A ll Posts

In Love with Loyalty?

Everything we do – as people, as companies – is about creating relationships, engaging the audience, shaping and creating true loyalty. We’ve made it our business, at least in buzz words, to focus on the emotional bonds between humans and brands. And, don’t fool yourself those emotional bonds are very real. In fact, I give you Dove.

So, if these emotional bonds are real, then why do so many loyalty programs lack a balance in considering rational decisions that humans make, as well as those emotional triggers which are by far much stronger, much more engaging, and can be the foundation of true loyalty. In the book “Switch” (by Chip & Dan Heath), the Heath brothers explain to us that the rational side of our brain is comparable to a rider and the emotional side, to an elephant. Think about that for a moment: if the rider knows where he is going, then he can easily guide the elephant there, right? But, what if the elephant decides he’d much rather get that jar of peanuts; you know the one that is 12 miles off course. Who wins – rider or elephant?

So, what does this have to do with loyalty? In early indications of an upcoming Maritz Canada Inc. research*, over half of the respondents say that the company brand influences their decision to join the loyalty program in the first place and also agree that the loyalty program becomes an important part of their relationship with the brand. Not only that, but they also say that they actually modify their shopping habits based on where they can earn loyalty points.

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What type of social network influences behaviour?

Yesterday we looked at the motivations for why people engage in different social venues; this morning I came across an interesting new study looking at what type of social network best influences behaviour.

Because it’s all very well if a network spreads information like wildfire, but if that information doesn’t prompt users to do something – buy the product, sign up for the event, stop smoking, change the way they talk about the brand – it’s all so much worthless WOM.

Didn’t I hear something about this? via Lab2112@Flickr

The study, from MIT assistant professor of system dynamics and economic sociology Damon Centola, looked at the spread of health-related behaviour in two different types of social networks – one based around ‘long ties’, or many distant connections, and one based on denser clusters of more closely connected people.

Sociologists have traditionally believed that long ties are the key to the rapid and broad spread of word of mouth, an insight reinforced by a Guardian study presented at a WOMMA UK briefing last year. However, Centola found that to change behaviour, you’re much better off focusing on clustered networks.

It makes human common sense. It’s easy for us to quickly pass on a piece of content via a loosely connected contact; but to understand something more complex, or change ingrained behaviour, we’ll need exposure more than once, and from trusted and emotionally impactful sources. There is more work to be done, but as Centola says,

“For about 35 years, wisdom in the social sciences has been that the more long ties there are in a network, the faster a thing will spread. It’s startling to see that this is not always the case.”

The study is intended to help improve the design of effective health networks, but it has obvious implications for marketing. We’ve always emphasised the need for multiple entry points with a word of mouth campaign, in order to foster both deep and broad engagement. This ensures rapid visibility but also concrete behaviour change, leading to sales, subscriptions and changing attitudes.

This kind of insight is invaluable in tailoring engagement, according to both the brand’s priority and the nature of the community. Great stuff.

Molly Flatt

Women hold the purse strings – talk with them!

Women hold the family online shopping purse strings, so no matter what your product, you should be talking to women. Women are the ones using social media to build their relationships, and in this era of Relationship Commerce, those relationships are pure gold.

It’s the women who will take the time to ask for and give product recommendations. It’s the women who will tap into their networks to find the good deals. It’s the women who will gladly make sure all their friends hear about a wonderful new product they discovered… or a terrible product they would never buy again.

However, these relationships are meaningless for you and your brand if you don’t have ways for these women to easily talk with you. They want to know they can trust you, and how do they figure that out? They build a relationship with you, the “influencer” (seller) just like they do with their friends and other trusted information sources. You absolutely must make sure that women find it easy to talk to you and about you!

  1. Make sure social media tools and your own online communities are as easily accessible as your online product information. This shows that you are not afraid to have your customers / clients talk with each other, so you must not have anything to hide.
  2. Interact publicly with individuals of your audience. You know that the most successful relationships are two-way streets, so keep that in mind as you interact with your “audience.” Social media allows you to build very visible relationships (2000 Twitter followers? 2000 possible observers of any of your interactions) so every single interaction counts. An information push won’t get you anywhere – you have to ask questions and answer them! Then ask follow-up questions and answer those also. Follow me on twitter (@TedRubin) to see what I mean.
  3. Communicate consistently. Don’t expect to build trust if you are only responsive to your audience every now and then. Build social media response time into every day and your consistency will pay off. Only pay attention once in a while, and you have no chance to build a relationship. In other words, just like you can’t disappear in non-digital life and expect to keep your relationships in tact, you can’t just disappear online.

So take another look at your product and your brand offering. Are you talking with the women? You should be. You need to be. If you’re not, start making changes TODAY – your brand success depends on it.

Ted Rubin

The Great Influence Debate

It seems every so often a major debate arises because someone uses some math to redefine an accepted belief. Not a bad thing to happen as long as it is to improve mankind and not just to make a name for yourself. In fact, challenging current beliefs should be a regular occurrence.

This time it is about influence and I must say I’m concerned.

The Grudge Match

In the blue trunks we have the challenger, Duncan Watts, proclaiming the super influencer dead and raising the common man up on the pedestal as the new super being – power to the people! “Nobodies are the new somebodies” his sycophants scream from their blogs and Twitter accounts. Witness this interesting transcript where @GuyKawasaki (a super influencer under Gladwell’s model) echoes Duncan’s musings to the mesmerized crowd. (Warning! The transcript is long and chaotic, but worth the read just to see comments from everyone)

Quick question, if @GuyKawasaki was a nobody, would anyone have come to #techchat or RTed his comments? Irony? Maybe.

And in the red trunks we have the current champion, Malcom Gladwell, the godfather of the super influencer via The Tipping Point and champion to the elitist perspective of the power of the few. In his corner are the thousands upon thousands of marketers and companies who based their marketing strategies on reaching specific individuals to spread the good word.

Now the problem here is our champ is fighting with one hand behind his back because of his own views on using Social Media, opting instead for more traditional means such as speaking, his books and PR. With Malcolm’s absence from Twitter – does the champ stand a chance while every minute his idea empire is being besieged by Duncan’s minions?

If you believe, like I do, that ideas struggle for existence; rising and falling as they gain strength or weaken to competing ideas then this could be an interesting fight indeed. Natural Selection at work.

But before we get into the color commentary of our title fight, let’s first understand what the fight is about.

Somebodies, Nobodies and the Nature of Influence

So is there room for a third idea here on influence? One that lands squarely in the great gray area in between these two polar opposites. After all, how can a complex human condition such as influence be explained in such a black and white perspective? How can math or even Chaos and Complexity Theory, for all its power, truly understand a highly evolved and mostly subconscious powerful emotional layer such as how we influence each other?

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Picture This

One of the oft-overlooked elements in the routine of blogging is image selection. Now, not every blogger uses images, charts, graphs, or other visuals as part of their storytelling approach (Seth Godin, most notably, is almost always a text-only blogger).

But for those of us who do, our photos can be just as important and compelling as our written copy.

The art of communications and marketing is largely one of storytelling. As someone with small children, I can appreciate the necessity of images to help tell stories. Images can help to set expectations, evoke emotional responses, draw attention, provoke laughter, or symbolize irony, among hundreds of other things.

So you see, the cavalier approach to image selection simply won’t do for blogging. Or shouldn’t. Similarly, the sources and the rights of images needs to be taken just as seriously as choosing an image. This post is designed to help you think about where and how you choose images for your blog (or site, or brochure, or whatever), with some bonus content thrown in.

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Marketing Tool That Transcends Message & Media

Today’s marketing professional has an impressive tool kit at the ready. In addition to the staples of the past half-century or so, technology has created a whole new set that seductively promises to change the arithmetic and shrink things to manageable size. Where the world used to be an accessible oyster only for those with the budget, today’s venture can play in the global arena with even the scarcest of resources.

Okay — truth be told, many of us are still wrestling with pieces of the new tool-set. (Please submit all workable Social Media marketing strategies.)

But while in pursuit of promising new connections in an undeniably dynamic marketplace, it may be timely to revisit the tool that has always shaped, and will again change the discussion.

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The Relationship Commerce Revolution

We’re hearing more and more about “Relationship Commerce” these days – but how many of us actually understand its implications? I’ve spent years in the midst of the evolution of commerce: As traditional commerce shifted into a digital world, through it’s evolution into Social Commerce, and now as we come upon the brass ring – Relationship Commerce.

There are some guiding principals to Relationship Commerce. None seem drastically different on their own; though they seem radically new when applied to the realm of commerce:

Relationships matter. Discovering something you love is great, learning about it from someone you trust is even better.

Buying from someone you like is way more fun than buying from a BIG-BOX robot.

Shopping can be better.

Relationship Commerce is simple yet novel, it’s buying from people you know and trust.

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5 Standouts for a Business-Read Mashup

In our rapid-fire, digital generation, content comes to us—faster and from more sources than ever before. Regardless of its origin—Twitter, Google Reader, The Wall Street Journal, or your favorite blog—information is still king and great books are still treasures. Whether you’re a Gen Y in your first job, an On-Ramper who’s re-entering the workforce after raising children, or an executive in high gear, these five literary and corporate standouts will challenge your thinking and drive your differentiation.

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Social media: to plan or not to plan?


In the debate regarding whether or not social media should be planned, I typically fall on the “yes” side, while others may feel it should be more organic. Really, though, my answer is, “it depends who you are and what you’re doing.”

If you’re a large organization like Aurora Healthcare, you’re going to benefit from a more formal plan, for these reasons, according to Jamey Shiels, Aurora’s Director of Marketing:

“Our social marketing strategy is planned and documented. We have a corporate plan and smaller plans for internal partners that feed the larger plan. The documentation is critical for keeping groups focused on the long term strategy and goals. While documented, the material is not lengthy, one to two pages and is flexible to adapt to performance, user feedback and overall activity. Our success and ability to measure becomes easier to achieve with this approach.”

Yet, on the flip side, if you’re an individual, a small business, or a small, grassroots effort, having the “plan in your head” can be enough.

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Is Social Media the Cure for Apathy?

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere over the last 50 years the majority of people in the world lost their mojo when it came to fighting for change. Didn’t matter whether the issue was big or small, even bad customer service and poor quality flourished because of the divide and conquer realities of slow one to one and the high cost of mass communication.

People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.

The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”

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