CGM “encompasses the millions of consumer-generated comments, opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources on a wide range of issues, topics, products and brands” and originates from:
* Blogs
* Message boards and forums
* Public discussions (Usenet newsgroups)
* Discussions and forums on large email portals (Yahoo!, AOL, MSN)
* Online opinion/review sites and services
* Online feedback/complaint sites (www.hellopeter.com)
Intelliseek have published a concise report on Consumer-Generated Media: What it is, why it’s important and how it’s growing.
I like their “speakers” and “seekers” concept.
Mike, this is important stuff. Why is CGM Important?
It is common knowledge that people trust people more than they trust advertising. Word of mouth has always been a powerful force in the market, and now CGM allows word of mouth to “go large”. “Consumers place far more trust in their fellow consumers than they do in traditional marketers and advertisers.” So CGM is critical to survival – to manage it, and to track it (do you know who’s talking about you, and what they’re saying? Do you know how to find out? Do you use Google Alerts, for example?)
“CGM is prolific and increasingly easy and inexpensive to create. Online discussion forms, membership groups, boards and Usenet newsgroups represented the first CGM wave. Blogs represent the latest wave of CGM that’s easy and inexpensive to distribute…and influential in its impact.” (From The Intelliseek report)
CGM data is seriously easy to find using search engines and alerts. Beacuse of this, marketers and advertisers can no longer “control” the message or even the medium. “When a consumer types a company name, brand or product into a search engine, it’s almost certain that some of the first results—good or bad—will be posted and created by other consumers.”
PS, I think the Fedex story (see see here) is a great example. Fedex actually have responded, and do have their side of the story. But they didn’t bother to post their response on the blog post that everyone is referencing. It would have been that easy.
See my comments at http://pop-pr.blogspot.com/2005/08/fedex-speaks.html
How long before companies hijack these forums. If marketers and advertisers can’t ‘control’ the messages or even the medium, what would prevent them from posing as ‘comsumers’ and adding their bits which would obviously favour the company and the brand.
It is already being done in supermarkets where a ‘shopper’ (paid by a company) bumps into another shopper, they start chatting and the ‘shopper’ lets slip about some a brilliant toothpaste that is just fantastic!!!! And 5 minutes later the other shopper leaves with a few tubes in her trolley. Completely unaware that she has just been marketed to by the company which produced said toothpaste.
Or am I just neurotic and paranoid?