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?
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 TimeMagazine 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.
True, the H1N1 influenza is now receding. True, it has not proven to be the population threatening pandemic strain the hyperventilating media made it out to be. True, that is, until we look at kids. Here the picture is different.
The swine flu hashad a tragic impact on the young.
Despite it being December, well past the prime of the flu season, the number of pediatric deaths due to H1N1 remains alarmingly high. According to the CDC, the total number of pediatric deaths since the end of August is 204; since the end of April, 267. There are usually less than 100 pediatric deaths from the seasonal flu every year.
Reports show that complications brought on from the swine flu are the major cause of these deaths among our youngest citizens, such as from pneumonia and staph. So while conditions like asthma and diabetes can certainly increase a child’s risk, it doesn’t take a pre-existing health condition for a kid to be vulnerable.
It’s with these unsettling stats in mind that I was further unsettled to read a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Danielle Ofri, M.D., Ph.D. about why, at least from one physician’s standpoint, parents have been choosing not to follow the recommendations of the medical community to inoculate their children against H1N1.
As someone who looks at both advocacy and badvocacy, I found her description of the emotional epidemiology of H1N1, particularly of parents who say they “don’t do flu,” of great interest (my personal judgments and feelings about vaccination aside). It makes it clear just how badvocacy, not advocacy, is what can take root in a hyped-up health crisis. How, as she says, “suspicion has its own contagion.” And how unless there is an aggressive public health/public relations effort to counter it demand will not meet even the readiest supply of vaccine. And we wind up with the worst kind of results: too many sick kids and worse.
Below is the article for those who just want to read it here and now. We welcome your thoughts and comments about the public relations aspects of responding to H1N1. Please refrain from sharing views on what you think about vaccination or the H1N1 vaccine itself. Let’s just not go there.
Last spring, when 2009 H1N1 influenza first came to our attention,my patients were in a panic. Our clinic was flooded with callsand walk-in patients, all with the same question: “When willthere be a vaccine?”
It was all so new then, and we didn’t have an answer. That lackof answer seemed to fuel anxiety to a fever pitch. A substantialcohort of my patients continued calling, almost on a weeklybasis, to ask about the vaccine.
These, of course, were the same patients who routinely refusedthe seasonal flu vaccine. Each year we’d go through the samedrill: I’d offer them the flu shot. I’d explain the clinicalreasoning behind this recommendation. I’d strongly encouragevaccination.
“No, thanks,” they’d say. “The vaccine makes me sick.” Or “Mybrother had a bad reaction.” Or, simply, “I don’t do flu shots.”
The irony was painful. No matter how often I trotted out thestatistics of 30,000 to 40,000 annual deaths from influenza,the patients would not be moved. So when they demanded the H1N1vaccine last spring, I reminded them of their reluctance overthe seasonal flu shot. “Oh, that’s different,” they said.
Six months have passed. Flu season is now here. After repeateddelays, H1N1 vaccine finally arrived in our clinic earlier thismonth to the uniform relief of the medical staff. But my formerlydesperate patients were now leery. “It’s not tested,” they said.“Everyone knows there are problems with the vaccine.” “I’m notputting that in my body.”
I was unprepared for this response, but maybe I shouldn’t havebeen. For weeks now, in the schoolyard of my children’s elementaryschool, other parents had been sidling up to me, seemingly inneed of validation. “You’re not giving your kids that swineflu shot, are you?” they’d say, their tone nervous, if a bitderisive.
How to explain this dramatic shift in 6 short months? It certainlyisn’t related to logic or facts, since few new medical databecame available during this period. It seems to reflect a sortof psychological contagion of myth and suspicion.
Just as there are patterns of infection, there seem to be patternsof emotional reaction (”emotional epidemiology”) associatedwith new illnesses. When 2009 H1N1 influenza was first detected,it fit a classic pattern that Priscilla Wald recently outlinedin her book Contagious1: It was novel and mysterious; it emergedfrom a teeming third-world city, and it was now making its insidious— and seemingly unstoppable — way toward the “civilized”world.
This is the story line for most headline-grabbing illnesses— HIV, Ebola virus, SARS, typhoid. These diseases captureour imagination and ignite our fears in ways that more prosaicillnesses do not. These dramatic stakes lend themselves quitenaturally to thriller books and movies; Dustin Hoffman hasn’tstarred in any blockbusters about emphysema or dysentery.
When the inoculum of dramatic illness is first introduced intosociety, the public psyche rapidly becomes infected. Almostlike an IgE-mediated histamine release, there is an immediateflooding of fear, even if the illness — like Ebola —is infinitely less likely to cause death than, say, a run-inwith the Second Avenue bus. This immediate fear of the unknownwas what had all my patients demanding the as-yet-unproducedH1N1 vaccine last spring.
As the novel disease establishes itself within society, a certainamount of emotional tolerance is created. H1N1 infection waxedand waned over the summer, and my patients grew less anxious.There was, of course, no medical basis for this decreased vigilance.Unusual risk groups and atypical seasonality should, in fact,have raised concern. By late summer, the perceived mysteriousnessof H1N1 had receded, and the number of messages on my clinicphone followed suit.
But emotional epidemiology does not remain static. As autumnrolled around, I sensed a peeved expectation from my patientsthat this swine flu problem should have been solved already.The fact that it wasn’t “solved,” that the medical professionseemed somehow to be dithering, created an uneasy void. Notknowing whether to succumb to panic or to indifference, patientsinstead grew suspicious.
No amount of rational explanation — about the naturalvariety of influenza strains, about the simple issue of outbreaktiming that necessitated a separate H1N1 vaccine — couldallay this wariness.
Similarly, reassuring fellow parents that I was indeed vaccinatingmy own children did little to ease their apprehension. Whenthe New York City public school system offered free vaccinationsfor both students and families, there was an abysmally poorturnout. Less than one quarter of the consent forms sent homein kids’ backpacks were returned.
The dramatic shift in public sentiment over the course of thisH1N1 epidemic is both fascinating and frustrating. It is clearthat there is a distinct emotional epidemiology and that itbears only a faint connection to the actual disease epidemiologyof the virus.
We cannot combat H1N1 influenza merely by ensuring adequatesupplies of vaccine and oseltamivir. Unless the medical professionconfronts the emotional epidemiology of H1N1 with a full-courtpress, we run the risk of an uncontrollable epidemic.
There is no doubt that we are far behind the curve in termsof public relations. Our science has not been dithering at all,but our articulation of that science has often seemed that way,from the unfortunate initial appellation of swine flu to ourinability to clarify distinctions between vaccine-productionissues and clinical-risk issues. Suspicion has its own contagion,and we have not been aggressive enough in countering it.
Every practicing clinician is, to some degree, an armchair epidemiologist.We register patterns of disease as they play out among our patients.We are also keen detectives of emotional epidemiology, thoughwe often aren’t aware of this as such. Keeping tabs on the emotionalepidemiology as well as the disease epidemiology, and treatingboth with equal urgency, are the essential clinical tools forthis influenza season.
Fur is back this holiday season! “Furry” to be more precise. And of the electronic hamster persuasion no less. No, not the hamster-dancing-fools of Internet past. This time it’s personal. This time it’s pets. This time it’s the Zhu Zhu electronic pet hamsters.
While these super-lovable Wonder Pets can’t fly, there’s little that can be done to stop them rocketing off of retailers’ shelves right now. Or to keep their prices from reaching a dizzying $100 on eBay and Amazon. So move over Pyrus Dragonoid, Ventus Skyress and you so many Bakugan Brawlers. That’s boy’s play. There’s a new must-have gift A-team in town–four in all. Pipsqueek, Num Nums, Chunk, and (sorry Mr. T), the sensational Mr. Squiggles.
So just how did this overnight marketing phenomenon happen? A big helping hand from some ground up, influential seeding and grassroots marketing, as reported by Beth Snyder Bulik in Advertising Age today. In plain english: word-of-mouth advocacy.
Tune in next week when we ask Philip K. Dick “Do Zhu Zhu’s Dream of Electronic Sheep?” The lucky reader who nails that reference might even get their very own Mr. Squiggles, that is if there are left to be had!
As if “High School Musical” wasn’t enough. Yes, as if?!? With this weekend’s record shattering box office gross of New Moon, the sequel in the unstoppable Twilight series, the world has been introduced to what Simon Dumenco of AdWeek called the “billion dollar Twilight economy.” Perhaps this, and the fandemonium you see below in the offline world for YouTube teen-music sensation Justin Bieber, is the stimulus we’ve all been waiting for?
New level of iPhone fandom and Halloween genius, or a bigger cultural statement about where media personalization is headed? Whatever the case, I hope they got a ton of candy for the effort in addition to their well-deserved accolades on YouTube.
I am reminded that I am a big fan of Robert Pasikoff of Brand Keys each time I read about his work and insightful approach into what drives brand loyalty. Like the 2009 Loyalty Leader rankings research they recently published. So here’s three cheers and a sis-boom-bah as it’s worth a read.
Not least because the rankings show “value” brands like McDonald’s Coffee and Hyundai rocketing up the rankings: from way down at 155 last year to number 16 on the list for McD’s, and from further back at 295 in the case of Hyundai to rank in the latest results at number 24.
Since Brand Keys’ research is predictive and forward-looking, these high loyalty rankings mean that consumers are not likely to pass up these brands for the next best deal that comes along anytime soon. Why? According to the study, the brands have earned fiercely loyal fans by providing something that differentiates them beyond just price. What that is, I imagine Pasikoff might say, is standing for something with authentic meaning and connecting to consumers’ changed set of values, beyond just communicating value.
The surge in brand loyalty for McDonald’s coffee is followed by a bold move up the rankings of its own by Dunkin’ Donuts, another new kind of value brand, to 54 from 123. If you guessed Starbucks is on the opposite escalator heading down then you’re right: its ranking fell from 192 last year to a back of the bus 428 this year.
Consistent with this overall trend, other brands that are earning fiercer loyalty include Walmart, Verizon, and J. Crew. Topping the loyalty list? Wireless handset brands like Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Rogue, Smooth and Trance handsets. See this article in Brandweek today for more discussion and commentary on the kinds of brands consumers are increasingly cheering about.
What’s up with the classic “What’s up doc?”, you ask? The one from long ago where Bugs conducts the opera and the great maestro himself at the Hollywood Bowl, literally bringing the house down? What’s up is this Advertising Age story from today, “Why It’s Time to Do Away with the Brand Manager,” and its preview of an upcoming report from Forrester that puts forth a few ideas we think are worth any marketer’s consideration. Ideas about how managers need to think and act more like maestros of advocacy.
The report is set to recommend that marketers make a number of structural changes as a result of, and a response to, the changed media and consumer world today. Chief among them: changing the role, and name, of “brand manager” to “brand advocate.” Why? So marketing can be nimbler. More consumer-centric. More opportunistic. More open and real-time. More adaptive. And very much more digital, according to the article. So a brand manager acts less like a “manager” and more (here it comes) like a maestro (an analogy actually coined over at Unilever).A maestro of advocacy for the brand whose mission is to bring a diverse range of players and experiences, interactions and influences, together in concert to generate greater alignment, engagement, favorability, loyalty, growth, etc.
It’s no Looney Tunes idea. In fact, we’d go a step further at Weber Shandwick and say that the imperative today is to create not just well-orchestrated marketing but truly “Inline Brands.” Brands that are in-line with what engages the consumer and creates more fans. In-line with what influences them from traditional opinion shapers to those of empowered consumers. In-line with their shifting media and news consumption habits across offline and online channels.
All told, the kinds of things that are by definition often unmanageable, beyond control and often shifting, especially now. The goal, then, is to take what’s immutable and core about a brand and connect and relate it to what is inline (again our nomenclature) with what will create greater advocacy among your fans and beyond.
Let’s just hope they are not all fans of the opera. As the iconic wascally wabbit himself intoned at the end of this 1949 short: “Well, what did you expect in an opera, doc? A happy ending?”
If this sounds familiar, well, it should. “The future ain’t what it used to be” is one of the all-time great malapropisms of the all-time baseball great Yogi Berra. Marketers should heed these words today, now more than ever, in light of the sustained global recession.
After all, Yogi knew something about challenging times: he not only was a member of 13 World Series championship teams between 1948-1962; he was part of the generation here in the US that grew up in the Great Depression. So today’s recession may just be “deja vu all over again” for this Yankee hall-of-famer. Just keep in mind that he also said things like “you should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours,” “when you come to a fork in the road, take it,” and “baseball is ninety percent mental; the other half is physical.” OK, Sun Tzu it’s not. But ignore him at your own risk.
Why? Because research continues to suggest the recession is having a deep impact on consumer behavior, creating what look to be long-term changes that affect everything from brand loyalty to the way marketers reach their audiences. This recent report from Initiative (our sister agency), based on a May survey of 3,200 consumers in the U.S., western Europe and China, provides more evidence why.
Of note, the study found a significant drop in trust in established marketing channels and a conversely sharp rise in people’s trust of individuals, including those who comment about brands online. For example, 43 percent reported far greater trust in online consumer content such as blogs, review sites and forums, while 48 percent said they trusted “expert opinion.” They also found that 76 percent of consumers said they trusted the opinions of those closest to them, the word of mouth of family and friends. Like the blog title says: it’s all about advocacy, now more than ever.
I like how Sue Moseley, who lead the study for Initiative, put it: That established brands can no longer rely on being accepted on faith because they’ve been around for a long time. Instead, they need to step up to the times to provide consumers with something authentic, tangible, transparent, real… and the means to evaluate it from independent sources online. The implication: the need for a new marketing model and approach to communications, on that puts igniting advocacy at the heart.
Yes, the future is certainly not what it used to be for marketing anymore. Come to think of it, it isn’t for baseball or music or the media business and I could go on. Maybe it’s just like the wise catcher said: “a nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” But being an optimist by nature, I’d like to think this other cautionary Yogism is the one that applies for our field: “if you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.” True, so very very true. Thanks, Yogi.
OK, full disclosure. I probably have seen Zack Snyder’s “300″ approaching 300 times now (including last night when somehow I got my wife to watch). So I’m likely to jump at the chance to use a pic like this in a post no matter how threadbare the tie to advocacy.
But the Gods must have been smiling upon me this morning when I saw this just published article in the Journal of Marketing called “Are Women More Loyal Customers Than Men? Gender Differences in Loyalty to Firms and Individual Service Providers.” Now while that clearly sounds like it has a lot to do with advocacy, it doesn’t exactly scream “Thermopylae,” the ancient battle site where the Greeks, 300 Spartans and their allies, held off masses of invading Persians in 480 BC. Or does it?
What our present authors have seemed to confirm here is something I’m told is called the “male warrior hypothesis,” which states that men are actually more loyal to groups, an orientation shaped by evolution to increase a tribe’s chances of survival. Well, if the suicidal battle of King Leonidas and 300 Spartans against some 800,000 invaders of Xerxes’ armies isn’t the most epic case of ultimate group loyalty I don’t know what is. Especially when it looks so amazingly cool and vibrant thanks to the magic of CG technology. I don’t know about you, but I know lots of guys who would be OK with this kind of loyalty “hypothesis.”
So what about the other half, all those Xenas out there? Are women not the equivalent of a Lucy Lawless warrior princess when it comes to their customer loyalty? Apparently not, according to the authors, because women’s loyalty tends to take a more personal and less tribal form. More specifically, they found that women are more loyal to individuals as opposed to the collective. This is something of a reversal, as the conventional wisdom has held that women are more loyal customers in general than men. And, therefore, better advocates in turn perhaps.
So who do marketers want on their side? A customer phalanx of men or women? Who is more likely to “die for” their favorite brand or company? The answer not surprisingly is that it all depends. It also may matter whether you consider brand loyalty to be more akin to sticking by an entire group vs. by the side of an individual. On this question the authors are silent (for now). But one thing is for sure. The research is yet another example of how if you simply assume the conventional wisdom about loyalty is right you can get it heroically wrong. Herodotus and Hollywood notwithstanding.
All About Advocacy is a blog written by and for people who believe in the accelerating power of Advocates in society today.
Contributors include a wide range of Weber Shandwick Advocates (plus any other Advocacy fans like yourself) who share their unique perspectives about this new shift in communications.
We encourage comments from our readers! That’s what advocacy is all about!
For further information about this blog go to the About page. For author biogs please go to the Contributing Advocates page.
Disclaimer
Everything posted in this blog represents personal opinion of the individual authors. It does not necessarily represent the views of Weber Shandwick or its clients.
