March 20, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

What’s this weird picture up here?

I had a great discussion a couple of days ago with Lois Kelly. Lois Kelly is a thinker, blogger, author and consultant who works in the area of online community as well. She’s written a book called “Beyond Buzz” which was just awarded a gold prize in the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards in the Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations category. She also and has her own excellent blog called bloghound.

We were talking about the changed in customer relationships that have happened over the last decade or so, as technology has empowered more and more consumers, allowed them to organize with one another, and given them a voice where the didn’t have one before. I started free-associating and I came up with the metaphor that consumers were like business’s “mute slaves” for decades. Obedient and silent recipients of marketing. And then, gradually, but apparently suddenly from the company’s managers point of view, they were overcoming their muteness, starting to talk back, to resist, to assert their power.

And that’s sort of scary to most marketing and brand managers who really don’t know how to handle these changes, under what Lois aptly called their “command-and-control” mode of interaction.

After the conversation, I was thinking about that classic movie, Planet of the Apes. The feral woman that Charlton Heston encounters, and who later becomes his bunkmate is named “Nova.” As in ready to go nova. Ready to burst. She’s wild-haired and matted, mute: an obvious animal. Heston/Taylor keeps trying to civilize her, teach her to speak, starting with her own name.

In the second movie, Beneath the Planet of the Apes, his linguistic lessons finally pay off and Nova finds her vocal chords. Of course this is a very symbolic act. The whole idea of finding voice is all about organizing, overcoming oppression, becoming resistant as a group of community. The great social theorist Albert O. Hirschman even used the term “voice” to refer to a special kind of social resistance.

Consumers as company’s long-time mute slaves. For a long time companies just put out their products, moved their advertising through the mass market, got them on the shelves and the consumers obediently bought the goods. They behaved. They were at a comfortable distance. When we wanted to hear them, we paid them a few bucks, brought them into a focus group, hid behind the one-way glass and they obediently spoke.

“Talk, Nova, talk.”

Then we could turn off the volume, walk out of the room, and the voice was gone. Nice, neat, clean. But now they were actually teaching each other to speak, they were sharpening their tools and skills, they were making fun of our brands, they were making their own parody ads, they were finding our emails, they were reaching out to us, starting to knock on our doors. It’s not Planet of the Apes. Oh no. Oh no, it’s Night of the Living Dead. Our brains, they’re out to ear our brains.

So much of what is happening with many companies sordid attempts to cope with newly empowered consumers fits into this strange metaphor. Companies are using legal means to try to gag consumers, to put the muffle back on, to shut them up, get them to stop, turn them back into the obedient slaves of the good old days. Remove the threat. Stop the conversation. Make them listen. Make them behave.

So maybe that mute slave metaphor has some deeper roots to it after all. Or maybe I was just watching too much weird stuff about Eliot Spitzer. Who knows?

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes | 5 Comments »

March 6, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

In a blatant act of self-promotion, today I’ve decided to post a book review of my co-edited volume “Consumer Tribes” from the international and interdisciplinary marketing journal Qualitative Marketing Research. To attempt to make up for the distasteful, unseemly, and downright rude self-interest of the post, I’m also posting some “highly collectible” alternate book covers that didn’t make it into the publication stream. I hope you enjoy looking at them.

Oh, and I’ll add an offer to the table. If you are interested in writing a blog review of the Consumer Tribes book, let me know. I have five copies of the book that I can send out as promotional copies. I’d be happy to send free review copies to the first five bloggers who contact me interested in writing a review of the book.

Many thanks to my colleague Professor Paul Henry of the University of Sydney for this wonderful book review. In actuality, this review isn’t so much a review of the book as it is, but an extension and development of a number of ideas. The review is a sort of distillation and application, more attuned to marketing and brand management than most of the book’s chapters. It draws quite heavily on the first chapter of the book, and references a lot of the other chapters sites as examples, but what it is doing is arguing for the relevance of the book and its topic not for academics so much as for practitioners, for marketers themselves. I thus thought it would be of particular interest to those of you who are practicing marketers.

Book Review: Consumer Tribes
Edited by Bernard Cova, Robert Kozinets, and Avi Shankar
Publisher Name: Elsevier
Place of Publication: Oxford
Publication Year: 2007
From: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal
Volume 11 Number 1 2008 pp. 113-115
Copyright (c) Emerald Group Publishing Limited ISSN 1352-2752

The idea of Consumer Tribes has become a hot topic amongst both academics and practitioners. No wonder this is the case, because traditional thinking around market segmentation is looking decidedly tied. This book draws on cutting-edge research from around the world to bring the tribal concept to life across a great variety of social and product setting ranging from Harry Potter fans, Royal heritage seekers, Swedish Goth culture, Italian metrosexuals and pipe smokers, through to Star Trek and Tom Petty fans, Hummer owners, Harley bike riders, surfers and films; to name a few.

Cova and Cova (2002) drew on Maffesoli (1996) to introduce the idea to marketers that modern consumer society can be thought of in tribal terms. The core point is that need for community and social connectedness has become the priority over that of material consumption objects. The reasons for this relates to the familiar things many of us find missing in our everyday lives. For example, fragmentation of society and value placed on individualism combined with technology and time pressure have left many feeling socially isolated and disconnected.

We are after all tribal creatures. Tribal belonging is a core source of meaning. Tribal rituals perpetuate social bonding and the myths and stories about who we are and where we fit, sustain our sense of esteem.

Thus, the word tribe is used to emphasize the yearning for old style values such as sense of local identification that fosters re-enchantment with the world. Tribes are held together by shared emotions and passions amongst networks of people that often cannot be neatly stereotyped in demographics terms. The binding source is shared passions, not demographic labels such age, gender, and social class.

Smart marketers can take advantage of this yearning for communal identity by fostering and supporting communities of product users. However, they do need to understand that tribal members do not simply conform to marketer actions. They often shape product meanings and roles in relatively independent ways that marketers may not necessary anticipate. Consumers become producers. The tribal approach is different to the traditional idea of market segmentation where consumers are targeted in an individuated manner.

Consideration of consumer-consumer linkages takes priority over marketer-consumer linkages. This is because it is the human connections that provide the core source of emotional value; products simply facilitate.

Tribal is also different from traditional segmentation in that people can be in many tribes, and that tribes themselves are dynamic and fluid. The traditional idea in market segmentation is one of marketers acting on the consumer, rather than fitting in with tribal interactions. This is a challenging mind-shift for marketers looking for short-term results.

Take the case of the Paris association formed to administer the mass night tours through the city by roller skating fans that has seen up 25,000 skaters on a given night. These tours started out organically by a few skaters getting together. It was never about products per se. As it grew marketers tried to sponsor the event, yet the community rejected these overtures insisting that any marketer involvement be on the tribe’s terms, which was most importantly about retaining the tribe’s independence from the commercial.

Tribes are not primarily about the buying decisions made by individual consumers. Rather, in-tune marketers seek to understand the potential for collective action such as appropriating and adapting products in ways that are not marketer-driven. For example, the resurgence of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in 2002 owes little to the marketing done by the company. It was adopted by alternative circles as a brand that was so out it was in. People in the know began consuming without being targeted by the company. The beer’s success is routed in rejection of aggressive marketing. Other tribes are more actively marketer-fostered. Salomon in entering the snowboard category went to great lengths to understand the ritual and practices of the tribe. They started at the micro-community level involving a small group of snowboarders in product design and testing. They embedded themselves in the culture, creating events and finding ways to the support the shared passion of tribe. They triumphed in a competitive market over the likes of Nike, Fila, and Rossignal.

The term tribe is closely aligned to another hot marketing term - brand community. These often consist of more formal organizational structures and as the name implies revolve around a specific brand. An example is The Hummer Club Inc. in the USA for owners of the General Motors (GM) vehicle. Although accredited by GM, this is a private non-profit organization. Interestingly, in-group bonds partly derive from vocal negative reactions to the “gas-guzzling monster” from non-owners.

Another example is the “My Nutella” community. This product category is different to sporting goods for youth culture or very expensive vehicles for the wealthy. Nutella is an everyday grocery product that has managed to attract a passionate following. The marketer has capitalized on this following by setting up a web site that fosters natural interaction amongst passionate consumers.

Identification and affiliative motivations stemming from group membership is an important mechanism for tribal creation. However, another feature is that given these tribes are not usually controlled by marketers is that they do not always act right. There are the extreme anti-corporate activities exemplified in the likes of Adbusters producing “sub-vertising.” Then there are the Harry Potter tribes writing their own stories - hundreds of thousands - and distributing them across the web. Actions like this can make the copyright owner uneasy.

You have to think hard before taking your most loyal customers to court. Thus, the most passionate consumers are often also the most fragile and require careful handing. There are many other examples of consumers playing around with products and even holding on to the product even when the marketer discontinues support (e.g. the Apple Newton community). The suggestion is that marketers risk stifling the shared passion through attempts to curb these activities. Hence, the imperative is to understand this flow of creative activity and foster it in productive ways. It means a rebalancing of power relations, often through consumer’s use of new technology, between consumers and producers. This constitutes a new reality for marketers.

It is important to emphasize that tribes are not necessarily centered on a particular brand or product as is typically associated with the notion of brand community. A tribe will often appropriate and adapt a range of products. Pabst beer was appropriated by bicycle couriers, along with their obvious set of bicycle-related needs. In-line skating and snowboarding participation is much more than just purchase of rollerblades or snowboards. There is whole constellation of other products and brands that tribal rituals prescribe.

Another even broader example is that of the Italian Metrosexual tribe. This tribe has appropriated a great range of aesthetic products and activities ranging across skin and hair care, fashion labels, modes behaviour and social participation. Given this, it is critical for marketers to flip their thinking from a consumer-product centricity to a social relations perspective … which just happens to involve a range of supporting products.

This book argues for a “true shift in the underpinnings of marketing,” where marketers partner with tribal networks in ways where consumers “teach marketers,” rather than the traditional approach where marketers “study consumers.” Another suggestion is that marketers may not necessarily have to send out completely formed messages to the marketplace. Given the potential for potent creative activity within a tribe, leaving gaps and disconnects opens the possibility for consumers to assert their own productive urges and fosters interplay amongst the network. This may act as a significant mechanism in which ownership is organically nurtured (rather than communicated and injected) throughout the tribe. It also leaves room for possibility of mystery and fantasy in one’s life.

Tribes personalize, authenticate and enrich members’ lives. This is far more potent than a marketer-directed brand image message.

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes | 2 Comments »

February 17, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Holy Digital Schnitzel and Bavarian Blog Pretzels, Batman, did you know that some of the most advanced netnographic work on the planet is being done in a cool little buzzing office located in an exciting university-embedded area of downtown Munich? Well. I sure didn’t.

At least, not until I met up with Professor Johann Füller and Hans Gebauer at the Associaton for Consumer Research conference in Memphis, Tennessee in October of last year. These two fine gentlemen introduced themselves and proceeded to tell me that Johann and his partners had built a marketing research and consumer insight business that was using netnography. Cool. They were maintaining the cultural quality of online community communications in their analysis. Kool 2.0. They were calling it “netnography.” The real name. Not some new name. Very kewl. And they were actually crediting me in their brochures and communications for inventing the technique. Well, that’s just super-über ultra fine.

There are so many companies out there today, and I won’t name names, and I genuinely hope to hear from them and invite them into the discussion, that don’t (or cant’t?) do what HYVE does even on this most fundamental level:

• 1. Do a faithfully cultural analysis of online data,
• 2. use legitimate procedures, doing due diligence in terms of finding existing research methods already developed, and
• 3. give credit where credit is due.

That has disappointed me, because I know netnography has enormous potential to help bring the voice of customers and their communities into every aspect of marketing and management. Increasingly, I’ve been doing this work myself, giving presentations, teaching students the basics of the technqieus, recruiting Ph.D. student, and trying to spread the word about netnography.So it was a wonderful happy day when I got a chance to meet these kindred spirits at HYVE. Yesterday, I was treated to a full day of presentations from this business that sells innovation based on sophisticated netnographic inquiry, selling insight, design, and hardcore communal intelligence. Johann, Miki, Micheal, Hans, Gregor, Julia, and the rest of the HYVE welcomed me like I was an old friend, and showed me some of the work they do.

They’ve got lots of great details on their snappy web-site, which you can reach by clicking here. As you see on that site, they’ve got an A-list of happy clients, including Adidas, BMW, Miele, Gore, Vodafone, Swarovski, Audi, and many others.

I can’t reveal the exact details of a lot of what they showed me, but I do want to convey the spirit of their enterprise. Most of the studies they showed me were inquiries that took an extensive view of the online communities on the Internet, did comprehensive overviewing of the online communityscape, picked relevant areas to focus upon, and then got to work. The team of professional netnographers downloaded extensively, coded appropriately and propitiously, and did solid grounded theory development with the input of members of the guiding research team. They tested and compared findings and theories. Then they developed conclusions. This was academic-solid research. But….

As I do with my clients, they were doing it in the service of applied practical marketing and brand management questions. A variety of different questions. The kinds of questions I like to handle, including:

• What sorts of opportunities/what white space of gaps exist for new products or services in this particular market category or industry?
• What are the brand discourses held by online communities regarding my brand?
• What are the global or social or consumption-oriented trends facing us in this particular area?
• How is this particular marketing campaign or WOM marketing effort working out? What are the implications and what should we do?

Their analysis looked solid to me, and they also are able, thanks to the talents of their design team, to extend their research conclusions into innovative ideas that helped companies to realize the potential of their findings. This is an innovative approach to innovation that has yielded some outstanding new products.

I’m excited about HYVE and the work they are doing. I should state right up front that I have no financial stake in the business, although I think that the potential for us to collaborate in the future is very exciting. What stokes my professorial fire is that they are using netnographic techniques in ways that are faithful to the method and its legitimate standards. Professor Johann Füller is a brilliant scientist is running an honorable market research shop that remains faithful to academic principles of methodological rigor, research quality, and building on the extant body of scientific knowledge.

It was also a wonderful social occasion as, despite the fact that we had been separated by an ocean and different cultures, we were instantly on the same page, sharing ideas and high-level opinions about online communities, consumer-generated media, and netnography. I felt very much at home. Here’s a picture of me with some of the HYVE gang, who, as you can see, are a very handsome bunch.

Johann even virtually introduced me to one of his mentors, Eric von Hippel, the celebrated MIT Professor who invented Lead User Analysis, whose work has been enormously influential to me in my development of netnography. The group at HYVE even asked me to sign their wall for posterity. It took a little prompting, but I did it. Here’s a picture of the result.

So I thank the great people at HYVE for treating me royally and, maybe even more importantly, for treating the technique of netnography with the class and careful concern it merits. I look forward to continuing our fascinating discussions and to building on the strong base of research community we’ve begun. Prost!

Now, to top it all off, on my plane ride home from Munich (via Zurich), I had the pleasure of sitting next to Shae-Lynn Bourne, a very famous Canadian ice dancer who has competed in 3 Olympics. We had a great chat over the 7 hours of our flight together, and it was a real honor and pleasure to meet her. She put up with all my naive questions about what she did, educating me about what it was like to be at the pinnacle of athletic achievement, and her whole interesting life, and she was just all around incredibly nice, interested, and sweet. After a mad dash through Zurich airport after a late arrival and a very tight connection (I almost missed my plane home), it was a great way to return from a wonderful time in Munich. I hope to be back to visit again soon. And I hope to have the pleasure of seeing Shae-Lynn perform sometime soon, hopefully in Toronto so that I can bring my family.

If you really want my opinion, she was robbed: she should have won Gold in 1998!

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Marketing Research, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes | No Comments »