citizen marketers

CITIZEN MARKETERSWhen People Are the Message

Alt-MBA Week 7

www.alt-mba.com

Presentation by Cassie Pruettcassie@reachgroupconsulting.com

“The message is simple:Control is

out of control.”

Meet the New Influencers - Filters

• Definition: Human wire services; filters and aggregators of information.

• Example: Hacking Netflix.com (created and run by a non-Netflix employee).

Meet the New Influencers - Filters- Fanatics

• Definition: True believers and evangelists; volunteer coaches / activists whoanalyze the progress of a brand, product, organization, or person and prescribeaction.•Example: McChronicles, written by a McDonald’s fanatic who wants the brand tobe “awesome.”

Meet the New Influencers - Filters- Fanatics- Facilitators

• Definition: Community creators.

• Example: Mini Cooper car owner and community organizer (www.mini2.com).

Meet the New Influencers - Filters- Fanatics- Facilitators- Firecrackers

• Definition: The one-hit wonders of

citizen marketers.

• Example: “Bowiechick” and her

tutorial video that drove camera sales.

People Are the Message Three Commonalities Among Citizen Marketers’ Work:

1. Personal Expression

2. Amateur Status

3. Freely Given

The 1 Percenters The 1% Rule:

About 1 percent of the total number of visitors to a democratized

forum will create content for it or contribute content to it. About

10 percent will interact with the content.

Therefore:

“Building a solid core of early adopting volunteers or

contributors is critical to creating a successfulcommunity-driven Web site or to launching a new product or

designing a grassroots campaign.”

The 1 Percenters Built the World’s Largest Encyclopedia:

The Democratization of Everything Technology Flattens the World:

- Over 1 billion people online; proliferation ofbroadband

- Virtual megaphones and platforms - from

digital cameras and cellphones to blogs

and social networks.

- Millions of people are content creators,

publishers, and broadcasters.

Creating a Democratized Community

The 6 Lessons of YouTube:1. Design and build with community as a founding

principle.

2. Make sharing content extremely easy.

3. Show statistics and flaunt data.

4. Allow for personalization of profile pages.

5. Create a simple, well-designed interface.

6. Provide a search functionality.

Hobbies and Altruism

Market-Helping Behavior:

- The behavior of everyday people who help one another with decisions on

what to buy and who to buy from.

- Four reasons for having market-helping behaviors:

1. Altruism

2. Personal relevance

3. Common good

4. Status

The Power of One

Memes and How They Spread:

- A meme is a catchphrase or concept that spreads quickly from person to

person via the Internet, much like an inside joke.

- Four stages of successful meme replication:

1. Assimilation - The meme is noticed, understood, accepted by the “host”

2. Retention - It’s embedded in memory

3. Expression - The idea takes some form

4. Transmission - It’s passed on to more people

The Power of One and Comcast

1. A citizen marketer creates remarkable content 2. Bloggers spread the surprising story

3. Traditional media outlets pick up the story4. The story lives forever in search

How to Democratize Your Business

The 3 C’s of Working with Citizen Marketers:

1.Contests

2.Co-Creation

3.Communities

The “3 C’s” in Action: Threadless

The Threadless Business Model:

- About 150 designs submitted daily bycommunity (2007)

- Community votes on favorites; 4-6 designspicked each week

- 1,200 shirts of each design printed- All sell-out in 6 months; 90% sell out

in 2 months

“Allow your content to be createdby the community. Put yourproject in their hands. Let yourcommunity grow itself, then rewardthem for making your projectpossible.”

Citizen Marketers and the Alt-MBA

Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators and Firecrackers - The 1 Percenters*

*This snapshot does notrepresent all of the amazingAlt-MBA contributors.

Share Your CM Stories

Alt-MBA Member Case Studies:

- How have you been a Citizen Marketer? Which “F” are you?

- What communities do you participate in?

- What brand(s) / organization(s) are equipping their

communities? Which ones are operating in the old way?

The BIG Question

How Do We (Alt-MBA) Get Betterat the 3 C’s?

What Are Your Ideas?

- What would make this program more relevant / compelling to you?

- How can we make community the Alt-MBA’s core competency?

- How do you want to contribute?

- How can we equip each other to be (better) citizen marketers?

- Insert your question here (in the discussion forum).

“The future is already here. It’s

just not very evenly distributed

yet.” - Wiliam Gibson

Now, go tell your friends…

Welcome to the Future of Education