Do Brands Have Moods?

By Matt Harty

I mentioned this in a previous post. I have been thinking about it more and more.

I am trying very hard to write about Social Media and User Generated Content (UGC) without plugging Buzzwareness. But in this regard it is unavoidable so my apologies for the pitch.

I have been watching the “Word Clouds” and “Tweets” that Buzzwareness gives me on a number of the brands I am monitoring. Between them I am detecting that there are moods surrounding the brands. The Tweets give an up-to-the-minute reflection of what is going on around the brand and the Word Cloud takes some of the randomness of micro-blogging out and gives a layer of depth from news items and blogs.

I have been trying to defend the inclusion of Tweets into Buzzwareness. What watching Tweets can tell us is how the brand is being used in a conversational way. The idea of marketing as “dialogue” is one close to my heart and this is possibly the ultimate expression of this idea. We are literally eavesdropping on thousands of conversations for the mention of our brand and we see how our brand is being used, discussed or portrayed.

Word Clouds are something deeper in nature than Tweets but no less informative. The Word Cloud is coming mainly from blogs. It takes all of the most common key-words surrounding the brand. This gives us another, different kind of insight. What we are seeing is a slower moving feeling towards the brand. Unlike micro-bloging where we look at many isolated statements, the Word Cloud is showing us a consolidated mood of many contributors. This adds sanity to the picture.

Micro-blogs in isolation may give a distorted view, particularly if you only read a few of them. The more Tweets you read the better the balance becomes. With the deep and slow moving Word Cloud data we can round out the perception of the brand amongst users of UGC websites.

For some brands who see mainly criticism in many UGC forums, this mood measurement may be an interesting tool. From playing with some generic terms I can see that the Tweets are often about how something is used or thought of and with the benefit of the Word Cloud this can be placed into perspective regarding the prevailing moods of the mob towards our brand.

Call me mad, but I honestly think I am seeing the moods that surround a brand.

Social Media Brand Touch-Points

By Matt Harty

Most brands are coming to the conclusion that User Generated Content (UGC) and Social Media are with us for the long term. At the same time, understanding of the impact and effects of UGC are lost on many marketers. If this understanding was widespread you would see a great deal of panic manifesting on the faces of marketers and brand managers.

Brands historically have had a kind of stand-off with the mass media. Brands spend money on advertising and the media generally need advertisers to stay in business. I am not suggesting that media is inherently corrupt, just that there has been a long-standing co-operation between the two sides.

Then along comes Media 2.0…

Marketers need to understand the touch-points of their brands in this new world order. The first thing to understand is that the nature of the Internet lends itself to dialogue rather than broadcast. What I mean here is that unlike most TV and Print, the Internet is a two-way communication, a bit like talk-back Radio gone demented.

Given this two-way nature the touch-points are also best looked at as Outward and Inward.

Outwardly brands Astroturf or broadcast to the Internet. This is done in a variety of ways using a variety of methods. Currently marketers are setting up blogs, they are building Facebook groups and writing Facebook aps. They are also seeding the internet with digital press releases and also carrying out other PR functions.

Apart from the accessibility the brand is offering/projecting to the end-users there is also a huge Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefit being gained. This places competing companies who are not flexing their brand online at a disadvantage in the organic keyword arms-race.

Inwardly brands are at the mercy of the mob. Comments can be left in a variety of places online, sometimes very close to the point of transaction for companies doing ecommerce. According to an article I read in the New Straits Times this month Microsoft did a survey that claimed that 86% of people no longer believed the claims made by brands and 78% believed the recommendations of other consumers.

Even as I shake my head at this I realize I am just as guilty. with my habit of checking on TripAdvisor.com before I book any hotel room. I do like to read their user’s comments and look at the photos they have taken. It is often a stark contrast to the hotel’s website.

Also on the Inward side of things are discussion groups, comparison shoppers, review websites, press articles and blogs. Anything negative can easily turn up in the course of a user’s “research” prior to purchase. I wrote earlier about the approach brands need to take to deal with UGC.

Sanrio Digital (Hello Kitty to you non-fans) is a part of the Group of companies I work with. We have been monitoring the brand “Hello Kitty” for some months now and have noticed something interesting in the world of micro-blogging. Just as we have been monitoring the regular UGC from press and blogs we have also been tracking “tweets”.

What we have learned is that micro-blogging is a real-time brand barometer.

By looking back at the tweets over a few hours or days I can see the general mood surrounding a brand. Yes, brands have moods! A dip-stick into the hive mind of the mob. Thankfully the words surrounding Hello Kitty remain as “nice”, “cute” and the suchlike.

The comfortable stand-off between media and brands is over forever. Brands now find themselves surrounded. Just as in the early days of search an opportunity exists to take market share from your luddite, technophobe competitors. I think the words “break-out media strategy” are about to get a new meaning courtesy of UGC.