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Advocacy Feels Good

I guess you are sucessful when you see others doing similar surveys on advocacy. This one is definitely more fun than most because of its cool infographics. The study on brand advocacy was done with Dr. Kathleen Ferris-Costa at the University of Rhode Island, College of Business Administration. Some of the findings are similar to what we learned and reported on about advocacy in 2007 and continually report on in this blog.

• Brand advocates are 83% more likely to share information about a product than typical web users, and 50% more likely to influence a purchase. 
• They are 75% more likely to share a great product experience and three times more likely to share product opinions with someone they don’t know.
• Brand advocates are more than 2.5 times more likely to use social media to expand their social networks.

Advocates love to be a resource for brands and other people. They like to see themselves as “thought leaders.”  According to the survey that was done with Bzzagent, they are motivated by how good it makes them feel — spreading the word makes Advocates relax, several times more typical than among web users. The latter motivation is a new one to me so thanks to the creators for recognizing the personal ROI on brand advocacy.  In a world of natural disasters, wars, economic uncertainty, it is good to know that brand advocates have found their feel good fix.

   Advocacy, Brand/Product Advocacy, Research, Social media, Weber Shandwick, personal advocacy    Add a comment

Complainers United

I just thought this was interesting. An app for complainers. complainapp.com aggregates complaints about business and uses the power of advocates to tell companies when they are not doing their job. On the website they also have trending topics and complaints by industry. Their tag line is Let’s Complain Together. That says it all. Maybe these are actually badvocates, not advocates. Whatever they are, interesting idea to get your complaints heard. I will have to tell my friends and family! Most of all, I like the graphic.

   Advocacy, Badvocacy    2 Comments

Using Avatars to Combat Badvocacy

I just read an interesting article about badvocates. I love seeing how the concept of badvocacy has grown over the years. Weber Shandwick invented the term and it has taken off. The article was on Mashable and one of the pieces of advice on dealing with badvocates was particularly compelling. I thought I would include here in case you are ever in danger of facing a badvocacy firestorm. [Another option is to review Weber Shandwick's book on badvocacy.]

The article quoted a woman who handled the Intuit Small Business community. She told the author that  engaging and displaying human avatars changed sentiment from 65% negative towards QuickBooks to only 35% negative. “My avatar was always a picture of one of my children and me during that time. I regularly told folks that it was easy to say ‘f**k you’ to Intuit the brand, but really hard to swear at the mommy and the baby. Especially when the mommy was helping,” she said.

Pick out your avatar today.

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   Advocacy    Add a comment

Institute for Civility

The University of Arizona announced today Monday that it is forming an institute on Civility. The honorary chairmen of the National Institute for Civil Discourse will be former Presidents’ Bill Clinton and George W Bush. The director said they “would focus on political disagreements from the grass roots all the way to the top.”

   Advocacy, Company/Organization Advocacy, Weber Shandwick    Add a comment

Crowdsourced Advocacy

  Wanted to update everyone on some interesting research on advocacy we recently did on how social media can be employed to further corporate responsibility. We (KRC Research and the Social Impact team at Weber Shandwick) found that crowdsourcing plays a vital role in helping companies drive engagement for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. Wikipedia describes crowdsourcing as an “open call to an undefined group of people…to solve complex problems and contribute with the most relevant and fresh ideas.” The survey was conducted among corporate executives in large-sized companies with responsibility for philanthropic, social responsibility or community relations. They are advocates themselves because these jobs require strong conviction about what is important and what is the right thing to do to meet corporate business goals.

The research found that a sizable 44% of companies have used crowdsourcing. In addition, an overwhelming majority (95%) of those who have used crowdsourcing found it invaluable to the organization’s pro-social or CSR efforts.

What particularly stood out for me was the reasons why these advocating executives say crowdsourcing is valuable for CSR programming. They said that it surfaces new perspectives and diverse opinions (36%), builds engagement and relationships with key audiences (25%), invites clients and customers from nontraditional sources to contribute ideas and opinions (22%) and it brings new energy into the process of generating ideas and content (16%).

The latter is particularly important to all advocacy programs — igniting the process by energizing people. It seems that the “energy” component is what really makes the difference so I was glad to see it among the top reasons mentioned why crowdsourcing helps drive corporate CSR. Where would advocacy be without advocates’ energy to mobilize these efforts to build a better planet? It should be at the heart of all corporate efforts. The question is how to find that energy and capitalize on it. How do you ignite it to drive mobilization? Energizing people is an important ingredient of true advocacy and worth deeper thought. Maybe a good topic in itself for crowdsourcing. Hmmmm.

   Advocacy, Brand/Product Advocacy, CSR, Company/Organization Advocacy, Research, Social media, Weber Shandwick    Add a comment

Chief Good Officers

An interesting article surfaced last week on a wholly new corporate position — Chief Good Officers (CGOs). The article mentioned our recent research on the impact of crowdsoucing on corporate social responsibility. The CGO would be the newest evolution of the CSR Officer. The idea is that this person would straddle the CSR position with marketing/advertising that aims to attract customers. The CGO would create “brand purpose”  and drive action to the company’s causes by bringing them to life. “This is the chef who blends financial and social bottom lines into a tasty dish that is as engaging as it is impactful for consumers.”  I think that the CGO is an alternative version of the CAO–the chief advocacy officer. So be it.

   Advocacy, Brand/Product Advocacy, CSR, Company/Organization Advocacy, Leadership, Research, Weber Shandwick    Add a comment

Men Complaining Badly

Female advocates complain less! Really. So says a study by Empathica about how men and women interact online with retail brands. According to the research, women are more likely to recommend a brand, product or service through social media than men — 35% vs. 28%.  And they do this often…10+ times in the past three months. What surprised me most was the finding that men are the complainers or what we call “badvocates” with more men than women using social media to register a complaint or seek resolution — 4% vs. 2%.  Everyone needs a life.

   Advocacy, Badvocacy, Brand/Product Advocacy, Gender, Research    1 Comment

Time to Help

 Maybe I am late to the party but I wanted to share this excellent idea where people can make a difference. Portland-based Seth Reams lost his job and he and his girlfriend wanted to do something meaningful with some of the extra time they had on their hands after searching for work. Sitting around after being laid off is not good for one’s mind set. Here was their first post:

Hello to everyone! My name is Seth and my (long time) girlfriend is Michelle. We are a couple in our mid-30s and we live in NE Portland (Gateway Area). So, if you read the sidebar, you kind of get an idea of what we’re about. We are not trying to organize the world. We are just trying to help others with nothing expected in return. This alone will give us an overall feeling that we did something that matters. Just getting out of our homes, away from the job searching for as little as an hour or two a week improves our outlook.The thing that will join us together is desire to help. Nothing is too big or too small.

This idea turned into a much bigger idea — We’ve Got Time to Help – and they recently won a Huffington Post Game Changer Award too.

A few recent projects I spied:

HOT SPRINGS – We have an elderly gentleman that needs an occasional ride to and from doctor appointments. 

* ALBANY – We have a disabled veteran that could really use some help! Here are some of the bigger issues: she needs some help painting her house (she has the paint), she also needs her breaker box updated (the wiring seems to be able to support this), and her gas fireplace needs to be installed. She also has a dishwasher that she purchased that needs to be installed. Are there some folks out there who can help this woman who served our country? Please let us know!

Find on them on Facebook and all other social media. Seems like a terrific example of advocacy and making a difference with action.

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Person of the Year — The Public

   I thought it would be worthwhile to post this quote from Admiral Thad Allen, the national incident commander for the Hoizon oil spill incident.  He is quoted in an interview in Harvard Business Review (November 2010) as saying:

With social media and the 24 hour news cycle, there will never again be a major disaster that won’t involve public participation.

I believe that his statement applies to advocacy as well. Mmake sure you have your advocates lined up and your “badvocates” or detractors identified. Every event today involves public opinion. Get ready for a new kind of information warfare.

We always wonder at the end of the year who will be on the cover of Time magazine. Who will be the person of the year? I think that the person of the year should be the public. Maybe next year since I know that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is the person of 2010. Public opinion and the advocates within will ultimately be the drivers of action and thought in the years ahead. You won’t dare leave home without them.

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Socially Impactful CSR

We take social advocacy seriously. Our Social Impact team just surveyed with KRC Research over 200 executives responsible for CSR type activities to learn how they were managing some of their challenges today. What did we learn?

We learned how important impact actually is. Having an impact on critical issues is the number one reason why corporations invest in philanthropic or socially responsible activities, according to the executives surveyed. A second reason given for CSR-funding is the opportunity to see an organization’s values in action (25%). I think that is a good reason. Interestingly, having an impact on critical issues (30%) outranked several more business-oriented motivations, such as building customer loyalty (15%), differentiating the company from competitors (6%) and engaging and retaining employees (4%).

The latter finding somewhat surprised me because it underscores the need for companies to better measure the link between CSR and employee satisfaction. Social advocacy deserves to be higher up on executives’ agendas as a primary benefit of good social responsibility. Employees can be a company’s best advocates if they understand how CSR drives growth, attracts talent and retains the best. In this anti-business environment, it is important to make the CSR case at home (the office) and in the community.

In our research lately, we’ve seen how important employee satisfaction is to how corporate communications officers are measured. Communicating about the value of CSR to employees and communities deserves greater attention in order to reduce some of the anti-business perception that seems to linger. CSR is the gift that keeps giving if companies would only focus more on communicating it well.