Entries Tagged 'New Media' ↓

Peter Kim, a lead analyst at Forrester, is kicking off a session on Word-of-Mouth Marketing with Janet Eden-Harris from Umbria and Dave Balter from BzzAgent. Pete opens with some updated stats about the decline of mainstream media consumption and the increasing amount of time consumers are spending on the Internet. The time consumers are spending is increasingly spent around creating, sharing and consuming content in ways they hadn’t before. With respect to content that is passed along not all content is equal - it is important to remember it is a reflection of the sender.

Janet from Umbria, now a division of JD Power & Associates, shared a variety of case studies from SC Johnson and a major jeans manufacturer - some interesting insights around some of their client engagements. Dave shared what his definition of WOM is “the sharing of an honest opinion between two people”. He then explained their “BuzzAgent” process which is consumer enrollment, campaign invite, product/service shared with folks invites, then feedback reporting for the agents. Everything is transparent and non-scripted. An interesting stat - “40% of WOM interactions include another media form”. WOM is a high-effective in compliment to traditional media - you need a mix. Also, remember a large portion of WOM actually takes place offline verses online. Very interesting stats as measured by BzzAgent about the effectiveness of WOM’s viral nature. The example provided was that when they start a program with say 10k agents they then reach out to 12 individuals on average who then speak to 4.14 individuals for a total WOM effect/factor of 628,000 conversations. Naturally, these happen over a period of time and generate the equivalent of 1.4M hours of conversations.That is pretty impressive but results scaled down a bit as you move away from B2C and tangible products. Some solid questions and audience participation about whether it can really work in B2B or for services verse tangible products.

Good session - Pete, Janet, Dave.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, of Forrester and Groundswell fame, are conducting a session about the groundswell that is affecting brands and companies. The four step approach to the groundswell for companies and brands is to think in term of the following acronym “POST” (People, Objective, Strategy, and Technology). To tap into the groundswell there are a couple of groups that can benefit from leveraging social media such as: Researchers for “Listening”, Marketing for “Talking”, Sales for “Energizing”, and Support for “Supporting”. Their is a big need for brands and companies to develop two-way conversations/dialogue with customers in order to fully leverage the value with social media.

A variety of examples about social media engagement/viral video like the tried and true “blending i-phone”, but a great new example of how Ernst & Young is engaging to aid recruitment strategies and P&G are approaching things very differently to engage with consumers. Charlene’s examples were to highlight the new ways of talking and engaging with customers via social media. Josh is up now and is covering the “Energizing” portion of the session. Examples highlighted Friskers and Brides.com. And a great overview of Dell and Lionel Menchaca’s team, who we are proud to support with our TruCast technology. The punchline is listen, learn, get started, don’t try to boil the ocean, focus, pilot, engaged and then replicate.

Blake Cahill

Visible Technologies

The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2008 State of the News Media report on American journalism contains some interesting, updated information and statistics. If you have a chance to digest the whole report, I think you’ll agree that it’s amazing how much journalism has changed over the past 14 years. Since the start of the commercial Web, the news media is definitely among the top industries impacted the most by the onset of digital and new media. If you don’t have a chance to read it all, here are some of the highlights from my perspective;

• more than 75% of American adults are now regular users of the Web;
• the top online news sites by visits continue to be Yahoo News, MSNBC, CNN and AOL News;
• news organizations appear to finally be embracing new technology, aggressively adding new features to attract audiences and remain relevant;
• citizen journalism is rapidly increasing with nearly 1,500 so-called sites by the end of last year, and professional journalists are calling on them more than ever to inform their reporting;
• citizen-driven news sites are not only sometimes countering what appears in mainstream media, but at times beating them to the story;
• Wikipedia now includes more than 2 million articles, and last year’s shooting at Virginia Tech evaluated the site to a prominent location for breaking news when continual updates by its editors led to more than 750,000 visits over the first 48 hours;
• ‘hybrid journalism’ that combines professional writers, citizens and new technology appears to be the wave of the future;
• despite the continued growth of blogs, most Americans who read them do so for entertainment or information sharing, rather than news;
• more than 90 percent of the top 100 newspapers in the country now include blogs; and,
• there is a growing backlash by advertisers angered by the lack of unified measurement standards after more than a decade of conflicting data and traffic analysis.

Mike Spataro