Gordon's Republic

Gordon Macmillan

Rohit  Bhargava – senior vp, marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence is the first main speaker today, great speaker and some very good advice for marketers who want to understand social media.

He kicks off his presentation by talking about "Why today is different from yesterday".

Picture of a baby. That's yesterday as feeding the baby is like the old scatter gun approach to marketing. You know, it's a bit of TV, press and radio and you hope that some of it might hit home. Just like the food most of which of course ends up around the baby's mouth.

Today Word of Mouth has arrived and there are ways of focusing on that Rohit says that simply did not exist before: you want people to buy your stuff and tell other people about you. Everyone says they know that but clearly that isn't the case.

His Eight Counterintuitive new truths of marketing.

1. Virtual trust trumps all. He points to the rise of eBay and how we are now more likely to trust the opinions of 20 strangers than anyone else. We look at product stars online, like ebay and "think okay four stars and ten reviews probably worth buying".

2. Spokes people are accidental

Great point, obvious and really quite true: brands can not choose their advocates.

He cites a Playboy model, Kendra Wilkinson, who started a ground swell about an American Italian restaurant called the Olive Garden. She would speak about tell people about why the food was so good, but the brand didn't thinks she was the "right kind of people" they wanted talking about their brand. It tired to stop her. Dong. Wrong move. It became a negative media story and Playboy shot back by doing a spread of the restaurant's staff.

He says the right move here is to embrace it as it is much easier to say something negative and create a ground swell of social media.

The question is he says are you doing enough to find your advocates out there? Picking one person (like a celeb spokes person is old)

3. People don't ignore marketing

His point is they ignore bad marketing. That viral you created didn't get any attention not because it was marketing, but because it was bad. You can be open about your marketing - just do it right.

Recent Diesel viral is a great example and people certainly did not ignore that.

4. Transparency doesn't matter

What matters he says is "authenticity". He cites James Dyson as a true authentic. Dyson is an inventor who has a track record and whose company has tips and hints to help other inventors. The brand lives and breathes authenticity.

5. Engagement is replacing impressions.

This is why we love unique users rather than impressions.

He talks about Nintendo Wii parties and how the games company has picked up on these and embraced them by creating Wii party packs and is actively helping them engage with the brand.

He has an interesting statistic here. While many of us have previously thought that the longer people spend on your website the better, he says this is not always true.

Cites some internal research that says 40 seconds on your homepage is about what you want to be seeing.

In that time they have looked and found what they wanted and gone off to get it. More than that then your navigation sucks. Less than that then they didn't find what they wanted and moved on.

6. Marketing is customer service

Brings up a really good Twitter example here. He talks about US cable firm Comcast and its Twitter use via Comcastcares.

He says this shows/demonstrates to people that the firm does care as it is listening and responding to their problems and that is what people want.

Says social media at its core is all about listening and responding: look at their YouTube videos and Flickr pics that rant about your brand and respond (underlines the need to buzz monitor),

7. Failure is an opportunity

Contrary to popular business belief he says. Cites good example of Digg and what it does when it occasionally goes down. It doesn't have a 404 not found page it has a message from all its developers with recommendations of websites they like. That is kind of cool (I think, love Digg).

8. Circular media is the future

Everyone is in media these days – well more of less. This is user generated content (although he didn't use that term – too 2007?).

This phenomenon has rocketed as content creation has become so easy. Blogger, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter. Talks about natural disasters where the consumer are now "first on the scene" and not the media.

He says part of what marketers need to do here is capture those opinions and use them. Do people post good YouTube about your brand? Cool, lucky you – embrace it.

My second post - read it here.

My Third and final post on BA's social media efforts is here

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