#ibmpulse

Sandy Carter, general manager of IBM Ecosystems, asked the crowd if she should have taken a Facebook poll on her outfit before taking the stage at IBM Pulse. Why not? It’s a growing trend, especially among teens. Post a picture of your outfit on your favorite social network and wait for the yay or nay responses. (For the record, Sandy did fine without peer decision making!)

1. Peer Influenced Purchasing

Retailers however, are seeing the value in this trend of peer influenced buying. Retail chain C&A in Brazil uses hangers that display, in real-time, the number of “likes” an item receives on Facebook. So you walk into a store, see a shirt has more than a thousands “likes” and if research is accurate, you suddenly feel more assured you are making a good choice.  

  Social purchase validation can be very powerful and profitable. In 2012, a study by Imbue Marketing determined that a 'like' is worth $8, and a share on Facebook is worth $14.

2. Gamification of Healthcare

“How far have you walked today?”  All week long, whether I was at a dinner reception or meeting colleagues in the lobby bar, everyone was comparing their Fitbit metrics.  It was a virtual “my dad is bigger than your dad” competition taking place among people who were frankly, old enough to be granddads!  

But what better city than Las Vegas to measure just how far you’ve walked in one day?  The average seemed to be about 5.5 miles for folks who were staying in the same hotel as the conference!

But this fitness validation trend isn’t only taking place among technical conference geeks nor is it just focused on Fitbit. Peruse through Facebook and you’ll see folks sharing how many steps they’ve taken while visiting Disney World; how many miles they’ve tracked with RunKeeper or even how many hours of restful sleep they’ve had using any one of the sleep clock apps.

ABI Research estimates that the total number of wearable devices with fitness and wellness applications will grow to 93 million in 2017; it also predicts that revenue from sports and wellness mobile apps will rise to $341 million in 2016.  That could buy a lot of unused gym memberships!

Why the excitement? My friend Martin Keen wrote about this a year ago in this blog, How Gamification Can Make You Do Anything. It’s part the love of competition and part the desire for community. 

Kevin Werbach, Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics explains, community and social experiences are very commonly connected to games.

“We want to play with and against others, and to share that experience with others,” Werbach says. “So having a social dimension is typically a significant and valuable part of gamification.” Co-author of For the Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business, Werbach believes there needs to true authenticity and engagement to sustain this trend, "It’s not enough to say, ‘Do you want to announce to your Facebook friends that you hit this milestone in a game?’ It has to be a real community.”

3. Influencing the Influencers

This trend of nurturing influencers is near and dear to me!

During one session at IBM Pulse, Marketing Nutz CEO Pam Moore talked about the importance of creating customer programs to develop advocates.  She predicts “Brands will dive deeper into understanding the difference between a brand influencer, advocate and evangelist.” But according to Moore,“Unfortunately to date, many have been treating them one and the same. The truth is they are not and should be nurtured far different.”

At IBM I participate in daily discussions around this topic. The one thing that is very clear is that whether someone is an influencer, subject matter expert or evangelist – they are all equally important to telling your story. The opportunity is in figuring out how to work most effectively with each segment.

Susan Emerick, influencer engagement expert and author of "The Most Powerful Brand on Earth" shares a great example by Shel Holtz, principal at Holtz Communication + Technology. 

Holtz says, “It’s important to understand that SMEs-as-brand-journalists is part of the future. Great writers will always have value and companies will always be able to use them. But the idea of hiring writers to write about areas of expertise that are alien to them makes a lot less sense than teaching people who are already experts how to write well.”

This viewpoint just makes sense. Despite the fact that it takes a jab at my journalistic background, SMEs have a credibility that a beat reporter simply does not.

I look forward to exploring this topic in future blogs, because I feel strongly that the future of your brand is in the hands of these story tellers.