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.

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

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

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.

 What would you advocate for if you were given $100 to give away and report back? Interesting thought, right? Courtney Martin gave each of nine friends that amount and asked them to report back one month later on their advocacy choice. This appeared in the New York Times. They were also invited into the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy which now meets on a regular basis to discuss their acts of advocacy or “kindness.” Ms Martin received a huge book advance and decided to make the giving away of some of it the problem of others. As word got out, some other small-time philanthropy advocates joined in.  Small philanthropy takes a lot of creativity when you have that responsibility and have to tell others. This mini-advocacy idea has generated chapters of the Secret Society in different cities. Here is a list of what some people did with their $100.

• Turned the writing of New York City children in a literacy nonprofit into books.

•Distributed 10,000 pennies to friends throughout the country to drop so there would be more lucky pennies for people to find.

• Inspired by Lewis Hyde’s book “The Gift,” bought a handmade platter on etsy.com and gave it to a friend, who she hopes will pass it on to others.

• Slipped $100 into a thank-you card and asked a friend to give it to the clerk at her local Duane Reade who makes her feel like a million bucks whenever she buys toothpaste.

• Gave $100 to the most frequent commenter on her Web site, who turned out to be a former correction officer aspiring to write.

• Gave to four established nonprofits that work in Haiti.

• Gave the money to a woman he sees collecting recycling on the street.

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.

The amount of money raised through texting is encouraging and makes Americans proud of their generosity–over $10 million has been raised in the U.S. alone. Here are the many ways to help via texting (from the Washington Post) :

*Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross

* Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee

* Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada

* Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to Yele

* Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United Way

* Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International

* Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross

* Text RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card

* Text HAITI to 25383 to donate $5 to International Rescue Committee

*Text HAITI to 45678 to donate $5 to the Salvation Army in Canada

* Text CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation

*Text YELE to 501501 to donation $5 to YeleText RELIEF to 30644 to get automatically connected to Catholic Relief Services and donate money with your credit card

*Text HAITI to 864833 to donate $5 to The United WayText CERF to 90999 to donate $5 to The United Nations Foundation

*Text DISASTER to 90999 to donate $10 to Compassion International

Keep a Civil Cybertongue

Rude and abusive online behavior should not be met with silence.

by Jimmy Wales and Andrea Weckerle