experience matters

Over the past few months, I’ve had some great opportunities to meet folks from a variety of companies and I’ve detected a bit of a pattern. Organizations are genuinely challenged with what to make of the changes on the Web, both from an external marketing perspective as well as the internal enterprise.

For example, many companies are eager to take advantage of “social media” efforts, meaning non-traditional marketing initiatives that involve either unpaid media or interacting directly with consumers/customers/users and communities. BUT, there is risk involved and the most often asked question which is inevitably asked becomes “what’s the ROI”?

The thing about playing in the “social space” is that while ROI can actually be measured in things like views, the number of times content has been embedded or shared, comments etc.—it also involves experimentation and potentially a high volume of iteration to see what actually works. The ROI question can sometimes kill an initiative before you ever have a chance to learn anything from it. And so recently, our very own Neil Clemmons asked this insightful question.

What about the “Return On Insight”?

I’ve thought about this as well being someone who lives and breaths much of the evolution we see on the Web—there is a real opportunity to become “digital anthropologists“—to gleam insights into the minds of consumers via leveraging social technologies. However, these insights will never be obtained and traditional ROI is allowed to take out the potential before we have a chance to learn something from it, and organizations may have to experience a cultural evolution before things can change. So we thought it was time for a conversation to take place. And maybe even a revolution in how we approach marketing in an age of consistently evolving consumers. On October 28th at the Forrester Consumer Forum, I will be having a casual discussion with Deborah Schultz who has worked with P&G on their Social Media Lab initiative. The talk is billed as follows:

“Today’s evolving consumers are sophisticated, informed, fickle, and multifaceted. And they’re just getting started! To stay ahead of the (r)evolution, organizations will need to break down their internal silos and adapt to new ways of connecting, communicating, and listening. As companies toss focus groups aside for other forms of input, “netnography” and communities can yield rich insights that lead to future product and service innovations. But to do this, organizations need to rethink return on investment (ROI) from the ground up to rapidly launch and iterate efforts before they get dismissed. Learn how P&G is getting a “return on insight” through initiatives that will help it connect to the ever-evolving customer.”

If you plan on attending the Forrester Forum, please join us—in fact, join the revolution. Viva La Evolution!

Written by David Armano