Tag Archives: social media

April 19, 2012 · 10:14 am

Trust Me

For you trivia buffs in the audience, there once was a TV game show called “Who Do You Trust?” The host of the show was a struggling comic named Johnny Carson and a year into the run he picked up a guy named Ed McMahon as his announcer sidekick. The rest is television history.

That bit of history has very little to do with today’s topic other than it asks the question the study I want to highlight answers. Who do you trust? For consumers, the answer appears to be one another.  Nielsen released its Global Trust in Advertising Survey and it shows that

92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth and recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising, an increase of 18% since 2007. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted form of advertising with 70% of global consumers surveyed online indicating they trust this platform, an increase of 15% in four years.

That’s the good news.  The bad?

…While 47% of consumers around the world say they trust paid television, magazine, and newspaper ads, confidence declined by 24%, 20% and 25% respectively since 2009.

You can read more about this here but the data reinforces the fact that we’re in the midst of a huge transition in marketing.  While most brands are still making the bulk of their marketing investment in paid media, the messages those media disseminate are declining in effectiveness as consumers find other sources of credible information to help with purchase decisions.  Visibility and relevance are not the same thing.

More brands are making efforts in what’s popularly called “earned media.”  They hire an intern to monitor message broads and social media while at the same time they spend millions paying creative types and media buys to work on their TV and print.  While I’m not for a minute suggesting the abandonment of traditional media, perhaps it’s time to look at reallocating resources better to reflect modern realities?  The money spent on the last two titles on your media plan could be working a lot more effectively elsewhere in media more trusted by your consumers.

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March 28, 2012 · 9:30 am

Social TV

Back in the early days of the online thing (it wasn’t even really the Internet then), I was working for a major television network (OK, ABC if you need to know).  As part of my job began to involve engaging people with online content, several higher-ups expressed concern that we might be pulling people away from the broadcast.  When I moved on to another large network, that thinking persisted.  We couldn’t or shouldn’t be doing anything that would pull viewers away from their TV screens.  It wasn’t a shock to me that the “exchanging analog dollars for digital dimes” analogy came from a TV person.

American family watching TV (cropped)

American family watching TV (cropped) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fast forward 18 years.  While TV viewing is more segmented than ever, overall viewing has continued to increase, as has use of digital devices to engage viewers.  In fact, there is now evidence that the very things that were feared to be pulling viewers away from TV are, in fact, deeply engaging them in the show.  According to a new study from iModerate Research Technologies, social media can increase the time viewers spend watching TV.  58% of those consumers who share stuff on social networks related to what they are watching at least 10 times a week, report watching more live TV. The respondents in this study consistently remarked that it makes TV more fun.

What’s really interesting is that there is evidence that the social activity has viewers adding shows to their TV activities specifically because of social conversations.  Turns out that it’s free promotion, not competition, I guess.  With time spent viewing continually on the rise, social interaction seems to be adding a dimension that can compensate for the times when “there’s 57 channels and nothing on.”

iModerate also found three types of consumers who regularly engage in social TV experiences. They are:

  • “The Sports Nut”: 25-54 year-old males who use social platforms to comment on games, debate, talk trash, etc.
  • “The Extrovert”: 18-34 year-old males who have a lot of real-life and online friends.
  • “The Girlfriend”: 25-44 year-old females who primarily use social TV to discuss the dramas and reality TV shows that are important to them, which is akin to a “girls’ night out” experience, according to the study.

Another example of how sometimes our worst business fears are, in fact, our best friends!

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March 5, 2012 · 10:27 am

But enough about me…

We’ve all been to the party where someone is firmly ensconced in a corner or at the bar telling tales about their favorite subject:  themselves.  Sometimes, especially if we’ve never heard them before, these stories can be funny and interesting.  I don’t know how you feel but I always get a little weary of them after a while.  If you hang around long enough, inevitably the person senses a fresh audience and repeats the same old tales, always with themselves in a leading role.  Then again, given the ages of some of my friends (and your author), it’s quite possible to write the repetition off to having forgot that they’ve told the tale already!  Maybe by telling the same stories these folks give themselves the appearance of establishing intimacy while really doing nothing of the sort.  We’ll leave that to the psychologists.

I bring this up this morning because of a piece I read on how brands are using Facebook and how their behavior reminds me of the tale-tellers at the cocktail party.  The report was in eMarketer, and the gist is this:

In December 2011, consulting firm A.T. Kearney analyzed the conversations happening on Facebook between 50 of the world’s top brands and their fans, comparing their interactions to those in December 2010.

The study found that in 2011, 94% of the 50 top brands’ Facebook pages directed users to a one-way communication page, such as a tab or a closed Facebook wall that didn’t allow consumers to initiate a conversation. This was up from 91% of the top 50 brands’ pages in 2010. Additionally, 56% of those brands did not respond to a single customer comment on their Facebook page in 2011; the same percentage of nonresponses as in 2010.

I suspect that part of this is due to those brands not wanting to deal with issues such as moderation (how to look for and deal with offensive comments and language), or full-time support of social marketing efforts.  Too bad.  Like the person who speaks only about themselves, these companies might think they’re engaging with their audience while the reality is they’re turning them off.  I’m sure you’ve been on company pages that are nothing more than an endless stream of promotions.  I’ve taken more than a few of those out of my news feed and I gather from the research I’m not alone.

If we’re going to use the tools of modern marketing the way we used the older, non-interactive tools, we’re missing the point and wasting the advantages these newer forms of marketing can bring.  That’s what I think – what do you think?

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