social media, advocacy, and crisis comms (cipr 6/12/10)

chris.reed@brewdigital.com@chris_reed

Advocates?

The power of the people – why what they say counts

Cultivating brand advocates to support you through the good and bad

A look at brand advocates in action

What I’m going to cover…

How everything has changed And how everything remains the same The importance of advocates in both

publicity generation and reputation management

A few real life examples

Everything’s changed? Or not?

Public relations is the discipline which looks after your reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour.

It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics

A quick canter through …

…the history of comms

1981/2. ZX Spectrum V BBC MicroChannel 4 launchedMass media started a decline

Relationships between PRs and journalists (previously our clients’ biggest advocates) have changed

73%

59%53%

49% 48% 46% 45% 45%

33%29% 29%

19%12%

Europe

Source: Nielsen Global Trust In Advertising Survey / Base: Europe, which includes: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK Nov 08

Has who consumers trust changed?

But have they really changed?

66% of the economy is influenced by personal recommendations - McKinsey& Company

20% of consumers are key influencers of purchasing activities of 74% of the pop - Gartner

Consumers mention 56 brands in conversation per week - Keller Fay

Each peer recommendation reaches 150 people on the social web – Forrester

40% of advocates answer, comment, or give opinions online several times each week - Yahoo! and Comscore

If I tell my Facebook friends about your brand, it's not because I like your brand, but rather because I like my friends

Mike Arauz

PR = social media marketing?

1. Enable others to advocate for your business by creating compelling content, designed to share

2. Monitor, defend and enhance your reputation online: for people and for spiders

3. Build relationships especially when you don’t need them

Your audience is now your channel

1. Create content which makes people feel like laughing out loud, feel loved, feel clever, feel inspired, and feel like passing on

2. Solve people’s problems. Proudly

3. Be in it for the long term, not for a quick win

Enabling advocacy through content

You can’t buy advocacy.You can only earn it.

Enabling advocacy through content

But it’s helped by transparency, passion, a service mentality and helpfulness

We’re now in an era of nodes, net promoter score and propagation planning

So what’s the value of an advocate

$3.60Vitrue, April 2010

So what’s the value of an advocate

$136.38Syncapse, June 2010

Reputation-enhancing

Monitor and defend your reputation online: for people and for spiders Customer service is now totally transparent Your genuine fans will stick up for you 2011 will see Google and Bing going big on

‘social’ search, as well as ‘Live’. Google’s algorithm now demotes brands

with critical forum comments

Transparency leads to advocacy

Advocacy in crisis comms

TV LICENSING EGSIn 2008, the community of fans for US TV Series, Jericho, badgered CBS to recommission the programme by delivering 20 tonnes of nuts to their offices. They did.

In 2010, the community of fans for a TV advertisement in the UK decided how a relationship would pan out

The Great Schlep mobilised young Jews to persuade their retired family in Florida to vote for Obama

Build relationships

Relationships featuring PRs and stakeholders have always been reciprocal

Relationships between advertisers and media owners have always been transactional

Build relationships

People like people who like what they like

Experiences make great talking points

Build relationships

Listen with passionEngage with understandingCreate great experiencesHelp by solving problems

Your audience is now your channel

1. Create content which makes people feel like laughing out loud, feel loved, feel clever, feel inspired, and feel like passing on

2. Solve people’s problems. Proudly

3. Be in it for the long term, not for a quick win

Define the specificsSales increase? Reputation improvement? Customer service?

Measure the outputssocial mentions, links, views, engagement, followers and friends

Evaluate the outcomes and impacts against budgetCPA, tracker research, behaviour change, sales increase

chris.reed@brewdigital.com@chris_reed