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Conversational Capital: How to Create Stuff People Love to Talk About
written by Bertrand Cesvet
Studio : FT Press
by FT Press
Publisher : FT Press
Released : 2008-08-17
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780137145508
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 75 reviews)
List Price : $22.99
Our Price : $10.75
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Product Description |
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"In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell presents an important idea without any 'how to.' Now Bertrand Cesvet provides the 'how to' you need to create 'Tipping Points' for your business and success. This book is a compelling presentation of a powerful idea. This is how the new world will do business. Highly recommended if you care about your future." Stewart Emery, coauthor of international best-seller Success Built to Last "Ultimately, magic is unexplainable. Still, Conversational Capital provides the most insightful analysis of what makes our shows ring in the heart of fans." Guy Laliberte, founder, Cirque du Soleil "Like all great ideas, Conversational Capital is at its core simple: word-of-mouth momentum can be created, harnessed, and used to build consumer passion for a brand better and more cost-effectively than almost any other marketing medium." Rupert Duchesne,CEO of Aeroplan "Marketing is an art that Conversational Capital turns smartly into science. This book provides the complete prescription for getting consumers excited about your ideas." Jim Champy, coauthor, Reenginering the Corporation, and author, Outsmart!Embed into Your Products and Experiences the Ingredients that Drive Advocacy: *Create products and services that consumers find truly significant*Intensify consumption experiences to transform your brands into market leaders*Don't settle for serendipity: manage and control the word-of-mouth around your brand by manipulating eight powerful experience amplifiers For all the books that speak of the value of consumer advocacy, few indicate how to create it to begin with. Armed with a compelling set of examples from their own work in fostering leading brands, the authors reveal the triggers of word-of-mouth and a process to embedding them in your own products, helping you create stuff people love to talk about. From Bertrand Cesvet, chairman of Sid Lee, a leading purveyor of experiential design and communications services that leverages commercial creativity for breakthrough brands including Cirque du Soleil, adidas, and Red Bull. 1% of the proceeds from the royalties earned by the authors will be donated to the One Drop Foundation. The mission of the One DropTM Foundation is to fight poverty around the world by giving everyone access to safe water. |
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Americancivilwar.com Review |
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An Exclusive Conversation on Conversational Capital with Author Bertrand Cesvet What is the most common mistake made by individuals seeking to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing?
All too many individuals seeking to harness the power of word-of-mouth marketing focus on the vehicles through which word-of-mouth is perpetuated, rather than the triggers of word-of-mouth to begin with. The number of times we've heard marketers yearn for a presence on social media or a user-generated content campaign is nauseating. Our response is pretty universal ~ it doesn't matter that you give your consumers a place to talk if they don't have anything good to talk about. Thus, our central message is to focus not on the tools, but on the substance of conversations. The only way to create resonant and sustained word-of-mouth is to focus on the inherent value of the experience itself. I found it interesting that Conversational Capital should not be termed "buzz." Why is this so important?
Buzz is something created around an experience rather than related to the experience itself. Let's say I put a pedometer in a box of Fruit Loops cereal and proceed to call it "healthy" because the pedometer encourages one to exercise. I've done nothing to change the experience or the nutritional value of the cereal itself - only created a stunt to project a temporal aura of "health." Do smaller companies have an advantage in building Conversational Capital?
Being small isn't necessary, but it helps. Why? Because engineering and implementing Conversational Capital requires three things: 1) the ability to be nimble, 2) the capacity to be entrepreneurial (and thus embrace some degree of risk-taking) AND 3) the foresight to take a long-term view of the development of your brand, unconstrained by investors clambering for short-term profit-taking. That being said, many large organizations have successfully preserved these three competences. Look at an organization like Southwest Airlines - the largest domestic air carrier in the US. The firm has managed to develop Conversational Capital principally because its empowered culture is by its very nature, entrepreneurial. So in essence, the ability to act small is what matters more than being small. How wary should marketers be with the double-edged sword of myth?
Myth must be rooted in some fundamental truth about the brand, the brand experience, or the brand's founding. Otherwise myth lives in the realm of lies, rather than as a story that's told and retold. Marketers can temper their wariness by ensuring that the myth(s) around their brand are continuous ~ it is continuity that keeps the cutting edge of that proverbial sword away from you. What industries do you feel are under-utilizing Conversational Capital?
Industries that view their customers with disdain or an attitude of dismissiveness. Look at the North American Air Transport sector. Airlines continue to pare service in a continuous quest for cost-cutting, thereby commoditizing themselves rather than developing the ability to build brands and extract premiums. Look too to the North American Auto Industry. It is in crisis principally because it didn't listen to the talk around its brands. And it didn't build products worthy of conversation. Many further examples exist, from education, to financial services, to telecom, to department stores. But ultimately, the realization must be apparent that not everyone can be a Conversational Capital king. But each industry should have its star(s). |
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Conversational Capital: not exactly a "how to"; some good case studies |
Can one claim "false advertising" for a book? It might apply to the hype for this one. Trading heavily on the success of Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point", the product description claims this tome supplies the "how to" whereas Gladwell's book only provides the description. `Fraid not.
What this book does provide is the identification of factors that do promote effective word-of-mouth for products and companies and give lots of real-life examples that make for wonderful case studies for students of marketing. The authors term these factors "engines of conversational capital" and they are:
1. Rituals
2. Exclusive Product Offering
3. Myths
4. Relevant Sensory Oddity
5. Icons
6. Tribalism
7. Endorsement
8. Continuity
Section One give a brief overview of these `engines', and uses Cirque du Soleil, IKEA and Schwartz's Delicatessen in Montréal as examples of how these factors are illustrated in the marketing success and word-of-mouth/consumer advocacy enjoyed by these companies, tells why conversational capital works ("we have moved from a top-down, mass-market approach to a horizontally organized, participatory trope of social organization in which the individual consumer is empowered as never before."), and tells what it's not ("conversational capital is not buzz").
Section Two looks at each of these `engines' in greater detail and provides even more examples from well-known companies. Little surprise Americancivilwar is listed in the chapter on "exclusive product offering" as an example of a company that can tailor the consumer's experience to be highly individualized ("...Americancivilwar builds a profile of the preferences of each customer...the result is a list of recommendations that...reflects your tastes and interests and is like no other user's"). And I will never again be able to hear the "Brian Eno-designed sound that greets the opening of every Windows operating system..." and not think "gosh, I'm having a RSO (relevant sensory oddity) experience right now". Whether Windows is truly a "more exalted, voluptuous sphere of activity" could truly be open to debate, but marketing people will eat this stuff up.
133 pages into the book we finally get to Section Three "Implementing Conversational Capital", the "how to". Only it doesn't really give a "how to" per se. Rather the book suggests "assemble the right team" with the ultimate goal being to "create conditions within which creativity will thrive", then "carry out a conversational capital audit" to find out if consumers are satisfied, and would be compelled to talk about (even if unsolicited) the product or experience you're trying to sell.
You are then referred to a questionnaire on the authors' web site and from there, it is suggested that you "generate insight". This is where the authors acknowledge what is obvious - these engines, while recognizable in an existing "success story", may be far more challenging to "create" deliberately from scratch: "We have not seen a great book on insight, and this is not going to be it. For all the business cases in the world a professor offered an easy solution to, no one can tell you how that solution was arrived at. The best we can do is tell you what ingredients are necessary to make the magic happen."
So use this book as inspiration for ideas, but understand that generating the "tipping point" for any product or company will depend heavily on successful creativity, not a `formula' contained within the book.
One last comment regarding the text and graphical layout of the book:
Each chapter had a similar structure: first, the main text of the chapter, followed by text boxes with related comments, then grayed text boxes with the chapter summary and finally, boxes (again, grayed) with questions for discussion. The graphic layout contributed to readability, the summaries reinforced the chapter content and the questions allowed readers to more fully engage with the text. The non-grayed textboxes with commentary set my teeth on edge, however. They were attempting to be "funny" and "clever" (I think), but came off as immature and juvenile. Example: "When we wrote this book, we were naked" was the headline on the textbox in chapter four. It goes on to ask "As you read this book, can you picture a group of men in their 40s naked? Do you want to picture this?...Snapping you out of your mode is a form of RSO [relative sensory oddity]. We hope that it makes reading this book more memorable and meaningful." It didn't.
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Helpful content but a bit dry |
First let me say that this book does contain a lot of useful insight into what drives people to purchase, and why one person doesn't necessarily purchase the same way as another. If you're looking to create a good experience for your customer, this is a good read. You'll get lots of useful content here.
The only thing that I would like to see improved is the presentation. It's meant to be an analysis, but it seems to work overtime at stressing the pro-analysis format and it distracts the reader. For example, there are comments sprinkled throughout stating that the content is not meant to sound overly intellectual, the authors aren't esoteric, and the book asks you directly: "Can we still make the claim that we are humble?" I think the presentation could be more conducive to reader focus if these parts were removed and content that may have caused concern to simply be restated so the reader can concentrate on thinking about how s/he would apply the points being made to his/her own business.
Otherwise, I think the content is insightful and useful, and if you think you can shrug off the textbook style presentation, you can certainly find some good stuff in here.
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Big Ideas Require Work! |
This is a damn good marketing book and an important one. However, it is not an easy book to read--not a business page turner if you will. If that is what you are looking for then you will likely be disappointed.
That said, if what you are looking for are insights into how to differentiate your company from the pack, then this book has important ideas, clearly presented, that can help you "get a clue." BTW, given the tough economic times ahead, differentiating from the pack is not a nice to do, it will likely separate the survivors from the "dead pool."
In short, if you are willing to put some "sweat equity" into understanding:
1. Rituals
2. Exclusive Product Offering (EPO)
3. Myths
4. Relevant Sensory Oddity (RSO)
5. Icons
6. Tribalism
7. Endorsement
8. Continuity
then perhaps you will gain some insight into what makes Cirque du Soleil, IKEA, Apple and others unique, and decidedly so.
This is also not a "how to" book. It is more akin to a graduate course in marketing, meant to provide insights that allow you to open doors that you may have felt were closed to a company like yours.
Making this "stuff" work is hard and will never lend itself to a step1, step2, step3 approach. If it were that easy then the ideas contained in this book would be trivial indeed.
Read it. Study it. Iterate. Iterate. Iterate. |
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Old-School Wisdom for New-Age Marketing |
As someone who has a role in advancing the products of a large company, I am always interested in identifying ways to successfully close deals. This book sounded like it might offer some useful ideas so I decided to read it.
The challenge I faced is specific to my field. Since we do not market events (like Cirque du Solei) or comsumer goods (like Ikea), and my role does not typically engage commercial endeavors, I first found the concepts presented a bit difficult to map to my world. (Large-scale computer systems, services, and solutions).
I decided to persevere and try to make the connections and see if there was value to the concepts presented for my purposes.
In short, the basic concepts do have relevance. Some are more relevant than others. It's not too hard to draw parallels in my field with concepts like "ritual", "initiation", "exclusive product offering", "over-delivery", "myths", "icons", "tribalism", "endorsement", and "continuity". One, "relevant sensory oddity" would be more difficult to relate to computer systems and services, but could be stretched to fit.
Embedded in all these categories of experiences and behavior that the authors have grouped, are the notions of innovation, integrity and making a human connection. They spend considerable time revealing the true importance of the more subtle things that color how consumers really experience products and services.
Thinking about my own consumer experiences, I found it very easy to connect with what they're offering. I consider myself something of an iconoclast. While I have fallen victim to today's "instant gratification" mentality, and make ample use of products that might be termed "disposable", overall I tend to be the sort of consumer who spends a great deal of time determining a need, identifying candidate products that fill that need, and then researching the offerings to make a selection based on product longevity, performance and reality-based capability.
While I occasionally fall victim to products that over-promise and under-deliver, for the most part I find the things I buy meet and often exceed my expectations. Once identified, I tend to favor products from the same source or manufacturer, so long as they continue to deliver on the promise first experienced in their other goods. If a company loses their way, I have no problem moving on to a company that can meet my needs.
Consequently I have quite a number of products that were purchased some time ago and still serve me today, though perhaps they've become obsolete in modern consumer terms.
The element of trust is no small thing and it permeates the ideas the authors explain. They promote the notion that in order to be recognized, a company must be consistent, must deliver on promises, indeed the authors encourage "over-delivery". It reminds me of my early days as a kid selling things door-to-door. Mom told me to sell "a dozen" but to deliver "a bakers dozen (13)". Not as a way to make up for an inferior product or delivery error, but to offer a value-add that a competitor might not. Or simply as a way to make a human connection with my customers. She was right, and that concept surfaces here.
Reviewing in my mind experiences with products, I can easily identify those companies that consciously or by happenstance invoke the ideas presented. I was pleased to find IKEA cited as an example of the things the authors want to illustrate. I was only a little surprised to see that my behavior as an IKEA customer tracked very well with what they say will happen in the consumer if certain things are done.
My experience was related to how IKEA provides inexpensive products that have good inherent value, and allow creative people to apply them to a solution in a way that might not be predicted by the sellers. For me this was to design a solution to a media storage problem I had. I didn't have a large budget but did have a large challenge. A couple thousand LP's, hundreds of CD/DVD/VHS, a large screen monitor and comprehensive array of stereo components. All this to be arranged into a highly organized whole in one space. Nothing about the solution I developed was constrained by IKEA's product offerings. Their marketing materials (the catalog) contained the detailed information I needed to design the solution without going to the store. Their product lines had the consistency necessary for me to work with a single wood finish even though I traversed several different "lines" of product. When it was time to make my purchase, everything was in stock, easy to locate and purchase. Even though we did use two large vehicles (a Jeep Cherokee and Jeep Wrangler with heavy-duty roof-rack) to transport the purchase home, it was not difficult.
The products were made less expensive by virtue of the fact that they must be assembled. That's a bonus for me since I like to put stuff together. Beyond that, the components were arranged according to my design and with only incidental construction to build the pieces into my space, was a perfect solution to my challenge.
Once my plan was realized I found other things that authors describe. Over-delivery: The tools were included and often there was extra hardware, some of the components integrated in ways not advertised. The authors go into a great detail about IKEA so I will leave the rest to them. But it is illustrative of the ideas they offer, and my personal experience was consistent with their claims.
This is not a quick fix formula. The ideas are very organic. One should not expect to have a couple quick classes to turn around problems that might benefit from these ideas. Just like a corporate culture does not "happen" overnight, most of these ideas require a conscious commitment, and consistent, almost religious practice and reinforcement. If these things are missing, it might be possible to begin to overcome the deficits, but a company that is seriously deficient in these areas would suffer fundamental change to achieve the goals set here.
And this may be the biggest twist - this book might have its greatest strength in helping identify everything that's right about a company, while evaluating a campaign, but, like some of the home renovation shows, leaves the details of the hard work of achieving these concepts, largely "off-camera". And like the viewers of the home renovations shows, leave the would-be practioners perhaps unprepared for the monumental challenge that some aspects of Conversation Capital represent.
As I consider how I would apply these concepts to my own role, I can certainly draw upon the wealth of information presented here, but have forced myself to realize some things don't readily adapt, and other things are going to be too "out there" for the business and customers we support.
Still, I consider this a "must read" because there are so many nuggets that have relevance and value, one cannot afford to have this insight missing from the "war chest". |
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Good idea, but lacking still |
The book has a good premise with a great title that gets you thinking; however, beyond the cover, the book was a bit of a disappointment.
It seemed as though the authors enjoyed commenting about themselves and the book because they did so throughout the book and it became distracting. The book could have gone much deeper into the topic and created some substantial content and been great.
Reflecting on the title and how one can create conversational capital might be the biggest benefit derived from the book. |
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