Garfield's "Listenomics" Half-Way There

If you haven't read it yet, go grab Ad Age magazine and read "Part II" of Bob Garfield's aggressive re-examination of Advertising (recall: The Chaos Scenario, April 15) entitled Listenomics.  The piece builds on similar themes around "new rules" for marketers, and takes a focused look at the implications of an "open source" world.  The piece has echoes of Dan Gilmour's We the Media, but with a marketing/advertising twist.  He writes: "Advertising. Branding. Distribution. Consumer research. Product development.  Manufacturing. They will all be turned upside down as the despotism of the executive suite gives way to the will, and wisdom, of the masses in a new commercial and cultural epoch, namely:  The OpenSource revolution."

I'm a huge Garfield fan -- have been since one of my advertising development mentors at P&G, Mike Wege, explained to me why he thought Garfield was among the few that "gets it" -- but I felt a bit empty after reading this piece.  Of course the world has changed -- these are not new themes -- but what are the real implications and "next steps" for advertisers and agencies.  Garfield missed the sweet spot: CRM, more specifically, consumer affairs and consumer relations.  The vast majority of ad agencies and media planners  ignore this increasingly important arena within the enterprise. The same consumers who exercise all the "open source" channels Garfield speaks of are the same ones who typically raise their hands to instigate direct conversations with brands. Put another way, these CGM-creators are right under the brand's nose.   Jeff Jarvis's Dell brohauha  became an issue because his "CGM Factor" was not taken into account when he first elected to provide feedback to Dell.  More to the points, I've led research for major CPG companies finding that nearly 70% of consumers who give feedback to brands are active on message boards, forums, or blogs.  The critical "next step" for agencies is to provide more enlighened guidance on how that part of the enterprise is managed. As I've written in the past, if you want to figure out how to manage and leverage CGM, treat customer relations as the media department.  What's frustrating to me is that I keep hearing folks from the agency world talk about the "new rules" or the importance of "listening."  And yet the solutions or next step rarely hit the strike zone.  This is not listening.  Nor is this, or this, or this. Kevin Roberts, CEO, of Saatchi is spot on about "Love Marks," but to what extent is that core philosophy of encouraging and embracing "feedback" actively practiced within Saatchi brands? 

At the end of the day, the fastest growing media is that which consumers create and shape themselves.  It's TIVO-resistant and presents long-lasting sources of influence.  It can't be controlled but it can be influenced. What agencies need to lead is a fundamentally new mindset about what it means to listen to and respect consumers who now create and shape CGM.  They are there rhetorically but not in practice.  Importantly, they need to exploit the few channels available to them where consumers are actually reaching out and offering us a very explicit invitation to the conversational table.   They need to find the balance between "capturing" attention and "managing" attention.  Garfield hits the core insight, as always, and God bless him for thrusting this to the cover of Ad Age, but what we now need is a more prescriptive game plan. 

Comments

[owen mack]

recently there have been a few calls-to-arms in the marketing/pr world. everybody is frustrated with the lip service paid to blogging and CGM, yet no follow thru. this from steve rubel at micropersuasion:
here

my response, in which i lay it out. ME ME ME! I have the answer! and it's ateam effort...
here

and for those of you on soflow/adrants, check out kevin glennon's post Billionaire Wanted.

[owen mack]

ps so i'm hoping to make the BlogOn 2005 event next week the point at which brands start to take some &&^%$# action. for christ's sake, everything they want is right under their noses...