Thursday, March 27. 2008
Many apologies for the silence on our blog recently, but we thought we'd kick start things with an extract from our most recent issue of Onward - dont forget, the digital version of Onward is now online at www.Onward.tv with new video content.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE - Onward front page story
As our media has become more segmented and likewise our consumption of it, the task in reaching our end audience has become even more challenging. One of the key reasons for this is that the power of advocacy and influencer groups is shifting away from perhaps the traditional media owner and journalist to the new wave of ‘citizen journalist’ within new media environments.
In a recent survey*, we looked into how important online influencer groups have become when it comes to trust before making a purchasing decision and 70% of respondents said that a positive feature on an independent review website would be the biggest influence on them, compared to just 14% who said that reading a positive feature in a newspaper article would be.
With the phenomenal rise in the popularity of social networking, gaining advocacy from key influencers within these groups has become one of the biggest challenges for the communications industry. After all, it appears that users certainly don’t want to be blatantly advertised to in these environments. Just consider the backlash that Facebook received after the launch of their advertising platform at the back end of last year when more than 50,000 of their own users came together online to complain about it, forcing an apology from the company.
The issue of commercialising and generating revenue from social networks is something that is an ongoing challenge for their owners. However, what is clear from the perspective of the PR and Communications industry is that we cannot ignore the fact that many of our audiences are spending a large percentage of their time interacting with each other within them.
Thankfully for those who have invested in these environments, the producers of some sites are starting to find ways to deliver a better experience for the user whilst monetising their content. Just look at the success of Bebo’s online video series ‘Kate Modern’ that stars Ralf Little from TV’s Royal Family. As reported on Guardian.co.uk, the first series drew an audience that watched an average of 1.5m videos per week, with Bebo successfully bringing on brand sponsors. The sponsors products appeared in the show proving a better way for brands to reach their audience through targeted broadcast quality content. However, if the evidence suggests audience engagement through video content is successful, why stop at sponsoring someone else’s show?
The lack of Ofcom regulations online allows brands to produce their own broadcast content, which can then be seeded into social networks encouraging users to join branded groups, interacting with them, as well as opting-in for more information. Being able to deliver engaging broadcast content that a brand has total control over, to an audience that has chosen to view, is a very powerful tool to possess. If you then give viewers the opportunity to click on the products featured in the video itself to either gain more information, or even be one click from adding them into an e-commerce shopping basket, then you will very quickly deliver a highly effective direct marketing campaign.
Controlling your brand’s assets using broadcast has historically relied on the media owners hosting your content. Now brands can become the media owner themselves. Add to this the huge appetite for watching video online and the fact that, according to Dynamic Logic, video increases the propensity to purchase by nearly 50% - and then consider that you have the ability to tap into the online networks in a controlled manner through content, and it’s very clear that there are huge opportunities opening up.
These same tactics are also proving to be very effective in other parts of the communications mix. Brands can use networks to build panels of very vocal customers, happy to share their opinions on all manner of topics. For example, in our survey, we discovered that 50% of people would like to provide their opinions for food & drink products as part of an online panel. Imagine being able to communicate with these panel members using video and audio when researching them, turning a potentially dull and tedious task, into an entertaining one.
It's for these reasons that we’ve expanded our own Digital and Technical Services division, helping support the work we are now producing for these environments.
If you would like to find out more, please do get in touch with me, whether by phone, fax, letter, email, or even finding my profile on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook…!
*survey carried out overnight 22/1/07 by Opinion Matters on Tickbox.net, 227 respondents
