Archive for March, 2010
Interesting idea regarding what Advocates could accomplish. And the idea comes from Kenya. A well known Kenyan professional returned to her homeland and because of death threats, she went elsewhere. In her blog, she mentioned how great it would be if there was an online tool to let people anonymously report violence and bad behavior. Some tech savvy Advocates saw her post and built something from her idea for her….Ushahidi. The site today uses cell phone reports of violence, riots, rapes, death threats and plots them on a map. Ushahidi is Swahili for “testimony.” Ushahidi has taken off and was most recently used when the Haitian earthquake struck and people were using SMS to report on individuals unable to get out of damaged buildings.
In this New York Times article where I first found this information, the idea surfaced about using this type of reporting to gather information on where Osama bin Laden might be hiding. Wouldn’t that be amazing. Ushahidi could be the foundation for building a crisis map of the world manned by global volunteer advocates. “With every new application, Ushahidi is quietly transforming the notion of bearing witness in tragedy. “
Tags: advocates, crisis, Kenya, Ushahidi
The race-car-driving, bestselling-novel-publishing, world’s-most-famous-blog-writing Chinese phenomenon that is Han Han can now boast being profiled in the New York Times.
An article over the weekend highlighted the 28-year-old heartthrob, who is a professional race car driver, published his first novel at the age of 19 and now maintains the most popular blog in China with 300 million hits. Not only did his novel, “Triple Door,” become the bestselling book in China in the last two decades, the New York Times points out that due to the popularity of his blog in the world’s most populous country, Han Han may be the most popular living writer of our time.
It may come of no surprise that Han Han is also one of the world’s greatest advocates.
He routinely engages in highly publicized online scruffs, exchanging barbs with literary critics who disprove of his work and chastising corrupt bureaucrats. In a country where the media environment is notoriously hard to navigate, how does Han Han get away with it? His tactics are an example for advocates everywhere.
First, Han Han is authentic and sticks with what he knows. It may seem like this renaissance man is spread pretty thinly. But Han Han isn’t good at everything. In fact, he flunked out of China’s national college entrance exam twice before eventually dropping out. So when he penned his first novel, it was about the hard knocks of a middle school student. Young adult literature is not the most commonly taken path to stardom, but it worked for Han Han because he knew the subject – he had lived it. Lesson: Stick with what you know, and your voice will be heard.
Second, Han Han has a sense of humor. It’s not easy into translate into English, but let’s just say that his clever use of irony, sarcasm and parody make him a difficult target to nail and an easy personality to be beloved. Lesson: Sometimes humor is the best way to get to the heart of a thorny issue.
Third, though Han Han’s professional race car driving career may seem unrelated to his controversial social and political stances, it is actually integral to his advocacy. Not only does it make him financially independent, the celebrity status it affords shields him from the negative consequences that might normally befall someone more obscure. Lesson: The debate on celebrity activism is ongoing, but there is no denying that they can get the message out when sometimes others can’t.
Advocate watchers everywhere: keep an eye on Han Han.
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Tags: China
Are we making too many generalizations about digital natives, those people born between 1980 and 2000, who we consider digital advocates as well. An article in The Economist reasons that there is as much variation among digital natives as among generations. Of course, not every one, has access to technology as we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking. But what caught my eye in the article was a reference to a Pew Research Center study that found that the younger 18-24 year olds that we assume are online activists are the least likely age cohort to e-mail a public official or donate money to a political cause online. That surprised me after living through the Obama presidential campaign where young people were out in force online pitching for the democratic nominee. Instead, these digital natives in this age group are more likely to share political news and join political causes on social media sites. “Rather than genuinely being more politically engaged, they may simply wish to broadcast their activism to their peers.” High intensity advocates, as we at Weber Shandwick call them, walk the talk and take action in support of their causes. These findings would suggest that 18-24 year olds are more likley to be passive advocates or are more inclined to spread word of mouth than engage outside their networks more proactively. Very revealing finding.
Tags: Advocacy, digital natives, Economist, high intensity advocates, Pew Research Center, Weber Shandwick
In an article by Stefan Stern of the Financial Times, I always find something thoughtful for this blog. This past week he wrote about where marketing was going (or not going) in this current economic environment. Stern was describing his conversation with the “father of modern marketing” Phillip Kotler. One part of the conversation had to do with advocacy, the mainstay of this blog. The other one was just plain funny.
Kotler was reminiscing about a book he enjoyed titled Firms of Endearment (the best title). He said that in the book they talk about how some of the most successful companies spend less on marketing than the less successful ones. Sounds counterintuitive? Kotler says, “But they used the word of mouth effect of unpaid advocates – loyal customers – to boost their reputation.” Advocates will do your marketing for you if you mobilize them, listen to them and engage them. Our research at Weber Shandwick found this to be the case. Indeed. Kotler is apparently publishing a new book on the role of advocates in marketing titled Marketing 3.0.
What made me laugh was a statement by Kotler who is 79 years wise. He is quoted by Stern as saying, “At least it’s the finance people who are getting blamed for a change.” Marketers and communications professionals are getting by without the blame for awhile.
Tags: advocates, Financial Times, Weber Shandwick
There’s a “new” news consumer today, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center released this week. And the Internet and mobile technologies are at the center of it all, helping people’s relationship with the news become more “portable, personalized, and participatory.”
• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37% of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
According to the study, the rise of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience for consumers, where they use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news.
This is good news indeed. Let’s face it, the mainstream news business, battered particularly hard by the recession, needs all the life-saving it can find to stay afloat and relevant to consumers today. And while that’s clearly not new news, it’s important not to lose sight of the broader story told by the broader trends.
And those trends tell us that the list of shows that thrive on broadcast television—particularly ones that discuss current events, politics, news and lifestyle— is short and getting shorter. The audience is declining for the Evening News. It’s declining for the morning news. No one is immune it seems. Not even the queen of daytime herself, Oprah. The trend for her show, and media empire, is down from where it was, unfathomable a few short years ago.
One of the few bright spots isn’t “real news” at all. It’s the hilariously “fake” news of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on cable and his even more radical brethren Steven Colbert of “The Colbert Report.” Ratings fueled by the loyal Colbert Nation are doing just fine. Even more surprising is that studies have found that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report—the news that’s fake mind you—have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs out of any show’s audience, news included! So obviously something more than just laughs is going on here.
But it’s the exception. Polls, circulation stats and Nielsen ratings show, beyond a doubt, that people under 40 are following current events less than their parents. Eighteen to 24-year-olds may be digital natives but research shows that just 11 percent use the Internet to learn about current events. Research also shows that people under 40 know less and care less about politics.
This generational divide is part of what’s wreaking havoc on the newsprint business. Average weekday circulation at 379 of the top U.S. newspapers fell 10.6% during the six months ending in September of last year—the steepest decline ever documented.
Similarly, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves regular magazine readers has shown a slow, steady decline over the past two decades. Pew has also found that 23% of adult Americans in 2008 said they read a magazine of some kind the day before — a drop of nearly a third from 33% in 1994. When asked specifically about news magazines, 12% reported reading one “regularly,” down 2 percentage points from 2006 and down 6 percentage points from a similar survey in 1994.
Together with the deep recession, these trends have led to a total of 15,000+ journalists getting laid off or taking buyouts in the U.S. alone last year. This means less journalists covering more beats, wearing more “hats.” A sobering reality for PR people everywhere, as there are far fewer journalists to write and pages to carry your story today in these old standby news vehicles. But there’s also good news. Niche publications have held up pretty well, with most though not all posting gains in a tough year last year. Same is true with some cable channels, the profit workhorses for many a media network today.
While the traditional news spigot runs drier, and Americans’ relationship with news changes, there’s a veritable fire hose of opportunity happening online. We’ve all heard the stats but they remain no less amazing. More video was uploaded to YouTube in the past 2 months than if ABC, NBC and CBS had been airing new content 24/7/365 since 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting). Twitter eclipsed The New York Times in unique monthly visitors in 2009. 250 Million unique visitors go to YouTube, Facebook and MySpace every month collectively (sites which did not exist 6 years ago), compared to the 10 Million unique visitors ABC, NBC, CBS get every month collectively. These kinds of stats could be cited all day long…
Of course, these are exactly the kind of trends that are disrupting the mainstream media model in the first place. But even so, any good news about how Americans are consuming news these days is welcome. Will news organizations truly adapt to and take advantage of them in time? Can they?
Image credit: Flickr
Tags: media, news, socialmedia, trends
The economic news is getting better for a change. But don’t expect people to consume the way they used to—not after learning to get along with lower-priced brands and living with less. The impact the recession has made on consumption will be long lasting (sigh).
And not just on what we are willing to spend money on. But in the way we go about buying things in the first place. The difference goes beyond using cash vs. credit or shopping offline vs. online. It’s in how we’re increasingly buying “social”: turning to what other consumers say, think, publish or otherwise share about a brand online when we make purchases as opposed to what a brand communicates alone. This has implications for the way we market and build brands.
It’s a transformation that was well on its way back in 2006 when Time Magazine boldly declared “You” the person of the year. It seemed like the only thing not going for the new medium was consumer trust, which was tentative at best.
The recession has helped to change that—globally. A recent survey showed that 43 percent of consumers in Western Europe, China and the U.S. now report far greater trust in online consumer content such as blogs, review sites and forums than they did before. By contrast, confidence in established companies, brands and media channels has fallen to record lows. The shift is one of the reasons why “social” has become more than just the latest buzzword but a powerful force on the media landscape.
“Social” is increasingly how we consume and create media, most dramatically online . Today, 33% of all online content is user generated and 6 out of the top 10 websites in the world are social. Social is also how we are increasingly learning about brands: 25% of search results for the world’s top 20 largest brands are now links to user generated content.
But that’s not all. Social is now a powerful force in commerce, too. It’s increasingly the way we buy—more, in fact. Retail surveys show that two-thirds of shoppers spend more online after reading recommendations from an online community. And 84 percent of consumers say they are now more likely to check online for reviews prior to making a purchase than they were twelve months ago. Translation: the community “closes the sale.”
It’s happening right in your neighborhood, too, thanks to fast-growing local social networks like Yelp, where consumers share the experiences they’ve had with local businesses. Yelp’s unique users jumped from 16 million in December 2008 to a whopping 26 million in December 2009, doubling the number of total reviews posted to the site to 8 million.
When the pace of change is this furious, it’s time for marketers to do some accelerating of their own. But creating another Twitter account here or Facebook fan page there, as my colleague Chris Perry often says, is not the solution.
He also says, and I agree, that this has become part of the problem. The jump in use of blogs, branded social communities, discussion forums, Flickr, Wikis, ratings and reviews, YouTube and other types of social media is rapidly creating a fragmented and inconsistent online presence for more than a few brands and companies today. What’s more, it’s not unusual for it to be managed by different functions within a company as well as by different agencies. While this a good problem to have, it’s still a problem.
The bigger challenge, of course, is that companies have ever less control over the empowered consumer voices speaking on behalf of their brands. The result is an increasingly two-way marketing dynamic—less communication and more conversation—that requires as much embracing of what audiences are saying as it does talking at them.
So expect to see more and more brands wrestling with how to communicate who they are as a brand and what they stand for in social media in a far more consistent, strategic and global way.
The key, we believe, is a new strategy that takes the principle behind the brand architecture systems, guidelines and standards brands have traditionally used to manage their visual identities and logos and evolves it for the two-way, verbal, visual, experiential and interactive world of social media engagement. Does this approach look different? You bet it does–big time. But the concept is based on the same mission of better integration and brand building, even though the rules of the road in social media couldn’t be more different.
We’ll be talking a lot more about this new approach for building stronger socialized brands in the coming weeks and months.
Image credit: Getty Images
Admittedly I am not a “Deadhead” but I know people who are and I bet that some of them would call it sacrilege to acknowledge the brilliance of the Grateful Dead’s advocacy business 
model, as written about in this month’s The Atlantic.
Although the writer, Joshua Green, doesn’t call it “advocacy,” the Dead’s strategy for “delivering superior customer value” and applying communications and marketing tactics to ensure a loyal following is a fantastic example of advocacy. The advocacy strategy, of course, was the Dead’s building and cultivating of a legion of fans, the Deadheads. The band used tactics, such as a telephone hotline alerting fans to concert dates, and created a profitable social networking structure unlike any other.
The Dead has long been studied by the academics. Just recently business scholars and management theorists have realized that the Dead were visionary geniuses in the way they created customer value and used social networking. Just another proof point for why organizations can’t afford to miss out on their advocacy opportunities.
