Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

In her blog yesterday, pharma marketer Ellen Hoenig-Carlson elaborated on my peanut butter post and said:

“Yet…what I also find interesting is that the US GOVERNMENT seized the moment during this crisis to launch a social media collaboration…”

Food and pharma are highly regulated, especially around health claims. Few companies (Johnson & Johnson is a notable exception) have leveraged social media to interact with consumers.

I find it rather ironic that the very government entities who regulate business communications are providing the majority of peanut recall information in the social media realm.

The CDC has a little site up complete with blog links, video links, e-health cards you can send to friends (!?!), RSS feeds, podcasts and even a link to their mobile web site. And, to fly the flag for safety, you can even put little badges (code provided) on your site.

I love the garbage can - proud to have thrown away products! But hey… if it gets people motivated, so be it!

As Ellen noted:

“WOW! Government actively using and exploring social media, twitter and the like, before private business…

Who would have thunk…

Attention industry and marketers alike…are you ready?”

Perhaps with the government leading the way, they will be able to speak more freely, especially when and where we need them to the most.

In early January the CDC and FDA warned of salmonella in peanut products from the Peanut Corporation of America, a peanut plant located in GA. One of my clients, the Academic Network, jumped into action once early indicators began to surface.

(They’re a Stericycle company, whose job it is to help manage recalled peanut and peanut paste products by getting them out of stores and destroying them.)

The Academic Network’s role is to provide health care professionals to help answer questions about product recalls, and provide the social media “listening” services necessary to help companies anticipate product recall issues.

I set up the listening systems for them, and help monitor them during crises like this, the largest food recall in history.

Anticipating Risks to Mitigate Them

We started monitoring the web (Twitter, Facebook, other social media sites) for conversations about peanuts, and the experience was quite amazing.

Some highlights:

• We were able to predict the spread of the recall from people to pet food - days before any announcement
• We predicted the spread of fear from peanut products to peanut butter in jars weeks before peanut butter jar sales dropped off by 25%
• We reached out to associations (like the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and the American Peanut Council) to help them handle the huge job of getting the right information out to people online. No one listened.
• People talk about peanut butter online a lot (probably second only to bacon) and we watched the hysteria grow exponentially the day after the inauguration, when Tweets and posts like this appeared:

…and it really hasn’t stopped. Victims of the peanut recall are not only the poor unfortunate souls, families and pets who ate the tainted stuff; but the businesses who are losing millions in sales of perfectly good products.

Traditional Response Fell on Deaf Ears - While Hysteria Grew

As the fear of peanuts, peanut paste and peanut butter spread in that first few weeks, no one from the food industry proactively reached out to consumers online. If they did, I didn’t see it.

Oh, sure, there were press releases announcing that products were safe, but unless you were subscribing via RSS to certain key phrases, they were falling on relatively deaf ears - as evidenced by the falling sales of peanut butter products of all kinds.

Apparently the food industry (and those who represent them) are glacially slow in their platforms and processes; and were unable to react to the needs of consumers and deliver information in the right channels of communication.

Meanwhile, Online…  People Reached Out to Help

From the beginning, the confusion was mitigated slightly when news reporters, bloggers, Tweeters and others shared links to the FDA site where, (weeks later) they’ve finally added search capability to help navigate the growing list of tainted products.

In a highly unusual - and I’ll bet expensive - move, today you’ll see ads and coupons in papers across the country from companies like ConAgra and Smuckers attempting to tell consumers their products are safe. That’s one way to try to recoup confidence in products.

And I’m finally seeing Google ads from providers - not just trial lawyers - on peanut butter searches:

Learning Our Lessons - Stopping the Spread of Fear

What should we do next time? (And there will be a next time, just change the food source and product…)

• Association sponsorship of a social web site dedicated to quelling the myths around recalled products, staffed by nutritionists, nurses and doctors - why not? It takes no time to put one up - if you know what you’re doing. And you can answer questions in near-real time. Imagine the resource that would be to consumers.
• Point searchers to it using PPC advertisements - engage search behavior to spread the word
• Mobilize the millions of social media connectors to get the word out - give us good information, and we’re delighted to help out

One of the pictures (and I love pictures) I’m most proud of during this mess is this one, from Google Insights:

See the regional interest in the recall? The Portland-based team supporting the Academic Network’s efforts has been highly engaged - and it shows.

I just hope next time we’ll have some industry partners interested in hearing how they might leverage the knowledge we’ve gained from this terrible scare much earlier in the process.

I’m sure there would have been millions of dollars in savings, much less hysteria, and (perhaps even) lives saved as a result.

Inspired (in part) by a post on ReadWriteWeb on how enterprise RSS is dead (really Marshall?), I thought I’d show how I use RSS every day. I think RSS is a critical business tool - especially for marketers - and it’s a free tool that can save time, increase your awareness and improve your productivity.

What’s RSS?

There’s a great 3-minute video called RSS in Plain English by Lee Lefevre of Common Craft on YouTube: http://smub.it/janet/rss. Watch it first, then pop back to me.

See you in a few.

Welcome back - wasn’t that a great, simple explanation?

So to me, RSS is about two things:

1. Subscribing - like my own custom magazine subscription, subscribing to RSS feeds is basically a way to have news and blog posts that you’re interested in come to you, vs. going out and searching for them.

For example, I like to read my friends’ blogs, and keep up with my clients’ blogs. I set up subscriptions every time someone announces they’re blogging, and every time I get a new client who blogs. I also like to read top technology and marketers’ blogs. So every time I find another interesting one, I subscribe to it.

To subscribe, you generally just right click on the RSS Feed button, which looks like this:

Copy the URL that’s there, and paste it into your RSS reader. Since every reader is different, I’ll show mine here - Attensa - where you click on the Add Feed button, and paste the URL.

Immediately your reader will start ‘listening’ to the web for you. I can read all of my subscriptions all in one place, my RSS feed reader. It looks like this: (Click on the thumbnail to get the full picture!)

2. Search - like an indefatigable watchdog, “persistent searches” alert when subjects I’m interested in (like my clients’ products, brands and names) are talked about online.

I set up searches in my RSS feed reader for every new client that I have. That way, if there’s something being said that I need to be aware of, I’ll know, and be able to either respond to it, or let my client know about it. I also keep a persistent search on my own name. I think it’s important to have early knowledge of anything being said about important topics and brands, and it’s incredibly easy to use RSS to do all the work for me.

To use RSS, you need an RSS reader, and there are tons of them on the market, tools from Yahoo!, Google, Portland’s Attensa and NewsGator… a list of RSS readers is here: http://smub.it/janet/rsslist.

Regardless of what you use, start experimenting with RSS. Start by doing what I do -

• Subscribe to your favorite blogs - read them from one place at one time…
• Set up persistent searches for yourself, your brand, your product names, or your clients’ brands.
• Set up persistent searches for keywords of interest to you - I keep my antenna looking out for “health 2.0″ and others.

I got a response yesterday afternoon from my rants about HighBeam Research. I thought it deserved to be posted here for everyone, as I felt the response was prompt and fair. And this is a little lesson to marketers, Steve found my posts via RSS. Are you listening for mentions of your company and its products?

Here’s Steve’s response, unedited (I left off his direct line phone number, that’s it):

Janet,

I recently read your tweets and blog post about our service.  I am disappointed to read that we have not provided you with the experience that you expected.

I believe that your blog post makes some very good points, and you have pointed out some areas in our communication that need to be tightened up.  We try to be up front with our customers, and your post has pointed out some areas where we can improve.

There are two reasons for the apparent inconsistency:

-          Over the past year we have nearly doubled the content on the site, and in the past 5 years we have gone from about 15 Million total articles to 68 Million articles from over 5,000 sources.  We are offering ever more value to users, and because of this, we have recently made the decision to increase our price. We notify all annual customers about their renewal price, and we offer a very simple cancellation process if they do not wish to continue.  Though we are a small company, we offer an 800 number that is staffed 24/7, as well as on-site cancellation that is easy to find and available at any time.  While our 800 number communication could be better, if you do get billed, the 800 number does appear next to our charge on your credit card statement.

-          We do offer a “stay and save” offer for our customers, as is common in the industry.  As you know, the cost of retaining a customer is much lower than the cost of finding a new customer, so, we offer the lower price here to help retain users.  I think the insight to draw from your experience is that it has the appearance of being inequitable and we can improve that.  We appreciate your comments, and will be working on this area in the immediate future.

We are working to make some improvements to our communications for all of our customers.  I think that our service is still an incredible bargain relative to the offerings of our competitors and we are hopeful that you will reconsider us in the future when you have a research need.

Thank you
Steve Weir
…………………………………………………….
Steven R. Weir
Director of Subscription Marketing
HighBeam Research, Inc.

I asked Steve if he’d mind me doing this, and he gave me permission to do so. He also noted that he’d let me know when they’re able to synch all of their systems to be consistent. End of rant.

People who follow me on Twitter will know much more about me than I’ve ever shared in my business relationships. You can decide whether that’s a good thing, but I have always believed that people do business with people; not with companies, or with brands, or with employees. Ask anyone in sales, business development, marketing or product management: knowing more about the people you’re doing business with is invaluable.

Tuesday’s example: I wanted to talk with someone about some upcoming news. In checking her Twitter feed, I found out she was preparing for a live, online event. I popped over to the live event to catch her wisdom, and found they were having trouble with the audio feed in trying to “join her” to the event. I certainly didn’t want to interrupt her day at that potentially stressful point, did I? Nope.

Wednesday’s example: I needed to get in touch with one of my key influencers on a project. I had sent them an email, and hadn’t heard back within the “normal” time in which he’d usually respond. I checked his Twitter feed, and found they had just landed in SFO for three days in order to attend a conference. I knew immediately that I’d need to find another resource for my project.

I have examples every week like this. Multiply them by the personal delights:

• Getting an offer of fresh arugula from @thisKat’s garden
• Being able to broadcast Stacy Hewett found my wallet in Old Town, and having @TopLingo in LA pass on the goodness
• Finding a presentation by @Turoczy put online that I could enjoy even though I couldn’t make it to the @OEN event (that’s both business and personal, admittedly… but it saved me time)

I hear all the time, “I just don’t understand Twitter…” Perhaps this will convince another person or two to try it out for themselves - both for business and personal use.

Remember though,  you’ve got to give to get. Being active and interesting in Twitter is about more than “I’m eating oatmeal…” It’s a glimpse into your life, yes. But it’s also an explanation of your interests, where you’re going, where you’ve been, and how you’re enchanted/engaged in the moment.