Circos Brand Karma

Most social media stories nowadays are about customer engagement. This post is about employee relations in the 21st century, and what happens when social media enters the mix.

A few weeks ago, a video called Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel was posted on YouTube. It was a flash mob covering Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” music video which is currently the most video of all time on YouTube with 214M views. The video was created by workers fighting to get affordable healthcare and a fair contract at a number of hotels in San Francisco. In the 3 weeks it’s been posted, the video has garnered over 175,000 views and been covered by a number of news outlets, including the Huffington Post. In fact, when one currently searches the hotel on YouTube the video is the first to come up. The 10th result in organic search when Googling the hotel leads you to this story about the flash mob.

We see a lot of things about social media and customers. But brand managers should look internally first; any brand that doesn’t have a social media policy for their employees may be at risk of an intractable PR crisis, particularly one who treats their employees poorly. Workplace rants by employees are becoming major headaches for companies.

In the past, what happened inside companies were kept behind closed doors. In this age of self-expression, what happens inside make headline news on a fairly regular basis. Take for example, Hon Hai Precision Technology, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics with customers like Apple, HP, and Dell. Its Foxconn Technology Group employs more than 400,000 people in Shenzhen. Since the beginning of this year, 13 employees have attempted suicide, with one leaping to his death hours after the Chairman had visited the factory promising to increase safety. The blog world either condemns Foxconn’s working condition or point to the stress of trying to make it in China today as the main reasons why these suicides occurred, but that’s all speculation; no one really knows why. Though ZDNet points out that the suicide rate is low in comparison to the China population average, Foxconn is still in the process of training more than 100 mental health workers, as well as making changes to improve its employee relations. But will it be done fast enough to save lives? And when will this impact Foxconn’s customers directly? For example, hurting Apple (which just recently overtook Microsoft in market value) in the same way charges of sweatshops and child labor violations continue to tarnish Nike?

Part of the measurement for brand value is employee morale. As every employee contribute to the brand experience, high morale should equate to a better brand experience, and leading to higher customer satisfaction and both customer and employee loyalty. Social media about employee relations and working conditions therefore affect not only your current employees, future recruits, but also, your customers today and prospects tomorrow.

Paul Hogarth of the Huffington Post asked his Facebook fans whether they, upon seeing the “Don’t Get Caught in a Bad Hotel,” would boycott the hotels listed, and here’s a very revealing response:

“It will be seen by a lot more people than your average – ‘what do we want and when do we want it’ protest – because as much as I am pro union and will support boycotts, I don’t forward info on every single boycott because seriously, nobody would read my reports if I did. I saw the YouTube video and then saw that the Palace Hotel was part of the boycott list and canceled my reservations for tea at the Garden Room. I probably would not have found out about the boycott if it wasn’t entertaining enough to go viral, and I definitely wouldn’t have posted it in my [Facebook] status and then five of my friends probably wouldn’t have posted in theirs …”

Last year employees at a Domino’s Pizza were fired and faced criminal charges for improper food handling as a result of their prank video post on YouTube. Though Domino’s didn’t do anything to provoke this, it was humiliated and eventually had to respond via YouTube to do damage control; and their brand suffered in the immediate aftermath.

Assuming brands treat their employees fairly, it’s still much better for them to have a communications plan in place already, as opposed to having to scramble on the fly to come up with a plan when something unexpected erupts. As was the case with Domino’s, it only took 2 thoughtless workers, a lack of social media guidelines for employees, and a slight hesitation in response time to tarnish the brand. Since then, social media has only gotten bigger and employees… more expressive. Take the time to craft a plan and talk to your employees if you haven’t already. You don’t want to get caught in a social media storm without a plan.

Written by Morris

May 28, 2010 at 11:29 pm

Posted in branding, china, employee morale, employee relations, flash mob, hr, taiwan, viral video

Tagged with facebook, domino's pizza, microsoft, youtube, foxconn, hon hai, apple, dell, nike, hp

Social Profile and Customer Service

Facebook is #1 in US

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As I noted at the Web-in-Travel Conference last October, Facebook was already the most visited website in many Asian countries, and according to Hitwise, for the first time ever more people visited Facebook than Google in the week ending March 13 in the US.

Hitwise also noted a consolidation of web traffic as the 2 sites accounted for 14% of all US internet traffic. Further Facebook’s growth YOY vs the same week in 2009 is 185% vs Google’s 9%, showing that Facebook still has a lot of upsides.

For brand marketers, the major takeaway is this: if your 2010 marketing plan is essentially the same as your 2008 plan, your emarketing strategy is operating in 2^nd gear in today’s world. Your brand has likely fallen behind, or soon will, in its ability to effectively engage with customers.

Also, with the online landscape consolidating, the longer you wait, the more resources you will need to invest just to catch up and stay relevant.

Furthermore, it’s time to have a conversation with the owners about how social media is shaping consumer expectations more quickly and forcefully than industry or brand communications. For owners that are building new properties, social media can be especially illuminating to help developers build a product for tomorrow as opposed to yesterday.

Finally, please don’t hire a junior person to run your social strategy. Facebook is a powerful communication platform with over 400M members worldwide. Senior brand marketers are needed to understand how your brand should be represented.

The good news is that there is still time, particularly because social media favors creativity. Due to its viral nature, your brand can go from unknown to superstar quickly (think Susan Boyle).

But your brand has to be good, authentic, and different.

Written by Morris

March 18, 2010 at 3:44 pm

Posted in US, asia, brand differentiators, branding, search, sem, social media, social media marketing, social network, traffic, trends

Tagged with facebook, google, web in travel (wit)

ROI in Social Media

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Will social media go from a cultural phenomenon to a commercial force? Yes, I believe so. If last decade’s new new thing for marketers was SEM, I believe this decade’s new new thing will be SMM (social media marketing).

However, for SMM to become legitimate its efficacy must be measurable, otherwise it’s tough to justify devoting any resources to it, particularly because in the last decade marketers learned how to calculate ROI by looking at conversion revenue from CPC traffic referred by their Google (and subsequently, other online) campaigns. Not only did ad budgets shift, discipline was instilled.

We advise our clients to think about ROI of SMM in 4 major categories:

Brand satisfaction – how do operational improvements and investments increase your overall guest satisfaction over time? In Brand Karma it’s the Guest Satisfaction Index, which is a composite index of your perception from various public sources, but if you don’t have Brand Karma you can also use something simple like your ranking or ratings on a review site. When your guests post reviews about you, they’re giving you feedback on their stay. Because their reviews are public, their words also shape how favorably viewed your brand will be for consumers researching your property.

Brand loyalty – related to overall brand satisfaction, the loyalty measurement lets you know if the guest stay experience is compelling enough that it moves your guests to recommend your brand. Like satisfaction, this is a measurement that needs to be trended over time as well. In Brand Karma it’s the Loyalty Index, but again, if you don’t have Brand Karma you can look at the “recommendation” rate on reviews that are written about your brand. Different sites do this differently, but most have a way for their reviewers to recommend a property. This index and the Guest Satisfaction Index gives you a good idea of how favorably the public perceives your brand.

Many internal guest surveys also measure satisfaction and loyalty. Just keep in mind that the surveys guests 1) give you solicited feedback — i.e. questions you ask, not necessarily what the guests want to evaluate, and 2) aren’t viewable by the general public — so they don’t give you insights into how public perceptions may be impacted.

Guest Satisfaction Analysis in Brand Karma

Brand awareness – how do sites with social media increase the awareness of your brand? In the social media world, in addition to the traditional metrics having to do with volume, awareness metrics must take into account the idea of relative frequency. Relative frequency lets you know how recent is the content about your brand vs. your competitors. This is important because if people haven’t been talking about your brand recently, then either you’re not interesting or your competitors are more interesting than you, neither of which is good.

Campaign performance – the ultimate metric that measures ROI. Suppose you run an ad on Facebook, you’ll want to see what is your ROI for every dollar spent. This means that you must have a way to measure what you’re advertising. For example, to execute you can set up a landing page on your ecommerce site so that you can track the referrals and conversion rate from that specific campaign. Use the traditional ROI formula to calculate what your return is (should be no different than your calculation for search engine marketing). As you get more advanced, try to establish a link between your brand satisfaction, loyalty, and awareness to your campaign performance. For instance, how much better does your campaign perform after your brand satisfaction has increased by 10 points? If you have lower brand awareness than before, do you have fewer click-throughs? Is there a correlation between guest loyalty to your campaign responses?

In a way, the above points are the fundamentals of marketing, and that’s precisely the point. Brands wanting to leverage social media for marketing should measure what they’re getting out of their investments in it. However, like traditional and other online marketing tactics, SMM takes a bit of trial and error to perfect into a strategy, particularly because the ability to micro-target is superb, and so brand owners should consider developing an expertise over a few marketing campaigns.

Some progressive brands are considering hiring a marketing manager to focus on social media in 2010. Once again, this person’s salary minimally should be considered an investment to improve brand satisfaction, loyalty, and awareness. List the activities that your social media manager engages in with your fans, followers, and friends, and see how much time they take. From there, you can calculate the dollar investment (percent of time to salary). Over time, see what activities lead to gains in satisfaction, loyalty, or awareness, and what activities don’t make a difference. If you’ve established a link between increases in satisfaction, loyalty, and awareness to increased campaign ROI, then you’ll know how much your social media manager can help you improve your bottom line and guide him/her to engage in activities that increases your key metrics.

Written by Morris

February 8, 2010 at 10:35 pm

Posted in Brand Karma, ROI, branding, conversion, guest satisfaction, loyalty, marketing, operations, sem, social media marketing, social network

Goodbye 2009, Hello 2010

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The one-to-many branding paradigm favored and perfected by advertising agencies utilizing traditional media changed irreversibly in 2009 with social media going mainstream. Hundreds of millions of people shared their brand experiences in social networks, generating exabytes (EB) of raw content about brands in text, photos, and videos in all languages (1 EB = 1 billion GB, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes). The world economy also accelerated business changes: giants had to be nimble or fell, small players had to differentiate to survive. Everyone, including all of us at Circos Brand Karma, had to do a lot more with less. Though recovery is widely forecasted to begin sometime in 2010, we all know that the twists and turns aren’t over. As we close 2009, here are our parting thoughts on what to expect in 2010 based on what we saw this year.

Relevant Engagement is the new paradigm in branding — for too long brands have talked at consumers, with social media going mainstream, now customers are talking back. The amount of time people spend on social networks like Facebook and Twitter make them places where brands should interact with consumers. These interactions can not be forced; like dating, brands must be attractive to the consumers they want. Authenticity is one of the most attractive quality a brand can have with its online fans and friends. See my post on Taming the Social Media Beast for what to do, and what not to do.

Don’t bore me: commoditization is your enemy, and you can no longer afford to be just like everyone else. People look for reasons to spend their dollars on your brand. In other words, what defines “value” for consumers includes what your brand does that no other brand can do. I wrote about this recently in my post about Finding Your Brand Differentiators. And a word of caution for those who have relied on price as their primary differentiator: whereas in an economy with ample demands you can do that to attract business, in this economy where there’s an overabundance of availability and supply, using pricing as your primary competitive strategy might actually kill your business or prevent you from recovering because you can’t raise your price back up.

The demise of traditional retail travel agents is greatly exaggerated; the savvy travel agents will find a new niche and be even more relevant. All the information available on the web can become an info-glut problem for travelers doing research. According to Forrester Research the satisfaction level of online booking has gone down in the last 2 years. This presents an opportunity for the traditional retail travel agents to filter out the noise and serve as a friendly and trusted voice to frustrated customers. Further, while booking point-to-point travel is fairly efficient online, complex itineraries that include multiple stops or special needs are still difficult, if not impossible, to book online. Robert Cole recently wrote an excellent post How Smart Travel Agents and Agencies Rise from the Ashes which is a must read for every traditional retail travel agent AND suppliers, who should explore what they can do to foster an even more intimate relationship with traditional retail travel agents to give their shared customers an easy way to have a holistic travel experience.

Who will come out on top in the battle between Brand vs. Search? Search has become an integral part of the discovery strategy, with billions of dollars being spent yearly on SEM, mostly benefiting Google, the dominant player in this space. Getting a higher search result placement organically is also a vexing issue confronting brand marketers who don’t have the traffic of say… Expedia. Executives in the Board Room are already questioning whether 1) it’s wise to rely on search as the primary driver of brand discovery and website traffic, 2) is the industry overall feeding the G beast to become ever more powerful by training consumers to always go to Google first, and 3) if all competitors are optimizing for search, has Search marketing become “tax” and therefore, non-differentiated? To which we answer 1) No, 2) Yes, and 3) Yes. To wean themselves off Search, some brand owners have already moved budgets away from SEM/SEO to develop favorable awareness the old-fashioned way: by creating exceptional experiences for customers who then positively recommend the brand to their friends. Except this time around, by leveraging social networks, the word-of-mouth takes minutes not months, and the page on the other side of the click is not Google or another OTA, but their own branded site. Bravo to them, and to all who do this in 2010!

Say hi to Facebook, your new Frenemy. Much as Google has helped your business in the last few years, Facebook will help in the years ahead. Yes — it’s still run by a 25 year-old, but the team that surrounds him is also serious about making money now… which means that there are lots of opportunities for you to benefit from their focus to monetize the online attention of over 350 million users worldwide. Facebook will become the new titan in distribution (you can check out Facebook’s impressive current stats and think of the possibilities). So if you haven’t done it already, it’s time to set up a fan page on Facebook for your brand and start engaging with your fans. At a minimum treat Facebook as an extension of your CRM. For some extra credit, you might want to consider Twitter as well, though if you could only focus on 1 social network, start with Facebook.

Have you thought of HR lately? The new branding paradigm, where social media is a fundamental pillar alongside well-crafted agency/brand communications, requires an update to your corporate policies For example, how, if ever, do you expect your employees to participate? If you’re a hotel management company, how do you ensure brand integrity when a property goes rogue locally? Who in the organization should be responsible for brand perception in social media? Where do you find the talent that can understand and bridge how you think v. how the social network thinks? Because social media has become mainstream, 2010 will present scenarios that will put your HR and corporate policies to the test. You must be proactive about setting expectations and diligent about learning from your own and other people’s best practices or epic fails.

And last but not least, Cloud Computing isn’t just for startups anymore. The amount of computing power and storage that is now available at bargain basement prices has helped startups like us keep operating costs down. But now that most of the security and reliability issues have been ironed out, cloud computing is a game changer enabling technologists everywhere to innovate cheaply. This means that there will be more disruptive technologies coming faster on the landscape. But it also means that your IT departments might need to migrate its technology from the client/server model of the last 10 years to the new, more powerful AND cost-effective distributed computing model to stay current. Since technology is the backbone to most businesses, it behooves brand owners to have at least 1 person in the IT department whose head is “in the clouds” to ensure that backbone isn’t becoming quickly obsolete and more expensive to maintain. Ouch. But consider this: legacy technology systems have a way of sucking budget away from other departments when its migration is not carefully and proactively planned.

And… that’s a wrap for 2009.

From all of us at Circos Brand Karma, we wish you happy holidays and a prosperous new year. See you in 2010!

Written by Morris

December 18, 2009 at 1:56 pm

Posted in brand differentiators, branding, cloud computing, guest satisfaction, hr, marketing, otas, search, sem, seo, social media, social network, traditional travel agents, traffic, travel agencies, trends, user generated content (ugc), website

Tagged with expedia, facebook, google

Finding your brand differentiators

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Thanks to an invitation from Giancarlo Carniani, I recently had the pleasure of presenting social media for hoteliers with Laura Valerio at the Buy Tourism Online Conference in Florence. Laura, who is Expedia’s Director of Market Management for Northern Italy, is highly knowledgeable about the Italian travel market. This post is an epilogue to our presentation, and given that the great majority of Italian hotels are independents, this post is dedicated especially to them.

Independent hoteliers need to truly understand their differentiators, because it’s the differentiators that will enable hotels to attract the right guests who are willing to pay a premium for what you offer. Differentiators must meet the following 2 criteria:

It’s absolutely good by your own standards (however measured, either through internal guest satisfaction surveys, word-of-mouth feedback on the web, or because your guests tell you when they check out)
It’s relatively better when compared with your competitors (from looking at social media feedback and editorial reviews)

Given this framework, location is rarely a differentiator if your competitors all face the same piazza. While it may satisfy criteria 1 (the location is absolutely good), it fails criteria 2 (it isn’t relatively better — at least not discernible to most guests evaluating where to stay when all hotels are in the same piazza).

Design, however, can be a differentiator. For example, let’s say you’ve recently renovated, “modern rooms in a classic building” could be a differentiator, and an especially strong one if other hotels in the piazza haven’t renovated in the last 10 years. Service can also be a differentiator. For example, “fresh-picked fruit from own garden” or “regional cooking lessons” can all be differentiators.

And herein lies the absolute beauty as it comes to the Italian hotels: it’s easy to spot the differentiators in independent hotels once you move away from the “obvious” criteria that often appear on guest satisfaction surveys. In most cases, you can find the answer in social media about your hotel.

Spotting Design as Potential Differentiators

According to the Italian State Tourism Board, Italy is consistently one of the of the world’s top 5 destinations (the other four being USA, France, Spain, and China). In 2007, for example, 42.8M visitors contributed to 163.5M bednights, with cities of historical and artistic interests contributing to nearly 1/3 of the bednights. The rest is primarily made up by visits to sea, mountain, and lake locations.

This information suggests that travelers to Italy are naturally inclined to seek out picturesque things (artistic, sea, mountain, and lake). To find out what are the picturesque things that guests find exciting about your hotel (and want to share with their friends and strangers), go to Google (or Flickr and Picasa), type your hotel name in, and look at the “Image” search results to see the pictures that are available about you. And then follow the pictorial links to sites that have user-generated content to see what pictures your guests are sharing and how they are describing your property.

You might find pictures of your amenities, rooms, certain design elements, or you might find pictures of nearby attractions, or you might find pictures of the outside of the hotel, or the view from the balcony at sunset. Whatever it is that you find will tell you precisely what guests found to be interesting about your hotel — and took the time to download the pictures from their camera into their computer, uploaded it from their computer to their account on the social media site (assuming that they’ve already created an account), and then told their friends that they’ve uploaded these wonderful photos about you. These photos give you a pretty good idea for what in the design of your property (either internal or external) could be differentiators.

Leveraging History as a Potential Differentiator

Secondly, travelers to Italy who are interested in historical cities might also be interested in the history of your property. For example, what did the building used to be? How did it become a hotel? Is it a family business? Did anything interesting happen on premise? Hotels in Italy (and many other countries around the world) have built-in stories that make the stay experience even more special. Why not share them?

Even though it may be more relevant if the property’s history is connected to the historical attraction in the city, sometimes it’s the people that own the building or run the property who have the interesting history. For inspiration from a familiar source, think of the wineries that are all over Italy. Many of them are run by families who have owned the same winery for generations. Behind each of these wineries are stories of colorful characters overcoming (or facing!) problems. Even most wine labels have a story behind them. Can you relate this to your hotel?

The great thing about the history of your hotel is that it’s always unique to your property. If you share your history and your guests begin to write about it in their reviews about your property, then that history might very well be a differentiator — one that you don’t have to spend any more money on improving.

However, you won’t know until you share and see how your guests respond.

Getting People to Talk About Your Service

I have a third tip on differentiators. In the past 12 months I’ve sat on more planes crisscrossing the globe than I can remember. On a recent KLM flight the safety video projection was not working, so the flight attendants had to demonstrate in person. I saw that most people actually stopped what they were doing to watch the flight attendants demonstrate how to buckle and fasten a seat belt.

This is because people pay attention to people. Extended to hotels, especially good service will not be ignored, and can become a differentiator that is not easily replicable by your competitors. Whether it’s in the way of a welcoming attitude, or thoughtful anticipation, or speed to solution, or personal recognition, or something else quirky but wonderful, what you and your staff create in terms of the human experience can often be your strongest differentiator if you construct the experience with empathy in mind. For Italian hoteliers, empathy can solve guests’ language obstacles, dietary needs, lack of familiarity with local culture, attractions and customs, bad/long transportation experience, etc. and win your guests’ loyalty. If they are so moved as to recommend you to their friends, they also become your best marketers.

4.5 years ago I stayed at Villa La Favorita in Alba which was up in the hills. I had bought some wine and needed to get to Turin, but this would have required me to get down the hill with a bulky box, take a train from Alba to another town, and then switch trains to get to Turin. Roberta, the owner, after helping me decipher the train schedule, voluntarily offered to take me to the train station. At first I thought it was nice of her to take me to the Alba train station, but she ended up driving me right past it and on to the 2nd train station. To this day, I’m still referring people to her 6 room property, and look forward to going back. On TripAdvisor, Villa La Favorita has a 100% recommendation rate and is ranked #1 of the B&Bs in Alba. Roberta is mentioned by name in several reviews. The most recent one reads:

Last but not least the owner Roberta goes out of her way to make each guest feel special and welcome. She provides for most anything you could ask for and will arrange for special tours or activities in the area if you wish. She will definitely succeed with Villa La Favorita.

An Example from an Independent Hotel in Italy

To summarize, let me use Villa La Favorita as an example. If you go to the Villa La Favorita website, you’ll see the following description amidst beautiful pictures of the property and Roberta. My analysis of why this is so effective is in parentheses below each paragraph:

Welcome! It gives me great pleasure to present my country home. Dating back to the early 1900′s, it is officially recognized as a historic residence, and has been meticulously refurbished in recent years. Set amidst a 10,000 m² estate of vineyards and fruit orchards, it is located on a hillside just 1 1/2 kms outside Alba.

(Roberta displays her pride of ownership and introduces the historical significance of her property)

The farm produces fine doc-status wines – Nebbiolo d’Alba and Grignolino Piemonte – which can be tasted free-of-charge, as well as a large variety of organically-grown fruit (cherries, apples, pears, apricots, plums, persimmons, figs, mulberries, peaches and pomegranates), some of which are used to make delicious jams.

(introduces potential differentiators: tasting of fruits, jams, and wines made from on-premise orchard and vineyard)

The villa’s four highly original, en-suite bedrooms are tastefully furnished with period family pieces, and have satellite TV, air-conditioning, bath with shower and hair-dryer. Each “room with a view” brings guests into close contact with the hills.and the towers and roofs of ALBA‘s old town centre. A stroll along the path leading through the vineyards to enjoy the picturesque view of the sunset from on high is warmly recommended before the sun disappears behind the rooftops and bell-towers.

(with the pictures available on the site, introduces design as potential differentiators of the guest experience, both internal and external)

Every morning a plentiful breakfast offering a wide choice is served outdoors in the large garden, on the terrace or in the bright lemon-house. I will recommend the best restaurants in the Langhe and Roero, and visits can be arranged during your stay to the countless castles in the area, as well as to wine cellars – famous estates or family-run concerns just waiting to be discovered.

(service as the strong differentiator, addressing convenience and access to local knowledge backed by her personally )

Alba is a lively town, standing at the feet of the celebrated “Langhe” hills. It is famous for its mediaeval towers, “Via Maestra” (the main street, animated by plenty of shops and a busy Saturday morning market), and cultural and food & wine events. It is also the starting point for many interesting outings, on foot or by bicycle, motorbike or car.

(sells Alba. Note that she isn’t selling her proximity to the town center — those may be strong differentiators for other B&Bs that are competing with her)

What is effective about this simply laid-out page is that the description presents the property’s strong differentiators and sets guest expectations on the location. The property is exactly where it is, and not only is the description transparent and upfront about it, it moves the value proposition to design, history, and service. These differentiators are then further backed up by social media.

All in all, a consistently great story, which makes for a great business.

Written by Morris

November 23, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Posted in brand differentiators, branding, conferences, guest satisfaction, italy, loyalty, social media, travel, user generated content (ugc)

Tagged with buy tourism online, villa la favorita

Taming the Social Media Beast Wrap-Up

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Last week was a great week for us as we were able to connect with most of our customers and partners in Asia Pacific at Web in Travel, ITB Asia, and our 1st half-day workshop, Brand Karma Day. We shared our thoughts on the social media phenomenon and how businesses can best leverage it to turn it into a strategic asset for their brands. Below is a recap of the top 10 ideas that we recommend for brands in the travel industry who want to venture into social media.

Understand your true differentiators. Sometimes what you’ve identified as differentiators don’t mirror what customers think. It’s important to monitor what is being said about you and reconcile your customers’ opinions with your story so that the brand message is consistent and credible.
Maintain operational excellence around your differentiators. Your brand differentiators can’t be temporary. Unlike ads, social media has permanence. Since what’s expressed about your brand is permanently searchable, changing the differentiators constantly will confuse your audience.
Set up your social network hub where your customers are. We recommend minimally a presence on Facebook because it is the largest social network with over 300M users and is one of the top-trafficked site in many countries. The volume and the intent (sharing, lifestyle) make it suitable for just about any consumer brand.
Use content about your differentiators as “landing lights.” Guide interested consumers to your hub with great content. You want consumers (current and future customers) to be attracted to and stay loyal to your brand because of your differentiators. If the content is timely, all the better. Of course, point #2 above is of the utmost importance.
Make fans not friends. Fans on Facebook and Followers on Twitter give users the power to opt-in to being associated with you, which is exactly what you want. It’s low risk for your fans, and you can stay focused on sharing the great things about your brand.
Engage, not advertise. The impression ads and click-through ads of the portal/search paradigms don’t work well in this channel. Think of your fans as people who are already or will eventually be in your CRM — and use your hub to please them digitally. Share things that would interest them, do things that would please them, reward their loyalty, and personalize whenever possible.
Link to allies. Chances are, brands in other parts of the world tout the same differentiators. Why not ally with them by cross-linking your hubs? The narrower your niche, probably the easier it will be to find non-competitive allies that can cross-authenticate what your brand stands for.
Partner with brands that complete you. Travel is a holistic experience involving many components. In your hub, introduce the partners that best complete the guest experience. Depending on the business your brand is in, points of interest, transportation options, accommodation choices, local eateries, and ticketing agencies are all possible partners to complete the experience your brand offers.
Respond immediately, and with empathy, to negative posts. Brands, like people, show their true colors when they’re under attack, so complaints, though unpleasant, can be opportunities for you to shine. Unless it’s a systemic problem, other fans will likely ignore the complaint, rise to defend you, or understand that the issue is between the complaining fan and you. In all cases, they will appreciate that you did something, even if all you do is to request to address the issue offline with the complaining fan. Doing nothing makes observing fans wonder what happened.
Develop a social media policy for your employees. How many of the 300M Facebook users also work for you? Chances are, quite a few. Employees can be your biggest promoters… or unintentional detractors. As you venture into social media, make sure that your employees are on the same page as you.

Written by Morris

October 26, 2009 at 6:33 am

Posted in brand karma day, social apps, social media, user generated content (ugc)

Tagged with facebook, itb asia, twitter, web in travel (wit)

The Incredible Shrinking Taiwanese Twentysomethings

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A few days ago I was at a conference in Taipei where I presented data about the major shifts in the Taiwanese market. I compared the outbound traveler data from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2002. Both 2002 and 2009 were preceded by events that negatively affected the travel industry (i.e. September 11, the financial crisis, and H1N1). As the total outbound travelers January-June was 3.7M in 2002 vs. 3.8M in 2009, it appeared that those events had a similar degree of impact on the overall market and I could compare them to see the shifts.

There were a few insights that I shared at the conference based on this analysis, including how outbound destinations shifted in this time period due to the opening of direct flights between Taiwan and Mainland China this year. However, the most interesting insight to me was this: for all age groups, the relative % of market remained the same except for the 20-29 year-olds vs. the 50-59 year-olds. The 20s group experienced a 15% decrease v. the 50s that had a 44% increase.

To ensure that this wasn’t an aberration for 2009 only, I also compared the first half of 2008 (a more prosperous time) with 2002. It turns out that while the overall market grew by 19% in 2002, the 20s segment grew by only 2%. In fact, every other age segment grew by double digits except for the 20s. Meanwhile, the 50s grew by 53% between 2008 and 2002.

The data is counter-intuitive. Travel is about discovery, and we associate that with something that younger people would be excited about. But the data suggested just the opposite. As the 20-29 year-olds are the youngest of the independent travelers (below 20 the travel activities tend to be largely as a result of family travel), they are an important bellwether segment to observe. And the data showed bad news. I shared this with a few Taiwanese friends and industry insiders and they were puzzled and surprised. No one had a good explanation for what was going on even though there were quite a few plausible suggestions related to the economy.

The down trend bothered me so much that I did some more research in the last few days. Here’s what I found.

According to government statistics, The population of 20-29 year olds in Taiwan from 2002 to 2008 decreased by about 6% whereas the population of 50-59 year olds increased by about 44%. However, the % of 20 year-olds and the % of 50 year-olds who traveled remained relatively constant in these years (monthly, about 3% of the 20s vs. 4% of the 50s). Taking the additional data into account, it made sense that:

Trend of Taiwanese Population by Age, 20s v. 50s (in 000s)

In absolute numbers, there were now many more Taiwanese in their 50s than 20s traveling to destinations outside Taiwan, whereas in 2002 the numbers were about the same

The reason for this may not be behavioral or socio-economic, but simply due to the decrease in the overall population of 20 year-olds in Taiwan from 2002 to now versus the increase in the overall population of 50 year-olds during the same period

A 29 year-old in 2008 would have been born 1979. I decided to look and see the birth rate of Taiwanese babies from 1979 through present day to see how that will impact future population. What I found was alarming.

Population trend of 20-29 year-old Taiwanese based on births from 1979-2007 (in 000s)

The birth rate in Taiwan has been in sharp decline. For example, there were more than twice as many babies born in 1979 than in 2007. The chart on the left shows the population of 20-29 year-olds for the next 20 years.

This means that in 2027, there will be 35% fewer Taiwanese in their 20s than today.

If the percent of people who travel stay roughly the same and there is no big influx of people immigrating to Taiwan to offset the decline, then this segment of travelers will severely impact the travel industry as they grow older and move into the older (and more affluent) age categories of the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

I think the travel industry in Taiwan needs to reconsider their strategy targeting outbound Taiwanese travelers, starting with how to attract young travelers and win their loyalty. Also, with the young population declining, Taiwanese airline and hotel operators need to have a better strategy for attracting inbound travelers.

Further, destinations like Japan and Hong Kong where a large number of Taiwanese visit should also take note. It’s kind of downhill from here.

While on the one hand I was glad to see that young Taiwanese people are still out discovering the world, I was sad to realize that there are going to be fewer Taiwanese people in the future.

Written by Morris

September 18, 2009 at 12:14 am

Posted in conferences, taiwan, trends

Tagged with 20-29 year-olds, twentysomethings

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