STW Group’s Christie St Headquarters last week played host to John Bell, the US-based Global Managing Director of Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence practice. In between his engagements with the Australian team, John was interviewed by Andrew Braithwaite, Digital Strategy Director for Lawrence Creative Strategy. Here is John’s take on what’s now and what’s next in his field.
Have you noticed a difference between the Australian market and the US market?
My team is in about 27 markets world wide, and the one consistent thing is that, one way or another, social media is emerging and manifesting itself very quickly, not just as a consumer phenomenon, but also as an avenue for markets to evolve how they are building their relationships with customers.
But there are big distinctions between Australia and the US, especially on the influencers’ spectrum. Influencers for me are people who have a demonstrated reach and persuasive power in the marketplace. Historically we associate this term with top bloggers, people who have high follower counts on Twitter, community managers, Facebook group leaders and message board mavens.
North America has a very broad, diverse, deep collection of influencers on an almost nauseating amount of topics. Whereas Australia has a distinctive influencer community, but it is much narrower. Do you have mum bloggers, yes. Do you have tech bloggers, of course. Social media “gurus” or purists, absolutely.
But is there the same depth of, say, “librarian bloggers?”
I don’t know, but once you start getting into these niches it isn’t as pronounced as in the US, because social networks have stepped in. Social networking (well, Facebook really) has offered an alternative benefit to blogs and other personal platforms. I think that is very vibrant here in Australia today.
Do you think social media is not a silo anymore, that instead it is simply a natural part of an integrated strategy?
In most brands, especially the ones that we are dealing with here in Ogilvy, no one is asking if they should get involved in social media. It is how and when, and how should they measure it so they feel good about their commitment.
The common theme we observe is that the path from experimenting in social media to operationalising it is a complex one. It can be very complicated. You might have one department who just thinks it isn’t worth the time. You can get the simplistic conflict between marketing and PR/communications, like “who owns what channel?”
You also get more complex questions, especially when you’re doing it successfully. Making it more efficient and feeling more confident about the impact it has on the business has all sorts of unintended consequences – mainly, that it can be very challenging to how companies are organised. Creating a really powerful social media strategy means creating one that’s providing value on a couple of levels for your organisation. Not just more efficient marketing, but things like operational excellence. That means you’ve got to get something like seven groups involved: HR, internal affairs, product development, marketing, communications and so forth.
Is helping a company to bringing these groups together part of our job?
Yes. The Digital Influence team has grown over the past seven years so that we’re now the largest network of social media strategists around the world. We are committed to integrated social media.
That’s integration on two levels. Of course, the first is owned, earned and paid media working together. We’ve proven the validity of that approach with effective cases such as launching the Ford Explorer in North America, and the Johnny Walker program in China.
The second is integrating really deep disciplines in customer relationship management (CRM), shopper marketing, PR and direct, and so forth. That’s Ogilvy’s sweet spot in a lot of ways. No boutique social media house can bring that to their client.
Now the next evolution for us is social business.
We think social media can deliver value to a company across four different areas. One is building brand reputation and value. We do that already. Two is creating customer value. This is also part of the current marketing and communications mix.
But then two new areas too. Building operational excellence is key. This encompasses goals like more efficient marketing communications, leading to things like shorter time to market on product development because now we have inside insight from the marketplace. Then lastly, strengthening workforce culture. This could mean enabling employees to tweet on behalf of the company. Or even seemingly trivial things, like enabling Facebook access in the workplace, which is an issue for some of our clients.
It’s hard to police a Facebook ban when many people have smartphones.
In our industry more broadly we are part of a white collar workforce of communication professionals. This means sometimes we all, myself included, fall victim to naive points of view. We say, “everybody should have access to social media all the time, if you’re worried about people wasting time on YouTube, then you have a bigger problem than access to YouTube”. I do believe that, but I’m also sympathetic to some of our clients who genuinely do have productivity and security problems.
Changing tack a little bit, a lot of what we talk about on Nextness is “what’s now and what’s next.” I know you are big on innovation in digital, what are you excited about that is coming up now?
Social selling, which is about sales force enablement – mostly used applied to the B2B space, but not exclusively. Our client, IBM, is taking that very seriously.
Social shopping, which is pretty self explanatory. It’s integrating a social layer into the shopping and transactional experience, both online and on the shelf. Pairing Ogilvy Action and their shopper marketing experience with our social expertise is something I am keen to do more.
Another thing I want to see is some definition around “Social CRM“. It is a phrase that doesn’t have crisp definition yet, so people use it for different things. Managing customer relationships can get stronger by incorporating social data from their experience on the web. How can we use that CRM data to not just help customers repurchase, or buy more, but also advocate on behalf of the brand? That’s something we are doing right now with Ford, which is interesting, and in its early days.
In terms of what’s next, I think about what might come after Facebook. Heresy I know! But businesses want to build a direct relationship with you the consumer to find out what customers want from me as a brand… we can’t do that on Facebook, as the data is all on Facebook.
It’s interesting, because you asked about what’s next and I didn’t name technologies. Is location based marketing important? Of course it is, I think everyone sees that already. If I could make a wager on a particular platform, I’d do that. If I got it right I would be rich. I’ve been around startups long enough to know that. Am I going to put my money on Quora? No. (Laughs.)
How do you think ROI is changing?
What social media suggests that we, as marketers ought to value is action and intent; increased engagement (as in, your customers are spending more time, interacting more, clicking more buttons, making more effort); and, of course, advocacy.
Whether it is liking a product and having it show up on my wall, or all the way down to a restaurant review which I spend 20 minutes writing… I am sharing, in one of many ways out there, my implicit or explicit endorsement of a friend.
The effort to figure out how to value social media is causing a lot of brands to question how they are measuring and valuing other marketing too.
Your thoughts on advocacy remind me of a quote I read, “I don’t like your brand on Facebook because I like your brand. I like your brand because I like my friends.”
Yeah, it is very insightful. The truth is, I am consciously aware every day of what I’m sharing every day with my followers and connections and friends. I’m thinking, “should I send this, or should I tweet this, or should I post this? Will someone else find this valuable, or am I just waving the John Bell flag?”
There always has to be an element of flag-waving involved as well I think.
Well, I’m an introvert. Give me a room full of people and I’m pretty quiet. But social has given me a way to form more connections, and stronger connections, beyond what I believed I could do terrestrially. For me, it is hugely liberating. And now, even in my own feeds, lets say the mix is about 70% professional, 30% is “let me show you a picture of where I’m at right now and why it’s cool.”
You are definitely not alone, I think a lot of introverted people have found their voice through social media.
Yeah. It’s good stuff!
Thank you to John Bell for taking the time to share his thoughts. You can read John’s blog and follow him on Twitter (@jbell99). John was interviewed by Andrew Braithwaite (@AndyBraithwaite). Andy’s last piece for Nextness was The best camera is the one you have with you: a review of top photography apps. Find out more about 360 Digital Influence in Australia.
