Consumers' Favorite Online Brands

[Posted by David Card]

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Google remains consumers' favorite online brand, with Yahoo! and Amazon not far behind. In the minds of their fans, the top online brands exhibit very traditional attributes such as trustworthiness, helpfulness, and relevance, all at the expense of more-predictable tech-friendly characteristics such as innovation and speed.

Direct-to-consumer brands in categories including media, retail, financial services, and travel — and consumer electronics, given its technology angle — should position themselves against competitors' weaknesses and deliver their brand messages through site experiences that complement offline marketing.

Forrester clients can follow these topics further in this report (behind the paywall).

Ready, Fire, Adapt!

 [Posted by Lisa Bradner]

My report on Adaptive Brand Marketing continues to generate coverage and comments positive and negative in both the US and Europe: see links here for Marketing Week and AdAge.

The Ad Age piece in particular is interesting to me.  While I’m not fond of the “we haven’t read the report but here’s what we think” approach, I do appreciate the folks from BBH Labs weighing in and sharing their vision of what the future adaptive marketing organization looks like. Several of the things called out on their list are in my report as well—although anyone who’s read Dave Frankland’s recent report on customer intelligence, "The Intelligent Approach to Customer Intelligence" knows that equating this function to market research doesn’t’ scratch the surface of everything that is involved.  

What I am concerned about is the attempt to bring adaptive brand marketing down to a list: lists won't get us there. We need to fundamentally rethink the people, process and technologies we use and, take on hard issues like organizational structure; partner relationships, compensation and metrics, or this just becomes another reinvention activity that stops short of real change.

My piece is neither an indictment of agencies nor of brand marketing organizations. It is an attempt to begin the dialog about what we keep, what we give up and how we make our relationships more productive for all parties. In my many conversations with practitioners on both sides of the fence (both for the piece and at Forrester’s Consumer Forum this week) I heard that no one is happy with the status quo and no one feels they have all the answers. I also heard a lot of smart business minds willing to wade in and take on the core issues and that excites me greatly.

At Forrester we'll be continuing to push the thinking on how to design, build and operationalize an adaptive brand marketing organization. As a 3rd party research firm we have the opportunity to look across both the agency and brand marketer camps and help surface solutions. The more everyone commits to talking about and thinking through the tough issues the better the solutions we'll create together.

So I’m here to give a shout out—there’s been a lot of noise out there but things are quiet on the marketing leadership blog—I hope you’ll change that: post here, tell us what you think, ask provocative questions and be part of the conversation.  Let’s make this something we build and grow together so we create lasting change not just another industry buzzword.

Post your comments here, or ping me on twitter @lisabradner

5 Ways For Marketing Leaders to Toe-Dip Into Social Media

[Posted by David Cooperstein]

Follow me @minicooper

During what I call the “black and white” days of the internet in 1995, when email was a green screen “app”, I presented a direct mail CEO with a business plan for direct marketing online. When he voiced his disbelief in the power of digital marketing, I walked him back to his office, installed the Mosaic browser, and stood behind him while he used the mouse to navigate a few sites I suggested. In about 10 minutes, he went into a trance of amazement at the data, the content and the interactivity. He went on to refocus the company on interactive media.

Last week, I was at dinner with a client and its board of directors. For them, the topic was eCommerce and social media. But like in 1995, the question for these folks was “So how do I learn how to use these tools?”Like my earlier experience, they understood the concept of social media and online selling, but had concerns for the privacy of their station in life and the daunting task of how to make sense of the frothy new communications mode that has invaded their children’s’ and grandchildren’s lives. For them, and for others who don’t want to ask “how do I get started” with social media, here are 5 things you can do to get familiar with the power of the medium: 

1. Gain customer intelligence about your brand or product.  Search for your brand on Twitter. Go to search.twitter.com and put in the brand your represent or the name of a brand you identify with. Read what people have to say about your brand or product. Search on your competitors too. Find out where you both stand in the Groundswell of commentary without having to sign up for anything.
2. Learn more about colleagues and job candidates. Search for a friend, colleague, job candidate or lost love on Google, and click on the LinkedIn link. You’ll find that LinkedIn just shows what someone has done, not what quirky comments they make about sports, politics or their last brilliant idea.
3. Test the power of scalable intimacy with friends and brands. Use your real name on Facebook, set up privacy to keep you secure, then follow step 2. You will find a door open to your nostalgic history of high school friends and college romances. And you’ll find that you still have some things in common. Search for a brand, politician, or relative on Facebook and read their feed, look at their photos, and read what they are reading. This is how people “fan” things, voting with a click of their mouse that they like something. Similar to an email database, it allows the marketer to remind consumers who have "opted-in" of new products, new shows, or updates on social activities of their own.
4. Test the power of socializing content. Go to Wall Street Journal’s web site, and link your Facebook account to your WSJ profile. Or click on the StumbleUpon or Digg links next to an interesting article. From a New York Times article, you click on the "Share" link to connect to a series of social tools. Your connections will start reading what you read, and likely start a dialog with you on the subject.
5. Rate and review products you sell or you have used. Read product reviews for your products or the new Dan Brown book you read on Amazon or a hotel you stayed in on TripAdvisor. Put in your own feedback. Even something as simple as product reviews or hotel recommendations are part of the social web. Wherever you see voting, recommendations or comments, you are participating in social media.

As you make your way through these steps, search for me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter (www.twitter.com/minicooper, or @minicooper in "Twexicon"). Or ask me in plain old email at dcooperstein-at-forrester.com.

Remembering MySpace

[Posted by David Card]

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Chatting with board members at a major apparel company last night, a few mentioned a story on NPR's Morning Edition about the social divide between young Facebook and MySpace users. I've been skeptical before, but am converting.

Marketers who want to reach mass audiences, especially mass youth audiences, should monitor this. And they shouldn't leave MySpace out of their plans. It still has a big, loyal audience. And it's beefing up its entertainment content and ad sales, while trying to copy Facebook's social communications features. Compared with Facebook, MySpace offers at least equal targeting capabilities and more places - e.g., its home page, video section, MySpace Music - where large numbers of users congregate.

Of course, we've been watching MySpace work its way toward 21st Century entertainment portal-hood for some time (report for Forrester clients). It still has a ways to go. Forrester clients can also read our recent report on teen coolhunting with social network sites.

Coolhunting with Teen Social Networkers

[Posted by David Card]

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Two-thirds of online teens surveyed said they tell friends about products — that's almost twice as many as adults — and more than 70% of teens use social networks regularly.

So it's critical for marketers to understand how to best use social networks to reach teens and to help them spread the word. Forrester created a new audience analysis framework based on what teen social network users said were their motivations for using them. It turns out they use social nets for both communication and entertainment. (For teens, communication is entertainment.) Compared with adults, there are more entertainment-driven teen social networkers.

Tapping into those entertainment users, who are also cross-category influencers, is key. Social networks can be a hub for cross-media "cool" and a launch pad for modern integrated campaigns.

Teen Social Networker Types

Forrester clients can check out the report here.

For the U.S, Digital Is Now Mainstream

[Posted by David Cooperstein]

Follow me @minicooper

iPhones, DVRs, and navigation guides are thought of as devices for the early adopter. Or at least they used to be. Forrester released the results of its latest annual Consumer Benchmark Data Overview Report, which concludes that the use of digital devices has become a mainstream part of every day life. This finding, which is critical to how companies plan their product and marketing plans for the coming year, holds significant power in terms of where marketers spend their money during the rest of 2009 and into 2010.

In this year’s report, we segmented consumers by lifestage, to help marketers understand the distinct use of digital technologies to reach young singles and couples, young families, older families, and older singles and couples. This lens provides some very interesting consumer insights into how  technology behavior changes when people transition between different stages of their lives. Which devices do they own, and how many of them, what are they buying and not buying, how they are using the Internet and even how they’ve structured their digital home. .

The New York Times has a write-up of the report this morning, click here to read the article.

Read more about this report and its methodology on our Consumer Market Research blog, or if you are a client link directly to the report here. Click here to get access to some additional consumer insights related to this report.

Also, note how Marketers can put this data to use:

To get a deeper understanding of how to use this report to refine your media mix, Forrester's Marketing Leadership analysts will be applying the results of this survey to our Media Allocation Tool. For more insight into this tool, please contact me via email at dcooperstein-at-forrester.com, or @minicooper on Twitter.

Successful Integrating Marketing For Consumer Goods (and My First Doc as a Marketing Leader)

[Posted by David Cooperstein]

Twitter: @minicooper

This morning my first new document at Forrester went live since 2002. I remember the thrill of having a whole new set of things to talk about at business meetings when those reports came out. Having shed my history as a Telecom and Retail expert, I am now more firmly focused on the issues that face Marketing Leaders, as they try to marry traditional and interactive marketing efforts.

This first report is a quick study on how low consideration brands, like soap, snacks, and sinus meds can be relevant online with some case studies from brands -- like Suave and SunChips

-- that worked with consumers (clients, see the report here: “Integrated Marketing Strategies For Low-Consideration Brands“). It builds on a theme that Forrester calls “borrowed relevance” in which brands can become relevant provided the message ties well with the content and the medium it is presented in – be that television, banner ads, branded content sites or social media efforts. The key is to integrate marketing carefully across channels, so that indirect marketers of consumer goods can engage their consumers in discussion and brand promise, and still drive them to the store to purchase. The right integrated message will drive interest, and ultimately sales, if crafted correctly.

Customer Personas vs. Modes

[Posted by David Card]

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I started thinking again about "personas" vs. "modes" during a discussion this morning with David Schatsky about James McQuivey's keynote speech. I work for a company that has a big investment in customer segmentation schemes, and I'm a true believer, especially in those that account for attitudes as well as behavior. However, I freely acknowledge that a persona or segment can only go so far, and that human beings are flexible things. For instance, while I might behave most of the time like an aging urban yuppie, at least twice a year -- near Christmas and Mothers' Day -- I shop like a suburban mom.

So what does this mean when you're designing sites, products & services, and marketing campaigns? It probably means you have to develop a persona taxonomy flexible enough to accommodate modes, or blend with a task-oriented approach. Your brand may cater towards certain types, segments, or personae, but it has to be able to handle them when they're switching modes.

I haven't really formulated a system or framework for thinking about this balancing act yet. So let's start the conversation.

Consumer Forum Day Two Wrap-Up

Back in the office and a little tardy with my Consumer Forum wrap-up. I met with another half-dozen execs who pretty much confirmed some of my observations from the day before. I am still rather amazed how little economy-obsessing went on at the event. Are we wearing blinders, or is digital really more insulated? Better subscribe to Forrester Downturn Alerts to be safe.

Day 2 featured the second annual Groundswell awards for social applications. Note that not all the winners were huge companies with massive resources: the Brooklyn Museum and a credit union from Alberta are right next to Starbucks and Mattel. At the risk of repetition, the ROI metrics still seem more compelling for customer service than for objectives earlier in the marketing funnel.

Highlights from the executive keynotes included Citi Brands CMO Debra Coughlin observing that, with four commoditized credit cards in every wallet, it's all the more critical for Citi to succeed at multichannel consumer communications. Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping author Paco Underhill charmed the audience and noted that during economic crises, consumers say they're more time-poor than money-poor.

He also riffed a bit on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a topic that came up in two Forrester presos. James McQuivey argued on Day 1 -- compellingly -- that consumer technology needs must be addressed in parallel, rather than in a linear progression. He's got a survey in the field testing his hypothesis and framework that I'm eager to see more of. Lisa Bradner counterpuncheded a little with thoughts on a more traditional approach for marketing more traditional products (a new set of the four P's, anyone?).

Check out the Forrester presentations here.

Trend-Spotting at Day One of the Consumer Forum

I did about a dozen meetings during the course of Day One of the Consumer Forum, most of them about social computing strategies for marketing. Some quick pattern-matching across the conversations produces the following trends:

• Social marketing budgets are safer than mobile initiatives in the current climate
• That said, social marketing measurement and ROI are sketchy at best. So marketing leaders continue to earmark for experiments more than full-blown campaigns
• CPGs are keen to participate
• It's way easier to prove ROI for social marketing for customer service cost-savings than for branding objectives or customer acquisition. That said, it felt like initiatives were equally distributed
• Social marketing doesn't exclusively equate to youth marketing -- no, not at all. And it piques a lot of interest for business to business marketing, not just consumer

Some highlights from the keynote executive presentations:

Since I'm a media analyst, I'll give more than equal time to NBC. NBC's digital content VP, Cameron Death, illustrated the Big Change Agents NBC was facing: continued TV fragmentation and audience niche tastes, DVRs, broadband as a viable video distribution channel, an increasing pace of consumer technology adoption, and a new environment where viewers are way more likely to "lean forward" and actively engage with multiple screens. No surprises, but a good, broad perception of the state of the art.

NBC's responses are on the money and appear effective, if not lucrative. NBC's attempt to scope audience size of the various new channels for, say, the premiere of "Heroes" shows TV with a 4:1 lead (24.5 million viewers to 8 million) over video streams, while a combo of downloads, VOD, and mobile added an underwhelming 130,000 viewers. Death promoted NBC's embrace of branded entertainment -- in this case, on-air commercials where a show's actors hawk goods -- but conceded that he worried that viewers could end up equating with these ads with spam. And, in a very big admission from a big network, he said that hyper syndication was alive and well while destination viewing was dead.

I've always said a broadcast network's core skills were acquiring (not creating) shows, selling ads, and cross-promotion on-air. Death is a content guy, so it's natural he's all about content, but NBC will have to prove consumer and advertiser value in promotion and ad targeting across the new media.

Acxiom SVP Tim Suther estimated $112 billion in advertising is wasted, and pushed 21st centruy behavioral targeting by what he called "confluence" and aligned measurement and incentives, and quick wins. Blockbuster CEO James Keyes says Blockbuster can't mean "video" but must be "media." Twitter commentators remained unconvinced. Consultant Patricia Seybold re-introduced marketing leaders to consumer ecosystems, and opined that empowering kids today will help you figure out the future.