After 50 years of mass advertising  have we reached such a level of cynicism that the magic of the message fails to impress unless it entertaining or funny?  It is unerringly clear that as the speed and ubiquity of digital touch points grows,  controlling the message has become increasingly difficult for marketers.  When it comes beginning to understand the  influencer landscape there a number of consumer truths that have to be reconciled  to understand why this has become so important. The marketing messages in mass media, even in the most cleverly devised campaigns, seem to be dismissed by consumers as missing an element of the truth or transparency, as if too say,  they have worn out their welcome.

Its good to reflect why this remark maybe relevant. In recent presentation by an Brian Giesen, Ogilvy PR executive in Australia , where Ross Dawson presented the Influencer Landscape framework ( see above ) he attributed  the reasons of the shift in consumer belief to the following researched facts.

• – 75% of people don’t believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
• - In the US 81% look to word of mouth (be it online or offline ) for decisions.
• - Trust in Media Editorial is is at a low 56%.

No wonder the citizen journalist in us is alive and well, albeit with the aiding and abetting of the new wave of  social communications technologies.

The Driving Forces

The Democratization of Media , Social Media Integration, Social Media Aggregation, The Decline of Advertising  Impact and Peer Trust all play  a role that is aided by influence mechanisms or media channels and touch points, the influence aggregators, and networks. How they all interconnected is pivotal in determining  how people behave.

For brands and companies its the  consumer trust and transparency that  remains as a  paramount concern over and above their advertising. Both managing a reputation and those consumer benefits already ingrained in a product offering become important issues.   Companies and brands that break that consumer trust  run the risk of trying to manage very hard to contain negative consumer sentiments.   Let’s not forget the adage, when a consumer has a bad experience they  tell 8- 10 people and 3-4 people when its a good experience. As we have seen in digital its amplified many times over ,  a single bad comment,  video, picture can ruin a companies or brands reputation overnight as it spreads through a web of influence.

A consumer has an 81% trust in word of mouth. The only clear and trackable way of following sentiments (other than in controlled research,or  focus groups or spying )  is to trawl the digital world where unbiased streams of thoughts and conversations take place. The same conversation can be taking place in many places at the same time , so how do we know which one has more weight than the other? which one has more influence? and which one may potentially be passed on? The landscape of Influence lies not only in immediacy of the contact or proximity to an influential source but also in  the volume of the opinion where the audience is in a dispersed chain of distribution,  or visiting sites where the collective  filtering takes place  e.g. the  most popular  opinion will rise to the top as common consensus. The social media aggregators and the resulting long tail of residual,  searchable and  referential digital footprints creates a potentially long shelf life for an opinion.

In the  Influencer landscape there are domains of influence  both in the networks where audiences gather, meet and talk  and where commentary is redistributed, in the critics circles and social media aggregators. So what are these domains?

The Where :  Domains of influence

• - Blogs, Microblogs
• - Video and photo communities
• – Message boards and forums
• – Social networks

The How : Characteristics of influencers
Its important to define our influencers  by identify certain behavioral characteristics,  as we know these people are really a minority group. A majority of people in social networks or communities are “lurkers” , the observers and readers, only a few people are the real content creators or conversationalists.  In landscape of Influence people are placed in a hierarchy of behavioral importance. Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and the In-Actives.  There are very few Creators, more Critics, a greater number of Collectors and so on. Identifying your Creators and Critics  leads you to understand the influence they have on the greater number of  Collectors, Joiners and Spectators. Creators are the initiators of influence and they share a few basic identifiable characteristics. They :

• - Engage others in conversations
• – Inspire others to continue the conversation
• - Participate consistently
• - Are seen as credible
• - Compels others to want to hear what they say next
• - Create content that is ‘remarkable’

The What : Engaging

• - Process of Listening (Conversation maps)
• - Planning (Influencer maps)
• - Engaging (Programs)

If brands and companies want to engage in the Landscape of Influence its best to understand the lay of the landscape first. Tapping into and understanding your influencers is a growing approach and  knowing what can be influential or what motivates them as influencers is a priority .  The qualitative understanding what drives conversation and reaction  is of key importance.  Understanding the patterns of distribution  is  more of a  complex matrix, however, its is likely that on any given subject matter there is one or two main sources of primary influence and then there are many interested re distributors  who act as  networked satellites  surrounding the source in close proximity. In mapping this influence it is commonly referred to as hot spots , where a dense grouping of people , ideas and conversations are in close proximity to each other. Knowing , when and where to engage these groups requires a  business intelligence approach, involving key data points for a precision driven programs. The under pinning  of this are the relationships a brand or company will create as these are direct communications programs. Whether its blogger outreach programs, external community engagement, influencer scouring, the development of closed special interest communities there has to be a defined dialogue idea or a  value proposition in the engagement. The other thing to remember is that once you create a relationship , its ongoing and you must nurture and maintain it or lose it.

View the intiating source of the Influencers Landscape at  Ross Dawson’s Trends in Living Networks

com.in / com.Business: february 12, 2009

A major change is taking place in the fields of communication and marketing. Mass communication is slowly losing ground to a more personalized dialogue between the brands and their consumers. This dialogue is terribly powerful on the Internet and has become an endless flow of conversations.

In the heart of this dialogue, an impressive quantity of information is shared on many of the blogs, forums, communities and other social networks that are active on the web. About two thousand platforms, forty million groups, and nearly five hundred million people are already involved in these different networks where passion is more important than any other rational factor.

These new open medias, which are available to everybody, have allowed the emergence of new opinion leaders called the “influencers.” Mostly non-professional, they are characterized by an enormous enthusiasm which doesn’t follow any rationale, and which can destabilize marketing specialists. Their style follows the Web 2.0 characteristics: participating, transparent, and open to critics. Totally independent, they are sometimes better-informed than some of the brand employees.

In this context, the role of marking evolves from being a unilateral message-sender to becoming a unifying force that sustains information-sharing, and that participates with the construction of a community around the brand.

The social medias are not the unique solution, and this evolution doesn’t mean the disappearance of the so-called traditional medias, but it rather implies a different approach in the use of the tools and channels available.

It is now unquestionable that brands have to work with an element that they have always been afraid of, the impossibility of totally controlling their image. Indeed, at this very moment, through internet everywhere in the world, people are giving advice on products, sharing their consumption experience, making suggestions, and calling for action. Brands simply cannot ignore these speakers.

This world is not virtual. The different actors in these interactions are real. Most of these long-lasting groups or communities have a life in the real world. This is not surprising, as human life has always been organized in networks, even well before the emergence of these technologies. It is therefore easy to understand why social medias that facilitate exchanges are so successful.

Finally, it is obviously not the recession that provokes this evolution; it is only accelerating a process that has already caused a deep transformation of the marketing and communication worlds. In this context, enthusiasm has become, more than ever before, a powerful engine to succeed this mutation.