YOU ARE WRONG

“YOU ARE WRONG”

In this first 6 chapters, authors Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li discusses a variety of groundswell tools and their implication for traditional institutions. One of the groundswell tools identified are forums, ratings and reviews which allow customers to publicly comment on their purchases and activities. Due to the rise of digital media, everyone is sharing, tweeting, pinning and posting about their newest purchase, latest trip and best recipe. Online brand reputation is more and more linked to ratings posted rather than the millions of dollars that companies throw at the brand in the form of advertisement.

Below is evidence of such a difference.

       

In these two images, we clearly see the difference between community branding and institutional branding. Nike wants to highlight their strong athletic ties, the community wants to highlight Nike HR abuse and other “sucky” actions.

The stark difference between these two images highlight the need for traditional institutional to understand that they no longer control their own brand, the customers and reviews do. Even those who have never consumed, but take the time to critic and post, can be more influential that all the ads that companies might make.

Trip Advisor and Yelp are two platforms that thrive on user-generated content. They are popular online travel guide where customers review and give ratings to different places to eat, sleep and visit around the world. The interface is simple to use and customers are free to praise or critic the retailer.

So I ask...

Are these better than published review from a expert reviews ? and if so why? 

According to my sister, yes since they are more genuine by presenting the overall “average” experience:

“I am not getting special treatment when I am going to the restaurant, so why should the reviewer? I am an average customer, so I want to see what the ‘average Joe’ has to say”.

Also, she adds that Yelp is a great tool to see aggregated data : "In one second, I can see the reviews from not only those who had a good or a bad experience, but also those who just went for dessert, happy hour or with kids”.

This variety of online user generated content enables the publication of negative and positive ads. My family went to Colorado last summer, and were not thrilled with the suggestions of where to sleep. In response, we posted our criticisms…. and got a response from the management straight away on the website.

Comments from mother and sister;

The reply from the rental company, although somewhat generic, is still symbolic and demonstrates that they understand the need to listen, and respond to negative critics.  

 For Long Peak , while our reviews were more on the critical side, others were quite positive.

 

This variety of opinions is much more realistic that if all you heard was negative or positive Having a community discuss your product, is similar to being in a coffee shop with friends, all discussing the latest movie or book. Online, everyone’s opinion matters. 

Everyone is right and everyone is wrong

People are influenced when people in their entourage are recommending good books or appliances. They do not want to hear from someone who is PAID to tell them how good  something is, but rather want to hear from their friends the “nitty and gritty”truth.

Customer reviews are also important for small businesses that do not benefit from a large presence in the traditional advertising word. My parents just bought a apartment to rent out to tourist. Since there are a variety of other vacation rentals, consumer reviews can be the deciding factor for potential customers.

The apartment is on Yelp. Despite a rating of 5 stars, there is only one posted review… This can make potential customers not trust the review as much had there been multiple.

Despite the fact that we have tenants, there is a difference between those who read and those who write. This is refered to as the "difference between the spectators and the critics". For this reason, we have high average rating from a few number of reviews.

On Trip Advisor, we are doing a little better. We have a rating of 5/5 with 11 reviews. 

A final interesting point about customer’s reviews is that they exist in both print and digital media.However, most of the reviews are still in the print form. Rarely, if at all, do you find customer review in the form of a homemade movie. There are some YouTube videos that show consumers talking about a product, such as the clip below about Acai Cleanse Acai Berry Detox below, however I do not think that this type of review is effective as a written post. 

According to my sister, “the problem with video is that you are totally dependent on what they say”. When I read reviews, “I get to control what I read, or in other words you chose how much information you get...when you have written reviews, you quickly get the message ‘in one sec’.

So even if Youtube videos are more "personal" because you see the critique, written word enables us to to see the information that we need and move on. For this reason, I ask;  

-Is the written word still the most powerful word of all?