Archive for November 25, 2010

Vocanic recently launched Fan Offers on the Fashion Fast Forward (F3) Fan Page. Wing Tai wanted to promote Kate Moss’ final mainline collection for Topshop as well as to publicise ‘Topman presents The Charlatans Live in Singapore’.

For the Kate Moss Fan Offer, the Vocanic team conceived and built an application where F3 fans could grab the chance to reserve a piece from the Kate Moss collection before it launched. Fans of the page could choose between 6 capsule items and reserve selected pieces in their sizes to be picked up at the launch.  Over 100 pieces were reserved within 3 days and the collection was very well-received.

For The Charlatans Live in Singapore concert, Wing Tai wanted to give out exclusive concert passes to Fashion Fast Forward fans. Vocanic developed the application to captured contestant’s details so that their names could be entered into a lucky draw to pick the winners. The Fan Offer received a substantial number of submissions and generated significant buzz on Facebook.

PEOPLE who are popular have a lot of influence. Or so Babbage thought. But things are not that simple, as research by the Social Computing Lab at Hewlett-Packard’s research arm shows.

Bernardo Huberman, the lab’s director, and his colleagues (Daniel Romerso, Wojciech Galuba and Sitaram Asur) analysed 22m messages on Twitter, the micro-blogging service, to find out, among other things, how popularity and influence correlate. Measuring popularity is straightforward: it rises with the number of those who have signed up to follow a person’s or organisation’s messages. In contrast, determining influence is more tricky. The researchers hypothesised that users of Twitter are the more influential the more they manage to overcome their followers’ “passivity”, meaning their tendency not to to pass on messages (only one in 318 messages containing an internet address is “retweeted” the researchers found).

Based on that assumption they developed an algorithm that calculates a user’s influence. The most surprising result is that the correlation between popularity and influence is weaker than one might expect. Some media, for instance, have lots of followers, but don’t do so well when it comes to having their messages re-tweeted. People Magazine and The Onion, a satirical website, had about the same number of followers in September 2009 when the dataset was obtained (2,1m versus 2,3m). But the former ranked 565th in terms of influence and the later 92th. And The Economist, which had only 311,109 followers, ranked a respectable 902 in influence. Below is the list of the 30 most influential media on Twitter (the entire list can be found here):

With politicians, the disconnect is even more pronounced, at least in America. If Mr Huberman and his colleagues got their numbers right, the most influencial American politician on Twitter is not John McCain (who has 1,7m followers), but Nancy Pelosi (15,964). Yet overall the results are rather good news for the Republicans: 70 of the 100 most influential members of Congress are from the GOP.

Experts will surely debate at length whether the algorithm designed by HP’s Social Computing Lab is a good one for measuring influence. Others will ask: So what? But the exercise is far from futile. In a world that is increasingly swamped by tweets, posts, likes and so on, it comes in handy to know who is listened to. In fact, it is crucial if firms, governments and individuals want to get their message through on social networks, Mr Huberman and his colleagues argue in the paper that they have written an their research (which they have posted here).

Other researchers will certainly devise alternative ways of measuring influence. Given enough money, they will have an easier time than their colleagues at HP. To get the raw data, HP had to query Twitter’s search function for 300 hours. But on November 17th it emerged that the service will sell access to its messages via a partner, Gnip. The firm will reportedly provide half of all tweets for $360,000 per year, or 5% for $60,000. Even the latter offer provides more than enough data to find the most influential needles in the digital haystack: currently about 5m messages per day.

A recent Advertising Age article revealed that more and more companies are now putting actual staff front and center in their advertising. Could your company do this? Probably not, if your staff are like those in Forrester’s recent surveys of knowledge workers.

In a report published today, Forrester Research examined the question of employees advocating for their companies. We surveyed 5,519 information workers across the U.S. and Europe, using a variation on the Net Promoter methodology that asks, on a 10-point scale, “How likely are you to recommend your company’s products or services to a friend or family member?” As in Net Promoter, we count people as promoters if they rate this a 9 or 10, neutral if they rate it a 7 or 8, and detractors for 0 through 6. The results are surprisingly negative. For example:

• 49% of information workers are detractors for their company, and only 27% were promoters. That’s a net score (promoters minus detractors) of -23%. Surprisingly, this doesn’t vary much with age, income, or size of company.
• Directors, VPs, and executives are net promoters, but individual workers and managers/supervisors are net detractors.
• Among U.S. workers, the best scores are in design, HR, and the ever-optimistic sales department. With a net score of -10%, marketers are actually more likely to be detractors than promoters for their own products. And customer service workers are among the most likely to be detractors. When your call center staff don’t believe in your company, you’re ripe for your own Maytag moment.
• In case you’re wondering if you should allow employees onto social networks (and trust me, you can’t stop them), try this fact on: workers who use social media are among the most positive. 48% would strongly recommend a company’s products and services and only 22% were detractors, for a net score of 26% — among the highest of the groups we surveyed.

What should you do? Well, you could squeeze more work out of people, tell them exactly what to do and punish them when they don’t do it, and block their access to technology. This might boost short-term profits and make you feel like you’re in charge. In a recession, they probably won’t quit. But they sure won’t be spreading joy to your customers.

Or you could spread an internal reputation that customer problem-solvers will be encouraged and highlight the workers who do it. You could empower people. Then the ideas will be coming from your staff instead of just from you. And maybe they’ll be happy. You could put them in your TV commercials, get them tweeting about your products, and generating customer advocates with their enthusiasm. That’s hard to do, but it’s worth it.

It’s like banging your head against the wall.  Every good corporate citizen today knows the name of the game is full disclosure (it’s an essential component of integrity).  Yet even some very visible companies still try to get away with violating the fundamental rule of transparency – and think they will not get caught.  But they mostly do.

Here’s the latest victim:  Netflix.

Netflix made a HUGE mistake when it faked customer endorsements by hiring actors to deliver praise at the Canadian press launch of its new service – for which it later apologized.

According to an article in Boing Boing, “Netflix has had to apologize after it was revealed that the enthusiastic customers talking to the press at its Canadian launch were actors hired for the occasion, reciting lines from a prepared script.”

Literally extras were encouraged to move into the streets and play types, for example, mothers, film buffs, etc.  An information sheet from Netflix distributed to extras said:  “Extras are to behave as members of the public, out and about enjoying their day-to-day life, who happen upon a street event for Netflix and stop by to check it out.”

This makes you wonder what the Netflix folks were thinking – should one of these actors be invited by the press to do an interview.  For all its press launch planning and execution, all the good has been undone in one fell swoop.

Survey from Varsity Brands Reveals That Teen Girl Opinions Are Greatest Influence, Involvement and Leadership are Critical, Recent Economic Conditions Factor into Teen Concerns

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — A recent survey by Varsity Brands of teen girls showed that ninety-three (93) percent of teen girls participate in one or more activities at school.  Nearly half of teen girls hold some type of leadership position in or out of school and almost three quarters feel people look to them as a leader.  Interestingly, being a leader resonates with teen girls more than being trendy — 47 percent more teen girls identify themselves as leaders versus trendsetters. They are not interested in changing who they are, as three-quarters (77 percent) are comfortable in their own skin.

The study surveyed 1,016 teen girls ages 13-18 to represent the roughly 14 million teen girls across the United States and sought to find out more about this powerful teen demographic, how they spend their time, how influential they are as a group and where they hold the most power of influence.

“In 2010, teen girls give ‘girl power’ a whole new meaning,” said Nicole Lauchaire, Vice President, Corporate Marketing and Communications for Varsity Brands, Inc.  ”Girls today are social connectors empowered by technology, and they beat out their male counterparts when it comes to ‘connecting’ online. Additionally, teenage girls are more involved than ever in their communities and value leadership more than simply being trendy.”

Community and Giving Back

For teen girls the broader community is a touch point where they connect and contribute their talent and energy. Teen girls are about twice as likely as teen boys to belong to a volunteer group, with roughly 65 percent of teen girls having volunteered in the past 12 months.

Girls as Brand Evangelists

Teen girls generally show more brand loyalty and make more purchases than teen boys. Teen girls are vocal about their purchases within their social circles. Nearly 9 out of 10 teen girls say they enjoy sharing recommendations with their friends.  Teen girls know they are influencers —  53 percent of teen girls believe their opinions greatly influence their friends’ purchase decisions. Teen girls report that their friends’ opinions and actions are the No. 1 reasons they will make a purchase.  Seventy seven (77) percent of teen girls say they are influenced by purchases of their friends and 71 percent say online posts influence them. This indicates a two-way influence dynamic: those who are more likely to influence others also are more likely to be influenced by others.  When a teen likes a brand, they are most likely to directly recommend that brand to a friend/peer (73%) or buy another product by the brand (69%). Virtual recommendations, such as becoming a fan of the brand online (48%), following the brand on a social media site (30%), or sharing links about the brand (17%) are less frequent.

Teen Girl Social Connections Online

While teen boys and girls spend roughly the same amount of time online, teen girls are more likely to use that time for connecting, self-expression and relationship building. Teen girls spend hours each day interacting with their friends through texting and social media. However, their preferred method of communication (e.g. texting, face-to-face, etc) varies depending on their audience. Texting is the preference for communicating with close friends, but many teen girls prefer to use social media to get in touch with classmates.  Face-to-face is their primary means of communicating with authoritative figures such as parents, teachers and coaches.

Teen Girls are Good Sports

Teen girls are embracing being active more and more, and athletics are the leading activity teen girls participate in at school. Today, 65 percent of high school girls participate in a school sport. The top 10 most popular include track and field, soccer, tennis, basketball, volleyball, softball, cross country, swimming, cheerleading and dance team.

In addition to helping them keep fit, participation in athletics gives teen girls a variety of interpersonal benefits. Through athletics, teen girls learn to enjoy healthy competition. Four out of five female athletes experience the “thrill of competition” from joining a school sport or spirit team. Participating in athletics helps teen girls make new friends (86%) and gives them a built-in support system (65%).

Though the interpersonal aspects of organized athletics cannot be overlooked, the internal benefits are just as powerful. A huge majority of female teen athletes say that playing some type of sport/spirit team generally makes them happier (78%), builds their overall confidence (73%) and helps to relieve stress (69%). “Girls are not just making friends – they are utilizing sports to grow their coping skills and improve their temperament and self-perception,” said Lauchaire.  ”Team athletics, such as soccer, cross country and cheerleading, give teen girls a social outlet, a confidence boost and a stress reliever.”

Girls are Stressed and Stretched

While they want and need to be involved, teen girls readily admit to having more stressors than teen boys – they are almost three times more likely to say they feel stressed out “all the time.” The economy and its impact is the dominate concern for teen girls – more so than “teen issues” such as drug abuse, bullying and teen pregnancy. Teen girls are most concerned with issues that have an immediate impact on them, such as getting into college. They have a great deal of anxiety about money, indicating that recent economic conditions may factor into teen concerns. This audience worries about paying for college (71%) and finding a job (58%), more so than issues like teen pregnancy (41%) or date rape (29%).

For additional findings from the Teen Girl survey, and to access the Teen Girls: Influence, Involvement and Empowerment white paper, visit www.varsity.com/teenresearch.