cgm

The Daily Buzz Factor

This morning in ClickZ ("Skype Nation") I take a closer look at what's happening around the "Skype Revolution," including my own (warranted) seduction into this latest social media storm.  My reflections here were precipitated by my colleague Max Kalehoff weaning on this free phone service (largely for selfish reasons) as well as an invite to participate in what was billed as one of the first-ever Skypecasts. I end with a very important question, which I believe get to the heart and soul (and yes, I'm talking about "emotional" needs) behind the explosive word-of-mouth activity around Skype:

"Is the bigger aha around Skype that it's revolutionized communication or that it's created tens of millions of heroes?"

What I mean to suggest here is that word-of-mouth and consumer-generated media emanates, in part, from a genuine desire to improve the lives of others, and in the process, take credit for the "change."  Skype has proven so truly "remarkable" (as Seth Godin so commonly puts it) that millions are banking "credits" through the active recommendation of this product...even before, I suspect, it's been put to the full torture test.

I also quote Dr. Walter Carl, a professor of Northeastern University and active research leader with WOMMA, who notes:

"Although the recommendation of Skype to a friend benefits the person making the recommendation, this isn't just a selfish act. That is, there's a huge relational component as well: the recommendation benefits both people or all members of the social network, because it allows them all to be connected to one another."

Carl, by the way, has launched a very important blog discussion on the topic of offline versus online word-of-mouth.

Computers & The Age of Empowerment

In his ClickZ colum this morning, Gary Stein offers some provocative thoughts about computers and empowerment. Computers, he argues, represent "a pathway through which (consumers) become not only more educated of their choices, but more involved and engaged in them, too." There's no question that technology is empowering; applied smartly it gives us more control, choice, leverage, and yes, power, and consumer-generated media is part of the residue. But there's a flip side of Gary's argument we need to start thinking about, and that's the extent to which technology starts to overwhelm us, confuse us, and even start to slow us down. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I'll admit there are times when I feel the only way I'll grow is taking a tech-free siesta. On the blog reading, my Nielsen BuzzMetrics colleague Max Kalehoff has been cranking out some excellent content in his AttentionMax blog, including a series of "Adventures in MySpace." Meanwhile, Nigel Holis of Milward-Brown, writes a thoughtful critique of consumer-generated media in the context of the Chevy-Tahoe CGM campaign.

Mirror Mirror! CGM in the Reflecting Mirror

Today in ClickZ -- Mirror, Mirror! Am I Consumer 1.0 or 2.0? -- I decided to throw away all the market research studies and just take a look in the mirror.  Is there something in my curious consumer behavior that "informs" or "predicts" the future?  Yes, I know. I'm atypical and non-representative. But, as I write, "I may just be 20 minutes ahead."

The world is moving fast, and I, for one, feel like the 2.0 current is taking me on a serious, transformative ride. Here's my advice: If you ever feel lost in the blur of marketing theory, just take a look in the mirror and whip out your personal audit checklist. If your kids are in a media consumption age, audit them next. We may just find our own behavioral habits and practices do more to sharpen our marketing insight than anything else.

Folks...It's Official!!!!

Today we formally announce the finalization -- yes, finito -- of our Intelliseek + BuzzMetrics + VNU-Nielsen deal.  We're now the Nielsen BuzzMetrics service. and it's no small coincidence that my ClickZ article this morning -- "The Gold Medal of Questions: Is the Web TV?" -- further probes the complimentary, symbiotic relationship television programming and web content, including consumer-generated media (CGM).  So much of what we'll be tackling as the "Global Measurement Standard in Consumer-Generated Media" will involve dissecting the relationship brand experiences (e.g. advertising) and consumer engagement (e.g. propensity to speak-out, recommend).  Naturally, this exercise implicates all forms of advertising, especially television. Quite honestly, I could not imagine a more exciting time to be in the center of the exciting, transformative changes in marketing and market research. In some respects, I feel like I'm back at Procter & Gamble when we just started to work through the implications of "new media" on marketing.  Back then my P&G mentor, now friend, Denis Beausejour, kept reminding me of a simple adage as we struggled to make sense of this new environment of consumer power and control.  "The consumer is our teacher -- listen and learn."  And so the journey continues.  I'm pumped!   

Wikipedia & CGM

Alex Mindlin of the New York Times "Drilling Down" column today writes about the growing popularity of the Wikipedia.   Alex and I talked for a bit last week regarding the growing tendency of bloggers to embed targeted links to Wikipedia definitions in their blog entries.  Quoting some of our data, he notes, "Wikipedia is consistently used by bloggers - about twice as often as the term "encyclopedia" - and showed up in roughly one out of every 600 blog posts last month; it was one of every 3,300 posts in October 2004."   As noted in an Intelliseek release back in September, a number of key factors are driving Wikipedia growth, including:

• Influential, top blog authors are embedding Wikipedia links in their blog postings, exposing the site to wider audiences.
• Major news events, especially July's London subway bombings, Hurricane Katrina, and the Supreme Court nominations.  Wikipedia is emerging as a source of immediate and thorough background - more reliable and timely than other encyclopedias or knowledge databases.
• The rise of Consumer-Generated Media. Because Wikipedia involves thousands of collaborative authors and contributors, many of them are passionate about accuracy and focused, thoughtful usage, increasing the level of trust among users.
• International appeal. Of the growing number of foreign-language Wikipedias (French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Dutch & Swedish), blog citations to the German-language Wikipedia increased the most, nearly doubling in the past six months.

Lastly, as I noted to Mindlin in the story, there's the credibility factor: "For bloggers, it's almost like a badge of credibility to embed Wikipedia in their blog references. There's something about Wikipedia that confers a degree of respectability, because multiple Web users have converged on it."   At the end of the day, we're all looking to maximize credibility.  As a blogger, I quote Wikipedia constantly, versus other sources, because I have higher confidence that the real-time "group definition" is closer to the truth than a time-stamped old definition. 

Teens & Consumer Generated Media (CGM)

USA Today recently published a story citing different numbers from PEW Internet Life and Intelliseek regarding teen blog usage & creation.  PEW suggest that 4 million teens have created blogs while Intelliseek puts the number closer to 8 million.  Why the disparity?  First off, both of us got it right on the core message: teens are creating lots of content on the internet, significantly more than adults. PEW's report "Teen Content Creators and Consumers, " provides much detail on this front.  The recent study we completed at Intelliseek, drawing from a rep panel of online consumers taken in August 2005, reaches similar conclusions. 

Still, what's going on with the teen blog numbers?  If  you just look at the raw number of blogs or personal web journals on teen-centered sites like LiveJournal or MySpace, four (4) million seems to pale in comparison with the total number of actual teen blogs.  BlogPulse alone monitors close to 20 million blogs, and we're probably missing millions of them.  We know teens are over-represented on the authorship front.  Why is there such a delta?  I have a couple hypotheses:

1. Timing of Study:  2005 was undoubtedly the "Year of the Blog."  By all accounts, usage and penetration skyrocketed, aided by a proliferation of new players entering the blogging space, from AOL to Yahoo.  Ironically, if you read the fine print of the PEW Study, it notes on the second page that the data was gathered "between October 26 and November 28, 2004, among a sample of parent-child pairs."   The study may have missed one of the most significant migrations of consumers to blogs.
2. Survey Requirements: But let's assume the fine print is a mistake, and they actually completed the study recently.   The other part that concerns me is the use of "telephone interviews."  I'll stop short of heralding online research or surveys (they have issues, innacuracies, and biases), but I do worry about how representative folks are who actually answer the phone in this "do not call" culture.   My wife and I feel pretty "typical" from a consumer perspective, but we rarely answer the phone anymore. It's actually gotten worse since we've had kids.  In 2003 I co-presented data to the Association of National Advertisers with the head of one of the largest market research firms, who lamented how phone based research is being severly compromised by consumer frustration and "do not call" trends.  I suspect PEW has a great technique for managing around these issues, but it's still a good question to ask.

Other Data:   As long as we're on the subject, what else did we learn about teen in our study.  Here's a couple nuggets.  Teens are nearly twice as likely to own an iPod or MP3 player than everyone else.  Interestingly, they also screen advertisements at a higher rate than other segments.  Nearly 50% said they use devices "that screen out online advertisements, pop-ups, or SPAM," but there's a catch.  Relative to other age groups, they have higher levels of trust in advertising.   Cynicism and distrust appears to grow with age (and heightened expereience with advertisers).  What's going on with teens and ad screening, I believe, is a higher level of expectations around user experience.  It's not that they don't "trust" Chrysler or GM to embed an ad in an online game, they just don't want the brand to interrupt or interfere with the flow. Consider, 77% of teens play video games.  31% download video clips or movies to their persona computer (far higher than other age segments except Age 20-34 yr olds).  11% of teens now subscribe to RSS feeds.  Business Thought-Starters: All of this creates a genuine dilemna for advertisers: the "elusive" teen audience is, well, ever-elusive and increasingly attentive to everything else but marketing.   How do you get through?   Or should you? 

 

CGM & Electronics

David Pogue's New York Times piece this morning centered on "electronics" hits the hammer on the nail.  The piece is entitled "10 Ways to Please Us, the Customers."   What the argument doesn't note, but which elevates the importance of his commentary, is the depth of virality and CGM around such experiences.  As we learned earlier about iPod users (arguably the gold-standard in CGM creation), active users of electronics products tend to shape and spread CGM at higher levels than other segments, which means their good or bad experiences have a greater impact, often intercepting other consumers during the "purchase cycle" or indexing via Google or other search engines where buyer prospects and other "influencers" can find them in a highly targeted needs-based manner. Interestingly, the electronics category produces more indexable or archived CGM than just about any other category.  But let's not get too overly simplified here.  There are many ways to cut an electronics experience, and certain issues drive higher levels of virality. Poque notes: "Thou shalt not charge tech-support fees for thine own mistakes."   He also raises red flags over "rebates." The big "aha" here -- informed by advanced text mining -- is that issues related to "billing" or "fees" in the electronics category elicit a higher emotional reaction, often to the point of outrage.  Depth of emotion and spread of CGM share a symbiotic relationship. Key Takeway for Brands:  Understand how certain experiences catalyze CGM, even at the broader "category" level. 

CGM Analytics In Review

Matt Galloway offers a well-researched, and well-articulated overview of CGM analytics space the New Communications Forum newsletter.  As with starting WOMMA, it's always a tad bizzare drawing attention to an article that highlights competitors, but when you helicopter up a bit you realize that Matt's piece is about so much more than three vendors in the CGM space.  He's talking about a fundamentally new, consumer-centered approach toward media measurements, informed and reinforced by the presence of a growing roster of players.  That's a very big deal, and a game-changer for marketing and consumer understanding. 

Seeding CGM:  Some important perspective here.  I left P&G in late 1999 after leading or co-leading over a hundred "tests" in the interactive marketing space, from online sampling to online ad testing to multi-brand online "content" initiatives.  It was all incredibly rewarding and stimulating, but my #1 conclusion after this dizzying "test and measure" dance was that the web is first and foremost about "listening."  You can't target or start a meaningful conversation with consumers without first listening, or "respecting" the boss.  You also can't manage what you can't measure.  The web, it struck me, was not only blossoming into the world's most potent "focus group" --  far more insightful, candid, and even honest than traditional research -- but also unleashing an almost unstoppable flow of highly-measureable consumer-generated media (CGM) that in effect was stealing "attention" from the controlled grasp of marketers.  The CGM analytics movement that Matt Galloway describes is about putting a meaningful "meter" on that process.  I really could not imagine a more exciting time to be in marketing.  Yes, I really mean that!

NY Times: "Drilling Down" on CGM

Last week I talked to Alex Mindlin of the New York Times about research Intelliseek recently fielded about consumer attitudes toward advertising.   He published a small piece this morning based on our discussion entitled "The Ad Averse: FInicky and Opinionated."    Our study, he noted, "found that ad-skippers were generally more interested than their ad-watching peers in online product research and more likely to participate in online discussions of products, like those on blogs or product review sites. Those who skipped ads were 17 percent more likely to research computer hardware or software online, and they posted comments on Web sites 25 percent more often." 

What Motivates CGM?

Yesterday I led another webinar with select members of the ARF (Advertising Research Foundation) about the importance of measuring CGM.  Quite a few media planners were in the audience.  Here's a slide I didn't share but which speaks directly to core motivators and drivers behind CGM behavior.  As marketers, we need to do a better job understanding and managing these drivers. That's the only way we can begin to create meaningful conversations with consumers, which is some respects may be the last hope for advertising. In lookng at the chart, it  should comes as no surprise that all segments want to be entertained, and that creates both opportunities and challenges for marketers.  But is it equally important to know that teens have a significantly higher passion "to be heard" than other segments, or that they  put a very high premium on creating a dialogue with others?  Yes, indeed!  And yet, if this is true, why are brands so hesitant to listen or start a meaningful dialogue.  Abercrombie, for example, is one of the biggest brands in the teen space and yet there's little on their website to suggest they value feedback.  The future of marketing is about managing these disconnects to drive new value.