The conceptual framework I’ve used here which looks at the different types of human groups is from some work published in the Harvard Business Review I read this year, which I am sorry to say I can’t find online. But I thought I should come clean that the concepts are not my own (although I can’t remember the names of all the groups and have improvised)…
Also I am going to define marketing as the practise of precipitating change in the behaviour of groups of people.
Some marketers are beginning to understand the importance of human groups when it comes to marketing and communication. This is particularly so with social media because for the first time ever the relationship between humans have become visible to marketers. It’s now possible to see who is participating on public forums, count the relationships between friends and followers and even search globally for conversations about particular subjects.
These marketers seek to effectively communicate with different groups of people by looking at the types of groups humans belong to, each with different marketing and communication characteristics.
Three distinct types of human groups have emerged so far.
Tribes
A Tribe is a group that is united behind a leader and communication within Tribes is top down. Tribes don’t necessarily have strong bonds between members but can be used by marketers to drive behavioural change because members of Tribes respond to communication from the leader. In marketing this is known as celebrity endorsement.
Ethos
An Ethos is a group that is united by a shared ideology or cultural frame, and communication within these groups is achieved with common understanding and alignment to this shared experience. Of all the groups Ethos have the weakest link between members, and it can be hard for a marketers to drive behavioural change towards a business goal using Ethos groups alone. Nevertheless Ethos groups are used by marketers for things such as attitude branding.
Webs
A Web is built up of direct human relationships on a personal level and communication occurs within Webs at a one to one level. This personal level relationship has been difficult for marketers to manage because of the large numbers of relationships consumer businesses have and until recently most of customer webs contact for a consumer business has been managed by either customer service or sales departments and not the marketing department. This is a pity because Webs are the best group for effective marketing.
In modern marketing, particularly online, planning great strategies using Ethos, Tribes and Webs is like making reinforced concrete, each component brings certain characteristics so the overall result is solid. But because of the traditional limitations to seeing and understanding Webs, marketing strategies have been mainly focused on Ethos and Tribes.
So given the time of year and this conceptual framework let’s have a look at two of the best social media campaigns in New Zealand in 2009.
A quick question to the internet later and our two finalists are: the Airpoints Fairy, from Air New Zealand and the Blackout Campaign from the Creative Freedom Foundation.
Airpoints Fairy
The Airpoints Fairy is a twitter account run by the inspired team at Air New Zealand, the Airpoints Fairy hops madly about the internet granting wishes to Air New Zealand customers.
- The Airpoints Fairy is strong on Tribes, she has created a loyal following of supporters who have engaged with her directly and listen and respond to her communication.
- The Airpoints Fairy is also strong on Ethos, by using the concept of a fairy, Air New Zealand has mined a cultural seam that runs between Walt Disney and teeth.
- The Airpoints Fairy has been challenged with Webs, however, this is largely limited by the low Webs like bandwidth of the platform she uses, twitter. She has built Webs between herself and her followers, but has struggled creating and using Webs horizontally, between other people.
The Blackout Campaign
The Blackout Campaign sought to change the law around copyright in New Zealand and offered a low barrier way of gaining support: blackout online profile icons in support of copyright change.
- The Blackout Campaign was strong on tribes, by making the show of support easy and obvious the grass roots nature of the campaign was picked up quickly by leaders of various online Tribes who in turn converted their followers. Early adoption is prised among early adopters and our leaders led the way.
- The Blackout Campaign was strong on Ethos, black is a very important colour for New Zealanders and the blackout campaign mined a cultural seam that runs from the Haka to yachting.
- The Blackout Campaign was also strong on Webs. The fact that nearly every social media platform allows users to display an icon, usually a photo, on their profile meant that the blackout began on low latency networks such as twitter and then spread through higher latency networks like Facebook and blogs. People saw their friends black out their profile, found out why and the blackout spread on the basis of one on one relationships.
So is there a clear overall winner this year? If there is I am not the one to announce it, but I do look forward to the creative marketing campaigns mixing Ethos, Tribes and Webs in 2010.