m-cause

Does the classic linear AIDA model still apply in the brave new world of social media where fragmented relationships often drive people to complete some type of action?

AIDA is a common marketing acronym that crops up time and time again & is used to guide for marketing message planning. Below is the AIDA process:

A - Attention (Awareness): Create content that can attract the consumer’s attention

I - Interest: Hold consumer interest by speaking the target consumer’s language

D - Desire: Convince consumers that they should desire your product or service

A - Action: Lead customers towards taking action and/or purchasing

GIVE THEM MORE KUDOS

To judge social media marketing efficacy, Ryan*MacMillan, a London based digital marketing consultancy, has proposed a new acronym…KUDOS. I stumbled upon this new acronym in the latest edition of Contagious magazine. KUDOS goes something like this.

K - Knowledge: A brand should first consider dispersing some type of knowledge (e.g. book review, white paper, etc.)

U/D - Useful/Desireable: The knowledge should be useful or desireable to the audience and help them achieve certain aims

O - Open: The knowledge should be open & the audience should be able to make use of it

S - Shareable: The information should be open and shareable between the brand’s audience and their own social networks

So if social media activities demonstrate a lot of KUDOS, the bigger the impact those activities will have on the brand…

Quick Case study: OBAMA & the pastor issue

Dan O’Connor from Ryan MacMillan posits that when Obama had to explain away the crazy antics of his Pastor, he responded with a KUDOS approach. In a sense, he put digital at the center of his communication by first going online to the famous political blog the Huffington Post (instead of going directly to the Sunday talk shows) to get his story out. In the blog post, he produced a clearly written explanation & in so doing set KUDOS in motion as his supporters accepted his open/transparent message and passed it on. Obama effectively used conversation & crowdsourcing to “soften the blow” to his reputation.

Will the KUDOS acronym start creeping into marketing books? Maybe. At least KUDOS acknowledges that consumers don’t want to have messages forced upon them anymore. Instead, brand content that is open and “worthy” will gladly be shared by the masses.