My experience on using social media research tools

The social media has been gaining popularity and strength throughout the last few years. And if you come to think of it, it’s a resource full of excellent information- whether you’re a student, a company, an employee, a brand manager or just some customer trying to find some information- the diverse social media sites will help you find what you’re looking for.

For social media research tools- to name a few- there is: google blog search, google zeitgeist, icerocket, social mention, and google custom search. All of these tools (each with its specific function) allow individuals to find out what other people are saying about a specific brand, person or company or even when people are talking about you. The good news for these tools, is that not only do you see the information but it also allows you to respond to it. Also, if you are a company the social web is a great place to learn about what your competitors are putting out there, and what others are saying about them.

 To share my experience in using social media research tools, I actually took an opportunity to use Google Blog Search. I was interested at the moment on knowing what other people out there were saying about Starbucks coffee- since I had one in the afternoon- so I entered the keyword into the search bar. It then came with a huge list of recent blog posts that had something to do with Starbucks. I then saw was that on the left side of the webpage, the Google Blog search allows you display the blog results depending on the time they were published- so you can choose if you want to see blogs just published within the last hour, the last 12 hours, ‘till the past month. In my case, I chose blogs within the last day. I then started seeing the titles- and obviously chose the one title that caught my attention, just for the fun of it. But no matter what blog you choose to read, it brings you to get ongoing insight about the brand, company or person you were interested in searching for.
I clicked on “YA Fresh: Starbucks Holidays, Fa la la la la, la la la la” blog. The author of the blog talked about the new drinks Starbucks was bringing this Christmas season- I actually didn’t know which coffees Starbucks would introduce this November!  What
I found surprising- and I think it happens in a lot of blogs- was that even though this blog was posted earlier this afternoon it already had 3 comments from other people. People actually responded by saying they were excited on trying these new coffee flavors, because they had loved the previous coffee flavors from other past holidays. So this brings me to realize that on blogs with a good following, the comments are often as valuable as the blog post itself. People have things to say and are interested on sharing their experiences, knowledge and opinions- that’s why blogs are so rich on information, ‘cause they provide good insight about a certain topic.

To stay up to date on the blog results, Google Blog search also offers you the option to:
-    Create an email alert for starbucks
-    Search Google news for starbucks
-    Add a blog search gadget for starbucks to your Google homepage
-    Subscribe to a blog search for starbucks in Google reader

Getting creative...

1. DESK
Everyone uses desks, either at home, at school, on their offices or even when they go to a restaurant.  Desks are very useful for placing things on top of it, for reading and also for writing. Many desks usually have one or more drawers or compartments, so that people can store things on it. But, many other desks are just single desks used for any function you’d like. Desks often come in many shapes, sizes and colors. The most typical desks are the ones that are made from wood and that are in a shape of a square or a rectangle. But desks are used in any contexts, for example we hear of the word desk in the following situations- an information desk at an airport, a reception desk in a wedding or other event, the front desk at a hotel, etc.

2. MIRROR
A mirror is an object with at least one reflective surface. Mirrors are commonly used for admiring one’s self, for decoration, and even for scientific purposes- for telescopes, lasers or even cameras. I personally think that mirrors are essential for girls and women- I mean who doesn’t have a mirror on her bathroom? You must have at least one for when you are dressing up, you need to take a look at yourself before going out. Also on the other hand, mirrors are great for decorating houses; it makes them look cleaner, bigger (with more space) and they are associated with a more modern style. Now there are even cell phones that have a mirror application!

IDEAS FOR COMBINATION: DESK & MIRROR
-    A desk with mirror on it’s surface (on top of it)
-    A mirrored desk
-    A mirror in the form of a desk
-    A mirror with a desk
-    A desk with drawers and the drawers are the only ones that have mirrors
-    A desk with a stored mirror (you can press it so that it comes up or down)
-    A reception desk decorated with pieces of mirror on its surface
-    A desk framed with mirror
-    A thick-squared mirror (sort of a table cloth) that you can place on top of a desk
-    A mirror on top of a desk

I think the idea of a desk with a stored mirror may be a viable and yet a creative product. This product may actually be useful for people, because for example, let’s say you’re on your room and you’re sitting there doing homework on your desk. You have papers on top of the desk and your phone is also placed there…the phone rings and your friend reminds you it’s almost time for her to pick you up…you need to rush and start getting ready, but also you need to write your last final thoughts on your homework...What do you do? Many would’ve written up whatever first comes to their mind and then leave everything there and then move to their dressing table. But what if you had the option to do both at the same time? You could just push a button in your desk, and a mirror would go up. As well, in the drawers of your desk you could store your make-up, blush, all of your eye shadows, and other cosmetics. So this way, you won’t have to move to another desk and you could finish up whatever you were doing in the same desk. Also, you could have the choice to click in the button for light to come up.

My topic: selling to the bottom of the pyramid

I’ve always found it of great interest when professors and business leaders talk about seeking a potential marketing opportunity in the bottom at the pyramid – within the world’s poorest. Mainly what I find most interesting about this topic is:  How can companies actually profit from this market, when this market it’s made up of people with low purchasing power and who doesn’t buy many products as well? I think for companies/brands the key relies in deeply understanding their needs, behaviors, preoccupations and their environment so that they can successfully develop products and services that result of great use for them.

It is obvious that products created for rich people are not suitable for the poor. You can’t sell them let’s say an Ipod or a TV because they have to satisfy first their most basic needs- health, shelter, food, water, etc. Also for example, packaging must be approached very differently within this market- poor people don’t have enough money to invest in inventory (everyone knows that products sold in packages are cheaper, but not them). So taking all of this into consideration, marketers and companies must really dig in for important insights to be able to understand this particular segment of the population.

I live in Mexico and for me, it’s no surprise to witness this huge gap between the rich and the poor- in Mexico there are about 53 million people who live in poverty conditions and they represent about 51% of the population in total. That’s a big number. But also we must recognize that this same gap is present in 8 developing countries around the world: China, India, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey, South Africa and Thailand. For marketers this is a potentially huge and interesting market- there’s an estimated of 4 billion poor people, constituting two-thirds of the world’s population. However marketers must also keep in mind that the ways they reach this market and their particular needs, interests, etc. will not be any similar as for the upper and middle classes- as I just mentioned before. Effective strategies for reaching these people will require remarkably different approaches.

Another question that I find quite interesting related to this topic is: How do huge multinational companies suddenly change their strategies and start focusing on selling to a whole new and different target? Within the last few years, companies like Nestle and Unilever have been developing products for the BOP market, and they’ve been quite successful about it. Even though it’s a challenge for them – particularly in balancing their initiatives in a cost-efficient way- they have also allowed some social-economic development to happen. By establishing themselves in developing countries they’ve enhanced new micro entrepreneurs by offering them new sources of work opportunities.

One article that is helpful and interesting for my topic is called, Portioning to make products affordable for the BOP, and it talks about how this market has particular differences mainly in their shopping habits. Below it’s the website where the article can be found. Another interesting article talks about how Nestlé Venezuela successfully managed to position it’s products among the low-middle class people, and it explains all the challenges it faced as well as the strategies Nestlé followed.

Articles:
http://designchile.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/portioning-to-make-products-affordable-for-the-bop/
http://www.globalens.com/casedetail.aspx?cid=1429090

Customers & Experiences

I’d like to start by saying that a customer will always evaluate or prefer a brand based on his/her personal experience with the brand. So when a customer goes into a store, and he gets to use the products he’d just bought – he gets to evaluate each brand he’d just had contact with. In marketing, this is referred to as “touchpoints”- moments where customers have personal contact with a brand that will help them develop their own impression of the brand. So the product, packaging, price, sales personnel, they’re all touchpoints for the customer. So, in the end I guess it really doesn’t matter what other people think about the brand, or what the brand itself communicates to it’s target market…what really matters is what the customer experiences with the brand – based on it’s performance, quality, what it means to her/him – and the connections he/she makes with it.

Brands constantly try to reinforce their personal image and try to do all it takes to maintain their promise. That way if a brand like Wal-Mart promises saving money, customers will expect to find lower prices at Wal-Mart than at any other supermarket. But it’s up to Wal-Mart to make sure that they’re delivering their promise, so they can keep their customers satisfied…without forgetting to consider that they (Wal-Mart) should create a good, positive and rich full experience for their shoppers, so that they return and shop at Wal-Mart.

I was trying to come up with an example of my own experience with a brand, and I just couldn’t decide on which one to write about, since I’ve had a lot of experiences with several brands. But, well, I guess Apple is the first I thought about. I remember that about 4 or 5 years ago, all of my friends started buying their first Mac laptop. They were so excited with it- they talked about Itunes, Iphoto and I just didn’t understand what they were talking about. I knew I wanted one, but I’ve just had a year with my old one- it was a VAIO. However, my parents gave me for that Christmas a mini Ipod – my first Apple product…I just loved it! It did more that I would’ve expected it to do. I could transfer all of my songs to that mini machine, and update it any time that I’d want. I used to take it to the gym, to run, in my car, when I’d travel…and the coolest part was, that it was cool and fashionable. I couldn’t wait to get now my Apple laptop. The next year, I asked my parents for one, so I went with my dad to the Apple store to buy it. The store was so cool! It had many desks with all the Apple products, and you could just go and try for yourself the several features each different model had. When I made my decision, a sales personnel told me all about the warranty, and the service they gave for free to the Apple customers- the genius bar. I was truly excited; I couldn’t wait to use my new Apple laptop. I knew I would have a difficult time on getting used to it- ‘cause I knew it was very different from the others computers – but to my surprise, I only took about a week. I’ve been very satisfied with Apple ever since, now I’ve got the new Ipod, Iphone, and I’m hoping to upgrade my laptop to the newest version.

I think that in Apple’s case, it’s more about just their products, it’s about the philosophy it has and the experience it creates for its customers. As a marketer, I know that for example their slogan of  “Think different”- it’s a strategy from Apple of creating a way of thinking- experience. You, as a customer know you’re getting something cool, modern and different by buying one of Apple’s products. Also Apple creates an experience for the customer when they go to their store – they let you use their computers, they have a genius bar for technicians to help you, the employees use cool t-shirts with phrases like: Advisor, Ask me anything, How may I help you, etc. So all of these things help customers develop an overall experience with Apple’s brand.

For customers, it’s all about the experience (when it comes to a brand). This is why we see thousands of people buying Starbucks coffee everyday – ‘cause when a brand creates all this new and positive experience for the customer, a customer is willing to prefer or give more value to the brand, because of what IT means to him/her. Starbucks isn’t just a cup of coffee, it’s a place where you can get really good coffee, excellent service- good personnel, cool sofas, cool music- and a place where you can just chill out.

Personas

I found the readings on the persona lifecycle to be quite interesting and different on the material I would’ve expected to read. I wasn’t expecting to be initially introduced to the process of how to create a persona - I didn’t know there were that many guidelines! But, I guess in the end it all made sense…you need certain steps to go trough, as in any other research & development activity, to develop a successful prototype of your persona.

Karen, from Procter & Gamble had already given us an idea about what the “persona” concept is. She showed us the type of persona they’d worked with for their new ageless makeup (Maybelline) line, and explained to us who this persona was- characteristics, insights, personality, etc. I guess it sounds kind of obvious, at least for me, when you’re able to see a connection between the final product and who this user is, for the brand. But, to my surprise after having read the articles on the persona, there’s a lot of thinking, research and planning involved.

Maybe you’re wondering what is a persona? I was trying to come up with a definition on my own, but instead found on a blog, a very simple and yet, useful explanation of the meaning of the persona. “Personas are fictional characters created to represent different segments of the market or target demographics.” So, with this in mind, we can see that personas are created by companies for a purpose- to understand who their prime users are. Personas are given by marketers, a certain age, gender, education, life style, needs, goals, expectancies, ethnicity, and many other things- including names-, so that companies know who they are dealing with and who are they trying to reach. But, to know all of these previous characteristics about your persona, marketers need first to go throughout the persona lifecycle-which consists of 5 phases. These are: family planning, persona conception and gestation, persona birth and maturation, persona adulthood, and persona lifetime achievement, reuse and retirement. The phases of conception and gestation, and adulthood are the vital steps. In conception and gestation, marketers are working on using and converting the information they’ve already gained about potential user population, user research data, demographic information, etc. to translate it into valuable information of their personas. This way they are able to understand the specific user roles, user goals, and user segments that uniquely describe their “target” users. In the adulthood phase, personas already have been introduced to the company and to the product team, so it is now time for the personas to be of use for designing and developing the product. Personas are used to help the product team plan, design, evaluate and release the products. They ask questions like: “Will Tom want to use a big object or a smaller one?” or “Will Sarah be interested on this feature? ”

If a marketer would like to create an accurate persona of people like me, they would probably come up with the following description:

She’s in her early 20’s. She is still a college student, with many goals of her own, and who is actively engaged in her education. Still don’t work, but her parents still look after her. She wishes to take the most out of everything- if she hears a conference is coming up, she’ll be willing to go, she participates in almost every single one of her classes, she is extremely responsible when it comes to projects and homework. She tries to always stay fit-eats healthy, goes to gym or runs every once in a while. She always has things to do- goes out with her friends, loves going to the salon every once in a while, cleans up her room, goes shopping. She barely stays at home just watching a movie by herself, if she were to do it she’d had to watch it with someone else. She is a people-person; she loves to always know about what’s going on with her friends, with her family, etc. She loves to travel and tries to go out of town minimum 5 times a year, and tries to organize a trip with her friend minimum once a year. Loves shopping. Loves going out- clubs, restaurants. We’ll call her ANNA- the active-college student.

A brand persona isn’t the same persona for all brands in the same category. The persona for Mc Donald’s isn’t the same persona as it is for Wendy’s. Brands need to differentiate, and one of the ways they do this is by developing a detailed and unique persona (or many if they need it), to understand what brand products suit them the best. So, this leads us to the conclusion that developing personas, it’s a very helpful strategy for companies to differentiate among themselves and get a better approach to their target users.

A design philosophy

In the past, people expected to buy what the market had to offer them. But today times have changed. In today’s marketplace, companies from all around the world must sell products and services that consumers want, need or wish for. Everyone, including you, me, teachers, business CEO’s, employees, and even the more humble people, are all consumers. So, how exactly do companies know what their consumers want?

That’s what my marketing Customer Insight’s class is teaching me at the Mc Combs School of Business. Nowadays, companies have learned to observe people’s everyday actions in order to understand their needs and design new products; not only have they learned this, but they know it’s an essential strategy for surviving in the marketplace.

Recently at our class we have talked about certain design philosophies, and how these philosophies have helped designers/engineers develop many innovative products. But, what exactly is a design philosophy? A design philosophy is sort of a personal point of view of the way you believe things, such as products, should be designed in order to function accordingly.  Jeff Mulhausen, an industrial designer who works for Upstream, was invited as a guest speaker to one of our classes. He showed us some important industrial designers and the design philosophies each one of them followed. The designer who interested me the most was, Dieter Rams. He is a German industrial designer who in his time worked for the German-brand Baun. As opposed to the other designers, Rams believed that a good design is a design, which is as little as possible. So, he simplified products so that people wouldn’t have a hard time understanding and using them. He designed for example, a simpler version of the radio than the one that existed in the late 1960’s. So, these philosophies each designer followed influenced on the way they saw new opportunities for design and the kind of products they created.

I can say from my own experience as a customer, that a product which I find really innovative in terms of its design, is the hands-free can opener (see figure below).

Before I owned one of this, I used to have a regular can opener, and I tried to use it as little as I could, since I’d get finger cuts, or I’d had a hard time getting the can opener attached to the can. But, I think whoever came with the idea of designing this new and improved version of a can opener really thought of an easier/simpler way to get cans opened. All you have to do is simply place the device at the top of the can and push the button. And, now I just realized that the hands-free can opener may be connected to Ram’s design philosophy of developing a design as little as possible.