Filed under: Affinity Groups, Altruism, Authenticity, Blog Messaging, Blogger Influence, Book Reviews, Brand, Brand Advocacy, Brand Ambassador, Brand Intelligence, Brand Promotion, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Branding, Branding Online, Business Intelligence, Buzz Marketing, CRM, Consumer Generated Media, Conversation, Conversation Marketing, Customer Ratings, Customer Reviews, Customer Service, Customer Supprt, Guerilla Marketing, Honesty, Influencer Identification, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influential Brand Advocates, Influentials, Integrity, Internet Culture, Managing Conversation, Market Research, Marketing Conversation, Markets are Conversations, Media Virus, Memetics, Messaging Online, New Media, Online Advocacy, Online Brand Reputation, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Conversation, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Messaging, Online Monitoring, Online Outreach, Online Participation, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Online Virtual Communities, Reputation Management, Social Intelligence, Social Meda, Social Networking, Viral Marketing, Viral Media, Viral Propagation, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The culture of participatory social media is having some surprisingly significant effects on both the way satisfied customers play a role in contributing to the marketing message development of products and services. And it is also playing an increasingly important role in defining the key touchpoints that customers use in the deciding factors one what to purchase. What makes this all the more noteworthy is that much of this is rooted in offline purchases. I’m putting this together from two recent studies…

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1 Comment » Posted on December 2nd, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Brand Intelligence, Focus Groups, Online Brand Intelligence, Online Intelligence, Online Monitoring, Online Polling, Polling Data, Polling Strategy

Polling and focus groups are like observing the behavior of the chimpanzee in captivity — you have a living, breathing, chimpanzee, but you have one that is under stress, duress, and has been partially acclimatized to appeasing its handlers — it wants to keep safe, it wants to be fed, and it wants to get out — so observing chimpanzee behavior in captivity is like observing consumer or market behavior in focus groups — you have real-live response, but you have the response of something that is beholden to you, that is wondering what’s in it for me — you have corrupted behavioral data.

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No Comments » Posted on November 18th, 2007 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Authenticity, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Brand Intelligence, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, CRM, Chris Abraham, Competitive Intelligence, Consumer Generated Media, Controversial Marketing, Conversation Audit, Conversation Marketing, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Intelligence, Corporate Responsibility, Crisis Management, Customer Ratings, Customer Reviews, Customer Service, Customer Supprt, Google Reader, Hate Speech, Honesty, How to Blog, Managing Conversation, Markets are Conversations, Media Virus, Online Attack, Online Community Outreach, Online Crisis Management, Online Engagement, Online Evangelism, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Messaging, Online Outreach, Online Participation, Online Public Relations, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Online Strategy, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, SERM, Transparency, Web Strategy, Word-of-Mouth

Here’s an amazing statistic:  a full 57% of marketing executives recently responded with the following answer to the question if their firm has a crisis response communication plan:  NO.  What makes it more amazing is that in the same survey, 53% said that their business had experienced a crisis in the past…one that resulted in a loss in sales, a reduction in profits, or negative press.  A majority of that 53% say that the recovery period took a year a more.  Only one-half have trained spokespeople.  And it shouldn’t go unnoticed that there’s an overlap of 4% here of companies that have suffered a crisis in the recent past but have yet to install a plan to address future crises.

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1 Comment » Posted on October 14th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Activating Bloggers, Advertising, Blog Strategy, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogging, Brand, Brand Advocacy, Brand Ambassador, Brand Intelligence, Brand Promotion, Branding, Branding Online, Conversation Marketing, Digital Marketing, Guerilla Marketing, Influencer Identification, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influential Brand Advocates, Influentials, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Marketing, Marketing Conversation, Marketing Strategy, Markets are Conversations, New Media, New Media Marketing, New Media Strategy, Online Branding, Online Collaboration, Online Communities, Online Community Outreach, Online Marketing, Online Media, Online Messaging, Promotional Strategy, Social Meda, Strategic Consulting, Viral Marketing, Web 2.0, Web Advertising, Word-of-Mouth, YouTube Marketing

Kelly Mooney has a great piece in AdAge, For Relevance, Think Three Way, in which she talks about the concept of ‘triangulation’ involving the brand, the customer, and the community and that all three need to embrace one another. She also blogs at MooneyThinks.

She’s quite right in that, for many of us, we’ve moved much of our media gathering experience online. Websites, blogs, social networks, forums are the areas that we discuss brands or experiences with brands or our impressions of brands.

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1 Comment » Posted on October 9th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Blogger Activation, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Ethics, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Brand Advocacy, Brand Ambassador, Brand Intelligence, Brand Promotion, Brand Reputation, Branding, Branding Online, Online Reviewers, Online Reviews, Word-of-Mouth, Word-of-Mouth Marketing, Yelp

All businesses should put some time and energy into reaching out to online influencers. The Wall Street Journal Weekend has a great article, The Price of a Four-Star Rating, on how restaurants, cafes, and bars can do a little face-to-face blogger outreach and engagement to great effect: dominating and pwning their reviews on Yelp!

Last August, Dine spent about $1,500 on an event for members of Yelp, a Web site where consumers post reviews and rate restaurants. The nearly 100 members were treated to an open bar, duck roulade appetizers and red velvet cupcakes for dessert. As a bonus, they all received certificates for discounts on subsequent meals. The result: a torrent of favorable reviews on Yelp. Most reviewers mentioned that they attended a Yelp event, though few highlighted that the food and drink was free.

$1,500 is peanuts, even for a small business, when the outcome can result in a 4-star rating — and it can be much much less — or much more luxurious, too! Additionally, the more folks who review you on sites like Yelp, the less likely that any one particular post will gut your reputation for all to see.

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No Comments » Posted on October 6th, 2007 by Abraham Harrison

Filed under: Abraham Harrison, Abraham Harrison LLC, Activating Bloggers, Black Hat Marketing, Black Hat PR, Black Hat SEO, Blog Counter-Messaging, Blog Ranking, Blog Search, Blog Search Engines, Blog Strategy, Blogger Effect, Blogger Engagement, Blogger Influence, Blogger Outreach, Blogger Relations, Blogger Support, Brand Ambassador, Brand Intelligence, Brand Protection, Brand Reputation, Citizen Journalism, Competitive Intelligence, Controversial Marketing, Corporate Blogging, Corporate Intelligence, Crisis Management, Defensive SEO, Google PageRank, Google Search, Hearts and Minds, Industry Reputation, Influencers, Influencial Bloggers, Influential Brand Advocates, Influentials, Integrity, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Journalism, Managing Conversation, Marketing Language, Media Consultancy, Messaging Online, New Media Strategy, New PR, Newspapers, Old Marketing, Old Media, Old PR, Online Brand Protection, Online Brand Reputation, Online Identity Management, Online Influence, Online Intelligence, Online Media, Online Messaging, Online Outreach, Online PR, Online Participation, Online Public Relations, Online Reputation, Online Reputation Management, Online Strategy, PR Blogging, PR Blogs, PR Hubris, PR Industry, PageRank, Pitching Bloggers, Political Strategy, Pop Culture, Popular Culture, Proactive Support, Propaganda, Propaganda Warfare, Protective SEO, Public Affairs, Public Affairs Blogging, Public Policy Blogs, Public Relations, Public Relations Bloggers, Public Relations Blogs, Public Relations Industry, Real Life, Reputation Management, Reputation Rehabilitation, SEM, SEM and SEO, SEO, SEO and SEM, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Reputation Management, Search Engine Strategy, Search Engines, Search Reputation Management, Self Promotion, Semantic Web, Shameless Self-Promotion, Social Meda, Social News, Social Unrest, Strategic Consulting, Traditional Journalism, Traditional PR, Transparency, Web 2.0, Web Strategy, Word-of-Mouth, YouTube, YouTube Marketing

With the issue of reputation management in the news, I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent discovery that many of the Mattel toys made in China were painted with lead-based paints. This had followed several other unrelated incidents that had previously caused embarrassment to either Mattel or to China.

A company such as Mattel needs to have a proactive online strategy that could meet the negativity head on, to help suppress those damaging rumors that could hurt the company both immediately and permanently. A company needs to understand what is being said about them in online forums, on blogs, and, if necessary, it needs to help blunt and diminish the negativity headed their way.

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No Comments » Posted on October 4th, 2007 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Brand Intelligence, Corporate Intelligence, Market Data, Market Research, Online Intelligence

I wrote this analogy back in 2005 and called it My Online Brand Intelligence Analogy and it is still apt and even more important now that attention data tools have matured and implicit and explicit interests are trackable by such tools as are offered by Particls and Attensa that exploit the attention economy. If you don’t yet know about attention data or its more practical cousin apml, you need to read about them after you let me know what you think about my analogy…

Let’s consider the chimpanzee. There are several ways to learn more about the chimpanzee: through dissection, in captivity, and in the wild.

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No Comments » Posted on July 24th, 2007 by Chris Abraham


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