Measuring the ‘sociability’ of a company

There is a need for a professional measurement criteria to determine how “social” a company is – or isn’t.

Below I have begun thinking about an approach to this issue by identifying the numerous reasons, or strategic rationales, why a company would want to be connected to it’s customers, prospects and the wider community.

1. Listen

Various social media channels allow companies to set up “camp” online and listen to what people are saying about them. It may be a Facebook fan page, a blog, a specialist forum site, a YouTube channel, or a Twitter account. There are numerous listening posts and some of these should be a foundation of a social media strategy.

2. Converse

Actually saying something of value to the community of friends/fans/followers/etc. is the next tangible step a company can take when they’re “being social”. This can take many forms and requires qualified and intelligent company representatives to be responsible for online publishing (this seems obvious but its amazing how poor some company/brand communicators are).
3. React

One of the biggest areas of opportunity to constructively use social media is when a crisis or negative issue arises. The banks, telcos, airlines and other major service-based organisations are the prime suspects in this matter. How a company responds to the issue via public social networks is often as critical to the outcome as the actual compensation or redress they offer the aggrieved customer.

4. Crowd-sourcing

An increasingly popular form of “being social” is to reach out to the community via social networks to invite ideas and feedback about a specific topic. It might be to come up with a new product name, or a home-made advertising campaign, or to conduct a test marketing program. There are many opportunities to use social networks to reach out to the community with the promise of rewards and publicity for those who “win” or have their entry broadcast to a wider audience.

5. Integrate

An essential element of a successfully social media strategy is how well your conduct in social media networks aligns your company or brand with all other customer communications. It’s potentially disastrous to act online as a highly “social” organisation if this does not match up with behaviours in other areas such as customer service, product availability, price competitiveness, green and philanthropic credentials, etc.

Can you nominate other strategies or tactics that a company can be put into action using social media? What other ways can a company “be social” online?

Sir Martin Sorrell’s advice for the changing agency landscape – iMediaConnection.com

In the next decade, agencies and holding companies will spend less time fitting into the traditional mold of an ad agency and more time focusing on consumer data and new media. WPP’s chief explains why.

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Advertising’s Future

A couple of recent announcements provide a sign post to the future of advertising. And a warning bell for media and creative agencies!

Publisher Conde Nast has announced the December issue of US GQ will be available on iPhone as well as in hard copy.

The print issue will be totally converted, advertising retained, for the iPhone. Importantly, this will mean the sales are tallied by audit bureaus. Conde Nast can therefore count downloads as part of their December circulation. The iPhone version will cost US$2.99 and advertisers buying the iPhone issue specifically will have their ads shown every fifth screen. (Read Marketing Mag article.)

Procter & Gamble is to ditch traditional CRM and CTR ad payment models in favour of a new ‘cost-per-engagement’ scheme.

The move will see publishers that run ads for the FMCG giant’s brands, paid depending on specific metrics used to measure their engagement with the advert. For example, a metric would be used to measure consumers who sign up for newsletters or watch videos after the initial ad impression.  (Read Netimperative article.)

Wow! Who would have imagined, just few years ago, that we’d be witnessing such dramatic changes to the “old-school” advertising model where circulation/audience number/unique visitors is simply used to set display ad rates. In other words, a media owner charging an advertiser based purely on the number of people reading or watching or listening. These metrics are about to undergo a most dramatic shift towards a far more measurable and accountable state.

The Conde Nast move is a bold and exciting one. The company’s CEO even admits to receiving criticism for this decision! But kudos to him for ignoring the “old schoolers” and being prepared to embrace the new ‘digital’ world order. Imagine the creative possibilities arising out of interactive advertisements in the iPhone issue! The real upside for Conde Nast (and one one that Mr R. Murdoch should be watching very closely) is the arrangement whereby GQ will earn a fee when readers link to iTunes songs/video clips incorporated into the special iPhone issue. Whoever devised this revenue-sharing model has their finger on the pulse of cross-platform monetisation.

P&G is well-known as an advertiser that demands accountability from its advertising. The article says this is a “radical new precedent in online advertising”. They got that right – given P&G’s media buying power it could be the path that all major advertisers adopt within the next 12 months. Of course many will wait and see how this new model works for P&G and whether it can be refined in any way.

This development raises a thorny issue: the relationship between media owners and creative agencies. In “old school” terms, the effectiveness of an advertisement was dependent on two factors operating in concert – the creative and the placement. The media owner naturally controls ad placement, however they DO NOT have any control the creative; whether a customer actually responds to an ad is not of ‘financial’ concern to the media owner so long as they delivered the audience the advertiser was after.

Under the new P&G-initiated model, the creative AND the placement will not only contribute to reader response rates, but it will determine how the media owner gets paid!!

You can probably see where this argument is going…why aren’t the creative agencies also being remunerated according to the response rate in this ‘cost-per-engagement’ scheme?

There is no mention in the article that creative agencies will be included in the scheme. Surely it is fairer that both producer and distributor of advertising are held accountable and remunerated accordingly. It will be really interesting to see where this trend leads. One thing is for sure, the ground is quickly shifting under “old school” advertising models.