What began for many brands as an exercise in crisis management is now part of many marketers’ business plans for 2008. “Listening in” is getting budgeted.
Companies are hiring “conversation analysts,” typically young, Internet-savvy geeks who can find their way around the blogosphere as easily as a kid in a candy store.
These analysts seek out and listen in on conversations taking place in various online forums and social networks. They view videos and photos, all in an effort to determine what’s being said about a brand and whether people are building groups around a particular brand. It’s a way for companies to find out — good or bad — how their story is being told and what they may not be aware of.
There are the critics who call these listeners peeping Toms, but the Web is a public forum and online conversations are fair game.
“Whether or not you listen, the conversations are going on and the one that you ignore is the one that might end up on the front page of The New York Times,” says Lea Jones, a conversation analyst with Me2Revolution, a social media consultancy within PR firm Edelman. “It’s important to listen so you don’t get blind-sided. The conversation is happening.”
Take the William Wrigley Jr. Co. It hired Me2Revolution to conduct research for its Extra sugar-free gum.
Jones monitored blogs and listened in on chats about diet and nutrition since part of Wrigley’s marketing strategy is to play on the health benefits associated with gum chewing, as well as its placement in the popular “Biggest Loser” series.
Several bloggers agreed to interview two of Wrigley’s spokes-persons during last season’s “Biggest Loser”: Marty Wolff, the show’s season-two winner and Molly Gee, a Wrigley nutritionist.
Wrigley is openly plugged in both entries.
Here’s an example. On Lessofme-lora.blogspot.com, Wolff was asked how he stays focused on eating healthy. He answered: “One program I am involved in is the Wrigley’s Walk and Chew Gum Challenge. They have developed a Web site, Gumisgood.com, and it aims to reward people for making two small changes to their daily routine: taking more steps and cutting calories. Wrigley and I are collectively challenging Americans to cut 10 million calories and walk 100,000 miles.”
He goes on to explain to readers how to log on to the site, how to sign up for the challenge and how to use the site to log miles walked and calories saved from chewing Extra gum instead of a eating a high-calorie snack like a brownie. As of this past Dec. 4 the site had logged 64,580 visits.
Listening in can be an important component in understanding what people think about a brand. It can be used to partner with bloggers, as Wrigley did, and convert them to brand ambassadors. Such arrangements can be used as the basis of a focus group to redesign packaging, test new products, or drop products that are poor performers.
“There’s a lot to learn online,” Jones says. “It can be about a company’s DNA changing. If a company wanted to ask, ‘How can we really change our business to service our customers?’ a lot of that information is already online. People are saying how they want your business to change. It’s just a matter of listening.”
Remember the viral Chevy Tahoe videos that got trashed as nothing more than wayward commercials promoting a gas-guzzling, environment-wreaking monster? And the Coke Zero weblog, The Zero Movement, that Adrants blogged about, saying Coke “lied, misled and misrepresented” itself when it didn’t initially identify that the brand was involved with the weblog. That kind of feedback can be a real wake-up call.
Wal-Mart and Microsoft are among other Edelman clients that are listening in. Procter & Gamble calls it a “priority.”
“We pay close attention to how our consumers feel and what they say about our brands,” says Stan Joosten, P&G’s innovation manager — holistic communication. “We want to better understand how new media like social networks fit into the marketing mix.”
Some companies’ policy is to listen only. Others will go further, stepping in to identify themselves and the brand they’re working for to learn more if they feel confident the person would be receptive. But that’s also when the trouble can start.
“Do people get upset? It does happen,” Jones says. “Before you do outreach it’s important to know that you’ve read the blog, done the research, and you’re confident that this person would want to talk to you.”
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