Supernova 2007: because technology is everyone's business

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The Marketers Dilemma: The Rise of Social Multimedia

Moderators Pete Blackshaw and Max Kalehoff of Nielsen Buzzmetrics tell us the fastest growing media are those that consumers create themselves. Consumer-generated media (CGM, i.e., generated through message forums, blogs, social networks, rating systems, et al) create impressions that get in front of other consumers and have an impact. There is an ROI impact of consumers who go online as evangelists or attackers.

When you ask people what the best source of info about products and services, 92% say word of mouth. Now, consumer expression of loving/hating products is moving into the rich media zone.

The panelists addressed some key questions based on their experience in this space:

P&G
Stan Joosten of P&G says that from a business perspective, the company is doing better than ever. They’re known for marketing, but also for understanding consumers. What are consumers doing with new media? There’s no strategy to move away from TV to the Internet. The strategy is to move with the consumers to whatever media they’re using.

Revver
Oliver Luckett of Revver says Revver solves the problem of how video creators can meet advertisers in a sponsorships marketplace. Revver is about people uploading content they generated and looking for advertisers to sponsor it. Sponsors get an unobtrusive ad at the end of the video. About 4% of consumers click on those ads. If you have a product, you get 6-20% clickthrough. Video content aggregators can make money as affiliates for redistributing content. That embraces the viral nature of this medium.

GM
Michael Wiley of GM says vehicles are heavily researched on the Internet. Most auto companies don’t participate in the conversation. GM launched a blog. They don’t want to seek cheap publicity with a gimmick. They taking a holistic view of the space, looking for people who are negative about GM and trying to change their perceptions of the company through conversations.

GM Planworks
Curt Hecht of GM Planworks says GM can win in the digital space with an approach that takes advantage of the buyers who go online to do research. A 30-second spot won’t be the way we get people to the dealership for a test drive. This year, Chevy drove traffic toward a neutral voice site to have an impact. Google Pontiac, and the search points to enthusiast sites. People can hear the voice of the brand believers.

Yahoo!
Brian Zeug says he moved from selling consumer packaged goods (CPG) to the online space to be part of the explosion on CGM. People want to express themselves. The question is, can you increase your brand equity/social standing by becoming a part of that.

Conversation with participants explored the challenges in engaging customers, dispelling misperceptions, and recruiting brand evangelists in the campaign to promote your products and services.

GM: The predominant advertising medium, TV, gives people very little info. A grassroots medium can give an in-depth look at the brand. If you put out a brief and say you’re looking for an ad for product x, then have a contest for impassioned users, they’ll create the ad for you.

Revver: We did this with Firefox, with a user-created 30-second video. See firefoxflicks.com. Agencies will be the most impacted by this, because the creativity is now coming from the consumers.

P&G: It doesn’t’ have to be an either or proposition. Agencies are sometimes pigeonholed in one medium that they’ve mastered, but they need to move toward a media-neutral reputation. Creative starts with an idea, what you want to talk about with consumers, then you execute through the media that will have the most impact (e.g., P&G put out a min-brief on MSN.con for an Old Spice video; the winner gets a film training course).

GM: Instead of serving up GM-produced ads online, we can take consumer-generated content and use the existing testimonial as the advertising vehicle. These are honest testimonials.

P&G: GM products are high-dollar. People do their homework. P&Gs products are a different order of involvement. People don’t go to charmin.com. To extend the brand equity, we have to extend the communication platform. For example, Home Made Simple is a multibrand website that has content about caring for the home. We’re creating an emotional connection with our customers. There’s now a TV program spin-off on The Learning Channel. The internet can become part of the product – facilitating discussions, getting advice.

Yahoo!: The global color vote for m&m drove $30 million in incremental sales and activated a consumer group. Through partnership with MSN, it drove people online through offline communication. You create discovery around a product, give the product to consumers, then capture their thoughts about it. It was a simple strategy. They didn’t have the power of bloggers, but there was a swell of activity around major media outlets. Yahoo is still wrestling with how to aggregate people around communities (e.g., yahoo360, yahoo answers, yahoo groups).

Revver: Channelization on the Internet means media are consumed on user terms. At , the big media companies are using it as a distribution channel. You embrace users wherever they are.

GM: There are misperceptions about the company. It’s treated as a monolith that isn’t made up of people. We wanted to begin to show personality and begin to engage people, whether they liked us or not. Even if we don’t like their comments, we’re putting ourselves out there. If you’re going to participate in this space, you need to be open to criticism and be willing to engage in the conversation. … There re very few people in the company who are working on this. Businesses like GM need to fundamentally change they way the operate and engage customers. The every opinion counts mentality is new. There are engrained cultures around advertising and communications, and the process of changing that is slow.