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February 28, 2005
Co-Creating and the growing power of 'average person like me'
The most profound finding in the Edelman Trust Barometer 2005 - out annual study of 1500 opinion leaders in eight countries - is the rise of the "Average Person Like Me" as a trusted spokesperson. The average person now ranks as high as academics and physicians as a trusted source of information about a company. Nearly 60% of Americans and a comparable percentage of Brazilians, Brits, Canadians, Chinese, French, Germans and Japanese look to their peers for knowledge and advice, up from 20% only two years ago. What's going on here? Part of this trend must be attributed to lack of trust in traditional figures of authority and institutions, such as business, government and the media. Some of this trust void is being filled by alternative institutions such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). But it is also manifested in a greater reliance on those close to you, who form a personal web of trust that supplements what you read, see or hear in the media, or through official company channels and in advertising.
The Internet has made is easy to reach out to your friends, family and colleagues at work. But it has also allows those with similar interests anywhere in the world to link up in chat rooms. This type of horizontal communication with like minded souls is powerful. Pam Talbot, Edelman's president of US operations, told a story last Thursday night about a music aficionado who heard a new song from a band he had loved in the 90s, but the melody was just too familiar. So he took out one of the group's early CDs, overlaid the new song against one of the tracks, and VOILA, he had an almost identical set of notes. He reported this online to a few of his friends, who spread the word virally, with the end result that the band apologized for reuse of old material.
This change in communications paradigm is leading smart marketers to embrace the concept of co-creation of brand. The traditional description of a brand is delivering on a promise of quality, service or benefit. Today, there is another requirement--forging of a close relationship with the end user. How can this dialogue be started, then reinforced over time? Here are two examples, one a product launch, the other a crisis situation, both involving Microsoft products.
Halo 2 had a phenomenal first day of sales, with over $125 million of the new video game sold around the world, outdrawing even the largest of feature films such as "Titanic." But the marketing process began 18 months ago, as Microsoft dared to show its beta version to gaming enthusiasts, who were then allowed to discuss the product (good and bad) on-line. As the product developers incorporated the critiques into the follow-on versions, the gamers felt vested in its success. The buzz on-line began to be picked up in mainstream media, establishing a powerful platform of credibility for the launch.
XBOX announced a voluntary power cord replacement for the 14 million consoles worldwide. The company understood that consumers would turn to search engines on hearing the news, many of them parents. Paid search engine placements were used to direct people to the official XBOX site to receive a replacement cord. There were over 136,000 search-generated impressions and 27,000 visitors to the XBOX site. I am sure that there was significant peer to peer chat among parents.
Business should embrace the "paradox of transparency" (term coined by Shell public affairs executives). Rather than hold back knowledge of a product's benefits and risks, be open with your stakeholders, engage them in conversation and allow them to contribute to the solution. Sure, there is risk of competitive response but is that worse than the consumer outcry that can undermine the eventual acceptance of a product concept? The days of buying consumer approval simply through mass advertising are over. Today the runway for successful brand take off is effective public relations, which provides the strong base of credibility on which advertising can build. The average person like me is demanding a seat at the table, the true democratization of the purchasing process. Smart companies will recognize that ceding control is a central aspect in earning trust.
Posted by Edelman at February 28, 2005 9:01 AM
Comments
Thanks for the update on your research - definitely a trend which is growing, and which the Internet only helps.
A technical point - at least in IE on my Windows XP system the title of this post has ‘ instead of the " and " which should probably be in the title (probably because "smart quotes" were turned on when you wrote this originally)
I would also like to extend an invitation for you (or someone from Edelman) to join us at MeshForum (http://www.meshforum.org) May 1-4 in Chicago. We have a panel planned on the role networks play in sales. Speakers on that panel will include experts on "word-of-mouth" marketing and entrepreneurs launching businesses around sales and networks. Edelman's contribution to the conversation would be appreciated.
thanks for the great blog,
Shannon
Posted by: Shannon Clark at February 28, 2005 11:14 AM
In my view growth in healthcare costs at rates greater than the rest of the economy will continue to cause more people to become uninsured - the gap that universal coverage would fill. But a one-time jump in transfers from the rest of the economy to healthcare that would accompany a political move to universal coverage would not, by itself, change the system structures that create these dynamics solution.
Posted by: Andrew Spark at February 13, 2006 2:04 AM
There was one point of irony in your survey that begs comment: on p. 9, the top graph shows that the most used and "most credible" sources of information come from the industry sectors that are the "least trusted" in 4/5 global regions (p. 9, bottom chart). I don't get it. Respondents trust information from scalleywags? I guess your research proves that the survey respondents WERE born yesterday.
Posted by: Dave Buerger at April 4, 2008 11:56 AM
Dave,
As you point out, credibility as a news source is no longer the sole purview of traditional broadcast media. Today’s sophisticated and media savvy audiences look to many sources and spokespeople before deciding how much they trust information about a company. In the recent 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer (http://www.edelman.com/trust/2008/TrustBarometer08_FINAL.pdf), the most credible sources of information about a company are “experts” such as business magazines or analyst reports, supplemented by “getting the scoop” from news sources and conversations with your friends or peers.
In a world where company reputations can move as quickly as stock prices, it is important to distinguish between high usage of news sources like TV or radio (Trust report pg 9) to get business information and whether people fundamentally trust media itself as an institution (bottom graph pg 9). Across the 18 countries surveyed in Edelman’s Trust Barometer, there are real cultural differences in how much people trust the institution of media (or government or religion) to do the right thing from skepticism in Europe to greater optimism about the media’s role in developing countries. To use an analogy, I might trust a friend or co-worker to give me the inside story on a company even if I have doubts about their personal behavior outside the office.
One consistent trend in our Trust survey is that the traditional media model is being challenged and evolving to more personal and participatory expressions such as this dialog. In that world, the most trusted spokesperson remains an average person like you which is as personal as media gets.
Thanks for your comments,
Richard
Posted by: Richard Edelman at April 7, 2008 2:08 PM