Following up on the importance of brand reputation, Chick-Fil-A is a great example of a company who is able to use authenticity to build trust and credibility.

Excerpt taken from Pete Bradshaw’s Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000

Chick-fil-A, a fast-food restaurant chain, has earned an enviable mantle of credibility by doing things in an authentic way. At the root of its   business is faith and unabashed belief in serving the Lord, and this principle guides how the company does business and serves its customers. All Chick-fil-A restaurants are closed on Sundays so that employees can spend the day in worship; unit managers are expected to contribute to the well-being of their community and their employees through servant leadership–leadership that focuses not so much on what I want as on how to help others get what they want. And as a result, despite being open only six days each week, Chick-fil-A has the highest annual average unit volume of any fast-food chicken restaurant in the nation. In fact, its unit sales compare favorably with those of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Wendy’s despite fifty-two fewer selling days per year.

I wholeheartedly believe that Chick-fil-A’s success can be attributed to their authenticity and the fact that they are real and sincere.

We (MotiveQuest LLC) have decided to start tracking & analyzing the healthcare debate using our online anthropology tools and techniques.  The first report in this series can be found here:  The Raging Debate

For this series we will be monitoring & analyzing the online conversation around healthcare and providing weekly updates as to what is driving the conversation, advocacy for different options and the emotional tenor of the chatter.

Here is one chart from the report showing the key topics and drivers of concern – you can see the landscape has changed significantly from June through August.

You can see that rationing shows the biggest increase from June through August.

We will be posting a follow-up report next week which will reflect today’s speech by President Obama.

If you are interested in more information you can contact me at tobrien at motivequest dot com.

Thanks – TO’B

Picture Credit: Daniel Broche

Aumento esplosivo dei siti web 2.0. e lenta crescita dell’e-commerce. Una contraddizione nell’utilizzo di Internet e nell’approccio al web degli italiani che emerge dalla ricerca realizzata da Ipsos in escusiva per Gdoweek lo scorso aprile su un campione nazionale di individui dai 15 anni in su. Solo il 16% degli italiani, infatti, ha dichiarato di aver fatto acquisti online nel mese di aprile 2009. Il fenomeno si può spiegare in diversi modi, sia di ordine strutturale (il 40% degli italiani  non ha un computer ed il 20% non possiede una connessione Internet) che di ordine attitudinale (il “non sentire il bisogno di un tale servizio”).

Ma, secondo me, comprare in Rete è soprattutto una questione di fiducia: nell’azienda e nel prodotto ma anche nel sito stesso, che deve garantire sistemi di pagamento sicuri ed affidabili. E l’Italia è un Paese in cui la fiducia non viene concessa tanto facilmente…

Anche se, con la crescita dei Consumer Generated Media, sempre più spesso ci vengono in aiuto le opinioni di chi ha già acquistato il prodotto e di conseguenza l’importanza del passaparola online sta aumentando considerevolmente. Al punto che anche le aziende e gli investitori pubblicitari online stanno iniziando ad utilizzare una forma di messaging più realistica, basata sull’esperienza diretta dei consumatori piuttosto che sui nobili ideali e sulla filosofia aziendale.

La fiducia da sola però non basta: altrettanto importante è la comodità d’acquisto, che oggi permette  di attirare più clienti rispetto ai prezzi bassi ed alle promozioni. Vi è mai capitato di aspettare per lunghi minuti che si carichi la pagina del sito per completare il processo di pagamento? Oppure di inserire tutti i dati richiesti per poi ricevere un messaggio di errore o di momentanea indisponibilità del sistema?

Sono situazioni comuni che però ci fanno capire quantosia importante una buona interazione online, per non generare nell’utente quel senso di frustrazione – comunemente chiamato “stress da e-commerce” – che lo porta ad abbandonare l’atto di acquisto e a cercare il sito di un venditore alternativo. Un danno sia economico che di reputazione per le aziende la cui sopravvivenza, soprattutto nell’attuale congiuntura economica, è fortemente legata alla fidelizzazione dei clienti. Lentezza nel caricamento delle pagine, messaggi d’errore ed informazioni poco chiare sono piccoli problemi che si possono risolvere con un atteggiamento proattivo di monitoraggio del sito e dotandosi di strumenti in grado di inividuare e risolvere eventuali problemi delle applicazioni Web.

E voi cosa ne pensate? Quali sono le vostre esperienze, più o meno positive, e che rapporto avete con l’e-commerce?

One of the biggest things Web 2.0 will be remembered for is its proliferation of user generated content (UGC). With falling bandwidth and storage costs, the thinking was that entrepreneurs could amass a large audience fast, and lock-in users in the process, by offering visitors a place to create, upload, manage and/or share their personal content (articles, photos, videos) with friends- and provide it all for free. The network affect would drive adoption as users invited friends to the site to check out their content, who in turn would sign up for the service themselves (thus the user acquisition costs could be defined as the per user cost for hosting and delivering the content). Once a site’s audience reached a certain threshold, the idea was to monetize these visitors through advertising and, to a lesser extent, premium services (i.e. get people to pay for more storage, additional features, etc.). Sites like Blogger, Photobucket and YouTube were launched to meet specific user needs around content verticals (articles, photos and videos respectively), while social networks like MySpace enabled the content to be aggregated by allowing their users to embed widgets from these UGC sites for everyone to see on the social network. While this tactic was a boon from a user adoption perspective, the revenue opportunity hasn’t proved itself for the acquirer of these web properties (both Blogger and YouTube were acquired by Google, while MySpace and Photobucket were acquired by News Corp/Fox) as of yet. While adjacency issues (displaying a brand advertisement banner next to objectionable content on a website) have been a primary excuse for poor CPM rates on UGC sites, the real issue has been the lack of higher value, integrated branding opportunities available to advertisers to leverage the unique behaviors of these communities. Since visitors to UGC websites are there to develop their content and interact with other users, standard ad units that push contextually irrelevant content are completely ignored. Considering that the Internet population is increasing the amount of time it spends on these types of properties, advertisers need a way to reach these users in a manner that is consistent with how people use these sites. So what’s the solution that provides UGC sites with more revenue, advertisers with better value for their ad spend and users with a enjoyable ad experience? It’s consumer generated media (CGM). While some might consider the difference solely semantic, there are differences between CGM and UGC in how the content is produced. Consumer generated media is created based on explicit and/or implicit sets of guidelines while user generated content has no such restrictions. These parameters enable producers of user generated content to create three types of consumer generated media.

1. Participation. Self-promotion is a big reason why people upload their content creations to sites like YouTube. So what better way to help some of them realize their 15 minutes of fame than by having them participate in an ad campaign! The typical model for participatory campaigns is to create a contest where users upload their videos or photos with explicit guidelines around what content qualifies, how winners are chosen and whether the prize is fame and/or fortune. Doritos was an early adopter of this model, leveraging fans to create Super Bowl ads on behalf of its brand, with the top 5 entries getting a monetary prize ($25,000) and a grand prize winner having their creation aired during the Super Bowl (in fact this year’s contest winner was also named the best ad by consumers, resulting in an additional $1 million prize!). According to Forrester Research, consumer generated video campaigns are are a popular way for a wide range of industries to drive brand loyalty. With the growing popularity of Twitter, even commenting-based campaigns are gaining traction as advertisers include a filtered set of publicly available tweets in widget-based ads. In both cases, you can see how leveraging the participatory nature of UGC sites can provide a quick and cost effective method for reaching and engaging with an audience, and in the process create ads that are more relevant to the intended audience.
2. Endorsement. Out of those seeking fame and fortune online a few have actually achieve celebrity status. Due to the open, promotional nature of UGC sites, individuals such as Justine Ezarik (iJustin), Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal (Rhett & Link) and Gary Vanyerchuck (Gary Vee), have been able to grow their popularity from within specific communities. As such there is a stronger perceived relationship and level of trust afforded to these individuals by their followers than you would find with more mainstream celebrities. This has also enabled these internet celebrities to leverage their success on one content platform to create devoted followers across other UGC sites (Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.). Thus, an endorsed campaign centered around one community’s platform offers an opportunity for the endorsement overflow into the individual’s other audiences as well. But because of the relationship these personalities have with their followers, advertisers interested in leveraging the endorsement model need to trust these internet celebrities to communicate the value of the advertiser’s brand in their own voice. Scripted endorsement could be construed as disingenuous and risk damaging both the celebrity’s and the advertiser’s brand. In putting together this type of program explicit guidelines should only be placed on the topic and context the online celebrity will be communicating to their audience, while implicit guidelines should be used around the content itself (the individuals’ thoughts, experience, etc. with the brand). Companies such as Carl’s Jr. and JetBlue have both recently experimented with this type of consumer generated media to promote their respective brands. For UGC properties, highlighting these celebrities or power users (if the former doesn’t exist) as potential brand advocates can yield high engagement- as long as the brand is willing to give up a certain level of control in the messaging. In addition to the monetization opportunity for both the web property and its endorsing personalities, this type of campaign can further strengthening the relationship of the site with its community as users see how the time and effort they put into the site can be rewarded.
3. Mashup. Combining user generated content with elements of professionally produced media (user generated video that incorporates a popular song into the experience is an example of this) can create an unexpected branding and, more importantly, revenue opportunity if embraced by the copyrighted content owner. These UGC productions are traditionally taken down by the UGC site host at the request of the professional content owner before the mashup has a chance to gain any traction in most cases. But the viral success of the JK Wedding Entrance Dance (choreographed to Chris Brown’s ‘Forever’) shows what can happen if allowed to flourish with the appropriate technology capabilities and business relationship in place to identify and capitalize on the opportunity. The popularity of this video mashup resulted in increased music sales for Chris Brown and his record label in addition to providing YouTube with a new revenue opportunity. In fact, YouTube is encouraging future mashups by allowing producers of viral video hits to participate in the revenue generated from their creations. Imagine the creative mashups that would be produced if content from media companies and the like were readily made available to a site’s users to mashup on a consistent basis? A scenario could evolve where the professional content owner wouldn’t need to spend marketing dollars to promote their content as a site’s user would essentially be doing it on the company’s behalf. This could evolve into more of a participatory model, though with a focus on revenues versus branding. Because the mashup model is user-initiated, the only parameters a brand can place on the experience is implicitly around the content as the professional production can only be spliced or layered into UGC content but the quality cannot be altered. The key for UGC sites is to have identifying and tracking technologies in place to enable monetization (instead of inhibiting it as most copyrighted content owner seem to do) and the right business partnerships to execute and share in the revenues.

While the ability for advertisers to control the brand message and user experience decreases as they progress from the Participation to the Mashup model, the potential brand engagement value actually goes up as the ad unit becomes pull-oriented versus the typical push model (where a user proactively grabs the content ad to consume versus landing on a page where an ad is ad served) making the experience more engaging. The key for advertisers is to find their comfort zone with these guidelines and the right UGC web property to help plan, deliver and report on the appropriate model.

Here’s to the evolution of consumer generated media!

Esattamente una settimana fa abbiamo pubblicato i risultati di una ricerca effettuata da Harris Interactive , in collaborazione con Adweek Media, relativamente ai livelli di influenza della comunicazione pubblicitaria a seconda del media.

L’articolo pubblicato, come sempre più spesso avviene, ha suscitato un confronto su FriendFeed in cui sono state espresse riserve e citati studi che affermerebbero il contrario di quanto si evidenziava.

Abbiamo cercato di affrontare il discorso anche da una angolazione diversa ad inizio di questa settimana sintetizzando e, come sempre, fornendo la personale interpretazione dei risultati di uno studio del Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism che ha investigato in profondità la fiducia nelle notizie e nei media.

Proviamo oggi a chiudere temporaneamente il cerchio grazie alla recentissima pubblicazione da parte di Nielsen dei risultati del Global Online Consumer Survey.

La ricerca periodicamente raccoglie ed analizza l’opinione di ben 25mila internauti di 50 nazioni diverse [Italia compresa] rendendo così possibile anche il raffronto rispetto alle edizioni precedenti.

Complessivamente vengono confermate le prime impressioni di Marcello nonché i risultati della precitata ricerca.

Come emerge dal grafico di sintesi dei risultati sottostante, tra i media tradizionali si conferma ancora una volta la televisione star del sistema di comunicazione promo-pubblicitaria. Abbiamo, inoltre, la conferma della inefficacia dei banner su internet.

Come ipotizzavo è primario il ruolo del passaparola sia on line che nella vita e nei contatti quotidiani del contesto sociale di appartenenza. Mi pare assolutamente interessante evidenziare l’importanza del ruolo delle PR che ottengono uno score del 69% al di sopra di tutte le altre forme di comunicazione promo-.pubblicitaria.

I giornali? Pur mantenendo un livello di fiducia e credibilità dignitoso, ponendosi appena dopo la televisione, hanno un trend negativo rispetto all’indagine precedente. Anche per quanto riguarda internet c’è ancora molto lavoro che deve essere fatto.

Per quanto riguarda in maniera più specifica i risultati relativi all’Italia, i consigli di persone che si conoscono ottengono l’85% di livello di fiducia, mentre quelli pubblicati on line si attestano all’ 80% . Risulta dunque evidente, da un lato la rilevanza dei consumer generated media e, dall’altro la sempre più pressante necessità per media e pubblicitari di costruire relazioni sociali [in antitesi ad esclusivamente commerciali] fiduciarie e perciò durature.

(The other day a client was probing about our methodology. They were asking lots of smart questions and as we worked through the answers, they asked me to send a write-up. Technically, it isn’t a social media cake, but a social media analysis and insight cake. Here it is.)

During our discussion, you asked how we bake this cake – here’s my diatribe answer to that question. (BTW, baking a cake turns out to be a great analogy!)

To bake a cake you need ingredients (data), mixers and pans (tools) and cooks (strategists).  Your questions were focused on developing a better understanding of each one of these. (Disclaimer, I’m not the CTO or the head of research, so my answers may be a bit shallow.  I promise that I’m happy to get both/either of those people (cc’d above) on the phone to dive into more detail.)

Any good cake starts with the right ingredients.  For MQ this means starting with the right data.  The right data is always category, project and client specific.    Here are our thoughts about data.

1. Including the data you want while excluding the data you don’t what is hard.  We discussed the Visa example, and you have experienced this with your brand.  De-spamming and de-duping is an important part of the job.
   
2. Brand mentions range from 2% to 30% of the relevant data (depending on category, so only collecting brand mentions will miss most of the relevant conversation.
   
3. It isn’t helpful to get all of the data.  (Splogs – or spam blogs have LOTS of brand mentions – but aren’t real and VERY hard to eliminate.   Focusing on and gathering the sites where the most people are participating virtually guarantees the elimination of Splogs.
   
4. 5 years of expertise in solving the challenges above with a combination of technology tools and linguistic programming expertise provides MQ with a significant advantage over most of our competition.
   

You can’t bake a cake without measuring cups, mixers, whisks, spatulas, pans and an oven.  We can’t do our work without a broad sophisticated toolkit.  One of the fundamental challenges in analyzing large amounts of unstructured text data is that you simply can’t make sense of it in any sort of manual fashion.  Sophisticated software tools are the answer, but how those tools are developed and deployed makes a difference.

1. Language is fluid over time and across categories.  Tools must be too.  Every one of our tools is parameter driven and allows the strategist to adjust the linguistic model and other parameters for the category and project at hand.
   
2. Simple measures (counts, brand mentions, sentiment) are not useful for understanding why people do what they do and without understanding, we don’t gain the insight of what to do next.
   
3. Understanding requires more sophisticated tools.   That is why we have tools for passion peaking, measuring motivations, word association, brand advocacy and many, many others.
   
4. We have many tools available, but the tools used and the order of use is very project dependent.
   

Finally, you can’t bake a cake without a cook.  Well, I guess you can use a box mix from the grocery store and bake a cake without a cook, but if you have a special occasion and hire a chef to bake a cake, you don’t expect to get something from a box mix.  You expect a cake cooked to your specifications for your occasion.  You expect something unique, professional, surprising and delicious for your special occasion.  In our world, the dashboard and organized data providers are the box mixes.

MotiveQuest brings the experienced professional chef who will design and deliver a custom cake according to your exact interests, needs and specifications.

1. Experience matters.  We have very sophisticated toolsets and it takes at least 6 months to get a strategist (most of whom have advanced degrees and backgrounds in consulting or planning) trained and productive.
   
2. The tools are complex because the problems are complex.
   
3. A single strategist is responsible for the entire project including data collection, organization, analysis, insights and recommendations.
   
4. Each project has its own specifications and requirements.  Communication, solid project management and client involvement are all required to achieve good results.
   
5. MotiveQuest Senior Leadership is deeply involved in every project to ensure results that meet your needs.
   

I will send the MQ capabilities presentation in another email.   Our case studies are very marketing (not data or technology) focused for a reason.  We don’t get hired to provide data or technology, but instead to solve real world marketing and communication problems.  I’ll be happy to provide more detail about any of them.

Thanks very much for your time on these issues, and I hope this helps answer some of your questions.

TO’B

BuzzMetrics, il servizio offerto da Nielsen Online, che analizza i consumer generated media e viene utilizzato dalle aziende per attuare decisioni di business, arriverà nel 2009 anche in Giappone. Il servizio, che è capace di captare sul web la voce dei consumatori, viene utilizzato in America già da 10 anni. Nel 2007 è approdato in Germania e nel Regno Unito e dal 2009 arriverà in Italia, Cina e Giappone.
Nel linguaggio comune il termine “buzz” viene utilizzato per indicare il passaparola ed i commenti che gli utenti lasciano nei siti di social network, blog, forum su prodotti, eventi e personaggi. Commenti che sono considerati molto importanti per capire se un prodotto o qualsiasi altra cosa, possa funzionare. Nel marketing il “buzz” è ormai considerato di vitale importanza per il lancio di qualsiasi prodotto. Attualmente i consumer generated media coinvolgono 242 milioni di persone nel mondo. Finora per analizzare questi dati era necessario affidare il compito ad una persona, che effettuasse una ricerca sul web. BuzzMetrics, partendo dai dati dei consumer generated media, riesce ad effettuare uno studio in base a vari elementi, come la quantità di contenuti presenti su un soggetto, i luoghi dove se ne parla, il tenore del commento (se positivo o negativo), la credibilità di chi ha scritto il messaggio e così via. Luca Bordin, managing director Italia Nielsen Online, ha così spiegato il funzionamento del servizio: “BuzzMetrics offre una prospettiva nuova nelle ricerche di mercato: non più questionari ma l’ascolto diretto dei consumatori online, oltretutto su un campione numericamente molto significatico”.

Social Media really is a lot like chemistry. There is a huge pool of elements you can choose from and an infinite variety of combinations you can create.  Twitter + sharing + commenting will give you a different result than blogging + LinkedIn + Flickr. Then of course there are the active ingredients - the people. A dash of Chris Brogan plus a big helping of David Armano and the whole thing changes again.

Well, this got me to thinking. It would be handy to have a Periodic Table of the Social Media Elements. So, I created one:

Social Media: Art? Or Science?

You can grab this from Flickr here. Please feel free to download and share.

Now, if I’m being honest there is nothing particularly scientific about the table. In fact, your table could be very different from my table. You have favorite applications, people and habits. That’s cool. The magic comes with using them all and putting them together in different combinations. According to Wikipedia (so it must be true), the Periodic Table is not a static thing:

“The layout of the table has been refined and extended over time, as new elements have been discovered, and new theoretical models have been developed to explain chemical behavior.”

So maybe in six months or a year I’ll revise this and add some new people, take out others, and mix things up a bit. I think it’s also a cool way to brainstorm – coming up with different ways to connect different elements of Social Media.

A lot of this is going to be old news to Social Media practitioners, but if you have friends, colleagues, parents, students or bosses who are having trouble keeping all the elements of Social Media straight, you may want to download/print this chart out for them.

I know what you’re thinking now (assuming you’ve been kind enough to read this far): Cool idea Rick, but what do all the abbreviations stand for?

Here’s the key:

Social Media Behaviours: (These are the positive things you choose to do)

Sh = Share

Mt = Monitor

Fr = Friend

Cv = Converse

Cu = Customize

Li = Listen

En = Engage

Di = Dialogue

Social Media All-Rounders: (These are the people you can find all over the Social Media landscape)

Mc = Mack Collier (The Viral Garden)

To = Todd Defren (PR Squared)

Lo = Lee Odden (Online Marketing Blog)

Dr = Darren Rowse (ProBlogger)

Mj = Mitch Joel (Six Pixels of Separation)

Ds = David Meerman Scott (Web Ink Now)

Pe = Peter Kim (Being Peter Kim)

Bs = Brian Solis (PR 2.0)

Sz = Shel Holtz (A Shel of my Former Self)

Rb = Rohit Bhargava (Influential Markeitng Blog)

Gl = Geoff Livingston (The Buzz Bin)

As = Andy Sernovitz (Damn! I Wish I’d Thought of That!)

An = Andy Beal Marketing Pilgrim

Ad = Andy Beard (Niche Marketing)

Al = Alan Wolk (The Toad Stool)

Cc = C.C. Chapman (The Advance Guard)

Nb = Noah Brier (Noah Brier)

Cr = Connie Reece (Every Dot Connects)

Kp = Katja Presnal (Skimbaco Lifestyle)

Da = David Armano (Logic + Emotion)

Jc = Joel Comm (Joel Comm)

Ls = Liz Strauss (Successful Blog)

Jh = Jackie Huba (Church of the Customer)

Vm = Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent)

Cg = Chris Garrett (Chrisg)

Ah = Ann Handley (Annarchy & Marketing Profs)

Jj = Joseph Jaffe (Jaffe Juice)

Ju = Joe Pulizzi (Junta42)

Ng = Nigel Hollis (Straight Talk)

Nh = Neville Hobson (Neville Hobson)

Bl = B.L. Ochman (What’s Next)

Si = Shel Israel (Global Neighbourhoods)

Ni = Nick Burcher (Nick Burcher)

Social Media Tools: (These are the applications and tools essential to Social Media)

De = Delicious

Su = StumbleUpon

Td = TweetDeck

Fe = FeedBurner

Dp = Dopplr

Tu = TinyURL

Tb = Tumblr

Fb = Facebook

Lk = LinkedIn

Te = Technorati

Fk = Flickr

Ms = MySpace

Go = Google

Dg = Digg

Social Media Practices: (Do these to maximize your Social Media experience)

Fl = Follow

Ht = Hashtag

Po = Post

St = Status Update

Sp = Spread

Se = Search

Hp = Hat tip

Fd = Feed

Rt = Retweet

Ud = Update

Cm = Comment

Jn = Join

Up = Upload

Tg = Tag

Tc = Tag clouds

Dm = Direct Message

Rx = Remix

Ln = Link

Mu = Mashup

Sb = Subscribe

Rf = Refer

Sr = Stream

Re = Reply

Rc = Recommend

Sn = Syndicate

Pk = Poke

Pm = Promote

Ib = Imbed

Social Media Live: (Bringing the Social Media experience to the real world)

 Pf = Piers Fawkes (Likemind)

Rd = Russell Davies (Interesting)

Cb = Chris Brogan (PodCamp)

Sg = Seth Godin (Seth Live)

Ha = Peter Shankman (Help a Reporter Out)

Facebook People: (Power users of the Social Media Networking platform)

 Jp = Jeff Pulver

Zf = Ze Frank

Twitter People: (Masters of leveraging microblogging)

Gk = Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki

Wl = Gary Vaynerchuk @garyvee

Aa = Aloha Arleen @AlohaArleen

Sm = Scott Monty @scottmonty

Jo = Jeremiah Owyang @jowyang

Sa = Sarah Evans @PRSarahEvans

Sc = Robert Scoble @scobleizer

Zp = Zappos @zappos

Sq = The Real Shaq @THE_REAL_SHAQ

Bo=  Barack Obama @barackobama

Pc = Laura Fitton @pistachio

Tm = Warren Sukernek @warrenss

YouTube People: (Pioneers in developing content for social media video)

Ij = iJustine

Jl = Judson Laipply

Blog People: (Consistently intellingent, thought-provoking & educational)

Sy = Shoe Money

Ar = Ad Rants

Mp = Micro Persuasion

Aw = Ads of the World

Sj = Search Engine Journal

Cf = Common Craft

Cp = CopyBlogger

Ba = Brand Autopsy

Sd = Search Engine Land

Dd = Dosh Dosh

Gv = Gaping Void

Ma = Mashable

Two years ago Forrester’s brand monitoring Wave evaluated vendors that help marketers monitor mainstream and consumer-generated media in order to identify key trends in the market. Social forces have gathered plenty of momentum since that evaluation. Today, consumers actively participate in the dialogue around the brand — witness the power of the consumer in shifting marketing strategies of brands like Dell, Motrin, and Wal-Mart.

Forrester defines listening platforms as:  A technology and analytics infrastructure that mines a wide variety of traditional, online, and social sources to extract and deliver insights that shape a firm’s marketing strategy. Forrester refers to this category of vendors as listening platforms. Listening platforms differ from brand monitoring vendors in one fundamental way: They deliver insights to shape
marketing strategy rather than simply tracking metrics.

Forrester’s evaluation of leading listening platform vendors across 62 criteria revealed an emerging category still maturing in its capabilities and vision. The Forrester Wave(TM) was released on January 23, 2009. Download  the paper at Visible Technologies.

Possibly one of the best things to happen to online marketing in Dubai, consumer-generated media (CGM) or user generated content (UGC) has taken a strong hold of those making a living on the internet and off it.

Also going around by monikers like Online Consumer Word-of-mouth and Online Consumer Buzz, ClickZ, the people who have helped standardize the concept, believe CGM promises a 30 percent annual growth.

This brilliant aspect of internet marketing in Dubai finds a voice in everything from web blogs to discussion boards and review sites and more recently, video blogs and podcasts. It is solely dependent on the end-user or the consumer, the group that a professional online marketing company constantly strives to influence.

Since consumers do all the reviewing, ranting, rating or just about plain raving about a product or service, it is one of the most viable and lucrative forms of online marketing. The only drawback of such media is the lack of control a professional online marketing company has over the consumers which is good in a way as it keeps the user’s opinion unbiased.

For great CGM, internet marketers have to look for demographics, internet marketing in U.A.E. techniques and mind-sets that will provide them the best ROI. It all boils down to market-intensive research and delivering web content that is absolutely captivating.

The trick lies in how to influence the consumer subtly, which Cosmos Star Consultants is well aware of and has successfully experimented with. 

Image Courtesy: Flickr

Said Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., at a Nov. 15 forum on digital media.

This looks like another opinion for the rising social media situation.  You can read the whole article down, thanks to Advertisin Age.

——————————————————–

P&G Digital Guru Not Sure Marketers Belong on Facebook
Advertisers Shouldn’t ‘Hijack’ Conversations, but Applications Hold PromiseBy Jack Neff

Published: November 17, 2008
CINCINNATI (AdAge.com) — Social networks may never find the ad dollars they’re hunting for because they don’t really have a right to them, said Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., at a Nov. 15 forum on digital media.

In a talk to the Digital Non-Conference, a program by Cincinnati’s Digital Hub Initiative presented by the Ad Club of Cincinnati and attended by about 190 people, Mr. McConnell pointed to the drumbeat of complaints about social networks being unable to monetize their sites.

“I have a reaction to that as a consumer advocate and an advertiser,” he said. “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”

‘Who said this is media?’
He went on to apply a similar standard to the broader world of consumer-generated media. “I think when we call it ‘consumer-generated media,’ we’re being predatory,” he said. “Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

While it’s not a company policy, but rather a personal preference, Mr. McConnell said, “I really don’t want to buy any more banner ads on Facebook.”

That’s not to say he believes P&G should end all involvement with Facebook. He cited Facebook applications as a potentially valuable vehicle for advertisers, one in which they can create an environment that’s favorable for their brands and consumers alike.

Uncomfortable about targeting
But while he appreciates the power of targeting afforded by Facebook, Mr. McConnell said, it also makes him uncomfortable.

He said a subordinate of his did an experiment in which he set out to use Facebook to find a 22- to 27-year-old female P&G employee living in Cincinnati “who likes sex and Cocoa Puffs — that was literally the target ID he asked for Facebook to find.” And he found such a person.

“So the targeting is fantastic,” Mr. McConnell said. “You can do really amazing things. But I’m not so sure I want to be targeted like that. … I don’t think everything every consumer says to someone else and writes down is somehow monetizable by the media industry.”

Inventory explosion
More broadly, Mr. McConnell said he believes marketer dollars will continue to flow online, but that won’t necessarily be a boon to online publishers, because online display inventory continues to grow faster than the dollars going after it.

He cited research by Morgan Stanley showing cost-per-thousand rates on banner ads falling from $3 to $1 on average during this decade. And despite rapid growth of internet audiences in markets such as Brazil and China, he said, advertisers are able to pay CPMs of about 5 cents because of the even more rapid explosion of inventory there.

“Fragmentation thwarts artificial scarcity,” he said, noting that CPMs for rich media have held up somewhat better. Search CPMs are growing largely because of Google’s quality-scoring system, he said.

Despite the growth of online classified-advertising alternatives, Mr. McConnell said, classified revenue for offline publishers continues to dwarf online classified spending, leaving plenty of remaining revenue for newspapers and room for growth for online alternatives.

But the divergence of fortune for pay-per-click and other performance-based models vs. CPM-based models will only intensify as the economy worsens, Mr. McConnell predicted. “‘Spray and pray’ is a little harder to do when you’re under economic pressure,” he said. “So performance-based advertising will gain share over CPM.”

Are you still trying to convince your management why your brand should be monitoring Social Media?  Well if you are a Consumer Packaged Good brand (or any brand really), just look at what happened to Motrin over the past couple of days and the reaction of Motrin Moms.

A simple search on Twitter of #motrinmoms will show you that they pissed off a lot of people with their latest ad around “babywearing.”  Mommy Bloggers are not people you want to mess with and you sure better understand the sandbox you are playing in if you do them wrong.  For instance, just look at this Consumer Generated Media that has already popped up in response.  Not exactly brand content you want at the top of search results.

The Lesson for Brand Managers:

Motrin screwed up.  It happens.  But in today’s world of Social Media, the place they really screwed up was in not monitoring what people were saying about the brand.  This PR disaster is happening underneath their nose and no one on the brand is responding.  Not their advertising agency, not their Public Relations group and not the brand itself.   The unfortunate fact is that company’s haven’t trained Brand Managers to respond quickly to situations like this.  That needs to change….and it needs to change fast.

People are going to be talking about your brand, with or without the Brand Manager’s permission.  This simple fact is reason enough that you should be monitoring the conversations around your brand.  Motrin is just the latest brand to learn this lesson the hard way.

UPDATE – Well it looks like Motrin is trying to respond.  If you commented on their website, it looks like their VP of Marketing has a response that is being sent out (Thanks to Amy Gates for the lead).  And the Motrin.com site has been taken down for now, but thanks to the power of YouTube, you can still see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmykFKjNpdY (Thanks Bill Seaver)

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Today, I spoke with Pete Blackshaw and it was tremendous. This is certainly one of my favorite interviews to date, out of over 50! Pete is the man who coined “consumer-generated media.” He’s also a top executive at Nielsen, an author, speaker, cofounder of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, a columnist and much more. It’s hard to keep up with Pete, just like it’s probably difficult to keep up with me (but at a higher level). You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his blog. Today, we go over the importance of word-of-mouth, and what companies and individuals should start doing about the conversations that ARE ALREADY taking place on the internet.

Pete, you coined the term “consumer-generated media.” Where did you come up with that name and what fvalue do you put on being a content producer, not just consumer?

About five or six years ago, the name just slapped me in the face while thinking hard about how to best communicate the concept of how user content is shaping the new landscape. At times I worried we were being too abstact and “technical” in how we communicated the value and importance of internet monitoring, and CGM seems to solve that answer. I was also looking for something that sounded a bit like CPG to make the concept more media-centric.

Also, I presumed a big tent under the word “consumer,” and that includes all other content creators. The use of the term “media” is quite deliberate, and I really wanted to underscore that the content consumers create acts like “media” in the product awareness, trial, and consideration stages. It especially acts like media in search results, a point I underscore quite emphatically in my book. There’s absolutely no question there’s a media effect going on when negative experiences spill across the web.

There are now countless examples of companies who monitor customer complains online. For instance, GoDaddy shut my websites now (3 of them) and I tweeted about it. After 24 hours I got a phone call from a man who apologized and told me that he will help next time via Twitter. What happens when a company ignores these conversations? What impact does it have on their bottom line?

“Companies that ignore these conversations merely increase the odds of the bad news spreading.”

Remember, consumers tell others because they often feel like the company is ignoring them. Negative word-of-mouth often serves an almost ‘cathartic need.’ As for the bottom line, you can look at the impact in many different ways. Keeping customers loyal is always a good investment strategy, and social media and CGM afford us a unique and powerful lens into new dimensions of consumer loyalty. If the research studies are correct that consumers trust other consumers more than advertisers in their buyer behavior, there’s no possible way to unpack ROI from CGM.

In 5-10 years, do you think every company will have a blog, Twitter account, page on Facebook, etc? Should some companies stay out of social media?

Most of these next-generation CRM tools are unavoidable, and for good reason. That said, I always tell companies considering social media or that proverbial “blog” to first call their 800 number and then look in the mirror. Many brands are poorly positioned to enter this space, and they need to ask harder questions about their core fundamentals.

There are too many gaps between the the marketing positioning about “dialogue” and the core fundamentals of the 800-number, consumer affairs, the ol’ fashioned listening pipe. My book makes a strong argument that social media will never succeed, or become permanently chiseled in the company operating strategy, until you first nail the fundamentals.

Your book’s title, “Satisfied customers tell three friends, angry customers tell 3,000″ is very interesting. I feel like I’ve heard it before, yet I believe that in a web 2.0 world, to reach the 3,000 people is quite easy. For some bloggers that might be a single tweet or blog post. How did you come up with the title and what “angry customer” stories have you heard recently?

The book was initially titled “Cred” as in “Credibility” — which is a big piece of what the book is all about – but Seth Godin, who I know and who works closely with my book partners at Lark Productions, suggested the “tell 3000″ theme. The publishers at Doubleday thought it was spot-on, and very consistent with my history in customer satisfaction. As for the angry stories, I can’t even begin to list them all. There are thousands, perhaps millions.

On PlanetFeedback.com, a site I founded, the service has probably aggregated over 800,000 negative stories. So let there be no question; I’m close to the pulse on this front. We all are.

You have done some truly remarkable things with building your own personal brand, from being the Executive Vice-President of Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services, to winning countless awards and now this book. How would you describe your personal brand and what steps have you taken to grow it over time?

I’m very passionate about consumers — always have been. Before business school, I worked in the California legislature, listening to the needs and aspirations of one of the most diverse legislative districts in the country. I carried that passion to P&G and them PlanetFeedback.com, and now Nielsen Online. I actually believe what my P&G mentors taught me that “the consumer is our teacher” and I try to reapply those principles and fundamentals to everything I do.

Along the way, I never forget to remind myself that although I represent and try to solve problems or identify opportunties for companies, I’m also a consumer. I relish from a personal perspective the same passions driving the entire CGM movement, whether as a father building blogs dedicated to my kids or as a son capturing the spirit of my now-deceased father’s life via YouTube interviews.

“The hands-on experience and personal passion helps build and nurture my overall brand so to speak.”

—–
Pete Blackshaw is a recognized expert in interactive marketing, word of mouth, and consumer understanding. He currently serves as Executive Vice-President of Nielsen Online Strategic Services, a new strategy group within Nielsen centered on digital strategy, key influencer management, and what Pete dubs “Defensive Branding.”

He is a co-founder of the 2004 Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association, and he presently authors a bi-weekly column on digital marketing strategy targeted to CMOs for ClickZ network. He’s frequently quoted in major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Advertising Age, and USA Today. He authors several blogs, including www.consumergeneratedmedia.com, and he is author of “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell Three Thousand: Managing a Business in the Age of Consumer Control.”  He was also elected elected chairman of the board of the National Council of Better Business Bureaus.

We sent out an email blast last week about our BrandAdvocacy ‘08 website and got some questions back from Josh Bernoff at Forrester (blogging here).

Here are his questions – and our answers. (By the way, Josh’s questions were pretty representative of the questions we are getting from everyone.)

1. Is there a bias in people who create or react to content online towards the democratic and liberal candidates?

• First, if you look at the trend data on Brandadvocay08 it is clear that sometimes Obama has led and sometimes McCain has led, so on a very simple level this does not seem to be true.
• Second, when we created the dataset we were careful to create a representative dataset of both ordinary people and political commentators.  For example on the site we have links to one of each for Democrats http://www.topix.com/forum/us/democrat and for Republicans http://www.topix.com/forum/us/republican. We found that there are plenty of Republicans who are online also.
• In addition we can look at the underlying constant of regression the CNN Poll of Polls and Obama’s Online Promoter™ Score to determine if there is an “online bias”.  The CNN Poll of Polls shows a constant of 50.8%, MQ’s OPS shows a constant of 49.6%.
• MQ’s data does not reflect a particularly liberal bias, other slices of data might, if we look more recently perhaps one could be emerging but over the 9/1 to 10/20 time frame there doesn’t appear to be one.
• This also depends on your belief in the bias of the poll of polls; I’m not a polling person and can’t say if there is a bias in the poll of polls.

2. Do people online just like to talk about the Wow activities (like Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live) vs the real Issues?

• Every day we highlight the words that are most highly correlated with each candidate.

• They show what issues the nation is associating with each candidate.  Sometimes it is true that they focus on the Wow stories but we see that they are just as likely to be seriously discussing the real issues (taxes, God, wealth, etc).  Don’t underestimate the power of forums as a place everyday people share their fears and thoughts with others like them.  For example take a look at this discussion on Parenting.com’s forums
  
  

3. How does Online advocacy relate to traditional polls?

• From one perspective, its apples and oranges, polls attempt to measure the outcome of the presidential election if it were held on a particular day, MQ is measuring the number of people who are advocating a particular candidate.
• On the flip side, if you believe as we do that people advocating to each other is an important piece of the future success of brands, products (and candidates) then we hope to show that the candidate with the most advocates will be the winner of the election.
• Important caveat, we don’t have an electoral college or battleground states so at best we can hope to use advocacy as an indicator of the popular vote.
• Using the data from the CNN Poll of Polls as a comparison metric, HYPOTHETICALLY, let’s assume that CNN Poll of Polls represents “truth”, we can apply straight forward regression to determine if the Advocacy metric for Obama is statistically related to the Poll of Polls data.
• Regression shows that Obama’s Online Promoter™ score is statistically significant in linkage to the CNN’s poll of Polls results at > 98%

• Furthermore, we can look to see if perhaps MQ’s results might lead the traditional polling methods; the relation appears strongest at 4-days leading.

The strongest statistical link from Obama’s Online Promoter™ Score to the CNN Poll of Poll’s results appears when we make Obama’s

OPS a 4-day leading indicator of the Poll of Polls

Obviously this detailed post may raise even more questions – feel free to post them in the comments section.

TO’B

I ran into this LG video contest and wondered what has become of the big “UCC” (User Created Content, the local acronym for Consumer Generated Media) rage that I mentioned in a blog post earlier last year.

Please read the complete Post HERE

Doritos is doing it yet again. A user generated ad campaign.

For the fifth time Doritos is inviting users to make a TV commercial. The winning one will be aired during the Super Bowl. And if it receives the Super Bowl’s top spot by USA TODAY’s Ad Meter then the maker will win $1,000,000.

The site provides contestants with a number of files to aid int the making of their commercials: animated logos, music, footage of the product and sounds effects.

Click image to see site.

]]> http://stuartparker.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/i-told-you-so/ Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:08:59 +0000 Stuart Parker http://stuartparker.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/i-told-you-so/

As someone who has submitted and reviewed CV’s on several occasions over the years, one of the major challenges I’ve encountered is in differentiating the great ones (including mine) from the not so great. Buried in any pile of resumés there is always to be found a few rock stars, many Joe Averages, and a depressing number of muppets. It’s normally pretty easy to filter out the muppets, but it’s often hard to discern the rock stars from the Joe Averages – they tend to have the same or similar academic backgrounds and experience, helped in no small part by the fact that Joe Average tends to do a very convincing job of blagging his accomplishments, while rock stars often (foolishly) rely on the facts speaking for themselves.

Some people try and use design to stand out, but sadly that just makes it look like they’re trying too hard. I mean, sure – you don’t want so hand in a CV written in crayon on toilet paper, but once you get past neat and professional it gets a little embarrassing. If you must send in a hard-copy, use only white, A4 paper with a single staple in the top left-hand corner. Do NOT use binders or plastic folders – if your CV is so long that it needs binding, you’re showing your prospective employer that you can’t hold down a job and/or don’t understand brevity. Either way, they won’t want to know about you.

So how do you make sure you stand out?

One trick that’s worked for me is to include a set of professional insights – half a dozen thoughts about the industry you work in, and what you think the next year or so has in store. You don’t have to make out like you’re some kind of oracle, and it really doesn’t matter if your predictions are a little off. Provided you don’t say anything too stupid, it always makes for good conversation in the interview, which you must have if you’re to have any shot at all of being hired. It also shows the employer that you’re not just some clock-punching automaton making a career out of getting by – show ‘em you really get what you do, and the job is yours for the asking.

Anyhoo, while doing some reading yesterday I was reminded of one of the predictions in my current CV, and – sadly for millions of people – it looks like I was bang on the money.

A substantial ‘adjustment’ will take place in tech stocks this year. That’s right people – we’re headed for another crash. Google will take a big hit, down to $400 US or below.

Exhibit A: Call it a ‘global financial crisis’ if you like, but a crash is still a crash

Exhibit B: Google shares are currently trading at $334, down from a 52-week high of $747.24 and $649.25 at the start of the year (when I made the prediction).

I wish I’d managed to predict myself into a new 911, but it’s been a pretty good year for me so I can’t complain. That said, (obligatory dig at the dyke) there are some rough times ahead and we need a firm hand on the tiller. Party vote NATIONAL on 8 November please!

If you have not heard of Pete Blackshaw yet, he is the author of a new book, “Satisfied Customers Tell 3 Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000.”  You can find a variety of information about this book on his website http://www.tell3000.com/, but the title gives you a good idea of what this book is about.

Thanks to the internet, broadband and other technologies, there are oodles of ways that consumers can easily share their opinions about anything and quickly spread those opinions to dozens, hundreds or thousands of other people.  How do they do this?  Through websites like Myspace, Facebook, CNet and others that collect and share consumer comments.  Any website that allows users to post their comments or opinions are often referred to as “consumer-­generated media”—blogs, s­oci­al networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, LinkedIn), message boards, product review site­s (CNet, Amazon, Home Depot).  Even online yellow page websites and Google are inviting users to post their opinions about products and businesses – including small businesses like yours!

So if you are a small business owner, do you have to worry about “consumer-generated media”?  And if so, what can you do about it if you cannot control the users posting comments and opinions on these websites?  (Keep reading for the answers below!)

The truth be told, this can be scary stuff if you are a business owner! 

• Especially if you are a business owner who has not fully embraced this new world of social media (without a Myspace or Facebook page, or even without a website)
• Especially if you are a small business owner without the big budget to counter the negative messages

In Pete’s book, he outlines three truths:

1. Businesses no longer hold absolute sway over the decisions and behavior of consumers
2. The longer companies refuse to accept the influence of consumer-to-consumer communication a­nd perpetuate old ways of doing business, the more they will alienate and drive away their customers
3. To succeed in a world where consumers now control the conversation, and w­here satisfied customers tell three friends, while angry customers tell 3000, companies must achieve credibility on every front.

While Pete’s book is a great read and worthwhile if you have the time, several of his examples seem to relate more easily to consumer products and giant corporations.  However, he makes some great points that apply if you are Wal-Mart or Joe’s Hardware, many of which are consistent with my own beliefs.

First of all, FACE YOUR FEARS and EMBRACE this new world of social media.  While you might worry about that one unhappy customer who will rant about his one bad experience on every website he can find (a customer you would not want back anyway), you might also find ways to use the power of these websites to actually GROW your business.  Here are several ideas:

1. You could ASK your friends, family and customers who already KNOW and LOVE your business to post their positive comments and opinions about you on Myspace, Facebook or on one of those yellow page sites.  Of course, we know that is easier said than done (which is one reason our next release of WOMbeat! will provide businesses a super easy and powerful way to make this happen…there will be an announcement about this on our WOMbeat! blog in a couple of weeks), but it doesn’t hurt to ask them today.
2. POST your own opinions about other businesses that you KNOW and LOVE on some of these sites.  If for no other reason, this will get you familiar with the options that are out there.  And, you might just see a few of these business owners return the favor for you!
3. CREATE your own Myspace or Facebook page, and then TELL your friends, family and customers.  Personally, I was a little hesitant to sign up for Myspace, but we at WOMbeat! created our own Myspace page, and I was pleasantly surprised by all the other small business owners already using Myspace for their business!  We became “friends” on Myspace, and now I am informed about their business everytime I log in (which means they are informed about WOMbeat! everytime I update my page and they log in).  Super easy and it was FREE!  I currently have 75 or more friends on Myspace after just about 2 weeks, and I am putting my business in front of their eyes every chance I can.  We have been doing the same thing successfully on Facebook and LinkedIn for years, so I am happy to see it working on Myspace too.  Just be sure to block out 30 minutes of time once or twice a week (or more if you can fit it in) so you are keeping your Myspace or Facebook pages up-to-date by posting news, photos, announcements, sales & promotions, etc.  (Here’s another trick – add your Myspace or Facebook page to your business card or to the bottom of your email signatures.  And don’t forget to include them in your email newsletters if you use them!)
4. Find a few blogs online that talk about topics related to your business, and CHIME IN!  Add your own comments and opinions on the topics.  Just be sure that if you are “recommending” your store or services that you make it clear that you are the owner of the store!  (More about this in a minute)

Spending some time educating yourself is one way to reduce the fear and let you see the potential opportunity.  As always, I am a big supporter of word-of-mouth, and I see all of these sites as a way to help you spread the word faster and to a greater number of people!

The biggest thing to consider in all of this is CREDIBILITY, which is the main point of Pete’s book.  He recommends that businesses find ways to be credible with their current and target customers on all fronts – from various advertisements to any postings on websites, and even to ways they conduct business directly with the consumers.  Consumers are human and don’t always expect perfection, but they do expect honesty.  Worse, they are very suspicious of any business owner that they feel is trying to fool them.  No one likes “bait and switch” tactics, and they definitely do not like anyone posting “consumer opinions” on websites only to find out later that it was the business owner himself “posing” as a consumer.  Some countries have actually made it a criminal offense to post an opinion about your own business on a website without indicating that you are the business owner!  (It’s probably only a matter of time before you see something like that here in the US)

So what if one disgruntled customer bad mouths your business on one of these websites?  Or worse, what if a competitor posts bad or misleading information about your business online??  In my opinion, that is the biggest challenge with any of the sites that allow total strangers to post their opinions for the world to see.  If you don’t know the person posting their opinion, you don’t know their reason for posting that opinion.  In my opinion, this is related to the CREDIBILITY concern.  Not only do consumers need to be wary of the credibility of positive comments (did they come from the business owner?), but they should also be equally skeptical of the negative comments.

But if you are watching the industry, you will notice that changes are coming that will allow people to zero in on only those opinions and comments that come from the people they actually know – their “real” friends (not some random blog reader or Myspace user).  When people begin to focus only on those opinions from others they actually KNOW in the real world, you will no longer have to worry about that one customer with a bad temper or your unethical competitor down the street.  Those folks will no longer have the power to influence anyone but their close circle of friends (which you may not want as customers anyway).

So, let me try to answer my questions from above:

As a small business owner, should you worry about “consumer generated media”?  I say don’t worry, but don’t ignore it either.   Embrace it!  If it makes sense, use it yourself to grow your business – just be sure to be honeest and open in everything you do to make sure you do not lose credibility with your target audience.  And as always, I also recommend focusing on keeping your happy customers happy and encouraging more word-of-mouth to attract your new customers.

On Friday afternoon I returned to the Hertz LAX location at 12:30 PM with 1 hour until my flight left. If I didn’t make the flight, I would be stuck at LAX for at least 6 hours. To make things worse, I was flying on United – which at LAX is the last of 9 stops that the Hertz bus makes.

So I got out of the car and started sprinting toward the bus. Someone called out “Sir, Sir”. I turned around, thinking someone wanted to give me a receipt when a Hertz employee named Walter told me to get back in the car so he could drive me around to United.

We had a nice chat and Walter told me that LAX has a policy of trying to help disabled people, families and those running really late (like me) get to the terminal quickly.

Well, I made my plane and got home to see my family that night thanks to the initiative and efforts of Walter at LAX. This is a great example of one person going above and beyond the call of duty to help someone – and I definitely appreciate it.

Please pass on my thanks to Walter and to his supervisor.

Tom O’Brien
Hertz Fan Forevermore