Posted 5/17/2012

Ed Keller, co-author of “The Face-to-Face Book” discusses why, even as social media looms large, over 90% of consumer conversations still take place offline.

Posted May 14, 2012

By Ed Keller and Brad Fay

The Facebook IPO has both the financial and marketing communities abuzz, and with good reason. Facebook is the king of the social media hill, and its growth and ability to attract a loyal and highly networked audience is to be admired.

For brands, however, online social networks are far from the Holy Grail of marketing.  The research is increasingly clear and compelling that for brands that want to be social and generate conversation, a far bigger and more powerful force is real world, face-to-face conversation.

It has been said that online social media is “word of mouth on steroids.” Key to that argument is a belief that online conversations will spread to hundreds or thousands of people (and maybe more) with the click of a mouse. But while that is theoretically possible, it is not the way online sharing usually works. Most links that are shared reach only 5-10 people. And the huge legions of Facebook fans, it turns out, are not so actively engaged with the brands they once “liked.” Fewer than 1% of brand fans on Facebook have any type of active involvement, bringing those huge numbers back down to earth.

Meanwhile, our research finds that 90% of word-of-mouth conversations about brands take place offline, primarily face-to-face, in people’s homes and offices, in restaurants and stores, really anywhere people congregate. These conversations bring with them greater credibility, a greater desire to share with others, and a great likelihood to purchase the products being discussed than conversations that take place online.

So if not via Facebook and other social networking sites, what can brands do to get conversations started? It is important to fight the urge to start your marketing strategy with a particular tool or approach. Instead, start a story that consumers will want to talk about. What are the messages about your brand and category that make you talkworthy?

Next, it’s important to tap the right talkers. Who are the consumer influencers in your category, and your brand advocates? When and where do they talk, about what, and why? Often the people who have credibility when they talk are not the target customer. And the places to reach these influencers will not flow naturally from your media optimization plan unless you’re clearly focused on word of mouth as a primary goal. Media with the largest concentrations of influencers will surprise you.

Once you have your message and target in mind, only then does it make sense to choose the channels through which to reach people and to encourage sharing. And it turns out, the biggest and most productive channel to spark conversation is not online social media, but paid advertising. Fully one-quarter of conversations about brands include an explicit reference to ads. In fact, television advertising is far and away the single biggest driver of consumer conversation. Far from being a dinosaur, as some pundits say, television and other traditional media play a key role in today’s social marketplace.

Today’s consumer marketplace is highly social, but not because of particular platforms or technologies. The businesses that will be the most successful in the future are the ones that embrace a model that puts people– rather than technology – at the center of products, campaigns and market strategies. Those who achieve the greatest success will recognize that there are many ways to tap the power of today’s social consumer.

The great social wave is an opportunity that no business can afford to ignore or look at myopically. It’s happening all around us – and to the continuing surprise of many, it’s mostly happening face-to-face.

Ed Keller and Brad Fay are co-authors of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, to be published in May by Free Press. They are also principals of the Keller Fay Group, a market research and consulting firm.

By Ed Keller and Brad Fay

What explains the spectacular success of Facebook? Does it represent the desire of people to go online to connect with each other, with brands and with information? Or does the rise of this social networking platform actually reflect a more fundamental human need — to connect in real life?

It is easy to see Facebook’s success as a sign of dramatic change — in technology and in human relations. But a deeper look suggests that Facebook’s rise is merely Exhibit A of a much larger truth: Our modern society is not providing people with the human connections they crave, and online social networking is a rather poor substitute.

Statistics show that more people than ever live alone in the USA. According to the Census, about 31 million Americans live alone, representing 28% of the nation’s households.

Online talk unsatisfying

Until recently, our cities were losing population as people flocked to suburban enclaves of large homes where one’s next-door neighbors are often strangers. The Internet has provided powerful new ways to interact with people, even as we remain physically isolated. But these are unsatisfying replacements for face-to-face contact.

For the past six years, we have been studying the conversations of the American public, and we’ve conducted similar surveys that confirm our results in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Russia and South Korea. Our research has focused on all forms of conversation, whether they happen face to face, over the phone or online.

The data we have collected via more than 2 million conversations have taught us:

•75% of conversations in the U.S. (and even more in other countries) still happen face to face; less than 10% take place through the Internet. The rise of social media, such as Facebook, has led to a reduction in e-mail “conversations,” but not a decline in face-to-face interaction.

•Face-to-face conversations tend to be more positive, and more likely to be perceived as credible, in comparison with online. What people talk about online differs dramatically from offline. The former tends to be driven by what is perceived as “cool,” while the latter tends to be about sharing real life experiences.

Power of media

•In the sphere of products and services, conversations are significantly impacted by what we see and hear in “traditional” media, including television, radio and print publishing and online. These traditional media motivate and provide content to far more conversations than online social media does.

What we have learned about the power of traditional media to spark conversations provides an important insight. All forms of communication work best when they lead to the sharing of ideas and recommendations, especially face to face. The fact is, all media are social — or should be.

Social media has helped us rediscover the power of “social.” But the richest social gold mine is literally right under our noses: in the word-of-mouth conversations that happen in our kitchens and living rooms, next to the office water cooler, and on the sidelines of youth sporting events. These are the places where we actually live our lives.

Facebook is a fine way to find long-lost friends and exchange tidbits of information and recommendations. But if we want to promote real change — as in our politics, public policies and cultural behavior — it’s best we do it face to face.

Ed Keller and Brad Fay are co-authors of The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, to be published in May. They are also principals of the Keller Fay Group, a market research and consulting firm.

It seems only logical that the more interesting a product is to consumers, the more they will talk about it. But the latest research from two Wharton professors suggests that when it comes to creating buzz-worthy advertising campaigns, how people communicate (e.g., whether they talk face to face or over email) is a big factor in determining what they discuss.

In their paper titled, “How Interest Shapes Word-of-Mouth over Different Channels,” marketing professors Jonah Berger and Raghuram Iyengar explore the relationship between successful marketing and the methods used to spread it. The topic is especially timely in the digital age, when word-of-mouth relies largely on social media.

Berger and Iyengar analyzed two unique sets of data involving thousands of everyday discussions across different conversation channels, then conducted a controlled lab experiment in which they manipulated conversation to examine the effects. The results of all three studies point to a single conclusion: How interesting a product is to discuss matters more when people communicate through discontinuous channels, such as blog posts, texts, emails and online conversations. “The punch line of this paper is quite clean,” Iyengar says. “It is one of the first pieces of evidence that we have seen that it is not only the message but also the medium.”

The professors draw a distinction between discontinuous and continuous channels. The latter include face-to-face or phone conversations in which there is an instant response. When people speak in this manner, interesting products or brands are not talked about with any more frequency than less distinctive ones because social convention demands an immediate response, the researchers note. “It’s awkward to have dinner with a friend in silence, or ride in a cab with a colleague without conversing, so rather than waiting to think of the most interesting thing to say, people will talk about whatever is top-of-mind to keep the conversation flowing,” they write. “It’s not that people do not have enough interesting things to talk about; rather, they do not have the time to select the most interesting thing.”

By contrast, discontinuous channels allow the participant to take time to craft a good response — or no response at all. It is socially acceptable for a woman to post a link on Facebook about a new pair of shoes that caught her eye, for example, and have no one “like” it. “A really simple way to think about it is the following,” Berger notes. “Imagine if you’re online and someone sends you something. You don’t have to reply. You’re only going to share things when they cross a certain threshold of interesting. The option of not saying anything is fine in a discontinuous conversation.”

Armed with this knowledge, marketers can be more precise in crafting their campaigns to achieve better results. It’s not as simple as blanketing the web with pop-up ads or blasting the airwaves with commercials, Iyengar points out. It’s about picking the right medium for the right message. When that happens, marketers can hope that the flames of word-of-mouth will ignite and spread like a wildfire.

“Practitioners often believe that products need to be interesting to be talked about, but our results suggest they are only right for certain word-of-mouth channels,” the authors note in their paper. “If the goal is to get more discussion online … framing the product in an interesting or surprising way should help. Ads or online content that surprises people, violates expectations or evokes interest in some other manner should be more likely to be shared.”

The authors point to the example of blender manufacturer Blendtec’s series of commercials, which have garnered more than 150 million views on YouTube. In one commercial, a smiling actor in a lab coat and safety glasses drops his iPhone into the blender to answer the question, “Will it blend?” Upbeat music plays as the blender pulverizes the phone into a fine black powder. The actor lifts the blender lid to expose “iSmoke” and cheerfully warns viewers not to breathe in while he empties the contents into a bowl. The amusing ad has generated more than 10 million views and 24,000 “likes” since Blendtec uploaded it in 2007. “It’s very smart on the part of Blendtec because it’s just a blender. Why would it evoke interest?” Iyengar says. “But they showcased it in an unexpected way.”

Finding the Right Cues

The professors used several research methods to support their proposal. First, they analyzed aggregate data collected by marketing research firm Keller Fay Group, which relied on a large, nationally representative sample to avoid bias. The professors examined how often 1,200 products and brands were talked about by 5,690 people who had both online and offline conversations. While word of mouth was more frequent in face-to-face contact, the opposite was true when it came to correlating the level of interest. In addition, more distinctive products were mentioned more frequently in online conversations. The second study broke down the data to the individual level with similar results, suggesting that “the continuity of the conversation channels drove these effects,” the researchers write.

To explore their proposition further, Berger and Iyengar conducted an experiment in which participants sat together for conversation. Some were told to expect a pause before and between conversational turns (to mimic a discontinuous style like what they would experience communicating virtually). The professors then measured how those pauses affected the relationship between interest and whether a topic was discussed. Once again, the results were consistent that more distinctive products came up more frequently during discontinuous exchanges.

“The experimental approach is particularly useful because it allows us to test the mechanism we believe underlies the effects observed in the field,” the researchers conclude. “People who care more about seeming interesting may talk more online than offline, people may encode or remember interesting conversations that occur over one channel versus another, and some brands may be inherently more likely to be talked about online rather than face to face. Similarly, it may be easier to leave a boring conversation when your conversation partner is not physically there.”

Real-world application is at the heart of the research. “Brands, companies, nonprofit organizations, even politicians are chasing word of mouth,” Berger says. “It’s cheaper and more effective than traditional advertising. What this research shows is how to do it. If your goal is to get offline word of mouth, then interest isn’t going to be as important.”

That doesn’t mean all marketers should rush to create the next viral video. For some products, it seems that offline buzz is more valuable. Berger uses breakfast cereal as an example. It’s not the most exciting topic in the world, but it is top of mind, which means it’s more likely to be discussed in a face-to-face conversation at the water cooler or the playground. “We get up in the morning and eat [cereal] for breakfast, so there’s a good chance that we’ll talk about it,” he notes.

The professors point to data showing that food and dining are the most frequently discussed product categories in continuous conversation, more so than media, entertainment or technology. “Thus for offline word-of-mouth, considering how to trigger people to think about the product or brand may be a helpful approach to generating discussion,” they write.

Another important factor in pitching a product is figuring out how to establish cues for consumers. Again, that differs based on whether the channel is online or offline. Iyengar offers the example of Starbucks, which used an early strategy of market saturation. Multiple stores in close proximity established brand recognition and triggered consumer desire for the product. “What are some cues that people can [use to] remember your product?” Iyengar asks. “In Starbucks, it’s frequency. But there can be other types of cues. In an online context, it might be less about the cues but the content itself that is interesting.”

Berger cites the example of Doritos commercials that have aired during the last two Super Bowls, an event that has become synonymous with creative advertising. The ads are a good move on the part of the manufacturer because they mainly target offline, face-to-face communication, he says. “What’s interesting about that situation is that people watching the Super Bowl are also sitting there talking about tortilla chips, guacamole, seven-layer dip. Those aren’t the most exciting things in the world, but [people] are talking about them because they are right in front of them.”

Iyengar says he and Berger are considering taking their research deeper by replicating it in a field study, perhaps focusing more on online communication, such as Facebook. The results could further assist marketers in crafting campaigns in the fast-changing environment of social media.

“It’s really about understanding what drives people to talk about things on different channels,” Berger notes. “If we don’t understand why they share word of mouth, we can’t make it more likely to get them to share” in this way.

By Mikal E. Belicove
Posted November 23, 2011

The now commonly held notion that social media-related marketing is a requirement for business success may not carry as much water as once thought.

Despite all the technological advances in recent years, especially in the realm of social media, a recent study suggests that the vast majority of public discussion about products, brands and services occur in everyday word-of-mouth encounters with others, not online.

A yearlong study from the New Brunswick, N.J.-based research firm the Keller Fay Group, which included more than 32,000 participants, found that 91 percent of respondents’ information about brands came as a result of face-to-face conversations or over the phone. Just seven percent of word-of-mouth conversations about brands occurs online.

The report shows that a well-rounded approach to word-of-mouth marketing and consumer participation is every bit as important as blogs, Facebook posts and tweets in getting the message out, says Chris Laird, CEO of Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s in-house word-of-mouth marketing organization, which commissioned the study.

Your customer or potential buyer needs a reason to engage, a reason to care and a reason to tell others about your brand. It comes down to having something sharable that you can get out there, Laird says. Here are his three tips for getting the most out of word of mouth:

1. Drive real-world conversation. Laird suggests that companies use social media tools to drive conversations out into the real world. In other words, discover ways to find and engage customers in online and offline conversations. As an example, the survey shows that 60 percent of respondents said they were “highly likely” to make a purchase based on an offline word-of-mouth interaction about a brand. Match that figure against engagement brought about by your social-media tools and you start to see why offline word of mouth is so much more valuable.Not only that, but the study shows that 67 percent of references to brands in offline conversations turn out to be positive in nature — yet another good reason for businesses to promote such personal engagements.
2. Have a plan for on and offline. A well-defined marketing plan should include a multi-channel approach with blueprints for both online and offline elements.
3. Know how your products or services measure up. In the report, respondents described their past day’s person-to-person conversations about brands, with food and dining topping the content list at 56 percent, and travel services at 22 percent registered as the least likely topic for discussion. Among other topical products and services were media and entertainment at 51 percent, beverages came in at 45 percent and shopping, retail and apparel came up in 36 percent of conversations.

Other findings in the study include:

• At 59 percent, the majority of word-of-mouth conversations occur at home, whether offline or online.
• Offline conversations occur most among females, those with a higher education, older consumers and married respondents or those living with a partner. Online conversations are more likely among males and younger consumers.
• Online word-of-mouth advice is more likely to come from younger consumers while those over 40 years of age are providing such advice offline.
• Most offline advice is likely to come from spouses, family or co-workers.

Mikal E. Belicove is a market positioning, social media, and management consultant specializing in website usability and business blogging. His latest book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Facebook, is now available at bookstores. For more information, visit MikalBelicove.com.

By Mike Bayfield, Published March 27, 2012

The Arab Spring. Occupy Wall Street. The London Riots. All of these events and many more – good and bad – seem to have at least one thing in common; the way in which ideas have been shared through social media. But mass movements have been around long before Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers, and recent research suggests that its role in their creation may be overstated.

According to Ed Keller of the Keller Fay Group, in his new book The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, “the vast majority of sharing occurs in the normal fashion, evidenced in real-world word of mouth.” Social media only actually accounts for about 10% of total word of mouth.

Malcolm Gladwell has famously downplayed the role social media plays in fuelling movements – even after its well-documented use during political uprisings in the Middle East. “People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented.”

He also argues that social media only creates weak ties between people, which means that they will be less likely to influence one another. There is no limit to the number off online friends or followers you can have, but there is a limit to the number of real relationships.

Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford, believes that human beings are only capable of nurturing an inner core of five close friends. He also postulates that the number of people with which we can hold close relationships is 150 – ‘Dunbar’s Number.’

And the evidence seems to back this up. The average user has 130 friends on Facebook, 126 followers on Twitter and 150 links on LinkedIn.

Online sharing platforms such as Buzzfeed and Stumbleupon recognise this. It’s not so much about the super-influencers with millions of connections, like Oprah and P.Diddy: Kony’s are incredibly rare. In both on and offline communications the key to spreading ideas is how information is shared amongst small groups of closely connected individuals.

The stronger the relationships between people in a network, the more resonance ideas will have. And relationships which are based in the real world, where people come together physically, will always be much stronger than virtual ones.

To create cultural movements, brands need to also think about how people interact physically in smaller groups on a local basis, and how they might enhance that. This is how the real power of movements manifests itself. Occupy Wall Street hasn’t just been happening on Wall Street, but in hundreds of city centres around the world. Recent leaked emails from Syria reveal that President Assad was advised to close down public squares for this very reason.

One famous worldwide organisation has been phenomenally successful in creating a cultural movement, through its own extensive network of local gathering points. They’re called churches.

Apple understands this very well too. Only 13% of all Apple products are sold through their stores. Their primary purpose is as physical shrines, attracting followers who believe in and will share the message.

Virgin has built its worldwide empire in many sectors as a consumer champion, challenging market-leading brands by promising to bring customers a better deal. A message people want to share. Their latest venture in financial services in the UK has been Virgin Money’s takeover of failed bank Northern Rock.

Before the first high street branch even opened, Virgin Money opened a small chain of ‘lounges’ in selected cities. These lounges don’t sell anything. You can’t pay money in, or take it out or get any financial advice. You can simply hang out, get a free coffee, surf the net, read a magazine. They’re places where people can come together. The kind of places where ideas can spread.

Whichever way they do spread, the bottom line will always be the ideas and messages themselves. Brands need to focus on content that that will resonate and get people talking to their colleagues, friends and families. To connect with your audience you need to create something that has real meaning in their lives, and then help them share it.

The power of social media is intoxicating, which means it’s very easy to get caught up in the buzz – like Pepsi in 2010 – but forget what the core messages are. Whatever the media though, the ideas will only spread if people believe in them passionately enough.

It could even be argued that social media may actually inhibit the formation of movements. By often replacing face-to-face communication ideas cannot be communicated as effectively as when using all the powers of human expression and emotion. The dynamics of any communication are very different when a group of people are all together in the same physical space. That cannot be replicated online.

With open easy access to social media channels, the proliferation of ideas has grown exponentially. But, with an hour’s worth of video uploaded to YouTube every second, what chance does yours have of cutting through?

And, paradoxically, ‘social’ media tends to be narcissistic. People like to talk about themselves. Brands can easily fall into the same trap too.

Social media is unprecedented in its ability to unleash new ideas on an unsuspecting world instantaneously, but brands aren’t built overnight. To start, grow and, most importantly, sustain movements, brands need to also look at how people share stories in the real world – around the dinner table, the water cooler or bar – not just the virtual one.

Offline word of mouth will always be slower than online, and much more difficult to measure. But what it lacks in speed and breadth it makes up for in depth and its power to help shape cultural movements should never be underestimated. Don’t confuse Klout with clout.

Posted March 28, 2012
By Pat McCarthy

An interview with Brad Fay and Ed Keller, Co-founders of the Keller Fay Group, COO and CEO respectively; and co-authors of the forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace.

Brad and Ed will Keynote at WOMM-U, May 7-9, about the research findings from their book that prove how all media are social.

How does the “social media is word of mouth on steroids” argument miss the mark?

In several ways.  First, there’s nothing more impactful than a face-to-face word of mouth conversation. When we compare the credibility of advice about brands, we find that face-to-face gets the highest scores, followed by phone and then online.  Face-to-face interaction has the benefit of emotion and facial expression that just doesn’t convey electronically, and this leads to more actions taken based on offline conversations.

Second, offline conversations enjoy greater scale, despite conventional wisdom to the contrary.  Nine times more conversations happen offline than online, and it’s possible for marketing activities to trigger enormous cascades of offline word of mouth.  For example, we find that the Monday Night Football advertisers enjoy some 3 billion conversations each year throughout the season based on advertising-triggered WOM.

Finally, the scale of social media is not quite as great as advertised.  We’ve seen research that shows typically less than 1% of the Facebook fans of brands engage with the brand following the initial decision to “like” the brand online.  Online social media has great potential, but it’s not “word of mouth on steroids” and it really needs to be integrated into a larger strategy that almost certainly includes traditional media or marketing approaches as well.

The term “Social Media” generally refers to digital media like Facebook and Twitter. How did this definition fare against your data?

Yes, that’s the definition most commonly used by marketers today.  But our research suggests that all media are social, in that all media have the chance to trigger or support consumer-to-consumer conversations and recommendations.

No medium sparks more brand conversations than television commercials.  Print media are better than just about any other in reaching influencers—the most active recommenders. And “traditional’ internet sites like brand websites, search engines, and online publishers are extremely effective at producing shareable content. We advise marketers to think socially with all their communications channels.

Considering how social media have become such a focal point for so many brands, how do you think media will change in the coming years?

More than 50 years ago, the Columbia academics Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld described a “two-step flow” for mass communications in which mass media sparks conversations, which then lead to purchasing. They said mass media almost never leads to purchasing without first passing through a social step.  They were right then, and we see a “back to the future” trend in marketing that will once again emphasize the two-step flow.

To be successful, marketers will need to have talkable messages, aimed at people who like to share, and using channels likely to reach them when they are best able to share.  It’s a huge opportunity for everyone, and WOMMA is at the center of that conversation.  We can’t wait to see everybody at WOMM-U in May, share the stories from our book, and learn what others think!

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Ed Keller and Brad Fay run the Keller Fay Group and are co-authors of the forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace. The book explains how ALL media and marketing can be social, based on market research and case studies from companies like Pepsi, Dell, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Apple.

Read more about their research and how TV drives word of mouth at MediaPost.

Posted March 26, 2012
by David Goetzl

Much has been made about TV driving online social media interaction. But what about the traditional tell-your-neighbor stuff? In industry argot, it’s word of mouth (WOM), and new CBS research shows TV and paid advertising in other media -– in a world where fewer people seemingly talk to each other offline –- still generate significant conversation.

Offering perhaps the same conclusion he would have 50 years ago, Brad Fay, COO of the Keller Fay Group — which conducted the research for CBS — said: “Word of mouth and advertising actually go hand-in-hand together. They work together fabulously well.”

The research showed that in 20% of word-of-mouth conversations about specific brands, a person refers to paid advertising. Furthermore, among media trendsetters, which is one of six population segments CBS has identified, 45% mention paid advertising across multiple media when discussing brands, and TV ads 27% of the time.

A media trendsetter is identified as an “urban, multicultural social diffuser.”

The Keller Fay research was generated from 7,000 consumer interviews and looked at other population segments, such as “program passionate” (younger, upscale women, prone to time-shifted viewing) and sports enthusiasts, as well as brands in specific categories.

Fay, who with partner Ed Keller has a new book coming out about traditional WOM in a digital world, spoke at a presentation at the Advertising Research Foundation Monday.

He was followed by CBS Chief Research Officer David Poltrack, who provided an update on a project CBS has been undertaking with Nielsen Catalina Solutions. The groups have developed a tool (volumetrics) to gauge links between media exposure and product purchasing.

Poltrack has been urging the industry to move away from using age and gender as “surrogates” for targeting and to rely more on consumer behavior to “enable advertisers to use (TV) more effectively, thereby enhancing the value of the medium for them.”

Volumetrics can allow marketers to identify shows with higher concentrations of potential purchasers — and, when adding in the price of an ad, increase efficiency more.

Nielsen Catalina recently tested whether a non-alcoholic beverage advertiser achieved more effectiveness with ads in CBS drama “The Good Wife” compared with overall results for the campaign. Results found the “Good Wife” ads brought a sales lift that was almost three times the average.

The researchers determined that the CBS show benefited from reaching a significant number of upscale females who tend to be loyal purchasers of premium products and usually  pay full price versus searching for deals.

CBS, Poltrack said, will be underwriting volumetrics research in 20 consumer packaged goods categories over the next few months that it hopes to make available to potential clients in the coming upfront market.
Read more: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/171113/cbs-research-tv-drives-wom-in-digital-world.html#ixzz1qKOlLwpc

Posted on March 26th, 2012 by Robbin Phillips

We’re all in marketing grad school.

Surrounded by massive changes in how we communicate, we need to study and share and listen hard with an open hearts and minds.

The good folks at KellerFay are some of the best “professors” I know in the Word in the Mouth Marketing world. At Brains on Fire, we discuss and share their research and findings with each other and our clients often. Which is why I’m super excited about their new book coming out on May 22nd called The Face-to-Face Book. Last night I sat down to write a post inspired one of Ed’s recent posts:

Social Media is Word of Mouth on Steroids, or is It? Part II

When I was almost done, I went back and re-read Ed’s words again and here’s what hit me:

I really want to share all of Ed words with you.

So with Ed’s permission, enjoy. (I’ve highlighted some remarks that really hit home.)
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I have heard it said on a number of occasions that social media is word of mouth on steroids. The argument goes like this: Whereas face-to-face conversations only reach people one-on-one or one-on-several, social media allows people to reach hundreds and often thousands of people with a single post. As a result, it has a far greater reach than word of mouth.

I have been skeptical of this view, arguing that while social media is certainly a piece of the social influence puzzle for brands that deserves to be leveraged, it is just one piece among many. And the premise that social media is word of mouth on steroids ignores the facts. A singular focus on social media is misguided, in my view, as it can blind brands to the full array of opportunities available to them to drive brand advocacy. This is the subject of my forthcoming book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace, co-authored with Brad Fay and coming in May.

A few months ago I wrote a blog under the headline, “Social Media is Word of Mouth on Steroids, or is It?” In the piece I shared research that shows for brands with tens of millions of Facebook fans, active engagement by those fans is quite small. In fact just 0.45% are active fans. In a similar vein, research was released last month from the prestigious Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science in Australia showing that after the initial click to “like” the brand, consumers rarely interact again with the brand on Facebook. Here too, less than 1 percent of people remained active on Facebook after the initial engagement. Ehrenberg-Bass summarized its results as follows: “Big Brands Snubbed by Fans on Facebook.” The message here is that the large numbers associated with social media can be seductive, but they are not always exactly as they appear to be.

Now comes a very different type of study that further debunks the “social media is word of mouth on steroids” argument. This research, conducted by BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon, looks at the sources of shared content online across their respective networks and comes to this conclusion: “Put simply, the vast majority of sharing occurs in the normal fashion evidenced in real-world word-of- mouth.”

More specifically, they report that the average Facebook share leads only nine people to visit the story. The median for Twitter was even lower, with each story shared on Twitter leading to five people visiting the story. This reality is far from the “one-to-many” image of social media that many proponents postulate and would be consistent with the “word of mouth on steroid” claim.

The conclusion from BuzzFeed and StumbleUpon: “What emerges is a picture of social networks where stories go viral when lots of people engage with their normal-sized circles to share content. . . In looking to get content shared, marketers and publishers should focus on content that will resonate and get people talking to their colleagues, friends and families. Social media is about engaging people in conversations that mirror the offline world.”

The research that is emerging helps to separate fact from fiction. Yes, social media has the potential to reach hundreds or thousands of people at a time, but the reality is that it rarely does. It should be considered as a part of today’s marketing mix, but it is becoming increasingly clear that for brands which wish to spark the conversations that will move their business forward, it is not a panacea nor is it “word of mouth on steroids.” Remember, for each conversation people share with their colleagues, friends and families via social media, there are many multiples more that get shared at the dinner table, at the water cooler, on the sidelines at youth sports events, and anywhere else people congregate. Those conversations collectively generate far more sharing. Let’s take a holistic perspective on the best and most productive ways to engage today’s social consumer.
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Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, has been called “one of the most recognized names in word of mouth.” The publication of Keller’s book, The Influentials, has been called the “seminal moment in the development of word of mouth.” His new book, The Face-to-Face Book, is coming out in May 2012. You can follow Ed Keller on Twitter, Facebook and Google+, or contact him directly at ekeller@kellerfay.com.

Posted Mar 15, 2012, 3:36 PM
By Sarah Mahoney,

Don’t miss anthropologist Grant McCracken’s Culturematic: How reality TV, John Cheever, a Pie Lab, Julia Child, Fantasy Football, Burning Man ….will help you create and execute breakthrough ideas (Harvard Business Review Press).

McCracken has a fine old time identifying hundreds of these nifty culturematics, as he calls them, “little machines that … test the world, discover meaning, and unleash value.” By definition, these ideas are a little wacky, but built on questions that spark some kind of curiosity. And while they are most likely to occur in small groups or people working on their own, these shots-in-the-dark do sometimes work for large marketers, and readers will love the backstories.

What if we put a bunch of real people, not actors, in a house with a camera on them all the time? Meet MTV’s “The Real World.” What if we gave a Fiesta to 100 people to do whatever they want, as long as they post about it on YouTube? Thank you, Ford. Suppose we replay a high school football game that ended in a tie, back in 1993? It worked for Gatorade. What if we acted like we cared that someone was unhappy with our product, and tried to fix it on the spot? Enter the Apple’s Genius Bar.

But for the most part, he concedes that the tricksters, time travelers, curators and practical jokers most apt to invent these little idea machines aren’t likely to be embraced by companies, or even their ad agencies. People’s closest friends probably mocked such ideas as Fantasy Football, Wordle and smart mobs. (In fact, if you’re a depressed corporate type trapped in the suffocating silos of a soulless large company, you probably shouldn’t torment yourself with this book at all.)

While you’ll get some how-to advice, the final chapter is enough to make an earnest Culturematic-crafter wanna-be heave the book across the room. His advice is to be more like … Nike. Or Starbucks. Or Apple. Still, this book will definitely lead you to a greater appreciation of your own inner curiosities.

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The Face-to-Face Book: Why real relationships rule in a digital marketplace, (Free Press) due out in May, is another don’t-miss-it read, if not as amusing. While much of the territory covered by Ed Keller and Brad Fay (CEO and COO of word-of-mouth agency the Keller Fay Group) is familiar, the detailed examples will hammer home the duo’s main point, over and over: All media is social media. Insights about what makes brands talk-worthy, the role of positive and negative word-of-mouth, rethinking your brand’s influential, and the best routes to earned and owned media are straightforward and helpful.

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Finally, we’re late to the party with Brand Rituals: How successful brands bond with customers for life, by Zain Raj (Spyglass Publishing). Raj, late of Euro RSCG and now CEO of SolutionSet, starts with the premise that whether we like it or not, the only real rule that applies in marketing today is speed. As the pace of life gets faster, sound bites get smaller, making it clear that old ideas about marketing (we can change the consumer’s mind, for example, or that either advertising or social media can build a brand) simply don’t apply. What does, he maintains, is using the power of habit to create brand rituals that are enduring and beloved. Shepherding your brand from habit to routine to ritual, he says, requires constantly making it interesting and relevant, while working every digital angle available.