Archive for the 'Brand/Product Advocacy' Category
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
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.
Tags: Weber Shandwick
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.
Talk about advocates. Microsoft’s new campaign for Windows 7 uses customers to help it make its selling points for its new operating system. The ads say, “I’m a PC and Windows 7 was my idea.” From what I have read about this campaign, there will also be print ads, banners, mobile ads, and all the many ways to reach customers. For those customers who had ideas on how to make Windows 7 work better for them, they now have a voice in the campaign and are featured as the real heroes. Supposedly one billion people helped Microsoft improve the new Windows product. That’s many advocates. Even employees are getting into the act. Real people as advocates makes great sense in a world where listening to your supporters and enthusiasts is the newest narrative. To learn more, read this article where I found out about this new initiative.
Tags: advocates, customers, Microsoft
Jeremiah Owyang, formerly of Forrester and now at Altimeter Group, recently posted some helpful tips on building a successful Advocacy Program on his blog. They are worth reviewing for those advocates among us.
Here is a brief rundown (paraphrased) on the 9 ideas that went into his checklist.
1. Get your internal officers onboard to deal with the “raw” discussions that will be coming your way from those noisy and vocal advocates you have enlisted and engaged. It is not as easy as it may sound.
2. Find credible advocates. Make sure they are the real thing and not posers with no influence or credibility. Make sure they have a platform and are highly regarded.
3. Disclose disclose disclose. Any advocay program should be upfront about the relationship between the company and advocate.
4. It’s their agenda, stupid. This is not about your company’s agenda so make sure that advocates are fully comfortable with you because their reptuation and yours are at stake.
5. Recognize your advocates but no pay day here. Owyang recommends letting advocates you enlist be beta testers or publicly thanking them or give them access to events.
6. Give advocates platforms to speak, whether it is your web site, social networks or letting others know that they are to be trusted.
7. Listen and act. Do something about what your advocates are saying about your products and services. Take their advice.
8. Turn them into a community. Figure out how to help them band together .
9. Measure your advocacy program and provide results.
Tags: Advocacy Program, advocates, Jeremiah Owyang
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.
Brand fans or brand advocates are not uncommon. According to research by Anderson Analytics and covered in emarketer from May 2009, over one out of two social network users (52%) are now fans of a company or brand. Also nearly an equal amount (46% ) said something positive about a brand or company on a social networking Web site. People are looking to not only connect with people but with brands and companies as well, especially the ones they support and advocate for. Let’s not forget that brand advocacy is one way for people to communicate who they are and what matters to them.
Tags: Advocacy, brand advocacy
If you’ve been following this blog you know that we at Weber Shandwick firmly believe in the “return on advocacy.” Simply, it’s the business benefits of finding and connecting with your advocates. Now maybe it’s time to kick off the “return on BADVOCACY.” Can there be such a thing? Afterall, our own study, Risky Business: Reputations Online™ clearly identified the fear instilled in global executives by customer and employee badvocates.
Employee badvocates are a big concern: executives ranked employee criticism (41%) in a tie for first place with leaked confidential information as the greatest online risk to their own company’s reputation. As employees wrestle with declining pensions and possible layoffs, reputation bandits will be even harder at work online.
The Internet provides innumerable platforms for employees to strike, usually anonymously, at a company’s reputation. However, rather than being immobilized with fear about the potential for such strikes, Nokia, as noted in an article in this week’s BusinessWeek, is embracing employee badvocacy. They are allowing their employees to rant anonymously on an intranet soapbox called BlogHub. “Workers can be savage as they flame thier employer…Nokia managers want them to fire away.” Nokia believes that innovation is accelerated by encouraging employees to say what is on their minds. I would surmise that the other benefit is that by allowing employees to release their frustrations in a “safe” environment, they won’t be tempted to go outside Nokia’s four walls and vent.
It will be interesting to see if Nokia sees a Return on Badvocacy as it struggles in a tough economy with strong competitors. In the meantime, we’ll keep on eye out for other examples of turning badvocacy into a positive return.
Tags: Badvocacy, Badvocate, BusinessWeek, Nokia, Weber Shandwick
We’ve been looking deeper into the differences between male and female advocates from our research on Advocacy. We will continue to report on some of these findings on this blog. One that recently caught our attention could easily be titled, “Company actions speak louder to women than to men.” As seen below, female advocates are significantly more likely than male advocates to recommend something to others if they feel engaged and hear about actions that signify a company’s behavior of responsibility or character. A company’s philanthropy, cause-related behavior or environmental actions matters more to women than men. Companies that want to attract the support of women should amplify their corporate responsibility activities and do what they can to articulate the company behind the brand. Advocacy is all about finding your passionate supporters and arming them with what matters to them. Women advocates want the details before they commit their advocacy.
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Men
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Women
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What motivates a recommendation to others…
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%
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%
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Personal experience with a brand or product
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71
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78
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What the company behind the brand or product does to protect the environment
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23
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37
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Whether the company behind the brand or product contributes to causes I care about
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17
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29
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Whether the profits from a brand or product benefit a cause I care about
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18
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27
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Motivated to support an issue/cause by charities that benefit community
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34
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41
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Tags: charitable causes, company behind the brand, engagement, environment, Female advocates, Male advocates, purchase decision-making
Big shout out to Chris Brogan, Justin Levy and all the folks here at Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas. Just finished my presentation on how Advocacy and Badvocacy are impacting marketing, and the various apple carts that are being upset in the process. For those who can’t make it, you can watch the proceedings live here or join us at the Boston event late September. Here’s my deck, BTW — would love your feedback…
IMS09 Dallas: Advocacy, Badvocacy & Upsetting Apple Carts
