Marketers, Researchers, Lend Me Your Ears Brandweek By Joel Rubinson February 16, 2010
Researchers are a risk-averse bunch. Reluctant to try something new, they prefer to quantify things with precise metrics from time-tested methods. Brand managers have their hang-ups, too. Though happy to act on gut instinct, they’ll fight to control their brand and its message in the never-ending quest to keep both positioned where they want it. So there you have them: geeks and control freaks.
Or, I should say, there you had them. This traditional way of doing things is changing. I know because I witnessed it firsthand on Jan. 28 at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Industry Leader Forum. There, at San Francisco’s Bentley Reserve, researchers and brand managers—professionals known for methodical habits and a fierce degree of control—shared a stage to advocate a hitherto unlikely bit of strategy: listening.
Listening to what? To the gaggle of conversations, behaviors and signals occurring every second out there in the realm of social-media, search and managed communities; listening in on what the ARF calls the consumer backyard—a scary place to some, and understandably so. After all, on Facebook or in the blogosphere, the listener controls neither the environment nor the conversation.
A year ago, some in the industry were actually resisting these conversations; now, most everyone seems resigned to the truth: The future of their brands rests in part on how well they’re listening. Well, in San Francisco, I was listening to these new listeners, and what they said furnishes the branding community with a great deal to ponder.
First off, marketers are clearly learning to relinquish control. Jason Harty, brand manager at Vitaminwater (a unit of Coca-Cola) showed us the Flavorcreator—a Facebook app set up to take consumer suggestions for a new flavor with the promise to manufacture the winner. (The tagline: “Vitaminwater was our idea; the next one will be yours.”) As you might expect, Harty got pushback from the brass over the idea. “What if fans create a crazy flavor?” they wanted to know. “Do we still have to do it?” The brand manager countered: “Yeah, that was kind of the deal.” As it turned out, fans weren’t crazy. In fact, the winning flavor—black cherry lime, with vitamins and a kick of caffeine—made its debut at the conference. Can you hear the sound of marketing letting go? It was rewarded for doing it; Vitaminwater roughly doubled its fan base in Facebook (to 1.1 million) as a result of opening up the brand—in other words, listening.
A related point: You know the way that people conducting research interviews always say, “We won’t sell you anything. This is a marketing research study”? Well, when extracting insights by listening to social media, that rule is quite naturally broken. Why? Because smart brands aren’t just listening to what people are saying; they’re present in, and participating with, the place where that conversation is happening. Inherent to this process is active involvement—turning communities into brand ambassadors. Marketers, in other words, should do more than just listen; they must engage, build and sustain as well. The process may begin with listening, but it hardly ends there.
The research department has been learning to listen as well. Paul Banas, senior category insights manager for Kraft, told conference attendees that observations are “facts without wings,” that we need to listen in order to find the tension, passion and context expressed in natural conversations. Is what a marketer hears in social media valuable? Paul said yes—and he had real nuggets of wisdom to back it up. For example, listening to moms online taught him about using hot dogs as a Trojan horse to get kids to eat nourishing side dishes. In this same vein, Penn Schoen & Berland Associates vp Ethan Titelman related that a movie’s opening weekend box office can be better forecasted by incorporating the buzz on the blogosphere than by sticking solely with traditional research alone.
However, before I brag about just how far we’ve come, we should be honest about how far there is yet to go. Jeremiah Owyang, a partner focused on customer strategy for the Altimeter Group, outlined what he called the eight stages of listening, ranging from 1 (no objectives) to 8 (being wholly proactive and anticipating consumer sentiment). Asked to rate where their organizations were in the listening process, the audience members landed somewhere between a 3 and a 6; none was at the top of the scale.
For now, anyway. But change is in the air. Marketing used to be about physics; apply pressure, push consumers toward your brand. People didn’t always move, but they didn’t push back much either. Now that they can, don’t make them angry. Today, the branding game is about social connection, about brands connecting with people while people connect with one another. Brands should be part of the conversation, but that begins with hearing. Advertising, in turn, is still important, but its role has shifted. It should be an icebreaker for that conversation, a device to engender curiosity, and move consumers along the path to the purchase. Instead of pressuring consumers, marketers are now collaborating with them. Last year at our conference, marketers were talking about these things. This year, the evolution is clear: Talking has given way to using one’s ears.
