Being Peter Kim

Nielsen: "Our influencers, Ourselves"

Kate Niederhoffer, Director of Measurement Science at Nielsen Online spoke about a current work in progress - defining "influentials."  Is there a hotter topic in CGM for marketers?  Well yes, ROI, but we're closer to figuring this one out, or at least more people are trying.

Kate gave an academic explanation of the history of influence - from propoganda to personal influence to a renaissance of interest via online amplification.

Defining influencers happens in four steps:

1. Factors, focusing on three dimensions:  authority, popularity, virality
2. Characterization of influencers: factors, independent dimensions (low inter-item r-squared), unique combinations
3. Ensure algorithm is flexible enough to allow additional parameters, e.g. persuasiveness, linguistic style.
4. Check for face validity, e.g. peer review

The result is a final score, an "ideal conduit" that can and should be weighted depending on client goals.

Does it go deeper than this?  Probably.  But I don't have a PhD like Kate to explain everything properly here.

In a more simplified approach, Ken Cassar outlined a way for media planners to make influencers identification actionable.  Using data from the NetView panel:

1. Find users who visit niche/esoteric, i.e. "expert" web sites on topics
2. Users who spend more communication time than average (e.g. time spent, posting comments, etc.) on these sites are most vocal
3. Identify other sites visited where you can reach these vocal experts (behavioral targeting of sorts)

In an example for TV broadcasters, 4.4% of the at home population were in the influencer category.  65% of the sample was female, indexing at 124 vs. 74 male.  The 25 - 34 age segment was most influential in age demographic cuts.  The result?  USA Today rates highest for site most likely to be visited by TV watcher influentials (684 index).  [...?]

*****

I had to get back to Boston and the afternoon sessions couldn't be blogged anyway.  But during the day I met a couple people I've seen online:  Emily Riley from Jupiter and Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy PR.  Saw Henry Copeland from BlogAds around, tweets too.

Free WOM webinar with Umbria - Nov 7

I'm delivering a free webinar with Umbria CEO Janet Eden-Harris on word of mouth marketing and brand monitoring.  It's scheduled for Wednesday November 7th at 3 pm Eastern.

We'll be talking about taking a left-brain approach to making WOM work.  More potential takeaways:

• Learn not only what is being said, but who is doing the talking
• Discover common characteristics of a target segment
• Learn how to measure the effectiveness, momentum and engagement of your marketing
• Take away practical tips for adjusting campaigns for the shifting marketing landscape

You can register with Umbria directly.

iPhone: advertising and brand monitoring

The iPhone goes on sale today, which you probably knew.  Do you remember seeing any ads for it?  TV?  Print?  Banners?

I've seen some paid keywords on Google.  Given the amount of buzz, hype, anticipation around the launch - why even bother?  (unless you're marketing Blackberries.) Today I got an email with the image at left.  Search ads and email - that's it.  Compare that to the consumer-generated content around the product:  on YouTube, Flickr, and in blogs.

Here's what brand monitoring experts have to say about the launch:

- Matt Hurst at Microsoft predicts the topic will garner 1% of blog discussion today.  Looks like he's right.
- Nielsen Buzzmetrics indicates positive sentiment around features.  Relevant Noise disagrees.
- BrandIntel points out that although discussion levels are high, purchase intent remains neutral.

So it seems as if we have a Subservient Chicken question here:  lots of buzz, but what about sales?  At minimum, the iPhone is already a huge success for the Apple brand and time will tell us about the bottom line...

Fun with Yahoo! Pipes: Brand Monitoring

Messing around with pipes for an hour this evening (morning?).  Created a mega-brand monitoring feed pipe.  Still need to tweak the filter as Max's posts seem to show up at the bottom, even though I have a sort/descending turned on (Wordpress issue?).  If anyone has suggestions, thoughts, etc let me know...

Behind The Chicken with Barbarian Group

At the IHAF spring meeting on Friday, Rick Webb from Barbarian Group spoke about creativity.  If you didn't know, this is the company that built Subservient Chicken.  Two of Rick's favorite commands:  "build a tent" and "make a sandwich".

Also, check out some free stuff from Barbarian:  magnetosphere, an iTunes visualiser; and grass, an interactive application.

Research Agency CEOs at ARF re:think

The second day of the ARF's re:think conference opened with a panels research agency executives, called "The Research Agency of the Future" with the CEOs of GfK, Kantar, TNS and Nielsen.  Moderator Jim Figura of Colgate-Palmolive said it should have been called "Insights Agency of the Future."

Most of what these CEOs had to say didn't get beyond what you can read in the press today.  Thus as Joe Mandese wrote in his post on the official re:think blog, the interesting parts of the panel came from reading between the lines.  In fact, most of the talking points were so generic that I didn't know what company was being referenced for the middle two speakers.  GfK was introduced by the moderator and Nielsen went last by process of elimination.  But for Kantar and TNS, it was a few minutes before I knew what company was being represented.  This was because none of the CEOs told the audience their name, title, or company when they took the podium - they all just started talking.  Perhaps these guys are rockstars of research to the ARF audience.

Klaus Wübbenhorst from GfK proposed his company was best positioned to help businesses - after all, GfK stands for "growth from knowledge."  I asked Klaus about GfK's brand monitoring plans after the panel.  No response - he looked at me as if I had just asked him to go a grab me a coffee with cream and two sugars.  I asked again, mentioning how TNS and Nielsen were building capabilities in the space.  He mumbled something to the effect of "sure, it's important."  I asked him if he thought brand monitoring were an important capability for a research firm to have in its portfolio.  Certainly a slow-pitch underhand softball in my book, but it must have looked more like a Matsusaka gyroball.  No response.  Pretty clear he just wanted me to leave; unfortunately, I had to in order to deliver my breakout session.  Note to Klaus:  70 million and growing.  Think about it.

Credit to Eric Salama from Kantar who was aware enough that the Blackberry in his pocket was creating interference with the mic.  Salama says it's time to mind the gap between what research firms promise and what they deliver.  His firm's strategy hasn't changed for four years, built on three principles:  people, innovation, and data quality.  I asked Eric about brand monitoring, too.  He said none of his companies were doing it.  I asked about Visible Technologies - he said, "yes, we have a partnership with them."

David Lowden from TNS had this to say:  "The research company of the future will be a partner with its clients."  "Cost-effective servicing is an increasingly important issue, but quality must remain."  "Clients will only commit to insight that positively impacts business in a meaningful way."  He did mention the Cymfony acquisition as part of their efforts to stay cutting edge.

David Calhoun from Nielsen was certainly different in appearance - he was the only panelist sans jacket.  He also heavily referenced his client-side experience, which others did not.  Calhoun was formerly at GE and mentioned his experience and mentors from there both in his prepared remarks as well as the Q&A.  These remarks certainly pointed out management acumen that puts The Nielsen Company in good hands - hopefully Calhoun will be able to change the industry standard as well and help marketers make advertising work.

Involved in WOM? Let's talk.

If you are involved in the WOM marketing space, you want to know how big it is, how fast it's growing and where you fit in.  Me too.

My commitments with Forrester's Marketing Forum are complete and now it's time to get back to the research.  I'm starting to work on a WOM marketing forecast in conjunction with WOMMA.  To kick things off, I'll be at two events next week and would love to hear your thoughts:

- Tuesday April 17th:  The ARF's re:think, New York (my session will be on agencies at 11:15 am)
- Wednesday April 18th:  WOMMA's WOMBAT 3, New Orleans (not speaking, attending to listen to you)

Feel free to leave a comment or drop me a note - I'd be happy to set up a specific time/place to meet!

TNS acquires Cymfony

The news is out - TNS has acquired Cymfony.  The new operating unit will be called TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony.

I'm not surprised - in my opinion, this was inevitable.  In the Forrester Brand Monitoring Wave, published in September 2006, one of the clear conclusions was that Cymfony would be a great fit with a large research firm like TNS. 

Did they sell too early?  From what I can see, mainstream attention is just starting to turn towards brand monitoring services.  In my conversations with vendors, everyone loves the fact that Nielsen brought attention to the space - now TNS ratchets it up a notch - and my Forrester wave helped validate the market as well.  But nobody wants to sell too early - like selling the rights to the Nike logo for $35 - and thus the market has been dating around, but not making long-term commitments.

Now, expect additional activity in the brand monitoring market.  Other conclusions from the Wave:

• Agencies will boost their market research capabilities.  I think this is the next big deal to be announced. MotiveQuest is the most likely candidate here.
• PR services agencies upgrade their offerings.  Not yet, but WagEd launched their own product  called Narrative Network.  Biz360 is a great fit for one of these firms - some of which could benefit from better social media skills.
• Nielsen Buzzmetrics will go public.  Wrong.  No IPO in sight as the measurement juggernaut formerly known as VNU builds an integrated measurement offering.  But now they have a challenger.
• Factiva will boost consumer capabilities.  Nope.  They were consumed by Dow Jones in December.  What this foreshadows, however, is the impending forward integration of data source owners, like Verisign.  Or at least starting to charge a premium for their services.

So who's next?  Well, the only ones I didn't mention yet are Brandimensions and Umbria.  For BrandDimensions, it'll mean selling off half the business, i.e. BrandIntel. I think Umbria will follow in the path of Buzzmetrics and Cymfony, getting paired up with a major research firm.  BTW did you know Umbria's CEO is the former CMO of IRI?

Too bad I didn't include a line in there about me becoming a billionaire!  Congratulations to Jim Nail, former Forrester analyst and Cymfony's CSO/CMO.

Free brand monitoring webinar

On February 22nd, I'll be participating in a webinar on brand monitoring with Umbria CEO Janet Eden-Harris, called "Look Who's Blogging: Tapping into the Blogosphere for Brand Insight." It's hosted by the AMA; registration is free.  Start time is 10 am Pacific.  Hope you can join us!

UPDATE:  Catch a replay of the session on-demand.

Portfolio of spam stock recommendations

Just for fun, I've set up a stock portfolio on Yahoo! Finance to track all the hot picks that make it through my spam filter.  There's a new widget on the right-hand nav to show its performance.  Basic approach: buy in lots of 100 less commission (same as my regular online brokerage). 

Will track recommendations in this post.

History:

• 26 Jan 07: Bought Physicians Adult Daycare (PHYA.PK).  Thanks, "Alex Walter"!
• 29 Jan 07: Bought Hemisphere Gold Inc (HPGI.PK).  Thanks, "Max McKnight"!
• 05 Feb 07: Bought West Excelsior Enterprises (WEXE.PK).  Thanks, "Danielle Kelly"!
• 08 Feb 07: Bought Mobile Airwaves New (MBWC.PK).  Thanks, "Annmarie Carson"!
• 13 Feb 07: Bought Kimber-X Resources (KRXR.PK).  Thanks, "Kyle Guerra"!
• 20 Feb 07: Bought Goldmark Industries (GDKI.PK).  Thanks, "Neva Powers"!
• 22 Feb 07: Bought Irwin Resources (IWRS.PK).  Thanks, "Eula McCoy"!
• 27 Feb 07: Bought Victory Energy Corp (VYEY.OB).  Thanks, "Jorge Gentry"!
• 28 Mar 07: Bought Peopleline Telecom (PPTM.PK) and Palomar Enterprises (PLMA.OB)
• 03 May 07: Bought West Excelsior Enterprises (TRDX.PK).  Repeat offender!

Think about the reality of enforcing WOM ethics

WOMMA applauds the FTC decision to not take an official regulatory position on word-of-mouth marketing.  Complainant Commercial Alert concedes defeat and calls it a "giant Christmas present."  The FTC will evaluate situations on a case-by-case basis to determine if law enforcement action is necessary.

BzzAgent has 450,000 agents.  Tremor has 230,000 teens.  Vocalpoint has 450,000 moms.  That's 1,000,000+ potential WOM nodes out there.  If one in a million agents don't disclose their affiliation when buzzing, who's at fault (i.e. who gets sued)?  The agent, network, media agency, and/or sponsoring firm?

More importantly, who files the complaints?  The burden of action falls to consumers - and a backlash against WOM doesn't seem imminent.  One solution?  A network of "anti-WOM" agents that would actively question when buzzed and take action to report disclosure or lack thereof.  But there's no money in this direction to fund such an effort and I'd bet that the demographics of those who'd voluntarily support such a cause diverge wildly from existing agent networks.

Otherwise, without Bones- or House-type forensics, enforcement will be nearly impossible outside of a closed-loop system, e.g. online.  You can track spam, flogs, and phishing - but not person-to-person non-disclosure.

WOMMA 2: Brand monitoring panel

I moderated a panel this morning at WOMMA's research symposium in DC.  Josh Hallett was live blogging and posted a great summary on the event blog.  The slides from my intro (slightly modified) are posted above - hosted at slideshare.

For more information on brand monitoring, see the Forrester Wave or previous blog posts.

Thanks to everyone who participated and attended!

WOMMA 2: Opening Session

Dr. Walter Carl from Northeastern University, one of the leading minds in WOM academics, kicked off the research symposium with a "State of WOM Research and Measurement" address.  Some highlights:

What does it take to start people buzzing?

• More likely to seek out and listen to WOM when purchase is higher risk, e.g. more talk about autos, less about toilet paper
• Extreme levels of satisfaction/dissatisfaction drive WOM
• Advertising can stimulate WOM
• Loyal customers tend to engage in WOM, but not always positive

What's the ROI of Advocacy?

• Likelihood to recommend as a proxy measure of advocacy
• Net Promoter Score (Promoters – Detractors); metric correlated with revenue growth
• Current controversy about relationship between NPS and business performance
• Challenge:  WOM is both a driver of future sales and an outcome of past sales

[the jury's still out on this one.]

Naturally, these points were all supported by citations of academic research, like this.

WOMMA Summit starts with big news

The biggest gathering of professionals in word-of-mouth marketing kicks off today - WOMMA's Research Symposium and Marketing Summit.  I'll be moderating a panel later today called "brand monitoring: following the conversation in a word of mouth world."

Any event organizer wants their conference to start out with a momentum-producing event...and this morning WOMMA announced via email that Andy Sernovitz, Founder and CEO, will be leaving the organization in April 2007.  In his words, WOMMA is "no longer a startup" and "the most important service a true entrepreneur can provide to his company is to get the hell out of the way when the startup days are over."  True that.

Perhaps we'll hear more about the reasons why over the next few days - book doing well?  Edelman fallout?  An early April Fools 2007 joke?

Best of luck, Andy.  In the past year covering the space, it's been quite a ride and fun working with you.

Forrester's Q3 2006 Brand Monitoring Wave is now live

I began working on the brand monitoring Wave in May and wrapped up the research with publication of the documents today.  More on the process and a pretty picture of the results on the Forrester Marketing blog.  More on the personal side of the process here.

The Wave is a quite intensive piece of research.  It's very process-driven which is good in some ways, bad in others.  The process makes for a very rigorous analysis.  It also means that there's very little time for other activities when you've got one in progress.  I ran in-person "lab" evaluations with each of the seven vendors.  I made 17 client reference calls with existing and former accounts.  I also developed the 56 evaluation criteria (with vendor input) and scales, scoring each vendor and backing it up with written analysis.  These scorecards turned into longer written documents in addition to the "long doc" that describes the brand monitoring market and process.  Moreover, there was discussion at each step of the way with vendors regarding their scores and my analysis, whether fact- or opinion-based.  It adds up pretty quickly.

As a result, I'm looking forward to taking a real vacation!  Haven't had a full week off yet this year...

A Chicken. Then Snakes. What next?

It ain't over for Snakes on a Plane.  Although media coverage calls the film a financial disappointment, we've only been through one weekend.  Calculating the P&L of a film can be tricky and isn't as straightforward as revenue less expense - see this example of how crazy things can get.

So now marketers will take these snakes back to their white collar labs and dissect them, in the same spot they autopsied a subservient chicken.  What will they find?

Some will mistake correlation for causation and make one of the remaining ten animals of the Chinese zodiac the star of their next viral marketing campaign.  Actually, narrow that down to eight - Crispin is making the Rabbit into a star and and someone trots out monkeys every year.

Others will go back to basics - "you have to start with a good product."  True, but the success of SoaP isn't about how seminal the film's content was - it's about the overwhelming consumer involvement in its marketing.

I believe that advertising has to do more than drive site traffic - otherwise we'd consider the Carl's Jr. + Paris Hilton ads on par with 1984.  Great advertising drives sales.  So the stage is set for the biggest viral hit of 2007, which will:

• Sync up with current memes - rising cultural trends.  This is tougher than it sounds; if you've ever produced a commercial (and I'm not talking SpotRunner here), you know how difficult timing can be.  You've got to be smart, in the loop, and a little bit lucky to succeed.
• Involve consumers early on, but not from the very beginning.  People are much better at critiquing something that already exists than creating something on their own.  Why are there so many more readers and commenters than actual bloggers?  Inventing is tough, innovation is how you make it your own.
• Come from a small to medium sized business.  Might be a smaller part of a whole - but marketers with fewer resources and less to lose tend to be much more creative.
• Be part of a new entry in an established category.  Derivative of the point above - less baggage to deal with.
• Use material from cultural and social edge that is comically acceptable, but would be uncomfortable or inappropriate with a slight twist.  Subservient chicken wouldn't be funny if it were a real person.  Snakes on a Plane could have easily been just another horror movie.  It's material that just approaches the line but doesn't cross it for an unexpected reason.  Cross the line and it's over.

So what's it going to be?  Depends on the brand and product - but next year does happen to be year of the pig...

UPDATE:  See my SoaP commentary on CNBC, below.

Owning WOM process: StoryCorps vs. JetBlue

The WSJ reports today on a brewing dispute regarding the collection of word-of-mouth information.  At issue is the use of mobile booths to record stories from people.

JetBlue is doing this for commercial purposes as part of their "Sincerely, JetBlue" campaign.  StoryCorps is doing this for humanities purposes as part of a cultural mission.

Unlikely that this will become a big issue as the process isn't core to JetBlue's business and StoryCorps is a non-profit.  However, as word-of-mouth marketing gains traction, it's likely we'll see business models and techniques patented like Amazon's 1-click.  Perhaps agent networks or feedback mechanisms...?

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BzzAgent to Pests: BzzOff!

In two related moves to make its agent network more attractive to advertisers, BzzAgent announced that it would expel up to 10,000 "pests" from its network (roughly 5%) and re-engineer its rewards system to attract and retain valuable agents.

For most companies, a housekeeping move like this wouldn't be publicized - but BzzAgent isn't a traditional company.  The company has already demonstrated a great deal of public self-awareness, examples being the "90 days" blog and political manuvering within WOMMA.  The need to clean up the agent network was inevitable and BzzAgent's announcement pre-empts the predictable ensuing backlash.  In a good show of listening to their stakeholders, a healthy discussion is in progress on the BzzAgent blog.

The decision to re-engineer the rewards system however is curious - when it should just be eliminated altogether.  A low rewards redemption rate (13%) can be attributed to many factors and it's in BzzAgent's best accounting interest to quickly dissipate its accrual for unused credit.  BzzAgent states that agents value "experiencing new products" as the highest benefit of participation and while earning rewards ranks next to last. 

BzzAgent already keeps a public top agents list - and should enhance their entire network with public rankings and profiles.  Let the bees hunt and gather, linking into personal blogs and other personal artifacts, giving even more data for advertisers to use.  BzzAgent would do well to let the benefits of membership and participation speak for themselves.  Recognizing prolific agents with a system like eBay stars or Amazon badges would make sense - along with a higher frequency of access to campaigns.  Eliminating the rewards system eliminates perception of bias in agent participation - along with pests who are only in it for the points.

In the long run, both moves make the network a more attractive resource for marketers, which results in wins for campaigns (e.g. better sample sets), agents (e.g. more access), and BzzAgent (e.g. more revenue).

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corporate kids on myspace

I was just thinking about the growing number of corporate characters on MySpace and then a post from Organic popped up in my RSS feeds.  Marketers are finding new ways to tap into MySpace every day and this tactic is increasing in popularity.  Are they finding success?  Here's one way to tell.

Organic commented on number of friends as a measure of campaign resonance - I'd like to take their analysis one step further.  Although the pages were supported by different levels of support, there are some clear differences involving orders of magnitude.  Starting with the number of friends in a network, divided by the number of days from the first posted comment to today (to get a sense for tenure), some differences emerge.

Let's call this a MySpace POPULARITY AND POWER RANKING just for fun.  [the number represents friends pro-rated based on number of days online]

• fox family guy:  3,708
• vw fast:  1,045
• dodge pig & bear:  698
• wendy's square:  503
• honda element:  216
• vw helga:  171
• dell dj ditty:  59
• ge elli:  14

Makes sense when you think about a "typical" myspace user, doesn't it?  Steve Rubel posted on The Magic "T" of Marketing yesterday - thinking about the PPR above, it should be noted that creating a myspace place for every campaign isn't right for everyone.  Then again, the cost of social computing technologies are so low - why not?

Speaking of which - the cost of securing rights and talent releases sometimes isn't cheap - be sure you get broad inclusion of internet/web rights before shooting your next campaign - and before agents start splitting out domain names in contracts!

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Mosquito Magnet - WOM

You might not be able to relate to this post if you spend most of your time in a fairly urban area.  But if you don't, or even enjoy visiting a park now and then, you know that summer's just around the corner which means...mosquitoes.  [btw don't click on the picture until you finish reading this post - it will make more sense.]

Look, I hate mosquitoes.  I can't find any redeeming answers for why they should remain in anyone's circle of life.  Skimmed Wikipedia; looks to me like all they're good for is transmitting malaria and west nile.

So...what's going on with the picture?  That, my friend, is the net from the inside of my Mosquito Magnet.  I read about this device years ago in a newspaper article or maybe an in-flight magazine and how they were being used by the government.  They're not cheap, starting at $200; the best models run around $1,300.  This article from 2003 discusses how the company had grown 25,615%.  That's a lot.

I'm guessing I don't have to elaborate on what the brown stuff is inside the net.  That picture is worth not one thousand, but only one word - "YES."  Which is the answer to the question, "do those things work?"

To this day, I've never seen an ad for a mosquito magnet and purchased mine on word-of-mouth, similarly influencing the sale of a few others.  Not sure what American Biophysics has for creative, but I'd say they are in prime position to launch a killer CGM campaign.

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