Re: Using communities for marketing

Ian Douthwaite — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 06:44:26 -0000

Hi there Nic

We have been running brand communities and "ambassador" programmes for the past few years - specifically in the youth market and covering both online and offline activity. It's not just about product development (but clients do use this for ongoing research and feedback) but more about harnessing word of mouth as a marketing tool, and - importantly - seeding product and opinion amongst those with large influence maps. Companies such as EA have been doing this for years and have their own community management team, and we work alongside them to recruit young influencers and prime the market for new releases.

Stats on the effectiveness of this marketing are still nascent, but we find Insiders and word of mouth communities around brands can drive web traffic and sales much more cost-effectively than above the line advertising. We know how a friend's recommendation is more impactful than any other form of marketing - but for hard evidence the key lies in tracking the origination of the message and linking the subsequent "influence network" it generates to that message. As an example, for Sega we ran a small community of only 75 kids who generated an audience reach of 181,348 from 10,335 message instances, including parties, online reviews, fan sites and so on. We have quite a range of examples like this - for example, for a declining carbonated soft drink (CSD), 50 kids increased web traffic by 600% and increased sales by 10% where the overall CSD market declined by 10%.

As a further point, many of the "Insiders" we use across the world are generated through the community sites and virtual worlds we create, where we can also place brands and products in an immersive way. We see kids actively enjoying the relationship with the brands - they even messaged and thanked Dr Pepper repeatedly on one of our sites for gifting them a new room, so this sort of involvement is not seen as cynically by the target audience as many would assume. In some research we conducted recently, they are positive about community advertising: http://interactive.dubitlimited.com/research.

So we believe it works, both offline and through creating a brand community online - and in a tough market where above the line ads are proving difficult to justify, marketeers are wanting to get closer to the customer and use more viral means. And the young people, in our experience, love getting involved. Sure, there are some freebies in it for them, but the mere fact that a brand is taking the time to work with them counts for much more, and genuinely recuits them as a long-term consumer and friend.

Hope this helps - as I say, stats are still difficult to get hold of but if you want more case studies just let me know.

Ian
Dubit
interactive.dubitlimited.com

Re: Stats Confirm It: Teens Don’t Tweet

Ian Douthwaite — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:25:58 -0000

Interesting. I think we need to look at trends within age groups, not treat a snapshot as the trend. Our research department quickly asked 400 of our panel of 13-18 year olds across the UK in July 2009 about their awareness and usage of Twitter. It's actually more widespread than the Nielsen research reveals.

81% of the sample (13-18s) knew about Twitter and what it was, 14% had heard of it but weren’t overly clued in, however 3% had no clue whatsoever about Twitter.

48% of the 13-18 year olds already had a Twitter account, with the percentage growing as they get older. The 13-14 age bracket had just 39% with an account, however the 17-18 age bracket registered 54% of them with an account.

How Do Teens Use Twitter?
There’s no set standard for the way teens with an account use Twitter. 34% last posted a tweet more than a fortnight ago, whilst 27% last posted today and 12% yesterday. 15% of those who signed up however have NEVER Tweeted.

25% of respondents Tweet more than 20 times a month, and again usage is higher in the older age bracket with 17% of 13-14’s Tweeting more than 20 times a month, whilst 32% of 17-18 year olds tweet that often.

Who they Follow?
Teenagers follow their friends (80%) most, followed by Celebrities (76%), Funny people (23%), Strangers into the same thing as me (17%), Complete strangers (10%), Random people (9%) and no-one (6%).

The idea of using Twitter to network and have conversations is much more prevalent amongst the older age groupings. Those who follow ‘Strangers into the same thing as me’ number just 4% of 13-14 year olds, whilst 24% of 17-18 year olds follow this grouping.

So privacy is important in the younger demographic, but as they lose their shyness, they switch on to Twitter. We're becoming more aware that the internet is increasing this trend to lose shyness earlier - so be prepared for more Teenage Tweets!

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Re: Using communities for marketing

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