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Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
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8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
Listening is hip! If you are a marketer and not doing it, you are
likely to be criticized by somebody. Or do you look in the mirror and think
you see someone that who is out- of- it. So, what do marketers and agencies
do? They put “listening” on their to-do list. And then, they go off and do
some listening. Good. It’s a start.
But.... the problem just begins here, because there are so many easy
ways to get check “listening” checked off your list. Take a look at Google
Trends, talk to some companies about sentiment and brand analytics, set up
a community or two, or get IT involved looking into software solutions.
But is this “listening”? Is this consistent with the historic
opportunity to hear your customers talk honestly about your brand? Or,
recognizing, as one pundit said recently, that “Twitter is free mind-
reading!” I think not.
The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) convened its first of
four Listening Workshops in November, 2009. Listening is exploding,
right? Well, it is, if you count all those projects that are started to get
“listening” checked off the list. But, the disturbing thing to me was that
many speakers seemed to be preoccupied with the obstacles to effective
listening— –no budget, nobody in charge;, where is the statistical rigor;, isit projectable;, tough organizational issues;, hard to sell internally;, ROI
tough difficult to determine;, legal has major issues….….etc.
So, what’s up with this? True listening is scary, that’s what’s up.
It’s a big change from our traditional way of thinking.
Consequently, the single biggest opportunity in the history of
consumer marketing lays lies dormant. The singular opportunity to tap intothe brain of today’s newly empowered consumer in such a natural way that
it gives us what we hear is the purest “research” ever is buried in nay-
saying.
The purpose of this book is to change that,. T to get you so excited
about the promise of listening, the essentialness of listening, the unequaled power of the insight potential of listening, that you will not go another day
without taking your important first step.
That little first step? Implement a continuous listening program in
your company. Tomorrow. Not project listening; … that’s checklist stuff.
This book will tell you how to do that, well. Welcome to a new world.
—Bob Barocci, ARF President
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
Part IV, Listening’s New Frontiers: Leading listening practitioners
and researchers contributed essays on listening’s way forward in practice,
adoption and contributing to business value. We will need to pick up newsignal, understand people and culture, change the research paradigm,
rethink what we do, and become listening organizations.
As a playbook, Listen First! is intended as a business tool. Here are
just a few of the ways that you can use it to your advantage:
Bring your colleagues and clients up to speed on listening
research by reading Part 1
Match a marketing problem you’re working on to those inPart II
Sharpen your knowledge of what’s next by consulting PartsIII and IV.
Jump start evaluating listening solutions by turning to the
Appendix, which presents summaries of over 70 vendors.
Learn the lingo by consulting the Glossary.
After reading Listen First! It won’t be business as usual. And for
many people settled into their careers, that’s scary.- especially whenlistening insights challenge the status quo. When you find that the market
you think you’re serving turns out to be – or is becoming - something elseentirely. When you know you’ve got a great insight and colleagues don’t
take it seriously. This book presents case studies of exactly these situations,
and what was done to address them. You’ll also learn about the ways
companies recognized and seized the opportunity to build their businesses
through listening.
I’m bringing these points up because of what I learned in the year ittook me to write Listen First! It’s simply this: Understanding and doing
listening is important but not enough to create business advantage. The
most successful listening companies do great work, have the guts to act oncompelling insights, let go of the past, and actively shape their futures. Just
imagine what boldness it took for Hennessy’s management to transform a
centuries-old cognac associated with brandy snifters, genteel sipping and
after-dinner pleasures into an urban, music-inflected brand, where the
beverage is mixed into drinks and enjoyed at parties? Or to persuade an
editor who built a career on parenting publications that the readers for a
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
Michalis Michael, DigitalMR; Steve Rubel, Edelman; Artie Bulgrin and
Julie Propper, ESPN; David Geddes, Evolve24;Courtney Keating, GE
Capital Credit; Eric Soloff and Greg Artzt, Thomas Malkin, GeeYee;
General Sentiment; Michael Kassab and John Wittenbraker, GfK; John
Zogby, IBOPE Zogby; Carl Marci, Innerscope; Steven Van Belleghem and
Annelies Verheage, InSites Consulting; Jennifer Zinn, J.D. Power and
Associates; Richard Fielding, Kantar; Ed Keller, Keller Fay; Bob Woodard,
Monica Corbett, Frank Cotignola and Paul Banas, Kraft; Jeff Catlin,
Lexalytics; Britta Ware, Meredith; R. Scott Evans, Microsoft; Howard
Moskowitz, MJI; David Rabjohns and Tom O’Brien, MotiveQuest; Linda
Sonne-Harrison and Lisa Joy Rosner, Netbase; Brian Johnson and Daniel
Neely, Networked Insights; Jonathan Carson and David Wiesenfeld,
Nielsen; Pete Blackshaw and Dave Hudson, NM Incite; Katja Bressette and
James Forr, Olson Zaltman Associates; Ethan Titelman, Penn Schoen &Berland; Jeff Rosenblum, Questus; Steve August, Revelation; Renee
Murphy, Seek; Jason Harty, Snack Factory; Larry Friedman, TNS; RishadTobaccowala, VivaKi; Sarah Tunney, Westport Public Library; Yoram(Jerry) Wind, Wharton School; Geoffrey Precourt and Douglas West,
World Advertising Research Center; Robert V. Kozinets, York University
Specials appreciations go to Antonia Miranda and Brendan Lawley,
ARF Knowledge Solutions interns, from the summer and fall of 2010,
respectively. Both worked tirelessly on the project, tracking things down,
finding and closing gaps, summarizing, contributing their valuable
perspectives, all the while keeping an even keel and maintaining their
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
extraordinarily perceptive, and respectful, and become their advocate. Last,
brands and customers are in a learning relationship over time; both improve
when each listens and responds to the other. The relationship is notreactive, but anticipatory and evolutionary.
You’ll notice that our definition does not restrict conversations to
online sources; rather, it acknowledges that they take place everywhere.
Neither does it reference research methodology, tools, or techniques.
Decisions about where and how to listen should be determined by the
project, brand, customers, and expertise of those involved.
L i s t e n Fi rs t ! Fo c u s e s o n So c i a l Med i a C o n v e rs a t io n s
This book is concerned with listening to social media conversations,
because that’s where the listening action is today. But since listening is alsoabout anticipating, we sprinkle in a few instances of listening to behavior
and signals. See Dr. Carl Marci’s essay in Chapter 19 for a glimpse of into
the biometric future of listening’s biometric future.
R es e a rc h Ta s k s : So c i a l Me d i a L i s t e n i n g Perf o rm s
“Part II: Listening-Led Marketing and Advertising: Applying SocialMedia Listening Insights to Achieve Key Objectives” shows how strategies
based on listening research enable companies to accomplish a wide variety
of marketing objectives. Social media listening provides different ways to
perform many of the customary research tasks that are central to developingwinning marketing and advertising strategies. In fact, listening’s range of
research applications often surprises people - "I didn't know it could be
used for that!" - because listening is stereotypically thought of in fairly
narrow terms, as a substitute for focus groups or other qualitative research,
or as a way to monitor conversations for mentions of brands, people, or words or phrases of interest. Look at this range of uses, all taken from case
Planning, running, and evaluating social media listening programs
requires the same discipline as is not very different from managing aresearch project or continuous research programeffort. The differences -
and they are crucial - reside in the operational specifics— – the skills
needed, tools, methods, data and analysisand data—, but not in the aims
and ends to which the research insights are applied. For many readers, the
differences will likely be challenging to what we know about marketresearch ("How can we answer questions we didn't think of asking?"), But
the chapters in Part I intend to explain the unfamiliar and guide the way
forward to understanding listening and doing it effectively.
Pri n c i p l e s f o r Ef f ec t i v e f o r L i s t e n i n g R es e arc h The following first three chapters explain the “how” of social media
listening; it is intended to be a very practical, approachable guide for mostreaders. Wehile we do not get into very fine technical matters; rather, we
will highlight the issues or controversies that are generally important.
Listening initiatives follow a sequence of steps, and that is how they
chapters are organized and progress:
Chapter 1: Organize for Listening, and Define Objectives, Key
Measures, and Conversations
Organize for listening. Set objectives in relation to business goals.
Define key performance indicators (KPIs).
Determine the “research subjects:”: the voices and
conversation sources best suited for the listening program.
Chapter 2: Evaluate and Select Listening Solutions
Listening tools: overview and key features in five
categories: Search, Monitoring, Text Analytics,
Communities and Full-service Vendors.
Chapter 3: Field, Analyze, Report, and Evaluate
“Field” the research: rRun the listening program; establish
methods and tools for “data processing:”— the harvesting,
cleaning, and processing conversations/
Analyze and report the data: Communicate the insights.
Evaluate, appreciate, and commit to next steps.
Earlier, we distinguished social media monitoring from social media
research., While both types of listening efforts share these steps, the types
of work and levels of commitment are different. Those primarily
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
However, even companies that actively listen to social media
occasionally find that they are working against themselves and may not
fully reap the benefits of these initiatives. The case analysis we did revealeda number of challenges that less successful social media listening efforts
faced, specifically when:
Company policies sometimes get in the way.
Violating research principles, such as listening to the right
sources and voices, can miss important conversations and, –
specifically, those that highlight unidentified problems lead to
faulty insights.
Core customer groups were not involved, yielding a distorted
picture.
Response to issues often used outdated strategies and tactics that
may have worked a decade ago but need to be overhauled for the
social media era.
Companies failed to listen continuously after addressing needs
and concerns to learn ifwhether solutions awere working. existed
Social media listening did not maintain a civil tone and/or avoid public arguments.
We organized the cases into a progression of brand objectives.
achieved, in part, through social media listening. You’ll see through these
examples how social media listening is not limited to simply generating
insights from “the world’s largest focus group” or to customer service; ittruly contributes to all of the tasks that marketers and advertisers typically
perform. Our aim is to provide you with a reference for you and your
colleagues to consult when planning a social media listening project for
your brand to achieve a specific goal. The chapters in this part will provide
guidance on how to achieve the following aims:
Chapter 4. Understand the consumer’s mind-set—, or “get in
their heads.”
Chapter 5. Discover new customers.
Chapter 6. Drive new product development and innovation.
Chapter 7. Create messages that resonate. Chapter 8. Improve products and services. Chapter 9. Increase sales.
Chapter 10. Sense change to compete in the present.
Chapter 11. Rebrand and reposition products and services. Chapter 12. Manage reputation.
Chapter 13. Compete strategically.
Chapter 14. Provide customer care and increase customer
satisfaction.
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
Each case describes the business objective, role for social media
listening, insights leveraged, program implemented, and marketplace
results or decisions that the findings helped produce. Where the casesallow, steps in their research processes are outlined. You'll notice they
conform to the principles summarized in the introduction to Part 1 and
discussed in detail in Chapters 1-3. When reading the cases, flip back tothem from time-to-time for a refresher and for more detailed discussion.
Doing so will raise appreciation for the valuable role of listening research
plays in achieving marketing objectives and creating business advantage.
The cases reviewed differ in the sophistication of their social media
listening; for that reason we indicated each one’s level:
Fundamental : -- Companies just getting started in this area and
relying on free or low-cost tools; Intermediate: -- Companies with some experience under their
belt who that may have a listening toolkit that includes traditional
research); and
Advanced : -- Companies with a commitment to social media
listening, investment in tools and people, and additional
resources.
Additionally, to help you understand the type of listening research
conducted in each case--search-based, social media monitoring, or social
research-- it is included in parentheses following the level.
Though social media listening is becoming more widely known and
utilized, it is still an emerging practice for many organizations. Most
companies are at the fundamental level; very few are advanced. But
whatever your company’s level of sophistication, everyone all can learn
from one another, – in terms of both accomplishments and setbacks. Whilefundamental-level companies may not have the same capabilities, they may
see approaches that they can approximate and borrow to improve their own
efforts.
Part III: Listening-led Marketing and Media Innovations
Ask the average marketing person what social media listening is best
suited for, and you’ll hear “insights and customer service—it’s the world’s
largest focus group!” That’s only partially true, of course, – and we hope
it’'s a notion of which this book has already dispelled. What is considerablylesser known is our ability to use listening to transform soft conversations
into hard data, as well as for a wider variety of business-building purposes.
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)
This superb book synthesizes the industry’s best thinking and reveals winningstrategies for capitalizing on the massive upside of listening. Listen First! is aninvaluable leadership resource for marketing executives, and will helporganizations create real competitive advantage. -- Dave Hudson, CEO, NMIncite, a joint venture of McKinsey and Nielsen
"Listening is a business imperative ... especially in a world of empoweredconsumers. Brands are getting built and nurtured in a very different way. This book is a must read of anyone who wants to succeed in this new world order." --Stan Sthanunathan, Vice President - Marketing Strategy & Insights,Coca-Cola
“One by one, the best Marketing Companies are putting “listening to consumers”on their strategic agenda. Following each announcement, we hear .... silence, asstaff groups try to grapple with the new directive. Listen First! is a timely, un-hyped, and pragmatic field guide for those exploring the world of listening. Put your ear to the ground, stop shouting, and get ready for hard work... but first readthis book." -- Ted McConnell, EVP Digital, the ARF; former head of Digital Marketing Innovation for Procter & Gamble
Yet, how many of you have an effective listening strategy? To help guide you in
the listening maze, identify new business opportunities, select the right partnersfor the development and implementation of an effective listening strategy, this book is a MUST and enjoyable READ! --Prof. Yoram (Jerry) Wind, TheLauder Professor, The Wharton School
We started J&D’s with a single idea – to make Everything Taste Like Bacon. All we needed now were customers. So we decided to go where the conversations were and we've been listening ever since. We use social media to connect with ourcustomers, promote our advancements in bacon-o-vation and ask for theirfeedback on new product development. If you're an entrepreneur or run a small business, this book will give you lots of examples and terrific and practical ideas
for creatively listening to your customers and growing it." -- Justin Esch, co-founder, J&D’s Foods
8/6/2019 Listen First! Turning Social Media Conversations into Business Advantage (Executive Summary)