Recently I wrote that the distribution of information had always been a funnel but it had now turned right side up.  The mouth of the funnel is wide open and consumers are publishing because it is easy and they have opinions.  The good brands are building these funnels, advertising their communication portals (Facebook,etc) , attracting consumers, collecting opinions, engaging, finding their voices and constructively inviting/channeling consumers further down into the brand storyline. During this process the brands are quietly measuring their effectiveness, learning, and becoming much better communicators as consumers elect to engage more deeply.  They are collecting excellent data on Influencers, athletes and active consumers as the information travels down the funnel.

In recent conversations I have been painfully reminded that many me-too brands in the Outdoor Industry are not building solid funnels but building buckets with holes and no bottom.

How? Well, these companies crow that they have a Web Site, Facebook Page, are on Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

And consumers are initially engaging…entering the bucket. But they are not directed or invited to go anywhere.  They  just sit in the bucket, quickly draining to the bottom…without direction.

And then an analyst from Channel Signal investigates. We find that they had good sign-up for the Facebook page, a decent  following on Twitter, and that YouTube and Flickr had good traffic, but that it fell off quickly.

Why did the traffic fall off?  Because these companies did not allocate the resources to engage. Employees were not assigned to respond to consumers, and direct them to the next point of interest. Consumer questions and comments went unanswered. They were not invited to go to Facebook or the Website, or YouTube, or a User Group. And because there was no natural momentum of engagement, no funnel, consumers were stranded and then took the easy way out….quickly out the bottom of the bucket. They were invited to the conversation and then nobody talked to them.

So they didn’t stick around. And  they took all of their knowledge about the brand with them.

A study by the Chief Marketing Council shows that 38 percent of the 480 executives in the industries surveyed say their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers. And only 29 percent rate highly their ability to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints

All that money to make products that attract consumers. All that money to sell into retail. All that money for advertising to attract consumers. All that money to set up conversation channels.  And then the pay-off…consumers responding online by engaging in one of the channels. And…

And silence. All that wonderful potential data about consumers and what they like and don’t like about your brand and products…out the bottom of the bucket. And all those potential Influencers, gone.

Never to be captured again.

Say goodbye to measuring ROI.

Courtesy: New York Times

I’ve been talking with a lot of the brands in the outdoor space lately and I’m hearing the same theme. Something like…”new media is important. We are looking at its impact.  We have to determine how much time this will take, who will execute inside the company, and how much it will cost.”

Fair enough. All good concerns.

This brings me to the core problem. The more information we load upon ourselves the less time we have for…everything.

Herbert Simon, a political scientist, wrote in 1971, “What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. The more information, the less attention, and the need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.” Quoted from A Short Manifesto on the Future of Attention by the Design Observer

In my view, this problem is now pervasive. Consumers are focusing their attention to write messages to companies about products, customer service, and branding. And it is evident that companies do not have the attention span to:

1. Listen

2. Engage.

Why?

Because companies are swamped with so much information that much of  the valuable info gets ignored . The work force is in a dingy and the waves of information are ten feet tall.

Another problem:  many companies are still in the Broadcast Mode because it takes less attention. Executives are saying “ We are on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube…and we have our own Blog. However, that company uses those channels to simply broadcast the message. Face it, that  company doesn’t have the “employee time” to engage with those customers.

Many brands suffer from information overload.  Reposition your company away from the endless silly emails that smack of over-communication in the form of “covering my ass” , positioning the responsibility to someone else ” I sent him an email!”, or ccing the universe “so I could solicit  feedback from the team” .  While all of this is going on, consumers are trying to communicate with the company.

Companies are more self absorbed than movie stars. Stop worrying about your brand image and look away from the mirror …and see.

To all major brands in the outdoor space: time to rebuild your marketing departments. Time to reallocate employee time for New Media. So they listen for the customer. Hear them. And then respond. Time to create content that consumers find worth responding to. Time to take money away from traditional advertising (and the push messaging) and invest it in real time feedback on your products, your service, and your brand initiatives.

Back to the future, where the motto is, “The Customer is King.”

From Wikipedia-Astroturfing is a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

And flogging is a new word that is basically fake blogging.

Astro-turfing and flogging are mirages with fake authors, intended to mislead, and written to create a false impression of popularity.

I had a long conversation with new media lawyer Andrea Anderson of Holland & Hart recently about flogging and astroturfing. She made an excellent point. If a company hires floggers or astroturfers to seed the blogosphere with false impressions of popularity, and if one of those authors states a fact that is false, then the company sponsoring the campaign is liable for false advertising.

Companies should drop the use of these people, authentically engage in the online conversation, and attract solid influencers who have real followers for a reason. They are good. They know their facts. And they provide great information.

Astroturfing and flogging should disappear. But alas…as long as there are bad marketers we will have to live with bad marketing.