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For half a century marketers, advertising shops and media agencies have concerned themselves primarily with maximizing reach and frequency, knowing all the while that at least half of the time their target was paying absolutely no attention to their travails.
No-one in the media business really believed that an ad campaign actually reached 100 million people, let alone impacted them, even in the glory days of network TV. Now, in the brave new world of YouTube, myspace, cable, video iPods, declining TV audiences and TiVo, the problem of brand engagement has become critical.
This old model relied on ‘reaching’ millions, many times, hoping that some would pay attention, a sub-set of that group would remember the message, that some of those would act on that message; that some of them might purchase the brand in question and that a few, by now a very few, would become brand loyalists. Waste? Most definitely.
What, then, is the Marketer in 2008 to do? What do consumers respond to? The answer is deceptively simple. Consumers trust each other for advice, information, ideas, and recommendations on brands.
In study after study, word of mouth recommendations from friends top the ‘trust’ charts, way ahead of any other form of communication. Adweek reckons that 83% of brand choices are based primarily on personal recommendation. Which is why there is so much buzz about buzz.
However, as we all know intuitively, not all friends are equal when it comes to trusting their recommendations; and there’s never one single person who we trust on all topics. So, whereas the one-in-ten rule holds up well for Influencers in any one category, or for any one brand, your ‘fashion Influencer’ is unlikely to also be your ‘financial Influencer’, who in turn probably isn’t your ‘green Influencer’. The lesson here is that many people tend be an Influencer on at least one topic – but very few are Influencers on more than half a dozen.
This is an approach that Ammo has proven through countless programs executed in virtually every market in the US. For example, the Peer Influencers we identified for Alberto Culver were not uber hipsters, but smart, articulate beauty-involved women who were active in multiple social circles, online and off, and who scored over our threshold in the Influencer Index.
Mass media will continue to have an important role in marketing plans, but it has to be complemented by a bottom-up approach. Increasingly in a world of product and media super-saturation brands have to challenge conventions to stand out, to be noticed – and to attract long-term Influencers.
Marketers have to flip the model, go from the ‘Many to the Few’ to the ‘Few to the Many’. Only by breaking with traditional thinking will brands really break through the indifference barrier and connect with their consumers, their Influencers and harness the power of Word of Mouth Marketing.
For more information, case studies and articles go to www.ammomarketing.com or contact Julian Aldridge at 415 541 2992.
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