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December 2, 2011
The Two Triangles
I was at Harvard Business School on Wednesday for a conference on US competitiveness. I took the opportunity to attend a marketing class, which happened to be discussing the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (you may recall that Edelman was the PR agency for Dove).
I found the summary at the end of class most interesting. The professor, Vineet Kumar, asserted that the new brand management is “meaning management.” Kumar described a new marketing paradigm (the old one, taught in the 1970s to this aspiring MBA, showed the path from awareness to preference to purchase and repurchase). The new triangle, developed at Tuck Business School, still has “Awareness” at the base, the value proposition. It then moves up to “Association,” which Kumar described as “what the brand can do for me and how the brand creates fun or social approval.” At the top of the pyramid is Resonance, which, Kumar opined, “few brands ever attain. This is true engagement, with the brand becoming part of a person’s identity.”
I was pleased that he acknowledged that Dove had attained this type of relationship with its consumers. The class came to the conclusion that in order to achieve resonance, the brand has to allow open conversations around a topic of societal interest. Brands have to be willing to risk losing control in exchange for gaining credibility.
Resonance can be achieved in a parallel fashion, by using the new Topology of Influence. Jonny Bentwood and his colleague Jonathan Hargreaves have been working on a way to define influential people by their characteristics. In short, in a social network, a person should not be valued by the number of friends or followers he or she has, but by whether he or she is opening up new conversations. The Bentwood Hargreaves school suggests that PR folks find and engage with Idea Starters—people who begin the discussion on a specific topic. The best way to work with Idea Starters is to challenge them to a debate (my colloquy with Bentwood this morning was on my use of Radical Transparency versus his preference for Translucency).
The other four groups in the Topology of Influence are in order: the Amplifier, who is credible because he or she connects various Idea Starters or takes an idea to a broader group; the Curator, who acts like a librarian and peer expert in collecting and displaying conversation threads; the Commentator, who adds value by joining conversations but is a critic more than an idea generator; the Viewer, who adds value by improving search rank. This is an upside down triangle: the process begins at the narrow end of the triangle and concludes with the viewer at the wide end.
We are implementing this in our offices around the world, spearheaded by David Armano, by mapping digital influence for our clients. We analyze the conversational and search data to identify critical topics, individuals and media properties. The resulting ‘influence matrix’ is created using a variety of tools including the Edelman Level solutions. We then map visually and create content and engagement programs from analyzed data. Measurement of course is also critical and we do this my looking for ‘new signals’ generated by efforts and access opportunities for further reverberation.
Our new goal in marketing ought to be market driving—to go beyond giving customers what they want today and envisage what they might want later. To do this brands must risk being social, to co-create a meaning with customers, to share the product before launch so that it can be improved. The greater risk is to embrace the same old marketing wisdom that advertising GRPs yield consumer preference.
Posted by Edelman at December 2, 2011 3:37 PM |
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Comments
Very interesting post Richard.
I truly believe we are currently at a tipping point whereby sociology and technology are colliding enabling us to identify and engage with different kinds of influential people according to their behavioural characteristics.
Only now can we adapt messaging strategy dependent upon the kind role that someone has in the topology.
There is a perfectly valid reason why we need to understand influence. Brands and marketers have limited time and money so we must engage with the people that count in the right manner. Only of we do this can we hope to have our message spread.
Posted by: Jonny Bentwood at December 5, 2011 12:14 PM
Hi Richard,
I think the speaker at Harvard has simplified the way this is taught at Tuck. It seems to gather together some of the concepts used by Kevin Lane Keller. There's a useful summary of them at http://bit.ly/KellerBrand
Duncan.
Posted by: Duncan Chapple at December 25, 2011 2:02 PM
Great post Richard!
Personally, I think the initial concept/ idea/ discussion is paramount to the development and success of any PR campaign. It would be great if more projects involved a PR firm right from the conception stage!
I've carried a quote with me for some time now from the late Laurie Kerr of International Public Relations who stated that the process of PR could be summed up as follows: 'Attract, Identify, Remind, Inform & Sell.'
Beyond that, my conceptualization/ business model for today works as follows: Any communication needs to attract attention, then entice consumers to migrate from their current product/ service and then ultimately adopt it. I.e. Just try asking a current iPhone user to swap to another device!
Posted by: Alex Bagg at January 5, 2012 12:05 AM