If you’ve been traversing the interwebs in the same manner as I have these past few months then you may remember these smart little ads from Google, informing us that ad space will work harder.
They’re not wrong. It is.
A few weeks ago I had to travel up to Grantham to speak to one of our clients, MARS, about how to build social into one of their newest (and most exciting) ventures. To get there, it’s a short tube ride from our global headquarters in Piccadilly, up to Kings Cross, from there a train ride to Grantham, whereupon a 30min cab ride awaits to cart you to the the MARS PetCare HQ in Waltham.
Obviously, when making any public transport-based travel plans, militant scheduling is required. TheTrainline.com is useful in this instance as it covers every overground train schedule in the country. Note; all I did was check the times of the trains. My browser knows this, Google knows this and so therefore, the ad that Channel 4′s adspace chooses to serve me when I want to read about the British Comedy Awards knows also.
Contextual web-based advertising. It’s a wonderful thing. The mind races through a thousand thought processes;
Wow, that’s awesome. I should screengrab that for the blog. Contextual advertising, nice. Wait a minute, are they allowed to do that? Hmm, maybe I said they could do that when I ticked some random box.. maybe, just through visiting their site, I’ve already agreed to let them follow me around the web.. is this cookie based? It must be.. What other data am I pushing out daily?
What other data am I pushing out daily?
What other data am I pushing out daily?
And how can it be used?
This last thought in particular is one we’re going to be coming back to over the next few months here at 1000heads. Over the past year or so we’ve been doing a lot of work on conversation metrics, purchase journey mapping and ultimately, the real value that word of mouth can bring to any business, globally.
Combined, these three content streams can provide some very real data about how consumers like you and I go about our daily decision making processes; in the first instance it really is quite scary… but in the second, once all the data is locked down and independently verified – for brands at least – it can be very, very useful indeed.
As Google might say – ‘WATCH THIS SPACE’ for more on this… in the meantime, tickets to Grantham are only £9.
Back in December last year, we kicked off a huge global word of mouth campaign for Nokia entitled ‘N8 Producers‘.
We’re about one week away from the final closing date and the standard of entries we’ve had in is absolutely astonishing. Covering off extreme sports, special effects and just plain awesome story telling (sometimes a combination of all three) we can quite honestly say that there cannot be a more fantastic collection of campaign-based user generated content anywhere else in the world.
Here are some hard numbers (as of ten days ago)
9million opportunities to view content
10,000likes & comments in social
250,000 views across both YouTube and Vimeo
(withoutany bought media support)
3,700 episodes of conversation
With one awesome entry even being shown on ESPN!
(average audience of 275,000)
Every single entry is brilliant in its own way but, to whet your appetite, here’s a selection of what we’ve had in so far… and remember: each and every producer shot their film with their very own Nokia N8.
We love to showcase the best conversational work being done by brands, and this ad by BMW is no exception. It’s based around the Chinese proverb “Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand” – as good a mission statement for consumer engagement as I’ve heard.
Innovative tech, an inspiring narrative and a collective experience in a real space. Old-school cinema ad plus new WOM thinking equals win, win, win.
Now close your eyes.
(OK, so I tried to transmit a 1000heads logo through the screen, but I’m not quite there yet. Imagine it instead.)
You remember Frank Carson right? Northern Irish comedian, star of Opportunity Knocks and uncle of Trevor Carson bright hope on the Northern Irish goalkeeping scene (currently under contract at Sunderland)? Of course you do. Then you’ll remember his catchphrase ‘It’s the way I tell ‘em’. And Frank was onto something there…
The way you receive a message is often just as important as the content of the message itself. Sometimes it’s more important.
If for example, you want to tell people you have a lawnmower for sale you could stick up a sign in the supermarket. But that isn’t very exciting.
You could dial it up a little then, by sticking your lawn mower on your front lawn with a nice hand painted sign. And that might turn a few heads.
Or you could hire a flock of sheep to crawl through the streets of London followed by a blimp with ‘You could have these sheep, or one lawnmower to keep your grass tidy – I know which one costs less in ongoing vet bills’ scrawled on the side. Same message, different methods.
Now, this is hardly startling stuff, marketers of all types are always looking for new ways to make their message to stand out. But what is often missing from the context, is any emotion. A sense of resonance that brings the content alive in a smart, and engaging way. Sure we can make the sign a different shape, or bigger, or project it on a building, or write it in the sky, or tattoo it on the knuckles of a bus driver, but unless that builds the message and becomes part of the interaction itself, we could be doing more.
A great example of this, is a neat little idea I picked up from Make Magazine…
When you leave a house, especially if you’ve lived there for a long time, it can be a little sad. Sometimes you might want to leave something behind, but not something too conspicuous. So how about a message hidden behind a light switch?
Imagine the moment: you’re doing a little DIY, it’s a lazy Sunday and it’s raining outside. You unscrew the light switch because you want to fit a new dimmer let’s say. As you take it off you see this text, and reading it, you discover the story of someone who lived there before you. Maybe recently, maybe many years ago. Now I don’t care what that message says, you’re going to read it. And you’re going to smile. And you’re going to talk about it.
In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with more and more messages in more and more invasive ways, the discovery of something unexpected becomes all the more precious.
Now, it’s unlikely that Mega Corporation Ltd are going to start putting things on the back of light swtiches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at the media we use to promote messages from a much more emotional angle. Discovery, disruption, secrecy, personalisation and wit all have their part to play and when they collide the connection between the message and reader can go even deeper.
Have you seen any great examples of messages resonating in new and unusual ways? Do share in the comments…
You remember Frank Carson right? Northern Irish comedian, star of Opportunity Knocks and uncle of Trevor Carson bright hope on the Northern Irish goalkeeping scene (currently under contract at Sunderland)? Of course you do. Then you’ll remember his catchphrase ‘It’s the way I tell ‘em’. And Frank was onto something there…
The way you receive a message is often just as important as the content of the message itself. Sometimes it’s more important.
If for example, you want to tell people you have a lawnmower for sale you could stick up a sign in the supermarket. But that isn’t very exciting.
You could dial it up a little then, by sticking your lawn mower on your front lawn with a nice hand painted sign. And that might turn a few heads.
Or you could hire a flock of sheep to crawl through the streets of London followed by a blimp with ‘You could have these sheep, or one lawnmower to keep your grass tidy – I know which one costs less in ongoing vet bills’ scrawled on the side. Same message, different methods.
Now, this is hardly startling stuff, marketers of all types are always looking for new ways to make their message to stand out. But what is often missing from the context, is any emotion. A sense of resonance that brings the content alive in a smart, and engaging way. Sure we can make the sign a different shape, or bigger, or project it on a building, or write it in the sky, or tattoo it on the knuckles of a bus driver, but unless that builds the message and becomes part of the interaction itself, we could be doing more.
A great example of this, is a neat little idea I picked up from Make Magazine…
When you leave a house, especially if you’ve lived there for a long time, it can be a little sad. Sometimes you might want to leave something behind, but not something too conspicuous. So how about a message hidden behind a light switch?
Imagine the moment: you’re doing a little DIY, it’s a lazy Sunday and it’s raining outside. You unscrew the light switch because you want to fit a new dimmer let’s say. As you take it off you see this text, and reading it, you discover the story of someone who lived there before you. Maybe recently, maybe many years ago. Now I don’t care what that message says, you’re going to read it. And you’re going to smile. And you’re going to talk about it.
In a world where we’re constantly bombarded with more and more messages in more and more invasive ways, the discovery of something unexpected becomes all the more precious.
Now, it’s unlikely that Mega Corporation Ltd are going to start putting things on the back of light swtiches, but that doesn’t mean we can’t look at the media we use to promote messages from a much more emotional angle. Discovery, disruption, secrecy, personalisation and wit all have their part to play and when they collide the connection between the message and reader can go even deeper.
Have you seen any great examples of messages resonating in new and unusual ways? Do share in the comments…
I like the new BMW mini, I have driven a few, including the supercharged Cooper S, and I like them. They are quick, well equipped and, with the BMW brand behind it, I assumed they were quite well-built as well.
Then I met a guy who worked for a BMW dealership, he was a mechanic and spent a great deal of time explaining to me in some detail how poorly built the cars actually were and how he was amazed they hadn’t been recalled for various engine problems. Safe to say that damaged my perception of that brand to some degree.
More importantly I share his information with my friends, it spreads, now I have even put it online, and I trust his advice more than most because he is a genuine expert in his field (well, compared to most) and he actually works for the company he is discussing, so he has an intimate knowledge of the product.
Now this is a big problem for brands: brands spend a lot of time and money creating the brand message, now, many brands spend a lot of time monitoring and engaging in online conversation with their communities, advocates and detractors, to understand how their users perceive their brand and discuss it, but here is my problem…
WORD OF MOUTH BEGINS AT HOME
It doesn’t matter how much your community get excited about a product or how many clever WOM, social media and other campaigns you come up with, if you have your own employees telling all their mates not to buy your products then you might as well not bother.
Your employees should be your core advocates, (and no, I don’t just mean your sales teams!!) they should be as, if not more, excited than anyone else about your new products and services, and it doesn’t matter who: from the CEO to the product managers, marketing & PR to the support staff – they should all be using and advocating your services over it’s competition. If they’re not then you have a work to do, if they are actively telling people NOT to buy your products then you have a big problem!
But there is a challenge…
Here it is: Your employees are often the most qualified to hate your products and tell everyone what is wrong with them.
Why?
Because they are the most embedded, they are the people who build, market and sell the products, they know where compromises are made, they know where the competition is strong and they are the first to see problems, as they deal with the angry customers, both online, in store and on the telephone.
Let’s take the example of my friend the BMW mechanic again: every day he goes in to work and he spends his day fixing cars, he gets to know the trends, where problems arise and he gets to see angry customers presented with large bills, he may think he has a solution because he can see that washer X is too weak or the positioning of part Y is off, he is frustrated because no one listens to him, so he thinks the designers are idiots (they’re not, but that’s his perception), his frustration is shared in the form of negative WOM.
So what is the solution?
Well it depends on your company but some general points are outlined below:
Measure internal WOM, don’t spend all your time and effort on monitoring social media, look internally as well, ask your employees (anonymously) and try using very simple surveys like NPS scoring to avoid overwhelming your internal teams with feedback when all you want is a pulse.
Have proper feedback systems in place, let these hidden internal experts, who work on the “front line” spend time with the product managers, tech teams and head office staff, help them to understand the positioning of the product and why it has been made the way it has, get them excited and listen to them, take their feedback and use it!
Give them a reason to use your products, big discounts, free if possible, offer them friends and family discounts and referral schemes for sales (give them a damn good reason to use and promote your products)
Make sure they see happy customers as well as pissed off ones! – Use the intranets, tools like socialcast, or even bulletin boards to share positive feedback and reward those responsible with tangible prizes (don’t just reward your sales teams for good work!)
Involve them in the mission of the company and give them a good, happy working environment! Easier said than done, I know, but a happy employee who understands why they matter is far more likely to be an advocate employee than a detractor employee!
“Yes this is all very nice Tom, but where is my ROI?”
Well that is an easy one actually!
Let’s use BMW as an example again, now BMW has around 98,000 employees, so lets say they spent £500k on an internal WOM campaign to improve their companies internal NPS score, they put in place a number of the bullets above and from it just 0.05% of their employees “sold” an additional car on their behalf by advocating their products and, based on experience, the average price of a new BMW is £20k (that is a guess from looking at bmw.co.uk) then in one year that is £980k of additional sales, just in the cars, not to mention finance, servicing etc. And if you use staff referral and reward schemes or family + friend discounts properly then you can measure a high % of that return very accurately.
But the best bit is that you additionally to the sales you can measure is the increased positive WOM created that spreads through the community and improves brand perception leading to more sales… However this success can be tracked with key KPI’s like internal NPS, which I outlined above. And you can measure pre/post campaign sales uplift.
Anyway that is it!
WOM begins at home, don’t forget to measure it and encourage it because it will make you money…
I am not sure if NPS has been used for internal comms at all, but would be keen to find out, any one have any thoughts or case studies?
It’s five tick boxes, and a bit of text. That’s it.
But it makes a huge statement.
This is the current menu they’re using in Ping Pong (a London based dim sum restaurant with awesome prawn balls, for those not in the know…) Ping Pong’s menus are fairly unique, in that you use them to fill in your order (just put a mark next to the item), and hand the whole thing to your waiter. It’s easy, and it’s simple. And it’s always been that way.
What’s new however, since my last visit at least, is this top section. Five simple tick boxes that put you at the centre of the evening. Now that’s what you call service. Especially for a UK audience with our reserved ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ attitude. Everyone wins. And it takes 10 seconds.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that the most helpful ideas, and those with the most impact, can be achieved without the need for fancy technology, or expensive gizmos. Sometimes all it takes is a little thought and a second print run of menus.
Cost to do it? Minimal.
Cost of not doing it? In today’s climate, who knows…
It’s five tick boxes, and a bit of text. That’s it.
But it makes a huge statement.
This is the current menu they’re using in Ping Pong (a London based dim sum restaurant with awesome prawn balls, for those not in the know…) Ping Pong’s menus are fairly unique, in that you use them to fill in your order (just put a mark next to the item), and hand the whole thing to your waiter. It’s easy, and it’s simple. And it’s always been that way.
What’s new however, since my last visit at least, is this top section. Five simple tick boxes that put you at the centre of the evening. Now that’s what you call service. Especially for a UK audience with our reserved ‘don’t want to make a fuss’ attitude. Everyone wins. And it takes 10 seconds.
It’s easy to forget sometimes that the most helpful ideas, and those with the most impact, can be achieved without the need for fancy technology, or expensive gizmos. Sometimes all it takes is a little thought and a second print run of menus.
Cost to do it? Minimal.
Cost of not doing it? In today’s climate, who knows…
However, what with #NewTwitter on the scene, all that hard work and stunning imagery we advised back in January is going to waste; it’s now suddenly hidden behind Twitter’s brand new, super-slick and super-fast web interface.
Damn.
This means change. But do not fear, change is GOOD!
We’re off to tell our friends and clients to make use of this window ASAP and to get to work on changing their Twitter background sharpish.
Perhaps you should too
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EDIT 1:
If you want to create your own, then we recommend graphic that has a 20pixel gap at the top and a 48pixel width for the side. We’d also recommend, for now at least, that you create something that works on both #newtwitter and old.
EDIT 2:
If you’ve updated your background because of this post, then please do leave a comment with a link. We’d love to know who’s not only benefited from this blog but also – more importantly – exactly how creative our readers can get with such limited space!
I found this website the other day. It’s called web.without.words. It’s awesome.
Below is the rendering of a certain famous website in their own style. Can you guess what it is? Click through for the answer…
It’s a simple enough concept. The web without words. Just blocks. It makes you look at something you possibly look at every day from a different stand-point. And that’s generally a good thing.
In this example, it might be more geeky fascination than anything wholly practical, but hey, at least I can easily now identify that this site has five images on the page. Probably not something that would stand out on the final design. And if I was looking for entrants for the world’s best website that specifically features only five images on the front page, I’d certainly be in a better place than I was this morning.
Day to day we look for different ways to approach projects, and it always helps to look at things from a different angle. In the same way it helps highlight the elements that didn’t seem obvious before. And that can lead to new things, interesting things, and even great things. And all you’ve got to do is wonder what would happen if, instead of waiting at bus-stops, people descended onto buses from the first floors of office buildings. Or why we don’t just go chew caramels instead of ‘grabbing a coffee’. Or how things would pan out, if politicians were just straight forward and honest.
Look at things differently, you never know where it will get you.
