Who cares about social media?

Bob Pickard | Asia-Pacific Chairman | Hong Kong | 2014.04.29

§  Executives who don’t want to be left behind §  Customers who want a relationship with the brand §  Prospects who are researching which firm to choose §  Investors deciding whether to double-down or sell §  Analysts who want fresh streams of new content §  Media looking for data and easy turnkey story angles §  Employees who like to share their working lives §  Talent deciding whether to join – and if you ‘get it’ §  Google deciding where to rank you

These people care…

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Let’s look at the numbers

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§  A risk-averse conservative mindset prevails §  Legal cautions have had a dampening effect §  Executive ‘face’ issues; fear of making mistakes §  Bureaucratic inertia abounds §  Regulatory constraints a reality and an excuse §  Legacy technology like Internet 1.0 (‘but we already

have a website!’) §  The mistaken belief that social networks are just for

brand marketing

Financial services slow on social

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Fear of losing control

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¨  “The financial services industry has largely shied away from participating in social media for fear of losing control of its messaging, or inadvertently violating compliance regulations, or both. As a result, within firms the use of social media channels is often blocked, and tepid or less-than-timely messaging is squeezed through a bottleneck of highly controlled manual supervision.”

¨  - IBM

MO

NO

LOG

UE

“They can’t hear me and I feel insignificant”

“They must listen and I will

be heard”

PASSIVE CON-SUMERS

DIALOGUE

ACTIVE

PRO-SUMERS

C O N V E R S A T I O N

C O

N T

R O

L

Power is going horizontal

¨  Going back to Dale Carnegie in 1936, we know that making people feel important is the precursor to persuasion

¨  Once PR-driven interactions make people feel important (‘someone is listening to me’), then stories are told via conversations “Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely”

Persuasion 1.0

¨  “When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity”

Carnegie’s other astute observation

¨  ‘You are important to us’ ¨  ‘We need your opinions to help inform our actions’ ¨  ‘We are listening to you and you will be heard’

Communication starts with listening

Social brands action like people, not things

2014.04.29

¨  Listening > Hearing ¨  Following > Leading ¨  Learning > Teaching ¨  Seeing > Showing ¨  Feeling > Living

§  Whether or not there is listening, of course social media increases the demand to be heard, regardless of merit

§  [Ironic that those demanding to be heard can often seem least interested in listening!]

§  ‘Me’ and ‘I’ narcissism, lack of attention span, rampant impatience, toxic anger and abuse abounds

§  Crowdsourcing intelligence versus mob rule?

Social media is emotional media!

A-P emotional social diversity

1.  Lust ‘I want this’ 2.  Greed ‘I need this’ 3.  Gluttony ‘I must have more’ 4.  Sloth ‘I haven’t thought about it’ 5.  Wrath ‘I am angry about this’ 6.  Envy ‘I want what s/he’s got; I am worth it’ 7.  Pride ‘I am better; I deserve this’

The seven deadly ‘digital sins’

The emotional power of metaphor

¨  Social media enables the easy application of metaphors used in everyday language for the development of corporate narrative – e.g. ‘word pictures’ – to convince consumers about a product brand with story ‘frames’ that already exist in their unconscious ‘emotional’ brains

Metaphor elicitation tunes into emotions

¨  Research is key, asking people before starting a social media effort things like: §  When you think about [company], what is the first

thing that comes to mind? §  What do you feel when you see this image? §  Can you share some of your past experience in

dealing with [area where product offers some benefit]?

We’re wired for stories

Scientific American Mind (August/September 2008) Source: Hoffman

Applying search insights

§  Using tools like Google Trends, PR people can mine search results for key words, and inject compelling metaphors into online content by combining Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics with conventional PR approaches

§  The ‘natural language’ words people are using to search can be discovered, the results of which can be used to tailor a narrative’s messaging elements.

§  Keywords can be crafted as metaphors, which can be integrated into media messaging, news releases, speech content, ‘elevator pitch,’ etc.

The modality of social media storytelling

§  While marketers tend to consciously think in terms of text, ‘real’ people unconsciously think in terms of images

§  As eyeballs migrate to the Internet, even ‘word picture’ text will not be enough as multimedia – videos and pictures and sounds – are being programmed via social media

What are we looking at?

What are we thinking about?

¨  Social media marketing involves the psychology of persuasion

...and the unconscious mind rules

§  Our deepest thoughts – the ones that account for our behaviour in the marketplace – are unconscious

§  “According to most estimates, about 95 percent of thought, emotion, and learning occurs in the unconscious mind - that is, without our awareness” [Gerald Zaltman]

§  Evidence of how the emotions of the unconscious mind drive human behaviour comes from neuroscience (using advanced new fMRI brain scans), psychology, and is being widely adopted in marketing

Stories tap into the unconscious mind

¨  People tend to remember products when they are woven into the narrative of media content

¨  They tend not to remember brands that don’t play an integral role in the story because people can see them as being ‘just ads’

Persuasion 2.0

¨  When people commit themselves in public to something, they have created a new ‘image template’ of themselves...

¨  People will do and say whatever is necessary to conform with their new public image...

It’s ‘like’ signing a public confession

The death of deference

Social media is visual media

“There's a good reason why pictures communicate so powerfully. A disproportionate amount of brainpower is dedicated to visual processing, which means that what we see has far more impact than what we're told. In fact, we acquire far more information through vision than all the other senses combined.”

Where data meets design to tell stories

2014.04.29

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“Which ones makes sense for us?”

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§  The Financial Services Industry (FSI) is now at a turning point in the industry’s adoption of social media

§  One organization after another is at least starting with one branded social media channel

§  After years of apprehension, many organizations are taking their first tentative steps onto social network; others are jumping in with both feet…

Times are a-changing…

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Social channels galore

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The dawning realization

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¨  “Social media humanizes customer service, brings ¨  businesses closer to their stakeholders, and makes ¨  information more accessible to the knowledge ¨  workers who are the heart of any FSI organization. ¨  For an industry built on trust, accountability and ¨  knowledge management, that’s a good thing.”

- HootSuite

Fearless engagement earns respect, trust

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Look through the other end of the telescope

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¨  “By researching their customers as closely as their customers are now researching them, financial services organizations can improve their image and counter unfounded negativity with facts, as well as identify communities of targeted customers” - IBM

The bar for social in FSI is getting higher

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The precedent-setting disclosure Tweet

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Pushing the envelope drives change

§  Social media has taken a ‘wrecking ball’ to walls dividing traditional marketing functions such as advertising and PR

§  The boundaries between distinct corporate domains such corporate affairs, marketing, human resources and customer service are blurring

§  Where exactly does ‘internal’ end and ‘external’ begin these days? §  Social media dramatically increases stakeholder touch points, each of

which represents opportunity and risk §  An increasing percentage of time consuming corporate information

occurs online using a mobile display, but marketers still spend a disproportionate time focused on traditional media

§  Competitive pressures will drive adoption eventually… §  From customer service to recruitment, corporate functions can be

enhanced using social media

Digital can be ‘disruptive’

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42 Source: McKinsey

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Source: McKinsey

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Source: McKinsey

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Thank you!

@BobPickard | bob.pickard@huntsworth.com