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Advocacy Feels Good

I guess you are sucessful when you see others doing similar surveys on advocacy. This one is definitely more fun than most because of its cool infographics. The study on brand advocacy was done with Dr. Kathleen Ferris-Costa at the University of Rhode Island, College of Business Administration. Some of the findings are similar to what we learned and reported on about advocacy in 2007 and continually report on in this blog.

• Brand advocates are 83% more likely to share information about a product than typical web users, and 50% more likely to influence a purchase. 
• They are 75% more likely to share a great product experience and three times more likely to share product opinions with someone they don’t know.
• Brand advocates are more than 2.5 times more likely to use social media to expand their social networks.

Advocates love to be a resource for brands and other people. They like to see themselves as “thought leaders.”  According to the survey that was done with Bzzagent, they are motivated by how good it makes them feel — spreading the word makes Advocates relax, several times more typical than among web users. The latter motivation is a new one to me so thanks to the creators for recognizing the personal ROI on brand advocacy.  In a world of natural disasters, wars, economic uncertainty, it is good to know that brand advocates have found their feel good fix.

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Institute for Civility

The University of Arizona announced today Monday that it is forming an institute on Civility. The honorary chairmen of the National Institute for Civil Discourse will be former Presidents’ Bill Clinton and George W Bush. The director said they “would focus on political disagreements from the grass roots all the way to the top.”

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Crowdsourced Advocacy

  Wanted to update everyone on some interesting research on advocacy we recently did on how social media can be employed to further corporate responsibility. We (KRC Research and the Social Impact team at Weber Shandwick) found that crowdsourcing plays a vital role in helping companies drive engagement for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Wikipedia describes crowdsourcing as an “open call to an undefined group of people…to solve complex problems and contribute with the most relevant and fresh ideas.” The survey was conducted among corporate executives in large-sized companies with responsibility for philanthropic, social responsibility or community relations. They are advocates themselves because these jobs require strong conviction about what is important and what is the right thing to do to meet corporate business goals.

The research found that a sizable 44% of companies have used crowdsourcing. In addition, an overwhelming majority (95%) of those who have used crowdsourcing found it invaluable to the organization’s pro-social or CSR efforts.

What particularly stood out for me was the reasons why these advocating executives say crowdsourcing is valuable for CSR programming. They said that it surfaces new perspectives and diverse opinions (36%), builds engagement and relationships with key audiences (25%), invites clients and customers from nontraditional sources to contribute ideas and opinions (22%) and it brings new energy into the process of generating ideas and content (16%).

The latter is particularly important to all advocacy programs — igniting the process by energizing people. It seems that the “energy” component is what really makes the difference so I was glad to see it among the top reasons mentioned why crowdsourcing helps drive corporate CSR. Where would advocacy be without advocates’ energy to mobilize these efforts to build a better planet? It should be at the heart of all corporate efforts. The question is how to find that energy and capitalize on it. How do you ignite it to drive mobilization? Energizing people is an important ingredient of true advocacy and worth deeper thought. Maybe a good topic in itself for crowdsourcing. Hmmmm.

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Chief Good Officers

An interesting article surfaced last week on a wholly new corporate position — Chief Good Officers (CGOs). The article mentioned our recent research on the impact of crowdsoucing on corporate social responsibility. The CGO would be the newest evolution of the CSR Officer. The idea is that this person would straddle the CSR position with marketing/advertising that aims to attract customers. The CGO would create “brand purpose”  and drive action to the company’s causes by bringing them to life. “This is the chef who blends financial and social bottom lines into a tasty dish that is as engaging as it is impactful for consumers.”  I think that the CGO is an alternative version of the CAO–the chief advocacy officer. So be it.

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Socially Impactful CSR

We take social advocacy seriously. Our Social Impact team just surveyed with KRC Research over 200 executives responsible for CSR type activities to learn how they were managing some of their challenges today. What did we learn?

We learned how important impact actually is. Having an impact on critical issues is the number one reason why corporations invest in philanthropic or socially responsible activities, according to the executives surveyed. A second reason given for CSR-funding is the opportunity to see an organization’s values in action (25%). I think that is a good reason. Interestingly, having an impact on critical issues (30%) outranked several more business-oriented motivations, such as building customer loyalty (15%), differentiating the company from competitors (6%) and engaging and retaining employees (4%).

The latter finding somewhat surprised me because it underscores the need for companies to better measure the link between CSR and employee satisfaction. Social advocacy deserves to be higher up on executives’ agendas as a primary benefit of good social responsibility. Employees can be a company’s best advocates if they understand how CSR drives growth, attracts talent and retains the best. In this anti-business environment, it is important to make the CSR case at home (the office) and in the community.

In our research lately, we’ve seen how important employee satisfaction is to how corporate communications officers are measured. Communicating about the value of CSR to employees and communities deserves greater attention in order to reduce some of the anti-business perception that seems to linger. CSR is the gift that keeps giving if companies would only focus more on communicating it well.

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Employee Advocates

Just read about employee advocates in a report (Do Your Employees Advocate for Your Company?) from Forrester. I am a big believer in understanding how to get employees onboard as advocates. I think it is where future success truly lies. How to do it is another story.

The survey (which I believe is only available to subscribers) was among 5, 519 technology end users in Canada, France, Germany, the UK and the US. They used the well-known NPS (Net Promoter Score developed at Bain) to ask employees how likely they would be to recommend their employer’s products/services to a friend or relative and how likely they would be to recommend their company as an employer? Without a doubt, employee advocates are critical to spreading positive word of mouth, attracting the best talent and building reputation. The headline about the results say it all, “The Sorry State of Employee Advocacy.” Here are a few nuggets:

• Employees in North America and Europe scored-23% on the employee advocacy index developed for recommending their company’s products and services. Particularly interesting to me was that detractors or what we at Weber Shandwick call “badvocates” made up 49% of the respondents on this question, 24% were neutral and 27% were advocates or promoters. Essentially, the badvocates were nearly twice as prominent in their answers compared to advocates.
• For the second NPS question about recommending the company as a good place to work to a friend or family member, the employee advocacy score was -16%, with 43% detractors, 29% neutrals and 27% advocates. Badvocates still overwhelm the discussion about one’s company as an employer. That is alot of conversation to compensate for.

These findings do not speak well of employees’ endorsement of the companies they work for and the goods they produce. Of course, this is not a representative sample because they are information workers. However, I suspect that if the research was conducted among a broader population, the results could be as bad or even worse. The economy certainly is a factor but in truth, greater attention needs to be paid internally for advocacy to take root.  This is a good starting point for understanding employee advocacy however.

   Badvocacy, Brand/Product Advocacy, Company/Organization Advocacy, Research, Weber Shandwick    1 Comment

Incivility & Business

In an earlier post, Leslie Gaines-Ross introduced Civility in America, a study jointly conducted by Weber Shandwick, Powell Tate and KRC Research. With the issue of incivility growing in the media (mentions in global media nearly doubled in less than five years), we thought it would be a good idea to pull some important facts out from the study about how incivility impacts business.

First, the situation today…

As the economy recovers and companies look for fresh and meaningful ways to connect with consumers, executives need to address a problem in America today: Consumers see a growing trend of incivility in society coupled with low levels of respect for big business. An integral component of reputation recovery includes reinforcing – through deeds and communications - a commitment to improving civility.

• The past few years have not been kind. Most Americans (71%) believe that the financial crisis and recession made the level of civility in America worse. Only 20% feel that civility was not impacted by the tough economic times and even fewer (9%) report an improvement in civility since the crisis.
• Nearly half of Americans believe incivility is prevalent among company CEOs (49%) and four in 10 believe incivility is prevalent inside companies and workplaces (40%).
• In a previous Weber Shandwick and KRC Research survey, only 14% of U.S. executives rated CEOs positively and in an AP-National Constitution Center Poll, only 8% of American adults reported having confidence in major companies.

Americans Hold Businesses Accountable for Incivility

Consumers don’t simply complain about incivility, they react to it in ways that could influence the success of a brand. A full three-quarters of them believe people should boycott products from uncivil companies. Consumers report that they have indeed punished companies for uncivil behavior in a variety of ways…

Corporate America is Expected to Make a Difference

The majority of Americans (79%) hold businesses highly accountable for improving the state of civility. Among the ways in which companies can improve their civility reputation…

• Set a civil example. Nine in ten Americans (91%) agree that business leaders should set an example and always behave with civility.
• Address uncivil behavior inside the workplace. Eight in 10 Americans (82%) believe companies should have zero tolerance policies for incivility.
• Hold the marketing chain accountable. Three-quarters of Americans (75%) feel that companies should pull advertising on shows or websites that include uncivil behavior and nearly two-thirds (63%) agree that companies with uncivil advertising should be fined.

Next week we’ll share more focused research from the study.

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Super Advocates

 An article in the LATimes described super fans of brands or what we at Weber Shandwick identified as high intensity advocates. They are those people who will take action on behalf of a brand, company or cause. They will tell friends, wear a logo in support or join a group devoted to their advocacy passion. The article referred to those overzealous fans who wait on line for days for the opening of a store such as a new Krispy Kreme, Ikea or Trader Joe’s. Paco Underhill, author and often-quoted president of shopping research company Envirosell, said that suburban loneliness has created this growing segment of super fans. “One of the byproducts of this suburbanization of America is a sense of loneliness. If we live in a suburb and particularly if we work on a corporate campus, we have no way for chance to affect our lives…. In that loneliness, we as a culture are looking for other communities.” I tend to think that community is the most important word here. Finding people like oneself with similar passions is a driving force that has only accelerated with the penetration of social media.

There is such a thing as a true advocate, according to Bobert Passikoff of Brand Keys, a consulting firm in New York.  “We call it the rule of six. A true advocate — you’re basically talking about your top 20% of customers — are six times more likely to buy things from you. They’re six times more likely to recommend you. They’re six times more likely to invest in you if you’re a publicly traded company. And they’re six times more likely to rebuff competitive offers, especially if they’re only based on price.”

The rule of six jives with our  global research on Advocacy. Take a look. Super Advocates are a company’s best customers.

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Civil Advocates

 In The New York Times yesterday, an article on the 2010 campaign in the US spoke about voter disengagement and how most people say it is because of the high unemployment rate, government spending, the deficit and our disaffection with politicians. However Matt Bai says that is not the whole story and after talking to some marketing consultants who spoke with independent voters, different issues are factoring into the mindset of Americans facing electoral choices.

“The dominant theme of the discussion, in which jobs and taxes came up only in passing, seemed to be the larger breakdown of civil society — the disappearance of common courtesy, the relentless stream of data from digital devices, the proliferation of lawsuits and the insidious influence of media on their children.  One woman described a food fight at the middle school that left a mess school employees were obliged to clean up, presumably because the children couldn’t be subjected to physical labor. A man complained about drivers who had grown increasingly hostile and inconsiderate on the roads, which drew nods of assent all around. Another described the Internet as just plain ‘bad.’”

I bring this up because the breakdown in civil society was the topic of our in-depth investigation into Civility in America that we undertook several months ago with Powell Tate and KRC Research. We found that an overwhelming majority of Americans view the erosion of civility in human interaction today as a major problem. Among the many signs pointing to this steady decline were the daily occurrences of cyber bullying, online “flaming” and nasty blog comments, the venomous bickering taking place on some reality TV shows and between TV news personalities and their guests, and the mean-spirited mudslinging among politicians and their loyal supporters. Weber Shandwick Chairman Jack Leslie said, “Freedom of expression is the bedrock of our society. Conflicting points of view are always welcome but too much incivility in the public square can turn people away from voicing their opinions.”

The tone of civility is clearly  causing Americans to tune out from the most fundamental elements of our democracy — government and politics, news coverage and reporting, and opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers and magazines. We have the facts to back this up. Sadly, the top reason for what people can do about this growing uncivil nations was for parents should teach their children the importance of civility from an early age. This made me think of the young people who have recently made news after taking their lives over cyberbullying or reputation-crushing events.

Weber Shandwick provides several strategies that can be taken to combat the the rise of incivility that is causing people to tune out. Take a look. We saw it coming.  Advocates for a more civil society need to speak up and make changes. Here is one place to start – CiviliNation.

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Civility in America

  We just completed a survey on civility in America. The survey was conducted with Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate and KRC Research. We decided to dig deep into the tone and level of discourse in this country and surveyed 1,000 Americans online.  I’d like to share with you some of the findings which point to an erosion in how people communicate with each other and with our public institutions. Since being informed is so fundamental to our democracy, our research might make people think twice before cancelling out other people’s opinions online and offline. You might also want to take a look at how Politico framed our research and underscored our point even further. As advocates for strong public discourse and hearing both sides of an issue, here are a few select findings: [For more information, please go to this link for the press release and here for the executive summary.]

• Two-out-of-three Americans consider a general lack of civility to be a major problem for the nation and 72 percent think that poor behavior has gotten worse in recent years.While the American people believe their friends, family and places of worship are bucking the trend toward incivility, a majority of the public sees uncivil behavior throughout society – especially in politics and high schools; on talk radio and our nation’s highways; in Hollywood and professional sports.
• Seventy-two percent of Americans view the political world and government as uncivil – the highest percentage recorded in the poll – and the absence of civility appears to be having an impact on participation and interest in the political process among broad swaths of the public.
• Nearly half the American people (49%) are tuning out government and politics, and almost two-thirds of those people (63%) cite the general tone and level of civility as a major factor in their decision. Forty-six percent of the people are tuning out opinion pieces and editorials in the media, and 45 percent cite incivility as a major factor. Thirty-eight percent are tuning out news coverage and reporting and half of them (50%) attribute their actions to the lack of civility.
• Each major political party gives the other low marks on civility. Seventy-one percent of Democrats view Republicans as uncivil, and 74 percent of Republicans view Democrats as uncivil. Political independents regard Congressional Republicans more uncivil than Congressional Democrats, although they rate both parties more uncivil than civil (58 and 50 percent, respectively).“Our research provides hard evidence that constituents and consumers alike are fed up with the polarization of our political system and the uncivil tone of our country as a whole,” said Jack Leslie, Chairman of Weber Shandwick. “As a result, Americans are tuning out and turning away from news, information and informed opinions that make up the very foundation of American democracy.”

   Advocacy, Issue/Cause Advovacy, Political advocacy, Research, Weber Shandwick    2 Comments