Does Oprah have influence?

A lot of the discussion on influence gets sidetracked by the allure of the super-influencer, or what I call the ‘Oprah Winfrey distortion’. The argument goes that super-influencers can make or break a product, or a market, by dropping the right or wrong names. Oprah is usually the cited case, where being named to her book club can rocket an author from zero to the top of the bestseller list. In the UK we have the Richard & Judy book club, which is similar in structure, if not in status.

Does Oprah really have influence? If so how does one tap it?

There’s no doubt that appearing on Oprah’s Book Club has a huge effect on a book’s sales. But is this useful information to a marketer or author? It would be useful if the right action to take was to call Oprah and ask her to read an aspiring writer’s novel. Except that isn’t the right thing to do. Why? Because (and here’s the ground-breaking insight) –

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Oprah doesn’t choose the books.

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Ms Winfrey heads a production firm called Harpo Productions, which employs a large team of producers and an even larger team of production assistants. This job spec was recently posted by Harpo productions (emphasis is mine):

Supports team and producer in daily production-including answering phone, getting lunch, opening mail, copying scripts and post-show notes, and other administrative duties. Production skills include research/resourcefulness-proficient in Lexis/Nexis, internet searches, DT searches. Must be resourceful in searching for guests, doing research, and obtaining footage. Reads all books considered to be selected with a critical eye. Maintains up-to-date knowledge of publishing industry. Consistently reads new books, searching for potential book club selections. Can suggest titles that are worthy candidates for upcoming selections. Can create system (charts, procedures, etc.) that are specific to the needs of the club/special projects production process. Charts and tracks show production and book selection process and can anticipate deadlines for the team. Must be able to consistently demonstrate solution driven communication. Communicates effectively with all Harpo departments demonstrating respect and professionalism. Team player works consistently to mesh well with supervisor, teammates, other department members and fellow staffers. Good phone etiquette.

If you want to get on Oprah’s Book Club, Oprah is exactly the wrong person to influence. It’s the new Production Assistant and her colleagues. They read the books, and make the decisions. I understand that Oprah reads the chosen book of the month, but that’s probably the only book she’s got time for (is my guess).

Believing that alleged super-influencers like Oprah, or Bill Gates, or David Beckham have real influence over the decisions that affect you and your firm can distort your marketing efforts, and completely misdirect your activities. Better to understand who really influences the decisions, and target those instead.

Of course, it’s much harder to find out who the new Production Assistant is, but that’s why knowledge of real influencers is valuable. It can give you a unique market insight which leads to competitive advantage.

Anything else is just wasting time and money.

More on Duncan Watts' theories

I suddenly remembered, after posting on Duncan Watts's theories of idea spread and influence (or lack thereof), that Prof Watts currently works at Yahoo!.

Spookily, we included a case study of Yahoo!'s use of influencers in the book. I wonder how Prof Watts is getting on with Yahoo!'s influencer marketing team...

Duncan Watts – influence killer?

There’s a bit of a stir going on regarding Duncan J Watts and his theories on how ideas spread. In particular he’s becoming known as the influencer killer because he says that influencers have no catalyst effect on the spread of ideas. Indeed, they have no special role in trends at all.

I’ve been following his research for about a year, since this was published. But the recent article in Fast Company magazine brings the issue to a head (and I think Clive Thompson has done a great job in raising the relevant issues).

As I see it, Prof Watts highlights some of the basic misunderstandings of influence. There is, frankly, a lot of nonsense and assumption talked about influence. Much of it stems from the Keller & Berry book The Influentials, which states that 10% of people tell the rest of us how to vote, where to eat and what to buy. I loved this book. I’ve read it three times. Nowhere does it say how Keller & Berry came up with the 10% number - why not 9% or 11%, or 1%. It is based on assertion, and the data in the book simply reasserts the 10% assumption. The Influentials is really useful in understanding how people gain influence in society. But it’s not useful in understanding who or where these people might be, or how to get them to influence markets on your behalf.

Another key misunderstanding on influence is that the people with influence are marked out through the roles they play, or the jobs they hold. Or worse, through the degree of celebrity status they hold. The consensus of research shows that we are more influenced by people with expertise than people with celebrity. And we are more likely to be influenced by people we know than by any other group.

Equally influencers don’t influence evenly through a decision process, as I wrote in this post and the book. And influencers aren’t influential in every category – influence is context-sensitive. So an influencer in buying a house may not have influence in buying a digital camera. This should be intuitive, but marketers sometimes get carried away by the promise of influencers that hold the keys to increased sales.

However, it’s clear that influence occurs in markets, and it’s attractive (I say essential) that firms understand how and what this influence is, and who are the conduits of it. So the final misunderstanding of influence is the assumption that it exists only within the consumers themselves. Clearly this is nonsense when you think about it (except marketers don’t tend to think about it). As consumers we are influenced by a host of people who are not (in the roles they play) consumers.

We’re clearly influenced by a range of people in different roles, some local, some national. What we do as decision-makers is to process the variety of influencers and then make a judgement. Not all influencers are successful in influencing every decision.

Consider the process of buying a house, something that most of us will be familiar with. You’ll be influenced by the house vendor and a real estate agent. Both have a vested interest in the transaction, so you do more checks. You’ll be influenced by any people that you know of within the area. You'll be able to check out whether a ‘neighbourhood watch' system is in place. You will consult published crime figures, possibly even calling the local police station for advice. You’ll refer to school inspection reports and league tables. Local councils will be quizzed for pending planning applications. The local head teacher may be critically important if the main attraction for the property is its proximity to good schools. Builders and other tradesmen may be asked for quotations for structural work you want to do.

I see this even more pronounced in B2B markets, where we can identify the individual people that influence a specific market segment. These are people that are not particularly obvious but undeniably carry influence in their area of expertise. B2B influence works in a different way to B2C, primary because B2B markets don’t have the word of mouth communication that B2C markets do.

But even in B2C markets we find that influencers in the supply chain and its ecosystem carry the majority of influence, with consumers having limited impact on the market as a whole.

I don’t believe that Prof Watts signals the death of influencers. But perhaps he has hastened the death of much of the nonsense that surrounds the notion of influence.

Book availability

I'm told that the book has sold out at Amazon.co.uk. Which means (lest my ego swell too much) that they only ordered half a box in the first place. Amazon UK is now citing 2-3 weeks' delay in shipping on orders. (US is unaffected as it's just launching there this week.)

If you're desparately awaiting your shiny copy you might want to try Elsevier's own site. If you quote offer code ASR4 when ordering you get 10% discount and free p&p.

Or you try the myriad of other sites, some of which are listed on the book web site (scroll to the bottom of the home page).

At one point the book was #1 in Amazon's market research category, and #14 in the general sales & marketing category (just behind Meatball Sundae). But you know how I hate lists...

A list worth reading

I hate lists. Especially top 10 or top 50 lists. Those pointless (endless) TV shows of 50 best comedy/horror/soap/movie/. Top 50 CIOs, top 50 management gurus, etc, etc, etc.

Typically such lists are poorly researched guesstimates noting the bleeding obvious people, in some sort of non-obvious order.

But consider this list. I confess I'm not an environment zealot, but I found the people identified in the list really interesting, primarly because I'd never heard of most of them. Besides the obvious Al Gore and prominent politicans, there is an eclectic mix of campaigners, artists, religious leaders, journalists, scientists and farmers. It's the mix of backgrounds and perspectives that give the list its credibility. Clearly the result of deep research.

So it is with any worthwhile list. While researching influencers for our clients we often find that potential influencers don't appear on any 'obvious' list. Yet their influence, once discovered, is clear.

We've often looked for shortcuts through the research process, and have examined methods for automating influencer identification, but they all fall short in thoroughness and completeness. There's no substitute for deep research.

Research of WOM and influence - a warning

Guy Kawasaki points to an important article published in the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (JAR). The article is entitled Reconsidering Models of Influence: The Relationship between Consumer Social Networks and Word-of-Mouth Effectiveness. It looks at how influence works in wom, and whether common preconceptions of influence are valid.

Spookily, I gave a talk at the London WOM Forum yesterday, which was organised by WARC, the publisher of JAR. Copies of the journal containing the article were handed out to delegates.

The research suggests that a pyramidal model of influence, where the majority of influence is concentrated amongst relatively few, highly connected people, is incorrect. Instead, the paper says that "it is the moderately connected majority, not the much smaller number of highly connected people, who hold the greatest potential for influence.

It also says that, "contrary to conventional wisdom that points to ... blogging as indicators of influence," more altruistic behaviour, like product rating, carries more weight. The research concludes that influence is not an exclusive, top-down model. Instead influence is something we all share.

This article is important because it identifies some key assumptions being made in the market about influence and the way it works. Some of these assumptions are identified and challenged by the article: others are not.

Here are the assumptions I detected in the article, and thus probably quite common in the market. My list may not be exhaustive…

Assumption 1. We know what an influencer is. The paper cites ' influence' (or derivatives) 52 times but nowhere does it define it. This is really important, as the scope of influence frames all further discussion. It’s difficult to recognise or measure influence if you don’t know what you’re looking for. At Influencer50 we restrict influence to those effects that impact on a purchase decision.

Assumption 2. Influence is concentrated amongst an elite highly connect few. In fact there is a non sequeter here - that connectedness is somehow related to influence. The article challenges the view that influence is restricted to a small group, but it reinforces the view that influence is somehow correlated with connectedness. This is unproven (and I have big doubts, based on Influencer50 research).

Assumption 3. Influence is unidirectional. In fact, influence flows in all directions. You can observe this the next time you have a conversation, debate or argument.

Assumption 4. Influence online is a proxy for influence in the real world. The article is based on research sources from web site users.

Assumption 5. WOM happens just between consumers. It clearly doesn't - wom, and influence, occur throughout the supply chain, and outside it too. This has huge implications for the structure and measurement of word of mouth campaigns. It’s much easier (and more effective) if such campaigns are grounded within the supply chain.

We have never thought that influence lies with a few people. But it does cluster and there are certainly those with more influence than others. But who are those people? The only way I know is to research the market thoroughly and with a rigorous methodology and rationale - anything else is just guessing.

Guy Kawasaki seems to equate 'elite' with celebrity. In the book we say that celebrity is very unlikely to influence buying decisions, and there’s plenty of research to back this up. In the markets Influencer50 tracks – predominantly B2B markets – the closest we come to including celebrities is when notable management gurus or authors exert influence on purchase decision-makers. People like Geoffrey Moore or (ironically) Guy Kawasaki.

It’s good that influence is being researched, but we do need to be careful about exactly what we’re researching.

Marketing’s image problem

In prepping for the CMO Council talk some weeks ago, I centred on a theme based on marketing’s image problem. It struck me that most non-marketers have a pretty poor regard for marketing, somewhere in the region of estate agents, lawyers and car salesmen.

What also struck me was the irony in the situation. Jeez – if marketers can’t fix their own image problem what chance do their employers/clients have.

When I met Hugh McLeod in 2006 he used this analogy for traditional marketing:

Imagine you're at a party. A man comes up to you, but instead of introducing himself, he yanks your head back, pulls your jaw down and looks at your teeth. "I'M A DENTIST!" he explains.

(I’ve subsequently plagiarised this analogy in a White Paper and the book.)

In a party context, most normal people would rather be offered some peanuts and engaged in polite, if trivial, conversation. Why can't marketing be like this? Why not engage people in a conversation? If you are interesting then they will respond in kind. You can move to a business conversation later, once social niceties are satisfied.

Hugh recently revisited the subject even more succinctly:

(Full post is here.)

The real problem for marketers is the awful image they have within their own firms. At the CMO Council Summit in Berlin, I was amazed at how many of the speakers criticised marketing and marketers (i.e. the audience!) for their lack of ambition and poor perception. “Blowing up the balloons,” was how Malcolm MacDonald termed it.

Marketing should be the second most important thing a firm does, after serving customers. If marketers are blowing up the balloons, then someone else has to do the effective, productive marketing, typically the sales teams and channel partners. Sales people can spend 40% of their time creating marketing collateral – 80% of “official” collateral created by marketers never gets used.

How are you perceived within your organisation? Are you a future board member or strategic thinker? Or do you blow up the balloons?

WOM Conference blog posts

I've contributed some posts to the WOM Marketing Forum conference blog - I'm speaking at the event this Wednesday.

The posts can be read here, along with contributions from other speakers. Interesting stuff, and several posts examine the relationship between WOM and Influencer identifcation & engagement.

WOM conference speaking gig

I’m presenting at the World Advertising Research Center (WARC) Word-of-Mouth conference on 16th January. Looks to be a good line-up, with Emanuel Rosen (The Anatomy of Buzz) as the headliner. Paul Marsden (Collaborative Marketing and Net Promoter Score fan) and Ivan Palmer (WOM advocate at Wildfire) are also there, together with a bunch of wom experts. Looking forward to meeting the crowd.

I’m talking on “Working with Influencers – Connecting with the Customers that Count.”

If you can’t make it to the conference to hear the presentation, here’s the short version:

• All customers count.
• Find out who influences them.
• Market through influencers to customers.

Simple, really - you should try it.

New year, new budget, old habits

What’s your rationale for determining your marketing budget this year?

The majority of us marketers look at what we spent last year, make a few tweaks, and submit the not-much-changed plan for approval.

So, did last year’s plan work well for you? Did it tangibly increase revenues, or generate better quality sales leads? The best measure for marketing success is to ask the sales team whether they think marketing is doing anything for them. So go on, ask them.

In fact, since Influencer50 started surveying sales teams as part of our kick-start influencer engagement programmes, I’ve been startled at the appalling scores marketing departments get by the sales teams. The average score for usefulness of marketing to sales efforts is less than 50%.

And don’t give me that “Oh marketing is complicated and we have to invest in awareness” claptrap. If you can’t justify marketing in terms of sales (or sales support) then why are you doing it?

With my Influencer50 hat on, I’d say that you should instead map out who and where your key influencers are, then organise your marketing activities around them.

But it doesn’t really matter what rationale you use to plan your marketing this year. Just make sure it’s not last year’s plan. If last year's plan didn't tangibly and positively affect sales, what makes you think the same plan will work this year?