Cluetrain @ 10: Josh Bernoff, VP, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research on The Groundswell Effect on Corporate Marketing

Revolutionaries create change, radicals create upheaval. Am I turning Cluetrain into management philosophy. Tom Paine - best selling book in U.S. colonies, Common Sense - were six people at his funeral. Benjamin Franklin was a compromiser, endorsed revolution only when there wasn't choice. Change by any means necessary (photo of Malcolm X), status quo may resist. Versus Jesse Jackson, worked with those in power for change. Radicals create upheaval that companies have a hard time accepting.

Groundswell - a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.  Companies sees the one-to-one communication, can't measure it, but now there are ways to do this at scale. CBS Jericho TV show - what happens after a nuclear bomb goes off near a town. Jericho message boards were active, show went on hiaitus came back placed against American Idol, same audience, show canceled. Shaun Daily, on BlogTalk radio, would not accept the cancellation. Collaborated with Nuts online, asked people to send nuts to Nina Tassler at CBS, had 20 tons of nuts that were delivered to the show. Saw that the decision to cancel Jericho was a mistake. 

CBS announced the comeback of the show on the CBS fan message boards, said that they will count on the fans to rally their friends - PS, stop sending us nuts :) Jericho Wiki, Jericho Widget - things are very 2.0 now. As he works with companies, they don't really understand that markets are conversations, but understand that the groundswell is there and that they have to manage it. 

Four-step management framework - P-O-S-T. People are going about this backwards, were working with a retail company, why do you want to start an online community, what are you trying to do - long silence. P is for PEOPLE - Assess your customers' social activities, O is for Objecttives, what you can accomplish, S is for Strategy, T is for Technology. Ladder of participation for peopl, ranging from contributors to blogs to people who comment on weblogs. 44 percent adult inactives vs. 26 percent youth, inveroose for active creators. Some activities, though, like travelers, have high participation rates in active social media creation. Key objectives - research (listening), marketing (talking), sales (energizing), support (supporting), development (embracing).
 

 Listening is learning from what your customers are saying, they're already having conversations about your products. Once communities are set up, they work like othes on the Web if built right. Del Monte - Dogs are People Too, fun-looking Web site, created by Communispace. Set up, ask questions. What do dogs eat for breakfast, my dog eats what I do. Would you buy more treats if they had minerals in the ingredients, etc.

Stormhoek wines, got more than 500 suggestions for their wines online, turned their clients into their marketing team. Salesforce.com ideaexchange, got tens of thousands of improvement suggestions, community prioritizes feature enhancements via Digg-like voting community, now marketing turns to community for the answers. Used in other sites now for Dell and other products. 

 The revolution withou/the revolution within - goes into internal sites as well to help people be more client-focused. Fewer mistakes, more certainty in product development, faster develolpment cycles. Companies need a revolutionary to make these kinds of oborormjectives achievable. Can't have a rigid, detailed plan, needs to adapt. Social media tools can accelerate the rate of change.

Q: Community ROI? 

A: Investing in social applications smart in a recession, people nervous about spending, more likely to listen to peers than advertising. Need to have lots of measurements, number of support calls, number of blog posts, lots of ROI examples. Metrics are maturing rapidly, more able to measure what's working and what's not. Proctor & Gamble - 4X as effective as TV advertising.

Q: Newspapers going down, how can this help?

A: Newpaper age goes up a year every year, flubbed online, was an adjunct, a lot like USAT seeing that they can be a hub of conversation on their own news. Requires them seeing that they're not in charge of what's news anymore.

Q: What if the groundswell is wrong or artificial? Jericho ratings not much better, about the same.

A: Very important to put these things in context, creators make the most noise but not representative.  Dell put up its idea community, Ideastorm, pushed for Linux computer, did it quickly, knew that it was a niche.

Q: Usefulness of brand monitoring?

A:  If 20 percent of clients are vocal online, doesn't say what's happening with the 80 percent. Value is in trend monitoring. Useful benchmark - Mini autos did a campaign for their own customers, to encourage word of mouth. Brand monitoring showed that it worked, but need the research.

Q: Is some of major company's acceptance leading to large success?

A: Retailers succeeding in some instances, ratings info can go to suppliers to improve products. Laptop cases were popular, then it started cracking, told manufacturer, they said it was fine, still problems, mfr then saw where the problem was. 

QUICK TAKE: It's interesting to see that metrics are coming on board very quickly for measuring success for this conversational mode of marketing, the corporate structures are still catching up with these realities and how to manage democratic input, but it's moving rapidly.