We now live in a world where an increasing number of consumers communicate with each other online and discuss which products they like, why they prefer them to competitors' brands, and how they want to be engaged by companies. It is quite challenging for advertisers to reach this group of consumers with TV commercials and PR campaigns because they avoid traditional advertising and are skeptical of mainstream news media. Even information from sources they trust gets rerouted through the cyberspace, where it is then reshaped, edited and repackaged for distribution through social networks, blogs, search engines and word-of-mouth (Hanlon & Hawkins, 2008).
So, how can advertisers reach and engage this new generation of informed and "wired" consumers? The message to marketers from a recent issue of Advertising Age is to stop preaching and start conversing. Rather than spending millions of dollars on one-size-fits-all advertising messages that consumers simply avoid, innovative marketers should engage their audiences in an open dialogue that invites participation in their brands. This is exactly what Rhiz can do for your company. By effectively connecting advertisers to members of social networks, it facilitates creative conversation between parties, which results in powerful advertising content.
It is important to note, that a fundamental difference of Rhiz from other advertising agencies is that it does not offer its clients the judge's chair but allows Youtube members to determine the winner by voting for user-generated ads they most prefer. In this way, online consumers are not only able to utilize their creative talents but also play the ultimate role in choosing the marketing material with most potential. In addition, Rhiz provides companies with important insights on consumer attitude regarding their products or services by observing commercial-related comments left by Youtube members on the vlogs of their peers. These insights can help businesses develop integrated marketing campaigns as well as be used to identify important consumer concerns.
-
What is live testing and how can businesses benefit from it?
Unfortunately for advertisers, it is not that easy to harness tAs mentioned above, Rhiz does not discriminate against ideas and allows Youtube members to make their choice of the best advertising content. The social network serves as a 24-hour focus group providing businesses with almost immediate feedback as to what will work and what will not. We call it "live testing". Live testing offers a number of advantages to businesses over traditional focus groups. Among them are fast response rates, no assigned cost, and the availability of a much wider sample of respondents in approximately the same demographic group. Another important advantage of live testing is that it provides more objective information than face-to-face focus groups. This is due to the fact that the Internet allows for Youtube users to stay anonymous, which eliminates peer pressure - one of the main biases existing in focus groups. This bias can result in significantly misleading responses in focus groups that deal with such sensitive topics as birth control, alcohol and drug consumption, health care, and personal finance. "If the discussion turns towards a controversial issue - like race or women's role in the workplace - many might feel a powerful impulse to self-censor or give politically correct responses rather than completely honest answers"(Gross, 2003).
Live testing is also effective for stimulating participants to provide more well-thought responses by greatly loosening constraints on time and place. Youtube members usually provide their feedback from the comfort of their homes or offices where they have more time to search for additional information before formulating their answers. On the contrary, participants of formal focus groups are pressed to give immediate responses regarding subjects they quite often have limited knowledge in, while sitting in a room full of strangers with yet more strangers behind a one-sided mirror. "When you ask somebody a question, they'll have an opinion," says Robbie Blinkoff, principal anthropologist and managing partner of the Context-Based Research Group, about eliciting opinions in focus groups. "And they may know absolutely nothing about it, or have never experienced it. It's abstracted from their reality" (Gross, 2003). Finally, because comments of Youtube members are unsolicited and result from users' genuine interest in a particular subject, there is a higher chance of getting creative responses and new ideas through live testing than it is by employing traditional focus groups.
Businesses can also use live testing to predict marketing potential of user-generated advertising in other media such as TV or cinema. It is important to note, that some of the work presented on Youtube is very creative and professionally done despite the fact that it is considered to be a "home video" social network. In fact, some commercials are so good that they qualify for Superbowl airtime, competing with the best talent of leading advertising agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Consider an example of "Live The Flavor" ad for Doritos brand, which was broadcasted during the Superbowl after it received more than 400,000 views on Youtube. It was created by Youtube users at a production cost of just $12 (in contrast to the $2.5 million by Doritos to run the spot) and won a "Gold Lion" at Cannes advertising festival. According to David Verklin, the board member of Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV, "quality content is beginning to come from the most unlikely places. Youtube now has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards" (Klaassen, 2007).