Jaap Favier – Forrester Research

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=906048186665972583

Jaap Favier, VP Research, Forrester Social Computing

Interact Europe, Brussels 2007

01:03 – 01:10 First, Computing is for Forrester the direction where the Internet and technology is taking the world.

01:10 – 01:15 Consumers are stopping to listen to companies.

01:15 – 01:21 They don’t trust adds anymore, they don’t trust what is being given to them through media.

01:21 – 01:28 What they do trust are other consumers. And that’s who they are communicating with.

01:28 – 01:36 The result of that is that brand loyalty is going down, for brand companies, for marketers, for advertisers.

01:36 – 01:48 It still remains relevant to the communities that are forming by these active consumers. They have to engage with four different levels of active consumers in these communities.

01:48 – 02:30 On the highest level with creators who shoot YouTube videos or write blogs; on the second level with critics, who turn the creation of a single man into a wisdom of crowds; on the third level with collectors, who collect the information on behalf of the community and are very in touch with what the community needs and pass on the relevant information, while they filter out the non-relevant information; eventually to the largest proportion of that community, the couch potatoes, the passive consumers who still listen to an extent to push marketing, but are much more in tune and trusting of the information passed on by the collectors.

02:30 – 02:54 Companies that do that well are blogging, have started a dialog with consumers, or at the highest level, they offer platforms to creators to make new products, to define new services. And companies like Nike, Adidas, Lego, quite a few companies are actually making these products for them.

02:54 – 03:04 For marketers to be successful in that new world, which is rapidly growing in the next five years, they have to forget three rules:

03:04 – 03:14 Rule number one: content is thing. Content is nothing. Content is a way to get in touch with consumers. Contact is thing.

03:14 – 03:31 Second rule that is wrong is: the media is the message, the medium is the message. You are not very in touch with these consumers by simply having your CEO that blogs, or by putting your product in Second Life. That’s passive.

03:31 – 04:00 The real message is the response, the response is the message. What do you get from community, from the critics, from the creators, that is what is important. Why is that important? Because ultimately they call the shots, they are in charge of your success, they pay you, they define your product, they tell their friends and their family and everybody who wants to listen to their blogs and their Youtube videos what is important.

04:00 – 04:10 And that’s the new world, the world of social computing, that I’m very passionate about, my whole team, the whole company is passionate about, that’s the future of the Internet.