Get Ready for a New Framework: Listening-Centered Marketing

My ClickZ column this morning kicks off one of many posts and articles I'll be writing this year around a new concept known as "Listening-Centered Marketing," or LCM.  My thesis is straightforward and simple:  active, continuous listening to the consumer is the most important source of competitive advantage for brands today.  If the consumer's in control, and media is fragmenting, we simply don't have a choice but to attentively tune-in to their behavior, desires, mood-changes, depth of satisfaction or disatisfaction with products and services, and, ultimately, their recommendations to others.  This doesn't mean we can't "market" to consumers (keep in mind that I very deliberately kept the word "marketing" in the LCM label), but it does imply that listening is a de facto measurement exercise that informs, guides, and shapes marketing behavior.   For instance, how can a marketer embark upon a proactive blog strategy without attentively tuning into relevant offline conversation or online CGM?  How can we develop breakthrough products and services without actively listening to our most attentive and observant consumers who already communicate with us?    How can we possibly figure out "word-of-mouth" marketing or new-launch awareness without first listening to our most brand loyal or disloyal customers?  Moreover, I suggest in my column, "Listening-Centered Marketing"....

"...thinks about measurements and metrics as continuous, and not mere time-stamps. It's about managing in a world where real-time conversation is held in equal esteem with a click, or a page view, even an actual "transaction." It's where the consumer "voice" gives us a much needed aperture to make better, more informed brand decisions.  It's about sensing and responding to unmet needs and concerns as they unfold, and co-creating along the way."

The concept isn't entirely new, and in some respects I'm simply reframing something I've believed and touted since I left Procter & Gamble six years ago to start PlanetFeedback.com, a service whose primary tagline was "It Always Pays to Listen."  Others have had many important (perhaps far more important) things to say on the topic of listening, including HBS Professor (Emeritus) Jim Heskett, author of The Service Profit Chain and the Value Profit Chain, fellow WOMMA board member Laurent Flores, author of the Customer Listening blog, and on the advertising front Bob Garfield, who rocked the boat with his Ad Age cover story (and now book, to be released soon, I believe) entitled Listenomics.  But it's time to push all of this much more aggressively; moreover, we need to be thinking about the implications of a new "listening renaissance" holistically, and across the entire enterprise.  The chart below provides a few thought-starters on how to think about the role and impact of Listening-Centered Marketing (LCM):

Today's backdrop of social media and consumer control puts special urgency on moving to this new model, and I urge and encourage an open, if not spirited, discussion on the matter.  And as always, you are welcome, in the good spirit of feedback, to throw tomatoes at me on the subject.

Comments

[laurence]

You are so right.
LCM should remplace CRM...
Funny, the link to Listenomic
is only for subscribers of Ad Age, of course. Too bad, if they want to listen...

[Chris@PeopleThatClick]

Great discussion Pete. I think Tivo is illustrative of LCM. You have both time stamped measurement (what is watched when and for how long) but also data available towards your conversational end of the typology like how many times did you rewind it save it or loop it in as a favorite. Can you imagine rewinding a commercial to see it again it is that engaging?(outside of the superbowl phenom). Now that is some data to think about! There are other "Tivo" mechanisms out there to tap for insight per your comments above and this gives it a developing framework.

[Nick Wright]

Real world example of 360 Listening in the workplace:

I used to work in marketing for Fathead (Fathead basically makes lifesize stickers of NFL players, NBA players, etc.).

Well, one of my buddies, who owns a Chad Johnson Fathead, tells me "I don't like the fact that my Fathead comes in two pieces... the website made it look like one piece."

I took note of his complaint.

Then, I check out Fathead complaints via BlogPulse.com and see there are a ton of people complaining about the same thing. I even printed out one guys post about his Ben Roethlisberger Fathead coming in two pieces... and how he felt misled by the website and Fathead commercials which depicted the product as one piece.

So I present these consumer complaints to the rest of my team... and we decide we need to find a die-cutter who can print and cut a Fathead in one piece.

Unfortunately I no longer work with Fathead (they moved from Cincy to Detroit and I didn't want to move up there), so I'm not sure if they've taken these consumer complaints to heart or not (I haven't seen the product lately).

But that was a real world example of your reasoning in action.

Great post!

Nick Wright