All around the world digital and social media has introduced a new form of communication. Social media has shifted control of the corporate message  from the organization  to the consumers and other stakeholders, It is high time for corporations to learn the lessons offered from this new reality and accept the challenge of open dialogue rather than keep on hiding behind their corporate walls.

 Many organizations are monitoring great numbers of social media and blogs, and others are engaging in this direct communication with news, information and promotional messages  utilizing the proliferating social media channels. It is through engaging with its stakeholders online that an organization can strategically conquer a fair share of voice and manage its own reputation.

I strongly believe that it is high time for companies to embrace, not fear, this new form of communication because there  is no other way to remain competitive.  Social media allows for a true dialogue in ways never before possible. The benefits for research, brand building and the creation of loyalty and trust are limitless As the recent study by Burson Marsteller correctly points out “The value of social media is that users are highly engaged and want to be heard. So, by listening to them and approaching them from their own point of view, it is possible to have a positive impact on beliefs and perceptions.”

read the study at Burson-Marsteller 2010 Global Social Media Check-up white paper

 About this Study:

Data was collected between November 2009 and January 2010 among

the top 100 companies of Fortune’s Global 500 companies. Sample size

for countries/regions: U.S. = 29 companies, Europe = 48 companies, Asia-

Pacific = 20 companies, Latin America = 3 companies

“ Interactive marketing will near $55 billion and represent 21% of all marketing spend in 2014 as marketers shift dollars away from traditional media…” Forrester Research 002180.forrester.interactivemarketingprojections

As mentioned in the report titled “US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2009 to 2014,” interactive marketing spend will increase from 12% today to 22% in the next five years. Money will shift from traditional marketing and advertising channels into social media, email and mobile marketing”.

We have discussed this powerfull trend in past posts of Hot Business Issues (December 20 and November 21, 2009) and pointed out that a major issue troubling businesses is how one can be sure that the money is efficiently spent. Simply transfering money from mass media to search marketing and online display advertising is not always the answer. Without a strategy and appropriate tools with which to measure success, little if no advantage is gained.

At the same time, consumers are demanding more from businesses. They want appropriate and relevant content tailored to their needs for information and knowledge. Thus, we come to some very simple conclusions useful for businesses in their efforts to take advantage of this new trend.

1. Foremost is the realization that interactive will definitely cannibalize traditional media.

2. More than 40% of marketers believe that “marketing is the strategic leader in their organization. and Forrester predicts that CMOs will begin to buy their own technology and focus on interactive solutions like Web analytics and email marketing.

3. Search Marketing has a leading share of the interactive budget and will continue to be very important in the future

4. Social media become an integral part of the interactive marketing mix. More companies will embrace social media and Forrester points out that 64 percent of marketers already invested in social media applications and 30 percent more will be added by the end of 2009. This creates a need to measure user interaction and activity with your brand on social networking sites.

5. E-mail marketing will continue to grow fast since marketers see this as an economically efficient method to reach customers. Forrester points out that email marketing is overtaking direct mail as a better way to communicate with customers.

6. And finally we see the evidence of strategic mobile application development. Everyone is participating these days in developing mobile applications.. With the increase of applications, an opportunity will arise for marketers to use this means to reach their customers.

An estimate given by J. Bernoff of Forrester Inc.a year ago indicated that only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs actually trust them. I believe that this is absolutely true because corporate blogs that talk about their products are not worth the time required to visit them and read their content. Blogs and especially corporate blogs make sense if they are “usable” and exercise “thought leadership”.

Here are some universal blogging thruths:

• Corporate blogging is not about companies and their products or services it’s about the customers.
.
• If we are to rise above the crowd our corporate blog should be about the customer’s problems.

• If we can bring value to our present and potential customers by talking to them about their problems and needs, then they’ll become loyal visitors to our blog.

• If our offering is known and liked, then we can mobilize those loyal customers with our blog. As a result:
our customers are gradually organized into an interest group with common agendas, then we can encourage them to connect, through our blog , with one another and create a “snowball effect” in our favour.

• If the corporate blog is B2B, it should not be written by a communication expert. The only way to do it is to involve the marketing and sales staff who are in a position to understand the customers’ needs. Only then will our customers participate in the dialogue and trust the content of the blog.

In conclusion:
Standing out from the crowd becomes a very difficult job and those companies that shamelessly blog about their products and services are just adding water to the mill of those who argue that corporate blogs cannot be trusted.

On the other hand, honest and transparent blogs that address the customers needs will definitely attract appreciation and awareness.

1. Consumers are researching the offer
Consumers will be putting more time and energy into finding good values, reading the labels and the service agreement and will be more informed on nutritional facts, environmental impact and ethical business practices

2. They are also looking for stability
While many economic indicators point to a light at the end of the tunnel , consumers will continue to be cautious and will be hesitant to commit when it comes to important purchases.

3. Necessity allows emerging market products to enter the developed world.
Products designed for emerging markets are increasingly becoming popular in the developed markets, where consumers are accepting them as cheaper and simpler alternatives to existing choices.

4. Green is entering our lives
As the ecological influence increases, producers will pay more attention to the environmental costs of packaging, and brands will increasingly switch to bottles, boxes and other solutions that reduce waste .The trend will be to reuse, recycle, remove and renew.

5. The disclosure trend is intensifying
Legal requirements and competitive pressures will force producers to fuller disclosure about everything from ingredients to carbon footprints and sourcing

6. Real time revolution
The Web is evolving into a constantly updating stream of real-time information, conversation, memes and images.

7. Products and communication will have an open eye for the older generation
As the world’s population grows older, we should be ready for a proliferation of products and services that cater to this demographic segment as they strugle to live independently for as long as they can. Communication will also be adapting to the habits and life style of this group.

In today’s “experience’ economy, consumers have the ability to match their values with every buying choice they make. Modern brands create value beyond their functional mission and they assume a major role in expressing the personality and mood of their clients. Thus we can argue that modern Branding is about building emotional and experiential values that fit the customer’s needs.

We, the consumers, are identified by our experiences: what we do and dream. We are extensions of our friends, our style of life, the music we hear, the car we drive, the entertainment mode we chose. Today, in part because of the emergence of social media, we are less biased and more courageous than ever, looking for every opportunity to discover new things, new friends and to collect new experiences. We travel, surf the Internet, experiment with new tastes and hobbies to a degree that was impossible in past.
On the other hand we feel more than ever the need to be different, and we want that to be made clear to all around us, friends, associates even our immediate family. Why is this happening?
Recently a lot of things have changed! We can have access to knowledge for numerous products and services, we are more open to new ideas. and the most important fact is that we are able to communicate literally with thousands fellow citizens like us easily.
The recent recession probably influenced marketing and gave a push to the price factor. However the oposite strategy to low price is the emergence of the need, now more than ever before, for boosting the image of our brands and investing in improving our reputation and strengthen the trust our customers have for our brand and our company.
Today, more than ever before, our products and services need to build a unique emotional bonding with our customers. If we succeed our business will be better off when the crisis is over.

During recessionary times, do-it-yourself is influencing not only home and office furniture but a whole range of categories, including food, entertainment, beauty and fashion. Examples are organizing and promoting our own parties and events and rushing to IKEA, to youth formulating their very own beauty treatments. Today we realize that the habit of DIY is becoming increasingly pervasive.
A number of factors is shifting this movement to the mainstream, chief among them the anxiety brought on by the present recession. Most of us realize that DIY is simply cheaper than the alternatives. DIY also seems like the trendy thing to do at a time when frugality and anti-consumerist sentiment are booming. Another factor that helps this consumer habit is the Internet and social media where dialogue and friendly discussions are thriving.And in a world where mass-produced goods dominate, DIY allows for a sense of discovery and a way to stand out from the crowd.
A recent JWT study explores how DIY ideas and attitudes are affecting consumer behavior and purchasing habits in a range of categories, and investigates what this means for marketers and their brands

Key Questions asked

• How is the DIY trend translating across a range of product categories? And how is it helping to encourage entrepreneurialism?
• What factors are driving this trend?
• What does DIY mean for brands and marketers?

Key Findings

DIY is a trend that was already growing before the recession, and the downturn is only helping to accelerate it.
This may sound as bad news for brands. If you DIY, where does this leave companies that sell ready-made goods?
However, brands and marketers can learn a lot and exploit this trend if they can understand how to become part of the trend and build the DIY experience into their own marketing plans
Indeed, as the JWT study concludes “DIY doesn’t mean consumers are opting out of the economy; instead, they’re reconfiguring it, taking a greater stake in the production process. Marketers that can complement consumers’ DIY efforts, serving as partners in this reconfiguration, will serve their brands best.”

With the emergence of social media, consumers are looking for greater personal relevance in the media they use. Today consumers want information and services that are relevant both to their place of residence and to their stage of life. It’s hard for centralized communication to do that, especially advertising. Even services like Google’s sponsored links and Amazon’s recommendations don’t feel personal, even though they are in many ways personalized.

The term “Personal” requires the existence of a real person. Marketers have always known that personal recommendations and word of mouth are the most powerful forms of brand advocacy. Today interactive technologies make personal recommendations no longer limited by physical constraints. With the multiplicity of social media consumers can create their own networks. As more and more people participate in these networks, they will begin to compete directly with traditional media..
A recent trend topic researched by JWT predicts that millions of influential individuals will develop their equivalent of a personal CPM rate card. A personal CPM assumes that people are their own media properties and, as such, should be applied some worth by the brands they advocate. As the JWT report indicates “the larger and more influential their social networks, the more valuable these individuals are and the higher the CPM they will be able to command. But as their influence grows, they will need to remain truly objective—consumers are too savvy to trust those who recommend the brands that pay them the most”.

Facebook is now amplifying this trend via a new advertising plan. The social networking site is combining user recommendations with hyper-targeted advertising for what it calls SocialAds. As an Advertising Age article describes it, “Under the system, actions users take when they’re not on Facebook, can be broadcast to their Facebook friends. Brands also can create Facebook pages users can interact with, and those interactions are communicated to their networks. This was also reported by Ad Age: “the more you enable person-to-person communication, the more opportunities there are for individuals to influence each other.

To illustrate what we mean by the above statement, imagine your marketing staff has just completed the plan to build your brand equity over the next three years. They have agreed to next year’s advertising and promotion activities and budgets and are ready to celebrate a job well done. They are absolutely certain that next year the plan will win the customers and increase sales and market share.
The only problem is that they have only done half the job required in building a strong brand and achieve their goals because a brand is much more than visual image, advertising and promotion. Actually your brand is your business strategy. It has to prove your uniqueness and real competitive advantage
A critical element of the business strategy is that it must be differentiated, and authentically delivered by the behaviours of your employees when they are in contact with your customers. Your brand is your ‘trust mark’. It is your reputation.
Whatever the promise, it’s the experience of the customer that counts. And a key part of the experience is what your people deliver – either personally through direct customer contact and service, or indirectly by creating and maintaining a fulfillment process.
Interactions between customers and representatives of the brand – the employees – can either reinforce or sabotage the brand.

“ At the end of the day, as Federick W. Smith founder of FedEx said, FedEx is not the logo or its advertising or its sales force. To the customer, FedEx is the person who comes to your door and doesn’t let you down.”
This post draws on the philosophy and experience of TMI and its partners around the world. http://tmiworld.com

adqrfinal_qr
The next few years will bring more change for the advertising industry than the previous few decades did. With the advent of social media consumers will be more empowered than ever, advertisers less dependent on traditional media. New technologies will be changing the way advertising is sold, created, consumed and measured. A recent IBM Global Business Services research points to four future scenarios. Traditional advertising industry players may well face problems unless they can successfully implement consumer, business model and business design innovation. As the advertising model changes, broadcasters, advertising agencies and media distributors will need to innovate in three key areas:

1. Consumer: There will be great need for more creativity in traditional ads, while also pursuing new ad forms across all media to attract and retain customers.

2. Business model: There will be need for changes in the ways advertising is sold and bought, the type of partnerships required, different revenue models and measurements.

3. Business design: There will be great need for consumer and business model innovation by redesigning organizational and operating schemes across the advertising lifecycle. The overwhelming trend for control of attention, creativity, measurements and inventory will reshape the advertising model and redistribute the power among the traditional players.
It’s obvious that the future of advertising will look radically different from that we know today.
Request the full report at iibv@us.ibm.com

What we are experiencing today will continue, with people connecting to each other –rather than institutions. Consumers adopt social media at an increasing pace, brands are jumping on the bandwagon even in the middle of a recession so we should expect to see lots of changes in the web trying to accomodate this trend.
According to Forrester “social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising.”
Portable identities are marking the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their friends as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Eventually this will result in more empowered communities who in turn will create the next generation of products.