Socially Endorsed Advertising: Focus Group + College Kegger = Social Focus Kegger

I saw this in BusinessWeek: "This Ad Stinks: Let Readers Vote"

People are voting on ads, and businesses are paying for it. The article details Billy Bloom's risk for letting people on StumbleUpon thumb his site Zunafish.com. The risk being he may get good reviews and therefore more traffic, or he may get bad reviews and have to deal with the consequences of negative opinion. He's paying a nickle for each thumbs up or down.

Cool. Right?

Going about advertising in this way serves the purpose of a focus group, without the control over how many people participate, how long and who they invite, and with all the consequences of having a potentially large number of participants good and bad.

So it's kind of a cross between a focus group and a kegger. Ah, yes! A Social Focus Kegger! Offer to buy cups for anyone that wants a drink (at a nickle a piece in this case) and then let them enjoy and sing its praises or spit it out and let everyone know it sucks. In the latter situation, you have only to hope that they explain why it sucks. In the former, just worry you have enough bandwidth.

The risks and benefits of this Social Focus Kegger are a new tangle of 1) empower consumers by letting them voice their opinions and 2) being responsible for the results you garner. Positive = Yay! (duh). Negative (should) = "How can we make this better?"

If negative, making the changes necessary, based on what you hear becomes the new (timely, possibly expensive) goal.

One of the keys with social media is that people enjoy feeling and being heard. I was amazed when one of my tweets on Twitter netted me the most positive CRM experience I'd ever had with Comcast. As you can see, I still blog about it. In the realm of social media, the power of voice empowers the customer. You've seen the Hotels.com advertisements:

People want to feel empowered. And while they are empowered when they vote, they are more empowered when their sentiment is reflected by a change. As people associate who they are with the brands, products and companies that they interact with, it is important to show that you care about what they think.

As pointed out by Matt Freeman, CEO of GoFish and Dave Morgan, Chairman of Tennis Co. in the article, it's scary, but it gets the hard part out of the way.

And remember, it's easiest to bring a good pony keg of sweet advertising to the Social Focus Kegger. But when people say it's too bitter, change the recipe before the entire world gets a taste.

~Jonas