For our second annual IWOM summit I recently met with 17 marketing communications directors, managers and CxO’s from some of the most important and innovative companies in China, many of whom are from the Fortune 500 and are our clients and partners. The purposes of the meetings were to:
* Preview findings from our own study on efluencers and other internal research regarding their perspectives of IWOM and brands
* Take a strategic look at recent developments in the IWOM industry around the world and in China
* Provide a practical understanding of the evolving impact of IWOM on redefining brand-consumer relationships within marketing communications
Below are the key take aways from the meetings:
Things change, things stay the same: In reviewing my notes from last year’s IWOM summit, I realized that in some cases, we had some of the same conversations this year, especially with our newer clients, including:
* The shift of IWOM from “nice to have” to “must have”
* Uncertainty who “owns” IWOM (i.e. PR, marketing, market research etc.)
* How IWOM fits into existing KPI’s
* How to manage IWOM ethically within an environment that includes “astroturfing” (see a perspective on this here).
Having the same conversations does not mean the market is not progressing; it just means that these are issues that these are defining issues of the industry and will be discussed for years.
L-K-PTM with an emphasis on the “P”: Our more experienced and strategic thinking clients have been following our “Listen-Know-Participate” principle (AKA “L-K-P”) for some time. Now, however, they are beginning to focus on the “PARTICPATE,” after a thorough grounding in knowing what’s being said and the culture behind the talk. The emphasis for these “best practices” clients is not tactics, but action supported by strategy. Some of the examples of strategic actions we shared in the summit are in our recent IWOM white papers (see here, slides 6 and 7 and here, slide 14).
Building an IWOM ecosystem: Well over a year ago, we discussed the concept of IWOM managers as a trend for larger, more strategic thinking organizations. We do see more and more clients creating such headcounts in China, or at least having dedicated responsibilities assigned to higher level staff. We are seeing now this is part of a bigger trend of re-engineering the organization to effectively leverage IWOM, i.e leverage the fact that a large majority of the 290 million consumers in China are creating and sharing information about brands, products and services. The basic principles for an IWOM ‘ecosystem’ can be found in our recent IWOM white paper on the here, slide 10. Also, Nathan Gilliant, a great thinker on social media and overall strategy, has a great article on this concept here.
Different roles of SNS, blog and BBS for communication: The fact that SNS, blog and BBS all require different approaches as connection points to the Internet Community was a topic that generated a good bit of interest from IWOM summit participants. We discussed how blogs are driven by self expression (i.e. content driven by ‘me’), BBS are driven by information/topics (i.e. content driven by topics), and SNS are driven by relationships. The marketing content/approach to each of these channels should be adjusted accordingly. More on the nuances of different platforms in our IWOM white paper here and my recent imediaconnection article here.
Finding the “right” voice for IWOM: One of the most interesting discussions we had during the summit was with one of our luxury brand clients. This client is one of the more progressive brands we work with in terms of understanding and leveraging IWOM. When the discussion of “finding the brand voice” within IWOM came up (see here for background), he questioned the best way for a luxury brand to “express” its voice. A basic assumption in social media strategy is that you need to engage your customers wherever they may be on the web—essentially, brands should be ubiquitous in their conversational presence. However being ubiquitous may not be entirely appropriate or desirable for luxury brands who maintain a certain distance or “mystery.” In the end, a brand’s “voice” within IWOM must resonate and reflect it appropriately.
