Satmetrix has just released a study on the value of Word of Mouth marketing based upon their Net Promoter Score system.

They put a $ value on what extra revenue a positive promoter brings versus lost business for negative promotion.

To quote from their press release

"....Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful and trusted marketing sources, but measuring and more importantly, understanding its financial impact hasn't exactly been clear cut,' said Richard Owen, chief executive officer at Satmetrix. 'Our study does that by examining customer behaviors and quantifying them in the larger economic picture that links loyalty with growth....''

McDonalds is encouraging employees to use blogs to improve internal communication (Source: MarketingVox). This joins McDonalds public blog on Corporate Social Responsibility.

As a video production company (putting my Focus hat on) we are always interested in what market researchers say about the growth of video. Hitwise UK is reporting that video searches has increased substantially in the last 12 months from almost 1 in 120 to 1 in 45 of all searches.

Also video website traffic has increased 170%+ in the last 12 months.

The Institute for Public Policy Research has just released details of a report it is publishing next month called 'Behind the Screen: the Hidden Life of Youth' by Kay Withers with Ruth Sheldon. It looks at the use of the internet by young kids aged 13 - 18.

What it reports is:

• Internet usage is 3 times higher than previous official reports (20 hours v 6.2 hours per week)
• 80% of 5 – 15 year olds have access to the internet at home
• 49% of 8 to 11 year olds have their own mobile phone
• 80% of 12 to 15 year olds have their own mobile phone
• 40% of 8 to 11 year olds say they mostly use the internet at home
• 71% of 12-15 year olds say they mostly use the internet at home

Most internet usage is unsupervised.

It would appear that a large part of the growth in usage is being driven by social media sites like BeBo, MySpace and Facebook.

OpenSocial got a great launch today when Google, Yahoo and MySpace all joined forces to support the open interface for developers of add-ins. Inb time this will enable users of applications to switch between social media platforms more easily.

Chrysler is the latest company to create a 'conversation' site (source AdAge)

Researchers at Duke University in the US are publishing a paper next month that purports to show that logos can carry strong attitudinal and behavioural associations. One of the examples given was that when the IBM and Apple logos were paired those participants exposed to the Apple logo were more creative in subsequent tests.

What the researchers were interested in is the power of unconcious constant brand exposure. In the US it is estaimated that everyone is exposed to 3k - 10k 'ad exposures' per day. The vast majority is unconsious via branding on clothes, packaging, signage and posters. Things that we think we have screened out but maybe not according to Duke. Find those figures hard to believe? I did.

As I am writing this at the kitchen table I stopped for a few minutes and started counting logos I could see. I counted 68. What were they on? There was food packaging and plastic food carriers but also logos on varios kitchen appliances including fridge, cooker, kettle etc. There were publishers logos on cook books. Company correspondence and envelopes carried corporate logos as did pens and pencils. Even my glasses case had the supplier logo on its side. Clothes I was wearing carried the manufacturers logo and so the list went on and on....I stopped at 68 without me having moved from my kitchen table.

What is even more interesting about the research at Duke is that the logos where shown subliminally. In 1957 James Vicary claimed that in his experiments on advertising effctiveness the consumption of Coca Cola and popcorn increased significantly after movie goers were shown subliminal adverts for those products. The advertising industry quickly moved to utilise this finding. Other researchers tried to replicate the results but without success. Equally consumer advocates voice strong opposition and the US congress passed legislation to have the practice of subliminal adverts banned. In 1962 Vicary admitted that his reasearch did not produce the results to support his claims.

So does the Duke research actually support the concept of subliminal advertising as well as the power of brands to effect behaviour? CNetNews has a video from the researchers. I assume they have avoided any subliminal messaging on either their research results or the sponsorship of their work!

I love TEDTalks. You get to listen to some great ideas (and performances) from brilliant people.

TED has digitised its archives so presentations from as far back as 1984 are now available. One of the first is Nicholas Negroponte's talk from 1984. Negroponte was in charge of the MIT Media Labs. Many of his predictions made in this presentation have come true.

Check here for the list of all the talks. You can select by a number of characteristics.

AdWeek has an article on measuring the effectiveness of social media marketing. Every marketing and PR person has to be able to justify the cost of any campaign. Social media marketing cannot be an exception but what and how do you measure it?

An interesting article from Knowledge@Wharton looking at the friction between professional journalists/media and user generated content from 'amateurs'.

On the one hand professional journalists are sceptical of the ability and skills of amateurs to research and write-up a story yet research shows just how much they use blogs and social media networks to source stories. Whilst it maybe true that most bloggers work with little or no resource to help research and confirm information and stories many members of the public remain sceptical of everything they read in newspapers. The Express Groups recent actions show just what corners will be cut in search of stories to fill pages and help boost circulation.

The recent book by Nick Davis - 'Flat Earth News' highlighted research showing that media very often accepts press releases and uses them to generate 'news stories' rather than actually researching and validating the stories independently.

For many people it is often the 'wisdom of the crowds' - unpaid amateurs but passionate about a subject - that helps give the information value.

The media has started to encourage citizen generated content and blur the lines of their own staff. The BBC - a broadcaster now uses blogs to help communicate. The press is using audio and video podcasts as well as blogs to help get their stories across and keep them fresh. This is a new dynamic and one that raises many issues.

GM are big advertisers - spending about $3b. AdAge has just announced that GM plan to move half their advertising budget online over the next few years. They already spend almost $200m on banner and online ads. The online budget will grow almost 8 times to $1.5b. Traditional TV and radio ads will decline.

Sources close to the company have said

"....The goal is to go well beyond the banner....to encompass gaming, search, mobile and a broad array of interactive applications, according to several executives close to the automaker...."

GM already are very active users of social media, blogs and podcasts but this appears to be a significant increase.

As companies are finding the traditional forms of communication (ads, direct mail etc) are declining in effectiveness they are exploring the social networked approach.

The Forester blog site for the forthcoming book 'Groundswell: Winning in a world transformed by social technologies' they have access to a very interesting technographics tool which shows different European countries adoption of the 'Ladder'

Starbucks is the latest large corporation to open itself to 'Ideas' from customers.

What do they think of the response so far? As they say on the site....

"....We are completely thrilled at the number of ideas (thousands!). We are stunned by the level of conversation (half of the top 20 ideas have 50 or more comments each -- 50!). We are stoked by the amount of participation (tens of thousands of votes).

When I first announced MyStarbucksIdea on stage at the annual meeting on Wednesday (two days ago), we instantly starting seeing traffic jump in leaps and bounds on the site. At a little after noon, just for curiosity's sake, I counted 10 ideas that were time-stamped in a 2-minute timeframe. We kept refreshing for the next hour and it never dropped off...."  Chris Bruzzo, Starbucks 

Why would one of the worlds top brands bother with social media?

To listen to what Duncan Wardle their Global Head of PR thinks check out this podcast interview. He sees mass advertising as a declining force as consumers move online and become engaged with brands through interactivity.

Shel Israel is doing some great things with video. Check the interviews out at Fast Company TV

An interesting interview with Jim McCarthy, CEO of Poundland in RetailBulletin.

Via my work with BOTTLE PR we have been helping Poundland with their social media strategy. So far in 14 weeks the blog has attracted over 14k visits (1k per week) with over 43k pages being viewed. In addition to this direct readership an additional 20k+ people have visited the Poundland web site via 3rd party sites compared to the same period 12 months ago before the blog started.

Taken together this means that almost 35k people have been engaged with via the social media campaign. Looking at Cost Per Click we are running at about 17p. The average time spent on the blog by each visitor is 2.8 minutes.

(Disclosure - I helped develop Poundlands media strategy)

We have just finished a real fun project with a new client.

Wilkins Kennedy are a 125 year old firm of regional accountants that now have 12 offices in London and the South East. They are one of the Top 30 accounting firms in the UK.

They contacted us a few weeks ago to see how we could help them best use social media and Web 2.0 to get their analysis of the the 2008 budget to their clients and a wider audience. They have always produced a printed report on the budget overnight and use their web site and then held seminars and briefings. They wanted to look at other ways to get their experts feedback on the budget out publicly.

We agreed to try a podcast. They lined up their Head of Tax, Matthew Hall, and 3 senior members of his team to have a 'round table' discussion. They listened to the budget presentation yesterday and spent the rest of the day working on what it all meant for business and personal tax. At 9.30am this morning we set up a mobile recording studio of laptop, mixer, audio recorder and radio mics in a meeting room at their Egham office. We had one practice run through and then started recording. Within an hour we had our core programme. We did some editing, added the music and voice-over and reviewed the results with them. When they had approved it we uploaded the file to the host and activated the link from the Wilkins Kennedy site. We had finished by 5pm. A total of 6 hours from start of recording to live online.

    Click the icon or here to listen to the podcast.

We will now track to see how many people access the recording and how quickly. Speed in such a situation is critically important as many changes the Chancellor announced will apply from April 6th. For many a delay in seeking and acting on tax advice could cost them or their company a lot of money!

Now compare that with a traditional 'white paper' approach to such a technical subject. BBC annoucers are taught to speak at an average of 3 - 4 words per second. The podcast lasts 22 minutes and so will contain about 4,500 words. An A4 side of paper has 30 lines and with an average of 10 words per line it means a 22 minute podcast is equal to 15 pages of A4. Allowing for layout and typesetting a 'White Paper' would be about 20 pages long. Now could that be written, printed and distributed in just 6 hours compared to a podcast? Equally with it being online the distribution costs are zero to Wilkins Kennedy. What would it cost to mail a 20 page document out?

The NHS South Central covers an area with a population of over 4 million and employs almost 100,000 people. It is a big organisation covering Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Hampshire.

The NHS is undertaking a massive consultation exercise to help shape its future over the next decade and beyond. The project is called ‘Our NHS – our future.’ All NHS employees and members of the public are being consulted through a series 'open house' meetings and feedback events.

8 clinical pathways covering all stages of life from birth to death have been identified. The pathway teams are lead by practicing NHS clinicians as part of this ‘root and branch’ review.

As part of the programme Focus Business Communications were asked to video one of the public consultations as it happened in Reading. We were also asked to interview leaders and participants in the pathways.

The resulting video is available on the NHS South Central web site as part of the ongoing internal and external consultation programme. It is a great example of using new media to help communicate and engage with large distributed groups.

Like the next person I now 'zone out' interupt ads. If I read a magazine or paper I flick past them. If on TV I change stations using the remote. My kids progamme Sky so they watch programmes in batches and mainly ignore ad breaks.

When would I welcome an 'interrupt' type ad? Going to a business meeting and having a little while to spare I would love to have a coffee or maybe somewhere I could meet up for a breakfast or lunch. Flying to another city in mainland Europe it would be nice to get information on local facilities - with or without special promotions. I could of course look up TripAdvisor or read a Lonely Planet Guide but I somehow I never find the time unless going on holiday. For me a mobile phone based information update would be great.

Am I alone in being happy to get relevant adverts? Seems not.

So how about an iPhone with video support to get geo-contextual information (advertorial)? I would happily let my Facebook profile be 'scrapped' or even super-enhanced so they know my preferences for food, drink and entertainment. Having booked and confirmed my travel details into my online diary via a Facebook application that also updates my shared work diary it would advise me of the locations to catch taxis (or send me the number to book one), let me know options for breakfast, lunch and an evening meal. Advise me of local bars close to where I am staying and generally be my PDA (Personal Digital Advisor). Would I be happy to have a free service supported via paid ads. Yes. Would I like the option to subscibe and avoid ads. Yes.

Maybe this is the model Rummble can offer? A mix of TripAdvisor, video/audio and text blogs from people who can advise and recommend places plus advertisers delivering targeted ads based upon profile information.

In May 2005 Business Week published an article 'Blogs will change your business'.

It has just updated it to take account of the last two years developments in the blogospehere. The new updated article is called 'Social Media will change your business'.  It is worth reading.

YouTube was by far the most popular web site in the US in January reports PC Advisor.

In January it had 66.2 million unique visitors and 2.6 billion videos were watched.

Other video sources:

                                    # Unique Visitors    # Videos Watched

Fox (My Space)                      19m                   377m

Yahoo                                   22m                   299m

Google Video                          13m                     79m

That is a total of 3.35 billion clips watched by 120 million unique visitors (Note: Unique Visitots maybe shared across platforms)

At the Unicom conference 'Web 2 and Beyond', Joyce Lewis of the University of Southampton talked about their findings that video content is a powerful way to engage with an audience through emotional depth and colour. The ECS (School of Electronics and Computer Science) are now producing video podcasts for internal and external communication.

The day before Joyce spoke Nielsen released its latest findings on the state of social media in the UK.

They found that YouTube had now displaced Wikipedia as the top social media site visited.

Other highlights:

• 63% of all UK people online visited at least one social media site in 2007
• Friends Reunited dropped out of the Top 10
• Half of the Top 10 Fastest Growing sites are video based

To quote Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online in their press release:

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.

On Friday I posted about the Unicom 'Web 2 and Beyond' conference I attended and spoke at in London the day before.

In that post I mentioned that the web site with all the recordings of the presenters had received 178 visitors. As of today at 8am that has now increased to 216.

Whist that is not a massive number in itself it has been done with zero marketing budget. Just mentions in blogs like this by fellow presenters and some of the delegates.

Now let's extrapolate the figures. If we say we will get 20 new visitors per day we will have had 3.5k within 6 months and it will keep going for as long as the site is live. We are still getting visitors to last years conference podcast - the 'echo chamber' at work.

What do I mean? Just like in a physical cave system (read series of interconnected social networks) if you shout out the echo bounces around with little or no extra effort from you. Depending on the cave system it can bounce - rising and falling in intesity - for ages. It is usually impossible to tell exactly what walls and inter-connected cave systems the echo is coming back from. Shout again later and it will not be exactly the same echo but it will have the same effect and if the original echo is still there they will seem to merge and move apart. In some cases potholers have reported the echo being heard miles away through interconnected cave systems.

So it is with the internet and social networks. On Thursday we shouted into the social network 'cave system'. The echo has started. It will be fun to see what happens.

Now the real bonus for people marketing a product or service is this...

Each new visitor pushes the average cost down. The cost of designing and building the microsite and recording/uplaoding the PowerPoint slides and audio over the 2 days was less than £1750. At 3.5k visitors we will be at 50p CPV. Now compare that to the cost of leads from direct mail, advertising, trade shows, seminars etc. Each visitor is in effect a response so please ensure you divide the number of leads by the cost of the campaign.

When I was running Tektronix marketing in Europe (1990 - 1996) we had the following metrics:

- Direct Mail - £10 - £50 per lead

- Trade shows - £35 - £100 per lead (includes cost of stand and hotels etc of staff but not salaries)

- PR - £40 - £120 per lead

- Seminars - £40 - £75 per lead

- Advertising - £50 - £150 per lead

- Sales person cost per client visit - £200 per call

Now these figures are from a few years ago and were not exact science but helped shape our marketing strategy. The above figures excluded our fulfilment costs. The podcast and web site is the fulfilment so the cost of online event marketing really starts to look interesting.

On Friday the CPV was £9.83. Already cheaper than direct mail was at Tektronix. Today the cost per visitor has fallen to £8.10. What will it be tomorrow and next week?

One thing that is a disadvantage in the 'echo chamber' is that we do not get names to do follow-up marketing unless you add reasons for people to 'register' for something.

What could this be? Unicom could run a number of 'added value' programmes where people see a reason to register such as...

• A discount voucher off another Unicom seminars
• Early Bird extra discount for future bookings
• Exclusive seminars and events for 'members'
• Meet the Presenters in private Q&A sessions
• Free access to unpublished materials

The growth of flickr has been amazing. From initial concept and uploading of 7,400 odd photos in Febuary 2004 to an estimated 2.3 billion today.

Pictures are now being uploaded worldwide at a rate of 150,000 per hour. With the availabilty of lower cost digital cameras and mobile phones with built in still and video image capability this can only increase especially when the 'trickle down' effect of consumer purchasing of such devices hits China and India. 

As the article says many are of cats and dogs (Disclosure: I have even uploaded a picture or two of a mouse in my time - there was a good reason...honest) but some are really masterpieces (not mine) worthy of (and maybe by) a professional.

So what is my experience....

I have a Flickr account and have 181 photos in my public album. The photos have been viewed a total of 1210 times. A few have had zero or only 1 or two views and the most popular 153. Two people have added one of my photos as a 'favorite' and one person has left a comment. My photos are usually a visual record of the studio and location work for audio and video podcast projects I have been involved in. I tend to avoid 'cats and dogs' and 'Aunts and Uncles' in the public albums and usually keep them on a hard drive.

Through Flickr, Facebook and other social media software I have discovered some really great work by people and have added them as a 'contact' so I get updates on what they are doing. I have also met two people who share common interests with me. To me that is the real power of social networking. The opportunity to build networks of online friends and for some move that relationship the 'real' world.

Quark has launched a social networking site for designers to post and discuss their work. It is a good example of the use of Web 2.0 to enhance customer relationships.

They will recruit to it via e-mail to their customer base and through a Facebook page. Having looked it seems the Facebook page is a closed group. You need a Quark e-mail address to join. A closed group seems to miss an opportunity to showcase designers work to a wider audience.  

What is interesting is that there are lots of groups on Facebook unhappy at certain design features in Quark. Although lots of negative comments have been posted Quark does not seem to have responded to them. Shame they have not engaged in that conversation and have restricted access to their own user group. A missed opportunity?

Facebook have announced a German version of the product with be available immediately.

They used 2000 volunteers from Germany to complete the task in a few weeks. A voting system was used to decide on the accuracy of the translation. This is a very Web 2 approach to product design and development and of course all the participants will tell their friends and family about their work on the project so providing a massive word-of-mouth campaign.

MySpace does it the traditional way by hiring local people to manage the translation.

It will be interesting to see if Facebook can take Germany by storm. There is already a very strong well established local competitor so it faces a tough task.

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded for podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

Now here is one for corporates who ban social networking to ponder over....and Doctors who prescribe anti-depressants that research seems to show may not be so effective as once thought...

Scientists in Australia have found social networkers seem to be less stressed and more social connected. Scientists say that people 

'....reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed after two months of online social networking....'

They also say that blogging...

'...can help you feel less isolated, more connected to a community and more satisfied with your friendships, both online and face-to-face....'

Maybe companies that risk legal action or absenteeism for stressed employees should allow them to social network for an hour a day.

A happy workforce is a productive workforce!

There was a time in my career when getting a Ziff Davis 'Recommended Buy' award was as powerful as having Delia Smith use or mention your product on her TV show. A good or bad ZD review could almost make or break a product.

In fact it was so powerful in my time at Tektronix that we used to put the Gold Award or Recommended Buy logo on all our advertising and even ran an ad of all the awards we had won in Europe under the headline 'Great colour but don't take our word for it'. Our 'Grand Slam' was to get the top slot in the reviews in the French, German and English editions. We did that on more than one occasion I remember.

Now the news via Podcasting News that ZD is bankrupt due to falling demand for advertising.

The fall off in advertising revenue has been huge from a high of $215m in 2001 to last years figure of $40m.

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)

I spoke yesterday at the Unicom Social Media conference called 'Web 2.0 and Beyond: Applying Social and Collaborative Tools to Business'.

Due to a prior business commitment I was unable to attend Day 1 on Wednesday. The good news is that all the presentations have been audio taped and are already available from a website. In fact they were uploaded with 15 minutes of each presenter ending their speach.

At the last count at 5pm on Friday 178 people had visited the pages and 20% had played an audio file.

Last years conference was also audio recorded foe podcasting. Over 2k people listened to the podcasts. All through word-of-mouth marketing.

(Disclosure: I work for Focus who produce the podcasts for Unicom)