Michael O'Connor Clarke on Viral Marketing, Social Media and User Generated Content

I recently spoke with Michael O'Connor Clarke of Thornley Fallis Communications about Viral Marketing, Social Media and User Generated Content. He had some interesting responses to me questions below.... Feel free to comment and keep the conversation going!

1. The age of 'User Generated Content' is upon us, and Marketers are no longer in control of their brand....Did they ever have control in the first place or was it all an illusion?

In truth: no - I don't think marketers ever really had as much control as they may have thought. (Frankly, I find the whole notion of "control"
in this context rather unsettling, but then I never was a big fan of command-and-control, hierarchical relationship models. But I digress...)

I think two things are worth noting here. First, the reputation and value of a brand has only ever been as good as consumers' experience of it. Brand perception is a gift. It's something the market gives to you in return for the way you behave, the quality of your products and services, and the opinion we, the people, collectively form about you.

The big difference today is that consumers have many, many more ways of communicating their brand experiences to much broader audiences than ever before.

Conversations that used to happen out of marketers' ear-shot (over the garden fence, in the schoolyard, at the bowling alley) have moved online - where they're findable. If we don't like you, we can take our griping online and find other, like-minded anti-advocates. The consumer now controls the means of production. You'll be hearing from us.

The second thing that has happened is that many market leaders (and leaders in general) have squandered whatever trust they once had. North America has grown up. We've learned to question what we see and hear, and trust each other's views above marketers' overt sales pitches.

So branding today is something you receive, not something you do. It's become a transitive verb, in which the market is the subject; the marketer the object. We brand you.

2. The so-called 'Social Media Experts' dictate to Marketers that they need to be blogging, podcasting and leveraging other web 2.0 tactics to "open up the conversation" or they will be out of a job in the next 12-24 months....Some of Canada's strongest brands like 'Tim Hortons' are still doing What they have been doing all along and they continue to shine. What are your thoughts?

Well, as one of those so-called 'Experts' I have to say that I'd never dictate anything of the sort. That's just scaremongering bollocks. I'm glad you used the word 'tactics', at least - I've heard blogging described in other quarters as 'a strategy'. Bah.

Having said that, conversation IS essential. Marketers that don't engage in active conversations with their markets are indeed doomed to die - or to be ignored, which is brand death anyway.

The key point that a lot of people seem to miss is that conversation is at least as much about listening as it is about talking. Many marketers have jumped enthusiastically into social media for the wrong reasons: they look at blogging, podcasting, and related technologies as groovy new message delivery vehicles. Those same marketers need to stop talking and actually listen to what their markets are saying.

A few years ago, I was consulting with the marketing VP of a fairly large consumer brands company. He had 85 people in his global marketing organization. I asked him when was the last time one of his staff went out to meet with some real customers. His response: "well that's not really our job - the sales guys do that." Idiot.

At Thornley Fallis, we use a four stage planning approach to help clients understand and engage with this new social media world. The first three stages have much more to do with listening than with talking.

I think Tim Hortons continues to shine, in part, because they've always been good listeners. Their presence in local communities and ability to connect with their customers shows that they're already actively engaged with their markets.

3. Seeing as it's hard know if an 'Online Viral Marketing Campaign" will actually catch-on and be viewed by the right customers and in the right numbers....What can Online Marketers do to ensure that whatever they have invested to generate the campaign, results in a decent ROI?

Not to be glib, but the first thing to note here is that the appropriate typography is: ROi. When it comes to most online programs, the returns can be substantially larger than the often tiny investment required (relative to the cost of traditional big bucket marketing campaigns).
Hence: big 'R', tiny 'i'.

Given that, I think it's safe and reasonable for marketers to do a lot of experimentation and run a whole bunch of different, low-cost campaigns to see which might take. As you've said yourself, that's the thing about viral effects - you never can tell what's going to go viral and what isn't.

'Planning a Viral Campaign' is essentially oxymoronic. You can plan to do cool, interesting, edgy, fantastically creative things, but I would submit that you can't really 'plan' to go viral - it's something that just happens based on the response of the crowd.

So the best counsel I can think to offer in this context is 101 stuff, really. If you're going to attempt some kind of viral grooviness - great, just don't get so swept up in the fun of it all that you forget your first principles. Define measurable objectives up front. Know what success looks like, and how you will track it. Think in SEO terms: will your campaign get you into the first ten hits of a Google search for the keywords you're trying to drive. No? Then what are you doing it for?