Hitwise post on ‘trust’ and sources of influence. What is really interesting is how we will accept input from strangers thanks to the concept of the  ‘wisdom of the crowds' as well as input from ‘people I know’.  

Is 'wisdom of the crowds' a new concept? No. I was re-reading a book recently on the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. They had all sorts of people investigating the sources and meanings of words. Professional and non-professional. Academic and non-academic. What they wanted was a number of people confirming word origins, earliest use etc. They needed multiple sources and then had to validate it. If you read the book you will find it was a labour intensive job (as to be expected in the 19th Century).

Fast forward today and you have Wikipedia. Community developed and community moderated and managed.

Starbucks recently announced a 'customer conversation'. Quite a few people were unsure of the value. Would they listen? Would they act?

The answers. Yes and yes.

Starbucks actions? They have brought back their free 'testing taster' and responded to another top wish from the over 1000 people who have commented. Check it out

Sparks is a division of Miller Brewing and rather than have its web site follow the style of the corporate Motherbrand it took its lead from its customers (Wisdom of the Crowds). 

An interesting article on BA and its T5 woes. (Source: The People Bulletin).

If employees had been raising concerns for 'some time' why did BA go ahead anyway? Two possibilities spring to mind.

1. Senior management did know and went ahead anyway hoping for the best.

2. Senior management did not know because somehow issues were filtered and kept from them

I have no way of really knowing what went wrong. No doubt an MBA case study or examination will come out one day. I just hope it was number 2 as that is fixable. Number 1 does not bear serious consideration.

If it was number 2 and internally the upward communication process is broken I wonder if web 2.0 tools such as blogs and forums would have helped. Certainly they can help downward communication but 'wisdom of the crowds' can often give senior managers an objective view of what is happening far from the board room.

A great article by Charles Leadbetter on the Wisdom of Crowds. Without doubt one of Web 2.0's greatest impacts has been the potential engagement of the public. And given the chance people do contribute. They want to be part of the conversation. People will pick and choose their level of engagement. They may just vote or subscribe to a view point. They may also feel engaged enough to contribute with a comment and some will active organise and lead.

I look back on my career in product marketing where we spent tens and hundreds of thousands of £'s trying to engage with our prospect and customer bases. We ran surveys, had user groups, published magazines, held 'open sessions' and round-tables. We did get engagement but at a lot of cost and effort. It took time to organise and manage.

Now look at what can be done using Web 2 social networking to get feedback.

Innovation is often seen as being 'out of the box' thinking. Who is more out of the box than the customers? They do not see the real and imagined barriers companies have to innovation. Companies that can tap into 'mass innovation' will have a massive competitive edge in the future.

Charles is speaking on 26th March at the British Library. I will be going down to listen.

I am often challenged by marketing people over this.

Is Web 2.0 useful or a distraction? Should we bother? How much should we spend?

From my experience of working with clients leveraging Web 2.0 tools and techniques certainly does work and is worth every penny.

But you would expect me to say that!

So it is always nice to have some independent academic research on the power of Web 2.0 and online crowd buzz/conversations. Thanks to Podcasting News for highlighting this research.

To quote from the academic paper overview...

'...the study provides some preliminary answers for marketing managers interested in assessing the relative importance of the burgeoning number of “Web 2.0” information metrics that are becoming available on the Internet, and how looking at interactions among them could provide predictive value beyond viewing them in isolation. The study also provides a framework for thinking about when user-generated content influences decision making.'

What they found was that

• The volume of blog posts about an album is positively correlated with future sales 
• Greater increases in an artist’s Myspace friends week over week have a weaker correlation to higher future sales
• Traditional factors are still relevant – albums released by major labels and albums with a number of reviews from mainstream sources like Rolling Stone also tended to have higher future sales.

The 'take-away' for marketing and PR people is

• Join in the blogosphere and online conversations
• Use social media networks BUT
• Don't ignore traditional marketing and PR

OK but how much to spend?

My suggestion. Take 5% of your marketing budget, 5% of your web site development budget and 5% of your PR budget and try a 6 month campaign.

Test and be flexible. Be open and listen. Monitor and react. All the most successful campaigns I have been involved in have been adaptable.

I posted last year about Lego's strategy of engaging with its customers and using beta programmes for feedback. Here is a great update (thanks to Charlene Li of Forrester Research).

Notice how company counter-culture and 'wisdom of the crowds' is now paying big dividends.

The message is simple. Use the size and interconnectiveness of the internet to get a 'buzz' going by engaging in conversations. What is great news is you do not need the budgets or global brand of a Coke or MacDonalds to participate. Look at the most watched video of all time - Star Wars Kid - estimated by some to have been seen by over 700m people. Made as a personal video, uploaded and them 'mashed-up' hundreds of times until it became a cult.

So the first football club to be run by fan share holders will be Ebbsfleet United. See the announcement at MyFootballClub. Shame that the voters on the site never got one of their choices as shown on the site.

However to get £1.375m in funds and 50k people participating was a great result in its own right.

Now the real experiment will be to see just how good the Wisdom of the Crowds will be each week as they will be picking the players as if they were the manager.

As the site says there will be no manager as such - just a head coach. So how is the team picked?

"The Head Coach will brief members. This will include a review of the previous match, reports from the training ground and views on the forthcoming opposition. He will also give his thoughts on players, their form and fitness, as well as possible selections and tactics.

Members will then submit their preferred 11, formation and tactics. A database will calculate the most popular choice. This will be handed to The Head Coach to instigate."

In the future will fans vote for substitutions during the game using some sort of mobile technology from the stands? Now that would be fun - a real interactive football match? Will the site also provide a video stream from the games so fans can watch the games online?