"Companies must ask themselves where their corporate cultures end. If their cultures end before the community begins, they will have no market."Those are stern words from The Cluetrain Manifesto, the digital marketing bible, but judging from the latest survey released by Fleischman-Hillard, there is a whole lot of truth in them.
The survey, conducted in association with the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), basically says three things:
1. Word of mouth is the new advertising.
2. The corporate marketing practice of accentuating the positive and burying the negative is confusing and boring the consumers.
3. The market is cleverer than you think.
Out of 2000 veterinary professionals surveyed last December, only 10% relied on information from consumer-oriented websites about pet care. A whopping 65% didn't buy web-based information from veterinary supply and equipment manufacturers.
Instead, they'd rather go to the websites of veterinary associations, veterinary school or research organizations, and veterinary clinic or animal hospital. About 78% expressed confidence in information gained from veterinary schools and research institutions.
What it means is that the veterinary community is a highly networked community. They trust peer recommendations, but they are highly sceptical of companies.
The survey also claims that 'most veterinarians said that online information confused their clients'.
It doesn't take a clever person to figure out that a brochure website littered with lengthy corporate goobledygook and boring jargons is not doing the business any favour. Consumers don't get them, vets don't like them.
In October last year, we covered the Veterinary Marketing Association (VMA)’s seminar on e-communication. One of the speakers, Mr Felix Velarde of Underwired (pictured), told the audience: "If you can prove your point in a few web pages, why do you need pages and pages of text to promote your products?”During a coffee break, I asked him what he thought of animal health websites in general. His answer wasn't flattering, but it could be interpreted as 'could do better'.
In an effort to control the message to consumers, some companies sacrifice clarity and creativity. Bad briefs breed boring results. And the results - corporate speak and dull design - are off-putting. Sure, companies spend lots of money trying to get the right message across about their products to the right people, but they can't control how they are perceived anymore in the new media landscape.
So what to do? According to the Cluetrain, companies should start talking to their market. "The community of discourse is the market," it says. "Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will die." Don’t just look over the trees to find an equally big competition, it says. The internet revolution is “bottom-up”. Look down to your feet. That is where the community is.
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