Diesel’s lesson for the digital brand manager of tomorrow

December 18, 2014

Written by Master Student at Lund University

Introduction

Mr. Renzo Rosso was facing a serious problem that could have melted its brand as ice under the sun.

Having built the first e-commerce ever for a fashion brand in 1995 (Rosso, 2011), he is proudly one of the first entrepreneurs that embraced the digital revolution, but in 2012 his brand was not anymore appealing to the young people.

How to save a global brand of a multibillionaire holding (Forbes, 2013) in the fashion industry?

By creating  an Instagram account and hiring Lady Gaga’s stylist, of course. Why that answer cannot be found by a digital brand manager on books or any academic papers?

There are few reasons.

Traditional media is not working

During the last decades, the digital disruption generated a new environment in which it is effortless for users to communicate (Deighton, 2009). Not only digital communication is unlimited in space and time, but also it is spread in the type of the entity exchanged, from information to real data and objects, (Deighton, 2009).

The conversation, however, happens between users, which are on the same level consumers, marketing executives and digital brand managers. There is no structural difference between business and individual users. In fact, many digital innovation, especially the social media, were not built with business as the main purpose.

Nevertheless, commercial and market activities have soon entered the scene following the marketing style of traditional media (Deighton, 2009). The attitude of business, defined by marketing and brand managers in the digital environment has been one of incursion in customers’ conversations.

Social Media Marketing is not enough

Social media marketing is meant as the use of social media for the promotion of a company and its products (Akar, 2011). The structure, the rhetoric, and especially the relationship between consumers and companies are radically different from traditional advertising and digital brand managers should be aware of that (Armellini and Villanueva, 2009).

Regarding brand management, the new digital environment requires a unique style of communication (Hansen et al, 2011). Interactivity has been defined by Blattberg and Deighton (1991) as the possibility for individuals and organizations to communicate directly with no restriction of time and distance.

Second, in the digital world, variables are different, especially when measuring brands. Social media require more complex drivers than reach, such as engagement, intimacy, loyalty and advocacy (Hanna et al, 2011).

Reach and frequency are simply not enough for marketing and digital brand managers to picture the the interactive media environment and the ROI of social media marketing cannot be based just on such variables (Hoffman and Fodor, 2010).

Digital markets do not deal in measurable messages, but conversations (Levine et al., 2001) Therefore, corporate messaging, with the obvious purpose of encouraging purchase, cannot be effective, as attention and interactivity are not presumed (Russell, 2009).

Community is not everything

Several ways have been proven to be effective as alternatives to traditional corporate messaging. It has already been argued that building a community is essential to provide meaning to digital brands (Wolfe, 1994) and that users are now consumers, marketers, brand managers and advertisers at the same time. Users can create content related to companies and products and influence the perceptions of brands (Roberts and Kraynak, 2008).

The power given by the digital media is potentially equal for all the users, both individuals and organisations. In that sense, the authority of digital brand managers has been reduced (Deighton and Kornfield, 2009; Denegri et al, 2006) while the influence of consumers on brands has increased (Kucuk, 2009; Urban, 2004 ).

Thus, the new balance of powers needs to be shown by brand management (El-Amir and Burt, 2010).

The behaviour and processes of communities on the web creates value for its members (Schau et al, 2009) and later also for the brand through co-production and social production (Benkler, 2006). However, the scope of the benefits for brand managers of co-production still has to be defined (Cova and Dalli, 2009; Toffler and Toffler, 2006). Consumers as digital users are proven to create value for companies (Cova and Dalli, 2009). Moreover, consumers show signs of appreciation for being recognized as contributors to building brand value (Humphreys and Grayson, 2008).

It has also been suggested that the construction of shared meaning within a community enriches directly brands and their brand equity and that capitalism itself would soon rely entirely on consumer contribution to brands (Arvidsson, 2008).

Crowdsourcing is not what it seems

On social media, digital brand managers are aware that the driving factor of a successful relationship between brands and consumers is reciprocity (Tadajewski and Saren, 2009). One way to build reciprocity is crowdsourcing, which was first appreciated as an efficient method to outsource to people (Safire, William, 2009).

As defined by Howe and Robinson, editors at Wired Magazine, Crowdsourcing is the use of achieving services, content or ideas from the contributions of an extended group of individuals, usually an online community, instead of employees or suppliers (Howe, 2006).

Crowdsourcing is effective for marketers and digital brand managers. It helps developing ‘engagement’ with varied audiences (Simmons, 2008). Engagement on social media has been demonstrated to be effective to improve marketing strategies (Joseph and Seb, 2012). Crowdsourcing consists of gathering good ideas and discover the best ones and works both as a source of ideas and understanding of the customers (Lazzarato, 1997)

In particular, crowdsourcing is a form of engagement which is based on consumers’ work, being social interaction or contribution, previously named ‘immaterial labour’ by Lazzarato (1997). It seems logic for digital brand managers to consider it as a technique to empower the users of a community, but that implies a certain distance of power between brands and contributing users.

Renzo Rosso and the Diesel campaign

In April 2013 Renzo Rosso enrolled as the new artistic director for Diesel Nicola Formichetti, the stylist of Lady Gaga and former Mugler art director.

The campaign, launched by Formichetti, was named #dieselreboot, a permanent crowdsourcing project built on a tumblr blog - dieselreboot.tumblr.com. The blog was aimed to showcase public contributes in order to discover talents as nominate the next brand ambassadors among them, instead of leaving the choice to brand managers.

Through Tumblr all the users had the possibility to upload their artworks according to different topics and interactive missions.

The promotion of the campaign followed the dna of Diesel as defined by digital brand managers, based on provocation, sex appeal, rebellion. Provocative images and guerrilla marketing actions have been shown in the main cities of the world. Among them, as an example, a female pope projected on the Colosseum in Rome (Diesel, 2013).

The real novelty of the campaign, however, is not referred to the innovative and rebellious style of its communication. A number of previous campaigns had already made Diesel win several advertising prizes (Rosso, 2011).

The lesson for the digial brand manager of tomorrow

The innovation relies in the digital communication style chosen by brand managers Nicola Formichetti and Renzo Rosso.

First, the missions, called ‘call-to-actions’, are communicated via youtube uploads. The video cannot be even remotely referred to a corporate ad. It is rather an amateur clip recorded from a smartphone. The first video featured Nicola Formichetti itself in a chinese restaurant, asking the community to submit what inspires them. Definitely not an ordinary digital brand manager.

Second, the campaign was mainly spread not through the official Diesel channels and social media accounts, but through Nicola Formichetti’s and Renzo Rosso’s personal Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr accounts.

The Tumblr blog itself of #dieselreboot is detached from the official Diesel channels. It does not have a custom domain and has no direct links to the Diesel website.

Third, Formichetti, as a digital brand manager of himself, has always been active sharing his lifestyle on social media, especially on Twitter and Instagram. Renzo Rosso has followed Formichetti’s style, creating a Facebook, a Twitter and an Instagram account and sharing his ordinary lifestyle.

Fourth, Formichetti and Rosso are characters whose strong personality is aligned with the Diesel brand.

A brand can be deconstructed according to Kapferer’s prism (2004) into six facets. Among them, the personality trait, for Diesel, could be expressed by the following adjectives: rebel, challenging conventions, modern and innovative. Both Rosso and Formichetti embrace the mentioned qualities.

The sender, therefore, is coherent with the message, a brand manager would state.

Renzo Rosso guerrilla marketing for dieselreboot

Fifth, content shared on their social accounts is not refined. Photo captions are amateur, as well as text. Grammar and typing mistakes are left untouched. There is no filtration by copywriters. The quality and the style of content remember the one generated by ordinary social media users.

Sixth, crowdsourcing activity of the #dieselreboot campaign is aimed not only to create content, but also to elect brand ambassadors within the community, instead of choosing representatives from models or famous public characters. It is a clear intent to empower users by Diesel’s digital brand managers.

The use of social media as individual accounts leads the path to a new communication style on social media. In the digital world, especially on social media, brands can be uniquely represented by individuals that are aligned with the personality traits of the brand.

It has to be analysed whether it could be applied to brands of every nature.

The key for being social is being a user on the same nature of the other users. No distinction between corporates and individuals. The brand becomes a trait, a part of the lifestyle of the users. Belonging them to the organisation or not, it soon will not matter. This is tomorrow’s digital brand manager.

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NATIVE ADVERTISING, THE NEXT BIG THING? Part 2

December 15, 2014

Written By Thomas Roos

Part 2: Native Advertising Discussed 

Part one of this paper discussed the rise of native advertising and how it is a result of paradigm shifts in consumer culture as a whole, as well as of developments within the online marketing field. This part will further elaborate on how native advertising is practiced and eventually discuss native advertising in terms of its success, and its limitations. To conclude with I raise the question that I could not answer in this paper, but should be of interest of anyone that has genuine interest in the field of internet marketing and branding. 

Empirical data analysis: Native advertising.

The consumer annoyance and scepticism towards advertisements, advertisers and capitalist practices in general as described in part 1 have forced online marketers in a new direction: native marketing. Native advertising, as explained in this infographic about native advertising by Wasserman (2012), is the creation of high-quality content by brands which is placed “…into the organic experience of a given platform.’’ Perhaps a simpler definition of the concept was given by Keers (2013), on the Content Marketing Association blog: “…instead of a simple, same-everywhere ad, it is targeted content, sitting alongside the publisher's content, but produced by brands themselves.”

The essence of native advertising is that it answers the consumers’ demand for valuable content from brands, whether they are the targeted audience or not. Holt (2002) argues that in the post-postmodern paradigm, consumers will judge brands and their ads on how they add value to people when they are not customers. Samuel Johnson once said: “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.’’, and this research provided reason to believe that the same mantra will define brand perception in the post-postmodern internet era. Native advertisements make a clear step into that direction, which is perhaps the reason why they work so well.

A second important strategic advantage of native advertising is that it offers value to both brands and publishers, as well as to different platforms. As Miller, the CEO of The Guardian Media Group (in this case: the platform) puts it: "There's an opportunity to work with advertisers on creating content that meets the editorial aspirations of ourselves and meets their need to get to consumers." {C}(Jackson, 2014){C}. What is being created is thus ‘branded content’ instead of simple advertisements.

{C}{C}{C}To illustrate this, an example is provided that came up during the empirical research online. The picture below shows a BuzzFeed article, and on the surface it seems like another entertaining BuzzFeed article (click on the image to view the full page). Who posted it? It was posted by Captain Morgan, and looking at the marked text in the description, its purpose is not just to entertain you{C} (Muniz & Schau, 2011){C}; it is there to educate consumers about the man behind the rum. On the side, we can find more ‘sponsored content’ from Captain Morgan. Evidently, the success of one such native ad is to create content that 1) enhances brand equity, 2) adds to the publisher’s / platform’s value, and most importantly; 3) is valuable for the audience that needs to be engaged.  

Figure 1 : Native Advertising in practice; Captain Morgan offering valuable content on Buzzfeed.

Native Marketing explained

Buzzfeed, Forbes, The Atlantic, Facebook, The New Yorker, etc; they all have developed a version of native advertising, called ‘sponsored content’, of which the above is an example. Buzzfeed runs completely on the gains from native advertising; not only do they encourage advertisers to settle in between the website contributors, (the regular visitors), but they also offer help to potential and existing advertisers to create content that is likely to be shared often by BuzzFeed users.

An overview of the main players in the native advertising field is provided in this map of native advertising platforms, and was taken from a 2013 article (Berry, 2013), and therefore not completely up to date. However, it accurately shows the division between different native advertising channels. Please note that more players joined this landscape since the map was made, however, the main players have remained more or less the same (Berry, 2013):

• Sponsored Posts and Articles: Facebook and BuzzFeed (and newspapers)
• Sponsored Video: YouTube and ShareThrough
• Sponsored Images: Imgur and TripleLift
• Sponsored Playlists: Pandora (mainly U.S) and Spotify (mainly Europe)
• Sponsored Links: Disqus and Zemanta (many more have emerged)
• Sponsored Listings: Uncrate and Yelp

Discussion.

In a study that was published on February 12th 2014, The Media Briefing (Taylor, 2014) investigated the traffic around these native ads and provided this study with interesting data collected from 689 BuzzFeed native ads posted by 51 companies.

The results (average ad shares per social platform) are astonishing:

• 263 Facebook shares
• 36 Tweets
• 7 Google ‘plus one’s’
• 44 Pins
  
• 2 Linkedin shares

Additional outcomes of the study:

• Native advertising on BuzzFeed is likely to result in 4241 total social media interactions.
• Spotify’s native ad wins: 8530 Facebook shares, resulting in almost 50.000 Facebook interactions, including likes and comments.

According to The Media Briefing (2014), it can therefore be argued that BuzzFeed’s native advertising strategy is a tremendous success simply because advertisers love the idea that consumers will share an ad on their social network platforms. Why? It turns out that the earlier-mentioned Word of Mouth is of vital importance for gaining trustworthiness, and therefore is much more likely to lead to an increase in sales (see table 1 below). “That these services enable only the sharing of content on the Web is not important here. What is important is that they allow simultaneous sharing in reality.” (Akar & Topcu, 2011, p.39).

A 2012 study conducted by The Nielsen Company (2013) indicated advertising in the form of word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family continued to be the strongest factor triggering action among 84% of 29.000 global respondents from 58 countries (table on the next page).

Table 1: Nielsen Global Survey of Trust in Advertising, Questionnaire 1-2013 (Nielsen, 2013)

Native Marketing explained

A brief Critique and suggestions for research.

Some critique is being raised about native advertising as a new form of online advertising.  Listed below are the most commonly raised issues:

• Many platforms may not have the capacity to handle the growing amount of native advertising, even though they say they can (Kantrowitz, 2013).
• It is generally hard to tell whether native advertising is more successful than conventional banner methods, as they are used at different scales.
• Joe McCambley, who helped creating the first banner ad, says that native advertising might destroy journalism, as “You are gambling with the contract you have with your readers,” and “How do I know who made the content I am looking at and what the value of the information is?” (Carr, 2013).
• There are ethical questions being raised about the extent to which for instance The New Yorker is fooling their audience and breaching the contract of offering valuable and trustworthy content.

The scope of this paper leaves no room for discussion of the above, therefore it is suggested that further research should be done towards the limitations of native advertising, in terms of scalability as well as in terms of ethical issues.

 

Conclusion.

Web 2.0 has made a significant impact on the power relations between brands and their audience, and native advertising is one answer to this paradigm shift. Online advertisers now find themselves on thin ice, as the “…web-based power struggles between marketer and consumer brand authors challenge accepted branding truths and paradigms: where short-term brands can trump long-term icons, where marketing looks more like public relations, where brand building gives way to brand protection, and brand value is driven by risk, not returns.” (Fournier & Avery, 2011, p.193). This paper confirms that advertisers will always be looking for better ways to reach their audiences, and that those who are most adaptive to change will always be upfront.

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NATIVE ADVERTISING, THE NEXT BIG THING? Part 1

December 11, 2014

Written By Thomas Roos

Part 1: How Web 2.0 gave consumers endless power

An introduction to native advertising.

Native advertising is a new phenomenon within the online advertising field and by some people is referred to as the new disruptive online advertising strategy (Salmon, 2013). Native advertising has received wide-spread attention within the online marketing field, especially among content marketers, but seem to be poorly understood by too many stakeholders. (The average monthly Google searches of the term ‘native advertising’ has gone from 800 January 2013 to 4000 in 2014.) Native advertising includes ads that ‘blend in’ with the content that surrounds them, but are actually branded and paid for. Evidently, the success of one such native ad is to create content that 1) enhances brand equity, 2) adds to the publisher’s / platform’s value, and most importantly; 3) is valuable for the audience that needs to be engaged.

The nature of this paper and the reason for writing.

This article will merely reflect upon my interpretations of the information that was collected and processed, and it is written to provide deeper understanding of native advertising. But most importantly; it tries to identify native advertising’s place in the existing marketing paradigm and to relate it to current movements within consumer culture.

After reflecting back upon the recent paradigm shifts in society and in internet marketing that are relevant to the rise of native advertising practices, I will display the findings from a literature search, highlighting authors that made future predictions in regards to the development of (internet) marketing and advertising. In the second part, the empirical data resulting from an explorative study using netnographic methods and secondary data sources will be analysed and discussed. After illustrating the essence of native advertising and how native advertising has developed to what it is now, I will provide the reader with an argument that explains the success of native advertising for brands. The paper will conclude with a discussion of native advertising and how its success might be predicting the future form of advertising in Web 3.0

Consumer resistance to online advertising.

Online advertisements are everywhere. It seems that there is no way to escape them, even though we were fairly quick to adapt our cognitive efforts to the overwhelming amount of stimuli; nowadays 90% of the banners is selected out by our brain and does not even reach our conscious mind (Benway, 1998) (Burke et al., 2005) (Buscher et al., 2010).

Digital advertisements have become more and more intrusive, some colourful, some beautifully simple; but they all annoy us to a certain degree. Certainly, advertisers and marketing agents have become better and better at drawing the online wanderer’s attention along the way, using a variety of methods (Winer, 2009, p.110).

‘’The early part of the 21st century has witnessed an explosion in new media utilized by marketing managers to reach their customers’’ (Winer, 2009, p.119). Not solely through visual attractions, no, a fine-tuned mix of audio-visual materials is often used to facilitate a desperate call for attention. Think of the time you were listening to your favourite playlist on Spotify, rudely being interrupted by an audio advertisement in your native language, along with a screen-size billboard popping up on your screen. Think of the times you were distracted by extravagant banners on the side of the news article you were trying to read. Think of that, and you’re thinking of the post-modern internet era, an era of ‘advertising deficit disorder’ (Rubleski, 2008).

A simple, but effective way to deal with these annoying banners and ads, is simply to install so-called ad-blocking plug-ins such as Adblock, that claims to have been downloaded over 200 million times (Palant, 2014). When companies started blocking Adblock users with software called Adblockblock, activists invented Adblockblockblock to avoid that (Smith, 2013), indicating an endless cat and mouse play.

Literature study: Are we witnessing the maturation of Web 2.0?

Even though the past decade has shown us numerous examples of brands that successfully drew the attention of their target audience, it seems like the ‘traditional ways’ of online marketing (Winer, 2009, p.110) are getting out of fashion. More specialized online marketing such as interactive methods have emerged in the past years, indicating a possible maturation of the online marketing paradigm as we know it (Wind, 2008) (Varadarajan & Yadav, 2009, p.20). 

This maturation of internet marketing goes along with shift in society as a whole. The paradigm shifts that have taken place in consumer culture naturally have their effect on marketing. In the current postmodern consumer culture, brands are used primarily for identity building projects. A growing body of literature from a more consumer culture perspective deals with how advertisements are perceived by consumers nowadays. Slightly older, but still very relevant contributions to this body of literature were made by Mick and Buhl (1992) and by Ritson and Elliot (1999). The former argue that ads function considerably as carriers of social meanings and are actively being used for identity building and creation. The latter argue that ‘’advertising can form the basis of for a wide variety of social interactions’’ (p.273). Firat and Venkatesh (1995) argue, - in their rather elaborative description of the postmodern condition of consumer society-, that “...it is not to brands that consumers will be loyal, but to images and symbols...’’ (p.251). Deighton and Kornfeld (2009, p.9) therefore argue that of their five possible strategies for interaction with online consumers, the one that facilitates people’s identity projects and that contributes to a collective sense-making will be the most successful.

{C}{C}{C}{C}In Why do brands cause trouble? (2002), Holt predicted a paradigm shift from postmodernism to what he calls ‘post-postmodernism’. He provides evidence for the impact that contemporary anti-branding movements will have on marketing as whole, and based upon the exploratory research that was conducted, this paper suggests that these predictions are to a large extend applicable to the online marketing paradigm as well. The recent changes in consumer attitude towards brands show that branding has become a fine art and is now subject to growing consumer scepticism of brands, producers and capitalist systems in general (Holt, 2002) (Barwise & Meehan, 2010). The well-awake and self-educated brand critics that we used to call consumers are now questioning the authenticity of each branded article, advertisement, blog or other content they come across. Advertising online is subject to a changing power balance between producer and consumer, and brands will be valued as long as they allow interaction from both sides and can be used to create meaning (Vargo & Lusch, 2004). As Christodoulides (2009) argued already 4 years ago: “Post-internet branding is about facilitating conversations around the brand” (p.142).

The empowerment of the consumer is enhanced in the numerous user-generated content (UGC) platforms: “…whether the news is good or bad, they will tell everyone.” (Levine et al., 2001). Recent examples of consumer empowerment include single Youtube videos posted by one single individual, resulting in substantial losses (or gains) in brand equity when going viral, and proving why Word Of Mouth (WOM) is one of the strongest means through which a brand can gain exposure. Later on WOM will be discussed further. 

Consumers have turned to UGC to inform themselves and others about brands and products, rather than listening to companies (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010, p.180). Now the companies seem to have their answer: settle in between the audience through native advertising.

Part 2 of this paper will take the above into consideration when discussing empirical examples of native advertising as an answer to this changing power balance, as well as its successes and limitations. It will offer visual aid while explaining the essence of native advertising.

How Did the Internet Create New Travelers And Implications for the Industry

December 8, 2014

Written By Aleksandra Rakonjac 

Industry Overview

Over the past 50 years travel industry has experienced substantial growth and as such has become one of the most profitable industries (World Tourism Organization 2012). Recent developments in ITC technologies have contributed to even more significant growth of this industry and its changes.

Once in Rome I met a 50-55 years old Swedish couple and helped them get around narrow streets of the city. Meanwhile, they told me they have already visited Rome for their honeymoon 20 years ago and that it was less touristy and more charming. What happened? The Internet, that eventually became a major tool in tourism industry (Wua et al. 2008). Developments in ITC technologies have influenced a number of travelers around the world to use technologies for planning and experiencing their travels (Buhalis & Law 2008). This means that customers search for travel information online, make online air-ticket bookings, as well as room reservations, and other online purchases themselves instead of relying on travel agencies to do this for them (Buhalis & Law 2008). Not only did purchasing holidays become easier and more efficient in the sense that customers no longer need travel agencies, but also more affordable. Due to the popularity of the Internet, many tourist organizations such as hotels, airlines, and travel agencies have incorporated Internet technologies as part of their marketing and communication strategies (Buhalis & Law 2008). However, many of them are still uncertain how to incorporate and use these technologies best since all online consumers are perceived as equal.

New Travelers

The Internet has shaped and created new consumers. Among the active Internet users between the ages of 16 and 54, 72.8 percent read blogs or web logs (Akar & Topcu 2011). After buying and consuming a product or service, users like to share their review and evaluation through a social network site. It has been reported that people spend more than 20% of their time online visiting social networking websites (Seraj 2012). Accordingly, travelers use social media to report their latest travel adventures. Moreover, electronic word of mouth has become dominating channel and can take place in different ways such as discussion forums, posted reviews or opinion platforms (Akar & Topcu 2011). Similarly to pre-modern times even today every purchasing decision is affected by social influence (Akar & Topcu 2011) and wants to be shared and displayed as such.

New travelers, however, are described as sophisticated, technologically and linguistically skilled. Organized tours are dull whereas self-organized trips are adventurous (Buhalis & Law 2008). New travelers seek experience, but look for value (money and time). New travelers can be described as both, hedonistic and utilitarian. Hedonism relates to festive, ludic, fun and playful side of shopping where consumers seek for pleasure, curiosity, fantasy and escapism (Scarpi 2012). Such travelers daydream about escaping to far lands. Hedonistic travelers (or non-travelers) spend hours and hours online searching for beautiful, tropical, hidden places where they want to escape once. By contrast, utilitarianism represents task-related, rational, necessary shopping (Scarpi 2012). Holidays are one of the most expensive services purchased and take out most of the house budget (Burn 2013). As such they are more closely related to utilitarianism since the travelers take time to explore options, think and finally purchase a holiday. It is essential for travel and tourist organizations to keep this in mind when designing and deciding for their online channels. Websites, social media webpages and blogs should be easy to navigate, pleasurable, stimulate curiosity and leave good overall impression so that audience would use it repeatedly (Scarpi 2012).

Just like in offline marketing, organizations need to know how their online target market thinks, acts and performs. Even though typical travelers of the 21st century are somewhat generalized, due to the high increase in Internet usage when purchasing travel it is essential to understand how are these online users segmented. Age, gender, income, and education were found to have a significant influence on online shopping intent (Aljukhadar & Senecal 2011). According to Aljukhadar and Senegal online consumers are segmented in the following way:

1. The basic communicators (use the internet mainly to communicate via e-mail),

2. The lurking shoppers (consumers who employ the internet to navigate and to heavily shop)

3. The social thrivers (exploit more the internet interactive features to socially interact by mean of chatting, blogging, video streaming, and downloading) (2011).

Travel and Tourist Organizations

What does all this mean for tourist organizations? In order to better understand which communication strategies to use for online activities it is important to acknowledge previous information and identify online target market. The world fell for the Internet and social media but not all the tourist and travel organizations will benefit from such communication strategies in the same way.

Compared to basic communicators and lurking shoppers, social thrivers are the least important segment due to the fact that they are the youngest users with lowest income (Aljukhadar & Senecal 2011). They are often disregarded and therefore not targeted for e-commerce websites. However, statistics show that they spend most time on the Internet. If travel and tourist organizations do not know how their target market utilizes time on the Internet, data can be misinterpreted and lead to wrong communication strategies. Offering exclusive holidays and targeting social thrivers will not generate high ROI. Instead, targeting lurking shoppers, who are highly educated and of highest income, will generate some ROI. Affluent consumers, who correspond to lurking shoppers, do not have the time to search for travel services and destinations to satisfy their travel needs (Bhati et al. 2013). Still the Internet can be used in two different but not exclusive ways: first, as a source of information, and second, as a marketing tool to facilitate online transactions (Garces et al. 2004). 14 years ago it was mainly used as a source of information due to insecurity in payment systems, technology and lack of human interface (Lang 2000). Today, however, the majority of Internet users overcame this barrier. As previously mentioned, particular segment that still does not use the Internet to purchase holidays are affluent travelers. Travel agents are still important and far from distinct when it comes to affluent travelers (Burn 2013). High end travelers appreciate customization, authenticity and exclusivity when planning their travel (Bhati et al, 2013) and this is to be achieved through networking, personal selling, and world wide recognized prizes (Burn 2013). They do not have the time to waste because for them, time is money. Social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or different blogs attract no attention (see the pic) since this segment only cares about the relationship with the hotel (Burn 2013).

Social thrivers, even though perceived as not important, are not to be completely dismissed. Knowing that they spend most of their time on the Internet engaging in social media websites to chat, blog, stream and download; travel and tourist organizations should use that information to better know where to advertise when targeting young travelers of lower income. Having identified where to target them, travel and tourist organizations need to know how to best reach new and existing travelers. Out of different options of Internet advertising such as banner ads, coupon/loyalty advertising, SEM (search engine marketing), and price comparison websites; it is vital to acknowledge that coupon/loyalty advertising and search engine marketing are used to reach existing consumers whereas price comparison websites attract new consumers best (Breuer & Brettel 2012).

Summary

The beauty of the Internet is that it offers broad range of information, products and services easily available. Couple of clicks share travelers from adventurous journeys and relaxed family holidays. Tourist and travel organizations have experienced major changes within their business models due to the rise of the Internet and customers’ fidelity to it. What has not changed is the way these organizations should think of their consumers. Just like offline, travelers can be differentiated and segmented even online. In order to better utilize all the benefits the Internet offers, organizations should identify and understand their online target segment and plan communication strategies accordingly.

Reference List

Akar, E. Topcu, B. 2011, An Examination of the Factors Influencing Consumers' Attitudes Toward Social Media Marketing. Journal of Internet Commerce . no. 1, pp. 35-67.

Aljukhadar, M. Senecal, S. 2011, Segmenting the online consumer market. Marketing Intelligence and Planning. no. pp. 4, 422 - 433.

Bhati, A. Chang, J. Kaur, K. Hoogn Cheong, T. 2013, Personalised Travel Services: An Exploratory Study in Singapore Context." Tourism and Hospitality. no. 2, http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/Personalised-Travel-Services-an-Exploratory-Study-in-Singapore-Context-2167-0269.1000113.pdf (accessed February 11, 2014).

Breuer, R. Brettel, M. 2012, Short- and Long-term Effects of Online Advertising: Differences between New and Existing Customers. Journal of Interactive Marketing. no. 1, pp. 155-166.

Buhalis, D. Law, R. 2008, Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management. no. 4, pp. 609–623. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517708000162 (accessed February 11, 2014).

Burn, D. Contently. 2013, The Brochure is Dead: Luxury Travelers Want More . Last modified July 16, 2013. Accessed February 11, 2014. http://contently.com/strategist/2013/07/16/content-experiences-for-the-luxury-traveler/

Garces, S. Gorgemans, S. Sanchez, A.M. Perez, M. 2004. Implications of the Internet - an analysis of the Aragonese hospitality industry. Tourism Management , 4(5) , 603-613. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517703001523 (accessed February 11, 2014).

Lang, T. C. 2000, The effect of the Internet on travel consumer purchasing behaviour and implications for travel agencies . Journal of Vacation Marketing. no. 4, pp. 368-385 . http://jvm.sagepub.com/content/6/4/368.short (accessed February 11, 2014).

Scarpi, D. 2012, Work and Fun on the Internet: The Effects of Utilitarianism and Hedonism Online. Journal of Interactive Marketing. no. 1, pp. 53-67.

Seraj, M. 2012, We create, We Connect, We Respect, Therefore We Are: Intellectual, Social, and Cultural Value in Online Communities. Journal of Interactive Marketing. no. 1, pp. 209-222.

World Tourism Organization, "Historical perspective of world tourism." Accessed February 11, 2014. http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/historical.htm.

Wua, A. Shwu-Ing, S. Weib, Pao-Lien. Chenc, Jui-Ho. 2008, Influential factors and relational structure of Internet banner advertising in the tourism industry. Tourism Management. no. 2, pp. 221-236. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517707000787 (accessed February 11, 2014). 

SOCIAL MEDIA – WHERE THE CONSUMER BECOMES THE BRAND MANAGER

December 4, 2014

Written By Karl Pollinger

Aim

The paper’s aim is to explain how the Internet and specifically social media platforms have changed the brand-consumer relationship in regards to branding control and influence. Do brand managers have lost parts of the control over the brand and is it a positive development?

Introduction

Once upon a time, in a realm far away, consumers were simply consumers - nothing more nothing less. They were bound to believe and accept the status quo set by companies and their respective marketers and brand managers regarding the latter’s products and services. That was the given relationship; the brand manager created an identity message (preferably around the company’s core values) and the consumer then interpreted the message and created his/her brand image – done (Kapferer, 2008, p. 174; Christodoulides, 2009). The only mechanism, which every now and then brought light into the matter of this relationship, was newspapers and other third party media, which uncovered scandals or gave ‘unbiased’ product information. However, the term ‘unbiased’ should be used carefully since it is an ideal and presupposes that third parties do not have their own agenda to distort information.

But then, in 2004 the corner stone of a new era was set by the foundation of a, at that time unexpected and unprecedented, mass social media platform commonly known as Facebook (Business Insider 2010). By now Facebook has accumulated a massive 1.23 billion monthly users, according to British newspaper The Guardian (The Guardian 2014) and has since been joined by other influential social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Google+, among others.

Together, they build a powerful tool for the common man and woman to share and listen with/to their fellow consumers (Papasolomou & Melanthiou, 2012). As a consequence, news are created and disseminated worldwide within split seconds. Tuten (2008) defines social media as online sites (or applications) through which users can produce, publish, control, rank, and interact with online content.

The Story

Afore-mentioned was not possible prior to the age of social media. Before, people could merely write letters or emails of concern to companies. This gave brands and their managers the hiding space of anonymity. A consumer wrote a letter, the brand manager did not answer, no one seemed to care, and due to the lack of social media platforms that was the end of the story.

Due to the emergence of mass social media like Facebook, brand manager have now the opportunity to animate consumers to participate actively and engage them emotionally into the branding process and, in connection with social media, can provide a platform for open discussion.

Yet, what is actually meant here by ‘opportunity’ is the fact that brand managers are rather forced to listen to the consumers who became active due to the simple fact of being able to write reviews, provide information about the brand at topic, and most of all share it via social media platforms (Singh & Sonnenburg 2012). Cova and Pace (2006) call this consumer control-takeover adequately a serendipitous hijack, in which the consumer captures control of the brand, unexpected by the actual brand manager.

Social media can therefore be seen as a catalyst that enables an ever-changing role-play between all participants/stakeholder. The consumer might be the brand manager at some point, sharing his/her views on Twitter, Facebook, and/or other available media and within minutes the social network can take over and manage the brand’s image without the influence of the actual manager. Singh and Sonnenburg (2012) describe this phenomenon as a metaphorical, improvised role-play in which the consumer and brand manager switch roles from the passive listener to the active participant from time to time. As a consequence managers loose partially control of their brand during the play - all thanks to mass social media platforms.

A fairly recent example where a company loses said control is the following: The Serco Group video (Serco Group Video), which was published in 2009 on the online platform YouTube. The rather critically toned video, made by a journalist, was aimed to unveil the intensity and scale the British based Serco Group is operating on. In a sense, it is warning the consumer of Big Brother (who is watching you), just as the fictional character in George Orwell’s world-renowned novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Within days the video was watch hundreds of thousands of times, mainly due to vast sharing on social media platforms such as Facebook. During the following months and years, more and more major (mainly British) newspapers such as The Guardian (The Guardian 2013) picked up on the story behind the Serco Group and the company’s brand reputation was hurt considerably as a result.

Problems for the Serco Group peaked in late 2013 as the British Serious Fraud Office, a sub-branch of the Ministry of Justice, put the group under investigation (Financial Times 2014). Inter alia, Serco’s mistake was and still is the fact that they did not build relationships with their stakeholders on a web-based social media platform, which is one key to successful brand strategies in the internet era (de Chernatony & Christodoulides, 2004). Quite simply put, they missed the chance to facilitate social media platforms as means to create an open relationship with consumers and other stakeholder. Serco rather hid behind the ambiguity and the enigmatic anonymity of silence. Granted, Serco is a B2B company with whom the average consumer entertains no direct business interaction; however, due to Serco’s operations (see Video above) they affect people in their everyday life. Thus, in order to strengthen and deepen the brand-consumer relationship for the Serco group in a more effective way, they might have to facilitate social media generated content (Van den Bulte & Wuyts, 2007) such as YouTube videos in a positive instead of an uncontrollable negative way.

On the other hand, a company who mastered the idea of partially losing control in order to connect with their consumers is the Danish-based Lego Group. In fact they are so good at it that consumers not only actively participate and provide innovational ideas during the development and production process but actually help Lego to progress products (Antorini et al., 2012). Lego realized as early as the 1990’s that consumer consumers have valuable knowledge which a company should utilize in order to generate a much larger (and much cheaper) pool of innovators. Now, Lego enthusiast can co-create entire Lego lines and earn recognition for their work. As did Chicago-based Architect Adam Reed Tucker with his creation of Lego Architecture (Antorini et al., 2012). This entire process was vastly enhanced by social media platforms on which third party developers are able to share ideas and creations with fellow enthusiasts (Antorini et al., 2012). In the end, by letting go of some of the control over the brand, the Lego Group was able to not only connect with their fans but also increase the innovative output of the company.

Other notable positive examples in the likes of Lucasfilm (providing material for amateur Star Wars DIY film makers) or Doritos (actual amateur films used as commercials) exist in abundance. The latter are just some of the many companies that managed to utilize social media platforms, and the therefore resulting loss of control over the brand, positively - even ingeniously. They managed to avoid what many brands, like McDonalds or Fox News, are currently facing – anti-brand web campaigns run by frustrated consumers, aimed to force negative attention on brands they deem harmful (Krishnamurthy & Kucuk 2008).

Conclusion

To answer the question whether brand managers have partially lost control over the brand due to social media. They clearly have. Above stated examples of the Serco- and Lego Group are just a few cases. Many more cases are widely known such as the ongoing Dove Real Beauty Campaign launched in 2004 and their latest video Dove Real Beauty Sketches, which went viral and sparked user generated mock-videos such as this one. The latter displays how a marketing campaign and its meaning can be distorted by the consumers’ ability to share their view via social media platforms. The Dove campaign earned further criticism, which rapidly spread on Facebook (i.a.) resulting in a Business Insider (2013) article with the title: “Why People Hate Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' Video”.

As to the second part of the question above – Is it a positive development? Yes, I believe so. Social media platforms cast off the veil of ambiguity and mystery that can lead consumers astray. Companies; however, need to actively engage and encourage the consumer to participate on social media platform in order regain control and also send a clear message of openness and trust. Also, brand managers have to realize that social media platforms caused a shift in power. Papasolomou and Melanthiou (2012, p. 320) speak here of ‘spreading the word about brands from a one-to-one basis to a one-to-hundreds, or even one-to-thousands.’ It all displays how brand managers lost control through social media – now it is time to adjust and regain.

In the end the questions is whether or not brand managers can fully trust what the consumer believes is right for the company and also from an ethical point of view right for fellow consumers. Is the consumer informed enough about intensions of a brand manager, is the consumer capable of accurately knowing what he/she actuals wants/needs? And is social media maybe also threatening to become a tool to easily dispense false news such as in the case of Konny 2012? 

References

Antorini, Y.M., Muñiz, A. & Askildsen, T. (2012), Collaboration with Customer Communities - Lessons From the Lego Group, MIT Sloan Management Review, 53(3), pp. 71-79

Carlson, N. (2010), At Last -- The Full Story Of How Facebook Was Founded, Business Insider [Internet], available from: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-facebook-was-founded-2010-3/they-made-a-mistake-haha-they-asked-me-to-make-it-for-them-2 [accessed 11 February 2014]

Christodoulides, G. (2009), Branding in the post-internet era, Marketing Theory, 9(1), pp. 141-144

Cova, B. & Pace, S. (2006), Brand community of convenience products: new forms of customer empowerment – the case “my Nutella The Community”, European Journal of Marketing, 40(9/10), pp. 1087-1105

De Chernatony, L. & Christodoulides, G. (2004), Taking the Brand Promise Online: Challenges and Opportunities, Interactive Marketing 5(3), pp. 238–51.

Harris, J. (2013), Serco: the company that is running Britain, The Guardian [Internet], available from: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jul/29/serco-biggest-company-never-heard-of [accessed 12 February 2014]

Kapferer, J.N. (2008), The New Strategic Brand Management - Advanced insights and strategic thinking, 4th Edition, pp. 174, Kogan Page

Krishnamurthy, S. & Kucuk, S.U. (2008), Anti-branding on the Internet, Journal of Business Research, 62(9), pp. 1119-1126

Papasolomou, I. & Melanthiou, Y. (2012), Social Media: Marketing Public Relations’ New Best Friend, Journal of Promotion Management, 18(3), pp. 319-328

Plimmer, G. (2014), Serco wins first UK government contract since ban lifted, Financial Times [Internet], available from: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9cfe3482-9259-11e3-9e43-00144feab7de.html#axzz2t7vFqnGz [accessed 13 February 2014]

Rushe, D. (2014), Facebook posts record quarterly results and reports $1.5bn profit for 2013, The Guardian [Internet], available from: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jan/29/facebook-record-quarterly-results?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2 [accessed 11 February 2014]

Stampler, L. (2013), Why People Hate Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' Video, Business Insider [Internet], available from: http://www.businessinsider.com/why-people-hate-doves-real-beauty-ad-2013-4 [accessed 13 February 2014]

Singh, S. & Sonnenburg, S. (2012), Brand Performance in Social Media, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(2), pp. 189-197

Tuten, T. L. (2008), Advertising 2.0. Wesport, CT: Praeger.

Van den Bulte, C. & Wuyts, S. (2007), Social Networks and Marketing, Relevant Knowledge Series, Boston, MA: Marketing Science Institute.

Social Media

The Rise of Social Media: Effects on Consumers and Brands

November 29, 2013

Written by Ioannis Petalidis

Purpose – introduction

It is an undisputable fact that the Internet was a revolution that changed not only the consumption field, but in general the way people live and exist; according to Aleks Krotoski and his BBC documentary “Virtual Revolution” it actually created a brand new kind of human being: the “Homo Interneticus”. Nevertheless, the last 10 years this revolution, took a totally different shape that occurred with the rise of social media. When Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 invented the Facebook platform for his classmates in Harvard, no one could imagine that 10 years later he would be one of the world’s richest people. But what was the reason, behind the shaping of “Homo Interneticus”?   

social media connect the world

How the rise of social media and the evolution of the Internet changed the consumption landscape

Susan Fournier and Jill Avery (2011) claim that this dramatic rise and success has its roots to one of the most basic human motivations: “the desire to feel accepted, to fit in and to belong; they name this new era “the age of the social collective” and describe it like a community through virtual connections among like-minded people, that creates “micro-targeted niche groups” to which people can easily belong.

Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden (2011) argue that the main shift in the consumption landscape through the social media revolution is that consumers are no longer passive recipients in the marketing exchange process; rather than that, consumers have a progressively active role in co-creating the marketing content. In their effort to highlight this immense change in the rules of marketing game, they are attempting to bust some prevalent myths that existed in the pre-Internet era:

1. Brand managers own and orchestrate their brands

2. Phones are for making phone calls

3. The Web is for finding information

4. Companies use marketing communications to control their message

5. Consumers purchase products promoted by marketers

6. Providing a forum for customers to talk is dangerous and risky.

Those 6 myths that marketers believed in and were building their strategies upon them are today something more than obsolete; they can prove disastrous.

For instance, if one focuses on myth number 2, it will become clear that during the last years mobile phones transformed completely from a calling and texting device to a portable mini-computer. This shift resulted to the rise of a brand new marketing field, the so-called mobile marketing. Andreas M. Kaplan (2011) defines this field as “any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which consumers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device”. Social media went mobile and this was a revolution inside the revolution; from a broader perspective, mobile social media allowed for a tighter integration of virtual and real life, proving wrong some researchers that believed the Internet would result in less communication. (Andreas M. Kaplan, 2011). The Facebook check-in for example is a tool that has proven powerful, as a mean of exhibitionism, but also for helping people meet each other. Nonetheless, as far as the consumption field is concerned, the increasing use of check-in, pushed companies (especially restaurants and cafeterias) to engage in the social media world.

Papasolomou and Melanthiou (2012) highlighted another great change in the consumption landscape that came with the rise of “Homo Interneticus”; the existence of intermediaries or Non Media Connectors (NMC) in the marketing procedure and their crucial role in the building of the brand in the virtual world. This evolution has made marketing being a field of Public Relations, rather than the traditional detailed strategic arena. 

Furthermore, the rise of social media democratized corporate communication, while messages and information about brands circulate with or without permission of the firms in question (Kietzman, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre, 2011). From this point of view, the statement of BBC Business Editor, Tim Weber, summarizes in an emblematic way the position of the brands in the era of Homo Interneticus: “These days, one witty tweet, one clever blog post, one devastating video – forwarded to hundreds of friends at the click of a mouse – can snowball and kill a product or damage a company’s share price”. It is worth mentioning that his kind of anti-branding activism on the Internet is a very common phenomenon, which indicates the online consumer power and the growing consumer sovereignty in the virtual world; what is more, the majority of online anti-brand attacks target well-established and powerful brands (Krishnamurthy, Kucuk, 2008).

Moreover, another important aspect of the latest evolution in the virtual world is the high degree of credibility with which Internet users treat the online word of mouth (Akar, Topcu, 2011). There is no doubt that customers perceive the user generated content as more reliable than straightforward business communication; as a result, electronic word of mouth has turned into a dominating channel that influences consumer behavior; social media marketing has become multidirectional, participatory and consumer driven.

Movies industry – example

After having examined some prevailing theories about the major shifts that the Internet revolution and the rise of the Homo Interneticus brought to the consumption landscape, it is time to focus on a field that the virtual revolution not only had a strong impact, but changed it radically: the movies industry.

 IMDb (Internet Movie Database)

IMDb logo

“Those Eyes”, the predecessor of IMDb, was launched in 1990 by professional computer programmer and British film Fan, Col Needham and it was about listing actresses with beautiful eyes. Others with similar interests soon responded with additions of different lists of their own: “Actors List”, “Dead Actors/ Actresses List”, “Directors List”. The goal of the participants changed over time towards making the lists as inclusive as possible. By the end of 1990, the lists included almost 10,000 movies and television series. When Needham developed and inserted a program that could search among the lists, Internet Movie Database was born. In 1993 IMDb became an independent website run by its followers and the amount of stored data increased hugely. In 1998, due to restricted funding, Needham sold IMDb to Amazon.com, with the condition that he would remain in operational charge.

There is no denying the fact that nowadays, IMDb is the most powerful and useful tool for everyone, before watching a movie. The democratized way of its rating system and the message boards in which the users exchange opinions about movies and TV series, are its two strongest components that allowed it to prevail in the movie’s critic field. A series of negative e- words of mouth in the IMDb message board or a low rating can prove devastating for the reputation of a movie and lead to a catastrophically small attendance in the theaters.

Besides, the site gives the opportunity for users to make their own lists of top movies, in general, by movie category or by actor. The evolution of IMDb demonstrates the shift from the passive movie consumer to the active co-creator of movies industry’s reputation. Award ceremonies like the Oscars and film festivals like Cannes review movies every year, however, those judgments might be biased due to financial interests of the industry or lobbying and are likely not to be proportional to the public’s opinion. On the other hand, professional film critics lost their authority over the quality of a movie.

How can marketers best adapt

While in a world that is ruled by Homo Interneticus and social media, the challenges have become clearer, the answers that marketers should imply are still surrounded by fog. According to Fournier and Avery (2011) the traditional branding strategies seem obsolete, disconnected and irrelevant in a space owned by the social collective, where transparency, criticism and parody of the well established firms reign. Instead, they suggest a different approach where brand building gives its place to brand protection, as an ever present need to protect reputation from attack and demise. As it can be clearly seen, the old attack-oriented brand strategies do not apply to the world of social media; whereas, a defensive attitude is more applicable and a strategy focused on risk management and risk control is much more effective. In addition to this, Fournier and Avery (2011) highlight the need for a shift from strategic planning and proactive, pre-constructed strategies, towards a branding ruled by faith in intuition and excellence in execution; for this purpose they encourage firms to employ the so-called “digital natives” or “Generation Y” who was raised amid the social media revolution. Last but not least, for the best adaptation of marketers in this brand new world, it is proposed to stop giving priority to differentiation and turn towards the creation of resonant cultural conversations; following this road, marketers will start to focus on building short - term brands, opposing to the dominant branding philosophy that emphasizes in creating long- term brand assets.

Moreover, Kietzman, Hermkens, McCarthy and Silvestre (2011), suggest a framework with a form of a honeycomb that consists of seven functional blocks of social media activity: presence (the extent to which users know if other users are accessible), sharing (are users exchanging, distributing and receiving content?), relationships (at what point are users are related to each other?), identity (the extent to which users reveal their true identities), conversations (how often users communicate with each other?), groups (are users forming communities?) and reputation (the extent to which users can identify the standing of themselves or others in a social media setting). Having those seven blocks in mind, marketers should try to recognize and understand in depth the social media landscape, finding out if and where conversations about a firm are being held, who are the main influencers and gathering competitive intelligence. Also, they should adapt their strategies to the different social media functionalities and develop a clear understanding of how often and when a firm should interfere in conversations as well as who will represent it online; the key success factor here is to identify who has the ability to listen and care about online chatter and especially who is capable of creating emotionally appropriate content for the community. This has to be done by creating relationships that solve customer issues, not just sympathizing. It is significant for marketers to scan the environment in order to understand the velocity of information; even when it seems too late an appropriate response may turn the tide.

Likewise, the case of negative e- word of mouth and its managing by the companies has gained attention by a lot of researchers. It is claimed that bad evaluations have a stronger impact on the brand reputation than positive ones and this is based on Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979) principle of prospect theory: people perceive losses more severely than gains (Shimabukuro Sandes, Torres Urdan, 2013); consequently, companies should remain vigilant and treat the criticisms properly.

At the other end of the scale, the example of Lego Group gave another perspective; not only monitored or interacted with customer communities, but took a step further and collaborated with them; the Lego paradigm is an exceptional case of how a traditional, tightly controlled company that for decades was run by the slogan “we don’t accept unsolicited ideas”, was transformed into an open-minded, collaborative and customer-oriented business. When LEGO management was found at the crossroad of either taking legal measures against the violation of their copyright or invite users to collaborate on new innovative products, the decision was brilliant and characterized by strong peripheral vision. Antorini, Muniz Jr, Askildsen (2012) highlight the main principles that marketers should keep in mind when collaborating with customer communities; at first it is important to clarify the rules and expectations; secondly there is a need of forming a win-win mindset, by creating the feeling to the collaborating customers that the firm does not only care about “getting the job done”; thirdly, it is significant to recognize that outsiders are not insiders, which means that user communities should always be treated as independent entities and not a part of the firm; additionally, companies should not expect one size to fit all and create different environments for each type of innovation; last but not least, they should be as open as possible in order to allow collaborators to interact with each other to the maximum extent and not sacrifice this openness for confidentiality reasons.

In the same wavelength, Muniz Jr. and Jensen Schau recommend to companies to take the initiative and create on their own the virtual community of their consumers in a well structured environment that embraces the differences of the members; it is very important for marketers to give motives at the members of brand communities in order to keep their attention and interest at high levels.

Conclusion

To recapitulate, it can clearly be noticed that the dawn of the 21st century was the transition point from a world that the big brands set the agenda, to a virtual reality that consumers break their chains and take things at their hands. Nevertheless, this era of the social collective and growing criticism about the power of firms, is also characterized by an unprecedented overload of information, where the consumer is bombarded in a daily basis by a huge amount of new data. Especially in the Internet field, the new experiences that an individual gets have become countless; consequently, the challenge for marketing experts is not only to create a friendly environment that serves their customers but also to keep the attention of the consumer in an everyday tough battle, among the never ending stimuli of the virtual world. Marketing strategies should be innovative, entertaining and avoid the web’s worst enemy; boredom.    

Reference list

Akar E., Topcu B. (2011). An Examination of the Factors Influencing Consumers’ Attitudes Toward Social Media Marketing. Journal of Internet Commerce. 10, 35-67.

Antorini Y.M., Muniz A. Jr. and Askildsen T. (2012). Collaborating with Customer Communities: Lessons From the Lego Group. MIT Sloan Management Review. 53 (3), 73-79.

Fournier S., Avery J. (2011). The uninvited brand. Business Horizons, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 54, 193-207.

Hanna R., Rohm A., Crittenden V.  (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business Horizons, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 54, 241-251.

Kaplan A. (2012). If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4. Business Horizons, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 55, 129-139.

Kietzman J., Hermkens K., McCarthy I., and Silvestre B. (2011). Social Media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 54, 241-251.

Krishnamurthy S., Kucuk U. (2009). Anti-branding on the Internet. Journal of Business Research. 62, 1119–1126.

Muniz Jr. A., Jensen Schau H. (2011). How to inspire value-laden collaborative consumer-generated content. Business Horizons, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. 54, 209—217.

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Shimabukuro Sandes F., Torres Urdan A. (2013). Electronic Word-of-Mouth Impacts on Consumer Behavior: Exploratory and Experimental Studies. Journal of International Consumer Marketing. 25, 181-197.

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VALUE FROM ONLINE CONSUMERS: AN ACADEMIC APPROACH TO MARKETING AND BRANDS Part 2

November 27, 2014

Written by Kristina Persson

Analysis: The Why and How: Generating value from online consumers

Why?

Armelini & Villaneva (2011:29) suggest that brands don't have any presence in consumer's thoughts unless the brands are blogging, tweeting and conversing with the customers on social platforms. Fourneir and Avery point out that the internet, the web, is a social space, for people first, and brands have 'crashed the party' (2011:193). Invited or not, brands are part of the web. As in Virtual Worlds, or "lifeworlds" (Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody 2010:168) real people and real brands are present, and brands can use these webs to communicate, and also sell, including real and virtual products (Eisenbeiss et al 2012:17).

In these complex webs of information, people and messages, it is important not only to realise why, but for marketers to figure out how, to engage in marketing online. While people are present on various platforms and in different communities, messages are not necessarily directed at any specific audience. In this new media age, brands do not have control over messages, or who they are influencing, '..everyone and no one [is] the audience' (Fourneir and Avery 2011:194). At the same time, online media messages compete for customer's attention (Armelini & Villaneva 2011:30). Consumers themselves generate content (Muñiz Jr & Schau 2011:210-212), and the web allows for many forms of alternative media, in non-geographically bound and fragmented markets (Winer 2009:109). Careful targeting to the desired audience, through profiles of participants may help marketers focus their resources.

Who?

Aljukhadar & Senecal 2010 classify people online into  three broad segments (2010:428) of 'basic communicators' such as people who use the internet for email, 'lurking shoppers' who would remain fairly passive, but engaging in online shopping, and 'social thrivers' who are interactive - blogging, chatting, video streaming, downloading. The 'Social Thrivers' are the largest group, would be most engaging and engaged with brands, but at the same time, for some businesses, would be seen as less important than lurker shoppers in e-commerce (Aljukhada & Senecal 2010:429).

In social media, where 'social thrivers' are active (Aljukhada & Senecal 2010:429), Web 2.0 platforms provide 'lifeworlds' for consumers and brands to interact together (Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody 2010:168). Keitzmann et al describe social media based on various 'engagement needs' that are fulfilled for users (2011:242). These are presented as seven 'building blocks' that stacked together, and labelled as  'Presence' 'Sharing' 'Relationships' 'Identity' 'Conversations' 'Reputation' and 'Groups' (Keitzmann et al 2011:242). Different social media platforms with combinations of these building block provide a social space for users to fulfil needs relating to these themes.

The way people act in these spaces have been classified into 5 roles, 'Creators' 'Critics' 'Collectors' 'Joiners' and 'Spectators' (Li and Berhoff (2005, cited in Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden 2011:269-269). These indicate various levels of engagement, and upon various platforms would attract different segments of people. Social media provides the possibilities for developing deeper relationships, and space to interact 'communally' both with individual and personal responses, and forum to share with group as a whole (Christodoulides 2009:142-143).

How?

A range of strategies are given for brands and marketers to adapt their approaches from 'traditional marketing' to social media marketing, how to engage online. Suggestions range from surrendering control, developing co-created brands, giving control to customers (Zwick. Bonsu & Darmody 2008:167) to developing cooperation, leveraging relationships (Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden 2011:266).

There are a 'multiplicity of factors' embedded in a corporation, or brand's business strategy, such as the company itself, the industry, products and buyers, that can influence marketing strategies, including in online environments (Varadarajan and Yadav 2009:12). Each of these suggestions require brands to understand their business strategies, resources and aims.

Brands have objectives such as brand promotion, reaching audiences, and achieving sales (Winer 2009:109). Brands and corporations can experiment on different social media platforms, with various functions such as social networking, content sharing of photos, podcast and video, or multiple sites, to engage and influence audiences  (Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden 2011:266). The brand story can be fed into this ecosystem, where conversations are 'products' (Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden 2011:267). Compared to being recipients of traditional media and brand messaging, consumers want to become participants, gaining intimate experiences (Hanna, Rohm & Crittenden 2011:267-268). Marketers can use technology to monitor behaviour, to understand the process of thought consumers take to reach ideas, and monitor their physical location, to send personalised advertising and messages (Winer 2009:109).

Credibility is given as an important factor by Armelini & Villaneva which relate to brand promises, trust and emphasise the power of personal recommendations, easily shared online, over advertising (2011:32). Barwise and Meehan provide similar suggestions including to continually strive to improve, and demonstrate an understanding of what consumers want, and play by their rules (2010:83-84). Playfulness is said to make value-creation interactions enjoyable, and activities are attractive for people engaging in them (Seraj 2012:212). Playful, self-governed and quality content driven activities were found to create value, and encourage loyalty for members in online communities (Seraj 2012:209,212). Zwick Bonsu & Darmody, warn brands against aiming to 'co-create' value as it can be seen as exploitative of consumer freedom and labour (2008:163).

Discussion

From the occasional internet browser to activist blogger; people contributing to conversations, every web page visit, action, comment, click, check in at a certain location, when and with whom, stands as an endorsement, reminder, signal of interaction with brands and consumers.  In the online world, these are recorded, visible and public. Consumers participate online enjoyable, playful, creative experiences and engagement to fulfil individual needs. Brands have the same freedom to enter these 'lifeworlds' and can engage with consumers, in order to fulfil their business objectives. While called 'mutually beneficial' relationships for consumers, brands are still in a position to direct how consumers interact, and shape messages to them accordingly.

Marketers can generate value by communicating in this social space alongside consumers, in order to engage and 'co-create' and develop social meaning, which can be translated into financial value. Readers may understand that their interactions in activities in social media are sources of consumption and production, and consider what these acts mean for themselves in their worlds, and to the brands they are interacting with.

References

Aljukhadar, M., & Senecal, S. (2011). Segmenting the online consumer market.Marketing Intelligence & Planning, 29(4), 421-435. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/02634501111138572

Akar, E., & Topçu, B. (2011). An examination of the factors influencing consumers' attitudes toward social media marketing. Journal of Internet Commerce, 10(1), 35-67. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15332861.2011.558456#.Uv5zdkqwW9k

Armelini, G, & Villanueva, J. (2011). Adding social media to the marketing mix. IESE-Insight Magazine, 3(4), 29-36.

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Christodoulides, G. (2009). Branding in the post-internet era. Marketing Theory,9(1), 141-144.

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Eisenbeiss, M., Blechschmidt, B., Backhaus, K., & Freund, P. A. (2012). “The (real) world is not enough:” motivational drivers and user behavior in virtual worlds. Journ Winer, R. S. (2009). New communications approaches in marketing: Issues and research directions. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(2), 108-117. al of Interactive Marketing, 26(1), 4-20.

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Firat, A. F., & Venkatesh, A. (1995). Reenchantment of Consumption. The journal of consumer research, 22(3), 239-267.

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Fournier, S., & Avery, J. (2011). The uninvited brand. Business Horizons, 54(3), 193-207.

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Hanna, R., Rohm, A., & Crittenden, V. L. (2011). We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem. Business Horizons, 54(3), 265-273.

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Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business horizons, 54(3), 241-251.

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Muñiz Jr, A. M., & Schau, H. J. (2011). How to inspire value-laden collaborative consumer-generated content. Business Horizons, 54(3), 209-217. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681311000036

Park, C. W., Jaworski, B. J., & Maclnnis, D. J. (1986). Strategic Brand Concept-Image Management. Journal of marketing, 50(4).

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Seraj, M. (2012). We create, we connect, we respect, therefore we are: intellectual, social, and cultural value in online communities. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(4), 209-222.

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VALUE FROM ONLINE CONSUMERS: AN ACADEMIC APPROACH TO MARKETING AND BRANDS Part 1

November 24, 2014

Written by Kristina Persson

Introduction

Changes in technology over the past decade have influenced the way consumers engage and participating in activities online. The web is an environment for creation, consumption, and socialising (Seraj 2012). Marketers realise the potential to capitalise on consumers as creators, advertisers and advocates for their brands through co-creation of products and experiences, in turn generating value. By understanding roles consumers take when engaging online, marketers can better target, reach, engage and interact with the right audience for their brand. 

Purpose

This paper provides an overview of online marketing, branding and consumption, to explain why and how marketers can adapt their strategies online to create value. Consumers participate on social media platforms to fulfil personal needs, which can also generate value for brands. This paper seeks to explain the concept of value, the roles consumers take, and provide considerations to 'why and how should marketers generate value from consumers?'

Ideas presented in academic literature will provide the basis for defining these concepts. The analysis will outline why and how marketers can adapt their activities in the context of the internet. Finally, some conclusions will provide a summary of the findings and encourage readers to ask themselves where they find value when engaging online. For brand managers, taking a marketer's perspective, they may consider where are potentials source to exploit to capture and create value and meaning for their brands. Readers may consider their own consumer roles, and how their social media activity might appear outwardly to their friends, communities, followers, and the millions of internet users with access their information, blog posts, comments and conversations online, and marketers who may be monitoring them (Varadarajan & Yadav 2009:19). The paper is presented in two parts, the first part outlining the theoretical framework and definitions, and the second addressing the 'why' and 'how' aspects of analysis and discussion about marketers generating value from consumers.

Theoretical Framework

This paper is written from a social viewpoint, considering roles of marketers and consumers and social interaction online, with a theoretical perspective of postmodern consumerism (Firat and Venkatatesh 1995:259). Postmodernism expresses the possibility to create spaces outside the market system, in a 'lifeworld', for example in social spaces, community and civic life (Firat and Venkatesh 1995:259) to explain consumption occurring in these spaces, beyond pure markets. Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody (2010:168) explain that brands are becoming embedded in these 'consumer lifeworlds', which means marketing itself is entwined with consumers, who are producing and consuming, and partners in brands creative and production processes (Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody 2010:168).

Value creation is considered from a perspective of neo-liberal Marxism, where marketers manage and seize creativity, knowledge and communication to generate economic value (Zwick. Bonsu & Darmody 2008:177). Seraj uses a definition that explains value as consumers perception and assessment of 'what is received and what is given' (2012:209). Co-creation and constructing 'productive social relations' for capitalist growth (Zwick. Bonsu & Darmody 2008:177) is used to describes how marketers can generate value from consumers interacting with corporations, or brands, and with each other (Zwick. Bonsu & Darmody 2008:177; Winer 2009:109). Brands manufacturing involvement and emotional and social attachments around products, which gives them value (Zwick Bonsu & Darmody 2008:186).

Definitions and concepts

Marketing

'Traditional marketing' (Armelini & Villaneva 2011:29) 'old' marketing (Zwick, Bonsu & Darmody 2008:164) or 'offline marketing' (Christodoulides 2009:141) is characterised by its one-way nature and corporate brand-directed messages broadcast to audiences. This style of marketing has also been called 'one-sided', where marketers and brand hold the power and information and opportunity to have their say (Christodoulides 2009:142) and consumers reactions to marketing are limited by their expression of choice to participate in the market, and purchase, or not (Muñiz Jr & Schau 2011:209).

New marketing is characterised by its interactivity, and digital nature (Winer 2009:110). Electronic versions of traditional 'one-way' advertising in banners, billboards and static messages and content online are found in addition to podcasts, video streams, as well as platforms of social communities where two-way and multi-way dialogue is possible (Winer 2009:110; Muñiz Jr & Schau, 2011:209; Seraj 2012:209). Akar and Topcu  highlight that marketers, involvement in social media, and communications affect the internet, and the lives of people using the internet (2011:58).

Consumers

Consumers engage in social acts of consumption and production, symbolic acts, in moments where meanings, relationships and social definitions are interpreted and reinforced (Firat and Venkatatesh 1995:242). That is, activities and social exchanges that people take part in generating meaning.  In social online communities, people fulfil individual and social needs such as desires to seek information, experiences, express creativity, develop identity, and escape (Seraj 2012:209, Eisenbeiss et al 2012:12).

Lifeworlds

Varadarajan & Yadav explain the market place extending beyond the physical market, into electronic, and a technology and internet-enabled one (2009:11). Eisenbeiss et al. (2011) describe Virtual Worlds, where people assume identities, have experiences, cooperate and interact, and take part in virtual activities, such as travel, business and relationships, in virtual worlds with virtual markets (2011:5,17). This may be one clear 'lifeworld' that can be understood as a social community, however market and social transactions or 'exchange processes' do occur (Eisenbeiss et al. 2011:5; Firat and Venkatesh 1995:240). 

Online marketing, can therefore be understood as social marketing, groups of people, including consumers and brands communicating in all directions - that is, creating, receiving, and responding to messages. This is enabled by the internet and communications technologies, particularly with Web 2.0 tools (Christodoulides 2009:143; Varadarajan & Yadav 2009:21) and virtual worlds (Eisenbeiss et al 2011).   

The types of social environments online include webs of content, which have value (Akar &Topcu 2011:35). Social media channels allow observers to become participants are platforms for influencing users (Hanna Rohm & Crittenden 2011:267) and  include, social Media channels such as Twitter, Facebook and other Web 2.0 platforms, including Youtube, MySpace and Flicker (Akar & Topcu 2011: 36; Hanna Rohm & Crittenden 2011:266)

Branding

Park, Jaworski & MacInnis (1986:135) define branding as activities that firms, or corporations,  engage in to convey an image effectively to a target market, to maintain a market position and improve performance. Brand Concept-Image Management is a complete system for firms to develop, maintain and control brand image (Park, Jaworski & MacInnis 1986:135) and manage it long term (Park, Jaworski & MacInnis 1986:144). Managing a brand's image is considered important as a brand itself, alongside firms resources and products, can be seen as something worthy of long term investment, and source of long-term competitive advantage (Park, Jaworski & MacInnis 1986:144). With or without physical presence, brands are sources of economic value, which makes them something worth valuing and protecting (Christodoulides 2009:141)

Christodoulides view of branding incorporates activities that take place in social networks, as dynamic environments enabled by computer and technology (2009:141-142). Rather than managing, brand 'hosts' conversations and manage customer perspectives about their experiences with brands based on their products and services (Christodoulides 2009:143). This branding activity occurs  in social media spaces, in groups, blogs, networking sites, where consumers create, define and dictate messages and advertising about the brand  (Christodoulides 2009:143). Marketers can listen and follow the conversations and messages being communicated in the social media ecosystem (Hanna, Rohm and Crittenden 2011:266).

Continue reading Analysis and Discussion

Brand coherence: how is it affected by the increasing connectivity?

November 20, 2014

Written by Mikael Omberg

INTRODUCTION

Brand coherence is strongly connected to a brand’s essence, the very core of what identity the brand is communicating to the marketplace. As all relationships, the bond between a consumer and a brand is built as well as maintained over time. Therefore, to systematically and successfully communicate brand values to a consumer or customer, maintaining brand coherence becomes an inherently vital tool for brand managers. However, the growth of a company and their respective market presence, arrival into new markets, new product lines or service offerings, creates challenges to maintain an approach to consumers which does not lack brand coherence (Kapferer 2012). These challenges also arise when companies are forced to adapt, often promptly, to new and constantly evolving communication channels (Kapferer 2012; Kietzmann et al. 2011; Hoffman & Novak 2012).

AIM OF RESEARCH 

The aim of this paper is to study what impact the Internet and social media have on a brand’s ability to stay connected to their identity and stakeholders as well as what risks or opportunities these communication channels may present concerning brand coherence.

BRAND COHERENCE AND CUSTOMER EMPOWERMENT

Today, not only is the amount of people who look to the internet and social media to evaluate brands increasing, but they are also shaping the corporate communication in form of comments, videos, pictures, reviews – the list goes on (Kietzmann et al. 2011; Kucuk 2008). Grönroos (2008) argues that service marketing is taking place in a servicescape, a place where consumers and companies meet to interact with each other and interaction is now also located virtually. While the extension of the servicescape to an online platform creates possibilities for companies to find new ways of communicating with customers (Koernig 2003; Wilson et al. 2008), the loss of control of content and interaction (Kietzmann et al. 2011), might prove to make brand coherence more challenging (Kapferer 2012).

Essentially, brand coherence is damaged when the values of the brand becomes convoluted to the individuals with a connection to the brand (Kapferer 2012). An illustration of when brand coherence can become convoluted, and thus the subject of brand dilution, is anti-brand sites (Kucuk 2008). Kucuk (2008) argues that the increase in consumer’s ability to voice their opinion has become powerful tool for them to react to companies’ business. While enabling companies to find new and efficient ways to market their products and brands, the internet has become a double-edged sword which people can use to voice their displease with company efforts and policies (Kucuk 2008). According to Kucuk, individuals now have an instrument to purposefully harm companies brand identity – and in the long run, the brand coherence. As established previously, this then might prove harmful to the brand coherence. Through the most vocal of the anti-brand standard-bearers, the message has then spread through word-of-mouth, and is able to reach every corner of the world.

However, not all damage sustained to brand coherence online is made by malignant or disgruntled individuals who have found a way to communicate their disapproval. Brand ambassadors sometimes themselves prove to be just as efficient in decimating brands, when responding poorly to customer reviews or critique (socialmediatoday 2014). Socialmediatoday suggests that ignoring, deleting or responding aggressively or hollowly to consumer comments can have a strong negative effect on how the brand is perceived. This correlates well to the arguments presented by Kapferer (2012) in the sense that what is promised, or expected, of a brand has to be delivered – otherwise the identity will become unclear and thus hurt the brand coherence: the values expected by the customer will not be delivered.

Other ways in which brand coherence can become subject to change is when a brand has not a clear strategy of engaging stakeholders. Inability to foresee outcomes of online interaction can, as discussed above, somewhat be perceived as inherent to online communication but a complete misunderstanding or misjudgment of the brands’ situation can increasingly lead to events hurting the brand.

JP Morgan Chase, global financial services provider and one of the largest banking institutions in the USA, decided last year to have a Q&A(Questions and Answers) on twitter. They invited people to ask ‘What career advice would you ask a leading exec at a global firm?’ The twitter feed was overrun with individuals diverting from the topic and asking JP Morgan Chase questions such as ‘Can I have my house back?’ and ‘I have mortgage fraud, Market Manipulation, Credit Card Abuse, Libor Rigging and Predatory Lending AM I DIVERSIFIED?’. Short thereafter the Q&A was cancelled with JP Morgan Chase announcing ‘Tomorrow’s Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board.’ (Rolling Stones 2013).

On the other hand, there are examples of when interaction with brand stakeholder and a serious and thought-through review of the opinions can be used to adjust and strengthen brand coherence. Deighton and Kornfeld (2009) explain, through exemplification, the metamorphosis of Unilever’s Dove brand trough the Real Beauty-campaign which garnered a lot of positive attention by shifting from a functional brand into a brand with a point-of-view, created through the scanning of opinions and trends of the marketplace.

Furthermore, scholars, actors and media powerhouses – among others – have taken to Reddit.com to engage the public in AMA’’ (Ask Me Anything). By doing so they are engaging the people interested in their craft or personality and strengthen connection with their followers and admirers, with a low dependency on intermediaries. Brand identity and brand coherence is here easily communicated, and formed, together with brand stakeholders.

Arguably, brand coherence is becoming crucial for brands because whether brand managers are making a conscious effort to advocate and support their products and services online there will be a constant community and stakeholder feedback and discussion being present. Chrisodoulides (2009) state that consumers will always know more about a company’s product or services than they do themselves and, more importantly, they will be talking about it. The author emphasizes the need for brands to facilitate these conversations that are taking place. The sheer amount of information that is being said about brands through reviews, comments, videos etcetera is according to Chrisodoulides (2009) impossible to control, but it is rather something that brand managers need to be aware of and act accordingly to. Furthermore, Hoffman & Novak (2012) state that it is important to understand that different brands generate the most and desirable consumer attention from different internet marketing platforms and strategies. Maintaining brand coherence therefore also becomes a question of strategic choices. 

Vargo and Lusch (2008) strengthens the arguments presented by Chrisodoulides and argues that online, a service-dominant logic is prevailing and that consumers must be viewed as co-creators of the experience. The amount of companies that provide us with intangibles have skyrocketed and some of them (consider LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram – the list goes on). In these cases Vargo and Lusch would argue that there is not service without the consumer. However, a service-dominant logic can also be applied to tangible products as described above in the Dove Real Beauty-campaign case. According to Kapferer (2012), this is   offering value to consumers.  This epitomizes the possibilities and challenges with maintaining brand coherence online.

HOW IT CONNECTS

It is to be understood that there is not a choice for a brand to have online presence or not. Whether a brand wants it or not it is subject to becoming the talk of town online. Internet has opened up communication channels and made it possible for everybody who wants to participate and voice their opinion. This raises on the other hand an important decision for companies – how, and to what extent do we want to participate in the discussions to ensure brand coherence? The first step in answering this question before taking action is to look at the brands identity and positioning. Providing stakeholders with the expected experience and make good on promises is essential to prevent the brand from lacking brand coherence through the multifaceted communication channels it will find itself in.

Likely, there will be negative reviews or comments regarding your brand but these comments can provide useful feedback, highlighting areas where consumers are not experiencing what you set out to do. It is improbable that consumers are commenting negatively on Amazons’ ability to provide them with an answer to where the closes coffee shop is. However, if they fail to provide good alternatives on which book to order for the weekend, they might be in trouble. Brand coherence is after all about delivering what is expected of you.

CONCLUSIONS

It becomes clear that there is, presently, no one true answer on how to maintain brand coherence through internet and social media marketing, but it is rather something that must align with the brand identity, as proposed by Kapeferer (2010), as well as the behavior of the brands target group  and the company’s brand strategy. Straying far from the identity of the brand, utilizing different voices and approached when communicating or even worse, neglecting customer feedback can however be highlighted as potential factors affecting brand coherence negatively. However, the rise of internet usage and social media presence of brand stakeholders are not to be issues out as a warning to brand managers. It increases the opportunities for companies to retrieve valuable feedback from consumers and customers and enables brand ambassadors to express their opinions. Moreover, it allows companies to reach people in the click of a button and promptly address issues as well as promoting products and services. All in all, it widens the scope and complexity in the work of managing brand coherence, but ultimately it provides companies with a powerful tool of brand management.

REFERENCES

Chrisodoulides, G. (2009), “Branding in the post-internet era”, Marketing Theory, 9, 141.

Deighton, J. and Kornfeld, L. (2009), “Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Marketers and Marketing”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23, p. 4-10.

Grönroos, C. (2008). Service management och marknadsföring. Malmö. Liber AB

Hoffman, D.L.  & T. P. Novak, (2012), ”Toward a Deeper Understanding of Social Media”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26, 69–70

Kapferer, Jean Noël (2012). The new strategic brand management: advanced insights and strategic thinking. 5. ed. London: Kogan Page

Kietzmann, J.H., K. Hermkens, I.P., McCarthy & B.S. Silvestreet (2011), “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media”, Business Horizons, 54, 241—251. *

Koernig, S K (2003). E-Scapes: The Electronic Physical Environment and Service

Tangibility. Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 20, Nr. 2, ss. 151-167.

 Kucuk, S 2008, 'Negative Double Jeopardy: The role of anti-brand sites on the internet', Journal Of Brand Management, 15, 3, pp. 209-222, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 February 2014.

Rolling Stone Magazine, (2013) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/chases-twitter-gambit-devolves-into-all-time-pr-fiasco-20131115 [Avaliable 2014-02-10]

Socialmediatoday (2013) http://socialmediatoday.com/carole/568001/5-ways-brands-respond-negative-comments-social-networks-hint-only-one-effective [Avaliable 2014-02-11]

Vargo, S., Lusch, R. (2008). Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution. Journal Of The Academy Of Marketing Science. Vol. 36. Nr. 1. ss. 1-10.

Wilson, A., Zeithaml, A., Bitner, M. J., Gremler, D. (2008). Services Marketing: Integrating

Focus across the Firm. New York, NY: McGrawHill Publishing Co.

How has the internet changed consumers over the past 10 years and how can brands make the most of it for their image? Part 2

November 17, 2014

Written by Yasmine Najjar

     The internet implementation in marketing process is a great opportunity for brands as it’s inexpensive, delivers instant international real time feedback and allows them to reach broader audiences (Papasolomou and Melanthiou, 2013). It’s the chance for brands to communicate with the consumers in a more honest and genuine way than advertising, to know them better and build a strong relationship. But to “harness the power of the web to reach consumers directly you must ignore the old rules” (Scott, 2011). The “rules” of communications are different in the virtual world: brands don’t talk at someone anymore but with someone. If they try to take the same approach than in traditional media, especially in social medias, and just speak their message out, it’s not going to work, they need to create conversation (Armelli and Villanueva, 2011).

    Research has highlighted the impact that can have online communities on perceptions of brands. Firms are vulnerable in this context especially brands who have a poor pre-existing brand image and face unfavorable consumer-generated content in online communities (Varadarajan and Yadav, 2009). Yet, it’s a powerful tool to interact in a more personal way and reinforce your brand image. The messages brands send to consumers via traditional advertising can sometimes be interpreted in different ways, blur their positioning and brand identity. Facebook and Twitter can be great for brand image as it allows sending direct messages and more importantly, humanizing the brand which is more effective than anything for brand image. Like when having a talk in daily life with someone, consumers will get a better understanding of whom the company is as a brand. Online, you are what you publish but control branding is yet impossible because of the e-WOM (Christodoulides et al. 2006, in Christoloudides 2009). People are selective about where to spend their time on social media platforms; they look for entertainment, knowledge, socialization… as a brand you need to fulfill these criteria otherwise you end up creating a ghost community abandoned once participants discover you don’t (Seraj, 2012). As Vries, Gensler and Leeflang reminded us in 2012 “Entertainment leads people to consume, create or contribute to brand-related content online. For Einsenbess, Bechscmidt, Backhaus and Freund (2012), consumers have three motivations to engage in this virtual world: socializing, creativity and escape. They agree that without responding to these motivations a brand can’t make the most of social media platforms.

     It is essential that brands take the cultural aspect in matter: we don’t address people from California and Paris the same way, their motivations for being on internet, their sensitivity are different. It also involves a consequent time commitment to manage online brand image properly. Brands need to make daily efforts to produce interesting content and foster a community around their identity and values. The main risk in going online is exposing the brand to bad and very straightforward feedbacks, visible to everyone. Negative comments on the Internet negatively affecting the brand image as perceived by other consumers (Sandes and Urdan, 2013). Brands need to address these complaints very fast and try to find a response that satisfy the consumer or at least clarify the situation. Managing these situations improve your brand image.

     Blogs are also a great tool to manage your brand image. Why are they so interesting? Famous and established blogs have often more credibility than brand websites, as the content is supposed not to be controlled by a firm. The reality is that more and more brands use these blogs as a PR tool or what we could call disguised advertising as the consumer is not even aware sometimes the blog received money to produce fallout.

     Blogs are also participative which allows brands to get closer to consumers, have lots of feedbacks and a good view on how consumers perceive your brand as they speak very freely when the blogger produces an article about one of your product. There are many ways to participate in this blog phenomenon. Most of the brands send products to bloggers so that they can test them. However, the brand doesn’t control anything after: they lose control of the message because bloggers have their own voice. So, every time a blogger has a good product experience and decides to talk about it,  brand image improves as the audience trust their judgment. On the other hand, every time his feedback isn’t good and he decides to expose it, it can damage brand image. Organizing a contest with a blogger is a good way to arouse interest and trigger liking. The most interesting opportunity is certainly to make partnerships with these bloggers by proposing to them to participate in a product creation for example. Their audience, very loyal, sees these partnerships as a caution from the blogger, like a go to love the brand themselves as consumers.

     However, relationships with bloggers can be complicated. There are lots of codes in the blogosphere that brands need to be familiar with in order for it to be a great tool for their image. When a brand sends products to a blogger, they need to avoid chasing him up so that he writes an article. Not only is he going to find it irritating but he also wants his feedback to be as authentic as possible, it’s his dedicated space, he’s the one who has the “power”. Also, as bloggers are a lot solicited, the brand has to show them its interest in their blog (why do they want to work with them) and to personalize their messages when they get in touch with them. Bloggers need to see the humans working behind the brand; they need to create relationships between people so that it can work.

     Partnerships with online versions of traditional media can also be very interesting to develop or change brand image. By teaming up with one of them, these media share their audience with the brand but not only: they have their own identity which is going to reflect on the brand. It can be really effective when a brand wants to change its image for example give a fashion touch to its identity by teaming up with the online version of fashion and renowned magazine. By having a presence on their website, the media gives you a “guarantee”. This partnership can be a dedicated space on their website, a contest to win prizes from the brand, and other very innovative presences on the media. The aim of this kind of partnerships is to advertise without doing it obviously, it needs to be very well integrated to the content of the website. For example, Tex by Carrefour, a clothing brand from the famous French supermarket, suffered a cheap old fashioned image. The brand wanted to have a more glamorous and “hype” image and teamed up with French ELLE to do so. This partnership impacted the perception the audience had on the brand as ELLE is known for appreciating fashion and cool clothes.

      What about buzz marketing? How can it impact brand image? According to Deighton and Kornfeld (2009), buzz marketing is an umbrella term for the mobilized power of the culture to pass on a marketer's message. People don’t have the impression to share advertising message but something novel, entertaining and of the moment. The video ‘Evolution’ by Dove, in which a simple woman is transformed in a model thanks to make-up and Photoshop, was a huge success for Dove brand image. Dove wasn’t anymore any cosmetics brand; it was the one close to women, fighting against beauty stereotypes so that women can accept their beauty. It was effective because it created engagement. The downside of buzz marketing is that you can be easily parody on sharing platforms like Youtube which can affect the message brands were trying to pass on.

      Internet has been a revolution as it tremendously changed consumers, empowering them. Most brands need to go there if they want to survive but as we have seen in this paper it’s a tricky place for brand image. It offers lots of opportunities to build a strong bond with consumers and manage your brand image when you know how to use the different tools it offers. We can wonder as soon as brand will have figure out how to make the most of internet, will we go back to brands having the power over consumers? Do they want that to happen? Maybe internet, even with its risks, can actually be seen as a benediction for brand image as brands have now a great insight of consumers’ perception and can adjust their brand image in function.

References

Armelli, G. and Villanueva, J. (2011), “Adding social media to the marketing mix”, IESE insight, No. 9.

Christodoulides, G. (2009), “Branding in the post-internet era”, Marketing Theory, 9, 141.

Deighton, J. and Kornfeld, L. (2009), “Interactivity's Unanticipated Consequences for Marketers and Marketing”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23, p. 4-10.

Eisenbeiss, M., B. Blechschmidt, K. Backhaus & P.A. Freund (2012), “The (Real) World Is Not Enough:” Motivational Drivers and User Behavior in Virtual Worlds”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26, 4–20.

Papasolomou, I.  & Melanthiou, Y. (2013), “Social Media: Marketing Public Relations ‘New Best Friend”, Journal of Promotion Management, 18(3), 319-328.

Sandes, F.S. & A. T. Urdan (2013), “Electronic Word-of-Mouth Impacts on Consumer Behavior: Exploratory and Experimental Studies”, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, 25(3), 181-197.

Scott, D.M. (2011), The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly, 3d or latest edition.

Seraj, M. (2012), We Create, We Connect, We Respect, Therefore We Are: Intellectual, Social, and Cultural Value in Online Communities, Journal of Interactive Marketing 26, 209–222. *

Varadarajan, R. & M. S. Yadav (2009),” Marketing Strategy in an Internet-Enabled Environment: A Retrospective on the First Ten Years of JIM and a Prospective on the Next Ten Years”, Journal of Interactive Marketing 23, 11–22.

Vries, L. & S. Gensler & P. S.H. Leeflang, (2012),” Popularity of Brand Posts on Brand Fan Pages: An Investigation of the Effects of Social Media Marketing”, Journal of Interactive Marketing 26, 83–91.*