Latent Communities mean Social Networking Business

Are there communities, on-line or off-line, where its members are unaware of their memberships – or that the community even exists?

This might sound like a far-fetched academic argument, and in part it is (academic, that is). However, I believe that understanding the nature of this question will enable social networking entrepreneurs to create sticky communities in response.

My hypothesis is that a community, online or offline, can exist without its members’ knowledge of the existence of the community and thus does not engage in a mediated communication with other members. Maybe it’s not your father’s definition of a community. Or maybe that’s just what it is; let me indulge you with an example.

My in-laws used to have an old VW Camper. They tell me stories of going on road-trips in the 70’s where fellow VW Camper drives would honk when passing each other on the road, as to say “you’re one of us.” However, what’s “us?” My in-laws never attended any Camper owners’ fairs, or even knew if any such meet-ups existed. Did they feel, nonetheless, part of a distinct group of people with whom they had shared experiences, (albeit their shared experiences where derived individually)? You bet.

Speaking of freewheeling romantics; I remember in grad-school reading a somewhat obscure study about housewives in Des Moines who read romance novels. Unaware of the other romance novel reading housewives, the study make a case for classifying them as a community by virtue of their shared experiences as romance novel readers. (For the literary arts geeks: This study was a tangent of the concept of ‘interpretive communities’ – coined by Stanley Fish).

Now, you might not agree to classify these housewives or motorists as unknowing members of any communities, but consider this: Is red paint in a can still red when the lid is closed? The best answer might be “It’s latent. It’s got the potential for red.” Similarly, these people belong to latent communities.

Offering social networking solutions for latent communities could be a gold mine for social networking entrepreneurs for a multitude of reasons, including:

• They represent a new type of growth of the social networking ‘sector’ where membership growth has primarily been based on friend-networks, not subject matter networks.
• There is existing passion and engagement among its members that will lead to a lot of UGC.
• The subject matter may require a different platform for social networking than what’s offered by the one-size-fits-all platforms like Facebook.

Social tagging as marketing & spam

Marketers are still scratching their heads as to the impact of social tagging. It’s clear that it’s becoming a very powerful search methodology where any netizen, not Google or Yahoo! get a say in what’s relevant content. The search algorithm is no secret either: whichever site is most often associated (tagged) with term ‘X’, gets on top. At least it is for now.

Even Tom Hespos has discovered it, although his musings on the topic underscores that it’s seemingly not yet on the radar as a marketing tool.

Unfortunately, I think the democratic nature of this social tagging may lead to its downfall. It might be just a matter of time before sites like del.icio.us and Furl will be rendered useless by spammers who find ways to flood the system with bogus tags.

UNLESS, there is be a way to for these services to detect and block spamming. The best way to achieve this is probably to ask marketers to stay away from social tagging all together. With email the challenge in detecting spam is that spammers and legitimate marketers through their distribution methods have more in common with each other than with person-to-person email. How’s a poor spam filter supposed to know the difference? Don’t let the same thing happen to social tagging. Let spam stand out like a sore thumb!

That said, marketers, it about time you started to take advantage of social bookmarking and tagging!

Encourage and enable your brand loyalists to tag you. That’s not spam, that’s just another flavor of viral marketing, one that could actually improve the quality and usefulness of social tagging. It might be the closest thing to public service marketers will ever do. Don’t let that hold you (‘cough’… us) back.

Crappy ad. What was the client thinking?

Across TV, print to interactive, there sure is a lot of badly executed advertising that still makes the media buy. I think this mediocrity it’s definitely the result of an incompetent client. Or agency.

Most ad men and women know that more often than not, clients reject the most exciting creative vision presented by the agency. Is it because the agency doesn’t get the client, their brand, services or products? Or could it be that the client just doesn’t appreciate or is to dim to recognize great ideas and fresh thinking?

In case of the former, these agencies should go out of business. How can an agency promise to deliver great work that connects with the target audience, when they don’t even ‘get’ their own client?

 

Another agency fallacy is delivering self-indulgent work that makes them look good, rather than meeting the client’s goals. My advice: Go be frustrated artists somewhere else!
As far as the 'incompetent client' theory goes, it definitely has some merit. If an agency is retained to deliver the best thinking and creative money (read: the budget) can buy, why wouldn’t the client take their advice? Well, that’s the client's prerogative. However, an agency should keep in mind that failure to get acceptance for an idea, is also a failure to sell the idea to the client.

Still, sometimes it just seems that nothing can be done to make the client see the light and great ideas go to rest on an account executive’s hard drive. While the agency has to rationalize their decisions, the client’s doesn’t, which sometimes leaves me wondering what the client was really thinking. However, being enigmatic is their right; they’re paying the bills after all. But, what was the client really thinking?

Having been on both sides of the table, I do have some ideas.

How about you?

Positioning Revisited

Charles Revlon once said: “I don’t sell lipstick, I sell hope.”

Reading my favorite staple marketing blogs, it seems that there is no lack of interest and articles regarding positioning, but most of them fail to address what I perceive to be the fundamentals.

1 – First of all choose your category, or more specifically, a frame of reference;

• A packaged goods example: Coca Cola can be perceived to belong to the ‘soft-drink’ category, in which Pepsi would be a competitor. Coca Cola could also belong to the ‘thirst-quenching drinks’ category, in which Snapple and Gatorade and tap water would be additional competitors.

As you can see, the choice of frame of reference is a choice of which market to compete in, and should be guided by determining:

a) The problem the product or products are proposed to solve

• E.g. people who buy power drills are actually in the market for holes. While conventional wisdom would put the power-drill in the ‘power tools’ category, think twice. Wouldn’t the ‘hole making’ category make more sense? Or does it belong to the ‘makes you feel handy’ category?

b) Which frame of reference the product likely to generate the greatest revenue? Consider competition, awareness, price point, etc.

When Charles Revlon said that he didn’t sell lipstick, but hope, do you think it had impact on positioning and marketing? You bet it did. Nobody sold just lipstick after that.

2 –Identify the norm

What are the points of parity for your ‘frame of reference’?

I.e. What minimum features or properties of the product(s) must exist in order for customers to perceive your product(s) or company as a legitimate and credible market offering?

• For example, a new car without airbags or a stereo would be sub-par/below norm compared to most cars. Likewise, customers might not perceive an Italian restaurant truly ‘Italian’ unless it is run by people with Italian origin or roots.

3 – Going beyond the norm

Once the point of parity has been determined, one needs to investigate how one’s product differs, or goes above and beyond parity on three levels:

Points of difference are identified as product performance associations, product imagery associations and consumer insights associations.

A) Product performance:
The ways in which a product or service attempts to meet customers’ functional needs.

• E.g. Benefits that prompt usage (“this product fits my needs because: …”)
• Benefits relating to reliability, durability and service
• Associations regarding service effectiveness, efficiency and empathy (personal relationship)
• Image and style associations (For example, the Jaguar automobile evokes associations of leather and rosewood; Starbucks evokes associations of coffee aromas, leather chairs, people reading, Harley Davidson evokes associations of chrome, leather jackets, noise, macho-lifestyle).

B) Product imagery:
Associations informed by experience.

· Own product usage or,

· Depictions of who uses the product and under what circumstances. (E.g. what kind of person would buy a Porsche? What person would buy an Apple laptop?)

C) Consumer insight:

• Reflect the extent to which the product, or the company offering the product, can show that they have insights into their customers’ problems or goals, and can make the case that they have the solution.

Thinks about these things first. Then start thinking about positioning. For example, start here.

What’s a StrategyHack anyway?

At the risk of sounding elitist; I tend to find stupid ideas or clueless people popping up a lot more than before. Probably this is not really the case as I am the one who has changed, as I should.

In my marketing career I've carried titles like Account Planner and Strategic Planner in the past. In my current position I am simply called a Strategist. Same difference. It's a black box/magic to those who don't understand it. But it really isn't.

Over the years I have also come to the realization that being a strategist, no matter how fancy it sounds, has a lot to do with common sense. As you start to more and more just going with your gut, one starts to question oneself: "Am I just getting lazy, pulling insights out of my a**, or has my a** (or more likely, gut) just gotten a lot smarter over the years?

I think it is the latter, meaning, one continually spends less time trying to figure out what makes sense by internalizing the knowledge one has acquired along the way. That's the StrategyHack. Makes sense, right?