Social Hallucinations

Homo Skepticus?

The couple of last years we've been sticking to mantra "people trust people like themselves" (Edelman Trust Barometer) to convince business establishment to jump into social media wagon, to understand better how people act and activate the power of WoM.

We've always trusted the circle of friends, so called significant others and their recommendatiosn mattered a lot us as the key influential factors. We've done this and will keep on doing this as anything else would break the social ties and lead us to alienation.

Edelman comes with the new 2010 results of the Trust barometer and something interesting happens - friends/peers as those whom we trust drop from 45% in 2008 to 25% in 2010.

 
It is quite natural the question about our skepticism and our ability to trust arise.

I don't think we trust less our friends and peers. I don't think we've become more skeptical. I just think we are in the phase where we rethink the word friend / peer. The word friend got stretched widely due to social networks. We call friends people we've never met in our lives and people we have no common history with. We do have hundreds of friends on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo...whatever you call it. The social networks devalued word friend. Anyone can be my friend today. It just costs one click and you have a new friend. But it ain't so easy and we are aware of that. We are aware that social networks bring also "virtual friends" we can't really trust because we simply don't know them, don't know their agenda and there is no really point of reference between our and their lives. Who are really those hundreds of people we follow on Twitter, we connect with on Facebook? We know the faces, we know the key facts we can find out from info tab and status updates. What really connects you with other people are common experiences...

Web revolutionized our lives for sure but there are still some barriers we need to overcome, like integrating online lives with offline lives. Meeting people we know online, exchanging offline experiences will be the way to create trust. Online relationships won't replace face to face time and sharing of real time experiences.

We still trust "people like us" but we are simply not sure whether Johns we follow on Twitter are really like us...

Photo by mek22

via AdAge

Give People Something to Copy

...and you will be able to trigger the change of behavior. Old and funny video demonstrating the power of group influence on individuals. In fact, there is nothing to laugh at but adopt this elevator psychology into communication efforts.

 

 Hat tip to  Simon

Visualize People's Thoughts

It is such a great tool to play around with - Web Seer - and visualize what's going on in people's minds when they google and explore differences and similitude, stereotypes, ideas by comparing 'Google Suggest' results. Plenty of interesting insights to dig for. I love how info-graphics democratizes data and make them more understanding-friendly. 

 

 

How Does Advertising Work?

Which advertiser wouldn't know how to influence people and change their behavior or preferences. There are no clear simple rules. Advertising is the people business and people factor is what makes it unpredictable. However the years of experimentation, testing and measuring allow us to draw out a few clear conclusions, which I stumbled upon on Faris blog.

The Journal of Advertising research run a special issue that concerned the advertising and the ways it works. Here is the one of papers by Les Binet and Peter Fields Empirical Generalizations about Advertising Campaign Success (thanks to Faris)

Download Empirical Generalizations about Advertising Campaign Success

One of the most interesting statements is about the vague role of rational arguments in advertising: 

 "The most effective advertisements of all are those with little or no rational content." 

(Les Binet/Peter Field)

Emotions, needs, urges working on subconscious level is what drives human behavior and we need to tap into it, but the problem is that often we rely on consumers opinions (focus groups and other types of research) that are mainly driven by post-rationalization. 

Lot of great material, theories and things to take into consideration when planning the next campaigns. You can learn a lot but it is important to keep in mind that:

"No single theory or group of theories can explain it all, because advertisements work in such different ways. There is no point in looking for an overall theory."

(Nevill Darby, quoted in Advertising Frameworks, Giep Franzen, Brand New Brand Thinking) 

Average Consumers: The Product of Single Story

"There are lies, damned lies, and statistics" (Churchill)

Who is the average consumer? Does he / she exist? How do we define it? Or does average consumers exist, isn't just a mathematical construct that was aimed at making easier for us to explain world?

People are different, we are the individuals with different stories that shape us, stories that are driven by our mind, our bodies and social environment we are living in. Every human is the patchwork of different stories that make him/her a person, not an average consumer. The average consumer is a type of urban myth to me. 

Woman, 34 years old, urban, modern, income above average, lives in apartment, career oriented, heavy user of internet, buys organic food, interested in technology, owns mobile phone, heavy consumer of culture, blah blah...Yes, it could be me...but the above description brings more questions. 

Can a human being amount to this?

Average consumer is just a construct that derives from the single story and is intended to make easier for us to work out things like strategy, advertising, etc. But the concept of average consumer doesn't really 'disenchant' the world, it makes it single storied and mass produced.

...listen to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie inspiring talk about the single story as the source of misunderstanding and stereotypes that keep us away from seeing the whole picture

Yes, I am aware it is difficult to work with the concept of individual when we talk communication, it is difficult to capture the complexity of people's lives but we can try with replacing or at least enhancing demographics with needs, motivations and more focus on the social aspects of human's lives.

Thanks for inspiration: Eskimon

Secret Life of Fliers

While most of researches stays grounded (mostly to computer screen), there are two guys who decided to take off to conduct very fascinating consumer research. Dustin Curtis and Alaska Miller have bought JetBlue All-You-Can-Jet Pass that allows one month of unlimited travel, any available seat for $599 and took off for 30 days adventure to talk to "hundreds of people with rich backgrounds and histories" that can be found on planes. 

As they put it on their website 30dayflight.com

"(...) They have fascinating stories. We want to tell some of them. Our plan is to strike up conversations during our flights and see if maybe, after 30 days of constant flying, we can get a good understanding of the average jetBlue flier."

They took off for their adventure on Tuesday. You can follow the trip on 30dayflight.com and their twitter streams: Dustin Curtis  / Alaska Miller.

I wonder how JetBlue will capitalize on this great initiative. There is the serious possibility for JetBlue to get interesting knowledge about their customers and their secret lives, none of questionaire can reveal. Plus there is plenty to learn about how their own services and staff works. There are already some complaints from Alaska Miller.

If they should live up to their claim about bringing humanity back to air travel, they should listen and learn from the real people.

I look forward to seeing final result of this 30 days trip into the secret life of fliers.

How People Share Content On The Web

Facebook leads sharing but whats interesting is how many people use Twitter to share - it is the same percentage as per mail, which is interesting taking into the consideration the fact how many people use mail vs. people using Twitter. After all, Twitter is tailored for sharing as it makes it easy, accessible and fast - just exactly as sharing opportunities should be.

found on CHART OF THE DAY

Groups Aren't Always Good at Taking Decisions

Image via Wikipedia

And here is why:

"Groups tend to spend most of their time discussing the information shared by members, which is therefore redundant, rather than discussing information known only to one or a minority of members. This is important because those groups that do share unique information tend to make better decisions.  ... Ironically, ... groups that talked more tended to share less unique information."





Read more about the meta-analysis of 72 studies, involving 4,795 groups and over 17,000 individuals

It is very interesting in relation to focus groups and diverse forms of works where any kind of information is shared or decisions should be taken. Such behavior and tendency to focus on the widely shared informaiton can lead to serious bias of conclusions and decisions taken.

Danish Active Facebook Users

Denmark has the proud 6th place on the ranking over countries and its Facebook active users with 2.1 mil. Facebookers. The growth within the last 3 months isn't quite impressive when compared to other countries, but you must take into consideration that it is already 40% of Danish population is on Facebook which is pretty impressive.

You can find more information on the demographic trends on Facebook.

Facebook Demographic Trends

View more presentations from oreillymedia.

via O'Reilly Radar

The Science of Shopping Revealed

"Despite all the new technology (neuromarketing), simply talking to consumers remains one of the most effective ways to improve the “customer experience”."

Wow! What an enlightenment. It is cheaper to be nice to your clients and improve the overall customer experience than hire the team of neuroscientists with expensive machinery to get into customers subconsciousness. Image by turtlemom4bacon via Flickr

Simplicity is often the best solution. However we humans love the glittering lure of fancy technology and people in white smocks that blur the simple ways leading to problem solving.

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” da Vinci

Read the whole story at The Economist - The Science of Shopping.

Insights Uncovered

Image by cdw9 via FlickrI had a few serious discussions through my career about insights and it is ineed incredible how little understanding is on what the real insights is. It is so often mistaken for information, for something you have extract from research. I always believed insights comes from observation of human behavior and social life of any kind. I've tried to find them in very unexpected places: on the bus, in the grocery store, playing with kids, reading books, browsing zombie film fans blogs. However I have always had hard time with explainig what insight is. Richars Huntington (Adliterate) nailed it in his latest post:

"No revelation or astonishing disclosure, no insight"

How to find those revelations?

"From real people, not respondents"

"great insights come from within"

‘Why would I want to go and conduct six one and a half hour groups with the good people of Solihull and Sidcup when I can read the work of someone that has been studying this area for 20 years and written seven books on the subject"

Read the whole post and get inspired here.

The Early Adopter Myth

Microsoft Advertising and Synovate published results of the global youth study "Young Adults Revealed: The Lives and motivations of 21st century youth" and the results are somwhat far away from what we hear around about today's youth.
The early adopter myth was challenged. The today's youth resembles their grandparents far more closely than they do their parents, according to the report. They seem more pragmatic than hedonistic and value family, good education and career.
The report goes throgh media attitudes, media consumption and attitudes towards brands and pushes to rethink the way we imagine we should communicate with youth.

Defintely worth reading. You can download it her.

Brain and Marketing

Link to min article in Market Magazine (in Danish) about brain, neuromarketing as the urge to find the tangible and fast answers to the world of unpredictable human behavior.

brain, neuromarketing, marketing, Untitled

What Lies Behind Facebook Popularity?

There are 700.000 Facebook users in Denmark. That's pretty impressive if you take into consideration the fact that there are barely 5 million people in Denmark and that last July, there were only 9.000 users.

Such a rapid growth makes researches to wonder what drives Facebook popularity. While one group talk about socializing aspect, others seek answers in science. The latter one are two researches from IT University and Center for Design Research in Denmark developed model that explains Facebook popularity. Model focuses on understanding how we experience the websites and what are factors that attract people. It analyzes not only content, services and applications but the quality of design, layout and user-friendliness.

When applying model to Facebook, the researches have found out that the popularity of the site is largely due to Facebook's visual expresson - it is design and layout are very discreet in the form and colors, and it may be the adult generation like. It signals the seriousness and credibility, just like banking sites. Researches compared Facebook with Danish bank site Danske Bank.

At the same time the system is extremely easy to use - it is very intuitive, and it does not require a lot of experience to create a profile. Researchers believe those are the factors that made Facebook popular not only amongst the younger audiences but also attracted adults, who weren't familiar with social networks or never used them before.

Interesting point of view, proving that user driven design is very important and together with understanding the drivers and motivations that trigger human behavior are powerful tools in creating community.

Denmark, Facebook, research, community

Internet is The Most Influential Medium

Digital Influence Index study from PR firm Fleishman-Hillard and research firm Harris Interactive covering the impact of the internet on consumer behavior (UK, France and Germany), suggests that the internet is twice as influential as television and eight times as influential as print media.

The internet is the most important medium in the lives of Europeans, they use it to seek information and product reviews that are to some extent a base for their decisions. In the UK, for example, 66% declared that the internet helps them to make better decisions, only 28% said that they trust the information companies provide on the web. They visit the corporate sites when they are ready to buy or interact with company. Internet behavior is driven by trust to other people that makes this medium so different and more powerful than traditional media. The latter one suffer from the scarcity of trust and authority. This takes us back to people trust people model as the most powerful communication tool.

Internet is definitely the most underinvested media group. Marketers underestimate its power and aren't keen to try the new ways to communication. We stick to what we know. The key fact is the you can influence your audience by creating smart connections with your consumers and by adding value to their life.

The fact of Internet being eight times as influential as print requires at least giving a thought to your budget split and taking a step forward by exploring how Internet can be used within your business. And I am not talking about banner advertising.

You can download the whole report here.

Found at Matt Dickman blog

internet, influence, Fleishman-Hillard, Harris Interactive, media spend, people trust people