Marketing has never been more exciting throughout the 15 years of my career as a marketer, thanks to the wide-spread use of Web 2.0, user-generated content and social media.  Marketing professionals can now directly engage with consumers and receive instant feedback on their brand, campaigns and products.

The idea of crowdsourcing is having a revolutionary impact on the communications industry, and has rapidly become an effective way to create content for consumers – let them decide on what they want to see…

For example, Tipp-Ex’s latest digital campaign has raised the bar for ads on YouTube.  By embarking on a choose-your-own-adventure game online, viewers can determine what the hunter should do with the bear.  Views can replace ‘shoot’ with other actions such as ‘hugs’, ‘washes’ or ‘dances with’ by typing in any word that comes to mind.  The choices are unlimited and depend on users’ imagination.

Other offline campaigns are also taking advantage of the crowdsourcing concept, for example, BT has been inviting audiences to vote for the storyline for its ongoing series of above-the-line (TV) commercials.  The result has led to pregnancy of the leading female character.

Unilever has taken an even more radical approach by getting rid of its long-standing ad agency and has since aired a TV ad for Peperami created by the winner of its 1,200-entry crowdsourcing competition.

Social media helps organisations open up their brand, and at the same time encourages consumers to speak up about what they want.  To me, it marks the end of patronising, one-way marketing communications approaches, as consumers continue to demand active participation in what they want and how they want it.

If you are aware of any other interesting crowdsourcing campaigns, feel free to add them to the comments section of the blog.

If social media is like word-of-mouth on steroids, why not make the most of it?

The Internet is full of information, and since the rise of social networks and micro-blogging, many brands and organisations have turned to social media for quantitave data such as the number of ‘likes’ a product has or the number of ‘followers’ accumulated over a period of time.

Although these figures might be good indicators of people’s initial feeling towards a product, service or even a brand, there’s a much greater mine of insight hidden among thousands of casual but honest online conversations everyday between friends or members of communities.

Social media has given individuals the power to speak-up and comment on what they like or dislike; one’s opinions being heard is no-longer the privilege of experts or authorities.  Whilst consumers are enjoying being listened to, marketers should optimise this opportunity to harness opinions and turn them into valuable market intelligence.  

As social networks become an ideal platform to conduct fast and effective research on customer behaviour and community patterns, netnography is now the key to faster, better and more cost-effective qualitative research on a massive scale.

Netnography is the branch of ethnography that analyses the free behaviour of individuals on the internet. The term is believed to be firstly employed by Professor Robert Kozinets in 1997. The concept has evolved with the advancement of the Internet as well as the way people consume and exchange information on the net.

Nowadays netnography allows organisations to gain customer insight through both a passive and an active approach.  For example, companies can easily observe what their customers think of their offerings and study their behaviour towards brands, through listening to their social media conversations or reading users’ comments on blogs or in forums.  

Of course, there are also plenty of channels for organisations to respond or proactively engage with their customers directly using a range of social media tools.  A successful sales channel set up by Dell on Twitter, for instance, has brought the technology company an impressive return on investment through simple but direct interaction with their customers on social networks.  Organisations can also design highly targeted netnography tools to fine-tune their interaction strategy with specific groups of key customers and brand advocates.  

I believe marketers would be pleasantly surprised to re-discover the idea of netnography together with social media.  Do you have any experience or success stories to share on using netnography?  If so, we would love to hear from you either via email (marketing@webjam.com) or through comments. 

If you haven’t already seen the new NME Breakthrough website, I’d highly recommend it.  Even though you might not be an Indie music fan, chances are you’d be impressed by the social media deployment undertaken by such a well-established publication.

At Webjam, we are proud to help yet another publishing title to get closer to their readers: from the initial idea of better engaging with their target audience to designing an online destination to serve them; from embracing social media to committing to facilitate a community that shares the same passion.  We have marched on a challenging but rewarding journey to transform one of the most famous music publications into a service provider.

Allow me to walk you through an amazing journey so far.  The ultimate key to the Breakthrough website is to put users (both bands and music fans) to the centre of development, and this is the initial idea that we’ve followed through.

The creative stage started with Webjam iDeA focusing on building the right community and creative architecture based on the understanding of what our customer requires.  In this case, NME wanted to connect bands with music fans through an easy-to-use online platform that encouraged conversations between the two.

Once the creative brief was cleared and the architecture was put together, we moved on to the next stage – innovation.  With Webjam Labs, we added technology to the equation and consulted NME on how to maximise the capabilities of social networks. An example of this is the advanced reputation engine to surface the most popular artists and music tracks.

Lastly, we support the engagement through Webjam Activate. This is the most essential part for building a successful and long-lasting community.  During the process, we conducted focus groups with bands to ensure we were listening to the bands and music fans about the functionality they expect and suggested appropriate engagement initiatives.  It is key to have the right amount of engagement; too little might lead to a slow start, but too much would be off-putting.

We’ve worked hard in the past weeks with the NME team to get things just right and we are delighted that the initial feedback from bands, music fans and other music industry media is very promising. We look forward to seeing the community grow. To us, NME Breakthrough consists of all the elements to create a successful social media community – People (bands and fans), Passion (music) and Purpose (rewards for the bands), which we call the 3Ps of Social Media.