Tag Archives: word of mouth

23 February, 2011 · 4:44 pm

The Blessing of an Elusive Attention Span

Virginia Heffernan wrote a terrific piece in the NYT Sunday Magazine in late November 2010. Entitled “The Attention Span Myth,” she questioned the idea that the human attention span is in danger of eroding against the onslaught of technology and media. She spent a good part of the article arguing against enshrining  a long attention span as a morally and intellectually superior quality. But I found this particular paragraph the most powerful:

Whether the Web is making us smarter or dumber, isn’t there something just unconvincing about the idea that an occult “span” in the brain makes certain cultural objects more compelling than others? So a kid loves the drums but can hardly get through a chapter of the “The Sun Also Rises”; and another aces algebra but can’t even understand how Call of Duty is played. The actions of these children may dismay or please adults, but anyone who has ever been bored by one practice and absorbed by another can explain the kids’ choices more persuasively than does the dominant model, which ignores the content of activities in favor of a wonky span thought vaguely to be in the brain.

This insightful point puts the constant barrage of statistics on texting, video, and cross-media consumption into a very different light.  The point is that the cause and effect are essentially backwards. The always-on twitter-sized mediaverse is not creating our restless attention spans. Rather, our restless attention spans are creating the mediaverse. The reason that kids are texting their friends in history class isn’t because they are so different from the kids of 50 years ago, it is because they can. Quite simply, there were fewer options to being bored a generation ago. Back then, you could doodle, pass notes, or daydream. But if The Beaver and Cindy Brady could have gossiped with their friends instead of listening to a lecture on the Magna Carta, you can bet they would’ve done it. If good ol’ Dad in the worn leather chair could have checked out the sports scores when Ed Sullivan rolled out the trained dog act, you can bet he would’ve done it too.

In marketing circles, there are many who decry the media clutter as the enemy of effective communications. They protest that those fragile attention spans are making their jobs harder. With a bewildering number of choices at people’s disposal involving not only what types of media they consume, but when and how they consume it, it’s harder than ever to put across a marketing message. It was so much easier when people just stayed glued to their television sets. For this very reason, good marketers ought to be rejoicing. You used to be able to get away with being boring and expected as long as you had a big media budget. Now, the game is changing from who can command the airwaves to who can command attention. The winners will be those who can be the most interesting, entertaining, and engaging. That is a great thing for marketers. The harder it is for a company to connect with its current and potential customers, the more valuable those who can do it well become. Advertising people who used to complain about having to crank out formulaic commercials can revel in the challenge of making something that people will actually enjoy. I can’t speak for all my colleagues, but if smarts and creativity are increasingly the best ways to win, I can’t wait to play.

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28 June, 2010 · 11:26 am

Getting It: Charmin vs. Cottonelle

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make when attempting to use social media is focusing on the channel first. Many of them have been trained that success comes from tapping into what’s hot whether that be celebrities, television shows,  or urban slang.  So they go into social media by trying to figure out  the hot place to be.  First they went rushing into Second Life, then MySpace, then Facebook, and now iPhone apps.

That mentality misses the point of social media: it is not to intercept people on their way to what interests them,  it is to engage people so you are what interests them.  The first task is not to assess the popularity of something unrelated to who you are, it’s about finding something rooted in who you are as a brand that other people find interesting. And that’s where the real challenge lies.  Before you pick any social media channel, you need to figure out what makes you interesting to somebody. Sure, it’s easy to figure out why people would want to talk to you if you’re Nike, BMW, or Maxim. Who doesn’t want to talk about sports, cars or sex?

It’s a little harder when you’re a less naturally conversational product.  Even if it’s something people use a lot of, it doesn’t mean they want to have a conversation about it.  If you make socks, table salt or toilet paper, is there anything that could make a normal person seek you out?

It turns out there is, if you are smart about it. For proof, consider what Procter & Gamble has done with their Charmin toilet paper. By owning public restrooms, they found a reason for people to talk about them and with them.  In 2002, the brand team started Potty Palooza, a portable set-up of high-end public toilets that traveled around the country to concerts, festivals, and other events.  It became an attraction in its own right, and the subject of considerable buzz. They built on that momentum with the installation of luxurious public restrooms in key venues like Times Square. Most recently  they extended their idea into the sponsorship of a mobile app, SitorSquat, that maps out public washrooms around the world.  These efforts have helped strengthen Charmin’s place as the most popular toilet paper brand, and even to have its premium line cited as a leading economic indicator. They found a way to make  people want to talk about a toilet paper brand. They started by finding something inherently interesting about the brand, and then played it out in various channels where it fit.

They did not pick a channel and then shoehorn something into it. For an example of that, you can look at Cottonelle’s Facebook page. Here’s the mission of their page in their own words:

“The Cottonelle® Brand Facebook page is intended to provide a place for fans to discuss Cottonelle® products and promotions.”

There’s  no reason to go there unless you have some pre-existing connection to the brand. I can’t say what motivated this effort, but it seems like someone simply decided Cottenelle needed to be on Facebook.  They do a nice enough job trying to keep some kind of conversation going, but you can feel the strain like small talk between people who arrived too early for an office party.  It’s hard to have a meaningful conversation without something interesting to talk about.

(credit to Bill Hague of Magid Research for related insights)

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7 July, 2009 · 9:23 pm

Word of Mouth is Not a Channel

Personal InfluenceWord of mouth is the most powerful brand-building mechanism there is. This is not new, of course. The book on the left put rigorous data behind the idea that people were more influenced by their peers in marketing, politics, and fashion than they were by mass media. It is interesting to note that the book was published in 1955, and is well-known by most marketing researchers. That is why I am taken aback by people promoting word of mouth as the next big thing.

What is new is the means to witness, promote and harness word of mouth through digital social networks.  But this does not change the fundamental challenge to marketers, which is finding a way to generate genuine word of mouth in the first place. True word of mouth happens when a potential customer gets a sincere recommendation from someone they trust. True word of mouth cannot be generated directly by a company. If it is, it loses the sincerity and trust that make it so powerful. Instead, it has to do something that makes that trusted influencer want to recommend their product. High product quality might do that, mass media might do that, database marketing might do that, great customer service might do that, a viral video might do that. These are all marketing channels. They are all means to influence the influencers.

When new firms try to position themselves as Word of Mouth agencies, the trick is to find out what they really do. How do they generate word of mouth? If they say by creating buzz in the mediasphere, then they are a PR company. If they say by identifying influencers most likely to be the source of recommendations to others, they are a database marketing company. If they say by creating unique brand experiences, they are an events company. Word of Mouth is an end, not a means. It still falls on marketers to find and use the tools they need to make true word of mouth happen.

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