I’ve been working on a couple projects lately that have me thinking about CGM and its relationship to overall media. Specifically, I’ve been trying to get my head around a taxonomy of online media. This is no easy task. The challenge here is two-fold: First, online media changes so darn quickly, that any construct you create needs to be flexible enough to change with the times; and second, any construct you build is likely to be disputed by just about everyone else who develops Internet research. And, no I haven’t figured this all out, but the process did lead me down a path.

To start thinking about this problem I thought about CGM and what makes it different from “mainstream” online media. This is a bit complicated on its own since CGM is not one thing; it is made up of blogs, discussion boards, video and, some would argue, chat. It seems to me that the unifying factor here is, shockingly enough, the consumer.

After having this not so brilliant insight, I thought about the blogs I read most days – BoingBoing, DeadSpin, Gothamist, Gizmodo, RazzBall, Freakonomics, Diane Mermigas: On Media and Online Travel Review. In at least six of these cases (BoingBoing, DeadSpin, Gothamist, Gizmodo, Diane Mermigas: On Media, Feakonomics), the writers of the blogs are not consumers, they are professional writers. Writing these blogs either makes up some part of their income, or is part of their broader work, much as this blog is for me.

With this said what happens to this construct of CGM, when the consumer is not in the middle, when it is a professional writer? What is the unifying factor? The frequency of updates? The platform itself? The tone? The format?

I then began to think about one of my favorite sports writers, ESPN’s Bill Simmons. For us Boston sports fans, Bill is a bit of an icon. He started writing a very blog-like column on his own site bostonsportsguy.com long before there was something called blogs – but it definitely had the “blog” tone, and it too was updated frequently. Bill’s column for ESPN.com and ESPN the magazine retains these qualities, particularly that of tone. Few people, however, would call him a “blogger” per se.

This thought process led me to the idea that blogs are subset of CGM is a fallacy. To understand what I mean, see the graphic below:

From a stylistic standpoint, one could make an argument that a blog is in all four quadrants above. One could also argue, however, that the concept of “consumer” implies amateur status and mainstream media sites do not employ amateurs (if they were employed, they would no longer be amateurs). If you use this construct to think about blogs, only a specific percent of blogs are truly CGM, specifically those that fall in the lower right hand corner.

Other than this being an academic exercise that bores the pants off people at cocktail parties, why is this important?

Two of the chief topics of concern in the CGM space are the following questions:

-How do we monetize CGM?

-How do we measure CGM?

These questions are too big, and too broad to answer. Breaking apart the construct of what is CGM, and what is a blog allows us to focus the questions and get closer to an answer. The fact is, we pretty much know how to monetize and how to measure all of the quadrants other than the lower right. So the problem isn’t how do we measure and monetize CGM, the problem is, how do we measure and monetize small, fragmented, amateur websites. This becomes a problem we can begin to think about solving – and frankly becomes much more of a long-tail question than a CGM question.

Ad networks anyone?

This is clearly a work in progress, and one could argue with pretty much all of my assumptions. I would love some help refining the concept. If you have any thoughts please shoot me a note or post in the comments section.

Tags: blog, cgm, online advertising

Early this morning it was reported that the Salmonella outbreak (Salmonella Saintpaul) has now sickened more than 750 consumers. As inspectors investigate farms from Mexico to Texas and southern Florida, consumers have been expressing concern and raising questions in online communities. Much of the buzz came in immediate response to the FDA warning on June 10, 2008. In total, we’ve documented nearly 8,000 messages posted on blogs, boards and groups during the month of June. And this is just buzz. The Associated Press uploaded a video to YouTube.com on the June 5, which has received nearly 20,000 views. Salmonella Saintpaul has also prompted scores of inbound links to the FDA page: http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/tomatoes.html

Buzz volume for Tomato Salmonella FDA Warning

Source: Nielsen BuzzMetrics service. Buzz expressed as raw number of messages.

One of the most vocal bloggers is Salmonellablog.com (voice of the Marler Clark firm), which has dedicated more than 20 posts in recent weeks to the outbreak and calling out the FDA’s snail-like response. On boards, we tend to see more conversation related to how consumers are adjusting in the interim. Weightwatchers.com in particular has spurred a couple of hundred messages related to the outbreak. Many dieters punt questions to the community about which types of products are tainted and some mention substituting tomatoes in recipes.

“Have they found out where this started? Is it safe to eat tomatos now? Also, is it safe to eat the ones in the cans? I know this is silly, but my children asked me that last night and I can’t answer that!!”
Source: Weightwatchers.com; June 12, 2008

“Normally I’d say a tomato /mozzarella salad, but with the salmonella, go for roasted peppers with mozzarella.”
Source: Weightwatchers.com; June 21, 2008

The discussion has already dropped off precipitously. There are few indications from the nature of the current conversation that this scare will have long terms effects on category sales. If we can take any cues from the e.Coli outbreak in 2006, we may see a softening in sales in the weeks to follow. The spinach outbreak had something of a ripple effect because of the back-to-back outbreaks that year. Ultimately fresh bagged salad approached previous year levels, though sales for fresh spinach were sluggish to recover.

Sales for Precut Fresh Salad Mix and Fresh Spinach

Source: Nielsen LabelTrends; usda.gov

Beyond sales, this latest outbreak does nothing but chip away at consumer confidence in foreign-produced food and the our own government’s food inspection systems. Earlier this week, the Harvard School of Public Health released findings of a recent survey that queried consumers on just this topic. 37% of respondents believed U.S. produced food was very safe. What raises eyebrows is that 58% believed it was only “somewhat safe”; 47% deemed food from Mexico unsafe and 56% were concerned about food from China.

Memories of past outbreaks linger. In the same survey, 74% remembered the spinach recall and 82% remembered the recent ground beef recall. It remains to be seen how memorable Salmonella Saintpaul will be, but surely if the FDA doesn’t find the source soon, it will likely further instill consumers sentiment toward globally produced food and call into question US production as well.

Tags: consumer confidence, cpg, health, salmonella

Few things in this brave new world of social media remain unchanged for long, and recently Internet practices in the UK took another significant shift with the introduction of new legislation under the snappy banner of “Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations.” Essentially, the legislation puts in place several significant new protections for consumers and, in effect, imposes new restrictions on marketers including:

• Further clamping down on spam
• Outlawing the use of “unclear advertorials”
• Prohibiting direct advertising/marketing to children to buy products or to persuade their parents to buy products for them (wisely called “pester power”)
• Prohibiting the use of the word “free” if the customer has to pay anything other than the cost of responding or delivery

The legislation has important implications for marketers and advertisers in the social media arena as it also outlaws the following type of practices:

• Falsely advertising on social media sites
• Creating fake blogs (”flogging”)
• Pretending that a blogger is a consumer when the blogger is not (”seeding,” or is being paid to pose as a consumer).

Therefore, practices such as these and others including “astroturfing” and “sock puppets” which also mislead consumers may be illegal. Breaching these regulations could lead to fines of up to £5000 for companies and similar fines and/or up to two years in prison for individual directors, senior managers or persons purporting to act as such who are guilty of “consenting, conniving or negligently” breaching the regs.

However, reputable advertisers should never have been engaging in these type of activities anyway - transparency with your customers, clients and prospective customers is always the recommended practice. These type of activities not only damage the brand if they get found out (think of Sony’s “All I want for Xmas is a PSP” fake blog or the “Wal-Marting Across America” fiasco or Coca-Cola’s “The Zero Movement”) but they also do further damage to the industry. Think of the irreparable damage done to email marketing by the spam industry.

The benefits that the marketing industry can gain from social media will only be realized if everyone involved adopts responsible practices. Whilst the legislation might not stop those determined to abuse the system, we all have a part to play (call it self-policing or whatever you like) in ensuring that advertisers lead the way in being transparent, legal and honest in their communications.

Tags: advertorials, astroturfing, flogs, pester power, regulations, sock puppets, spam, UK

The majority of consumers are feeling the pinch at the pump with gas prices rising above $4 a gallon. Auto manufacturers and dealers are scrambling to offer incentives that address the sharp increase in gas prices while enticing shoppers to purchase a new vehicle.

Suzuki began offering a free summer gas incentive on May 1, 2008. Online discussion for this campaign is garnering minimal buzz online, but those that are talking feel that this campaign is a “gimmick” that could backfire on the auto manufacturer. On May 7, 2008, Chrysler followed suit with a similar gas incentive called “Let’s Refuel America.” Conversation online is rather robust for this program, but unfortunately most consumers view this as a “gimmick,” as well, and a way to off-load a current line-up of vehicles that aren’t fuel efficient.

In consumers’ eyes, the $2.99 gas incentive is a good deal when considering a diesel from Chrysler since the cost of diesel is higher than regular gas. However, others suggest that simply buying a vehicle that is slightly more fuel efficient would more than make up the gas savings versus this offer.

On Tuesday, June 24^th, at 2:00 p.m. EST, we will uncover how consumers are reacting to high gas prices relative to their driving habits and automotive purchase considerations. If you are interested in joining this free online Webinar, please click here to register.

Tags: chrysler, gas prices, incentive

There has been much speculation in the past few weeks about how consumers will react to rising fuel and grocery prices. On June 24th, we’ll host a Webinar to shine a light on pricing sensitivity from the consumer perspective. Leveraging our BuzzMetrics data, we’ll present data from our research of unprompted and unfiltered conversations to reveal how consumers are coping with rising prices.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been analyzing online conversations (buzz) to try to understand how consumers may be altering their behaviors. Are they making fewer shopping trips? Buying more store-branded products? Is coupon use increasing? What’s compelling about this particular recessionary period is the extent to which consumers are leveraging social media to find solutions, ask questions and share ideas.

Online Buzz Growing

As we look at buzz over the past few months, we see online discussions about grocery prices, in particular, rise significantly in the first few weeks of 2008. While the post-holiday season is usually a time when consumers begin tightening their belts, the sentiments expressed during this time period express a sense of foreboding and anticipation.

Trended Buzz Volume for Gas Prices, Grocery Prices and Private Label Goods

Note: Buzz is expressed as an index of total online discussion from November 25, 2007 to May 18, 2008.

Do Rising Prices Lead to Private-Label Growth?

As we learned from the data above, buzz for private labels and store brands remains remarkably unchanged in recent months. It is important to note that in unprompted discussion, consumers infrequently discuss store brands generically, but will identify a brand by retailer, such as the “Aldi Fit & Active hot pocket brand,” for example. This obscures the rise in private growth that is ringing up at the register.

When we look specifically at private label buzz linked to milk, eggs and bread, we see a different story emerge. Buzz increases moderately in recent weeks for all three categories. This is consistent with recently reported sales trends, which reveal over half (52.7%) of sales growth for private label products were driven by milk, fresh eggs, cheese and breads and baked goods for the period ending March 29, 2008.

Private Label Buzz for Key Commodities

This is just a sampling of the data we will present during our Webinar on June 24^th. We will also present data on how rising fuel prices are changing buying and lifestyle decisions for millions of consumers—and how marketers can proactively respond to consumer sensitivities now.

Tags: gas, groceries, online consumers