Dear Chief Executive

http://bit.ly/q1JNTG 

The internet is contributing 7.9% to the UK economy this year, about £11 billion.


This is up 10% since last year. It is bigger as a contributor to GDP than health, construction and transport.


The ONS report 10% of all retail sales are now conducted online. In September this amounted to  £5.5bn.


Most managers recognise the economy is at best, flat-lining and yet last month while retail sales rose, unexpectedly (by 0.6%), it was dwarfed by Online retail sales which were up 15% Year on Year. 


This is not just for the middle market buying the week's groceries. Top of the line retailers are benefiting from the web too and they are not nearly as affected by a sluggish economy.


When excluding online travel sales, e-retail sales growth in September jumped 20%.  We could do with a similar boost.


Not to be too bullish, it is realistic to imagine annual growth online in the retail sector to slow somewhat but good double digit growth will continue.


This suggests there is an opportunity here for us.


The data is clear that traditional selling outlets, that is, non internet retail sales, are in decline and to make up the shortfall online marketing is essential to maintain turnover, and probably margins.


With 35 million people already shopping online, it is not a big stretch of the imagination to believe that online selling in B2C is reflected in B2B data as well.


Organisations like Autorola are projecting sales of 220,000 cars  this year and twice that in five years. Construction Enquirer is an online magazine with a readership that would make the traditional magazines proud and 57% of businesses are reporting increased internet budgets this month.


We know that seven in ten B2B buyers start their purchase process with a query typed into Google or another search engine. Thus, right at the beginning of the purchase cycle, the internet is pivotal. B2B marketers with a social media strategy has now doubled from 32% to 64% in three months.


To get some idea of the capabilities that are part of the digital infrastructure now, the BBC has done amazing things online for the Olympics that we can learn from. But most important is that they have taken as their mantra that they will deliver content on "on whatever piece of glass" they choose". 


The range of platforms is now extensive and PC's are only one platform among many for delivering digital content. 


Mobile is critical and has even domestic implications notable in being able to offer wifi throughout or premises. 


At the same time the internet is expanding to include physical objects fitted with sensors or intelligence.


We need to find systems to manage different platforms and technologies as we increasingly need to accommodate the many different devices chosen by employees and consumers.


On the delivery side, users are adopting a wider range of channels from Facebook to Google+, mobile phone apps to storing everything in the cloud. 


This applies as much to individuals as to organisations. For the most part the adoption of these advanced technologies is hardly noticeable. The technology is so good it is not even noticeable. 


We will have to come to terms with offering digital services internally among employees as well as for an extensive range of external stakeholders.


What these data tell us is that to be competitive more than £1 in £10 has to exclusively flow from online activity. 


Better than 7.9% of turnover has to be directly attributable to the internet.


We need to be able to adopt and enhance activity on many channels with many communications platforms, including social media, throughout the organisation.


Having done that, we will be ordinary and average. To be competitive, we need to do better. The need to understand the internet at the heart of our organisation is now pressing. 


This means that all businesses, and ours in particular, need good quality digital capability too.


We also need to employ and deploy a much greater level of strategic as well as tactical expertise.




Your sincerely,


Your PR manager








Sources:
Every statement here has excellent provenance


http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16092825
http://www.bcg.com/media/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?id=tcm:12-64183
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15383602
http://www.brc.org.uk/brc_news_detail.asp?id=2064
http://www.imrg.org/IMRGWebSite/user/pages/homepage.aspx
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2118831/luxury-retailer-saks-courts-percent?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clickz+%28ClickZ+-+News%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/2011/07/countdown_continues_as_olympic_1.html
http://www.silicon.com/management/cio-insights/2011/10/20/psst-want-to-know-the-top-10-technologies-you-cant-afford-to-miss-next-year-39748109/?s_cid=991
http://www.am-online.com/news/2011/6/30/european-b2b-online-car-sales-set-for-rapid-growth/29230/
http://blog.pwcom.co.uk/2011/04/15/for-online-only-b2b-media-twitter-matters/
http://www.newsreach.co.uk/seo/b2b-search-success-requires-an-ongoing-commitment
http://www.circle-research.com/2011/business-ideas/b2b-marketing-sector-bounces-back-57-report-rising-budgets/
http://www.circle-research.com/b2b-barometer/

Return on Values

Yesterday, I began to  look at ROI in a slightly different way and Philip Sheldrake and Tim Marklein maintained the argument for staying with a financial measure of public relations based on cash investment providing an incremental cash return.

For some PR trades, this is a perfectly adequate. One press release reaches a readership of a million people who in turn repay the client the cost of the press release and then some. The effect on the relationship between the organisation and the readers as well as tertiary publics such as journalists, editors and the process of WOM is ignored. Crude, better than nothing and informing management very little about effect.

Lets see if we can improve on that.

Suppose the PR practitioner was to ask the client:

• "Do you have values?"
• "Does your organisation have values?"
• "Do you invest time explaining, even re-enforcing, your values and the organisation's values to the Board?"
• "Do you and the Board invest time explaining your values and the organisation's values to your shareholders, employees, customers, vendors and other stakeholders?"
• "Do you use your values and the organisation's values to single out your brands among consumers/customers?"

I think that most managers would agree that their values and the values of the organisation are very significant competitive differentiators and that valued have value.

Now, lets make this harder. What if you ask the CEO:

• "What is the Return on Investment from your values and the values of the organisation?"

Ummm......

Now, in PR, we do have the answer.

Not marketers, not accountants, not business gurus.

Although many do recognise values as important even if they are not really sure how to identify values I cite: Charles Handy, Peter Drucker and Henry Mintzberg plus L Chen - 2009; H Donker 2008; M Chong 2010; J Cambra-Fierro & Y Polo-Redondo 2008; NL Trapp 2010 etc. etc).

In PR, grounded research (much better research than brand mangers have - and explained in this post), show that, among different segments of the public, there are drivers that build relationships between them and the organisation. They take the values of the organisation and where those values coincide with personal or group values, they find an affinity with the organisation.

An organisation can be described as a nexus of values and, to extent that they chime with the values of people or groups, there is a coincidence of interest.

We also know from a range of research and academic writing that organisations need to be able to understand the affinity between consumers and brand values to be effective and successful.

I cite, for example: JN Kapferer 2008; S Boo, J Busser, 2009; KL Keller & T Apéria 2008; S Srinivasan 2009; N Mizik & R Jacobson 2008; AE Cretu 2007; J Kim & JD Morris 2008 ....

For PR, deeper and more relevant measurement is to be able to identify the Return on organisational Values.

Does the organisation understand the values of its constituents? Does the organisation have values that chime with its constituency and in explications of its values, is it creating, sustaining and enriching positive relationships.

There is significant literature which explores the concept of Return on Values and much of the literature touches on matters like ethics, trust and reputation.

I cite for example: P van Beurden 2011; KS Cameron 2006; DA Waldman & MS de Luque 2006 LL Nash 2010 etc.

With rich, sustainable and supportive relationships, organisations will prosper both in the short and long term.

The return on investment in having clear, relevant, supportive and mutually acceptable values with the organisational constituency is a great deal more than cash out and cash-plus back. Yes, there is cash-plus back today but also cash-plus back tomorrow and with wider audiences. The real ROI will be seen to deliver real shareholder value, lower cost of doing business, a stable workforce with lower recruitment cost, enhanced vendor relationships and a more supportive licence to operate (Keller, Handy, etc etc).


Return on Values seems to be a much more sensible way of measuring PR.


Image from http://thefinancialbrand.com.

Online PR delivering sales

In research for Google, Boston Consulting revealed that the UK ecommerce sector is worth £60 billion and is growing at the rate of £6 billion every year.  

For companies and their agencies, this is a huge opportunity. For organisations harnessing the power of social media this is an awesome opportunity (http://goo.gl/cPYDQ).

This post explores how effective social media interventions have been in delivering real tangible returns and how effective and knowledgeable consultants working as social media partners can deliver effective results.

Traditionally the relationship between most PR activities and sales has been tenuous. Today, the direct link between online activities and very tangible outcomes, including sales outcomes is pretty common.

Old Spice Sales Double With YouTube Campaign

 “Old Spice Body Wash sales jumped 27% in the six months to July 2010, 55% in the latter three months and 107% in July, according to research firm Nielsen Co,” reported Emily Glazer, of Dow Jones Newswires. (http://goo.gl/oKDuK).

It would seem that the old output, outtake and outcome model of PR measurement has lost the outtake road block. Online PR delivers customers. 

We know from eConsultancy research that the majority of companies have difficulty measuring the return on investment (ROI) from social media. Almost two-thirds of respondents (61%) say their organizations are “poor” (34%) or “very poor” (27%) at measuring ROI (http://goo.gl/lPJnf).

 However, working closely with people who do have the numbers, including website traffic data, marketing and sale returns as well as using effective monitoring, the stumbling blocks to finding the cause and effect derived from online interactions is not quite as hard as many believe.

More generally we can use results based case studies that cover a wide range of PR sector practice to get valuable insights from Olde Spice to computers.

Lauren Fisher writes in The Next Web that ‘Sony have proved the power of Twitter with a fairly covert social media campaign that incentivised people to purchase their products and it worked. They reported an increase in Sony Vaio sales from Twitter in that period of $1.5 million. This is a pretty impressive figure and also puts into action this new way of buying – social commerce,’ (http://goo.gl/GD5B).

Of course, many people look at the claims that have come across the Atlantic but the results are just as compelling from case studies in the UK.

For Asos, a Facebook campaign achieved s 2.6% increase in ASOS Denim sales and a significant increase in the number of weekly new fan sign-ups during the 2-week campaign period, (http://goo.gl/6K2XI).

While the UK may have fewer case studies, there is every reason to believe that the UK should be even more responsive.

The Boston Consulting report shows that the UK is exporting internet goods and services at the rate of £2.80 for every £1 imported with an online advertising sector worth £13bn.

What is more, its per capita internet involvement (including online purchasing) is globally competitive and ahead of the USA, Germany, France and Italy.

 Bearing this in mind, it is useful to examine best practice worldwide. They offer experience and ideas that can be adapted and re-purposed by the savvy consultancy. There are any number of such examples and we have chosen a representative few in this paper.

Domino's credits Facebook and Foursquare promotions for lifting online sales by 61 percent in the U.K. and Ireland during the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2009. The international pizza chain also announced on Monday that web-based sales now account for 33 percent of its revenue, compared to 26 percent in 2009.

http://goo.gl/yI4ob

There is no doubt that practitioners’ do need to have a comprehensive view of the facilities that are available for best practice online. The lines are blurred between different communication practices and the adoption by a PR consultancy may be equally used by a marketing promotion company or other agency.

Shoppers using the Wet Seal  mobile phone tool are 40% more likely to buy something, and buyers spend 20% more. "Shop with friends" users become buyers at 2.5 times Wet Seal's average conversion rate online.

The iPhone app generates about 5% of Wet Seal's overall Web traffic, and the app has been downloaded more than 65,000 times. Girls look at about 500,000 outfits a week with their iPhones -- traffic that spiked to about 750,000 a week the two weeks before back-to-school.

Facebook has become one of the largest marketing bases for store traffic, thanks to coupons and campaigns, and one of the biggest drivers of traffic to WetSeal.com

http://goo.gl/Xr1uu

The value of using social media marketing is not confined to the biggest of clients. As one might expect big consumer tech companies should do well. But it comes as something of a surprise that they can be sufficiently light of their feet to create real returns using Twitter.

 Dell’s big announcement that they tracked $3 million in sales through their Twitter account came over a year ago in June 2009. What we are seeing now though, is a shift in user behaviour that shows we’re now more likely to purchase through social media. http://goo.gl/QANW

Even the smallest enterprise can benefit which means that consultancies with social media ready practitioners can help contribute sales to even the smallest account.

Curtis Kimball, the man behind the enormously popular Creme Brulee Cart in San Francisco, has quickly amassed over 12,000 Twitter followers in a little over a year. He knows that most of his business comes from people who follow him on Twitter because Twitter is the only way you can find the cart’s location for the day, says Kimball, a former construction worker turned creme brulee expert. “It gives people a valid reason to follow me,” he says. http://goo.gl/FUoZ

Last October, Dentist Dr. Vaksman signed up for a Groupon deal in San Francisco, and received 320 new patients because of the deal, which was for a patient exam and x-ray. The Vaksmans say that the deal propelled the five month old business in the right direction and boosted its patient base significantly.

The ability to adopt ideas from around the world is important for clients and consultancies and there are any number of examples to choose from.

Examples include  Delta Airlines which introduced a flight booking option through their Facebook page. 

Gap recently ran an offer with Groupon that offered users the chance to purchase a $50 giftcard at $25. This earned them $11 million in revenue.

Public relations, using social media can come up with really creative ideas that can even help turn underperforming capacity into a marketing win.

Every Tuesday, Joie De Vivre’s Twitter account will Tweet an exclusive deal to its nearly 10,000 followers. Followers have only hours to book the steeply discounted room rate. For example, this past Tuesday, it offered $79 rooms at the group’s Galleria Park Hotel in San Francisco in November and December. The company also operates similar deals for its 5,000-plus Facebook fans on Fridays.

In less than a year, Joie De Vivre has booked over 1,000 room nights through these types of deals—rooms that otherwise would have stayed empty. 

One of the most common responses consultants get is that social media is confined to consumer facing PR. A study by eConsultancy reveals that this is not true. Their research shows that there is not a significant difference in the extent to which B2B and B2C organizations are engaging with social media marketing (http://goo.gl/KWMgJ). Perhaps this shows that even B2C has a long way to go and justifies the Boston Consulting Group’s projection of growth at the rate of £6 billion per year.

The Direct Marketing Association expects digital marketing channels, driven by social media, to overtake traditional platforms, in a new report.

While direct mail is currently the top avenue for businesses, online channels are expected to surpass it within the next 12 months, according to TMCnet. Social media is the top emerging platform for many B2B firms, with 88 percent maintaining a social media presence. Professional sites, such as LinkedIn, are the most popular, followed by microblogs, including Twitter.

TMCnet quotes the DMA as saying, "these results clearly underscore the recognition that marketers see the need to experiment with new marketing channels which offer the opportunity to break through the marketing clutter with more personal and engaging messaging."

Social media is part of a multi- billion explosion of marketing and sales activity. It is effective at delivering very tangible results. There are case studies from around the world that have relevance in the UK, one of the top most active e-economies worldwide.

Every sector can benefit and there is significant evidence that growth in this sector is set to outperform other marketing communications sector over the next few years.

The online marketing model has gone through many transformations in the last decade. The turn of the century idea that ‘in your face online advertising’ would work was quickly dismissed as users just left such sites in a huff.  Pay per click remains useful but as the power of search emerged as the number one way to find new information, Search Engine Optimisation came to the fore. Now, we have seen that the power of the online community and how it can translate into real sales and behaviour changes. The shift from broadcast to community plays into the hands of the online PR practitioner used to holding conversations.

Understanding this transformation is really important because of what is at stake.

Online sales are predicted to grow at the rate of 10% per year. Put another way, which organisation can pass up an opportunity to take a slice of £6 billion next year and which organisation can withstand the shock of consumers disserting their traditional marketing effort by going online.

This is a journey. A chunk of Facebook and trickle of Twitter is not a strategy. If the objective is to take a slice of £6 billion, it may mean some serious conversations about business models as well as development of essential social media strategies to participate in exploitating the fastest evolving part of a growing economy.

Productivity comes to marketing

Addressing a meeting of the Public Relations Consultant's Association this morning, Peter Cochrane ducked the question of how the internet changes economics as we know it.

I thought it might be time to re-visit this difficult area of of forward thinking.

Of course, I am not pretending to be able to out-think Yochai Benkler or a host of other experts, authors and thinkers.

I just want to pause for a second to consider productivity.

The concepts of productivity espoused by Hansen & Prescott suggesting that automation is the prefer ed or dominant method for enhanced productivity is misleading. Automation and the deployment of technologies does tend to presage changes in employment and in wealth creation and distribution for a larger majority.

While no one would recommend the slums of London in the time of Dickens, the population was expanding and, horrid though these places were, they had an appeal for the rural population who migrated to them. How hard life must have been in the countryside!

I am not completely in the camp that suggests that mankind is successful because of recent evolution. Evidence suggesting that evolutionary processes in the composition of existing genetic traits may be rather rapid and the time between the Neolithic Revolution and the Industrial Revolution that lasted some 10,000 years is sufficient for significant evolutionary changes. True, changes occurred such as lactose tolerance in Europe and the Near East; genetic immunity to to malaria provided by the sickle cell trait among descendants of agrarian African tribes and so forth but I think that the productivity spark goes back a lot further.

Today's news of evidence that early modern humans living on the coast of the far southern tip of Africa 72,000 years ago employed pyrotechnology – the controlled use of fire – to increase the quality and efficiency of their stone tool manufacturing process tells us a lot more about our species.

Here we see examples of intellectual capital being deployed in the transformation of stone to tool.

This is manufacturing.

It also is an example of knowledge associated with technology in making mankind more efficient.

We are, as Philip and I made clear in 'Online Public Relations' (Kogan Page) extending the capability of our physiology.

Today we can travel much faster than our legs will carry us and instead of a super memory we have Google and Wikipedia. We have used our intellect to create super-humans in the basically primitive human of 70,000 years ago.

More recently, we have added to these capabilities by offering people opportunities to contribute time, creativity and attention to goods and services.

This may only be the adding of photograph to Facebook or an erudite Blog post or even an SMS vote to Big Brother (if it still exists). It might be the development of new process shared with like minds online but its not passively watching television.

This shift from consumer to producer is big and it has a major significance for economics. A huge jump in the productivity of huge population is happening now.

This productivity is lost to most organisations.

Some gain because the productivity is part of a production process or, in marketing it is brand building and its big.

I shall return to this though in a day or so.

Why 20th century marketing is dead

If one of the worlds, leasing business publications was to be found to be selling editorial to the highest bidder it would be a scandal...right?

People would loose trust in its editorial independence.

It would loose its appeal to industry leaders.

Of much greater significance is that it would be vilified in social media and progressively its reputation would cost its shareholders their fortune just as those who once though banking shares were a smart lost theirs.

Indeed, those who colluded in such a scam would be suspect. Their ethical practice would be called into question and their reputation too will suffer.

Well, there are marketing practices that drag people along this gently inclining slope to the slippery bit and in an era of transparency cannot avoid the finger being pointed:

"Please let me know ASAP if you have a client that might be interested to participate in BusinessWeek's Cloud Computing ad section. This is a "pay-to-play" opportunity ($6,980 entry fee) to appear in a hot section.

"Appearance here will position your client as a leader in the the cloud computing space. BusinessWeek delivers a prime audience of 4.8 million decision-makers, consisting of over 1.8 million senior executives, and 2 million business technology influencers.

"BusinessWeek magazine will publish this section in its April 13, 2009 global print (and online) edition (hits newsstands/goes live April 3). Produced in partnership with the Cloud Slam 09 Virtual Conference Event, this timely section, titled "Cloud Computing: Next-Gen Internet to Power Business," will discuss the business imperatives of cloud computing, i.e. harnessing power, opportunity of on-demand computing, storage, applications, infrastructure, etc.

"If your client were to commit to advertise, we would develop complimentary coverage to appear in the section article (or develop a top quality "advertorial" piece); interview and content development by Internet veteran Vance McCarthy. Exposure includes visibility on www.cloudslam09.com during and after the event, and on www.businessweek.com/adsections providing links to their website (can include video), and high quality reprints. We are also offering Cloud Slam '09 Sponsorships. Further, we can create a very cool, interactive 3D “virtual booth” for your client at a relatively small fee. Uniquely, the booth 'container' is in PDF, so it can be distributed everywhere your client wishes, beyond the event! Lots of value and impact in this package! Another complimentary element here is BusinessWeek's social networking Business Exchange site now taking flight.

There is nothing new in this. It has gone on for years and yet, because it is common practice does not make it right.

So, are we shocked to see circulations of publications in free fall when the words they print are really just advertorials? Well not really. Will anyone regret the going of such publications. Well no, not really.

Feel for the poor pensioner who depends on investment in such shares for a living.

The New Marketing

Jeremiah Owyang discuses this video by Scholz and Friends, a German marketing agency.

It is worth watching.

There are amazing things happening at a very domestic level that give us a clue about what is happening online.

A very special lady in my life is my side of 60 years old and, yes explores products and services before buying in shops, buys and banks online but this story offers a slightly different angle. It is real as opposed to some investigation researched findings.

She was getting very fed up with spray window cleaners. Apparently they are not as good as old fashioned pink Windowlene.

For weeks she scanned supermarket shelves with no luck and eventually decided to use the internet.

Result!

Not only did she find that Windowlene is still available but that a small local shop stocks it.

What a brave local shop and what a result!

This is not some 24 year old geek or a major supermarket or even some magic next generation search - it is good old fashioned Web 1.0 working well.

When, I wonder will she price check in-store? The power of the internet in the hands of this demographic and the increased time spent by them online important not just for retailers but many other organisations. 

This story would be a straw-in-the-wind but is backed up a raft of research.

How much more can we achieve with all the new opportunities developing channels offer?

Yahoo and its attention study

One of the advantages of consulting with an agency with Yahoo! as a client is that you can easily get at the inside story.

The Yahoo! "Return on Attention" research is really interesting.

The survey of 1015 adult UK internet users between the 21stJuly and 25thJuly 2008 showed that people thought they were busier and working longer and 80% think they are living in an age of information overload.
Well, that’s not hard to believe!

There are some serious issues associated with the findings when
• 51% of respondents suffer from three or more symptoms of Information Fatigue Syndrome.
• 54% say that information overload makes it more difficult to concentrate
So it is not surprising to find that 92% of respondents value their time now more than they used to and the gap between information available and information consumption is growing.
Yahoo! quotes research that shows overload creates attention poverty and this has economic consequences and competition for attention becomes a crucial element of business strategy (Sullivan 2006; Burns 2007; Brown and Davis 2006; Goldhaber 1997 and Hagel 2001.
The research also looked at motivations for use of online content and found that:
• 79% want something of value in return for paying attention to advertising, even if it just makes them smile or tells them something new
• 67% think that advertising can be really innovative and engaging
• 88% consciously screen out information and advertising that they think won’t be worth their time
• 66% wish that there were tools that could help organise the information in their lives
• 88% think that technology will continue to improve and will develop in new ways to help accomplish tasks --or do them outright
This brings to mind Kevin Kellys thoughts on the next 5000 days of the internet (http://xrl.in/11tt) which may offer a solution and some of the thoughts I have been expressing of the future of the internet (http://leverwealth.blogspot.com/2008/09/role-of-emotion-in-immersive-web.html).

In the busy lives of people (including the ever growing amount of time they spend online – or feel they have to spend online 68% feel it is getting more difficult to balance life and work.



As a result, people are making increasing use of search engines, tagging or bookmarking of favourites, and sites which allow them to amalgamate content (good for Yahoo! which owns Delicious – of course). Secondly, people are, in general, more likely to return to sites which enable them to do this effectively (and it’s really interesting to see how most online newspapers have now added such facilities at the end of most news and comment.

Yahoo! says that business models that can profit from these trends are the ones that will succeed in the attention economy and certainly we have seen enhanced reach for publications that do.

The pressure. The pressure. It seems to be getting to everyone! We are spending more time with PowerPoint than in the pub.



The data on information overload also gives us some useful indicators.

80% of respondents believe we are living in an age of information overload.
63% of respondents feel information overload affects them.
54% of respondents find overload makes it more difficult to concentrate

I was also interested in the 63% that admit that they feel like they would miss out on something if they “switched off”.

The Facebook generation is over faced.

The data confirms other research showing that while we are addicted to being constantly connected, ‘we are kidding ourselves if we believe we can multitask effectively’ (Lohr 2007); people are increasingly contactable and even on holiday, over half of British adults check their email, (Fried 2005).

Amongst those who feel information overload affects them, 62% are concerned about its effect.

And the numbers who feel they are always-on is considerable.

But nearly two thirds admit that they feel like they would miss out on something if they “switched off” and ‘escaping’ is a word being used.

The causes and consequences of information overload goes beyond the simple 68% of respondents who feel overloaded with tasks and information. 51% of respondents suffer from three or more symptoms of Information Fatigue Syndrome

Research suggests that office workers are distracted every three minutes, yet it can take 15 minutes to regain full concentration on a task, leading to a drain on economic productivity that is partially the result of information overload. This loss of attention has been estimated in the US at a loss of about $650 billion per year.

But on an individual level, the affects of overload are considerable. People, the Yahoo! report says, view themselves as unable to cope with the supply of information. This perception often causes feelings of dependence and frustration that can lead to various symptoms: anxiety, stress, sleep disorders, digestive problems, etc. This leads to more severely divided attention –and a greater need for a return on the attention captured.

These problems have been grouped under the general term Information Fatigue Syndrome. As well as being the cause of a range of biological problems, Information Fatigue Syndrome has been identified as a potential cause for larger and more severe attention disorders.

(see also : Fried (2005); Lohr(2007a); Lohr(2007b); Holstein (2006); Epplerand Mengis(2003); Nellis(2001); Guardian (2005); Chritakis, Zimmerman, DiGiuseppe, McCarthy (2004)

I guess most of us are guilty of ‘wasting time’. That great thing about the internet that satisfies our curiosity, the serendipity behind that hyperlink that is not relevant but is irresistible and that has to be balanced against work and domestic distractions.



Pretty serious stuff here and I wonder how much more work these findings will are going to entail to get to the bottom of all the causes?

On a lighter note: Loss of appetite! Wow! Does this mean that using the internet is as good as a diet?

The research also showed how people try to mitigate these problems and ignoring them seems to work quite well and most of them seem to fail.

It is useful to get this information and to be able to see the original research.


I confess that I am a bit surprised at the levels of stress associated with being online.

The past and the present

Dave Chaffey has a really good case study about easyJet on his site. It plots the success of e-commerce for an icon of the e-commerce age.

The numbers, as you would expect are huge and the capability of the company is impressive.

By sheer chance, I have another study about the company. It is an audit by eFootprint, a company I am involved in with Robin Gurney at Altex.

What we have is a take of two parts. The first is a study of Web 1.0 and the second is beginning to show the impact of Web 2.0.

There are some interesting things we can begin to take away from such studies.

Some are obvious like making web sites mobile phone friendly. Others are interesting like the sudden growth of web pages being indexed by search engines over the period of huge Web 2.0 growth (from an already high level) and, of course, the content now being contributed by social media users.

Here we can see a company in transition. Is it moving with the times? Has it begun to move from a web strategy to an internet strategy?

It would be fascinating to see hear what the company is proposing - and even more fun to be involved.

IMRG Capgemini - online retailing to top 50% by 2011

Online shopping is poised to take 20p out of every UK consumer pound by the end of the year, a landmark milestone that analysts believe will make the channel a critical business for many high-street retailers.

An IMRG Capgemini E-Retail report notes that online retail sales amounted to £26.5 billion in the first six months of 2008, up 38 per cent from the same period in the previous year and projected online retail sales would be as high as 50% by 2011.

In B2B because of the growth of online trading, IT workers, now have to be creative, world-aware and business-savvy to succeed. They are now a central part of the wider workforce and drive future development in sectors as diverse as retail, transport, finance and hospitality, reports Retail Bulletin.

Booming e-commerce means sectors not traditionally linked with IT are creating brand new technology-related job roles throughout their businesses and working much more closely with IT workers to help them succeed.

Of course, this also should include the PR sector. But figures are harder to find here.

The statistics that say you must take social media seriously

Image via Wikipedia

I have been working through a range of statistics that show how significant social media is for PR and marketing.

While UK internet users are all saying they want to hear from brands and companies on line, with rare exceptions, marketers and PR people cant quite make the leap of faith to do it.

Perhaps this list of links will suggest to them that it is their inhibitions that are the problem and not whether this space is commercially important.

Perhaps this too, will suggest that online PR is a great career move. Perhaps this will show the Universities they need to be able to teach this stuff.

So here goes (and if you want to add any... help yourself)

• London School of Economics Reports: a 7 per cent increase in word of mouth advocacy unlocks 1 per cent additional company growth.
  http://tinyurl.com/aohth

• Internet usage growth out performs all other economic activity worldwide.
  http://tinyurl.com/6aaxc2

• National statistic office report six in ten Internet users go online dail
  http://tinyurl.com/5sky8a

• IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. Online retail sales in the U.K. grew 54% in 2007 over 2006, reaching £46.6 billion from £30.2 billion http://tinyurl.com/62ee4x

• IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. 15% of all British retail sales took place online last year. http://tinyurl.com/62ee4x

• 40,362,842 UK Internet users in Nov/07 http://tinyurl.com/6255h5

• 66.4 % penetration, of the population http://tinyurl.com/6255h5

Growth in social media

• Britain's blogging army is now 4m strong http://tinyurl.com/2uzh2k

• YouTube is now the most popular social networking website in the UK http://tinyurl.com/26h7vo

Social Media affects consumer behaviour

• Social media is affecting audience behaviour. According to research by Hitwise (Hopkins, 2006) , social networking site MySpace is responsible for more Traffic flow into the HMV.co.uk music portal than both the Yahoo and MSN UK search engines. http://tinyurl.com/58coe9

• UK visits to Facebook
  http://tinyurl.com/yt6ax5

Top Brand mentions in social media

http://tinyurl.com/5av73g

• Reasons for people going online

(Source: National Statistics Office)

What people do online

• 5.7 million users were browsing via mobile devices in January of this year. http://tinyurl.com/4xn2z9

Social media affects every stage of the shopping process

• A study by DoubleClick shows that the web is the most influential medium in shaping consumers’ purchasing decisions, with shoppers using it at every stage of the shopping process, from first awareness to final purchase. http://tinyurl.com/58coe9

Should be % of marketing spend

• Internet advertising has again buoyed the UK advertising industry with above-expectation 41.3% year on year growth in the first half of 2007. This takes the sector to a half-year high of £1,334.3 million – compared to £917.2 million just a year ago – lifting online advertising’s market share significantly, to 14.7%. http://tinyurl.com/2xg2kr

• Where is Internet advertising going?

http://tinyurl.com/4czrbx

• Audience engagement in online advertising is 18 per cent more effective than its print equivalent, and people are also 15 per cent more engaged in magazine articles online than in print. So much for print advertising. http://tinyurl.com/4kzf3c

• But is advertising the answer? Nope!

New research into the effectiveness of different advertising mediums has revealed that advertising on social networks has had very little impact on consumers so far. http://tinyurl.com/657yj2

• Since July 2006, Topshop has seen more visitors to its site come from its pages on social networks like MySpace than from search engines. Advertising don't work involvement does http://tinyurl.com/5tgpfm

• Over 90 per cent of marketing departments are planning to launch a social media campaign in 2008 http://tinyurl.com/66pq63

• A survey, conducted by LEWIS PR at PR Week’s New Media Conference, revealed that 75 per cent of attendees are planning to use a blog as a social media asset in 2008 – an increase of 50 per cent on 2007. The number of firms planning to use social networking is tipped to increase from 33 per cent to over 70 per cent. http://tinyurl.com/66pq63

• What Web 2.0 is most effective for US companies http://tinyurl.com/57xrgh
  

Online v’s print media (popularity, growth etc)

• Average Time Spent on Social Nets 3X Longer Than News and Media Sites

http://tinyurl.com/5qxxqf

For any target demographic there are numbers;

What sites are 18 – 35 working women visiting? (not just media)

• In all countries except the UK and the US, more men than women use the internet. In the UK, the split is equal (50/50), while in the US 52% of internet users are women, with 18-34 year-old women being particularly active in both countries (Ofcom).
  

• Women outnumber men for the first time among UK residents going online. Females between 25 and 49 spend more time online than males the same age.” http://tinyurl.com/3lac2o

• 18-34 age group is where women spend more time online than men (57 per cent compared with 43 per cent). http://tinyurl.com/2pms2u

Importance of social media

• Two thirds (66 per cent) of 18-35 year olds in the UK are actively engaged in social networking and almost two in five (38 per cent) are members of two or more online forums or social networking sites. http://tinyurl.com/5qoksh

• Negative comments posted on online forums and social networks put off customers. http://tinyurl.com/5qoksh

• Nearly 1.5 times as many 18-35 year olds would rather accept a friend request from a brand than have banner adverts on a social networking profile page. The best way to get users to accept friend requests was identified as through offering special offers and discounts (60 per cent) http://tinyurl.com/5qoksh

• In a survey in 2006, 1000 women were surveyed revealing some extremely interesting insights:

• 70% are 25-44 y/o. 70% are in long term relationships, 83% are employed over half full time.

• 28% 'couldn't do without it'

• More important that TV, magazines and radio

• Internet is six times more than nearest rival (TV)

• Compared with other media the internet is regarded as the most important, achieving a 37% share. TV followed and only managing 24%. 63% of those surveyed ranked online first or second in terms of importance and 45% considered the internet “very important to me” with 28% of women going as far as to say they couldn’t live without online!

• 67% regard the Internet strong on community. That three times greater than magazines!

• 92% of women identified shopping with their use of the internet, over nine times as much as its nearest rival. Buying fashion online is now as important as booking travel, with 63% of women claiming to do both.

• The convenience of being able to research products and services before purchase online or in the high street is also valued with 75% of females identifying this as important. The internet is enhancing women’s lifestyles. 67% of women considered the internet to be strong on community, with 84% using the internet to keep in touch with friends and family.

• 55% of all British users of social networking websites were women. Similar research by Nielsen Online shows that women aged 18-24 account for 17% of all users of the social sites, while men in the same age group account for 12%. http://tinyurl.com/22tlp8

• A recent poll by Game-Vision showed that 30% more women bought computer games in the six months to July 31, 2007, than in the same period in 2006. The survey also found that there were more female owners of Nin-tendo’s handheld DS console in the UK than men (54% against 46%). http://tinyurl.com/22tlp8

• "Video streams at broadcast network TV websites were nearly two times more likely to be viewed by women age 18-34 than men, who accounted for 22% and 12% of streams respectively. http://tinyurl.com/67qjxu

• Different types of products are likely to be best advertised on different types of video websites.
  For instance, a female products brand may have better luck effectively reaching its target audience through a network TV website than through YouTube. http://tinyurl.com/67qjxu

Corporate site important but declining

http://tinyurl.com/4fvadf

How regularly do folk go online

• 88% of women who use the internet aged under 44 use the internet daily.

• Most adults (59 per cent) who had used the Internet in the last 3 months used it every day or almost every day, with the age group 25 to 44 using it the most (63 per cent). http://tinyurl.com/46u4wc

Where are client target audience currently reading about the brand online?

Its easy to see how far the client has got: Only 16 in Blogs, 26 videos, 288 mentions in MySpace, 14 people and 14 groups in Facebook. A profile in Wikipedia and was last updated 17 days ago (five changes). But it does not figure in Twitter. There are 26,400 indexed pages that refer to the client in Google (Budweiser has seven million).

We cab see where the online communities are active. e.g. Social Networks are the most popular social media for this client.... But how active are they in other media?

Who’s doing digital well?

• The web continues to drive sales at PetMed Express. In fiscal 2008, e-commerce generated 65% of sales and accounted for 83% of growth. http://tinyurl.com/437p8
  
  

What are competitors thinking of doing?

• More than three quarters of company respondents say that the importance of online customer engagement to their organisations has increased in the last 12 months.

• The most frequently cited benefits for companies implementing customer engagement initiatives are 'improved customer loyalty' and 'increased revenue'.

• More than half of respondents say their companies are either using or planning to use web-based widgets to engage with their customers more effectively.

• Around two thirds of respondents say the mobile channel will be 'essential' or 'important' for customer engagement in the next three years.

http://tinyurl.com/25e5ay

Here are some examples in the public sector campaigns:

• Ministry of Justice - BarCampUKGovweb was an idea for an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment.

• National Health Service - The Our NHS, Our Future activity is putting a lot of weight on its online engagement components.

• Foreign and Commonwealth Office - when David Miliband arrived, engagement shot up the agenda, particularly online. Not content with just the Secretary of State blogging, staff from across the FCO were invited to get involved too.

• Government Communications Network - the Social Media Review and associated activities led by GCN.

• Downing Street - it’s use of ePetitions

• Communities and Local Government - the CLG rebuilt its corporate website using community software.

• Defra - the software that runs the CO2 calculator, complete with government data made freely available under general public licence. Google has used it in its carbon footprint widget.

• DirectGov - according to the ONS, 6 in 10 of the UK’s web users have accessed government services via DirectGov.

• Ministry of Justice - Digital Dialogues, which is in its final phase, has been putting data about government blogs, forums, webchats etc in the public domain.

• SS/SIS - a bit of a Is involved in a range of interesting developments.

Do we know or have an idea of how much other brands are spending on digital activity alone?

I hope you enjoy the links.

There are zillions of them and they all point one way.

In preperation for Euroblog 2008

Tomorrow, I will be joining a panel at Euroblog 2008.

I will be in the august company of

• Toni Muzi Falconi,
• Ansgar Zerfass (University of Leipzig, Germany),
• David Weinberger (Fellow at Harvard Berkam Center),
• Frank Ovaitt (President and CEO of the Institute for Public Relations)
• Gilles Klein (Le Monde),
• Tim Macmahon (NY University)
• Wolfgang Luenenbuerger, (Head of Social Media, Edelman Europe)

We are tasked with examining:

The changing media environment and how it is affecting business, academia and its implications for the future:

• What are the potential opportunities and risks for businesses in investing in new media?
• How can we measure it?
• What is the role of higher education in navigating these opportunities.

I thought that I would get my thoughts ready before the event.

In the first instance we need to be sure that there is a changing media environment and whether the extent of any such change is significant.

A year ago, I presented evidence of the changing media environment. Based on work at Bournemouth University I showed that at a time when more people were online; when people were spending more time online and when access was increasing because of the uptake of broadband there was a paradox. In 2006, I showed that traffic to search engine sites and retail web sites was not reflecting the extra eyeball or eyeball hours. Worse still, traffic to these sites was in slow decline. Where was all the extra 'traffic' going?

It was going to social media. Blogs, wiki's, social networks, YouTube.

These finding legitimise the the first assumption in our discourse and are a vindication of my repost to the views expressed by Betteke van Ruler, Professor of Communication and Organization at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, in April 2006. Social media is significant and has a huge role to play in communication.




Of course, it would be wrong to blithely make the assumption that there is significant evidence of the generality of business being affected by the changing media environment.

What, then is the evidence that online interactions are affecting business?

Over the last two months, I have undertaken in-depth studies of the digital footprint of five companies. One of the resources used has been Microsoft adCenter Labs . In presenting to a B2C client with over 600 UK retail outlets, I showed this graph of search driven numbers of visitors to their websites.



For the marketing director this was a surprise. This graph was a match for their volume sales! In subsequent analysis for a range of other clients we were able to demonstrate similar correlations.

It would seem that people go online before buying and search extrapolation from these data suggests that they do so in significant numbers, mirroring other research of this nature in areas like B2B purchasing.

In answer to the second premise for our discussion, I contend that companies and the internet are now joined at the hip. Even for company websites that are not e-commerce enabled, the internet is having a significant impact on business performance.

The next issue we need to face before we go further is the extent to which the internet is affecting business.

Once again, we now have evidence of what companies believe they are achieving online.

With some confidence we have evidence of the demographic nature of the website by sex and age profiles:











But when we go and look at who is actually visiting the site we get a different picture:

The age and sex profile is not the same:



What we are seeing is that it is the consumer who is deciding what they want and need from the internet. This is full blown evidence of the phenomenon of 'user' segments. The marketing people (you remember - those folk who held sway in the 20th century) have got it wrong.



There is other evidence that is interesting. If you examine the SEO keywords used by webmasters, they are more often than not at variance with keywords people use to search for products and services (which also demonstrates the poor SEO of most websites). In this case, we are seeing evidence of people online deciding what they believe are brand and corporate values. In the majority of cases (in the five surveys I have done so far) there is significant dissonance between what the company thinks are its brand values and what their website visitors believe.

Progressively, companies are changing their keywords as the attune to the power of SEO. The companies are being changed by the online community.

But is this enough? What about the effects of ubiquitous interactive communication.

In the UK there was a very significant change in the behaviours of the interactive community.

As a generality, and for years, the numbers of blog posts about companies has shown a progressive increase.

But last year (round about November time) there was a sea change.

The rate of growth in the number of posts moved from progressive to exponential. It is not the numbers of posts that is important. It is the rate of change that is so significant.

Once again, in each of our surveys the results showed the same dynamic.

















From the foregoing, It is reasonable to accept the premise of the session at Euroblog. There is a :

changing media environment and how it is affecting business and academia and it does have implications for the future.

These finding also help us with our examination of:

• What are the potential opportunities and risks for businesses in investing in new media?
• How can we measure it?
• What is the role of higher education in navigating these opportunities.

The opportunities are, of course, no longer potential. If companies are being changed because of SEO, the opportunity is being seized. But probably inadvertently and probably at considerable risk to the organisation.

Not that risk cannot be managed it can and so I hope that the discussion on risk is based on good research, practice with good assessment and in a structured way.

This is going to be fun.