The Future Place Blog

Do you know any young people? If so, get them to read Tanvi’s blog

Tanvi Gupta is one of the young rising stars of the new research world, currently she is a student in India, but she is soon to take a position with one of the leading MR companies, and will already be famous when she arrives, because of the profile she has created through social media and her contribution to events like the Festival of NewMR and more recently blogging for ESOMAR’s Contact project.

Tanvi has just posted a blog that I think every young researcher, and every young person who is even considering joining the MR industry, should read. There are two reasons in particular that I think people (even older people) should read it:

1) Tanvi shows that even a new entrant to the industry can achieve a global reputation, if they are talented, if they contribute, and if they have a vision.

2) Tanvi also makes the comment that despite her success, none of her MBA classmates have adopted her strategy. The chances are there but young people still need to grasp them, they won't just happen!

Tanvi puts the credit to her success down to a fairy godmother (Twitter), but I think it is those young researchers who do not grasp the opportunities of social media who are trusting to the fairy godmother model of advancement.

 

Measuring the NewMR Buzz

During the Festival of NewMR, Nigel Legg of Trevanian Legg was monitoring the buzz and writing an update on his findings. You can access of copy of his report HERE.

Today Nigel gave a webinar which summarised his findings and engaged in a Q&A session. You can see a recording of the webinar by clicking on the video below.

 

Why #heddlu is sometimes better than #police

When people use Twitter they are increasingly using hashtags to group their tweets with others tweeting about a similar theme, for example popular tags include #nonprofit, #FollowFriday (often just #FF these days), and #climatechange.

Perhaps the most successful public sector use of a hashtag in the UK is #testittuesday,  a tag that has been adopted by many of the Fire and Rescue Services to encourage people to test their smoke alarms. (BTW I warmly encourage any tweeters out there to ReTweet #testittuesday when they see it AND to test their alarms).

One interesting challenge with hashtags was illustrated with the tag #mr which was for a time used by the market research industry. There were two problems with the #mr tag, 1) it was also used by people into some form of gangster talk, which included an unpleasant amount of misogyny, 2) a number of supply companies started to tweet spam using the #mr tag. At the moment both problems have been dealt with by the use of a #mrx tag for general market research and #newmr for the cutting edge stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I was speaking to a really interesting team of people from South Wales Police who are developing some innovative social media approaches including the use of Twitter. The obvious tag for grouping tweets about the police is #police, however the majority of tweets using this tag are from too far away South Wales to be of regular interest, indeed often from the USA. So South Wales are trialling the use of the tag #heddlu, which is Welsh for police. So far, this seems to be working well for them, but real success will be if other local bodies, especially other local police forces such as Gwent Police, adopt a similar strategy.

Hashtags are still relatively young and the way they are being used is evolving, but I suspect that we will see a range of interesting strategies developed to help organisations cut through the noise to reach people who want to be reached. In many ways effective use of Twitter comes back to Seth Godin’s principle of permission marketing, we are trying to reach the people who want to be reached and trying not to annoy the people who do not want to be reached (spammers are you listening?)

 

Is the Old Spice Social Media Campaign Failing?

The hottest news about brands and social media is all about Old Spice

But, other voices are beginning to question the ROI (for example social media today) based on a report on bnet that reports that sales for Old Spice are down.

At the end of the day, ROI has to be the main test. The challenge for the campaign is enormous, for most buyers the ranking for Old Spice could jump 20 places and still not make the consideration set. I think the ads are interesting but I was a user of Old Spice in the 1970s and I am about as likely to start using Old Spice again as to start wearing the bright purple loons I used to wear (no, I did not look good in them even then).

However, I have a hunch that it will eventually produce ROI, not with older white men in the US, but with other groups and in particular other markets.

What should your social media policy look like?

I talk to a large number of private sector and public sector organisation about social media and one common question is "What should our social media policy be like?", and I tend to describe some key characteristics from organisations I work with and point them towards a small number of organisations whose policies can readily be accessed.

However, here is a link to a great list compiled by Ralph Paglia. In the post Paglia lists over 100 organisations and provides links to their policies.

Paglia also makes the important point, that looking at other people's policies can only be a guide to what your organisation should do, i.e. necessary but not sufficient.

Slides for 'The Busy Exec's Guide to Social Media'

Last week I ran a workshop at the BIG 2010 Conference titled 'The Busy Exec's Guide to Social Media', looking at how execs, particularly in and around the market research industry can get 80% of the value for 20% of the effort.

Here are the slides I used in that session.

Busy execs guide to social media

View more presentations from Ray Poynter.

Over the next few weeks I will be converting this material into standalone course which I will be offering. I am also looking to create a free booklet on this topic and a training service to help busy exec's configure their systems.

United Breaks Guitars

This is the first of a set of case studies in Social Media; watch out for the rest of the series.

Dave Caroll, a Canadian folk singer with the band Sons of Maxwell, was travelling by plane to Nebraska on a United flight and saw baggage handlers at Chicago throwing his guitar around. When he got to Nebraska and opened his luggage his guitar was broken. He tried for nine months to resolve the issue with United, to no effect. So he said he would create three videos and post them on YouTube. Were United scared, they did not seem so.

The first video has so far been viewed by over 5.6 million people.

The video was followed by one from Taylor guitars providing support to Dave Caroll.

According to this statement by Dave Caroll United did offer compensation after people started watching his video. But Caroll declined the compensation; he did not want to be bought off.

The second video of the trilogy has now been released and has been viewed by over 400K people (although to my taste the second is nothing like as good as the first).

Dave Caroll has a write up of his side of the story here.

The key point about this story is that power is shifting from the big battalions to the individual. However, the subtext is that the power is shifting particularly to people with the skill or humour to make the new platforms work for them.

By all accounts Dave Caroll is doing very in terms of bookings, United’s image has taken a hit, but the economy has been a bigger problem.

A number of articles can now be bought with the logo ‘United break guitars’, including mugs and t-shirts.

I guess United, and most other brands, have a better understanding now that they can’t just ignore people, especially musicians, artists, writers, comedians, and other people with talent.

Many thanks to Russ Meyer of Landor who was the first to bring it to my attention.