Here is the presentation with the preliminary results of the 2008 Tribalization of Business Study (produced by Deloitte, Beeline Labs, and the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR)), which I presented at the SNCR New Communications Forum yesterday. The findings are very preliminary as the study is still in progress.

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If you are interested in more information about the study, or in participating in the study, please email me at francois [at] beelinelabs [dot] com.

Joseph Jaffe delivered the Society for New Communications Research keynote speech last night. During his presentation he was making the case that marketing can be conversational.

As I have written before, I do not believe that marketing can be conversations. First off, and as David Weinberger suggested in an interview I did with him last year, I do not trust marketers to carry conversations without screwing it up for the rest of us.

I also do not think that all aspects of marketing can be or should be conversational. Think about new product innovation as an example. Sure, you will benefit from getting ideas and feedback from your user base and especially you prospecting base, but at some point the marketing product manager needs to act as a benevolent dictator and make decisions on what goes into the next generation product – and that may include features that did not pass the user popularity filter, or features that may not even come from the user base at all. The same is true for pricing – where coming to a price based on user feedback may in fact mean leaving a ton of money on the table.

Markets are conversations – marketing is not…

A new research study by the Society of New Communications Research (disclosure – I am a senior fellow in the society and have been peripherally involved with the study), “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media,” found that affluent consumers are using social media to share their customer service experience and learn about other’s care experiences when making purchase decisions.

Some of the top findings include:

• 59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience (ed. note: glad to see I am in the majority…)
• 72.2% of respondents research companies’ customer care online prior to purchasing products and services at least sometimes
• 74% choose companies/brands based on others’ customer care experiences shared online

Again – proof that while positive word of mouth may outweigh negative word of mouth, and that off-line word of mouth may outweigh online word of mouth, the online negative word of mouth may have much more impact on purchasing decisions as they are found while the buyer is in active buying mode.