(mobileYouth) Influence - A Marketer's guide (Free Ebook Download)

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Copyright© 2011 by mobileYouthAll rights reserved. No part of this document may bereproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, orotherwise, without prior written permission of mobileYouthAuthors grant fair use of book’s materials according toconventions of “fair use” covering printed materialshttp://mobileyouth.org Page 1

A special thanks to the mobileYouth team Bernard Hor of Youth Works Asia Marlon Parker of RLabs Roman Ravve of Anketki Researchhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 2

INTRODUCTIONRemember the ‘60’s?No, neither do I.Yet it’s amazing how brands insist on marketing like it’s still the 1960’s. “Create a great brand story and push it out there.” Sure it worked for Pepsi back when the coolkids wore bellbottoms but things have changed sincethen. We’ve landed on the moon. We’ve torn down The Wall and then there was this thing called “The Internet”. But, marketers still ask questions like “How do we identify influencers on Twitter that would tweetabout us?”, “How can we get youth talking about our brand” or “How do we get more people to ‘Like’ us on Facebook?”These are all the wrong questions to ask.Nobody cares about your brand story. At least, not whenyou’re the one telling it.If your idea of marketing is still about finding thebusiest place where you can stand alone yelling out yourstory with a megaphone, stop and take a lookaround. The only ones still doing that are the onesholding a “The end is near” sign.Actually, even those guys have gone online.Deep down even the most adamant billboard-spacesalesmen know that the world of influence has changed.http://mobileyouth.org Page 3

The drivers of influence haven’t changed but being influential has. The branding game used to be abouthaving the loudest and most interesting voice. It wasabout Paid Media or buying youth trust and attention.Those with the biggest budgets won the game.Old Influence = Hot Creative Agency + Media BuyThis used to be enough to influence customers tocome. Now, telling your brand story can actually scareinfluencers away. It’s not that they don’t like your branding tone, or your story, or your choice of mediumbut that you’re not creating any space for them to tell their own story. And this is why so many brands fail atthe new influence game; the space you need to free upfor these influential storytellers is currently occupied bycelebrities and creative agencies. They are products ofthe 1960s and don’t belong.You see, the new rule of influence is as follows:It’s not who’s telling your story but whose story you’re telling that counts.New Influence = Create Tools for Customers to tell theirStoryIt’s happening because there are multiple narratives out there. Who to trust? The answer is simple, people justlike them. That’s why Earned Media is the most critical factor in brand influence today. You can’t buy youthtrust and attention anymore - that strategy was born ofhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 4

an era when they were abundant. Today, you have toearn it.This book is about how brands can create influence andsuccessfully navigate this new landscape of the post-advertising world. It’s about change and anticipating the future. It’s about the role that you can take in it. Andthat’s the key.Even though our partners have conducted a superbresearch covering four continents (Americas, Europe,Africa, Asia) and we’ve combined the results with the10 years of insights and experience collected bymobileYouth, you shouldn’t expect this book to spell out for you what you need to do.Yes, you’ll find plenty of examples and best-practiceshere but they’re not meant to be copied. They are meantto inspire. I didn’t write this as a book of answers after all. I wrote it as a book of questions.We might be experts but you’re the one who has to make the decisions. Marketing is broken and today, it’s your job to fix it.Ghani Kuntoghani.kunto@mobileyouth.orghttp://mobileyouth.org Page 5

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CHAPTER 1http://mobileyouth.org Page 7

Influence: The New Normal* Awareness means nothing* Peer Recommendation is now the key market driver* You cannot buy influence anymore, you have to earn itEarly August 2008 was a special day for Gadis. It wasone day before her first day at university and she wasabout to celebrate it by buying herself a newphone. Gadis checked out the campus and was on herway to ITC Ambassador, one of the leading places inJakarta, Indonesia for mobile phones.The 15-minute drive stretched 45-minutes but she didn’t mind because she was comfortable in her air conditionedcar, accompanied by music from the radio. Her favoritesong came on, interrupted only by the DJ ad-libbing apromo for a music event sponsored by Nokia.Peering outside, Gadis briefly noticed a Nokiabillboard a stretch of downtown street. She recognizedthe celebrity featured in the ad and Gadis smiled. Sheliked the celebrity, she didn’t mind the ad and hadalways liked brand because she had been using Nokiasince she was grade eight. Her previous four phoneswere all Nokias. While she usually didn’t notice ads, this time was different. Gadis was about to buy a phone.She noticed all of them.Vast Nokia billboards hung right above the mallentrance and flanked by further signage along theescalators. Even as she arrived at the crowded 3rd floorof ITC, where a thousand mom-and-pop mini outletshttp://mobileyouth.org Page 8

crammed together cheek-by-jowl selling mobile phones,there was no way to ignore the Nokia presence.Nokia was everywhere.Making a beeline towards the outlet recommended byher older sister Gadis blazed through the cluttered spaceto commandeer a stool right in front of the displaycabinet.“Excuse me” she says to the store attendant. She taps onthe glass pane to draw his attention to the model shewanted. This was the moment she had been lookingforward to all week. She made up her mind long beforeshe reached the stall and that’s why she had been brimming with both anticipation and excitement fromthe moment she turned the key over in her car’s ignition. “I’d like a BlackBerry please.”***At the time of writing, Nokia still has the largest marketshare in Indonesia. However, like in many othercountries where Nokia still leads, competition is rapidlyeroding the customer base - one Gadis at a time.Looking around the mall at ITC it’s easy to beconvinced otherwise by the millions of dollars spend onbright, confident ad hoardings. Every young Indonesianknows Nokia but here’s the rub - less and less of themcare enough about the brand to buy its products.In the midst of all these glossy in-you-face Nokiaadvertising Blackberry is nowhere to be seen. Why thenhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 9

are youth like Gadis demanding the brand that doesn’t advertising? Consider too that Blackberry was designedfor corporate executives but the phone’s reality in Indonesia is anything but; from housemaids to stay-at-home moms to 10-years old kids everyone seems tohave one. The brand is one of the most coveted in thecountry’s growing market of 180 million mobile owners. Research in Motion (RIM) gained all this lovefor the BlackBerry brand not by winning the massadvertising game but by tapping inadvertently into thekey driver in modern marketing today -recommendation.Recommendation is simple but most marketers over-complicate their lives. Recommendation is a square pegin a marketing mindset of round holes. These are kind ofquestions marketers typically ask: How do you measure Recommendation? How does Recommendation compare on a cost-per basis? How do you justify the cost of gaining Recommendation with long term results that would supposedly follow? How do you gain Recommendation in the first place?Maybe you’ve tried this whole “recommendation marketing stuff” using various campaigns: member-get-member programs, ambassador programs or paidtweets? Perhaps you’ve done this “social media” thing http://mobileyouth.org Page 10

before? Recommendation may be simple but thesimplicity betrays its elusiveness. We marketers can’t win the Recommendation game through changingstrategies and media tactics - we first need to change ourmindset.I was curious. How does Recommendation determinethe fate of brands? How could we extrapolate theseresults on a global basis to transcend localidiosyncracies? To do this, we’d need an industry that was both truly global in availability of products and onethat touched customers in similar way across everymarket. That’s why mobile telecoms is our passion because it checks all these boxes - every teen in everymarket of the world knows of and has probably ownedat some point in their life a Nokia. We looked at theUSA, South Africa, Russia and Malaysia because wewanted to cover diverse markets that had very differenteconomic, social and cultural conditions to test thevalidity of both our theories and data. Our challenge wasto develop a simple tool that could identify how andwhy Gadis bought Blackberry and not Nokia. Weneeded a tool that measured Recommendation only suchthat brands could easily take it and use it without havingto go hire expensive creative agencies. We also needed atool that was forward looking - i.e. predictive - ratherthan one based on history. And so, the Simple MobileAdvocacy and Recommendation Tracker (SMART)index was born.In this book I’ll refer back to the SMART index as the scientific crux of how Recommendation can bemeasured and how it can also provide insight into wherehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 11

brands need to start. You can learn about this more in-depth in Chapter 3. We developed this core competencyfor mobile brands and youth but it could be equallyapplied to any age group and any vertical sector.Our research into youth attitudes towards mobile brandsacross 65 markets now spans a decade of insights,travels and stories. We found SMART to be a reliableindicator of future brand growth and profitability. Youcan use SMART in a number of ways: Measure your Recommendation scores Measure the impact of marketing on Recommendation Identify who your fans are Develop a profile of your most vocal fansIf you asked me to summarize this work in one sentenceit would be this simple truth - you can’t buy Recommendation, you have to earn it.This is Earned Media. Earned Media isn’t a curious anomaly that bolts onto the mainstream marketing, it ismarketing today. To understand Earned Media we needto first appreciate where we’re coming from - the era ofPaid Media - and the broken mindset that accompaniesthis approach.http://mobileyouth.org Page 12

When advertisers still roamed theearth* Advertising used to be the most effective tool to createinfluence* Habit, fear of change and lack of direction continue tokeep advertising in business* The price of attention is higher than ever: Supply ofadvertising has increased exponentially but Demand(customer attention) remains fixedBefore the 2008 economic crisis advertising was a $480billion industry globally. Then the crisis hit. Everyonehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 13

from consumers to companies suddenly had less tospend and anything considered as dead weight wasjettisoned. In 2009 global advertising spending droppedby 10% to $50 billion. It doesn’t seem like companies had fallen out of love with advertising though becauseanalysts predict that by 2012, spending will have passedthe $500 billion mark. That’s twice the GDP of the Republic of Singapore. Although Paid Media isbecoming less effective in comparison to Earned Mediaoptions, fear of change and ingrained habit keeps brandsand brand managers clinging to the familiar rather thanthe effective.The love story of modern advertising began in the1960’s. It was a time of social change. Prior to WorldWar 2, there was no such thing as teenagers; there werekids and there were adults. Then a whole new generationof consumers inbetween adult and childhood appearedon marketing radars looking for a way to identifythemselves. They knew they were different from theirparents. They didn’t empathize with the fear of being invaded by hordes of Nazis or being drafted to attacksmall islands in the Pacific. They knew they weren’t their parents but they didn’t have the media outlets or voice to express this point of difference. That was beforethe “Big Idea”.In 1963, advertising executive Alan Pottasch decidedthat this was a question brands could help answer.Before Pottasch broke with tradition, advertisingfocused on product features;; “The gentlest dishwashing soap for your hands”. Occasionally, advertising focused on tangible benefits “The dishwashing soap that’s so http://mobileyouth.org Page 14

gentle, you wouldn’t need gloves.” But to Pottasch, thegrowing importance of media in teen lives presented anopportunity for advertising to play a bigger role inhelping this lost generation find their voice. Pottasch’s idea was “The Big Idea” - the benefit of the benefit. ThePepsi Generation was born.Pepsi’s invitation -“Come Alive! You’re the Pepsi Generation!” - helped the Boomers in defining the senseof displacement they were feeling. Pepsi took theleadership position simply by giving a name thatBoomers could use to gain a sense of belonging yet stillmaintain the sense of significance that differentiatedthem from their parents.Pottasch’s advertising model worked so well that many companies started copying with devastating succes allthe way into the late 1980’s. Michael Jackson sangabout Pepsi to the tune of Billy Jean and while the oldergeneration debated whether or not Madonna was indeedlike a virgin, the young people knew that Madonnaindeed liked Pepsi.Advertising told stories that people liked; if you made agood advert, people actually looked forward to seeingit. Advertising made the news. There was evenadvertising about upcoming advertising.Before the 1990’s the most important questions that a brand faced was, “What’s our brand story?” It seemedthat if they could only figure that out, then people couldbuy into the story, and then it’s just a matter of distribution and operations. And, if they couldn’t figure http://mobileyouth.org Page 15

it out there was always a creative agency waiting towrite the blank slate as long as you wrote the checks.Brands always vied against others for attention leavingthe one with the deeper pockets the winner. They couldafford the bigger idea, the more famous celebrity and thelouder campaign. But by the 1990s, the media landscapestarted to shift fundamentally. The growth of multiplemedia channels meant brand managers couldn’t simply buy media space as a guaranteed method of winningeyeballs. Where were those kids now? Brands now faceda whole set of new challenges. By mid-2000 the averageperson was seeing 500 advertising messages a day -more than 10x the number in 1970s. As that numbercontinues to rise a new generation of consumers aregrowing up trained to ignore them. There is simply toomuch noise to appraise every ad message on its merit.Now we’re only listening to those messages our peersare recommending. You can spend millions buyingmedia space that Gadis will see but you can’t buy that all important place in her heart.In this post-advertising world, marketing is just that - alove story. It’s about heart. It’s not about being “liked” but being “loved”. Cynics point to youth’s fickle relationship with marketing as indicative of a generationthat lacks the ability to focus or develop deeprelationships on a meaningful level but that misses thepoint. This generation has adapted to a media landscapethat has changed fundamentally to the Pepsi Generationwe grew up with. The internet changed everything.http://mobileyouth.org Page 16

Blame It on Internet* Advertising treats internet as new real estate to tell thebrand story rather than a new form of storytelling* In the pre-internet era marketing and consumptionwere compromize. Today, however, we exist in afragmented Interest Economy* Relevance in the Interest Economy cannot be definedat the level of advertising - it must be self-createdIt was just another day in Twitterverse.As usual, a collection of largely unconnected and oftenunknown topics dominated the global trending topicstop 10. On that day, June 27th 2010 the top trendingtopic was #wasitgoblog.People jumped in. Some rode the coattail of the trendadvertising their own content with links to articles like“7 Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Blog”. Most, however, were curious. What happened? Did it happen on GoBlog? What is Go Blog anyway?Gadis would know. The penny dropped. Most of thetweets were not in English. The tweets were inIndonesian and these Asian Twitteratis were actuallyreferring to the controversial call made by the referee inan England vs. Germany Soccer World Cup match. Itwas around 02:00AM in Indonesia and most of thosewatching the game watched it in the comfort of theirown homes. For a short moment in time, these totalstrangers voiced out their frustration. From a corner ofthe world that often receives little attention on the globalhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 17

media’s stage and that voice drowned out everything else on Twitter. Translated, #wasitgoblog means“stupid referee.”It was past midnight in the country of more than300,000 islands. How else could an Indonesian fan ofEngland’s football team find so many others like her thatthey could overwhelm other things in Twitter at thetime? The internet is made of an infinite number ofthese small moments. Total strangers finding otherswho are passionate about some seemingly obscurething. Fans of Call of Duty in Calgary, Canada playingwith a modded version of the game that was developedby another fan in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Fans ofJapanese anime who liked to dress up as their favoritecharacters finding each other to organize regular cosplayfestivals. Fans of Korean pop music in Mexico gettingtogether for karaoke parties.This is the Interest Economy and the internet made ithappen.The internet became a place for the world for all thethings that didn’t have space in the sound-bite-onlytraditional mass media. Things that seemedinsignificant—even inane—to most, but very importantto some now found a home. For many young peoplediscovering and exploring their identity the intenet’s Interest Economy offers an attractive alternative to theworld of compromize and its Pepsi Generation approachoffered by brand managers. Just like previousgenerations youth wanted to be different but now theydidn’t have to be different alone. http://mobileyouth.org Page 18

For advertisers, the early internet held so much promise.Here was a new media that people were avidly payingattnetion to. Maybe this was the next television?Eyeballs translated to speculative growth and growthdrove stock prices through the roof. Everybody wantedto the next big thing and the next big thing would befound in the media presence that had won the mosteyeballs. The business model, it appeared, could beworked out later.Banner ads, pop-up ads, pop-under ads, the list goeson. Advertisers kept finding new ways to make sureplenty of eyeballs saw their advert.Fast forward to post-dotcom-bust era, brands started torealize how much the internet is not like television. Yes,people consume this new media but the beauty of thismedia is that people can produce content too. And mostof those who do are doing it to connect with others likethem.If John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison andRingo Starr had only met today and made songs aslegendary as The Beatles we know had, they still wouldnot have been as successful as The Beatles were. Theywould still have the groupies. They would still rock theirlive shows but they could never reach 30 million albumsales like The Beatles did with The White Albumbecause you don’t have to listen to the Beatles today to belong to your peer group - you have unlimited choice.You don’t just have 1000s of music genres to browse you could also be a Lego fan or be into World ofWarcraft, My Little Pony, hang out on 4Chan,http://mobileyouth.org Page 19

Hypebeast, Threadless or the millions of othercommunity websites out there that house people justlike you. In the 1960s you either liked the Fab 4 or youdidn’t. In 2011, global recorded music sales lost a furtherUSD$1.5bn. People just aren’t buying albums anymore. No one can come near the record-breakingalbum sales numbers that artists used to get prior to theinternet. Michael Jackson’s Thriller was released in1982 and sold 110 million copies. Even if you added upall the new album sales of 50 Cent, Justin Bieber, ColdPlay and Beyonce in the last half of the decade, youwon’t come near those numbers.From the troubadours of ancient Greek to singers whomade it big via music videos and MTV to our currentcrop of household names, performance artists havealways been the best storytellers. Their gift was theability to enrapture their audience with charm andpersonality, along with on-stage performance. Intoday’s world, while their names might be familiaracross the globe, less and less people care enough to buytheir albums because there are a million stories vying forthe same amount of eyeballs as there ever was. Whatchances do brands and advertisers have?Today’s storytellers (artists/brands/advertisers) might bebetter at telling their tales than their predecessors, buttoday’s young people don’t care. Young people todaydon’t need a company telling them that they can become cooler if they’re part of the some soda generation. http://mobileyouth.org Page 20

Young people already have other young people who aretelling them that they don’t have to be cool.The internet changed how we marketed “cool” forever. No longer was “cool” even relevant because it represented a mainstream interpretation of how weshould be. Today, the Interest Economy permits us toindulge our passions in communities that have foundfertile soil on the internet. What matters today isn’t the voice of aged DJs, magazine editorials and the images ofthe silver screen but your new friends - the relationshipsnurtured on the internet.New Sincerity* Mainstream definitions of cool have changed; cool isnot about getting elected but being relevant to specificinterest nichesToday, it’s hard to sell cool, because nobody knows what that is anymore. Driven by fan discussions online,a show that one television network deemed “made TV too gay” actually became a top hit. The Gleeks—as theGlee fans call themselves—proudly show their love forthe show. Make a nerdy TV show like Glee, UglyBetty, or Big Bang Theory and you’ll find a fanbase. Make a geeky movie about comic booksuperheroes like Iron Man you’ll find fans of all ages. Nobody needs to hide their inner nerdanymore. This is the New Sincerity, where guiltypleasures are just pleasures.Being a nerd is cool now. But being cool is also stillcool. Perhaps the term “nerd” is simply a term coined by http://mobileyouth.org Page 21

mainstream media to control, corral and terrorize avastly diversified and unique group of individuals intobelieving in a myth of the mainstream.When we were kids we were told to be ourselves but notit was difficult advice to action. It was too hard to justbe ourselves. “Being myself” often meant “being by myself” and nobody wanted that especially young people. Being part of the group was more importantthan being ourselves. Most youth would rather go on anunhealthy diet to look like the models they saw in thatcool advert where it seemed like everybody hadfriends. Some young people took the other route, andthought they could get friends if they emulated theromanticized image of bad boys who sat in the back ofthe class.Today, while many young people are still trying to fitthemselves into the traditional ideals about cool manymore are discovering and defining what cool is forthemselves. Cool is just a Google search away.Today, youth can be themselves without being bythemselves. The Interest Economy is a growingdiaspora of fans united not by geographical proximity -as was the haphazard zip code lottery of friendships inthe pre internet era - but by passions. If youth can nowdefined their own cool, advertising no longer plays acentral role in their story. The Pepsi Generation is over.Storytelling - the art of the advertiser - has now becomethe prerogative of the customer. In particular, the youngcustomer. It’s here in these self-defined stories abouthttp://mobileyouth.org Page 22

what brands are and are not that youth shape thefortunes of billion dollar companies. Young black SouthAfrican females redefine the story of an executivemessaging tool to create one of the country’s most identifiable brands. Millions spent on ad agencies tryingto make Nokia cool fail to impress a whole newgeneration of customers for who the brand means verylittle.In the era of Earned Media the story isn’t written by the brand manager or ad agency but by the customer and it’s this change in mindset that forms the fundamentalprerequisite of getting strategy right. You can’t generate Earned Media if you’re out there still make the narrative about your brand, you have to let them tell the story.The Alternative* The alternative to advertising isn’t advertising* Brand ambassadors, paid tweets or user-generatedlogos may use new media but it’s business as usual* It’s not who’s telling your story that counts, it’s whose story you’re tellingIrrelevancy impacts your marketing like smokingimpacts your health. It’s a slow, insidious creep rather than a game change paradigm shift in behavior. It’s just enough in the long run to propel the brand to a fataloutcome but never enough in the short term to jumpstartmarketers into making change. Brands like Nokia arefeeling the first impact of irrelevancy on their brandhealth;; ratings agency Moody’s just cut the company’s debt rating to just two grades above junk. But as withhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 23

any chronic sickness that impacts health, the symptomsaren’t an overnight phenomena - they are the product ofyears of neglect.Nokia lost relevancy with youth long before theMoody’s downgrade in 2011. In early 2010 we shared a presentation online appropriately titled “Hey, Nokia -remember me?” featuring the voices of youth who we were interviewing at the time. We were findingincreasing evidence that this once untouchable youthbrand was now falling out of touch with its coreBeachhead in key markets. Needless to say, the usualsuspects - fear of change and a lifetime of habitprevented the companies own change agents from beingheard. But it’s not all doom and gloom for the company. If you’re a brand who has lost credibility with your core market you can win it back. We’ll show examples ofhow to start in Chapter 3.Irrelevancy faces all brands today. Every day theiremployees need to wake up in fear that they are lessrelevant than yesterday. Yesterday they had relevancy.Yesterday their brand stories meant something to thecustomers. Now most of these stories are lost in thewall of noise the advertising world itself has created.And even when brands reach the customer and show upon the creative agency’s “awareness” based metrics, they are still meaningless. After all, you all knowCadillac but when was the last time you bought one?The two most ineffective methods of marketing todayare based on Paid Media models:http://mobileyouth.org Page 24

 Feature based marketing Brand managementThe first finds its roots in pre-World War 2advertising. “Now featuring QWERTY keyboard,” and “winner of a design award.” Dishwashing soap,anyone? This is feature based marketing and is theproduct of companies that don’t get out into the real world enough. Nobody wakes up thinking about yourproducts or brands anymore. Get over it.The second ineffective method of marketing is brandmanagement. Brand management means controlling thestorytelling and works something like this: If youngpeople prefer listening to each other, then lets pay themto talk about us! Brand management comes in manyguises: brand ambassador programs cool ad campaigns using a drumming monkey on a tricycle on Youtube Facebook fan pages that talk about your brand, paying those with high influence scores on Twitter to tweet about the brand anything with Lady Gaga in it most of what comes out of creative agencies today and the rather desperate “Submit your most creative pose in front of our logo, and you can win free stuff.”http://mobileyouth.org Page 25

Feature based marketing and Brand management are thekey composites of Paid Media. Today, neither iseffective at building long term Recommendation.Paid Media has always been a short term game eversince the days of Pottasch and the Pepsi Generation.Brand managers were tasked to spend not investmarketing budgets. Back then it worked because youwere guaranteed that as soon as your campaign ran itscourse the customers were waiting there like somefaithful puppy dog anticipating your next offering.Today, however, Recommendation rules. 65% of youthwill buy their next mobile phone based on what theirfriends say not what the creative agencies and brandmanagers say. That’s a game changer for Nokia;; you can’t simply go to the creative agency and say “I want you to make us an ad campaign but this time make itsomething that people are going to recommend tofriend.” It doesn’t work like that. In fact, in this redefined marketing landscape the creative agency oftenbecomes a significant part of the problem.Of course, there are outstanding creative agencies outthere but they are the exception rather than the rule.Most creative agencies are the products of an era builton the assumption that youth trust and attention wereabundant and that simply isn’t true anymore. For brands to win the Earned Media game they have to seriouslychallenge their own internal assumptions about how themarketing game works. Sure, you can easily win aCannes Lions for an ad campaign that looks great andsatiates your corporate ego. Ask Gadis what she thinkshttp://mobileyouth.org Page 26

about it and she’ll say it’s great but when it comes downto it, she goes off and buys your rival. This is the ironyof Paid Media today - billions of dollars wasted becauseof fear of change and habit. In years to come we willquestion how we ever put up with it during thesetransition years but that wisdom is afforded to us withhindsight. For now, I’d like to impart some foresight based on 10 years working with your next generation ofcustomers.http://mobileyouth.org Page 27

Building a Movement* Global brands like Ford are adopting Earned Media asa core composite of their entire marketing approach* Earned Media means working with fans who wantedto be involved rather than paid celebrities andambassadors* Fans need brands as much as brands need them -brands simply have to remove the walls that prevent fansengaging with themStanding in the shade out of the sun’s scorching heat, Maria de los Angeles cups her hands in front of hergingerly holding two little critters.“Can we get them to make that cute little noise?” she asks, half squinting as the Summer sun beats down onher brow. Her friend Brad Schenck gives the hatchlingsa little rub under the chin. They start chirping.“When you’re in the everglades and you’re canoeing in the wilderness, if you hear that,” Maria paused, “it means that there’s some baby gators around.”The two baby alligators in her hands started squirmingas if they knew she was talking about them. Maria is atthe Gatorland theme park and wildlife preserve inOrlando Florida. This was a little off her usual path inMiami but not so far that she was out of herelement. She always liked writing about her adventuresin Florida and together with her filmmaker friend Brad,they made a pretty good team sharing what the Sunshinehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 29

State had to offer. In the last few months alone, she hadadventures with alligators in Orlando, uncovered abehind-the-scene look of the graffiti scene in SouthMiami and helped build a home for a family withHabitat for Humanity. She was doing the kinds ofthings she had always been doing - things that she loveddoing - but with a slight difference. This time it wasn’t just Maria.After the 2007-2008 economic recession, the Big Threeof American automobile manufacturers reachedthe bottom of an economic pit that many analysts haddeclared would be the end of the line. Thousands ofworkers were laid off. A number of well known sub-brands discontinued. Trust at domestic automobilebrands were at an all-time low. In a situation wheremany were losing their homes few were in the mood totake out a loan to purchase a new car. Set against thisbackdrop companies were advised that they needed tokeep advertising to retain consumer trust. When brandsfailed to maintain their brand with high visibilitycampaigns, we were led to believe, customers wouldthink they’d gone out of business.The received wisdom of the advertising industry didn’t find favor at Ford, however. Here was a brand that wasdetermined to re-engineer its marketing by jettisoningthe mindset that got it into its financial mess in the firstplace. Out of the Big Three, Ford was the first to emergefrom the slump. Half of its turnaround story was due tothe shedding of old lines that were no longer relevant inthe American market and shoring up its manufacturingprocess. The other half came from introducinghttp://mobileyouth.org Page 30

innovating products launched on the back of equallyinnovative marketing. When it came to building lines ofinfluence at Ford, advertising and the creative agenciestook a back seat. Earned Media was in the driving seat.The Fiesta was as an unlikely success story for Ford inthe US market as could have been conceived during thebubble years. Even before the recession, banking on anentry-level model to drive sales was not a safebet. While there were numerous offerings for the youthmarket, sales in previous years for that segment of themarket in the US had been dwindling. Urban migrationmade public transportation more appealing for day-to-day commuting and gas prices meant car maintenanceexpenses became too costly for those trying to find theirfeet on the economic ladder. For youth, automobilesmeant freedom but in the current economic climate theyincreasingly became a byword for burden.Ford took a chance. The company took an entry-levelsmall-engine model already avaialble in Europe andplanned a launch in the US. Traditionally, auto launchesat Ford adopted the Paid Media approach to newproducts: generate buzz at trade show via unveiling of new model court trade press and media edgy TV ad campaigns expensive media buyshttp://mobileyouth.org Page 31

Post-recession Ford, however agreed to adopt a newapproach that captured the zeitgeist of the era - less risk,less waste, less glamor and back to basics. To crack theyouth segment Ford understood that “good enough” was no longer “enough” but short of investing millions in anexpensive media buy, they’d have to re-build a customerbase one Maria at a time. Necessity is the mother ofinvention and Ford’s drive to focus on optimizing their capital outlays from manufacturing to marketing createdthe perfect environment for the birth of some veryinnovative Earned Media marketing. The Ford FiestaMovement was born.“We haven’t completely decided what’s going to happen,” said Scott Monty, Head of Social Media for Ford Motor Company. “We’ll be continuing the relationship with the agents and ensure that we make themost of it.”The agents Monty was referring to were the participantsof the Fiesta Movement, all 100 of them. They wereperfect strangers who led active lives, both on andoffline. While they did have some social mediapresence most were by no means online celebrities.Maria De Los Angeles was agent #27.These hopefuls needed Ford’s platform to tell their story and Ford needed them to generate the Earned Media itrequired to shape their target market. It was an approachthat required a degree of confidence in the new EarnedMedia model and a departure from the ubiquitous “go social” attitude offered by creative agencies. http://mobileyouth.org Page 32

“We didnt want A-list celebrities. We know that peopletrust people like themselves most, and our agents are agood representation of many of the people wereinterested in reaching. Plus, they all wanted to be part ofthis - we didnt have to go out and hire them,” said Monty.These weren’t brand ambassadors in the traditional sense - they were Fans. Nobody was getting paid. WhenFord asked Maria and the agents to blog, share andrecord their daily experiences on video they didn’t need to hire an agency to tap their ambassador network, theseFans were already lining up. This is what Maria does forbreakfast - video, broadcast, editing. It’s all part of telling her story and Ford just happened to give her theSocial Tools to make that go even further.Even though they knew they would not receive anymonetary compensation other than some gas money anda 1 in 100 chance to win a new Fiesta, over 4,000 peopleapplied to spend 6 months of their lives to be part of theprogram. Your fans are out there, you just have tobreak down the walls and mindsets in your organizationsthat prevent them from engaging you.These were individuals who liked to talk, write andcreate movies. They liked to perform. All Ford did wasgive them a stage - a car for half a year and told them todo what they’ve always loved doing.And the agents did just that.FFM agents created video shorts, documented theirtravels, discovered little-known places, interviewedhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 33

interesting people - one of them even used the car toelope. Very few of the pictures taken and videos createdwere about the Fiesta itself. Those that did just showedthe car briefly - around 3 seconds in a 5-minutesvideo. In fact if you look at the agents’ page on the FFM website you struggle to see any evidence of theFord logo or brand. It wasn’t about the car, after all. Itwas about the people.Earned Media works. It doesn’t just drive mobile handset sales it also drives the auto industry. The FordFiesta launched in 2011 and is now top seller in thesmall compact category for the youth segment. Whilethis new approach to marketing was new to thecompany, Ford did not take a blind chance. Fordalready knew the ground rules of Earned Media.What Doesn’t Work* Earned Media does not equal Social Media* Social Media is a tool in the strategy not the strategy* Earned Media strategy means making customers thestorytellers“Let’s get someone on this right away. Twitter,Facebook, YouTube, whatever. Go make somethingviral.”This was how companies like Toyota ended up withcampaigns like Shareathon, where those who purchase anew Toyota can get a $500 debit card for tweetingabout it. Toyota gave away the debit cards to 2,000people. The million dollar campaign lasted for fourhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 34

days. The company added another $500,000 as a bonusat the end of the four days.Four days, one and half million dollars later (more ifyou include the fee for the agency that hatched the plan)and people have pretty much forgotten about the Toyotamarques being pushed in the campaign, just like Gadisat the mobile mall.As JP Getty once said “any idiot can sell a dollar for eighty cents”. This is not what Earned Media is all about. As the name implies, you have to earn it.http://mobileyouth.org Page 35

The 5 Laws of InfluenceRule #1: The best things in life arefree* Paying for media can prevent fans from gettinginvolved* Earned Media needs to allow fans to decide whatstories needed to be told rather than determine thecontent* Brands can provide guidelines and leadership butultimately the story needs to be the customer’s “I got involved in this not only because I wanted the funand the opportunity to create great content for my blog,but also because I wanted to experience it from aprofessional angle,” said Maria.I’ve seen countless brand ambassador programmes where companies have hired agencies to recruit and payfor presences on campuses, in malls and at events. Mostof them simply rock up to score credits on their resume.Others need the money. When the proposition is rightmoney and resume credits don’t even enter the equation - they do it because they love doing this anyway and htebrand simply gives them better tools to achieve theirsocial objectives. Like many kinds of humanrelationships, once money enters a relationship it opensup issues of power, control, and trust. Not exactly thekind of things you want on the table early on in arelationship. So, how did Ford control what was beingsaid? The short answer: it didn’t.http://mobileyouth.org Page 36

“Were the curators. Its up to the agents to create their content - and post it on their own sites, not on ours,” said Monty.Indeed, Ford’s Fiesta Movement’s official website only gathered content that the agents created and scattered allover the internet. Of course, there is an element of risk;what if the cars turned out to be lemons and agents bad-mouth the brand? Fortunately for Ford the autos arereasonably sound so recurring glitches were not an issuebut this still doesn’t pre-empty any PR timebombs thatcould occur from letting youth loose on your brand. It’s when Ford turns from content creation to contentcuration that risk self-mitigates.You see, the program was never meant to highlight thecar. It was meant to highlight the social context of thecar. While a small part of the market might be interestedin the technical specs of the vehicles, most people weremore interested in how the car would blend into theirlives. This realization was what lead Ford to its hands-off approach. When the story is about them not the brandwhy would agents like Maria risk everything by makingthemselves look stupid? There is no “evil brand” to flip the royal finger at here - this is about them.“The whole process has been very organic, warm and fuzzy, and not at all pushy or forced,” said Maria. “I’m not a ‘money’ person and I have no idea if this will helpFord’s bottom line in the end when it comes to selling cars but I can tell you that from professional perspectivethat this has got to be one of the most brilliantcampaigns ever. It fully engages us as ambassadorshttp://mobileyouth.org Page 37

without us being hardcore sales people. We are notrequired to yap about the Fiesta constantly and we canpretty much say whatever we want. The only thingwe’re not allowed to do in our videos is shoot something stupid — ie, driving without a seat belt, that sort ofthing. Ford took a great risk in putting these cars in ourhands.”What if Ford played it safe by doing what everybodyelse had always done? “Safe” does not mean guaranteed returns like it used to. In youth marketing today,playing it safe is the riskiest thing you can do.Rule #2: Be something to somebody* Earned Media is not about getting elected but focusingon a core of fans who care* Focus on which of the 3 groups of change agents aremost relevant to your brand message* Create Influence by creating a relevant Social Spacefor your targeted peer groupIt’s one thing managing the risk of agents producing negative content but what about the possibility of themproducing no content at all? How many times have weseen corporate ghostships ply the oceans of Second Lifeor brand-centric social networks within months of themulti-million dollar launch?Marketing fails when the tail wags the dog. Whenmarketing is created to fulfil the needs of theorganization it becomes focused on big hits, Big Ideas,silver bullets and locking down uncertainty to managehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 38

returns. Uncertainty is almost always a byword for anykind of customer interaction.In the restaurant business, the organizational needs ofoutlets often determine the structure of its marketing.The McDonald’s success formula is QSC&V (Quality,Service, Cleanliness and Value) - not taste. Take a drivealong a US highway and the golden arches areinescapable and often visible for miles. The McDonald’s franchise relies heavily on securing prime real estate.When overheads are this high the franchise can’t take risks - it needs to guarantee the slimmest of margins tostay profitable and everything needs to be segmentedand systemized to ensure risk is squeezed out of thedelivery.When the marketed becomes dominated by volumeplayers who excel at mitigating risk it may appear staid -a few large players who seem to be more comfortablewith their limited competition than to be drawn intoentering an all-out price-war. Real choice may belimited. Customer influence is drowned out by massmarket advertising.In these markets innovative marketing can answer publicneed but not through established outlets. It takesinnovators like Kogi - the Vietnamese/Korean/Mexicanfusion food truck operating in South LA. Kogi’s success in drawing in a young hip crowd has spawned countlessimitators because the low overheads and easy point ofmarket entry allowed entpreneurs to hit the marketwhere McDonald’s was weak. McDonald’s marketing is based around fixed real estate. By using Twitter tohttp://mobileyouth.org Page 39

promote its movements, Kogi could free itself from theyoke of staid innovation and fill the gaps left by theincumbents. Search the words “Kogi Food Truck” on YouTube, and you’ll see videos of people standing in long line ups even before the food truck arrived.The key to Kogi’s success in drumming up custom in the saturated markets of South LA hasn’t been in the technology it used (sure that was a key component inmaking it happen) but it was using that technology tocreate influence. Kogi’s success lay in its fans. Los Angeles is a heterogeneous city with a large migrantcommunity open to new and different experiences likefusion food. LA is also a city of concrete built for carswith highway upon highways, sometimes stacked on topof each other. What the city needed was more SocialSpaces, more pop up communities and less of themonolithic offering they could get elsewhere.Kogi fans documented their experiences and foodreviews, regularly posting them on YouTube. They alsotweeted and retweeted the truck’s movements turningcorporate PR into a social event. For the fans, buyingfusion tacos became less about the taco and more aboutwhat the taco did for them - provide an opportunity tomeet up with friends. In a world where time wasincreasingly becoming a scarce commodity and whereMcDonald’s could deliver your a filter coffee in 2 minutes or a Big Mac in 3, being “stuck” in the lineup with your friends became an anomaly. This wasn’t about concrete highways and risk-free efficiency but the Socialhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 40

Space Kogi fans were searching for. The longer thequeue, the more valuable the social space became.Of course, most people were time-pressed and had toscurry back to their offices before the end of lunch hourbut then Kogi wasn’t targeting “most people”. Like Ford, Kogi took a brave decision to not be everything toeverybody but something to somebody.Taking the first step means realizing that being #2 nolonger counts and that in this world of no-compromizefans don’t want to settle for second best. By trying to win market share rather than share of customer you endup becoming a mediocre offer that people like but don’t love enough to talk about. When Earned Mediadetermines the success and failure of brands you can nolonger rely on this strategy.Understanding what people love is a game changer. Theword “love” itself is the uncomfortable elephant in the room when it comes to marketing because we don’t like talking about deep rooted emotional feelings - especiallywith strangers. But, the reality today is that winninginfluence means getting over these hangups andinvesting time in really understanding your customers.What drives them? How do they interact? What are theiremotional attachments to your brand? What do theylove? What are their social needs?I’ve put together an outline of the 3 key fan groups in the youth segment to help you make that transition fromeverybody to somebody:http://mobileyouth.org Page 41

1) Teenage Pirates* Belonging and the fear of being left out are key driversfor teens* Teenage Pirates are outliers who emphasize skill andknowledge to hack brands and products* Teenage Pirates influence peers by finding better waysto use existing productsTo understand teenagers look at their relationship withthe mobile phone. US youth own their first phonearound age 13. In Europe they’re getting them much earlier (as early as 8 yrs in North Europe).Technically, teens remain adept in mobile use at thebasic operational level. They’ll skip the incumbent protocol of usage and use it they way they want to (notthe way it says in the manual). As social circles expand,the mobile phone becomes an intrinsic tool within theirgrowing network - address book contacts and Facebookfriends lists grow as a moniker of social worth. Thosewithout friends are seen as outsiders or simply put not“in”. Social exclusion for many teens is a fate worse than death. It’s a simile not used lightly;; teens will experiment with lethal substances (such as tobacco) justto be “in”.The premium placed on Social Tools compels a subsetof teens to experiment with these tools to make themdeliver more Social Currency. From “discovering” SMS and txtspk to corrupting BBM, mobile phone fascias orexploring filesharing it’s the Teenage Pirates who have been at the forefront of evolution in mobile technology.http://mobileyouth.org Page 42

From high school to homes, the typical teenager lives ina highly structured environment. This type ofenvironment molds even the most diverse groups ofpeople into a homogenous one, much to the displeasureof those in it. After all, late teenage years are that periodof life when one looks to define one’s self.This search for social significance drives some to joinafter school sports activity, the traditionally mosteffective way to gain social currency. Others followtheir own strengths and skills. If you’re interested in baseball history you could gain social currency by beingresident baseball expert, the guy to go to when you wantto know anything about baseball. If you’re into music, you can gain social currency by becoming an expert inthat. Or if you’re into graffiti, or the occult, or anything at all. Expertise creates social currency and, with that,influence.Teenage Pirates possess a different kind of expertise -innovation. They hack stuff. We’re not talking abouthacking into government mainframes here but oftensimple, innocuous incidences of innovation from“rooting” and android phone to remixing a ringtone that allow the Social Tools to evolve beyond their originalfunction.Teenage Pirates exert influence in many ways: TPs often are the first to innovate new usages and functions for existing products TP influence spreads rapidly within the teen segment. Successful innovations filter through thehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 43

mass market without the need for centralized media authority to accept or recognize the trend TPs influence family by introducing technologies into the household and later educating the family on how to use them - how often do you hear a marketing exec recall the tell of her female daughter using BBM at the dinner table?2) Cashless Innovators* Cashless Innovators are students, often male and havea growing need to establish significance* Cashless Innovators focus on creating alternativesocial economies* Influence is based on innovating unused or abandoneditems and assigning new social meanings - e.g. retro,hipster, Instagram and fixie bike etcAs teenagers mature and enter college their socialnetworks change. Gone are the large inclusive groupsthat divide on male/female lines and in their place aremore fragmented lifestyle based groups built aroundshared interests, beliefs and identifiers such as music.Where teenagers sought belonging over everything else,students also seek status. They don’t just want to belong to the group, they want to be something within thatgroup. That’s why peer groups fracture from being the monolithic mass into smaller ones where individuals canplay a significant role.The key distinction of student lifestyle is an excess oftime and restriction of money. Student’s seek status buthttp://mobileyouth.org Page 44

they don’t have the economic means to demonstrate arrival in the same way their older peers would.Consequently, it’s left to the Cashless Innovators - thechange agent subset of the student category - to eek outinnovative corruptions of existing Social Tools to inferstatus on the owner.Cashless Innovators are the backpackers of the youthmarket - they were the ones who sought out Maya Bayin Kho Phi Phi Lee, Thailand in movies like The Beach.Unlike Teenage Pirates they’re not looking to break thesystem, they’re seeking an alternative. That’s why the Social Tools adopted by CIs are often old, discardedtools that have little mass market worth enabling them tobe reborn, reinvented through a few hacks and patchesthat are beyond the knowledge repertoire of oldergenerations.CIs created fixie bikes (or scrapers as they are known inthe US) - old rusty fixed gear bikes that often have nobrakes. They’d take them from the junk yard, color them in bright, garish colors and ride them aroundtown. Rather than look forward they distinguishthemselves from teenagers by sourcing their materialfrom history - such as trucker hats and vintage t-shirtsback in the early 2000’s before Ashton Kutcher madethem a fashion item.Cashless Innovators derive Social Currency fromabandoned Social Toosl by recreating their meaning.Old rusty bikes become the symbol of cool. Vintagefilters on their mobile phone photographs become abetter way of sharing than the latest high-def DSLRs. Ifhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 45

you don’t “get it”, you’re “out”. That’s why outsiders see CI innovation as awkward, sometimes more focusedon winning attention than anything readily practical.They speak of ‘Hipsters’ in the pejorative grouping a whole bunch of lifestyle tweaks into one package. But,for those living on the inside, it’s different - these are allmicrosymbols that strive to keep the outsiders on theoutside. If it was easily discerned, less obscure andsimpler to understand - it wouldn’t work.As the Cashless Innovator tries he find out who he is bytrying on different things and different ways to look atlife his peers look to him for answers. In the ongoingquest for self-discovery, CIs lead opinion, shape trendsand form a key line of influence in today’s marketing.Many brands, however, only see the tail end. They jumpon the bandwagon once these things have become atrend or hire trendhunters to go source the latest, coolesthappening from the street only to find that, by the timethey reach the boardroom, CIs have moved on. Whatthey don’t see is the force that propels CIs to innovate in the first place - defining an alternative social reality.Once brands hijack the scene, the alternative becomesmainstream.There are brands, however, that understand that theEarned Media game is a long-term play. These are thebrands that don’t have to chase trends because they’ve been unofficially adopted as partners by the CashlessInnovators. We will address these examples later on.http://mobileyouth.org Page 46

3) Disruptive Divas* Disruptive Divas are often female and college age orolder* Disruptive Divas favor social tools that representsymbols of the establishment (e.g. Louis Vuitton orDad’s Blackberry phone)* In societies where the role of females have changedradically in the last generation (e.g. India, South Africa,Indonesia), this group of change agents are most visibleand place a high premium on symbols of belongingAs students mature, society takes hold. The first job, thefirst home and late nights at the office. Social circlesshrink rapidly. It’s at this point, the key differencesbetween male/female and developed/developing marketsbegins to manifest because it’s here that the freedoms afforded to teens and students yield to the widereconomic realities facing young adults.Even though this is the 21st century, it’s still harder for women to establish themselves in the workplace than itis for men. That’s why young women pay greater attention to the Social Tools that facilitate status withinthe workplace as opposed to those that work outside.Women strive harder to achieve titles and recognition socompensate by purchasing readily visible status symbolssuch as handbags and shoes.Few countries can claim unilateral economic equality forwomen, that’s why you’ll find the Disruptive Divas inevery market. This group of change agents are typicallyin their 20s and almost always females (although wehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 47

have seen male examples but the drivers manifest verydifferently).The worst thing you can do for this group is market tothem as females - the “Pink Phone Syndrome” as we call it. Sure, you need to account for the fact they are womenbut you can’t patronize them by inferring that the key requirements for women are that the model should be inpink. DDs are attracted to the symbols of theestablishment - particularly in developing markets.While many may argue that females in developingmarkets now have equality of opportunity, pointing tothe first Indian female PM in 1966 and the first femalehead of state in Indonesia 35 years later in Indonesia,let’s not forget that these “role models” wouldn’t have achieved anything without their powerfulfathers/husbands who were also once heads of state.Real emancipation is still very far away, that’s why they’ll seek out “dad’s phone” (the Blackberry) thanwhat marketers would have them believe as coolbecause they’re more driven by recognition as economic players than the need to pigeon-hole them as cool youth.They’ll also attribute more value to Social Tools that reflect the establishment and heritage - e.g. LouisVuitton rather than those that infer cool such as Nike.DDs are disruptive by the very nature of their disruptionof social convention. DDs don’t conform to the centuries-old tradition of how a young girl shouldbehave. She’s 25 years old, unmarried and seeking acareer. Unlike the Teenage Pirates and their systemangst or Cashless Innovators and their quest for anhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 48

alternative system Disruptive Divas want to become partof the system. They aspire to belong in the mainstream.Disruptive Divas generate significant Earned Mediabecause they’re masters of networking and they naturally like to share information about their lives. Therest of the women in the same age group look toDisruptive Divas as compasses as to how to make theirpurchases.An important note to marketers: if you’re selling a product by directly aiming at the female segment andthink that you can get Disruptive Divas onboard as ameans to generate Earned Media, thinkagain. Disruptive Divas are attracted to symbols ofpower and arrival that are traditionally not reserved forthem. They gravitate toward luxury brands and brandsthat are aimed at male executives.Don’t expect Disruptive Divas to generate Earned Media for your laundry detergent Facebook campaign.…Teenage Pirates, Cashless Innovators, and DisruptiveDivas are all very different. Each subset has itscharacteristics, motivations and interaction. Their sharedqualities aren’t their need for “cool”, “fun” or “personalization” as tech marketers so often put it buttheir fundamental need for Social Space and the SocialTools that help them get there.The “cool”, “fun” and “personalization” approach to youth is the product of marketing that tries to behttp://mobileyouth.org Page 49

everything to everybody. Sure, you’ll get awareness. Sure, they’ll like you but if your young customers like you be afraid - be very afraid. Being something tosomebody is about love. What do these change agentslove and how can you add value to their social needs?We have to get passionate about their needs and startunderstanding the social Context in which thesedynamics take place. This isn’t a quick fix which is why so many brands try to fudge or fake it. This brings us tothe 3rd rule of influence...Rules #3: You can’t hurry love* Creating sustainable Influence is a long term endeavor* Highly influential brands like Apple have built theirfan base over 20 years* Brands need a long term vision to build Social Spacefor future fans rather than pandering to short term andurgent organizational needsFans of a brand don’t just like a brand. They loveit. They talk about it. They defend the brand if it’s attacked in public. They think about the brand evenwhen they’re not in contact with it. They like thingsabout the brand that they know nothing about. This waswhy products like iPhone5 could get more than 71,000likes on its Facebook fanpage, even though it was stillmore than a month prior to the rumored product launchdate and no one had actually seen the actual product yet.Much like human relationship, when a person loves abrand the brand becomes an integral part of theirhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 50

lives. And much like human relationship, real love takestime.One of the biggest hurdles companies in creatinginfluence is internal; most corporate cultures feed offinstant results and as the rule says - you can’t hurry love. We’ve seen brands invest heavily in building intricate profiles of their young customer base only to, at the lastminute, be seduced by a creative agency pitch and goand blow all their good work on an expensive socialmedia ad campaign. Why? Because influence takes timeand time tests the resolve of even the strongest marketer.It’s easy to capitulate against the pressure of next quarter’s earnings bearing down upon you and capitulating means handing over your marketing budgetto the agency with a resigned “here, take this problem away from me.”Marketers need to have faith. Ford Fiesta movementdidn’t start in the year of launch 2011 but back in 2008. Ford simply created an environment for the long term totake seed. Some crtics questioned the decision,wondering if it was too early and whether or not Fordcan keep the momentum going until launch.Similarly, internal critics within brands like BlackBerryfrom Research in Motion (RIM) prevent the companyfrom building out on the Beachhead of Influence inmarkets like Indonesia, India, and South Africa becauseall the corporate results needed to be yesterday. If RIMcan create an environment - a separate project teamperhaps - that can build out these lines of influence longhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 51

term then RIM has a role to play in the future of themobile handset market. Right now, the corporate edictsfrom Waterloo Canada reflect a growing sense ofimmediacy that the answer lies not in long termsustainable change but in silver bullets. RIM has justannounced 7 new handsets to compliment its existingrange within a year of its ill-fated Playbook launch.It’s funny that the only incidence of a Playbook being used in public by youth seen by any of our team waswhen our founder Graham Brown saw a student usingone at Amsterdam airport. The student in question wasquite obviously Indonesian (Indonesia has stronghistorical ties with the Netherlands and many studentsstudy there). Perhaps RIM missed a trick here because ithad an existing line of influence with IndonesianDisruptive Divas that it ignored. It’s easy to forsake what you have right in front of you when you areseduced by the alchemy of analysts and creativeagencies who seek to undermine your own corporateconfidence by telling you that you are not enough.Blackberry could be a great brand if it built on thisinfluence and took time in doing so. If Blackberrylistens to creative agency pulp that suggest social mediacampaigns or design agencies yammer on about SteveJobs then it will end up sacrificing its strength formediocrity.Brands often lose their way - it’s part of the growth cycle that blights so many successful companies. It’s at these times of lost direction that brands need fans toreinstigate momentum and to keep the brand alive.During its 80-year history, Converse sold 170 millionhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 52

pairs of the black canvas sneaker with white rubber sole- the Chuck Taylor All-Stars - in 144 countries. Yet, by2001 the company had filed for bankruptcy only to berescued by the unlikeliest of suitors - Nike - in 2003.Converse had a long tradition of market influence - herewas a brand once worn by Larry Bird, Dr. J, ElvisPresley, Magic Johnson and Kurt Cobain because itstood for something and had built that brand story overthe long term.The undeground punk rock scene bought into Conversebecause it also stood for the anti-establishment. Herewas a basic shoe canvas that could be co-opted andrecreated with a simple Sharpie permanent marker. Thewhite canvas became storyboard for expression forwannabe Kurt Cobains.Interestingly, Converse’s fanbase was a sleeper hit for Nike. When Nike bought the brand out of bankruptcy itdid so on the basis of its basketball heritage as opposedto its punk fan base. But, as often the story goes, it wasthe latterly discovered line of influence that turned itinto a success story.Rather than push the basketball heritage, Nike began togear its marketing focus towards the undergroundpunk/skateboard scene and supporting fledgling musicacts. Converse’s new spirit of intentional rebuttal against overindulgence resonated with a new generation ofstudents who became sensitive to a new economicreality of compromize. New terms like “staycation” and “frugalistas” were coined. Converse reacted to thechange in the market in the best way possible. While ithttp://mobileyouth.org Page 53

spread its distribution to make it accessible to morepeople, it continued to focus its marketing on itsfans. In 2011, Converse opened a free recording studiocalled Rubber Tracks in Brooklyn to help new emergingartists gain access to resources they may not have beenable to afford.In the traditional Paid Media vernacular, recordingstudios do not create awareness. But then Conversedoesn’t want awareness it’s seeking to engage its fans.By focusing on this core group of fans, Converse gains anumber of different advantages. It had a solid group of people to continue to promote the brand, even when the brand was not putting money into new campaigns. By looking at how its fans modified the shoes, Converse also knew the types of design that customers were looking for in their next shoe models. Converse also had a sounding board to test out new ideas to see what would work as it reentered new markets. This worked out well for the company, as it started staging a comeback in Asia. The company found an even more militant base of fans there. It’s not strange to find Converse fans in Asia who were so into the brand that they would collect every color combination of the Chuck Taylor All Stars.http://mobileyouth.org Page 54

Hunting vs. Farming fansWhen in 1998 Apple release the iMac, it gained asignificant press buzz over its approach to design, withApple declaring, “the back of our computer looks betterthan the front of anyone else’s.” Apple continued tomake headlines over its design and user-focusedinterface as it began its long march to occupy themarket’s mindshare. It released products thatcontinually redefined the market: iPod, iPad, and ofcourse the iPhone. By 2011, the company was namedthe most valuable company in the world, usurpingGoogle.While many companies tried to follow in Apple’s footsteps what they missed was that Apple’s success did not only come from its product designs. It also largelycame from the company’s approach to finding the love of its fans.Apple did this through a multitude of approaches, theunderlying theme being the same: give your fans thesocial space they need and they’ll use it to show theirlove for you.Turn Retail Stores into Social Spaces Apple created temporary social spaces for its fans through programs like turning its Apple Stores into an Instagram Gallery or by fueling fans dialogue through the Mac vs. PC debate that enraptured the citizens of geekdom.http://mobileyouth.org Page 55

Train Future Fans Apple Camp teaches kids how to make movies and music, training a generation to believe that Apple is the number one tool for the creatives. Apple also trained teachers to use their softwareShare of Market vs Share of Customer While the main competitor focused on getting a computer into every home, Apple focused on making the best computer for every home it was already in. Apple’s rising dominance in the mobile market in the last stretch of the 2000’s was a result of not just avoiding being everything to everybody, but also from consistently being something significant to somebody.All of these approaches take time and vision. Time is thecost of making them happen. Vision gives people thefaith to believe it’s the right thing to do. Vision preventsfallout and marketers scurrying back to their creativeagency with their marketing budget on the plate.Like any relationship, with Earned Media, you can’t hurry love. You can only prepare for it. CEOs need tocreate the right environment for love to take hold.Rule #4: Learning to let go* Brand influence isn’t a product of marketing strategy or creative agency genius but brand culture* Influence today stems from a company culture thatembraces the brand innovators (often hackers andhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 56

teenagers) rather than viewing them as a threat* You no longer own your brand - it’s owned by the fans. Influence comes from becoming its custodianrather than managerSince its humble dorm-room beginnings in 2004,Facebook has become what some dub The SecondInternet. The founder became one of the youngestbillionaires in the world. The company has captured theimagination of so many people that they made a movieabout it. The movie was nominated for eight Oscars andwon three.While many factors undoubtedly came into play increating Facebook’s success, perhaps none was more important than the fact that the company’s culture allowed it to hire people like Chris Putnam.In 2005, Chris and his two friends worked on a series ofhacks and pranks on Facebook. They did a number ofdifferent things from creating a worm that postedrandom messages on friend’s walls, like “Hey, nice shoes,” to changing the Facebook layout so that it looked like Facebook’s more popular competitor MySpace.Soon enough, fixes for the worm started rolling in fromFacebook and Chris was contacted by an inquisitveDustin Moskovitz - one of Facebook’s co-founders. Instead of a cease-and-desist message, Chrisreceived a friendly one instead, and it led to a back-and-forth between the two which led to Chris receiving a joboffer from the company.http://mobileyouth.org Page 57

To put into the job offer into context, Putnam’s incident happened not long after a similar incident happened withMySpace. Like Putnam an amateur hacker hadpenetrated the site’s code thus alerting the managementteam. The hacker receives a “friendly” email from the MySpace team invited him in to discuss his findingsfurther. At LAX airport, believing himself to be on hisway for a job interview at MySpace, the unwittinghacker was surrounded by cops and arrested.Putnam was well aware of this precedent and theinvitation from Facebook’s Moskowitz was naturally greeted with a high degree of suspicion. Was thisanother trap? After all, what was the difference betweenMySpace and Facebook?It turns out that the although MySpace and Facebook areboth social networks and were both bootstrapped fromthe early days, their similarities end there. WhereMySpace was intent on controlling the brand experienceFacebook adopted an altogether different attitude. WhenPutnam finally agreed to his “job interview” he was relieved to find this was no ambush. Within 3 days, hewas working with the team.On face value, they are the same but when it comes toculture, the two brands are worlds apart. For Facebook,hackers aren’t a threat to the business but part of it. Facebook thrives on maverick thinkers; theyregularly run like the Hackathon—where students andyoung engineers were given a chance to win a game bycompleting a series of increasingly challenging hacks.From letting go of the brand and embracing the hackers,http://mobileyouth.org Page 58

Facebook not only opens itself to the innovators oftomorrow, they also source valuable insights.Hackathons produced the all-important “Like” button as well as many other widely used features.Culture isn’t just the soft underbelly of the brand, it is the brand. To create influence you need to create aculture that allows influence to grow from the grassroots. This stuff can’t be manufactured. In terms of product MySpace and Facebook were the same thing.What distinguished them was culture and the results areevident for all to see.Letting go may be easier if you are a start up or arelatively small brand so can global brands really let goof their brand pretensions? How about a brand valued at$500 billion like Google? Surely, this has to be one ofthe most recognizable brands in the world today. Can“letting go” co-exist comfortably with superstar status?It appears it can. Those in the mobile and internetindustry are undoubtedly familiar with Google Camp forTechies aimed at college-bound students that have aknack for computers and are planning for a career incomputer science. More recently Google had turned andfocused such camps on the Droidettes.Since the first of Google’s Android phones wereapproved by the FCC in 2008, the Android OS hadbecome one of the most adopted operating systems formobile phones in the world. Android had become sucha big success in such a short period that in August 2011,the Federal Trade Commission began looking intohttp://mobileyouth.org Page 59

whether or not the Google had breached any antitrustissues.Android’s quick rise into prominence would have been difficult if Google hadn’t done all it can to understand the mobile market. It was a foray into a relatively newmarket for Google. The company understood that if ithad relied only on the experts that it had—of which thecompany had many—it could not truly understand themarket quick enough nor reliable enough. Thus, enteredthe Droidettes.Droidettes - teenage girls who develop apps. Googleinvites them in to the Google campus to experiment,play and develop. Not only is Google training ageneration of future developers it’s also building its fanbase one teenage girl at a time.Fear of Losing ControlApple, Google and Facebook are all brand successstories because the size of their brand hasn’t been a function of their advertising budget. In many cases,they’ve built influence organically, over the long term and one customer at a time. In all cases it’s been marketing pull over marketing push. They “pull” the market into their organization - whether it be the officeor the stores - rather than “push” their ideas out on to the market.Push is a control based marketing strategy. Push meansdefending and protecting the brand to ensure that themarket interferes with this story as little as possible.Push means defining and following a clear marketinghttp://mobileyouth.org Page 60

trajectory that’s been tried and tested for generations.The problem with push is, however, that fans willalways want to interfere because they want to tell theirown story. Look at the amount of fan fiction thatsurrounds television series like Star Trek. Trekkies havedeveloped such a complex mythology around the StarTrek push reality that practically every character hasnumerous versions of rich back stories. They takeartifacts of the television serial’s story - like the Klingonlanguage - and invest years into to creating new SocialTools with it, like using the Klingon language totranslate the Bible and all of Shakespeare’s work. Go Google it yourself - they exist.The question is - like Facebook do you try to fight these“hackers” because they’re interfering with your brand story or do you try to play with them? When GeorgeLucas produced the last three prologues of the Star Warsfranchise fans took vocal issue with the movies. Google“Jar Jar Binks must die” and you’ll find over 45,000 pages referencing fan dissent with Lucas’ newestcharacter Jar Jar Binks imported into the prologues as anaddition to the original story. Sometimes you just haveto sit back and let the real brand custodians look afterthe brand. You are simply the curator now. Messingwith the brand is a potential powder keg of negativepublicity. When Star Wars fans released “The People vs George Lucas” featuring countless scenes from the original recut and recast by fans in everything fromclaymation to costumed re-enactments they were doingso because Lucas was managing the brand against theirbeliefs about what the brand should be. Fans didn’t care http://mobileyouth.org Page 61

that Lucas directed the original Star Wars trilogy - it wastheir story now.With a continuous decline in the number of femaleundergrad pursuing computer science degrees from 40%in the 80’s to just below 12% today Google knows that in every aspect of society that a brand touches there areuntold stories - people who see things differently andpeople who feel aggrieved that their story is not beingtold. Google did it by empowering minorities within theindustry. Lucas should have done it by first appreciatingthat there was a group of fans who had a very strongemotional attachment with his work.Managing the brand means restricting what fans donaturally - influence. Push means silencing thesedialogues through loudspeaker style marketing. Pullmeans stepping back and letting these conversationshappen with your support - giving them Social Tools toconnect with each other and ideas to share.…But what if you’re not Google or Facebook? What ifyou’re a century old company with 54,000 employees and with a mountain of debt? It’s a question that a company like Ford might have asked itself. Paying$1.5Billion just in debt interest alone in 2009, this was acompany that many other priorities before it can startthinking about Earned Media.One of the key challenges a company will face instarting into the world of Earned Media is from withinhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 62

the company itself. Ford addressed this by bringing inthe right people for the job.Jim Farley headed Toyota’s Scion line -another youthcar success story -before he was brought in to leadFord’s marketing and communication. Fiesta was oneof his first challenges. Having brought back the results,his concerns are now in replicating this success withother lines of Ford’s products.At the end of the day, its the people in the company thatwill make-or-brake the jump into Earned Media. It’s the people after all that creates the company’s culture because the culture is the people. If you’re an organization run by old creative agency execs or folkfrom the advertising world you’re going to be stuck with a culture of control. Letting go in this sense means morethan just letting go of the brand conversation.Rule #5: Ego kills relationships* Ego is the enemy of relationships, branding andinfluence* Letting go is key to creating space for relationships togrowHow can a company like Nokia win awards for itsdevices on the one hand and still bleed market shareglobally on the other?By the end of July 2011 investors had lost so much faithin the once mighty giant the US rating agency Moody’s cut Nokia’s credit rating to just two notches above junk.http://mobileyouth.org Page 63

To those who’ve followed the company closely, this would not come as a surprise. A mobileYouth SMARTIndex Survey showed that Nokia had lost relevancyamong teens in a number of key markets like theUS. For youth in the older age group the only relevancyNokia had for them was nostalgia. The company clearlymeant something for young people once upon a time butthat meaning has slowly eroded.“We had Nokia fans for some of our models,” a Nokia marketing exec once admitted, “but they’ve become ‘haters’ now.”“It was because we basically ignored them.”The exec quickly added, “Well, the guys before us did.We’re on the ball now.”It seems that in some markets, Nokia had realized that itneeded to take a different approach. It needed to startfocusing on people - its fans specifically - rather thantechnology. In key Asian countries, Nokia wascommitted enough to a different approach to marketingthat in the last year changing more than 80% of itsmarketing department personnel.Gaining - or in the case of Nokia regaining - EarnedMedia will take time. Nokia didn’t lose the recommendation of youth overnight and it won’t regain it by next quarter. Jobs retuned to Apple in 1996. It was2001 before he launched the groundbreaking iPod thuspaving the way for the iPhone and later the iPad.http://mobileyouth.org Page 64

Similarly, Nokia’s ills won’t be solved by a creative agency silver bullet. Nor will they be able to addresstheir product portfolio with the wave of IDEO’s magic wand. It’s going to take hard graft and years to turnaround. That requires faith and vision.Brand turnarounds also require CEOs to lose thecorporate ego. Nobody likes to be world ruler oneminute and has-been the next following in the footstepsof a much cooler upstart who caught you by surprise.Ego means hanging on to the brand story or refusing tohear the harsh reality that kids think your products suck.It’s not easy when you’ve spent your whole career investing time and effort into those products only forsome unqualified and ungrateful teen punk to puncturethe brand bubble with an unhealthy dose of reality.The most important rule to keep in mind in the EarnedMedia game is that it’s always about other people not you. This is the underlying rule on which all the otherrules are founded. A focus on people instead oftechnology or protecting the organization itself is whatmakes brands like Apple attractive to people like TrevorMoran aka. iTr3vor.At 12 years old, Trevor Moran’s YouTube channel had more than 43,000 subscribers. His video posts fetchmore than 1.5 million views. His more popular postsfeature him dancing and lip syncing to pop songs in themiddle of an Apple Store. If you happened to be in thestore during one of his performances, it would be nearimpossible to miss it. Some of those in the store chooseto ignore him, some shoot him dirty looks, others joinhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 65

in. What would you do? Is he part of your “vision” for the brand? Does he fit into the story or simply confuseit? In most cases, Apple staff let Trevor do this ownthing because it’s the fan story as much as their own. George Lucas discovered this at cost to his professionalcredibility. Apple staff also know that they need peoplelike Trevor to pay their wages because he is theirinformal marketing department.Trevor is an Apple fan. While the fact that Appleemployees let him perform in Apple stores helpedTrevor spread his love for the brand to his followers inits focus on people, Apple did more than just that.Apple avoided the Big Idea brand story. Apple alsomanaged to avoid the trap that many other companieshad fallen into: identifying customer stories and thenincorporating them into an advertising campaign—usually involving a celebrity or a mock impromptu man-on-the-street comment about the brand. Apple had madethe brand into a necessary tool for its fans to tell theirstories.This is why Apple has so many fans and this is why it’s hard for other brands to follow Apple’s footsteps. Stand in line in any of long queue of people waiting forthe next iPhone launch, and you’ll find that these people talk about design, art, life in general, and only very littleabout Apple or Steve Jobs. While Trevor uses the prefix“i” in front of his online persona, the content ofiTr3vor’s video posts are mostly a sublimation of his ambition to become a performance artist. Even thosehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 66

people who’ve gone so far as to tattoo themselves with the Apple logo are fans not because of the brand stories,but because of the brand’s ability in helping them tell their stories. A brand’s ability to integrate itself into its fans’ telling of their own tales is what creates Earned Media.For Earned Media to work a brand has to look at itsrelationship with its customers like a man would look athis relationship with his wife in a marriage. While opencommunication and commitment is important, one of thekey things in a successful marriage is about throwingyour ego out the window.Branding efforts are often ego stroking exercises for thebrand, its executives and its agencies.“This is our story, aren’t we great?”You don’t tell your husband or wife you’re great do you? (You wait for them to tell you!) Ego has a way ofclogging your ears from listening to your fans and fillingyour mouth with bravado such that even when you’re in dialogue with your fans all you’re really saying is, “That’s wonderful, but you know what’s really great? ME!”A friend once confided in me his secret to a successfulmarriage. The spirit of his adage would work well ingenerating Earned Media.“My formula is simple,” he said. “Happy wife, happy life.”http://mobileyouth.org Page 67

Keeping fans happy works.Apple has plenty of happy fans because it helps themtell their story. Ford also applies this approach to sellingauto and it works; 60% of Fiesta are now the 5 doorhatchback (the model used in the FFM) rather than thesedan sales into that of the five-door, 97% of those whoexpressed an interest in buying Ford didn’t own one and most importantly and sales continue to outperform therest in class.http://mobileyouth.org Page 68

SMART - Simple Mobile AdvocacyRecommendation Tracker* You can’t create influence without metrics that measure it* We’ll look at an example of how simple metrics canbe used to identify influencers and measure the impactof marketing on influence* We’ve used SMART for mobile brands - it can equallybe applied to any sectorAs the old McKinsey adage goes, “What’s measured,gets done.” The key challenge in generating Earned Media is findinga way to measure your efforts. Most metrics are eithertoo convoluted (e.g. agency “brand equity” type measures that measure multi-dimensional aspects ofbranding), too short term focused (e.g. market share, netadditions) or just plain irrelevant (e.g. awareness,expressions of interest and “top of mind” surveys). For a metric to work successfully we laid down a set ofcriteria as prerequisites: Simple - You should be able to go out and measure this metric yourself without having to commission agencies to run surveys for you Clear - metric had to measure one aspect (Recommendation) and offer a clear gauge in response to company market activityhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 70

 Attitudinal not Historical - metric had to measure future activity rather than past dataThere are a number of suitable metrics out there - netpromoter score, online promoter score, trust quotientsetc. These are all usable and have their own strengthsand weaknesses. SMART index is modelled on thesemetrics as they all share a common theoretical basis.While the Simple Mobile Advocacy & RecommendationTracker (SMART) Index was developed specifically forthe mobile industry, the principles can be applied toother industries as well. Powerfully simple, the resultsof recommendation as measured by the SMART Indexare strongly correlated to changes in share of marketprofit.Handset brands that successfully increased theirrecommendation (SMART) scores also saw an increasein their share of market profit as a % share. For example,Apple’s SMART Index recommendation score for youth increased just under 50% over a period of 2 years whileits share of total market profits has similarly increased50%.Having completed the survey in four continents (Asia,Europe, Africa, and the Americas) a number ofinteresting questions emerge for the mobileindustry. Rather than produce all the data from theSMART index surveys (this is not a report after all)we’ll share with you the key findings that arise and use these as examples of the kind of questions abouthttp://mobileyouth.org Page 71

influence you can derive from running recommendationbased research on your market.How is Apple winning the Teenmarket in the USA?* SMART shows Apple’s recommendation scores with youth were high even when Nokia was in ascendancy* Apple’s most vocal fans in the USA are increasingly younger* Apple’s focus on training teens has created a generation of Teenage Pirates who continue torecommend Apple highlyApple is the most recommended mobile brand by youth.Market share started small and increased over time. Inthe beginning, many pundits wrote off their challengegiven they only occupied 4% of the total volume ofmarket share compared to Nokia at over 30%.It was Apple’s strategy of building their market onecustomer at a time that completely disarmedcompetition; many looked at Apple as a bit-part playerclaiming their challenge to be of little concern to themajor incumbents. What Apple achieved in the USprovides useful case study insight into how brands canuse recommendation and manage risk to createunassailable market positions.Apple’s key strength was its ability to think long term. Branding takes time. If you look at the key componentsof its Earned Media success you will see that all werecreated with the long term in mind:http://mobileyouth.org Page 72

 Apple Genius Bar - a team of enthusiastic helpers who operate the Apple Stores. Highly trained and highly motivated this crew of dedicated employees may fail to make the cut in other brands as they cost money to maintain but at Apple they drive front line recommendation and also source invaluable customer insights for the internal product and marketing teams. Apple Education Policies - from in-school K-12 policies to in-store Summer Camps, Apple has invested in low-spending customers (youth) who may not be making any significant purchases for a number of years but it understands that training the next generation today is key to its success tomorrow.The second aspect of Apple’s Earned Media success is how it handles the hackers. For an organization builtheavily on proprietary control, it has done well toaccommodate change agents who seek to innovate andcorrupt its own products.Nicholas Allegra aka. Comex is one such Apple fan thathad recently made news. By the age of 18, Nicholas hadalready released the several iterations of his iOSjailbreaking tool—basically a way to remove thelimitations imposed by Apple on devices that run on thecompany’s operating system. By the third iteration,Apple rushed to patch security openings and managed toclose them in just nine days. However, in that period1.4 million people had already used the tool to jailbreaktheir devices.http://mobileyouth.org Page 73

Comex was not the first Teenage Pirate to dothis. When he was 19 years old, George Hotz aka.GeoHot became the first to jailbreak an iPhone. GeorgeHotz was subsequently hired by Google as an internbefore he was accepted in Facebook as an employee.Apple learned its Earned Media lessons the hard way.The initial approach to hackers like GeoHot was to suethem but in the test case Apple vs George Hotz, thejudge struck out the claimant’s argument leaving GeoHot to walk free. Apple lost. Unlike the recordlabels that continue to pursue a policy of cease anddesist on all its detractors, Apple has learned to allowthese hackers to operate within the parameters ofacceptability. Fighting a war against Teenage Pirates canbe both difficult and costly - even if you won, you’d end up ostracizing your future customer base.Apple instead engages these youngsters by inviting themto the Apple Summer Camp. The camp is run byApple’s Geniuses, who had been trained at Apple headquarters. By having these touch points whereTeenage Pirates can engage with the company Applecan stay ahead of the curve by generating Earned Mediawith those who visit the camp along while gainingproduct insights from them.How is SonyEricsson winning theStudent market in Malaysia?* SMART shows that Cashless Innovators adopted theSonyEricsson brand as the Android brand of choicehttp://mobileyouth.org Page 74

* In a conservative market where people buy phones fordurability, Cashless Innovators place emphasis oncosmetic hacks to the phone as a point of difference toestablished brands like Nokia* SonyEricsson needs to support the Malaysian fan baseby creating Social Space to house and facilitateinteractionApple is also finding favor in the developing markets -such as Malaysia. But this is not about Apple, this isabout the brands that are managing to carve out theirown Beachheads without being Apple. SonyEricsson isone such brand.In a market where the majority of handset buyers lookfor reliability as one of the key features, a well-knownbrand like SonyEricsson has an advantage over many ofthe newer market entrants. As Bernard Hor of YouthWorks Asia explained, “Malaysia’s largest mobile market is not in the urban areas. It is in the rural andsuburban areas. The kids there are significantlydifferent than the kids in the urban areas. Malaysiansuburban kids are not really savvy with technology--some of them may not even have a Facebook accountyet. In fact, many of them don’t want to be cutting edge. They just want to blend in. Being special is notsomething they want. That’s why a familiar brand like SonyEricsson is so appealing.”The real strength of SonyEricsson in Malaysia is,however, lays in its appeal to the Cashless Innovatorsegment.http://mobileyouth.org Page 75

“The rural and suburban kids are pretty much insulated from the outside world. That is, until they go touniversity. They would go to universities in the urbanareas, and that’s when everything changes. University isthe first time they realized that just ‘blending in’ doesn’t get you anywhere in life. It won’t get you a girl, and it won’t get you a job. They’re desperate to be different then but they don’t have the resources yet to buy something upclass like an iPhone, so they settle withmodifying whatever they have.”As discussed in Chapter 2, this is of course the birth ofthe Cashless Innovators. The Cashless Innovators tookthe most established brand available to them--for mobileit was SonyEricsson and Nokia--and changed it aroundto suit their needs to be special. Between the twobrands, SonyErisson ended up the winner.SonyEricsson has always had pedigree in music andphotography - two creative disciplines the studentsegment has mined extensively for Social Tools - whichmeans Cashless Innovators are attracted to the brand toseek out ways to use the onboard Android apps todevelop these tools further.Cashless Innovators also intentionally run the risk ofruining their phones by hacking the operating systems.Wherever you find pockets of Teenage Pirates orCashless Innovators using Android in Malaysia you’ll also find small subsets who have discovered AndroidRooting. Again, the information shared by theseinnovators across Facebook pages and forums representsa threat to the traditional brand management approach tohttp://mobileyouth.org Page 76

marketing but to those that can let go, relinquish ego andaccept the reality it represents a real opportunity inEarned Media.While some of the hack are aimed at increasing theperformance of the phones, most of the hacks areessentially cosmetic. “Bricking” - so termed because ifsomething goes wrong, then the handset becomes nomore useful than a brick - changes the visual nature ofphone’s interface. It may appear extreme, but for older Teenage Pirates and the Cashless Innovator segment, theappeal is also a function of the risk.“The kicker is that those kids in the rural and suburban market who are allergic to risk get their trends from theurban areas. They wouldn’t know how to do Rooting nor would they want to. All they know is that their coololder brother and cool seniors in the big city is usingSonyEricsson and that makes them want aSonyEricsson. The brand’s appeal to the few makes itappealing to the mass.”Why are young females drivingBlackberry in the EmergingMarkets?* SMART shows that Blackberry’s Beachhead found in young females* Blackberry’s popularity found strongest in markets where women have traditionally been key drivers insocial change* Disruptive Divas see Dad’s phone as a symbol of http://mobileyouth.org Page 77

status and arrival. They are turned off by marketingapproaches that are overtly female (e.g. pink phones) oryoung (e.g. “Blackberry Boys” in India).In 2010, the worlds brands descended on South Africafor the continents first soccer World Cup showering$1.5 billion on building awareness through advertising.One brand was conspicuous by its absence from thismedia buy fest - Blackberry - a story in itself when youconsider how emerging markets are key to the futuregrowth of mobile handsets. Yet, in the Sunday TimesGeneration Next Brand Survey Awards of the followingyear it was Blackberry not Coke that won the coveted"Coolest Brand Overall" for South Africa.Why?In short, Disruptive Divas. Young, South Africanfemales provided a powerful Beachhead of influence forBlackberry by amplifying recommendation andtweaking the brand story to fit the local market.Although Blackberry is owned across all genders andraces, it’s the Divas who were the key line of market influence that helped the market discover handsets,BBM and BBM groups as well as educate them on theirusage.As with most emerging markets, it is the women whostand at the vanguard of change. Fifty years ago inapartheid South Africa women were the first tochallenge racist "pass laws." Black Africans wererequired to carry a pass that allowed them in designatedhttp://mobileyouth.org Page 78

whites-only areas and while most hated the laws, it wasmostly the women that openly tried to disrupt them.While women have taken places at the top table withmen in Africa, they still face discrimination. Thisgeneration, however, has grown up in a world wherethere was no apartheid, where role models aren’t just those in the local market but available globally. It’s this current generation of Disruptive Divas who feelconfident enough to adopt the symbols and Social Toolsof the establishment - Dad’s Blackberry phone or Louis Vuitton handbags.As Marlon Parker of RLabs in South Africa explained,“the further down the economic ladder you are, the more important symbols of social status becomes. Just take aquick look of the Facebook profile pics of the womenhere, and you’ll see them posing with their BlackBerry prominently displayed. The rest of the population gettheir cues from these women. Now even lower thanmiddle class have a BlackBerry.”Young females are driving the demand for BlackBerryin emerging markets. In these markets, BlackBerrybecomes a runaway success when the operator made theservice more accessible. In Indonesia and India thishappened when operators offered unlimited prepaid datapackages in very affordable chunks--monthly, weekly,even daily packages. In South Africa, it happened whenoperators lowered unlimited prepaid data package to aslow as USD $8 per month.http://mobileyouth.org Page 79

The story of Disruptive Divas and Blackberry is thestory of female emancipation in South Africa, India,Indonesia and a whole series of emerging markets wheremobile phones represent key composites in definingsocial norms and identity. Mobile operator’s role in this is in making the supply affordable and connecting itwith the demand. RIM’s role? Simply to allow it to happen. Recognize that fans have their owninterpretation of the brand story, help them tell it and letgo of managing the narrative.How will Apple and Samsung stealthe youth market from Nokia inRussia?* SMART shows Russia as one of the last maturemarkets where Nokia is still recommended* Nokia’s SMART score is in decline because relevancehas peaked and fans from outside Russia are advocatingother brands (e.g. Apple)* Nokia’s brand strength is being eroded on 2 fronts: reliability (Samsung) and innovation (Apple)Unlike other emerging markets like India, South Africaand Indonesia, government restrictions in Russia havemade Blackberry a non-event. No matter how muchrecommendation fans can generate to support a brand,nothing can overturn the underlying infrastructure.http://mobileyouth.org Page 80

Blackberry’s loss is Nokia’s gain. Nokia still retains a relatively high recommendation score in Russia due tothe absence of its main youth market competitor. But,this is not a given inevitability of Nokia’s long term market position;; Nokia’s SMART index scores are fading fast.Nokia’s strength in Russia is as the “dependable” phone, indicative of a developed markets circa 2005-2008. It’s here Nokia thrives as the first time handset or even thebackup model that youth own either as a handmedown,first purchase or gift. Roman Ravve of Anketki Resarchelaborated, “the young people here carry two, three, or four mobile phones. They might have one for reliability,but have two or three more for show. Most new phonesales come from these ‘life style’ handsets.”Yet, as already discussed their SMART scores arechanging. After Nokia, the brand that young Russiansalso recommend is Apple. While in total number ofsales, Apple’s numbers may seem small, a closer look revealed a different fact. Apple actually had 84% of themarket share in the premium phone market (>25,000rubles). New entrants such as Apple, Samsung andSonyEricsson have made a considerable impression onNokia’s market lead and will continue to do so in a similar manner they eroded competition 2008 to thepresent day.Apple and Samsung continue to grow at the expense ofNokia because they focus on being something tohttp://mobileyouth.org Page 81

somebody rather than everything to everybody. Applefocuses on innovation and nurturing high end fans. Evenbefore the iPhone launched in Russia, local youth hadmade up their mind about owning the product. “If a guy was to give a girl a mobile phone as a gift, it has to be aniPhone,” Roman said. “If you give an iPhone, then you’re giving her something special. Give her any otherhandset brand, and it’s like you’re giving her an appliance.” Samsung now picks up the moniker of reliability from Nokia - no coincidence that this Koreanexporter has made a profitable business out of sellingappliances. Nokia’s customer mindshare is being eroded from both ends of the market - from Apple at the valueend of the market to Samsung at the volume end. Nokiastands exposed in the meaningless middle ground. ***http://mobileyouth.org Page 82

Details on the SMART Index Survey:For the US market, the SMART Index survey was doneonline via CrowdTap. The survey ran from January toFebruary 2011 with 564 respondents, male and female,ages 15-29 years old.The SMART Index survey in Malaysia was conductedwith the help of YouthWorks Asia. The survey wasconducted from January to April 2011, with 1,400respondents, male and females age 15-29 yearsold. SonyEricsson’s high index score for Malaysia was driven by a number of factors.The South Africa SMART Index survey was completedearly 2011, in the months of January and February. Thesurvey covered 1,674 respondents, 15-29 year old maleand females, and was done with the help of RLabs.The SMART Index survey in Russia was completedbetween May and June of 2011, with 307respondents. It was completed with the help of AnketkiResearch.http://mobileyouth.org Page 83

About the Authors Graham Brown has spent his life living and working in both London and Tokyo. A psychology graduate, Graham has focused his marketing career on understanding what influences consumerbehavior a field in which he is due to publish his firstbook in early 2011.As well as speaking at industry conferences on thesubject of young consumers, Graham has appeared onCNBC, Sky News, CNN and BBC as well as in printwith the FT, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal and TheSunday Times. Ghani Kunto is the Business Development Manager for Asia at mobileYouth. He has been involved in the world of youth marketing and education since 2007. He hosted anumber of business talk shows in television and radio.Ghani has ran workshop on marketing in variouscountries in Asia. He currently teaches ConsumerBehavior for Asian Banking Finance Institute in Jakarta,Indonesiahttp://mobileyouth.org Page 84

Contact UsJosh Dhaliwal, Directorjosh.dhaliwal@mobileYouth.orghttp://www.twitter.com/joshdhaliwalUK/Europe: +44 203 286 3635North America: +1 646 867 3635South Africa: +27 11 08 3635 1You can find out more about our work on mobile andyouth research on http://www.mobileYouth.orghttp://mobileyouth.org Page 85

THE MOBILEYOUTH 2013 REPORT youth marketing insights for handset brands, content providers and operators features: 29 reports 400+ pages data, charts, cases mobileYouth: tracking youth & mobile culture since 2001 MOBILEYOUTH youth marketing mobile culture since 2001

THE MOBILEYOUTH 2013 REPORThttp://www.mobileyouth.org MOBILEYOUTH youth marketing mobile culture since 2001

http://valoriprimilab.blogspot.com	130
http://www.rlabs.org	84
http://storify.com	43
http://www.ghanikunto.com	22
http://valoriprimilab.blogspot.it	15
http://it.paperblog.com	9
http://www.mobileyouth.org	6
http://www.blogitaliani.com	1
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(mobileYouth) Influence - A Marketer's guide (Free Ebook Download)

by Graham Brown (mobileYouth) on Sep 05, 2011

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(mobileYouth) Influence - A Marketer’s guide (Free Ebook Download) Document Transcript