How to build a global passion brand: Insights from the 2013 Social@Ogilvy Brand Advocacy Study

Irfan KamalJohn Bell

Insights from the 2013 Social@Ogilvy Global Brand Advocacy Study

How to Build a Global Passion Brand

3HOW TO BUILD A GLOBAL PASSION BRAND 2013

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 5

What Brands Need to Know About Building a Passion Brand 6

Findings 7

5 Ways to Build Advocacy and Amplify Passion 12

In Depth: What Does Real Advocacy Look Like? 18

Detail: Advocacy Levels by Country & Category 19

Detail: Advocacy Drivers by Country & Category 20

Detail: Advocacy Intensity: A Look at Real Passion 24

What’s Different about Passion Leaders 25

Spotlight: Deep Dive into Drivers 26

Methodology 27

About Social@Ogilvy 30

Thank You to Our Study Partners CIC | Visible Technologies | Radian6

Contributors Luisa Lorente | Victoria Martins | Tim Parsons


People in China are more passionate about skin care brands than the latest action movie.


In today’s digitally driven world, advocacy for a brand is just a like, tweet, pin, reblog or product review away. But what really drives social advocacy has been a relative mystery.

Understanding how advocacy works is critical to driving real business value. It helps brands enable and amplify genuine, organic word of mouth, which translates into financial value. In fact, the data Ogilvy has collected suggests that social shares drive action at a rate as high as 10x that of paid impressions.

The following study analyses almost 7 million brand mentions in 4 countries and reveals surprising insights on how people talk about the brands they love. These insights include two “passion brands” that generated more passionate advocacy than blockbuster movies and the unexpected #1 driver of advocacy: product features.

Using this analysis, we have developed five recommendations to help brands build advocacy and amplify passion.

Brands that do not generate substantial advocacy will need to pay more for reach and consequently have costs substantially higher than those brands that drive high advocacy.

In an environment where costs to reach consumers continue to escalate, this advantage could make the difference between a company with outstanding shareholder returns and one that fails to perform.

Executive Summary


What Brands Need to Know About Building a Passion Brand

To better understand what drives advocacy, and to look at the differences in sharing across categories and countries, Social@Ogilvy undertook a comprehensive first-of-a-kind study.

We looked at almost 7 million social media mentions of 22 brands (and 8 feature films) spanning 4 countries.

We then analyzed the data to answer the following:

� What people talk about when they share their thoughts about brands: from features (rational), benefits (emotional), and cost (deals/savings) to customer service and advertising

� What the degrees of advocacy are, from mere liking (“casual advocacy”) to enthusiastic support (“passionate advocacy”)

� How advocacy differs country by country


Findings

FINDING 1

Where advocacy is concerned, features trump emotion. We looked at advocacy mentions of ads, benefits, features, costs and customer service. In all markets, features (e.g. the characteristics of skin cream) were the most often mentioned.

In comparison, mentions of ads/commercials typically garnered the fewest mentions.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Exceptions included: the Coffee category in Brazil where deals and savings were the biggest driver; and the Skin Care category in China where there were about as many mentions of ads in advocacy posts as references to features.


FINDING 2

Advocacy can occur anywhere; no category is too “boring.” Of the 22 brands we looked at, the five with the highest advocacy percentage included 2 hotels, 2 skin care brands and 1 fashion retailer. One instant coffee brand came in among the top 10. This showed us that it’s a myth that people only advocate in specific categories.


FINDING 3

China boasts the highest level of brand advocacy. Overall advocacy rates can vary by as much as 50% between categories and as much as 5x between countries. China had the highest overall brand advocacy rate, coming in at about 30% of mentions vs. Brazil’s 6% and the UK and US’s levels of 12% and 13% respectively.

China 30%

Brazil 6%

300=60=

Fig. 1


FINDING 4

Few brands are driving true passion. For most brands, the majority of mentions were casual. In the US, only 2 brands out of 22 had over 50% of mentions falling in the most enthusiastic advocacy category (love, excitement, must-do/buy). Interestingly, those 2 brands had more enthusiastic advocacy than blockbuster movies like The Avengers and The Hunger Games.


FINDING 5

Brands have an enormous social advocacy gap. Advocacy mentions represented about 15% of all brand mentions, with the remainder being either neutral or negative mentions. However, when we dove deeper into the US hotel category, for instance, we found less than 1 advocacy mention per 100 stays. 1

With some of the studied hotels reporting guest satisfaction scores of 80% or more, there’s clearly a large social advocacy gap: the vast majority of people satisfied with their experience aren’t advocating online. Not even movies have overcome this advocacy gap, with less than 1 advocacy mention per 100’ movie tickets sold in the US.2,3

1 Stays estimated based on publicly available occupancy and room counts, as reported in financial filings, news media statistics and Smith Travel Research data

2 Tickets sold estimated based on boxofficemojo.com US theatrical sales data for the period studied, and estimated 2012 average ticket price reported by the National Association of Theater Owners

3 There’s some undercounting here because we could only look at publicly visible advocacy mentions


RECOMMENDATION 1

To drive passionate advocacy, know and focus on your fans’ true advocacy (not satisfaction) inspirations. What drives passionate advocacy may not be the same thing that drives consumer satisfaction based on brand research. It’s important to build programs that emphasize real advocacy drivers.

For example, we know that hotel advocacy tends to reference features. Using tools that help identify “clusters” of discussion, we notice that Holiday Inn’s breakfast tends to drive more advocacy than other hotels; in comparison, Kimpton’s bars are more often cited than those of other brands.

This data can be useful as the inspiration point for creative/campaign messaging. More deeply, these insights can be used to inform changes in messaging and even products.

5 ways to build advocacy and Amplify Passion


RECOMMENDATION 2

Identify and use your brand’s differentiated advocacy drivers. Different brands often have distinct advocacy strengths – things people talk about most for that brand. Understanding and emphasizing that strength can help a brand stand out in the conversation.

Two of the highest advocacy brands, even when compared to movies, were Kimpton and Kiehls in the US. What’s interesting, however, is that there are significant differences in what drives the higher levels of passion when compared to category averages: for Kiehls, it’s features while for Kimpton, it’s benefits and customer service.

Look carefully at the brand and competitive set to determine what could be the most effective advocacy driver.


RECOMMENDATION 3

For global relevance, emphasize product features. Product features were the number one driver of advocacy in every country studied, and deserve to be the key focus of global advocacy programs.

While features should be the key messaging, market-level and brand-level data can help further refine the precise execution. For example, a skin care brand might also consider Brazil’s relatively greater mentions of cost or China’s relatively greater mentions of ads when designing the specifics of the program.


RECOMMENDATION 4

Move beyond the blunt metric of “sentiment” to tracking advocacy levels. Brands who really want to strengthen advocacy need to implement a quantitative advocacy tracking index.

A simple positive/neutral/negative tracking system does little to help understand the degree of recommendation around a brand. Leading brands should pursue a more advanced scoring system to look at the ability to increase advocacy over time, identify key drivers by brand, and evaluate differentiators between brands.

Ogilvy created its new Advocacy Index to track category-specific advocacy, including level of passion. This index can be customized to analyze specific brands, competitors and markets and be extended to integrate content metrics to provide both insights and progress measurement over time.


RECOMMENDATION 5

Encourage and enable advocacy everywhere. Think about increasing advocacy impact in 3 ways: volume, passion and reach.

To drive volume, map out customer touchpoints and make it easy for advocacy to happen at any touchpoint.

To increase passion levels, use a process that identifies and encourages passionate customers to share more. As an example, we use the Advocacy Pyramid Framework to help brands customize advocacy programs based on value and brand passion.

To amplify reach, use owned, earned and paid channels, including influencer engagement, employee communications, social content, websites, ads and email/CRM.


5 Ways to Close the Social Advocacy Gap.

When we analyzed the US hotel category, we found less than 1 social advocacy mention per 100 stays.

With some of the studied hotels reporting guest satisfaction scores of 80% or more, there’s clearly a large social advocacy gap: the vast majority of people satisfied with their experience aren’t talking about it online.

OPPORTUNITY

Brand Satisfaction 80%

Brand Advocacy 1%

Recommendations

1 To drive passionate advocacy, know and focus on your fans’ true advocacy (not satisfaction) inspirations.

2 Identify and use your brand’s differentiated advocacy drivers.

3 For global relevance, emphasize product features.

4 Move beyond the blunt metric of “sentiment” to tracking advocacy levels.

5 Encourage and enable advocacy everywhere.


In Depth: What Does Real Advocacy Look Like?

There’s a common perception that advocacy is viral, big and relies heavily upon big ad campaigns like the latest Old Spice campaign or Super Bowl ads. In

our research, we found there’s a high volume of advocacy driven by everyday experiences such as being delighted by a great product feature, an exceptional service experience or a good deal.

In this study, we took an in-depth look at advocacy, analyzing both the level of advocacy and the driver of advocacy. For the level of advocacy, we looked at both the volume and intensity of the advocacy mentions. Intensity is what we refer to as the level of passion.4 To determine the drivers of advocacy, we evaluated advocacy mentions for their content.

4 The ratio of the most passionate advocacy mentions to all advocacy mentions


Coffee 14% 31

Fashion Retailers 12% 33

Hotels 13% 29

Movies 14% 45

Skin care 18% 39

140=120=130=140=180=

310=330=290=450=390=

Passion (On a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the highest) Advocacy

Advocacy Levels by Category

Passion (On a scale of 0-100, with 100 being the highest)

Brazil 6% 22

China 30% 18

United Kingdom 12% 43

United States 13% 49

60=300=120=130=

220=180=430=490=

Advocacy

Advocacy Levels by Country

Detail: Advocacy Levels by Country & Category

We found that, on average, about 15% of all brand mentions were advocacy mentions where the person expressed some positive comments about a brand.5 This differed across categories, ranging from 12% for fashion retailers and coffee, to 18% for skincare. Differences across countries were more pronounced, ranging from 6% for Brazil to 30% for China.

While Brazil had a much lower overall advocacy % than China, its advocates were just as passionate. The home of the most passionate advocates was the US, with the UK a close 2nd.

5 Advocacy mentions include neutral mentions. For example, a simple announcement or mention with no specific personal context (e.g. “bought” or “stayed”) would qualify as neutral. A negative mention would not include advocacy-related keywords.

The results by category in Figure 3 (above) were much more uniform, showing that advocacy is not constrained by category – it can happen in any industry.

The passion levels varied a bit, with movies and skincare a bit higher than hotels and coffee.

“There is nothing like a good pair of worn-in Levi’s…I just want to get rid of all my other skinny jeans and wear Levi’s for the rest of my life.” (USA)

Fig. 2

Fig. 3


At the aggregate level, there were both differences and similarities in advocacy across countries. Figure 4 shows more detail and Figure 5 on page 21 provides a summary of some of the key observations from the data. Some of the country observations include:

� Features were consistently the largest drivers of advocacy mentions across countries

� In China, benefits were the #2 driver

� In Brazil, the UK and the US, cost was the #2 driver

Detail: Advocacy Drivers by Country & Category

China

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

152=163=148=448=88=

Avg. Value

15.2%

16.3%

14.8%

44.8%

8.8%

United Kingdom

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

79=186=241=334=160=

Avg. Value

7.9%

18.6%

24.1%

33.4%

16.0%

United States

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

111=197=242=330=120=

Avg. Value

11.1%

19.7%

24.2%

33.0%

12.0%

Brazil

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

145=183=230=333=109=

Avg. Value

14.5%

18.3%

23.0%

33.3%

10.9%

Advocacy Driver by Country

“I went to Zara today... There are many beautiful clothes! And they are not too expensive.” (Brazil)

“Man, today I confirmed it that this Dove Man Care really does have 48 hours of effectiveness.” (Brazil)

“A cup of Nescafe in the morning, wakes me up and stay sharp all day long [sic] ” (China)

Fig. 4


Features (Rational)

Benefits(Emotional) Cost

Customer Service Ads

Brazil High Med-Low Med Low Low

China High Med-Low Low Low Med-Low

United Kingdom High Med-Low Med Med-Low Low

United States High Med-Low Med Low Low

Total Advocacy Driver Volume by Country*

* High=30%+; High-Med=25-29.9%; Med =20-24.9%; Med-Low=15-19.9%; Low=14.9% or lessFig. 5

� Customer service was more important in the UK while least important in China

� In the Ads category, UK mentions were least linked to ad mentions (while in China they were the highest)

“River Island is an absolutely fantastic store both on the high street and on their website as I have never had any type of item off them that is faulty or had any problem…” (UK)


Advocacy Driver by Category

Coffee

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

123=150=258=358=111=

Avg. Value

12.3%

15.0%

25.8%

35.8%

11.1%

Fashion Retail

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

74=263=169=401=92=

Avg. Value

7.4%

26.3%

16.9%

40.1%

9.2%

Hotels

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

84=161=212=385=158=

Avg. Value

8.4%

16.1%

21.2%

38.5%

15.8%

Movies

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

132=164=169=459=77=

Avg. Value

13.2%

16.4%

16.9%

45.9%

7.7%

Skincare

Ads

Benefits

Cost

Features

Customer Service

192=161=234=306=108=

Avg. Value

19.2%

16.1%

23.4%

30.6%

10.8%

Fig. 6


Features (Rational)

Benefits(Emotional) Cost

Customer Service Ads

Coffee High Med-Low High-Med Low Low

Fashion Retailers High High-Med Med-Low Low Low

Hotels High Med-Low Med Med-Low Low

Movies High Med-Low Med-Low Low Low

Skin care High Med-Low Med Low Med-Low

Total Advocacy Volume Driver by Category*

* High=30%+; High-Med=25-29.9%; Med =20-24.9%; Med-Low=15-19.9%; Low=14.9% or lessFig. 7

“Nescafe Rich Colombian instant coffee is deliciously cheap compared to dropping $20 a week at timmies [sic]. Best decision ever.” (US)

“Shopping at HM last night, so sweeeeet [sic], super love the royal-blue shoes, and the skirt, green hot pants, Bravo! All look so amazing, feeling high all the night.” (US)

� Feature discussion was the highest driver of advocacy ranging from 31% to 46% of mentions.

� Cost advocacy for the coffee category was the highest of any of the categories studied.

� There’s a substantially higher mention of advertising among skincare advocacy mentions. But at 19% of mentions, it’s still quite a bit lower than the 31% attributable to discussions of features.

� Fashion retailers advocacy mentions refer more to the benefits around the shopping experience than the other categories studied.

When we look at the categories, we see a similar pattern in what drives advocacy. Figure 6 shows the detail, and Figure 7 provides a summary, including:


Top 10 studied brands with the highest advocacy

The top 10 brands with the highest passion

Brand

Sheraton

Estee Lauder

Kimpton

Levis

Olay

Dove

L’Oreal

Nescafe

Gap

Starbucks

260=240=230=210=200=180=180=150=150=140=

Advocacy

26%

24%

23%

21%

20%

18%

18%

15%

15%

14%

Passion

68%

63%

50%

49%

45%

44%

39%

37%

37%

34%

Key

Hotels

Skin care

Fashion Retailers

Coffee

50=50=50=50=

Fig. 8 Fig. 9

Brand

Kimpton

Kiehls

Folgers

Banana Republic

Olay

Estee Lauder

L’Oreal

Levis

Dove

Zara

Detail: Advocacy Intensity: A Look at Real Passion

We took a look at high advocacy and the intensity of advocacy – to explore how often brands generated “brand passion,” as compared to simpler forms of advocacy such as check-ins or simple mentions of a brand. We looked at advocacy at different levels, including high, medium, low and total.

We also looked at the ratio of high to total advocacy conversations (we refer to this as

Passion). When we look at this from a “passion brand” lens1, we see a slightly different ranking.

If you compare Figure 8 to Figure 9, you can see how brands with the highest advocacy are not always the ones with the highest passion.

1 Calculated as % of advocacy mentions that fall into the highest level of advocacy, as defined in the Methodology section


Features (Rational) 33.0% 27.3%

Benefits (Emotional) 18.0% 21.2%

Cost 23.8% 23.7%

Customer Service 20.8% 24.3%

Ads 4.5% 3.5%

330=180=238=208=45=

273=212=237=243=35=

Hotels avg (US) Kimpton

Discussion breakout vs. category averages Hotels

Kiehls

Features (Rational) 29.8% 35.0%

Benefits (Emotional) 16.6% 15.0%

Cost 27.7% 24.8%

Customer Service 7.1% 8.4%

Ads 18.8% 16.8%

298=166=277=71=188=

350=150=248=84=168=

Skincare avg (US)

Discussion breakout vs. category averages Skincare

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

What’s Different about Passion Leaders

What about the “passion brands,” i.e. the leaders that generate either high passion or high advocacy (as % of

mentions)? What do they look like relative to other brands? The following table compares discussion breakout vs. category averages for the two highest advocacy passion brands: Kimpton and Kiehls (US only).

Kimpton Hotels over indexes in the hotel category on benefits and customer service. Conversely, they under index on advocacy associated with the more rational based features and advertising.

Conversely, Kiehls over indexes in the skincare category for Features.


Keyword Hilton Holiday Inn Hyatt Marriott Sheraton Kimpton

airport 1.94 1.83 1.67 1.84 1.77 N/A

amenities N/A 1.33 0.83 N/A 1.41 1.64

area 1.39 2.11 1.08 1.92 1.79 1.61

bar 1.24 1.41 0.9 1.42 1.39 1.97

bathroom N/A 1.52 0.82 N/A 1.42 1.74

beach 1.71 1.36 1.45 2.15 2.05 N/A

bed N/A N/A 0.84 N/A N/A 1.66

boutique N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 1.8

breakfast 2.25 3.15 1.72 2.32 2.22 N/A

Keyword prevalence

Fig. 12

With good advocacy analytic tools, we’re able to look competitively at brands to dig into the specific features that are being emphasized. For example, we looked at feature related keyword prevalence among US hotel brands.

The numbers represent the relative presence of keywords within each brand’s advocacy mentions. For example, discussion of the bar and bathroom for Kimpton are higher than for its peers; similarly, breakfast at Holiday Inn generates more advocacy related discussions.

Spotlight: Deep Dive into Drivers


We created advocacy filters and worked with partners CIC, Visible Technologies and Radian6 to assess

the advocacy content of approximately 7 million social media conversations around 22 brands and 8 feature films in four countries (Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and the United States) during the first 6 months of 2012. In some cases, there were differences in brands and feature films by country (the latter, based on theatrical availability during the study period).

We looked at advocacy at different levels, including High, Medium, Low and Total. We also looked at the ratio of High to Total advocacy conversations (we called it Passion). Here are a few examples of the types of keywords used to create searches for each level:

High Amazing; love; fabulous; awesome; perfect; incredible

Medium Good; like; nice; decent; standard; reasonable

Low Bought; purchased; picked up; tried; saw; stayed; went to

We categorized advocacy drivers into the areas of Features (Rational), Benefits (Emotional), Cost (deals / savings), Customer Service, and Ads and Campaigns. Here are a few examples of the types of keywords used to create searches around each area for the hotel category (note that one mention may fall into more than one driver area):

Features (Rational) Room size; amenities; location; cleanliness; food

Benefits (Emotional) Refreshing; relaxing; peaceful; romantic; comfortable

Cost Discounts; special offers; deals; coupons

Customer Service Friendly; helpful; accommodating; efficient; enthusiastic

Ads and Campaigns Ads; commercials; giveaway;

Methodology


For feature films, we used a different categorization system. Features (rational) reflect directors, actors and other rational features such as plot, soundtrack or movie format; benefits (emotional) reflect emotions experienced during the movie; cost reflects prices; customer service reflects the customer service/shopping/attendance experience; ads and campaigns added in keywords related to trailers and previews.

We made some adjustments to keywords to reflect differences across markets, while

attempting to preserve comparability across the broader categories.

This study looked at real world advocacy through the lens of social media mentions (text). It did not look at advocacy that occurs through the visual web (images and video). It also did not look at advocacy expressed via means other than publicly visible social comments.


About CIC

CIC is China’s leading social business intelligence provider, enabling enterprises to fully leverage the power of social media and Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) intelligence across an organization. Recent acquisition by WPP’s Kantar Media, the media research and insight division of Kantar, has strengthened CIC’s position and is a step towards expansion of its social offering across Asia Pacific. CIC will continue to provide social business intelligence from an objective, third-party perspective, to the world’s leading brands and agencies. Other language services are now available through the Kantar network. http:///www.cicdata.com

About Radian6/Salesforce Marketing CloudSalesforce Marketing Cloud is the world’s only unified social marketing suite, organizations creating compelling social presences, amplifying content, tracking campaign ROI and ultimately driving real business results. Marketing Cloud allows businesses to make better decisions in marketing, sales and service and in decisions that will impact the bottom line. This is used to empower brands to turn insights into action, and connections into Customers for Life™. http://www.salesforcemarketingcloud.com/

About Visible Technologies

Visible’s social monitoring, analytics and engagement platform and expertise help businesses analyze social media conversations to better understand consumer preferences, market dynamics, competitive strengths and weaknesses and other information critical to a company’s reputation and brands. Visible’s insights and ability to connect with customers on social channels enables brands to rapidly gauge effectiveness of their existing programs and optimize in real time leading to greater ROI, increased marketing effectiveness, improved customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. www.visibletechnologies.com, @visible

Can a Machine Really Score Sentiment?It’s a classic case of office politics: the email that was sent with good intentions, but misinterpreted by recipients—or interpreted in several different ways. And email has been around for decades. We shouldn’t be surprised, then, that the same kind of complexity is present in social media posts.

Sentiment is a complicated thing to rate: it can be degrees of positive, negative, mixed or neutral. And in a single social media post, an author might intend to express a mixture of sentiments. Even if the sentiment is intended to be purely positive or negative, readers of a post can respond in very different ways. This makes sentiment scoring particularly challenging. Visible has many ways to review, assess, and refine our scoring of social media content. As part of our ongoing review process, we decided to do a thorough, systematic review of one month’s worth of data for one customer. This quick take is a brief overview of what we found.

The QuestionHow did automated sentiment scoring perform when compared to human scoring?

The DataWe looked at one month’s worth of sentiment scoring for one customer. This included 778 social media posts that had been scored by both a person and a machine.

The people doing the scoring are trained professionals, part of dedicated teams that have been labeling social media posts for more than five years. The teams have established processes to ensure high-quality labeling.

The machine scoring uses Visible’s state-of-the-art automated technology, developed by a team of staff scientists with extensive experience in text analytics, natural language processing, machine learning, and information retrieval. And because of Visible’s considerable human labeling practice, our scientists have access to an extensive set of sentiment data.

QUICK TAKE

Figure 1 - Overview of Methodology

Original Post

Scored by a Person Audited

AuditedScored by a Machine

The AuditWe started with 778 social media posts that had been labeled both by machine and by people who are experienced labelers. We recruited social media professionals to serve as auditors. Each auditor was given an even (50/50) mix of posts that had been scored by machine and by the experienced human labelers. Each of the posts was reviewed by two auditors, and the auditors didn’t know which posts were scored by machine and which were scored by people.

Testing Sentiment Accuracy

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New York 1185 Avenue of the AmericasSuite 1750New York, NY 10036

Phone: 888.852.0320Web: visibletechnologies.comTwitter: @Visible_TechFacebook: /Visible.Technologies

About Social@Ogilvy

S ocial@Ogilvy is the largest social media marketing communications network in the world. Named 2011 Global Digital/Social Consultancy of the Year by The Holmes Report, the practice leverages social

media expertise across all Ogilvy & Mather disciplines, offering an extensive list of services within the foundational business solutions -- Listening and Analytics; Social Business Solutions; Social Media Marketing and Communications; Social Shopping; Social CRM; Social Care; and Conversation Impact™