how to touch the untouchable?

Is your customer hard to get to, let alone have a conversation with?

Well...why are you trying to have a conversation with them?

Why should they listen?

Maybe it is us who should be doing the listening. To what they have to say.

Mack Collier (@mackcollier) recently shared that Dell customers would be willing to pay more to get better service. An interesting finding for a highly price driven category. Kraft listened when the public told them that the name for the new version of the iconic Australian brand Vegemite, iSnack 2.0, stunk and killed the name in 4 days. As a result both brands have gained much positive media exposure for the way they listened to customers.

Maybe your customer (or potential customer) is not untouchable, they merely expect you to get to know them a little better first?

Flickr photo credit: Verces300

Does your brand have a life after death?

I recently saw an amazing Ted Talk by Dr Nicholas Christakis about the social connections between people and how they affect health outcomes. It got me thinking about how social connections affect brand.

They showed that there is a hard correlation between people with obesity - so much so that if one of your direct connections is obese, you have a 45% likelihood to be obese also. This diminishes with distance of connection.
Why is this?

Dr Christakis categorises 3 main drivers for this 1) induction, if I gain weight it causes you to gain weight 2) homophily, or birds of a feather flocking together and 3) confounding (science speak for some effect that we haven't yet been able to identify). They found that all 3 elements were in play affecting the incidence of obesity. You are not only affected by others, associate with people like yourself....but the effect of that lingers beyond your connection, even beyond death! What lingers goes beyond immediate cause and effect - it becomes part of the fabric, ideas and norms affecting the entire network.

Once the Idea, or connection exists, it remains like a cloud in the air. Intrigued, they then tracked this for positivity, finding that like a common cold, postivity is catching too.

We know that Word of Mouth (WOM) is one of the strongest stimuli influencing purchase behaviour (for B2B and B2C). But what happens when we go beyond WOM as a purchase influencer to the notion of a Sustainable Idea?

Some examples of this notion of a sustainable Idea that is harnessed and propogated by a brand are Earth Hour, Contours (the notion of fast, effective and female friendly workouts), Facebook (an online meeting place) and Nike (perform at all points in your life). Which brands do you think do this well?

What Sustainable Ideas exist around your brand, your business and importantly your tribe? How can you help them spread, connect and grow so you too can spread your own brand of positivity, even after the death of your current campaign?

hat tip: Heidi Allen for pointing out this amazing piece of work. Flickr credit:Binkiexxx

From super celeb to super connectors?

Influence, voice, status, once the purview of philosophers and politicians, more recently owned by Paris…and although I think Obama has perhaps blended the two sources of influence, I wonder if the new celebrity is the Superconnectors.

What are Superconnectors? People who not only have and promote extensive links between online communities and individuals, but also distill thinking and information to help more people understand and connect over concepts. Their celebrity or position in the statusphere is reinforced and created by their direct connection with the community.

In an interesting post, Techcrunch discusses the transition from the traditional ranking of status online – the blog Authority list by Technorati and how that is no longer a true indication of status given the links, connections and content on micro-blogs and using other media.

I’m curious – what do others think?

more thinking to come….

(30 April, 2009)