Curious Thoughts from Curious Minds: Dr Strangelove, or How I Came To Love UGC - Graeme Hutton - MediaBizBloggers

When we ask US online consumers how quottrustworthyquot they rate information typically provided by various contacts a wide ranking emerges Personal recommendations from family and friends scores highest at 67 out of a possible 10 Consumer online recommendations on sites such as Amazon score 57 By comparison TV or magazine advertising merits only 37 At least advertising beats email spam which scores a lowly 31But if online word of mouth is mushrooming in its online presence how do we embrace it particularly its most evocative online form User Generated Content UGC without falling into the classic traps feared by many Fortunately if we really want to incorporate WOM there are ways to draw on research to ensure we can develop scalable and repeatable strategiesWOM is deeply rooted in our culture Americans do like giving their opinion both on and offline Tracking WOM across 22 product categories we have found that 80 of Americans quotoften inform others on what to buyquot in at least one of these categories More intriguingly we are seeing the emergence of the SuperInfluencer amp8211 30 of us inform others on what to buy for five or more categoriesSuperInfluencers exhibit clear preferences in the subjects they like to talk about At the broadest level our analysis indicates SuperInfluencers will tend to focus on one of two macrotopic groups either a technology and entertainment or b more personal and household matters such a fashion cosmetics personal health and groceries Similar smaller topic groupings occur throughout people39s WOM repertoires amp8211people often like to talk to others on several related topics such as music and films or children homes and familiesThe implication of these types of macrotopic groupings is actually quite profound If we wish to activate a WOM or UGC strategy we should avoid the pitfall of directly inviting consumers to create a specific response around our product As Chevy Tahoe found out in 2006 in the USA consumers rebuffed the marketer39s invitation to create UGC ads for the SUV and instead they exploited it as a chance to attack the vehicle39s fuel consumption As a result of this type of experience the marketing industry is often hesitant to pursue WOM or related UGC consumer creation strategiesInstead of inviting consumer responses on the brand directly we should harness this type of customized WOM topic research to determine what other often seeminglyunrelated product areas do actively interest our consumers to talk to others We could then include these other potential areas in a refocused WOM or UGC activation strategy to emphasize our product39s proposition without necessarily talking about our product In turn this can unexpectedly broaden the interest and appeal of our brandAn admirable case in point is ING Canada A year ago they ran a UGC competition on the theme of savings amp8211 but rather than being about bank savings and deposits the competition was about any form of saving Consumers39 UGC responses were diverse humorous and creative For example they included a video about someone trying to save money by ordering a pizza where the pizza was free if it was not quotdelivered to your handsquot in 30 minutes So the dinertobe deliberately refused to physically accept the pizza when the delivery guy turned up at his door and a very humorous skit ensuedIt is these sorts of surprising approaches where WOM and related UGC strategies will ultimately succeed because they not only arouse consumers39 genuine curiosity and invite an authentic response that isn39t transparently selfserving to the needs of the brand they also provide a broaderbased forum to interact with the brand and other fansGraeme is SVP Director of Consumer Insights ampamp Research Graeme is responsible for ensuring that all appropriate proprietary and syndicated research tools and resources are applied in the development of consumer insight strategies for a total communications research platformfrom TV to chat roomswhich informs the efforts of Universal McCann and its agency partners Graeme can be reached at graemehuttonumwwcomRead all Graeme39s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at Curious Thoughts from Curious Minds MediaBizBloggersFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBlogger

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Curious Thoughts from Curious Minds: Dr Strangelove, or How I Came To Love UGC - Graeme Hutton - MediaBizBloggers

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