Do you have a dog or cat in need of grooming? If so, here is an opportunity to advocate for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean-up efforts. Consider taking your pet to a groomer who will donate your pet’s fur to Matter of Trust, a San Francisco nonprofit organization that has established a process for collecting animal fur and human hair to create nylon “booms” that naturally absorb oil from the water. Last week retailer PETCO began shipping donations of pet fur from its grooming salons to aid in creating these booms to soak up and remove oil from Gulf of Mexico waters. Once fur shipments arrive in the Gulf Coast region, volunteers gather to assemble the booms and prepare for their deployment. The booms are made by stuffing donated nylon stockings with hair and fur. With nearly 1,000 grooming salons pitching in, PETCO expected to ship up to a ton of donated fur per day hoping to reach 5 tons through this past weekend.
As a pet owner, I say it’s about time my pets begin contributing to society! Joking aside, this is a truly unique and worthwhile program. Get your four-legged friends to advocate for the wildlife in the Gulf who so gravely face endangerment.
Apparently April was Advocacy Measurement Month. I collected a number of fantastic and enormously valuable reports and articles published during April or so that are highly relevant to evaluating the impact of advocacy. I’ve summarized interesting findings and stats from each piece below that I thought are worth noting but hope that you’ll find the bytes interesting enough to click-thru to read the full analyses.
Word-of-mouth is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions
McKinsey has developed the “word-of-mouth equity” index which measures a brand’s power to generate messages that influence the consumer’s decision to purchase
In the mobile-phone market, McKinsey has found that the pass-on rates for messages can increase a company’s market share by 10 percent (positive messages) and reduce it by 20 percent (negative messages) over a two-year period. [If you are familiar with Weber Shandwick’s advocacy research, you may recall that badvocacy, or brand criticism, reaches nearly twice as many people as brand advocacy.]
Marketers tend to build campaigns around emotional positioning, but McKinsey found that consumers actually talk and generate buzz about product functions
About 8 to 10 percent of consumers are influentials, whose common factor is trust and competence in a particular subject area. Influentials generate three times more word-of-mouth messages than noninfluentials do, and each message has four times more impact on a recipient’s purchasing decision. About 1 percent of these people are digital influentials—most notably, bloggers—with disproportionate power to influence
Marketing-induced consumer-to-consumer word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones
Through online word-of-mouth, people make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services annually. Forrester Research estimates that U.S. social network users create 256 billion impressions on other social networkers per year and blog posts, blog comments, ratings and reviews, etc. generate another 250 billion impressions per year (hence the roughly 500 billion impressions)
Forrester concludes:
People’s influence on each other rivals online advertising. For comparison, for a 12-month period ending September 30 last year, Nielsen Online estimates advertisers created 1.974 trillion online advertising impressions, compared to the 500 billion impressions people make on each other about products and services. And peer impressions are more credible than advertising, since they come from friends.
A minority of people generate 80% of the impressions. About 6.2% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence impressions. Around 13.8% of the online adults generate 80% of the influence posts.
One common form of advocacy on Facebook is through social ads. That is, if a user’s friends are fans of a brand on Facebook, the ad unit itself will contain the names of those friends. But does this lightweight form of endorsement actually impact the effectiveness of the advertising? Nielsen and Facebook compared the responses of users who had seen ads with social context against users who saw ads with no social context from the same campaign. A user would be eligible to see social context if one of their friends had previously “Become a Fan” of the brand running the advertisement.
The result? Social advocacy impacts consumers three-fold: Ad recall is substantially higher with social advocacy with a lift of 16% (vs. 10% for non-social ads), the awareness lift is doubled, and the purchase intent lift increases from 2% to nearly 8%.
This report provides methods for quantifying your social media advocates, their reach/influence and their impact. It assumes that a company already has an agreed upon definition of advocates and a process for identifying them, for example, the individuals generating positive or negative discussion about your brand.
Finally, having nothing at all to do with measuring advocacy, April saw the release of a movie called “The Joneses.” David Duchovny and Demi Moore star as a couple planted by a consumer marketing company in a gated community to spread word-of-mouth about its goods and services with the upscale community. The intent, of course, is to drive demand for the products. When I read the review for this movie (haven’t seen it), I thought of how the value advocacy has become so acknowledged by the mainstream.
Recently became aware of this very cool mobile application that lets consumers advocate for causes just by scanning certain products in stores or restaurants with their iPhone or Android. It is called CauseWorld and it is sponsored by Citibank, Kraft Foods and Proctor & Gamble who have provided nearly $1,000,000 for you to donate. No purchase of their products is necessary – you walk into a store and scan the barcode of products. Each time you scan a product you earn “karmas” and when you earn enough, you can donate them to a variety of charities with which CauseWorld partners.
A really innovative way of turning advocacy into action.
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.
As this blog has addressed many times before, there are many ways people demonstrate their advocacy for a company or brand. They talk or act on its behalf and actively spread word of mouth. They may wear their causes on their clothes and discuss them in social networks. They might carry branded products. They will pay a premium price for brands they support. In doing so, these advocates can have a significant impact on a business’ success (or failure if the business does something to damage its advocates’ trust).
Consumers aren’t the only ones with the ability to influence company success. Employees have increasing influence (see my first post on The Employee Advocate) and more opportunities to advocate for their employers. They often set up fan or group pages on Facebook for example. Of growing importance is their ability to “vote” their companies onto acclaimed “best employers” lists. These lists, awards and rankings not only help to recruit more great talent but signify to the world that the company values employees and in turn the valued and proud employees work harder for their customers. A client once told us that her company’s salesforce uses these honors as a sales tool because their customers want to do business with a company that treats its employees well. Happy employees, happy customers.
As close observers of these rankings (Weber Shandwick’s SCOREBOXX™ database includes approximately 900 awards of all kinds, roughly 100 of which recognize companies for its employee satisfaction and/or training and development), we’re seeing the popularity of these rankings growing. Most glaring has been an increase, particularly in the past year, in the number of our clients who want to understand how their strengths can be recognized by their industry, talent prospects and other stakeholders through unbiased third party recognition. Aside from that anecdote, here are just a few facts…
A Google search of “best companies to work for” generates 661,000 results for the 2009 time period, compared with 190,000 in 2007 and 309,000 in 2008. That’s a stunning 248% increase of the topic’s online visibility.
50% of chief communications officers at North American Fortune 500 companies told us in our annual The Rising CCO study that awards and recognition are an important way their company leadership measures communications effectiveness.
CNBC dedicated a five-minute segment to this week’s release of the the Fortune Best Companies to Work For list. Perhaps one of the most well known of the best employer rankings, this list uses a rigorous method to identify the best place to work in the U.S. with employee ratings accounting for most of the score.
Glassdoor.com’s annual Employees’ Choice Awards of the 50 Best Places to Work included reviews of 11,000 companies among nearly 75,000 employees in 2008 and 37,000 companies among nearly 100,000 employees in 2009.
Based on facts like those above, and by the growing demand from clients to better understand and leverage these lists, we think that ‘best employer’ awards will take on more significance for promoting and rewarding good corporate cultures. Companies with less than stellar environments may be pressured to listen much more closely to employee opinions.
I’ve been monitoring the coverage of our Good Book of Badvocacy since we released it last May. We didn’t do a press release for it – just put it on the Weber Shandwick Web site, shared it with clients and the Weber Shandwick network, and discussed it in events and social media forums (including, of course, this blog). Needless to say, we’re more than pleased that a book about the power of word-of-mouth has made its way around purely on the power of word-of-mouth. In fact, as Leslie Gaines-Ross blogged, the Book was presented in an IT meeting at a company that is not in anyway affiliated with Weber Shandwick. The review was glowing. One of the meeting attendees was my husband so you can imagine his surprise when the book appeared (in case you’re wondering, he had not discussed it at work nor does he carry it around with him but I think he should).
And who can forget when “badvocate” became Addictionary’s Word of the Day! Or when Forbes.com interviewed Jack Leslie, chairman of Weber Shandwick, about badvocacy. Certainly I don’t want to overlook the many bloggers and Tweeters who kept the discussion rolling along. Many thanks to these folks for being badvote advocates:
Yesterday The New York Times teased an upcoming Strategic Management Journal paper about the positive influence of zealous employees. Their research found that strong sales growth is correlated with an organizational culture in which employees thought more highly of their company than did the public. In other words, when staff believes in its organization, pride and loyalty shows through and customers pick up on the positivity.
The theme of employee advocacy, and its importance to business success, was one of our key findings from research we released earlier this year (Risky Business: Reputations Online™ conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit). Our study found that global executives believe that the best way to protect reputations online is to monitor employee satisfaction levels and respond to results from employee satisfaction surveys. Many executives echoed the importance of building “best places to work” cultures when asked in an open-ended question about the greatest reputation threats facing their companies over the next three years. As one Australian executive said in response to this question: “Failure to engage the passions of employees will cause the most damage to corporate reputation in the future.” Without a doubt, no company interested in protecting its reputation can afford to have a mob of grumbling employees online. Satisfied employees who are company advocates are the best antidote for–and defense against–reputation failure. A company’s culture is ultimately its best protection both online and offline.
Looking forward to the release of the Strategic Management Journal report. In the meantime, remember: your employees are your best advocates.
The Weber Shandwick financial services industry practice hosts a terrific blog - http://www.financialstatementsblog.com/ - and this week posted about how U.S. government agencies are adopting social media. More and more resources are becoming available to government agencies to understand risks, how to mitigate them and best practices in social media use among government. Here as a sample of some really interesting resources:
Facebook and Government - Earlier this month, Facebook launched a new page to provide information about how governments can best use Facebook. The page contains links to resources and agencies already on Facebook.
New Media Across Government - Found on the U.S. government’s YouTube channel, this video highlights social media efforts at The White House and other federal government agencies.
Secure Use of Social Media - This document by The Federal Chief Information Officers Council provides guidelines for social media use by federal agencies in a manner that minimizes risks.
Apps.gov - The White House recently announced via its blog this new online source meant to help agencies “harness the power of today’s technology.” Social media applications, as well as how to request approval for agency use, are available on the site.
Webcontent.gov - Provides background on various forms of social media as well as additional resources for government agencies.
Twitter Takes Wings - In addition to providing a basic overview of Twitter, this story from Government Computer News makes the case for government participation in online areas where people are gathering. In addition, it discusses alternative services for project management or internal communications.
GovTwit - This online directory is a one-stop resource for all parts of the U.S. government on Twitter.
GovLoop - GovLoop is a social networking site specific to the government community. According to the site, it connects more than 14,500 federal, state, local, academics and good contractors.
We think these are really clever ways to connect with stakeholders and help make government more transparent and communicative.
Wanted to direct you to a great article written by Weber Shandwick’s own Colin Byrne, CEO UK and Europe. It appeared last week and includes practical tips for minimizing reputation damage that comes from a company’s badvocates. Colin also cites real-world examples of the kinds of damage companies have experienced when they haven’t kept “the window to sabotage” shut tightly. Enjoy the article.
As a follow-up to Leslie’s Pay Dirt post - about how important it is for organizations to know, understand and engage their advocates and badvocates - I thought I’d share some data from our Risky Business: Reputations Online survey we conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
Our study suggests that executives are taking on the job of advocacy intelligence. In the 30 days prior to taking our survey, one-quarter of global executives searched online for information about their supporters and/or detractors. While this is not a majority level, it is a rather large proportion when you consider how busy a typical executive’s life has been during the past year and how much pressure he or she is under to just “make the numbers.” The finding that one-in-four found it an important enough task to take time to do an advocate/badvocate search underscores the recognition of the opportunities and risks.
Adding to the import of the activity is our finding that it’s not a task delegated to junior staff: 29% of CEOs/Chairs took it upon themselves to do such a search. With CEO approval ratings at rock-bottom levels and badvocates piling up, these top executives are finding it critical to know who their friends and foes are.
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.
