral” video, but didn’t bother gauging what feedback for that video may be virally may be before launching it.
Could Tropicana have avoided this $35 million misstep by using Facebook or Twitter? Well, the company isn’t clueless when it comes to new media. Just take a look back at their Orange America Twitter campaign in November. But could the company have used that foray into social media and micro-blogging to create a real brand following on Twitter? From what I’ve found, they don’t even have a Twitter handle. They definitely don’t run @Tropicana.
If they had taken the time to build off of Orange America, they could have created a real following of really passionate Tropicana drinkers (Yes, re: Stuart’s headline they do exist). They could have observed what was being said about the brand and more importantly they could have created dialogue around a “potential” re-branding. Maybe even implemented feedback into their plans, or stopped them altogether.
If social media has taught me one thing, it’s that the real wisdom, comes from the wisdom of the crowds. Especially when it comes to marketing.
Just like PR, branding and design need to evolve in order to integrate social media feedback into their campaigns. In fact, our newly created sister organization Two Martinis, which launched this week, plans to assist corporations in doing just that.
Aaron Hughes, a colleague of mine under the W2 umbrella and SVP at Two Martinis, believes that social media analytics and measurement are the key to making the most effective use of a client’s money – when it comes to branding and design.
He also believes that focus groups are too “aided” and “guided” to provide a true sense of customer perception. I believe he’s right.
If only more corporations could understand that the ultimate focus group, is now only a click away. Whether that’s Twitter or Facebook, is still up for debate.
