Nielsen’s 2010 Social Media Report has been digging deep inside the minds of Australian internet users and consumers and finding out how aligned they are with social media.
They discovered two important statistics about our online habits:
To source opinions and information about products, services and brands, 86% of internet users rely on social media.
Nearly two in five are interacting with companies via social media.
14% of consumers followed companies/organisations via Twitter – up from 5% in 2008.
Considering that social media is still in its infancy, this is quite a result. With Twitter’s audience alone growing by more than 400% in 2009, expect big things to happen in this space.
I wonder however how many of these are switched on baby boomers?
Mobile social networking is the domain of the young, with 66% under the age of 35 leading the way. And it’s Facebook the winner with 92% of visits, YouTube and Twittter at 18% and not so MySpace at 9%.
Anyway, what does all this mean for mainstream consumers and the companies who sell to them? It suggests that there are big opportunities for brands and companies to engage consumers online.
Does this suggest many Australian need to get a life? Facebook continues to dominate in the world of social networking – 83% of users have it as their main social networking platform. And guess what – they spend an average of more than eight hours each month on the site! Good for online marketers!
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
It was reported this week that Facebook has risen to new heights. Evidently in the week ended 13 March more Americans visited Facebook than Google. It achieved 7.07 percent of total web traffic compared to 7.03 percent for Google. This is the first time Facebook has outdone Google in weekly traffic.
The market share of visits to Facebook.com increased 185 percent during this week as compared with the same week in the previous year. What does all this mean? Do people want to be entertained more than just finding information? Are we now a fully electronically and socially networked society?
The growing popularity of Facebook’s online games is being suggested as the explanation for the site’s surge in traffic. Have we become a planet full of gamers? Is life just one big game?
Here are more stats. Facebook now has more than 400 million regular users around the world. It is suggested that half of these visit Facebook daily to post photos, check their friends’ updates and play games. Do they have a life we ask?
Analysts are encouraging businesses to seriously consider Facebook, and leverage a thriving marketing platform to launch a campaign, information network or even shopfront.
Whatever your views however, I guess this represents 400 million reasons why so many companies are keen to establish their presence and bring a smile to client’s faces.
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
Peugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroen, the second largest European car maker.Its vehicles are distributed in more than 150 countries and are universally recognised by their lion logo.
Peugeot’s roots go back to 19th-century coffee mill and bicycle manufacturing in France. The company produced its first automobile in 1891. It was on 20 November 1858 that Emile Peugeot first registered the use of a lion as the brand’s emblem. He asked Julien Blazer, a goldsmith and engraver in the Franche-Comté region of France, to produce the logo for identifying all Peugeot products.
To celebrate its 200th anniversary Peugeot has rebranded courtesy of an in-house design team. The new age lion has apparently got faster and more sensitive with the tagline ‘motion and emotion’. But is it a lion? The reworking or re-interpretation of many high profile corporate logos inevitably prompts often adverse comment from the design community, and this one has not escaped the critical gaze of many outspoken brand experts....
The reworking has been likened to a bear, a wolf, a jaguar on hind legs, a man in a silly rigid bear suit, a man/bear/pig, video game creature or the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz!
One of the more intelligent comments was “the least appealing and emotive rendering they (Peugeot) have ever used”.
I think it is certainly more modern but has strayed from its classical lion heritage. Compare it to the Holden lion and it could be suggested that some unfortunate breeding with other species may have occurred. Naughty lion.
What do you think?
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
Here are a few choice statements that have motivated the team here recently and which seem very pertinent to the challenges and opportunities we perceive for 2010...
“The man who starts out going nowhere generally gets there”.
Dale Carnegie
“If we are to achieve results never before accomplished, we must expect to employ methods never before attempted”.
F Bacon
“Wherever you see a successful business, someone has made a courageous decision”.
Peter Drucker
“Management is doing things right. Leadership is doing the right thing”.
Peter Drucker
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change”.
Charles Darwin
“Imagination rules the world”.
Napoleon Bonaparte
“He who is not courageous to take risks in life will achieve nothing in life”.
Muhammad Ali
“If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough”.
Mario Andretti
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
Prior to undertaking a branding review, you need to gather all applications - tangible and intangible - which contribute to the success of the brand. These range from business cards to mainstream advertising to the way your receptionist is answering the phone to the way your salespeople are dressed to what your employees are saying on Twitter. The objective is to determine how applications are being used, guidelines adhered to, levels of quality and consistency and how these are impacting on the experience your audiences have of the brand and their perception of it.
Putting all of an organisation’s materials side-by-side in the one place can be a sobering experience for many. It inevitably identifies shortcomings such as...
quality issues
levels of inconsistency
relevance to the task
whether materials are outdated
omissions
relevance to the organisation’s short and long term business objectives
A visual audit however, can only achieve so much. The way in which the materials are used is important as this tends to identify whether they remain appropriate for their intended purpose since they were introduced or whether they need to be changed or even deleted. Do employee induction materials reflect the downturn-driven changes the company has made in the last 12 months? Are point-of-sale messages consistent with the organisation’s current advertising? Are machinery operating instructions consistent with workplace safety requirements? Does the organisation’s product packaging suitably reflect its stance on sustainability? Do the messages on motivational posters throughout the organisation truly reflect the culture of the organisation and its attitude to employees? Are customer communications saying the right things for the way in which the organisation wishes to conduct its business moving forward into 2010 and beyond? Is your marketing department disengaged by the events of 2009 and operating with blinkered vision that may just be detrimental to how the business and its products need to be perceived to capture new market opportunities?
Heywood Innovation’s audit reports probe significantly deeper than a simple check on whether the organisation’s logo and colours are correctly reproduced! Key components of the organisation’s brand are its employees and customers. We conduct online surveys and facilitated workshops with employees, key managers, executives and customers to gauge their real perceptions of the brand at this moment in time and collect their ideas. We get to know what employees’ thoughts are on the materials with which they work - whether they are helping them do their job or hindering them, and whether the employees have ideas for improvements or something totally new.
An audit conducted by an external resource like Heywood Innovation will guarantee an objective viewpoint based around questions, comments and recommendations that would challenge most internal resources.
How does your brand stack up with the organisation’s business plans and vision for the future?
Are the materials which represent the organisation’s brand appropriate to support the organisation’s business plans and vision for 2010? Have there been significant changes to the way in which the organisation operates since the upheavals of 2009 to warrant changes to the way the brand is expressed and ultimately perceived both internally and externally?
The answers to these questions can only be answered by a well considered and executed audit. Now would be an ideal time to consider this before the post-Christmas momentum takes hold...
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
One of the buzzwords that is increasingly used in the corporate world is ‘sustainability’. Over the last few years it has firmly entrenched itself in the vocabulary of branding. Yet I’m not entirely convinced everyone has a good grasp of what it means.
Application 1
In these ‘recovering’ times when there is still much doubt about our future business prospects, ‘sustainability’ is being used to describe an organisation’s potential to survive on a long term basis, suggesting that it will have to adopt beliefs, behaviours and practices consistent with being able to achieve this.
Application 2
‘Sustainability’ can allude to an organisation’s responsibility and commitment to helping save the planet and its people.This can refer to the influence it has on external communities with which it may or may not come into contact, and/or the influence it has on its own employees.
Application 3
‘Sustainability’ can also jump into the change arena and suggest ‘transformation’ and ‘innovation’ and ‘moving away from conventional thinking and practices’. It often refers to the way we live – the new options we have available as individuals to build sustainable communities, living and working harmoniously with the environment.
Not many people associate its relationship with an organisation’s brand. Not many see it as a core function of the business, relegating it to a compliance requirement associated with managing business risks and yet another box that needs to be ticked in the annual report each year. This is an increasingly regulated world where we are expected to cut emissions and move to low-carbon sources. It makes sense for an organisation to do this claim a stake in a sustainable future and add strength to its brand. For companies who are reliant on fossil fuels and water say, their sustainable actions may well determine the future viability of their business. With sustainability underpinning your brand, it may well provide a competitive edge over similar brands. Sustainability may not sell more product, but it can enhance brand credibility of the company behind the product and the potential to impress investors and attract them its way.
Because sustainability is now a consideration at most brand touchpoints, it has become one of the supporting pillars of the brand, alongside such essentials as culture and values. Audiences are increasingly aware of it as it gains more exposure in the media. This has prompted stakeholders, employees, suppliers, government and the press to ask questions on the subject relating to how an organisation manufactures and sells its products, what they’re made of, how it treats its employees, how it supports local communities and so on – questions directly relating to how it operates and whether it thinks beyond the factory gate about ‘the bigger picture’. At the end of the day, people want to know whether the organisation is a good citizen.
People are increasingly less forgiving of companies caught polluting, funding governments, covering up financial irregularities, paying outlandish bonuses and having poor attitudes to workplace relations. Organisations seen as ‘responsible’ and adopting acceptable behaviours are finding new favour in the investor community.
This has lead to companies investigating ways to leverage their sustainability focus to gain exposure and build value into their brand. Sourcing coffee from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms, cars made from high proportions of recyclable materials, energy efficient appliances, proportions of revenue donated to AIDS research, local community initiatives, educating children in Third World countries – there are many opportunities to contribute.
The challenge for companies is to align sustainability initiatives with stakeholder expectations and ensure they are consistent with the overall business strategy. There is a risk however, that some customer segments will have little or no regard for the company’s interest in this area, while some will have high expectations.
Failing to address sustainable business practices can have dire consequences either directly or through supplier relationships. Nike’s image has been battered on several occasions with revelations concerning its supply arrangements with Third World ‘sweat shops’. An article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian from an Indonesian worker summed up her experience of Nike “... labourers faced with forced overtime, minimum-wage violations, illegally low training wages, and abusive employers in countries such as China, South Korea and Indonesia to which Nike has contracted its manufacturing.” This is the stuff that PR company dreams are made of.
Organisations must recognise that ‘sustainability’ needs to be a recognisable mindset, not a part time indulgence. There are many instances of ‘greenwashing’, jumping on the sustainability band wagon and using public relations activities to crank up false perceptions. It is surprisingly easy to identify these organisations.
An organisation’s attitude to sustainability therefore has a direct bearing on people’s perception of the organisation, its brand and the ultimate value of the brand.
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
With a thankful sigh, the CEO signs the last letter of the day. It is 6.45pm on a cool winter night in the Sydney central business district. Dark rain clouds scud across the darkening sky. The rain batters the window and the muffled sounds of homeward bound traffic are heard in the street below. His secretary, standing close by, clutching her soft kid handbag against her stylish raincoat, takes it from his hand, folds it neatly and inserts it into the waiting envelope. Her tongue briefly caresses the gummed flap. She smoothes it down and a brief smile lightens her face... “Do have a pleasant weekend Mr Donnelly”. And with that she is gone into the night. A distant door slams shut. In the meagre light from the desk lamp a mysterious grin is seen to spread across CEO Theodore Donnelly’s face and transforms his usually friendly features. His body slumps forward in the chair and his hands grip the edge of the desk. He rises awkwardly from his black leather chair, his large frame casting a dark and sinister shadow across the far wall. Slowly and unsteadily he crosses the room to where his wall safe is concealed behind a framed print of a Chinese girl with a face glowing eerily in the low light. He leans awkwardly against the wall as his tortured eyes strain to see the combination numbers of the safe. The tumblers fall into place and the heavy door yields to his anxiously tugging hand. He reaches in. Something suddenly moves in the dark recesses of the safe. His hand is grabbed by something unknown. It feels as though it is being pulled from its socket. He wrenches his arm back and forth in one mighty effort and it is released. He grabs the battered envelope before him and slams the safe door shut.
Crossing the room, he sits once more at his desk. Pulling the desk lamp nearer, he opens the envelope and slides the large dusty book out of the envelope. There before him lay the object of his innermost desires. Ye Olde Booke of Branding Spells. The faded script on the front cover proclaims ‘He who masters these spells shall have control over the hearts and minds of all before him’. He lifts the heavy cover and turns it over. He briefly notices a small imprint on the inside cover ‘First published by K. Roberts, Lancaster, Auckland and New York 1504’ which causes him to wince. His eyes move to the first page. He slowly reads the words aloud. “Mind control. The dark art of visual and verbal persuasion. Mix together words and images to control people’s minds and instil a sense of wellbeing way beyond their financial means. Ingredients: a twist of mystery, two shakes of flippancy, an ounce of bullshit, a teaspoon of hubris, a scoop of overspending and two parts of overindulgence. Mix well and apply liberally. As this is a somewhat unstable set of ingredients, results cannot be guaranteed. Ensure you stand well back following application as after affects can be catastrophic”. He looked longingly at the book. “Thank you”.
Here at Heywood Innovation we do claim to produce magical results for our clients. These however tend to be the result of tried and tested methods honed over a 20 year period and applied with loving care. There are no potions in our cupboard that transform underperforming brands into sector leaders overnight. Our BrandGuidanceSystem however, when diligently applied, triumphs every time over the dark arts. You should try it.
Lizard’s tongue or eye of newt anyone? Good for uplifting brand libido so they tell me!
Tony Heywood is an international branding consultant and founder of Heywood Innovation in Sydney Australia with affiliates in Melbourne, Gold Coast, London, Singapore and Mumbai.
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