Key takeaways from Ed Keller and Brad Fay’s WOMM-U Keynote.
Nearly every person raised in the U.S. knows Betty Crocker. She represents home cooking, good housekeeping, and wholesomeness. And she’s entirely fake.
She was invented by the Washburn Crosby Company as a way to personally respond to consumers’ questions. In 1945, Fortune magazine named her the second most popular American woman, bested only by Eleanor Roosevelt.
How did a fake person rise to such prominence? Could it be that Betty was the only person who responded to questions asked of a company?
On Monday, Steve Knox showed how consumer brand trust is falling. Yet it isn’t falling among friends and family. And neither are impressions.
Research from the Keller Fay Group found that of the 250 billion social media “impressions” every year, only 10% are actually seen. This is due to fast moving and algorithm-based newsfeeds. Simply showing up in a newsfeed hardly means the user has seen a post.
However, 750 billion offline brand impressions happen every year too. And nearly every one of those is a real impression. The data consistently shows that 90% of word of mouth happens offline. Only 8% is online (Text 2%; email 2%; social 4%). The final 2% are categorized as “other.”
The difference isn’t just in volume. Reason is a factor too.
The Keller Fay Group’s research found that there are three main reasons people share: social signaling, functional reasons, and emotional sharing. These reasons vary in importance depending on whether the sharer is online or offline. The motivations break down like this:
Online
- Social signaling
- Functional reasons
- Emotional sharing
Offline
- Emotional sharing
- Functional reasons
- Social signaling
Emotional sharing – That’s where you find words like love and hate. That’s where people communicate as they truly are. Ed and Brad highlighted a quote from MIT professor Sherry Turkle:
“We are tempted to think that our little ‘sips’ of online connections add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don’t.”
So how does a brand start conversations offline?
Start with your story. Tap the right talkers. And choose your channels wisely. One excellent example comes from a product category known for its lack of conversations – feminine hygiene. Kotex saw how vague ads and cultural pressures limited the product conversation. So they turned the conversation on its head.
Key Takeaway: Social Media have opened a huge new world of communication, but it hasn’t replaced the value of true face-to-face conversations.
Ed Keller and Brad Fay’s book, The Face-to-Face Book: Why real relationships rule in the digital marketplace, will be available May 22. Buy it here.
