As a marketing researcher and consumer advocate, I’ve long held that no business would be in business without customers, and that the consumer-brand relationship is paramount in all business activities. The Internet has made these relationships both more intimate and interactive. And selling can be a bit more difficult in this environment. Many of the old “relationship” rules no longer hold up.
“Brand Butlers” – just the clever name – caught my eye recently. Coming out of TrendWatching.com, this opinion piece says there’s a transition underway: “Why serving is the new selling” is their proposition.
The argument is that recession-weary consumers are “jaded, time-poor, and pragmatic” and are looking for “uber-relevant services” offered anywhere, anytime – by companies that show they aren’t in it just for the money (that they care about their customers and their lives).
From a brand perspective, these new, closer relationships allow for greater interaction, more immediate understanding of the customers’ needs (as it directly or indirectly relates to the brand), and greater feedback overall.
Personally, I don’t think is this an entirely new wave or generation of relationship marketing, but rather an outgrowth of a related technology which is allowing for better, softer-sell, sponsored-sell, and generally relationship-building opportunities. (Hence the 2.5 designation.)
Having said that, the Brand Butler paper has some great examples of their new relationship-service proposition. A lot of them are mobile web apps for smartphones and others are web-based or offline. Take a peak.
- Obvious Butler: Mastercard’s ATM Hunter iPhone app allows users to find their nearest ATMs by entering their location or using built-in GPS functionality.
- In the Know Butler: Nike’s True City iPhone app aims to give consumers ‘insider’ information on six European cities, while also allowing users to share their own tips and delivering exclusive Nike offers and information.
- Money-Saving Butler: Sprize, provided by Gap in and around Vancouver, BC, allows shoppers to register online before they shop, and if an item’s price is reduced within 45 days of purchase, their Sprize account will automatically be credited the difference.
- “Finding” Butler: Pet food brand Purina offers a branded application that helps consumers to find ‘Petcentric’ locations in their vicinity.
- Connectivity Butler: vtravelled, launched by Virgin Atlantic, is a social network aimed at creating a global community of travel lovers. The free service allows members to share travel knowledge, thoughts and photos, and access real time updates about destination events and information.
- Health Butler: The Nivea Sun iPhone app is designed to help Brazilians tan safely. The app collects information about the user, suggests the correct SPF to be used on a particular day, and alerts the user when the protection should be reapplied.
- Advice Butler: In 2009, Smirnoff held a series of master-classes for men wanting to become ‘Modern Gentlemen’. Three complimentary classes were delivered in London to a limited number of guests, focusing on classic cocktail making, style consulting and grooming.
- Utility Butlers: The Zipcar iPhone app allows members of the car-sharing service to find, reserve and unlock vehicles using their mobile device. And ColorSnap is a free iPhone app from US paint brand Sherwin-Williams that allows consumers to match the color of a photo taken on their iPhone with over 1,500 colors listed in the Sherwin-Williams database.
(Source: www.trendwatching.com/trends/brandbutlers/)
Clearly, the focus is on service (not selling) and supporting a brand by supporting key target groups in ways that go beyond the tried and true.
Inspired to come up with you own Brand Butler idea? These ideas are fun and clever. My only suggestion if you’re developing for smartphones is that you develop for the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry platforms.
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had a working theory that the social media buzz of last year is fundamentally changed. I’m not suggesting that social media is dead – no, it’s here to stay. Rather, there’s an evolution to its usage; it’s something of a maturing market. Over the past week, several news headlines have caught my attention:
MySpace looks to the past for its future. The social networking site plans to return to its roots by pushing entertainment content and jettisoning portal-like features. (3/10/10, LA Times)
Facebook and Twitter join the location wars. Facebook and Twitter are each rolling out geo-location services designed to link updates to users’ current locations. Twitter’s feature uses Google Map overlays to show users’ whereabouts, while Facebook plans to introduce a location-based service at next month’s f8 conference. (3/10/10, Smart Brief on Social Media)
At SXSWi, Twitter may finally have met its match. No question Twitter is still huge here, but Foursquare and Gowalla have to be considered a major part of people’s organizing principle. (3/16/10, CNET.com)
Surprised? It was only a matter of time before end-users started asking – and expecting answers to – the question: “what’s in it for me?” (We saw the same thing with Internet adoption in the mid-to-late 1990s.) The economic downturn of last year, in my opinion, helped fuel interest in social media (people had more time on their hands), which may have accelerated the questioning of social media’s value/investment.
A Barracuda Labs’ study of 19 million Twitter accounts supports this idea, at least in part. Interest in Twitter peaked during the first two-thirds of last year, the height of the economic downturn.
This study reported on in MediaMemo, also did an interesting analysis: they defined “True” Twitter users as those who had at least 10 followers, were following at least 10 people and had tweeted at least 10 times. Using that definition, only 21% of Twitter users were “True.”
Furthermore, “in terms of tweets, the report estimates that 34% of Twitter users hadn’t tweeted even once, while a whopping 73% of Twitter’s users tweeted less than 10 times. That means nearly all of the tweets on the social network were coming from about 1/4 of the user base. Power users dominate.”
If the 80-20 rule applies, that means that around the world, around 5% of Tweeters are generating the content. In all likelihood, that’s not very engaging or interactive for most people.
So the evolution in social media isn’t all that surprising. People want to be noticed for their efforts and geo-location services get them noticed.
If you’re a marketer who’s still wondering about social media and its payout, particularly if you have a retail presence, look into the geo-location services and design retention and promotional programs around them. (They will be especially effective with your younger target and should be eminently measurable.)
If you’re into social media, keep an eye out for the aggregation services (tweets posting to Facebook; the centralization of content). This way, if you decide to take a “short-cut” you don’t lose your reach with your audience.
Want to learn more? There’s a great piece from Mashable called “9 Killer Tips for Location-Based Marketing” which you can find by clicking here.
We’ve been hearing a lot about the “new” mixed-method or hybrid market research techniques called “Quant/Qual” of late. Truth is, if you’ve been around marketing research for any length of time, you know that we’ve been doing “quant/qual” or “qual/quant” for decades.
What’s different – and noteworthy – is the way technology is being leveraged. Two companies come to mind, yet I’m sure there are others:
iModerate – Fields a larger quant study and then pulls off certain participants to have a one-on-one follow up with a professional moderator. As their site says: Research>iMpact provides a hybrid approach in which online qualitative sessions are incorporated into virtually any online survey, giving you qualitative insight that enhances and clarifies the quantitative data.
Invoke Solutions – Seemingly more quantitative in orientation, Invoke is leveraging their technology to obtain richer and deeper open-ended responses. They say that it’s like a focus group experience, but I’m going to need to learn more before I’m convinced. Having said that, I’ve seen enough that I’m intrigued and I want to learn more. The client-interface portion looks very powerful.
But are either of these “new”? I started this topic thinking, “No, they’re not really new at all. Just a new twist on an old approach.”
But the more I think about this, the more I believe these might be new approaches. The dividing line for me lies in the definition of “qualitative research.”
- Qualitative research explores.
- Great open-ended responses in quantitative research explains.
For now, I’m going to continue to think of these newer approaches in these ways – and make client recommendations accordingly. And, as always, I’ll continue to seek out more info. If you’ve got something to share on this subject, please do!
Over the last year, “apps” and “social media” have gotten a lot of attention. “Apps” are making smartphones more indispensible – “stickier”to use a word from Web 1.0.
And social media (Web 2.0’s driver)? While there’s a lot of hype, we’re beginning to hear that interest among some segments is waning. Dunbar’s Number has been trotted back out as rationalization for the slowed growth. (How many “friends” can you really follow?)
So, can social media be made more engaging and relevant with “stickiness”?
There are lots of folks out there trying, but the one concept that’s caught my eye for its potential “marketing legs” is location-based mobile services – such as Foursquare, Yelp, and Gowalla. Foursquare seems to be the one to watch and it’s doing some interesting things. Its site says:
foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. We aim to build things to not only help you keep up with the places your friends go, but that encourage you to discover new places and challenge you to explore your neighborhood in new ways.
Consider customer loyalty programs. You login and say you’re at a restaurant. That restaurant knows you’ve been there 10 times before and could reward you with a free dessert. No cards to keep track of and you are engaged with the brand as you know your actions get you bonuses sooner.
A brand can promote its involvement via Twitter, at checkout, or wherever it makes sense.
Part of the social aspect comes from Foursquare’s “mayor” concept. If you’re the most frequent visitor to a location, you’re crowned mayor. A bit of a game or contest that could bring people in again and again.
What about brands without a retail presence? Pepsi sponsored a NY charity event for CampInteractive: every time New Yorkers checked in from any location with Foursquare, points were tallied and Pepsi gave money. In this case, social engagement with a purpose.
Even without charitable involvement or the “mayor” concept, this is a newer form of social media that provides something tangible to the user. Consequently, in my view, a highly “sticky” idea.
An earlier blog post highlighted my belief that market research is experiencing a paradigm shift; a simple matrix was created to summarize the trend. This month I’m focusing on “anthropologic” research, which falls in the lower left, “non-verbal/natural environment” quadrant.
One could argue that everything on the left side of this diagram is anthropologic. However, I contend that “discourse analysis” is so reliant on words that we must acknowledge techniques that rely equally much or more on physical observation.
The three types of approaches utilized in anthropologic market research which most immediately come to mind are:
Ethnography. From the Greek “ethos” (the character of a people and their distinctive culture) and writing. In short, to observe and document.
Semiotics. The original Greek meant “interpreter of signs.” Today, in business applications, it involves studying communication processes, signs and symbols. A British colleague pointed out the two main influencers of this discipline: Peirce and Saussure. (For a quick read, see Wiki). To me, semiotics is about cues and norms. For example, we tend to think of banks as “institutions” with strong edifices or tall buildings; we want them strong. “The friendly bank” sounds slightly oxymoronic. Clearly, it’s more complicated than this – and I hope others will weigh in!
Ergonomics. For the sake of brevity, this is about how people interact with things, either physically, mentally, or organizationally. Human factors and usability testing fall into this category.
The second thing to keep in mind about this quadrant, as with “sociologic” research, is that we can study people individually or in groups – a major consideration in study design.
This quadrant has been “trending” for the past decade or more. With the aid of technology, we’ve been pushing into the lower left of this area. There are dozens of new innovations and techniques, but the two that have stuck with me are the following:
Wireless cameras for individual ethnography and usability studies. People can create, with limited direction from the moderator/facilitator, mini-documentaries. Want to go along with a man when he€™s trying to pick out a gift for his wife? You can do that. Want to see and hear how a woman works with a new appliance she just bought? You can do that too. I really don’t believe this is a gimmick or fad. While some might think a “con” of this method is that people will only show or discuss what they want, the clear upside is the natural setting. My experience: I’ve never done an in-home study where the bed wasn’t made, but I have done online sessions and seen unmade beds and messy rooms. So, like any other method, the pros and cons need to be assessed. Overall, this is a terrific advancement.
CCTV for merchandising. Several years ago I did interviews with executives in the corporate security business. One of the men I interviewed told me that his closed-circuit TVs were attracting the interest of major retailers; the software they had developed, for use at airports, looked for things that weren’t moving (e.g., bags with bombs). What the retailers wanted to know is if the software could be modified to assess what I call “merchandising wear-out.” That is, a display is put at the front of the store. Could the camera/software tell 1) if the display had “stopping power” (to get people to enter the store and/or look at the display) and 2) if the traffic flow patterns indicated it was time to change/modify the display? A bit creepy, perhaps – but realistically we know there are security cameras in stores. Net, net: this is a clear example of when the absence of behavior can represent critical learning.
What are your favorite new methods or tools in this area?
