February 14, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

Now that’s what a grand old University should look like. I’m currently in Munich for a Best Brands College event organized by Professor Anton Meyer of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität at München’s Institut für Marketing. It was a truly engaging event that started yesterday and went on today.

I got a chance to see the kind of work that some of Prof. Meyer’s Ph.D. students are doing here–Silke Bartsch, Ben Brudler, Florian Jodl, Alexandra Illek, Markus Rosier, Nina Specht, and Sina Fichtel–and I’m genuinely impressed.

This is a different model of scholarship, where the students are deeply involved in the business world, working with companies on their project, yet applying cutting edge technique to business problems. It isn’t so much about theory development per se, but theory in the service of particular practical problems. It’s refreshingly differently from the kind of scholarship that often goes on in North American b-schools, which is theoretically interesting and academically useful, but often has its flaws when it comes time to explaining and justifying itself to the business world. Of course, that’s not all-important, but any means, but it does mean something to me. There is all sort of debate on this question of relevance. Me, I’m in the camp of staying relevant to the business world. But that can, in practice, be a fine line to walk.

I saw real multidisciplinarity in the student projects that were presented. Although Prof. Meyer supervises 12 Ph.D. students by himself (whoah…that’s very different from the collaborative North American system, too), they deployed a wide range to techniques and methods, from psych questionnaires (using impressive video stimuli) to causal equation modeling of mass survey data from real managers in real companies, to netnography and critical incident studies of students’ servicescape experiences, to sophisticated collage methods.

This was a real eye opener, and I’m going to share some of the ideas I gathered from some of the projects with you in a future blog posting. The Ph.D. students here are Munich’s LMU university Marketing department are smart, they are talented, they learn rigorous techniques under Herr. Prof. Meyer’s tutelage, and then they go forth into the work world (lots into consulting), about 95% of them or more. That’s different. Doesn’t happen in the North American system very much, where we train Ph.D.s as professors. They’re also a very nice bunch to hang out with and I’ve enjoyed spending time getting to know them a little.

The Best Brands College was an event held for business practitioners, and I delivered the keynote today on “User-Generated Branding.” My core contention was that user-generated branding is happening whether companies want it to or not. It’s not really their decision. Not under their control. And that had some real interesting implications.

One of the presenters had a perspective of “How do I make money in this new space of online community generated advertising and WOM? Maybe there’s no money there. Maybe it’s all hype.”

I think that this perspective misses the point. I actually remember hearing that the Internet was a fad in earlier years, and was going to fade away. My friend Ingeborg Kleppe of NHH in Bergen had the presence of mind to keep some newspaper clippings that asserted that the Internet would be essentially over by the late 1990s. Seems sort of ridiculous in retrospect that people actually believed this. I love remembering those frustrating times. And if anyone says or writes that online communities won’t have major implications for business and marketing in the coming years, I just can’t help but think of those early predictions of the Internet. The same short sighted thinking.”How will anyone make money off of all those free web-pages? Big deal.”

The key proposition in my talk was that this is actually a change in society that is bigger than the short-term planning horizons of companies. Of course, there are companies that will make money by understanding the phenomenon and the trends and working with them rather than against them (can anyone say Google?). I have no doubt of that. But there are no magic bullets, no one-size-fits-all solutions. How could there be? What works for one brand might not work for another, for various reasons. And in fact, there are probably as many threats and challenges that this phenomenon poses to brand managers as there are opportunities for them. But can we really afford to ignore that complex change in reality?

What is required is a more subtle and holistic understanding (sometimes this is a difficult thing for anyone to do, not least of all managers who are constantly pressured in a variety of ways). An actual shift in perspective towards the lived communal experiences that are increasingly desired and common. And that’s not going to be easy. It’s not easy. And it’s not going to get any easier.

But consumer-generated branding happens. Whether you want it to, or not. We may as well get used to that, and start figuring out what it means to our entire view of what we do as marketers (maybe as members of a changing society, too). It’s important. And not just because it is or isn’t going to make us more money or not.

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Communities and Tribes | 3 Comments »

January 25, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

This blog has been getting a lot of interesting comments lately, and those comments always spark further rumination. Ruminate. Ruminate. I may not always respond right away, but you should know that I’m ruminating on them.

Recently, Ron “humbly submitted” (hey, I recognize another Twilight Zone fan when I hear one), “that there are a couple pieces here that the industry, or the profession [of community management teams] has down much better than academia [because] we’re in this stuff up to our necks every day.”

I agree we always have a lot to learn from the people in the trenches. Problem in the trenches is, it’s a lot about problem-solving, sometimes not so much about understanding. Ron said that “community managers” are a special breed. They are engaged in an honest, open dialog with the community”jointly engaged in a long-term relationship,” acting, ideally, as “an authority in good standing.”

Ron says that”the whole gig” of being a community manager “is to maintain a trusting relationship with the community.” Sounds like the idea of being a brand manager. But in other words, the community manager is both part of the community, and a leader of it, an authority figure, at a higher lever in the hierarchy because she controls the resources.

Here’s what Ron had to say:

“The community manager guides it, at times with an iron fist, but only so long as their actions can be accepted and seen by the community as good for the community. It’s very much a case of leading by running slightly faster than the others, only with a handful of bright shiny objects to occasionally use for course correction as well as an ultimate authority to basically boot anyone who gets too far out of line.”

I like the Pavlovian feel of “bright shiny objects,” “iron fists,” and course corrections. They have the carrots and they’re not afraid to use them. “Well done, Jeffrey, here’s a free membership to Wii-Monthly and a ticket to see “Aeon Flux: The 3-D IMAX Edition.” And the stick and the trapdoor. “You, you with the big potty mouth: Out!” The community manager is in charge. They are in control. Boo-yeah.

“There is nothing wrong with your community. Do not attempt to adjust the culture. We are controlling transmission . . . we will control the feedback. We will control the commentary… For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all you see and hear… You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery that’s reaching from the Corporate Mind to… The Online Community.”

Now, as Ron points out, this is control for the greater good. The greater good being The Company’s greater good. Corporate community managers are beneficent rulers, online baron landlords with velvet gloves as well as “iron fists.” But even they have limits to their jurisdiction or credibility. Can’t push the people too far.

In case of a disastrous event, they need to deal honestly and directly, “always with the view that the goal is prolonged positive relationship.”That’s interesting because it says to me that this community might outlast any particular company or any particular brands–especially true in online land, and in the world of entertainment offerings, like games. So it’s not just this particular community, maybe, in part, but it’s relationships with a holistic, pre-existing community that also matter. And so it is “a very active and meaningful role.”

Although I’m having fun here, there’s really nothing I disagree with of Ron’s statement, except the notion that all communities can or should be managed. In fact, when you pose the question like that it sort of seems ridiculous. Should the Chinese-American community be “managed”? Well, not really. Should the Catholic community be managed. That’s interesting. How about the African-American community? Well then why would you want to “manage” the science fiction or RPG or MMOG or young mom or low-carb dieting or Cola-drinking community? The question of course is managed by whom, for what ends? And why the heck wouldn’t you just let the community manage itself, while you interact with it? You: emissary, ambassador of corporate community. Them: receptive-but-at-times-understandably-skeptical consumer community. Not necessarily Leader of the Communal Charge, Chief Online Overlord, Corporately-Appointed-Ruler of This Hear Brand Coh-munit-tee.
The key of course is what Ron is talking about in relation to what I’m talking about. We’re actually comparing mangoes and pomegranates. My big interest is in these grassroots, self–managed, organic, naturally-occurring gatherings, often based more on a group of individual’s common structures of interest than a particular brand or corporation’s interests.

But Ron says it himself: what he is talking about is “online community in a site, a social setting, built around and hosted by the corporation (this is not etribes, this is a community dedicated to an ongoing relationship with a game, product, brand, etc.).” Not etribes. Managed brand communities. It’s a social site, but it is built around and hosted by the corporation. That’s why they control transmission. That’s why community managers can dish out bright shiny objects (”Would you like to win an Underdog Pez for your suggestion this week?”). That’s why they have their hands on the trapdoor level (”Away with you, Foul Potty Mouthed One! An Never Return!”). They control the resources, therefore they are in control.

And so this was a response to my blog about Dean Devlin and the Godzilla board, definitely a corporate run site. But it could also have been in response to my many other blogs about Communi-space and the idea of managed, created, community. And that’s where I like to draw some differences and maybe a few lines in the communal kitty litter.

I’m back to a particular metaphor that I like, which is the managed community metaphor. Kinds of works with online and offline communities equally well. I think that managers have been working with the idea of the manager as Good Cowboy. As I’ve explained it in a number of presentation, the community of consumers is conceptualized pretty much in this way:

• As A Community of Consumers Needing to be Directing
• Community Needing to be Controlled (for their own good)
• Community Needing to be Owned (if we don’t Own them, our Competitors Will!)
• Communities Needing to Fed (if we feed them, they we like and trust us; and need our food)
• Communities Needing to be Weeded (mangy unkempt things!)
• But always Managing Community to keep consumers happy
• Happy, happy consumers

Mooo. Yeee-haw! Come on, Bessie. Move em out!

Yes, we’re “joint participants” in this community, but I’ve got the stick, the horse, the pen and the gun and it’s your job to eat the hay and make the milk. Or make the Wool and lie down and get shorn when we tell you to. Pick your metaphor. Don’t matter much to me.

Okay, that’s extreme. My point is that community is ALSO an emergent phenomenon. The E in eTribes Stands for Emergent. They emerge on their own. They are a phenomenon of Self-Organization. That doesn’t at all mean that they don’t have anything to do with managed communities. Of course they do. They are both manifestations of culture world and online world, two permeable, connection-seeking realms that dissolve boundaries. They merge, combine, and hybridize in all sorts of interesting ways.

An interesting example of this hybridizing just given in a BusinessWeek article about SmugMug.com, the online photographic service. It’s a family run business, but where did they hired their additional 22 workers from who weren’t family? They recruited them from their message forum, Digital Grin (dgrin.com). They found people they knew, people they could trust, fellow members of their interest community, their affinity group, who already had an affinity for their service, brand, and company, and they helped them turn their hobby into a career (just as the owners had done). I saw the same sort of fan-amateur to professional evolution happen all the time in the fan community. Those are very permeable borders, and in the past I’ve called fandom a breeding ground for professionals. Why wouldn’t it be? And the same thing holds true oftentimes for online communities.

But Emergent etribes are different from the managed herd that Ron and the Communi-space people talk about, lead around, and experiment with. There are lots of interesting real-world intersections between these two types of communities that we need to explore, but they seem like two distinct categories. The Exchanges are different. The Benefits are different. The Rules are different. And what might be nice to manage and contain in one situation might be much better left in its feral state in another. I know that the instinct in companies is to want to manage their environment: that’s what they do. But there are also phenomenon that are best left alone. Or, hey how’s this, PARTS or ASPECTS of the phenomenon that are best left alone.

So that raises an interesting question. What’s a good mix of Domesticated to Wild Community for a company to have? Two parts to One? Depends on types of company, brand, consumption, community, I’d say. Depends on the company’s goal. Depends on the history. But I do think we need to think more subtly about Communities and company’s and organization’s relationships with them. These categories are important, and they’re constantly evolving. And it’s our job to think about them, understand them, and figure out what to do.

Posted in Netnography, Technology, Fandom, Entertainment Marketing, Communities and Tribes | 2 Comments »

December 11, 2007 by Robert Kozinets.

Well I’m back from Norway, and back in the airport again, traveling back home to the Land of the Free, which always feels good.

It’s nice to be able to blog from the airport, and I have to say that I am enjoying and using my Boingo membership. Boingo is the company that provides wireless Internet access to airports around the world with a single membership. A great idea for those of us who are on and off of planes a lot. I remember probably 7 or 8 years back, I had a student presentation in my New Products MBA class at Kellogg with a similar idea. Back then, the economics were a bit different because wireless wasn’t a ripe technology.

Anyways, I just brand blogged about Boingo. Ooops, I did it again. I’m getting no compensation of any kind, just saying that I think it’s a good idea and a decent service and I’m using it, and the deal they gave me ($10 a month for the first three months) was fair and got me hooked. Now that brings up an interesting point that came up in the class on Consumer Communities that I taught in Bergen Norway for NHH’s Marketing Department. And that is:

How incredibly vast this topic of Consumer Communities is, and how incredibly much we currently don’t know about it.

So, the Boingo example. Because I blogged on Boingo, am I now a member of some “Boingo Brand Community”? Well, we could use the standard Muniz and O’Guinn 3 pillars of brand community view to ask:

1. Do I have concsiouness of kind as a Boingo member? Well, yes. But as a Boingo “community member”? Hmmm, that’s something different and I’d say no to that. I don’t know who else is in the community, so I don’t feel connected to them. I did, however, blog to my posse (that’s you guys) about Boingo. I WOMmed them. But that’s not the same as feeling like I connect through them (although, literally right now, I do).

2. Do I share rituals and traditions with other Boingo members? Like the log-in, the plug-in, the weary airport carry-on shuffle? Well, yes I guess that I do. But it’s not really Boingo brand community related, though, is it?

3. Do I share moral responsibility with other Boingo members? Hmmm. Ten minutes ago, a woman I’ve never seen before and will almost certainly never see again approached me and asked me if I was connected to the Internet. “Yes,” I said. I didn’t bother to flog Boingo, just said yes. “Could you do me a big favor?” She asked. I expected her to ask me to check her email, or her Facebook account, but instead she asked me to check on her flight, which is sort of sensible. Toronto is getting some weather today, with freezing rain, but things seem to be okay at the airport so far.We checked her flight, she realized she was at the wrong terminal, and away she went. So Boingo allowed me to engage in a moral act or responsibility towards my fellow traveler and in fact fellow human being. But it isn’t that I reached out to her as a fellow Boingo-er (Boinger? Boingee?–c’mon brand-brothers and sisters what should we call ourselves?). In fact, maybe sharing our online access is bad for Boingo’s business. Probably it would be.

So this quick example suffices to show some important areas we still need to explore and fill in with an enhanced understanding of online communities.

1. When does a customer become a community member? What’s the threshold?

2. Related to this, is their an awareness that you are a community member, or not?

3. What are the degrees of community-ness?

4. How does community form temporally? What are the acts and the processes involved?

5. Are those formation processes different for different kinds of communities? I’m thinking that virtual communities of consumption (VCCs), product communities, lifestyle communities, and brand communities are all different social formations that are all relevant and interesting to marketers and marketing/consumer researchers.

6. What happens when companies mess with them?

7. When does brand or product community work against the company? When does sharing something hurt sales? What happens then?

8. When is a ritual really a ritual? Or a moral responsibility? Are those really critical elements? Are there others? Where do we draw the line between the kind of support I would offer a stranger at the airport with that I would give to a member of the same brand-oriented tribe? Does it even matter? Are there overlapping circle of community-ness? The traveler’s community (an imagined community of cosmopolitan travelers). This airport’s local community (including staff, workers, people waiting for family and so on). The Canadian and American and Euro communities of travelers. The TSA workers community. The people-wearing-jeans, and people-wearing-business suits communities. Maybe I hate the other people wearing Armani suits, because they make my brand seem more common. So there’s no community fellow-feeling there, there’s a feeling of resentment and competition.

It seems to me we have some fuzzy understandings here. And lots of good research that can and I hope will be conducted to keep on clarifying and building our understanding of this important and fascinating topic.

Yahoo! Zap! Twitter! Google! Boing! Oh.

Posted in Technology, Communities and Tribes, Branding | No Comments »