Two weeks ago we released our research white paper, ‘Meet the Family: A new model for social influence.’ Our aim was to explore the different influences that impact upon purchasing behaviour within the family; but also, crucially, to identify which ones are most important, for which types of people.
So this week we’ve been reading with interest the new study from the Social Computing Group division of HP Labs, which also tries to examine what types of relationship most influence our behaviour in social.
Does the crowd trump your mates? Image via James Good
In ‘Swayed by Friends or by the Crowd?’ the HP team look at users of Mechanical Turk and conduct three empirical studies on the effect of friends’ recommendations vs general ratings on their behaviour. The gist of their findings?
“We find that for a user deciding between two choices an additional rating star has a much larger effect than an additional friend’s recommendation on the probability of selecting an item.
Equally important, negative opinions from friends are more influential than positive opinions, and people exhibit more random behavior in their choices when the decision involves less cost and risk.
Our results can be generalized across different demographics, implying that individuals trade off recommendations from friends and ratings in a similar fashion.”
It’s a small study specific to a very particular platform but worth absorbing nonetheless.
While offline word of mouth with friends and family still holds greatest sway over our decisions, might the wisdom of the crowd be what we’re seeking when we go online? Can the looseness of a ‘friend’ in social media (come on, for all your matey comments you haven’t seen that girl on Facebook since you were nine) devalue their influence?
Last year, the University of Washington Foster School of Business and the Wharton School of Business conducted another niche but noteworthy study on the influence of friends versus the crowd, this time on the topic of film reviews.They found that:
“if you pay attention to online movie reviews, you are likely to follow the crowd. If, on the other hand, you consider the online reviews generated by friends, you’ll probably come to your own conclusion.”
Burberry may be ‘the biggest luxury brand in social media’ (thanks to a wide-reaching use of social technologies, its own social network ,and a huge number of fans and followers) but that doesn’t impress as so much as how the brand is using those tools and engaging that community. For example:
“You have to create a social enterprise today; you have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand. If you don’t do that, I don’t know what your business model is in five years.”
Burberry has been executing lots of socially switched-on projects over the past few years, for example: Art of the Trench, a crowdsourced photography site where customers share images of their favourite coats; a holographic film immersion for its launch in China; and allowing customers to shop direct from 3D catwalk livestreams and in-store iPads.
In February, Burberry livestreamed their autumn/winter 2011 womenswear show from Kensington Gardens onto the famous 32m screen in Piccadilly Circus - which was viewed by over one million people online in more than 185 countries. And this week the brand continued the trend at London Fashion Week (#LFW) with a detailed social strategy:
premiering its catwalk collection on the ‘Tweetwalk’ so their Twitter followers see the clothes before the actual show
handing Burberry’s fantastic Instagram account over to photographer Mike Kus, the most-followed Instagram user in the UK, for the duration of the show
releasing the show’s soundtrack as an album on the iTunes on-demand service
selling the collection direct for a week after the show on Burberry.com and through ‘retail theatre’ events nationwide
This isn’t wildly innovative stuff, but it is situated in an innovative context – the traditionally closed and elitist world of couture. Burberry evidently refuses to believe that transparency will kill the aspirational desirability of its brand, and persists in democratising its experiences for more than a handful of underfed editors.
Social media has become an integral part of fashion weeks the world over, and we’ve done our bit to help our clients join in. The coup here is that Burberry’s prolific social tactics appear to be genuinely rooted in a commitment to sharing, providing immersive experiences, and putting the everyday fashion lover – not just the moneyed few – at the heart of everything it does.
Now that’s worth raising a lychee martini (or four) to.
Do you support a charity that uses social media to engage in a genuinely useful way?
This week our good friend Steve Bridger, alongside his colleague Anne McCrossan, has released a report called The Charity Social 100 Index. The Index looks at each organisation’s strength of income; strength of brand and social performance across social networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube; and general social media behaviour.
While lists like this have been created before, it’s the ‘social media behaviour’ measure that stands out here. As Steve and Anne put it in their accompanying Guardian article: “our study suggests that charities may be neglecting social culture as an element of their brand and the development of communities as part of their social media mix.”
While I disagree with their belief that charities should create their own insular networks of supporters which they organise and curate – people prefer to self-organise nowadays, and creating your own closet of supporters rather than engaging with all the passionate people already out there, on their own terms, seems bizarre – I entirely support their belief that charities need to start to focus on their internal processes, training their own talent and evolving their structure so that social becomes a way of being, not just a campaign.
Here at 1000heads we well know the huge opportunities (and challenges) in helping charities become social through our work with Cancer Research UK and YouthNet. We’ve spoken at various ‘tech for good’ conferences about how to harness the psychology of sharing. And this month I’ve been putting together a FREE event for WOMMA UK showcasing the work of Medecins Sans Frontières.
Tomorrow Thursday 22nd September from 8.30-10.30am, at Leon in London’s Spitalfields, Polly Markandya (Head of Communications) and Ben Holt (Digital Communications Manager) will talk about how Medecins Sans Frontières – a leading medical aid agency with a formidable reputation among the aid community but limited awareness within the wider UK public – uses word of mouth to boost their profile and supporter community.
They will be presenting their recent project ‘MSF Delivers‘. Created in-house and on a shoestring, MSF Delivers uses cutting edge 3D photography and documentary-style audio and footage to bring to the UK public the daily work of a single MSF medical worker – a British midwife called Samantha who works in eastern Congo. And after the event, we’ll have the opportunity to see for ourselves what Sam’s daily work is like through an awesome, immersive 3D experience.
To join us at the event just email julian@wommauk.org to register and reserve a place. If you can’t make it, drop us a line and we’d be happy to share our insights about how charities can go beyond ‘Likes’ to create truly social communities.
And while you’re at it, why not share your own favourite charity social media success stories in the comments below…
It’s Social Media Week this week and all across the globe, a multitude of key cities are gathering together to learn and discuss about the impact of social media on modern society today.
As part of our work with Nokia, global partner for Social Media Week, we’ve got teams all over the world helping with all kinds of different activations, similar to the work that we accomplished back in February.
Our brief was simple: how do you make the simple things you see around you, just that little bit more special?
Our response? We decided to create one of the world’s first Foursquare-enabled vending machines.
Unlike most machinery, the instruction manual is quite simple:
Anyone following on Twitter last week would’ve spotted this teaser we put out when we first went to test the machine above, I’m fairly sure no one managed to guess what the image was going to be!
If you’re at Social Media Week Glasgow this week, make sure you get yourself along to the Sky Park on Elliot Place and give it a go!
Three different subjects, all intrinsically linked in a multitude of ways. However, today I wanted to share with you three slideshare presentations covering off each of these subjects in various forms.
If you’re a grade one newbie or a seasoned master in any of the above areas, these slides will be of use to you.
First up, co-creation.
This presentation, from the smart chaps at the Board of Innovation, came my way via Google Plus just over a week ago and it’s taken me that long to truly process all of the data available. It not only introduces the concept of co-creation, but also talks through the guiding principles and then goes onto benchmark TWENTY different examples.
Really, really interesting reading for anyone with even a passing interesting in Co-Creation.
Next up: the Mobile Web. Or, in this case, Selling the Mobile Web.
Hat tip to @CarlMartin for bringing these slides to my attention; this presentation speaks to me for a whole number of reasons. First and foremost, I have mobile in my soul and so therefore anything and everything that helps move the handheld revolution forward is alright in my book.
Second, this presentation is about the mobile WEB. Often forgotten in the today’s world of quick-win ‘let’s make an app’ marketing, the mobile web has been playing second fiddle to mobile applications for some time. If I’m honest, the two should easily be able to co-exist comfortably together. However, that is not always the case
This presentation has great ideas, theories and strategies for attacking your own mobile website. Definitely worth a look.
A truly astounding number. Admittedly, the research was conducted with ‘just’ 9000+ people so it obviously isn’t a complete look at the social networked world we live, however if you’re hungry for the latest stats and figures, this isn’t a bad place to start.
Today sees the official launch of Different Size Feet, our specialist family consultancy unit designed to deliver in-depth insight into the area of family social influence.
Working closely with us here at 1000heads, Different Size Feet, (headed up by our family brands expert, Carrie Grafham) was developed to meet a need for greater understanding of parents’ purchasing dynamics – the role of influencers on and offline and how and when they made an impact on the end decision.
A recent large-scale study of family decision-making carried out by Carrie and her team has resulted in some fascinatingly rich data, some of which we will be sharing with you over the next few weeks. We will be discussing the relationship between on and offline influence, pester power, the role of the mummy blogger and gender differences.
In addition, and most excitingly, behavioural profiling was carried out into parental purchasing; we have developed eight social buyer personalities, sharing common traits around what and who influences them socially and how that translates into purchasing behaviour.
With the social business industry exploding at the moment, here’s a quick digest of some of the recent interesting developments, resources and reads out there to help you keep on top of the latest thinking and case studies.
First up, IBM, which we’ve profiled here before, continues to position itself as a leader in social business practice as well as technology. Fast Company’s interview with Ethan McCarty, their Senior Manager of Digital and Social Strategy – called Move Over Social Media, Here Comes Social Business – shows that the industry is increasingly permeating the mainstream.
Then this week, Dachis Group opened its Social Business Index to the public. The Index, another attempt to define the ROI and effectiveness of social business strategies, is built on top of the Group’s Social Business Intelligence Insight Platform and “tracks the performance of the most socially engaged global businesses, providing real-time ranking, analysis and benchmarking”. With over 26,000 brands currently loaded it’s definitely worth a play – as Headshift co-founder Lee Bryant says, “the idea here is to gauge the effectiveness of your organisation’s own social engagement strategies and tactics - not just sentiment but defined, identifiable behaviours”.
Yesterday, Chess Media Group published a new research report, The State of Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration. Based on a survery conducted over spring 2011 of 230 small, mid and enterprise size companies which are using collaborative technologies to improve their business performance, the main findings include:
Business managers and IT managers are beginning to work more closely together to co-own and co-sponsor emergent collaboration initiatives
There is not a strong enough focus on developing an enterprise strategy before deploying a technology platform
Solving a business problem or achieving an objective is just as good as being able to show a financial ROI
A combination of both a structured and unstructured approach is the most successful and commonly used approach by organisations
And finally, Jeff Jarvis’ new book, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way we Work and Live effectively explains how the need for social business has emerged. After putting our era of huge social and technological change in a grounding historical context, the book then “introduces us to the men and women building a new industry based on sharing”. For a taster, why not listen to an audio excerpt, watch a video or read the introduction below.
First up, our resident Kiwi and HR person, Lucy Armstrong, wanted to share this awesome piece of Rugby World Cup inspired Lego-based wonderment -
When we asked ‘Why is this cool?’ to the rest of the office, the simple answer was ‘BECAUSE IT IS LEGO!’
However, one thing that did come out of this was the amount of time and effort that goes into some of these cool things. The above stop-motion video leads quite nicely into another high-effort delivery, aka: cool thing number two -
Regular readers will know that we like our big Follow Fridays here at 1000heads and last Friday was no exception. The Nokia community team were in the office helping to create the above #FF message out of post-it notes. @My_E72 was over the moon with our message and well, we thought it was pretty damn cool too.
Our third and final cool thing came from one Joel Diamond. Joel had managed to locate what is being labelled as an ‘Audio-Haptic Navigation Environment.’
Following up on our recent shortlist success with N8Producers (awards announced later this week!), 1000heads are proud to announce a further five shortlist placements for two separate pieces of work.
First up, Behind the E7
In February of 2011, Nokia was launching its flagship enterprise phone: the Nokia E7. With more and more of their devices being well-reviewed for their industrial design, Nokia wanted to give a ‘behind the scenes’ demonstration video that not only highlighted the product itself, but also gave an insight into the design philosophy that exists within the very DNA of the company…
Hitting over 100,000 organic views in the first 24hrs was a huge success for both us and the client. Combining that with the top secret competition hidden in the video (did you spot it?) meant that overall, this is one of our best video creations to date.
Thanks to these results, Behind the E7 has been shortlisted for the following two awards -
At the end of 2010, Nokia partnered with Disney for the launch of the film Tron: Legacy. With the majority of the plot set ‘online’, it made perfect sense to compliment this with a social media campaign reflecting and building upon those elements. As the world’s leading word of mouth marketing agency, 1000heads were perfectly placed to deliver against this brief…
To date, this is Nokia’s most successful Facebook campaign, ever.
With that in mind, it’s great to see the above work has now been shortlisted for the following three awards -
