PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

Our friends at Cymfony, now TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony (proving a theory of mine that all CGM companies will ultimately be acquired) have just released a new survey of 60 marketers at companies in North America, France, and the U.K.. The report concludes that when it comes to social media, marketing agencies are “ill equipped,” to quote AdWeek and “don’t get it,” to quote the survey report.

The report brings back the words of an AT&T executive who is a “friend of the agency,” as the saying goes. In essence, she said that “agencies talk a good game about integrating print and online, but I’ve been hearing it for years and I just don’t see it.” Well, she used more PG-13 language than that, but you hear the same kind of frustration as we’re now hearing about social media.

Although BtoB has traditionally lagged consumer markets in marketing innovation, we find that social media provides a great opportunity to step out and “punch above your weight,” since larger companies tend to arrive at the party later. Of course, there are a few ground rules to be laid down after, to quote Jim Nail from Cymfony, we “put up a good presentation about what social media is.” In no particular order, these are: (more…)

A recent Network World survey supports what PJA’s second wave of original research with ITtoolbox showed late last year: IT professionals are increasingly taking up the tools of social networking – LinkedIn, MySpace, Digg, Stumbleupon, Facebook, etc. – and using them for business purposes. According to the new survey, nearly half of IT professionals use social networking for business. As the Forrester analyst put it, “We don’t really go to Toastmasters anymore.”

As available content becomes richer, especially on YouTube, I think we’ll see an even sharper rise in the number of business users making the site a go-to destination. MySpace activity may be dropping, as the recent BusinessWeek article “Generation MySpace is Getting Fed Up” pointed out, but that drop seems pretty closely linked to boredom with static profile pages and annoyance with ads. Which is precisely the point about why IT and life science audiences are using social media more these days: Content, not ads. Information, not self-promotion. YouTube remains a terrific way to get any technical content out to the world without the need for AAA production values. Anyone who has been sent the link for a live demo of root canal surgery knows the sky is the limit with sharing (maybe that should be over-sharing) and education using video online.

In our BtoB world, several of our clients are considering programs that are less focused on messaging themselves and more focused on a point of view about content – content that relates to their technology in action or to the larger lifestyle interests of their customers – so it’s no surprise that appreciation of these channels continues to grow as people discover their ease of use.

I’m happy to announce that we have just completed our first research study with BioInformatics, LLC, a PJA research partner with an online forum of more than 30,000 scientists.

The study topic? Life scientists and social media.

And what did we find? More than I expected, certainly. Here are some of the highlights: (more…)

If you’ve wondered why that old pyramid hierarchy slide continues to appear long after it’s been supplanted in many companies’ operations, CNET Business has just released some great research on word of mouth marketing and how everyone plays some influential role in spreading a word. As conversations with a number of CXOs over the last months have shown me, word of mouth remains the headiest elixir in marketing: it can’t be bought, it can’t be forced, but it moves people to act like nothing else. Everyone wants it, especially as social media channels proliferate, but it’s getting harder and harder to pin down.

As CNET Business notes in its new white paper, Understanding Influence, and Making It Work For You, several myths about word of mouth deserve to be called out:

“Myth #1: The Few Inform the Many
While the size of personal networks varies widely, with some individuals having 10 or fewer connections and some having more than 100, each person wields some influence. Viewing the model as a pyramid discounts the much larger number of moderately connected individuals who can help spread the work about your product or service.

Myth #2: They Share Because They Know More
Influencers aren’t driven to share information for the sake of appearing knowledgeable or to demonstrate their expertise. They’re primarily motivated by a basic desire to help others. They develop a stronger sense of self-confidence when it’s well-received, further motivating them to help and advise others.

Myth #3: A Single-Minded Focus
Influencers aren’t necessarily single-subject experts. Our research shows that influencers have diverse interests crossing a wide range of topics. On average, they are interested in 10 to 12 topics and they actively seek information on these topics. This is true whether they have large or small networks. There are two critical attributes for information to be valued by the influencer, no matter what topic they’re investigating: it must be both unique and trusted.

How to take advantage of word of mouth? Make your word of mouth fodder forwardable, place it in unique and trusted environments, and share your message with moderately connected users, not just the top of the pyramid (make that diamond) types.