Paper on participative branding, social media, reputation, and online communities.

1. REPUTATION MANAGEMENT THROUGH
PARTICIPATIVE BRANDING
by
Martin von Wyl
November 2009
Key words: Participative Branding, Participation, Reputation, Social Media,
Online Communities

2. MANAGEMENT SUMMARY
Stakeholders already exert considerable power over brands and they ask for even more
influence. Actually, companies should encourage stakeholders to play an active role in
branding decisions. They need to recognize stakeholders as a valuable source to improve
brands. Participative branding is about empowering stakeholders and involving them in
processes and decisions concerning the brand. Brands need to engage in dialogues with
stakeholders in order to understand the people’s behaviour and satisfy their expectations.
Furthermore, brands that collaborate with stakeholders strengthen their reputation and ensure
success. The collaboration entails a redistribution of power in favour of stakeholders, yet the
results are beneficial for both parties.
The Internet is the most capable brand touchpoint for participative branding purposes. On the
Internet, brands have the possibility to empower stakeholders in an economical and effective
way through social media and online communities. Participative branding results in more
satisfied stakeholders and more successful brands. Companies that value the participation of
stakeholders and that wholeheartedly engage in social media notice benefits across all
departments as well as a positive impact on the bottom line. However, participative branding
requires companies to be transparent and authentic.

3. Table of Contents
List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... III
1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1
2 Participative Branding ........................................................................................................ 2
2.1 A Stakeholder Approach ............................................................................................. 2
2.2 Participation ................................................................................................................. 3
2.3 Participative Branding’s Influence on Reputation....................................................... 6
2.4 Stakeholders Know More about Brands .................................................................... 10
3 The Brand Touchpoint Internet ......................................................................................... 12
3.1 The Internet Generation ............................................................................................. 13
3.2 People are in Control ................................................................................................. 14
3.3 Most People are Spectators........................................................................................ 15
3.4 Participative Branding on the Internet ....................................................................... 17
3.5 Social Media .............................................................................................................. 18
3.5.1 Reviews and Opinions .......................................................................................... 23
3.5.2 Knowledge Exchanges ......................................................................................... 24
3.5.3 Social Networking ................................................................................................ 25
3.5.4 Blogging ............................................................................................................... 38
3.5.5 Sharing Media ...................................................................................................... 43
3.5.6 Community Forums.............................................................................................. 47
3.5.7 Web Chats ............................................................................................................ 50
3.5.8 Virtual Worlds and Social Gaming ...................................................................... 53
3.5.9 Social Media Best Practices – Starbucks, SAP and Dell ..................................... 54
3.5.10 The Social Media Strategy ................................................................................. 65
3.5.10.1 Understanding the Scope of Social Media .................................................. 66
3.5.10.2 Identifying the Right People ....................................................................... 68
3.5.10.3 Do Not Rush ............................................................................................... 69
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4. 3.5.10.4 Measuring Return on Investment ................................................................ 70
3.5.11 Putting it all Together ......................................................................................... 71
3.5.12 Crisis Prevention and Crisis Management ......................................................... 74
3.6 Closed Online Communities ...................................................................................... 78
3.6.1 The Advantages of a Closed Community ............................................................ 79
3.6.2 Closed Communities are Superior to Focus Groups ............................................ 80
3.6.3 Closed Communities in Action ............................................................................ 81
3.6.4 The Costs of Closed Online Communities ........................................................... 86
4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 88
Appendix .................................................................................................................................. 89
References ................................................................................................................................ 94
II

5. List of Figures
Figure 1: The Ladder of Citizen Participation ........................................................................... 4
Figure 2: A Holistic Approach to a Brand and Reputation-guided Organisation ...................... 6
Figure 3: Participative Behaviour .............................................................................................. 9
Figure 4: The Social Technographics Ladder .......................................................................... 15
Figure 5: Consumer Profile Tool ............................................................................................. 16
Figure 6: The Four Levels of Community Engagement .......................................................... 16
Figure 7: Brands Fall Into One of Four Engagement Profiles ................................................. 19
Figure 8: Engagement Correlates to Financial Performance ................................................... 20
Figure 9: Entering Social Media and Anthropomorphization .................................................. 22
Figure 10: Social Media Types ................................................................................................ 23
Figure 11: Screenshot BearingPoint Wiki MIKE2.0 Website ................................................. 25
Figure 12: What do You do with Your Social Networking Profile? ........................................ 26
Figure 13: Screenshot Whole Foods Market Website .............................................................. 29
Figure 14: Screenshot Coca-Cola Facebook Page ................................................................... 30
Figure 15: Twitter Followers.................................................................................................... 32
Figure 16: Screenshot of Comcast's @comcastcares Twitter Profile....................................... 34
Figure 17: How to Build a Community Around a Blog ........................................................... 39
Figure 18: Screenshot Malaysian Hospitality Employees Advocates Blog ............................. 40
Figure 19: Most Subscribed YouTube Channels ..................................................................... 46
Figure 20: Screenshot of Chat Application on GM’s Fast Lane Blog ..................................... 51
Figure 21: What Dell learned from Social Media .................................................................... 65
Figure 22: Screenshot Electrolux Newsroom Website ............................................................ 73
Figure 23: Domino's Pizza Chatter .......................................................................................... 75
Figure 24: A Taxonomy of Detractors ..................................................................................... 89
Figure 25: Social Technographics Profile of Europe, USA and China .................................... 90
Figure 26: Air Force Blog Assessment .................................................................................... 91
Figure 27: Dell Blog Assessment ............................................................................................. 92
Figure 28: Corporate Twitter.................................................................................................... 93
III

6. 1 Introduction
“It is not the strongest who survive, not the most intelligent, but those who are the most
adaptive to change”, said Charles Darwin. Our planet, our species and our technology is
changing at an ever-faster rate. Companies must change, too. The change I will talk about in
my thesis is fundamental because it has the power to transform how companies do business
and how they interact with society. However, the magnitude of change entirely depends on
how wholeheartedly companies embrace, what I call, participative branding.
We increasingly filter marketing communication, and we’ve learned what to believe in and
what not. The traditional shouting of brands at people does not work anymore. Participative
branding is different. It is about how brands behave and engage with customers and all other
stakeholders. It is important to take an all-embracing point of view and see the company as
part of society – with stakeholders as partners whom it interacts with. Participative branding
empowers the stakeholders and invites them to participate as equal partners. Brands teaming
up with stakeholders results in more satisfied stakeholders and builds reputation and financial
success.
Chapter 2 introduces the concept of participative branding. Subsequently, I single out the
Internet as today’s most capable technique for participative branding. Chapter 3 deals with the
Internet in general, whereas chapter 3.5 focuses on social media while presenting many
examples. Chapter 3.6 looks at closed online communities, another form of participative
branding on the Internet. Finally, I conclude.
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7. 2 Participative Branding
Participative branding takes a holistic approach as branding encompasses the four interlinked
areas of strategic management, corporate governance, corporate communication and
marketing. Participative branding means to acknowledge and to involve stakeholders as
important partners.
A company, or a brand, is more successful when its stakeholders are content. Therefore,
participative branding is about involving stakeholders in a dialogue (as opposed to
monologue), exchanging views and empowering them to actively participate in the business.
Stakeholders include employees, brand enthusiasts, critics, and many more – but, as common
ground, they all have a stake in the brand. The brand does not really belong to a company as it
is made and exists solely in the stakeholder’s head. Since stakeholders are emotionally
engaged with the brand, they are usually willing to invest time and mental effort to help
shaping the brand. It is the business’ responsibility to listen to and empower stakeholders to
participate.
The perception of taking part, of being involved underpins the stakeholders’ sense of brand
ownership. People who feel acknowledged and treated as equal partners with co-
determination are naturally more emotionally involved. Hence, stakeholders are a valuable,
and often underestimated, source to improve the brand. Just think of customers who are
interested in making a product or service better for their own sake but at the same time help
the business through, for example, more loyalty and more frequent purchases.
Participative branding may be applied for temporary projects, but the permanent involvement
of stakeholders yields more benefits. The catalysts for participative activities are often
company-external stakeholders. However, companies become more proactive as they are
increasingly aware of the prospects of collaborations, and because they are more sensitized to
the responsibilities towards stakeholders.
2.1 A Stakeholder Approach
Participative branding enhances a brand’s reputation. Integrated brand management and
integrated reputation management may seem very different, but are in fact very closely
related. Reputation management is about identifying and meeting stakeholders’ expectations.
The reputation of a brand is not only affected by those who buy the product. All stakeholder
groups have, some more some less, influence on the perception and hence reputation of the
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8. brand. Nonetheless, many companies still neglect the relationships with stakeholder groups or
concentrate only on a few handpicked ones like customers or shareholders. Looking at the
definition of stakeholders, one can see that stakeholder management should be at the core of
any business: “The stakeholders in a corporation are the individuals and constituencies that
contribute, either voluntarily or involuntarily, to its wealth-creating capacity and activities,
and that are therefore its potential beneficiaries and/or risk bearers” (Sachs, Post, & Preston,
2002).
Stakeholders are exposed, in some manner, to a brand in various ways. Brand touchpoints are
all the different ways that the brand interacts with and makes an impression on stakeholders
(Longoria & Davis, 2003). A stakeholder’s exposure to a touchpoint shapes the stakeholder’s
perception of the brand and consequently forms the brand experience. It is therefore important
to identify and monitor the brand touchpoints. Even though time and resource scarcity makes
it difficult to focus on all of them, the ambition should be to identify and manage all
touchpoints. Touchpoints are critical interfaces for many reasons clarifies Mike Mendenhall,
HP Chief Marketing Officer, “All public touchpoints, and increasingly they are digital, now
impact our brand, its reputation and its revenue. Brands are not defined today by campaigns,
but by the consumer ecosystems we nurture to support them” (AdvertisingAge, 2008).
Not all brand touchpoints facilitate collaborative practices. Predestined for participative
programmes is the touchpoint Internet, whereas others like ads in newspapers are incapable of
establishing a two-way dialogue. Furthermore, it is essential to provide a consistent picture of
the brand across all touchpoints. Last but not least, all efforts are pretty much useless if the
company cannot deliver on its brand promise on and on again, at all brand touchpoints.
The majority of brand touchpoints, think for example of the Internet, are open to all
stakeholder groups. This openness causes the additional complexity that one cannot address
stakeholder groups group-specific. Even more, many persons belong to multiple stakeholder
groups. For instance, it is not unlikely that people from the stakeholder group “local
community” belong at the same time to the group “consumers”.
2.2 Participation
Participation is the keyword in this thesis. Participation has different meanings. In social
science, participation refers to people taking part in decision-making (Cooke & Kothari, 2001,
p. 172). Participation has different gradations, and one of the first to acknowledge this was
Sherry Arnstein in 1969. She formulated the ladder of citizen participation, displayed in
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9. Figure 1, which is also the basis for many other classification attempts. Arnstein developed
her landmark concept to address the redistribution of power that would enable have-not
citizens, excluded from political and economic processes of America, to be included in the
future. Nonetheless, the very same ladder of citizen participation may be applied to the
current context of stakeholder participation. However, when speaking of stakeholders in the
context of Arnstein’s ladder, I only consider external stakeholders, i.e. not employees.
The eight rungs correspond to the
different degrees of stakeholder
power in decision making. The
bottom two rungs, manipulation
and therapy, are condensed to a
level called nonparticipation. At
this level, there is no participation
because the aim is, using
Arnstein’s words, “to educate or
cure participants”.
Nonparticipation is the world of
traditional public relations and
push marketing.
Rung 3 to 5 are called tokenism.
Informing is an important first step
to real participation. Yet,
communication is still one-way.
Figure 1: The Ladder of Citizen Participation (Arnstein, 1969)
Common informing tools are, for
example, news media or pamphlets. Consultation ensures that stakeholders hear information
and are also heard. Even though the company listens to its stakeholders, this form of
participation has generally no impact as the information does not reach the powerful people
who could change things. For many companies, however, this is already good enough as they
can attest to involve stakeholders. Placation gives stakeholders the opportunity to make
recommendations that will be heard by the right people in the corporation. The organisation is
pleased to receive outside contribution and considers the stakeholders’ inputs. To successfully
implement tools at this level, the company needs to make certain that stakeholders experience
the participation not just as tokenism.
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10. The level citizen power is characterized by a redistribution of power. Rung 6, partnership,
transfers power over a brand to its stakeholders. Certainly, it is still the company that runs the
brand and not the stakeholders. In some areas, however, company and stakeholders
collaborate as equal partners. Delegated power sees the company relinquish power in certain
areas or for certain projects to stakeholders. The stakeholders take over a function formerly
executed company-internal. Yet, the company typically has the power of veto. Citizen control
would mean that stakeholders occupy leadership functions in a company and actually have
dominant decision-making authority. This, however, would principally transform the external
stakeholder into employees.
When we speak of participative branding we speak about the rungs delegated power,
partnership and placation. However, placation is only added if the company is really
committed to stakeholder involvement and thus ensures proper participation processes. The
appliance of Arnstein’s ladder embodies that participative branding has a lot do with giving
up control in favour of stakeholders. Participation without redistribution of power allows
companies to claim that they have considered stakeholders, but it is a futile and frustrating
process for stakeholders.
Participative behaviour is not only a nice add-on, it is more and more necessary. In the past
years, people have been increasingly bombarded by a wealth of brand messages. Only our
selective perception prevented us from a nervous breakdown as advertisers shout more and
even louder. Good news is that the bright companies have started to climb up the ladder. They
have left the lower rungs and are now engaging with their stakeholders on the higher rungs.
These companies have changed from a one-way communication to a two-way dialogue with
stakeholders.
Traditional push marketing messages are increasingly being ignored or deemed irrelevant.
Participative branding, however, gives people the choice to engage with the brand wherever
and whenever they like. In this less obtrusive way, stakeholders are more inclined to build a
brand relationship. Participative branding requires a mutually beneficial relationship and a
brand that epitomizes transparency and genuineness.
People do not really trust advertisements in newspapers, TV commercials or online banners.
Word of mouth from satisfied customers is still the best advertising. Or as Steve Knox, P&G
Vocalpoint CEO, recognises, “We know that the most important form of marketing is an
advocacy message from a trusted friend” (Ambrose, 2006). People primarily trust
5

11. recommendations from people they know and to a lesser extent from online consumer
opinions (Nielsen, 2009). Hence, every company’s aim should be to encourage word of mouth
– i.e. let the stakeholders engage with the brands they support. Participation deepens the
emotional ties to a brand, and people are more inclined to advocate something when they feel
emotionally connected to it. Participation is marketing.
2.3 Participative Branding’s Influence on Reputation
Figure 2: A Holistic Approach to a Brand and Reputation-guided Organisation (Branding-Institute, 2009)
As shown in the illustration, reputation and brand management are interdependent. The
stakeholders’ perception and attitude towards the brand determines the reputation of the
brand. Therefore, it is essential to know the stakeholders’ expectations and the reasons for
their behaviours in order to adjust the company’s actions. Fulfilling stakeholders’
expectations is the road to success (Branding-Institute, 2009).
Participative branding may be initiated by company internal (left brown-orange side) or
company external initiatives (right side). If the demands for more participative action come
from the external side, it is expressed through feedback, expectations and behaviour – as
displayed in the arrow in Figure 2.
Stakeholders may provide direct feedback in the form of opinions about products/services or
reactions to the organisation’s behaviour. Many stakeholders directly or indirectly proclaim
expectations that they wish to have more influence on the brand. These expectations reflect
6

12. the increased self-confidence of stakeholders. They know that they can put pressure on
companies, and they know that the brand depends on satisfied stakeholders to be successful.
Because the brand affects stakeholders in some way, they also claim to have a say in
decisions concerning the brand. They realize that the brand does not solely belong to the legal
brand owner and that they, as stakeholders, have rights too. They certainly compare their
current influence to similar situations involving other brands and observe what is possible and
what is not.
Stakeholders who want to become more active have found that the Internet is a great
instrument to find likeminded people, to apply pressure on organisations and to collaborate
with people or organisations. Stakeholders become increasingly active and proactive. They
are in power, e.g. they can force the company to change suppliers or products. They influence
friends and strangers by talking about products, recommending products and rating products.
Brands are well advised to find out what drives stakeholders’ behaviour and what
stakeholders’ expectations are.
The upper arrow of the graph is about organisational behaviour. This is where participative
branding is actually executed. For a successful implementation of participative practises, the
organisational behaviour should be characterised by openness, trust, participation and
empowerment of stakeholders. If the business is able to epitomize participative behaviour – at
placation, partnership or delegated power on Arnstein’s ladder – it has a positive effect on
reputation.
Participative behaviour should not be confined to selected stakeholder groups, nor should it be
confined to particular brand touchpoints. However, not all brand touchpoints offer the
interactivity needed for stakeholder involvement. Participative behaviour is about listening to
stakeholders and understanding their expectations, and it is about letting stakeholders (co-
)decide and (co-)create. It is in fact quite clever to give stakeholders power to influence the
brand in such a way to meet their own expectations. The corporate reputation, the rational and
emotional attachment of stakeholders to a brand, is enhanced by better satisfying
stakeholder’s expectations.
Unfortunately, there is only very little research investigating the correlation between
participation and reputation. However, it should be evident that when we have the possibility
to participate, or actually do participate, it changes our relation to the person or object. Even
the mere possibility to participate impacts the reputation. Sophia Parker, from Social
7

13. Innovation Labs, clarifies that people’s perception that they can participate in decision-
making has a direct correlation with levels of trust and satisfaction (Gormley, 2009).
Taking part in a dialogue with the brand is time-consuming. Stakeholders willing to take part
in participative branding demonstrate that, for whatever reason, they have an emotional bond
to the brand. They are willing to invest cognitive effort and time as they engage with the
brand. This prolonged exposure to the brand certainly has an impact on the way stakeholders
perceive the brand.
Interesting findings start to emerge in the field of neuromarketing. From a neuroscientific
perspective, brands (brand names) are pieces of information, meanings, experiences,
emotions, images, intentions, etc. interconnected by neural links of varying strength. For
brands to be chosen by customers, they need to create as many synaptic1 connections as
possible between choice criteria and the brand. This is called a rich network of synaptic links.
Participation forms a richer network of synaptic links, i.e. there are more synaptic connections
between choice criteria and the brand. Tjaco Walvis established, based on his neuroscientific
research, a law of participation which states that brands creating participation increase the
chance of being chosen by customers (Walvis, 2008).
On the one hand, the mere possibility to participate has an impact on the perception and
reputation of the brand. The active participation has accordingly an even greater effect on the
reputation of the brand. We perceive brands differently if they offer us the possibility to take
part, and if they engage with us. These are psychological effects. The empowerment of
stakeholders plays a central role because it effectively lifts the stakeholders to the same level
as brands/companies, recognizing stakeholders as equal partners.
On the other hand, participative behaviour has a lot more concrete effects on the business than
only psychological effects changing the perception of brands. The concrete effects on
businesses are illustrated in Figure 3 which is an extension to the original illustration by the
Branding-Institute. The modified arrow highlights the participative behaviour’s direct and
indirect effects on reputation. The previous paragraph describes the arrow’s lower branch,
while the upper branch indicates the participative branding’s effects on business functions and
processes. Collaborating with stakeholders introduces the stakeholders’ views and interests
into the business. The outcome of this partnership could be new product lines,
environmentally friendly production methods, improved product labels, or new markets – the
1
Synapse is a gap between two neurons in the brain across which an impulse (information) is transmitted from
one neuron across the synapse to another neuron.
8

14. possibilities are unlimited and in the graph simply described as “effects on business functions
and processes”. Whatever the outcome of involving stakeholders it is likely to change
perception and reputation.
Figure 3: Participative Behaviour (by author adopted from Branding-Institute, 2009)
A brand that truly engages and collaborates with stakeholders notices an increase in
reputation simply due to its open approach to involve stakeholders. Additionally, stakeholders
exert influence on business decisions or even co-create. They mainly participate to
accomplish their vision of the brand. Again, reputation increases as stakeholders are pleased
with the changes they initiated. In short, participative branding increases reputation twofold.
Reputation clearly matters. Cees van Riel and Charles Fombrun, both with executive positions
at the Reputation Institute, state that reputation clearly affects various stakeholder groups:
Reputation affects customer’s purchase decisions. Reputation affects employee’s decisions to
engage, commit and stay. Reputation affects investor’s investment decisions. Reputation
affects the media’s coverage, and lastly, reputation affects financial analysts’ language (van
Riel & Fombrun, 2003). Furthermore, the Reputation Institute’s models show that a 10%
increase in corporate reputation translates into a 1.3% increase in bottom line corporate value
(Rooks, 2009). The bottom line is primarily influenced by customers’ purchase decisions.
When customers make purchase decisions, they are heavily influenced not only by the
objective features of products, but by the customers’ perceptions of the brand (Foley &
Kendrick, 2006). In turn, customers’ perceptions are influenced in immeasurable ways by
many other stakeholder groups. For example, a NGO’s criticism on unfair labour practices
can make a brand less favourable.
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15. 2.4 Stakeholders Know More about Brands
I will claim, again and again in my thesis, that the stakeholders are the real brand owners.
From a technical and legal point of view, the brand owner is obviously a company. There are
many ways to define a brand. I see the brand as a perception that exists in the minds of
people. Hence, each individual has his or her very own interpretation of a certain brand.
Stakeholders have some sort of association with the brand, and their perception of the brand
defines how weak or strong it is – i.e. not the company but the people ultimately determine
the brand’s fate.
The company associated with the brand tries to influence us, for example through marketing,
to have positive feelings about the brand and encourages us to buy it. However, we decide
whether to listen or believe in what it tells us about the brand. There are many other
influences on our perception of brands, e.g. friends’ opinions or our image of the typical
brand user. One can say that companies’ direct influence on our perception of brands is quite
limited. That’s why I proclaim that the company cannot be the real brand owner. Companies
should rather hand over part of the power they claim to have to their stakeholders. This
intrinsically makes sense because companies that involve stakeholders essentially ensure that
corporate messages get through perceptive filters more easily. Stakeholders want to improve
the brand. They want to shape the brand in a way to better suit their way of thinking. The
improved brand obtains easier access to stakeholders’ minds. Of course, the company wants
to improve the brand as well, but it frequently doesn’t understand the stakeholders’ way of
thinking.
How is the perception of brands formed? Aldous Huxley wrote, in his famous book about his
mescaline and LSD experiments, that the doors of perception are the senses – eyes, ears,
mouth, nose and skin. These senses are our only point of contact to the world (Huxley, 1954).
Even so, we never know how the real world really looks like. The world we perceive is not
the real world but a simplification, a so called map. All our senses are tied to a series of
perceptual filters. Anything that is not filtered out builds our map. In addition, what we pay
attention to in the map is further filtered through our beliefs, interests and preoccupations
(O'Connor & Seymour, 2002, p. 25).
I argue that people, stakeholders, know best how to shape a message so that it actually goes
through all these filters into their awareness. Therefore, companies should encourage
stakeholders to participate in branding to help the brand find its way easily onto the map –
and become a relevant object on the map. I believe that stakeholders should influence a brand
10

16. to make it better, for their perception. And a better brand automatically becomes more
relevant to them. In the end, stakeholders perceive the brand that offers participation or that
they have influenced as better, and a stronger brand has positive effects on the company.
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17. 3 The Brand Touchpoint Internet
I singled out the brand touchpoint Internet because it is the most suitable one for participative
branding. It is also the touchpoint that is evolving fastest and many new developments, such
as social media, are worth having a closer look at. Chapter 3.1 to chapter 3.3 look at the
Internet as a whole, while I’ll explain in 3.4 the significance of participative branding on the
Internet. Chapter 3.5 goes into more detail as I introduce you to what social media is all about
and how it can be used to involve stakeholders. The objective of my thesis is to impart
knowledge about participative branding. This can be best achieved with real examples. That’s
why an extensive part, chapter 3.5.1 to 3.5.9 looks at good and bad examples of various
companies. Chapter 3.6 presents closed online communities, a promising approach to
participative branding. Again, the usefulness of closed online communities is exemplified
with various examples.
The reach of the Internet is mind-boggling. Europe’s 400 million Internet users (Miniwatts
Marketing Group, 2009) are exposed to the touchpoint Internet between 14 hours (Austria)
and 32 hours (Turkey) per month2 (comScore, 2009a). Not included in these figures is the
fast-growing mobile access. In Switzerland, 80% of the population uses the Internet – on
average 31 hours per month. 60% of the Swiss use it daily, but only 4% access it via mobile
phones – certainly a number that will soar in the near future (Bauer, 2009, pp. 93-94).
The Internet has become an indispensable part of our private and business lifes. The Internet
saturation is already high, and the Internet will get even more ubiquitous as it has eventually
started to conquer the mobile devices market. For companies of all sizes, the Internet has
become a major brand touchpoint that needs to be carefully looked after.
For purposes of participative branding the Internet is the most capable medium as it allows a
relatively cheap and practical way to interact with stakeholders. Unlike other brand
touchpoints that are dominated by certain stakeholder groups, the Internet unifies them all.
The apparently unlimited possibilities, the reach of the medium, the speed of developments
and the ability to directly communicate with people justifies to have a closer look at the
Internet.
2
The average hours spent on the Internet was measured for 17 European countries only, as of April 2009.
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18. 3.1 The Internet Generation
How familiar are you with the latest technology? Do you effortlessly work with the newest
Internet services? Do you even know what’s currently hot? When you hear aki-aki what do
you think of? When describing the Internet affinity, people are often classified into
generations.
The Baby Boom Generation, born just after World War II, have lived most of their lives
without the Internet. Generation X, or Gen X, is the generation born between the early 1960s
and 1980 (Stephey, 2008). The Xers were brought up with Atari, personal computers and
television. Following Gen X is Generation Y, also known as the Millennials, born between
the early 1980s and 1994 (BusinessWeek, 1999). This generation closely witnessed and took
part in the rise of mass communication and the Internet. According to alphabetical order, the
subsequent generation is dubbed Gen Z. This latest generation began around 1995 (Schmidt &
Hawkins, 2008). Other names for Gen Z include Generation V (V for virtual), Internet
Generation, Gen @ and Generation C (C for community or content). The Zers are highly
connected, and being born into a world of digital technology they can be classified as “digital
natives”.
It has become common knowledge that brands have to have a presence on the Internet, no
matter which of the aforementioned generations they interact with. However, in order to be
successful with the younger generations, brands should treat the touchpoint Internet with
special care. For these people the Internet has established itself as the first and most important
brand contact point. Having a nice website is fine, but will Gen Z ever visit this website? If
they visit the website, knowing about the Internet’s potential, won’t they demand for more
interaction?
For most brands it is difficult to keep pace with the technology of the early adopters, the
Generation Z. The good news is that it is not about technology but about the way of doing
business. Especially people with high Internet affinity want to get involved and take part in
decision-making. They expect to be heard by the corporations and request transparency.
Hence, to meet the changed demands, companies need to loosen grips around their brands and
empower their stakeholders. The Internet clearly facilitates this process. The technology is
simply the execution for this shift in thinking.
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19. 3.2 People are in Control
The Internet has been growing and evolving ever since its modest beginnings. With the
changes came new expressions. Nowadays, some of the buzz words are Web 2.0, social
media, webinars, microblogging and social networking.
The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of web development and web design,
characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing, interoperability, user-
centred design and collaboration on the World Wide Web (Wikipedia, 2009a).
Social media is characterized by a shift in how people discover, read and share news,
information and content. Social media is a fusion of sociology and technology, transforming
monologues into dialogues and transforming people from content readers into content creators
(Wikipedia, 2009b). Social networks are simply online communities.
People have discovered that they, as a single person or group, are capable of changing things.
They take matters into their own hands and ask for more participation and power. If your
brand isn’t able to satisfy these demands, the competitor is just one click away – even though
it possibly operates from another corner of the world. Signs of change are visible wherever
you look, and companies start to empower their stakeholders: Co-creation, social media and
crowdsourcing3 fuel stakeholder participation and have become common practice for Gen Y
and Z.
On the Internet, people are in charge. Individuals may be stopped but it is so easy to find and
connect to like-minded people on the Internet. As a group, people are usually powerful
enough to accomplish what they want: One man and his broken laptop spurred an anti-Dell
movement that initiated a change in Dell’s overall strategy (see p. 24). Another man only got
what he’d been asking for after denouncing United Airlines publicly on the Internet (see p.
75).
People devote time to projects and organisations. They write encyclopedias like Wikipedia,
and they collaborate on open source projects like Mozilla. They assemble an orchestra of 96
musicians from 33 countries who play their opening concert at the famous Carnegie Hall
(YouTube Orchestra) (Trümpi, 2009). They take over and manage a football club deciding
together, by voting on the Internet, about the starting line-up, transfers and ticket prices
(Ebbsfleet United) (Gormley, 2009). They voluntarily and unexpectedly carry out marketing
3
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing
it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowdsourcing)
14

20. functions and impact a major Hollywood movie (Snakes on a Plane) (McConnell & Huba,
2007, pp. 162-169). These are just a few examples to demonstrate that people work together
and participate in tasks formerly performed by organisations only.
3.3 Most People are Spectators
There are countless examples of Internet users participating in some way. Apart from the
question why would anyone contribute, it would be interesting to know how many do actually
participate, and how many are simply bystanders? Marc Smith and Peter Kollock (1999, pp.
225-227) try to answer the first question, why users contribute (in online communities). They
mainly see three possible motivations for participation: Users are motivated to contribute to
the community in the expectation that they will receive useful help and information in return.
Furthermore, users participate as they are motivated to increase their prestige in the
community. Lastly, users are willing to contribute valuable information because doing so
gives them a feeling to have some effect on the community.
How many do participate?
McConnell and Huba’s research
produced the 1% rule, or the 90-
9-1 principle (2007, p. 34). This
rule of thumb states that about
1% of all visitors to a forum
will create content, and 9% will
interact with the content
(writing comments or voting).
90% of all visitors read and
observe but don’t actively
contribute.
Figure 4: The Social Technographics Ladder (Forrester Research,
2008)
15

21. The 1% rule applies only to a single community or a single site. When looking at the overall
behaviour of people, i.e. looking across all sites, one should consult the social technographics
ladder by Forrester Research. The ladder classifies people according to how they use social
technologies (Forrester Research, 2008). Figure 4 depicts the six categories of participation
(participation at one level can overlap with participation at other levels). The level of
participation varies depending on the consumers’ demographics. For illustration purposes, the
profile of an average French
consumer, aged between 25 and 34,
is shown in Figure 5. In the
Appendix on page 90 you can also
find the consumer participation
profiles of Europe, USA and China.
The European profile sees a
relatively high number on the lower
two rungs and comparatively low
figures on the top rungs of the
Figure 5: Consumer Profile Tool (Forrester Research, 2009)
ladder. However, by changing
countries and age of the consumers, these figures vary greatly.
Gartner promotes a
slightly different model.
Gartner identifies four
levels of engagement as
shown in Figure 6. It
recommends segmenting
all four levels in the
community as each level
has significant business
value (Gartner, 2008).
Similar to the previous
models, the inactives and
spectators make up the
Figure 6: The Four Levels of Community Engagement (Gartner, 2008)
vast majority.
16

22. Are the people who are very engaged, like the 1%ers or Gartner’s creators, a representative
sample of the existing customers? Most likely they’re not because they are typically well-
educated, highly involved and technology-savvy (McConnell & Huba, 2007, p. 41).
Nevertheless, their ideas and opinions are valuable as long as you take into account which
customer segment they represent.
All the figures about participation must be used with caution. It is important not to generalise
but to look at the specific brand and the behaviour of its stakeholders. This requires a bit of
research, however, it is money well-invested given the high failure rates of web sites building
on user-generated content.
3.4 Participative Branding on the Internet
Brands have become increasingly important in our everyday lives and can be seen as cultural
accessories and personal philosophies (Klein, 2002, p. 37). The Internet is a popular platform
to voice opinions about brands. It also enables people to get involved with brand-related
matters. People have undeniably taken over part of the branding function. As a matter of fact,
people have more influence on (buying) behaviour through online word of mouth than
traditional push marketing activities have. The leading companies have acknowledged the
benefits of involving external stakeholders in brand-related decisions and let them spread the
message. Outside input has always been valuable but only the advent of the Internet made it
possible to empower external stakeholders in an effective and economical way.
It is certainly not new that people talk about products and services. We’ve always talked
about brands, although perhaps more nowadays than in the past. However, it used to be nearly
impossible, or only with a big effort, for brands to listen to the conversation. Nowadays, a
substantial part of the conversation happens on the Internet which makes it easier for brands
to listen and interact with people.
In a nutshell, the Internet in general and social media and communities in particular are the
best participative branding instruments. Social media is something like a replica of the offline
life, just with more transparency. Social media users generously expose their likes, dislikes,
friends, beliefs, and so on. This looks like paradise for brand managers, if it weren’t for the
loss of control over the brand and the negative chatter. Many of the downsides of social media
can be averted in closed online communities. Closed online communities enable participative
branding in a more intimate environment.
17

23. To succeed in today’s digital world, brands need to undergo a change in thinking. Companies
can see consumers with more clarity, and vice versa consumers can see brands with more
clarity. As a consequence, on the Internet you are who you are, not what you say you are. This
is, at least, true for brands. Brands must deliver on their brand promises like never before
(Adamson, 2008). Luckily for the brands that are serious about making good on their
promises, external stakeholders are keen to help the brands getting better. Therefore, it is
about time to open up to brand evangelists and stakeholders in general to collaboratively
advance the brand.
3.5 Social Media
Is it worth to invest resources in social media? An increasing number of people would say
yes, even though it is difficult to measure the success of social media. Experts articulate that
brands can increase brand awareness, reputation, and the like. However, the finance
department and other people as well are more interested in the really important metrics:
revenue and profit. To my knowledge, there is only one large-scale study that examines the
correlation between social media engagement and revenue and profit.
The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group analysed this alleged correlation, based on the 100 most
valuable brands according to Interbrand’s Best Global Brand 2008 (Wetpaint/Altimeter
Group, 2009). The verdict is clear, “The relationship is apparent and significant: socially
engaged companies are in fact more financially successful.” Socially engaged doesn’t mean
just having a presence in social media. It means to take part, having a dialogue and empower
people. How social media should be done to have a real impact is elucidated with many
examples in the following chapters.
18

24. Figure 7: Brands Fall Into One of Four Engagement Profiles (Wetpaint/Altimeter Group, 2009)
The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group study gives even more valuable insight into social media. The
study allocates the brands into one of four profiles depending on the number of channels4 and
the level of engagement (see Figure 7). Wallflowers have below-average engagement scores
and are testing just a few channels. They are cautious about the risks and uncertain about the
benefits of social media. Selectives are also only present in a few channels, but they engage
customers deeply. The social media projects at these companies have usually only few
resources available. Butterflies have managed to cover many channels, but the engagement in
these channels is insufficient to have a real impact. Even though their ambitions are high, the
companywide support is unsatisfactory because the company isn’t fully convinced. Mavens
are highly engaged and utilize many different social media types. They have a convincing
strategy where social media affects the whole organisation along with providing the necessary
resources.
4
Channels are social media types such as blogs, wikis, Flickr, etc.
19

25. The Mavens had the most success in terms of both revenue and profit. Butterflies produced
stronger revenues than Selectives and Wallflowers, but Selectives had higher margins. The
authors of the study assume that more channels mean more brand touchpoints, which in turn
leads to more viral marketing and brand recognition and therefore higher sales volume. The
fact that Selectives have higher margins than Butterflies shows that it pays off to focus only
on selective channels, but doing so with high engagement.
Figure 8: Engagement Correlates to Financial Performance (Wetpaint/Altimeter Group, 2009)
Brands occupying space in social media are not perceived as being obtrusive by users. On the
contrary, 93% of American social media users think that businesses should have a social
media presence, and 85% are of the opinion that companies should interact via social
networks with their customers (Cone, 2008).
Branding in social media is different from traditional branding as stakeholders directly
interact with real people representing a brand. These people who engage with customers,
prospective, NGOs, etc. apparently have an impact on how the brand is perceived by
stakeholders. It would be interesting to conduct research as to how social media, and in
particular the persons who engage with customers, affect the brand personality.
Unfortunately, there is no such study yet. Moreover, there are many passionate brand
enthusiasts who, often without the knowledge of the company, influence the way the brand is
perceived. Rohit Bhargava calls these people accidental spokespersons. In his book
Personality Not Included he writes, “They are not controlled by the brands they describe, but
they influence perception about those brands in a powerful way” (Bhargava, 2008, p. 56).
Brand personality is strongly affected by the people who engage with customers in social
20

26. media. For that reason, it is crucial to educate the employees engaging in social media about
their role.
Brand personality is formed and influenced by direct and indirect contact with the brand.
Aaker explains that personality traits get connected to a brand in a direct way by the people
associated with the brand – the perception of the typical customer, the employees, the CEO
and the brand endorsers (Aaker, 1997). Translating Aakers findings into the age of social
media, the personality traits of employees using social media and the personality traits of
company external brand ambassadors are transferred directly to the brand. Once again, we’ve
found evidence that external stakeholders increasingly acquire control over the brand. A
company can influence as to who they employ and to a certain degree on how employees
behave, but the company has no direct influence on external brand ambassadors who
evidently influence the brand personality as well. Moreover, many companies don’t know
their brand ambassadors or they don’t even know that they exist. That's why it is so important
to listen to the conversations on the Internet – to find out who talks about the brand, what they
discuss and what is the tone of the conversation.
Brands can form their personality by actively participating in social media. Specifically,
social media humanizes brands as it is all about human interactions. As I will explain later
with a few examples, sometimes employees become the stars and not the brand itself.
In my opinion, the process of humanization is equivalent to the process of how brands should
enter social media. The more engaged a brand is, the more human interactions are taking
place. The more such interactions, the more people anthropomorphize brands5. I tried to
sketch the process of entering social media in Figure 9.
At the beginning, the company is not involved in social media. It is focused on push
marketing activities, also known as one-way communication. To appeal to customers and
prospective clients, the company tries to attribute human traits to the brand – something that is
usually quite difficult. The difficulty is exemplified through the face (representing the brand)
that lacks important human features (first phase in the illustration below).
5
Anthropomorphization occurs when human qualities are attributed to nonhuman objects, e.g. brands.
21

27. Figure 9: Entering Social Media and Anthropomorphization (by author)
If the company wants to get engaged in social media, it has to proceed to the next phase. This
necessitates ears as an apparatus to listen to the conversation. Stakeholders talk about many
things, probably also about a company’s brand, its competitors and the industry or business
environment in general. With the newly grown ears, the company is able to listen to the
chatter as well as to learn how people use social media. It is the phase when employees ought
to acquire knowledge about how people use social media and about the do’s and don’ts. Yet,
the communication is predominantly one-way because the emphasis in this phase is listening
and learning.
The company starts to get truly engaged in the third phase. The brand gets involved in real
dialogues with real people – the double arrow symbolizes the two-way communication. The
organisation and its employees are now ready to be an active partner in the conversation. It is
an opportunity to influence the brand’s reputation, to ask for advice or ideas, or to get to know
customers – fundamentally to empower stakeholders. Engaging in human-human interactions
is also the equivalent to the third stage of humanizing the brand. Even though the dialogues
occur between two real persons, one side represents a brand or company. Whatever she or he
says influences the listener’s perception of that brand. Because of the sheer number of
interactions taking place in social media, it truly impacts brands’ perception and reputation.
Social media means new opportunities to create and communicate with people who care. This
is not just a phoney saying of some social media fanatic. The benefits are real and the anxiety
unsubstantiated – as confirmed by a Beeline Labs survey (2009): Companies reported that
they were surprised by how much customers advocate their brands. They observed that
22

28. customers help even more when companies directly communicate with customers, offering
help and giving thanks. Furthermore, the interviewees experienced social media as a way to
open doors, create relationships, learn and help people get to know the people behind the
company in a transparent, authentic and human way. Almost all companies were pleasantly
surprised at how few negative experiences occurred from social media.
In the subsequent chapter I will introduce examples of how social media is applied in practice
and how companies can derive advantage from social media. A selection of the countless
social media tools are arranged into groups as seen in the illustration below.
Figure 10: Social Media Types (by author)
3.5.1 Reviews and Opinions
60% of German Internet users and 71% of Internet users in the USA pay attention to opinions
and reviews of other customers before buying a product (Billhardt, Henke, Waldenmaier, &
Holtthoff, 2008). Review and opinion services like Ciao!, Epinions, dooyoo, etc. are social
media but not very important for participative branding.
If your brand is mentioned frequently on review and opinion sites, monitor what’s being said
about the brand, competitors and industry. However, the contribution of a company should be
restricted to direct replies to selective comments. Only write comments and ask for
information if truly necessary, and don’t even think about faking a review.
23

29. 3.5.2 Knowledge Exchanges
Typical knowledge exchange websites are Yahoo!Answers, answerbag and WikiAnswers.
They allow users to submit questions and answer questions asked by other users. A step
further goes Hunch that is a collective intelligence decision-making system which uses
decision trees to make decisions based on users’ interests. Wikipedia is so popular that it
needs no explanation.
Wikis, like Wikipedia, are a perfect tool for participative branding, in particular for
collaborative works. Businesses can use wikis to empower employees. IBM uses wikis to
involve employees in the decision-making process. Instead of just blocking access to
(selected) social media sites as many companies do, IBM chose to empower its workforce by
collaboratively establishing guidelines. In 2005, IBM employees used the wiki technology to
create a set of blogging guidelines (Snell, 2005). With the occurrence of new forms of social
media, IBM turned again to its employees and asked them to re-examine and revise the
guidelines – now called IBM Social Computing Guidelines6. By the way, wikis are also great
tools for internal knowledge management and many corporations like Citigroup, Nokia or
Dresdner Kleinwort take advantage of that (Carlin, 2007).
To build a full-size wiki together with your external stakeholders is a very challenging task.
Careful planning is necessary and the risks of failing are considerable. Jimmy Wales, co-
founder of Wikipedia, sees the problem that many brands have problems with authenticity,
they do not engage communities in a real dialogue and tend to be very controlling. Companies
tend to fix things that communities got wrong, thereby angering the community. He advises
companies to accept wrong contributions because, as it regularly turns out later, it is very
likely that they did something wrong (AdvertisingAge, 2009).
6
http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
24

30. Figure 11: Screenshot BearingPoint Wiki MIKE2.0 Website
If you have external stakeholders, in this case mainly customers, who are ready to share
information and if you have an attractive topic, a wiki might be something for your business.
BearingPoint (http://www.openmethodology.org/) has a successful wiki. BearingPoint had
interesting and valuable content to start with. It used its intellectual property that was spread
all over the company. This intellectual property now lies outside of the company in a wiki,
and it has grown significantly. People even added to areas that the consulting firm doesn’t
cover. By collaborating with its own clients, BearingPoint gives its clients the feeling that
they solve problems together. Clients and prospective clients feel supported and comfortable
– and as a result book BearingPoint’s services (Li & Bernoff, 2008, pp. 165-169).
3.5.3 Social Networking
In December 2008, 75% of the European Internet users visited a social networking site
(comScore, 2009b), not including the fast-growing mobile web access7. Social networking on
mobile devices is one of the fastest growing areas on the Internet. For instance, 25% of total
traffic to Facebook happens via mobile phone (Colaizzi, 2009). The European Internet users
spend almost a third of their Internet time on social networking sites (comScore, 2009c).
7
All data reported by ComScore measure Internet users age 15 and older who access the internet via a home or
work computer. Traffic from public computers (e.g. Internet cafes), mobile phones or PDAs is excluded.
25

31. The number one social networking site in Europe is Facebook. The network has grown
tremendously in Europe and had overtaken its rivals in most European countries. Network
effects are definitely a factor – the more people on Facebook, the more useful it becomes.
ComScore reports that by February 2009, Facebook is the leading social networking site in 11
European countries and number two in three countries. It hasn’t reached top positions yet in
Germany, Portugal and Russia (comScore, 2009c). Apart from global social networking sites
like MySpace or Facebook there are still many national sites that are extremely popular8. For
example Skyrock in France (comScore, 2009b), Tuenti in Spain (comScore, 2009d),
Vkontakte in Russia (comScore, 2009e), Bebo in the UK (comScore, 2009f), Netlog in
Austria and Switzerland, or StudiVZ in Germany have a strong local following (Mohsin,
2009).
Figure 12: What do You do with Your Social Networking Profile? (Universal McCann, 2009)
I will use Facebook representing all other social networking sites. Even though people use
social media differently around the world, the basic concept is always roughly the same and
can usually be translated easily to other social networking sites. In general, social networking
services allow users to create a profile for themselves. Users can customize their profile, write
comments, upload pictures and become friends with other users. What people are doing with
their social networking profile is visible in the chart above.
To begin with, Facebook profiles are for people, pages are for businesses and groups are for
both. In most cases having a page rather than a group is more suitable for businesses. Besides
8
For a worldwide graphic overview go to http://www.oxyweb.co.uk/blog/socialnetworkmapoftheworld.php
26

32. better customization, detailed statistics are only available for the page. The statistics tool,
called Facebook Insights9, reveals demographic information, activity levels and page views.
Statistics are always helpful – maybe you find that your fans have certain similarities or
preferences. That gives you already an opportunity to create content that your fans will like.
The persons who administer the brand’s page need to be registered as administrators. All
administrators who interact on the profile page will be doing so under the brand page name
(e.g. “Converse All Stars”) and not with their real names.
The first example of participative branding on Facebook is the tortilla chips from Doritos
(http://www.facebook.com/DoritosCanada) which is produced by Frito-Lay, a division of
PepsiCo. Doritos handed the brand over to its Canadian fans. It asked them to name the
flavour of a new product and create a commercial for this new flavour. The winner was
chosen by voting on Facebook. Doritos Canada was quite generous, the winner’s suggested
name was put on the packaging, the commercial aired on TV and online, and he cashed in
CAD 25000 plus 1% of net sales for the life of the product. It is important to show gratitude
and give something back to the participants. It doesn’t need to be as generous as Doritos, but
it is a game of give-and-take. And I think it is important to reward not only the winner. The
winner takes it all mentality discourages participation and shows no gratitude for the
participants who invested their time voting or making videos – in that way deepening their
relationship with the brand. Contests are a perfect way to keep fans engaged. They need by no
means be as big and sophisticated as Doritos’. Dunkin’ Donuts
(http://www.facebook.com/DunkinDonuts) chooses each week a different fan photo to be its
official Facebook profile picture. Other popular means to entice consumers to become fans
and to engage them are coupons, free shipping or weekly deals (Balwani, 2009).
Doritos sort of outsourced a whole marketing process to its fans. One can also ask specific
questions to the audience. The dairy producer Emmi turned to its fans for help in product
decision making (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yogi-Drink/43763851004). The apple
flavoured Yogi Drink has been discontinued, but many people want the apple flavour back on
the shelves. Therefore, Emmi pledges to start producing again as soon as the Facebook page
reaches 20000 fans. The idea is good but the execution poor. It is Emmi’s first social media
undertaking and, of course, a learning process. On the Facebook page you only find one short
explanation, but there is nothing else provided (no additional content, empty info tab, no
photos, no cross-linking) nor is anyone from the company willing to join the conversation
9
There are certainly many other independent statistic tools available, too.
27

33. with its fans. It is important to give your fans a reason to become fans. This criterion is
evidently satisfied. However, the Facebook page for the Yogi Drink as well as the main web
site for Emmi illustrate that it has no social media strategy yet. By the way, I found out that
Emmi has started producing again even before it reached the 20000 fans (von Hunnius, 2009).
I have the feeling that too often businesses create Facebook pages, or any other social media
accounts, because everybody else does it. You can easily spot such pages because they simply
duplicate their websites, they do not publish content that is valuable for people, nor do they
ask questions, stimulate and respond. These lifeless pages are neither a real benefit for the
fans nor the brand. For that reason, a good starting point is to develop a strategy as to why
someone should become a fan of your brand (e.g. career advice for people who want to work
at Ernst & Young) and of course what you want to get out of it (e.g. recruit talented
employees). Your Facebook account needs to have a business purpose, but on the other hand
the brand must be flexible. Depending on how the fans want to interact with the brand the
business purpose might evolve over time. Whatever you do, it is imperative to always stay
consistent with the brand.
Even if your product seems to be inappropriate for starting a conversation, various examples
show that people nonetheless are ready to engage with your brand. Scotch Duct Tape
(http://www.facebook.com/ScotchDuctTape) is a tape and not really a product you normally
talk about with your friends. However, the company provides creative content and manages to
engage its many fans by having a real dialogue with them. The key point is that it is not about
the tape, it is about how to use it. They often ask questions like, “How has Duct Tape saved
you from a sticky situation?” which generated hundreds of comments. Maybe the company
finds some valuable ideas or insights when analyzing the comments.
Now, one might think that monitoring conversations, thanking and responding to positive
comments, and even responding to negative comments is almost impossible for brands with a
big fan base. It no doubt needs resources. Nevertheless, companies like the aforementioned
E&Y Career (http://www.facebook.com/ernstandyoungcareers) along with many others are
proof that it is indeed possible.
I think most brands haven’t yet figured out how to converse with its fans on social networking
sites. A lot of brands do not yet see the potential social networking sites can yield. They look
at a social networking site as an individual entity whereas they should think of the brand
touchpoint Internet (or social media) as a whole and connect the different outposts. By
28

34. interconnecting the different brand presences on the Internet, the company can direct the
stakeholders to the web platforms which are most suitable for their specific concerns or
wishes. Even if you only want to increase your traffic on a specific social networking site, you
need to link them with each other and provide the link on your main website as well. Many
businesses fail to connect the different brand touchpoints on the Internet because they don’t
know, or forget, that people are usually not actively searching for a brand’s presence on
Facebook. They rather stumble upon a branded page, either through a link from another
website or through friends. Whole Foods Market (http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/) shows
how it can be done by putting hyperlinks prominently yet unobtrusively on its website (see
encircled area in screenshot below).
Figure 13: Screenshot Whole Foods Market Website
If a business interacts with very diverse groups, it is wise to create different communities.
Dell is such an example having private customers and business customers. Even more, the
needs of business customers vary greatly depending on the size of the business. Hence, Dell
created a Facebook page for small businesses. Dell identified an area where it has superior
knowledge (social media) and decided to share this resource with managers from small
businesses. That’s how the Social Media for Small Business Facebook page
(http://www.facebook.com/dellsocialmedia) came into existence.
29

35. Having a dialogue with your stakeholders is crucial in advancing your brand’s reputation.
Dialogue is one form of participation; another form is content generated by external
stakeholders. A very remarkable way of empowering stakeholders was chosen by Coca-Cola.
But before I continue with Coca-Cola, I’d like to talk about Nutella which is in a very similar
position as Coca-Cola used to be.
Brands like Coca-Cola or Nutella certainly must have done many things right because there
are dozens of fan pages on Facebook with millions of fans. Just to give you an impression of
the scope, Nutella’s largest fan page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nutella/24932281961)
is currently ranked 17th in terms of number of fans (3.3 million). The top three Nutella fan
pages together will soon have over 5 million fans. By looking at the top three Nutella pages I
can clearly see that they are not administered or supported by Ferrero, the parent company.
There is a community of millions of Nutella aficionados Ferrero could have free access to, but
Ferrero is not present. Ferrero has a range of popular products which it heavily advertises on
TV (Nielsen Media Research, 2009). However, young people find Ferrero products
increasingly unsexy (W&V, 2009). This is not really surprising as not only Facebook pages
but the whole brand touchpoint Internet is badly neglected.
Figure 14: Screenshot Coca-Cola Facebook Page
30

36. Other companies learn more quickly. In the book Citizen Marketers (McConnell & Huba,
2007), Coca-Cola is alleged to make products that everyday people enjoy talking about, but
the company does not engage in conversation with its fans 10. Coca-Cola now writes on its
Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/coca-cola), “This is your Fan Page. Our goal is to
celebrate your happiness and passion for Coca-Cola. We want to get to know you and hear
your input so that we can continue to be the brand that you know and love” (Coca-Cola,
2009). The Coca-Cola page was created by two Coca-Cola enthusiasts and became within no
time one of the biggest fan pages. The community of over 3.6 million fans is jointly
administered by its two creators and the Coca-Cola company. The joint-venture was the result
of a dilemma. Facebook urged Coca-Cola to take over the page because it feared trademark
risks, and on the other hand, Coca-Cola was afraid to send the wrong message to its fans by
seizing control. If a brand already has a very strong community on a social networking site, it
is probably best to collaborate with the community. Coca-Cola endorses the page, but it does
not interfere nor does it disburse the site administrators (Bradshaw & Gelles, 2009).
Participative branding is about loosening the grip around your brand to empower stakeholders
– exactly what Coca-Cola did. However, I am sure that it took a lot of courage to hand over
the most valuable brand in the world to its stakeholders.
Brands can profit from social networking sites in various ways. In order to have a long-term
gain brands need to behave social. This means creating engaging and relevant content, sharing
status updates, posting photos or videos and making regular contributions to the community.
This is also true for Twitter, only that the technology works a bit differently.
Twitter enables users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets can have a
maximum of 140 characters and are displayed on the author's profile page and to the author's
subscribers who are known as followers. Tweets can be sent and received via the Twitter
website, external web applications or mobile devices using SMS.
Twitter is not the only “micro-blogging” service but the most successful one. It is quite
widespread in the USA, though it has not (yet) reached the same status in Europe. Estimates
of number of users vary because Twitter does not reveal these figures. Growth projections
vary considerably depending on the sources11. I simply assume that Twitter will keep growing
for a while and therefore will become even more relevant for businesses. As a matter of fact,
10
See also the Coca-Cola/Mentos example on p. 77
11
Nielsen reports that unique visitors to twitter.com increased by 1382% from Feb 08 to Feb 09.
31

37. big American companies prefer Twitter over Facebook. In July 2009, 54% of the Fortune 100
companies have a Twitter presence and only 29% a Facebook presence (eMarketer, 2009).
“Consumers own the brands as much as we do, and they want to share their interests and
likes,” says Bonin Bough, director of social and emerging media for PepsiCo. “Twitter is the
only medium where we can have a two-way continuous dialog about the brand” (Milstein,
2009a).
Twitter is a rather new service and businesses have discovered it only recently. Twitter is,
despite being very simplistic, changing fast. I assume there will be many improvements for
business users in the near future. I start with the example of JetBlue Airways because it was
one of the first major brands on Twitter and is therefore one of the most experienced
commercial Twitter users.
Not only does JetBlue Largest Airlines in North America Twitter followers
(http://twitter.com/JetBlue) have a lot of 1 Southwest Airlines 485 904
2 American Airlines 10 190
experience with social media, it has also 3 Delta Air Lines 10 362
worked out a competitive advantage thanks to 4 United Airlines 31 279
5 US Airways 2 297
its large and active community. Looking at
6 Continental Airlines 1 513
the biggest competitors of JetBlue (see Figure 7 Air Canada 2 719
15) gives you a hint of how far ahead JetBlue 8 AirTran Airways 42
9 JetBlue Airways 1 067 745
is with its social media presence. Imagine
10 SkyWest Airlines 360
you have a large community and a company- sources: Wikipedia, Twitter
data: August 18, 2009
internal issue you need to resolve, or you
need guidance for a decision. Continental Figure 15: Twitter Followers (by author)
Airlines will have to initiate a new (research)
project that costs money and time to get the answers it needs. Jet Blue, however, simply
tweets and the community will answer within no time. This approach is free and results in
almost immediate results. I think this example already proves all critics wrong who claim 140
characters (Twitter) cannot have any value for companies. To demonstrate a real life use, I
copied the tweet from Kodak (http://twitter.com/kodakCB) that taps its community looking
for a product name: “You want a Kodak Zi8? Try coming up with a name for our next video
camera! http://bit.ly/3MVhhJ #NameAKodak”.12
12
In order to save precious space, remember you have 140 characters, people use short URLs like
http://bit.ly/3MVhhJ. This short URL directly forwards to the destination URL. Hashtags like #NameAKodak
are tags that help those who seek similar content discover your tweets. Simply prefix a word with the #.
32

38. In order to keep and grow your community you need to give (e.g. content, sweepstakes,
support, etc.) and not only take. Both sides must benefit from the community. What exactly
do your followers want from you? If in doubt, simply ask the people like JetBlue asked its
community. Morgan Johnston, manager of corporate communication, explains that people
responded saying they want to see JetBlue asking questions. The JetBlue followers even said
they want JetBlue to see them as a resource for helping to deliver a better product. Johnston
consequently asks questions and posts information that people would respond to. He also uses
Twitter as customer service. The customer service part is not visible because it mainly
happens via DMs (direct messages) (Milstein, 2009b). DM is the private messaging channel;
the tweets can only be seen by the sender and receiver. You don’t need to stay on Twitter all
the time. If you think something can be resolved better by email, then do so.
There are six people at JetBlue who can post directly to Twitter, and Johnston identified key
people in different departments who can answer questions. When there are announcements
that are likely to generate a lot of questions, JetBlue adds some relevant staff to cope with the
amount of tweets. Even though it does not make sense for most companies to be on Twitter
around the clock, JetBlue plans to be available for its followers 24/7 (Milstein, 2009b).
JetBlue has achieved qualitative improvements thanks to Twitter. Johnston explains that he
can warn passengers in advance of delays because of weather issues. Passengers who have
more knowledge keep calmer and treat the airport staff with more respect which reflects back
on them (Milstein, 2009b). However, other people say that Twitter has put airlines on the
defensive as they try to cope with the many tweets, often sent directly from airports or
airplane seats, complaining about delays and poor service (The Age, 2009).
Twitter humanizes brands. Companies can’t tweet but people can. It is easier to build a
relationship with a brand when this brand has a human voice and is willing to interact with
you. Anamaria Irazabal, brand director for Pepsi, says that Pepsi tries to humanize the brand
with Twitter to make it more accessible to consumers (Milstein, 2009a).
There are two ways for a brand to be present on Twitter. Firstly, an account named after the
company, e.g. “JetBlue”. In this case I would recommend informing in the “Bio” section
(right panel) about who is currently on duty, e.g. “Currently on duty: John (JM) and Laura
(LW)”. The abbreviations in the brackets can be put at the end of tweets, so that followers
know who they are tweeting with. Alternatively, you assign each Twitter user his or her own
account. Comcast controls the account “ComcastCares” (http://twitter.com/comcastcares)
33

39. who is the director of the care team and other team members whose accounts are called
something like “ComcastSteve” or “ComcastMelissa”. In comparison to the JetBlue way,
which has the logo as their profile picture, each Comcaster has his own private profile with
his picture. “ComcastCares” (real name Frank Eliason, see screenshot below) explains in a
BusinessWeek article where they look over his shoulder, “Originally I used the Comcast
symbol instead of my picture, but then I listened to customer feedback and put my picture up.
Now when they think Comcast, they think Frank. Right now I have 5700 followers. They
know about my family web site. It gives a face to Comcast” (Reisner, 2009).
Figure 16: Screenshot of Comcast's @comcastcares Twitter Profile
In terms of humanizing the brand, Comcast decided to go further than JetBlue. I suppose
when your main purpose of Twitter is customer support the Comcast approach is better.
Otherwise, I would rather opt for one Twitter account representing the whole company, a
company location or a company division. It is of course also possible to mix the two models.
Whole Foods Market, a very Twitter-savvy supermarket
(http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/twitter/), has one main account for the headquarter, four
topical accounts, and many cities and even stores have their own accounts, too. Obviously, it
only makes sense to have accounts for different stores when the offerings are basically
different. Whole Food Market targets retail customers by giving them information for the
store nearest to them. This localization is clearly an added value to the Whole Food Market
34

40. customers. I think it is also a very interesting approach to use topical Twitter accounts, e.g.
topics that typically concern a certain stakeholder group.
Twitter is very suitable for customer support because it is more personal than e-mail or call
centres, although it cannot replace them. Support on Twitter means more back-and-forth
discussions, is less formal and gives immediacy to interactions. If you want to use Twitter for
customer support, it is imperative to integrate it carefully into the organisational structure.
Otherwise it may happen like at Comcast when not all company representatives knew about
Twitter, “right hand doesn’t know left hand is tweeting”, which only complicated matters for
customers (Bhanoo, 2009).
Browsing through the accounts with the most followers on Twitter reveals that people just
seem to love to hear from celebrities. Unlike Facebook where dead people lead the ranking
(Michael Jackson), people on Twitter are very much alive and thus able to twitter. Britney
Spears, Oprah Winfrey, John Mayer, Barack Obama and Lance Armstrong do personal
branding. There are also highly successful channels like Woot (http://twitter.com/woot/) that
exclusively concentrate on selling. Dell Outlet (http://twitter.com/DellOutlet/) began tweeting
about promotions but has changed due to audience feedback to increasingly engage customers
(Nelson, 2009). Twitter is also a true blessing for organisations like the World Economic
Forum (http://twitter.com/davos/). It enables everyone to participate at the forum in Davos.
The World Economic Forum plans to host more Twitter interviews and enable more direct
access to forum participants (Lüfkens, 2009).
Twitter has also become the fastest news channel (first reports from Mumbai terrorist attacks,
first picture of aircraft that crashed into the Hudson River, etc.) and a tool for crisis
communication (Beaumont, 2009). Brands need to be where the conversation takes place
(social media) in order to listen and respond quickly using the right channel (Salzman, 2009).
These are all compelling reasons and examples why brands should consider using Twitter.
However, in the context of participative branding, Zappos is a much better example.
Zappos is an American online clothing store, acquired by Amazon in 2009, that is commonly
seen as the company doing the best job of using social media (Abrams Research, 2009). The
corporation is also ranked 23rd in the Fortune list of best companies to work for (Fortune,
2009). Zappos has quite an unusual approach to Twitter. Employees are introduced and
encouraged to use Twitter. There are currently over 400 employees tweeting, including the
CEO (http://twitter.zappos.com/employees). All employees’ tweets and all public mentions of
35

41. Zappos are shown publicly on the web site. The aim of all this is to express a positive
company culture which translates into superior customer service and growth says CEO Tony
Hsieh. Zappos’ approach to Twitter fosters personal connections with customers which
strengthens the brand and its reputation. Zappos can’t tweet, but its employees can. External
stakeholders feel that they are not dealing with a faceless company but with real people. Hsieh
states that Twitter has not only helped to communicate the company culture to the world, it
has also had profound impact on the company culture itself – employees learn about each
other personally (Weinberg, 2009, pp. 134-135). Zappos’ success has already spurred
copycats like Best Buy (http://bbyconnect.appspot.com/).
If you are not like Zappos and do not want as many employees as possible tweeting for the
company, who precisely is then going to tweet for your brand? Don’t hire an intern like Pizza
Hut did (Clifford, 2009). You rather want someone, if possible more than one, who has some
experience in the company and is very passionate about the brand. Margery Myres, senior
vice president of communications at Dunkin’ Donuts, says they talked a lot about what its
voice should be. They decided to choose someone who has a very dry sense of humour and is
comfortable expressing himself online (Coster, 2009). “The voice should reflect the company
culture”, explains Joel Comm, bestselling author and social media expert (Lai, 2009). The
voice influences the brand personality and how stakeholders perceive the brand.
Listen for comments about your company, brands, products and competitors. Scott Monty,
head of social media for Ford, recommends starting by actively listening, “You need to
understand the rules of engagement before you take part” (Naslund, 2008). When you talk use
a casual tone, share interesting stuff by retweeting13 messages, don’t spam, offer help if
needed, thank people for praise and remember that quality is more important than the number
of posts. Stefanie Nelson, who runs the marketing communication for Dell Outlet, says,
“Offering relevant information that people are interested in is key” (Milstein, 2009c). You can
only establish a community when you provide some real value and talk to the people about
their interests, too.
With Twitter you can build trust and relationships. Moreover, you can learn about your
stakeholders. “It's real-time responses with people, and you're getting authenticity in the
feedback”, says Dave Brookes from the small boutique winery Teusner Wines (Milstein,
2009d). As a matter of fact, small businesses can arguably profit even more from Twitter;
13
Retweeting (RT) means to take a twitter message someone else has posted, and rebroadcast that same message
to your followers.
36

42. they often use it as their sole marketing channel. “The small businesses typically get more
than half of their customers through word of mouth, and Twitter is the digital appearance of
that”, explains Greg Sterling who researches the Internet’s influence on businesses (Cain
Miller, 2009). Twitter can lead to new and creative ideas for your brand as the community
serves as a market research pool. Because it is a conversational tool, rather than a broadcast
tool, it is wise to use it extensively for learning and not only for informing.
Often companies are unsure whether they should follow someone who has become a follower
of the company on Twitter. I think this is not a critical decision. Nonetheless, it is always
good to have guidelines to reduce uncertainty. Dell recommends following everyone who
follows you if your focus is customer support. Otherwise, follow only others who post
information your audience would find interesting (Nelson, 2009).
I am sure that most executives would never allow such an open and transparent company
culture as lived at Zappos. They believe that what is communicated in the company must stay
in the company. This, however, does not avert the implementation of social media tools for
internal usage. There are some very powerful internal social media tools14. Currently the most
popular is Yammer (https://www.yammer.com/) which is for example used at AMD,
Thomson Reuters and Deloitte (Yammer, n.d.). These tools work similar to social networking
sites like Twitter and Facebook, but they are enhanced with special features for companies.
Essentially, all the participative branding you can do with your external stakeholders can be
done internally as well. Among the benefits of such internal social media platforms are that
they help to share knowledge, get quickly ideas and feedback companywide or from specific
groups, and connect a distributed workforce. As more employees participate, it can grow into
a corporate social network that can change the way a company communicates and works.
Finally, I should not forget to mention the social networking sites like LinkedIn or Xing.
LinkedIn claims to have more than 45 million members around the world (LinkedIn, n.d.)
while Xing is the leading European business network with over 8 million members (Xing,
n.d.). Both platforms can provide great benefits to its users, however, they do not really
facilitate participative branding. LinkedIn and Xing are great networking tools enabling you
to connect with professionals. You may find potential clients, service providers or employees
with these social networking sites. You can even build or join groups to share similar interests
14
Short review of popular tools like Yammer, CentralDesktop, SocialCast, SocialText and Rypple is available
on http://blog.thoughtpick.com/2009/08/what-are-you-working-on-top-5-enterprise-2-0-platforms-reviewed.html
37

43. and, last but not least, it should also help to build brand awareness (Weinberg, 2009, pp. 163-
169).
3.5.4 Blogging
Blogs can be divided into personal blogs and corporate blogs. Corporate blogs can be used
either internally or externally. Unlike many authors who argue that Twitter is a micro-
blogging service, I actually put it into the category social networking. I think Twitter is
different from blogging as it puts a lot more emphasis on relationships. My assumption is
even confirmed by an eMarketer study illustrating that most Twitter users use it to keep in
touch with friends (eMarketer, 2009).
People talk about brands. 32% of bloggers write opinions on products and brands according to
Universal McCann (2009). Blogs are often the first type of social media embraced by
companies. Yet, of the Fortune 500 companies only 77 (15%) make use of weblogs
(Socialtext, 2009). Reasons for the reluctance to corporate blogs are diverse: Resistance from
legal department, blogs have no ending date, time-consuming, employees are not brand
ambassadors, too informal, not knowing how to measure success, fear of losing control, or
lack of executive support. Even though you can stay away from corporate blogging, you
cannot prevent employees from using personal blogs. Naturally many bloggers will write,
directly or indirectly, about their employer and its brands. In this regard, companies should
think about introducing a blogging policy (or even better, make it part of a social media
policy) to provide guidelines for employees with blogs15. And why not list the personal blogs
on the corporate webpage, as for example HP does along with its Blogging Code of Conduct
(http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html).
Most of the objections to weblogs can be resolved. To begin with, it is important to have a
clear objective. The corporate blog is a brand touchpoint to start a dialogue with one or more
stakeholder groups. Therefore, we need to find out which stakeholders we can reach via blog.
Accordingly, one needs to determine the subject(s) of the blog, e.g. product news and
information, industry news, training, company inside stories, etc. A good blog can humanize a
brand and it can build credibility and trust through engaging with stakeholders.
A remarkably good example of corporate blogging is Southwest Airline’s blog called Nuts
about Southwest (http://www.blogsouthwest.com/blogsw). Tamar Weinberg writes in her
book The new community: marketing on the social web that Southwest’s blog achieves the
15
Social media guidelines are apt to be written collaboratively. The example of IBM’s Social Computing
Guideline using wiki was already brought up in chapter 3.5.2 on page 24.
38

44. balance between appealing to readers emotionally and conveying company goals (2009, p.
97). The airline’s writers make an effort to connect with the readers, often on an emotional
level. There is no need to include the brand in every post. Many of the posts on Southwest are
purely private. The bloggers try to build relationships with the readers. They also know that
visual elements (video, pictures) are helpful to capture attention, as is the writing style. When
writing a blog post it is important to remember that probably most visitors will only skim the
article. Another point that seems to work well on Nuts about Southwest is the timely response
to comments. Furthermore, dare to be spontaneous and blog regularly – if not, people forget
about you. What I miss about Southwest and most other corporate blogs is that corporate
bloggers do not think enough about how to participate readers. Unfortunately, many corporate
blogs tend to publish articles that don’t give readers the possibility or incentive to comment.
One of the aims of blogging should be to convert readers into an active community. Jason
Baer, a well-known social media strategy consultant, teaches in his training seminars five
blogging tips on how to turn a blog audience into a blog community:
Welcome • When new visitors comment on email sitewelcome them to the community.
websites. Send them a personal
your
to
for the first time, click on their names and visit their
• If visitors to the blog demonstrate an interest in a particular type of content, or topic, direct
Facilitate them to other posts or resources in a similar vein.
Answer • Within reason, answer every blog comment personally.
• If you’re taking the time to learn more about your commenters in the Welcome phase, use that
knowledge to create community segments. Create a list of people in the community who are
Connect consultants, PR professionals, customers etc. Connect new commenters to others in the same
segment. This can be done via email or in answers to blog comments.
• Don’t forget that there are millions of blogs. Not to mention TV, radio, print, direct mail, ipod,
movies, family, and countless other activities that require you to stand and move around. Every
Thank second somebody spends on your blog is a second they could EASILY have spent doing
something else. Nowadays, the greatest gift of all is time, in every respect. Make sure you take the
time to appreciate readers that spend theirs with you.
Figure 17: How to Build a Community Around a Blog (Baer, 2009a)
Many blog entries on Southwest’s blog are written by media, public relation or marketing
specialists. The average flight attendant does not write for the weblog. This, however, is
exactly what happens on the Malaysian Hospitality Blog
(http://www.malaysiaairlinesblog.com). All Malaysia Airlines employees, from cabin crew to
airport operations to management, contribute to the blog. It is a nice example of empowering
workers from different line of works and turning them into energetic ambassadors for the
39