WOMMA/Summit - Day 1: Radical listening to customers: using WOM for consumer insight
Word of Mouth has evolved from buzz monitoring to something bigger. Here's the idea behind the session concept -
Normal Listening:
* Buzz
* Sentiment
* Impact
* Influence
Radical Listening:
* Passions
* Motivations
* Engagement
* Advocacy
Dave Rabjohns - Motive Quest
MINI (the car) Case Study
Behavioral Drivers: found that the community drivers were particularly important for the mini vs. other brands.
Brand DNA: The reason for this was creative customization culture that drove sharing. (You can customize your MINI 10 ways from Sunday)
MINI = Blank canvas for self-expression
Integration: These insights drove campaign development that drove online promoters (via Online Promoter Score... an equivalent to the Net Promoter Score).
Sales: Overlaying monthly sales to the Online Promoter Score shows a strong correlation between online promoters and sales emerges.
Howard Kaushansky - Umbria
Consumer needs often rise to the surface by letting the population segment itself
Consumers want more control, including the abilty to: add personality to products,
Issue segmentation & breaking down into "need states"
Leslie Forde - Communispace
Consumers want to be involved + Companies want to hardwire customers into strategy.
GlaxoSmithKline Case Study - high level of customer input in the product development of Alli weight loss drug.
Cox Enterprises Case Study - reinvention of publishing industry with Gen Y, including not only media consumption but also for Gen Y friendly company culture, hiring, etc.
HP Case Study, PhotoSpace - brought in 300 digital photo enthusiasts for the purpose of co-innovation. Many teams within HP are participating in the community.
"Operationalize Listening" - difficult with very large companies
UPDATE: Question Time!
Q1: How do you actually let customers segment themselves?
A1: Language clustering of terms related to topic. Watch the topic/discussion clusters that happen.
Q2: How do you figure out the optimum size of a community group and how do you find and invite those groups?
A2: Finding a balance between big enough to vibrant without being so big as to be unwieldy. 300-500 for private groups (in Leslie's opinion) is the optimum number.
Q3: How do you get clients to engage through the risk?
A3: Get the legal and compliance people at the table ASAP. Members are required to sign NDA and rules of engagement.
Q4: Who signs up for online communities and is the audience inherently biased?
A4: Online communities are a "very good proxy" for what's happening offline. Matches very closely to traditional research methods. In a peer-to-peer environment, members often share more than what they would in a traditional focus group. Need a "social glue" to pull people together. Only a very good friend will tell you that you have a bad haircut.
Q5: (Jake's question) I worry about the overuse (misuse?) of the concept of community, where short-term, smaller group communities meant to "put to work" the consumers takes away from a company's drive to do larger issues.
A5: Taking the macro world view and bringing it into community to encourage organic conversation. 96% of communities renew each year, often change members out regularly.
(Is conversation done through a product like CommuniSpace actually "organic conversation"? I'm not sure I'd call it "organic".)
Is radical listening just "good marketing"?