Mediaczar

You know the maverick cop? The one who breaks all the rules, has to surrender his gun and badge somewhere in Act II, but nevertheless somehow gets the job done? His approach to solving problems is crude but effective (usually it involves shaking people down, which isn’t something we get to do a lot in the communications business.)

I don’t know that maverick cops are into influence mapping. I don’t know how many people really are, but it’s a big part of my work life. These days it seems I’m always being asked, “Mat, who is the most influential x?”, or, “Mat, who influences the online discussion on y?” or, “Mat, what influences people’s purchase decision-making when it comes to z?” These are all interesting questions, and bear a lot of thought and research and planning.

However, time isn’t something we all have a lot of these days, so right now I’m going to share a very quick-and-dirty method I’ve been working on; the research equivalent of holding a pimp upside down over a balcony.

Before we start, what’s wrong with this approach?

It builds on what we know, or what we think we know. Using it successfully will require all those assets that the maverick cop has in spades: a sharp brain honed by experience, a deep knowledge of the streets (well, your market), and an underworld intelligence network of pimps and hookers (in our case these are more likely to be clients and colleagues, of course.)

Axel Foley aside, maverick cops don’t always do so well out of their jurisdiction. This approach isn’t going to expose surprises or new information so well. It’s all about organizing what you know.

If you are a rookie cop, you’d better stick by the book. That’s all I’m saying. Or someone will bust you down to traffic duty before you know what’s hit you.

And what’s so good about it?

Well, it’s fast, for one thing. And it’s a process - which is another. Now if you add into that the fact that - when you have more accurate data, you can go back and plug it into the model without breaking it, but only making it better - then you’re onto a winner.

Is there anything I need to know before I start?

Well, yes. We’re using a fairly common model of the decision-making unit which looks like this:

This is a good model to use because it covers a broad spectrum: from the stages in the consumer decision-making process all the way to the roles and groups in the more formal enterprise buying centre.

As maverick cops we’re naturally less fussy about our definitions. Let’s say that all six roles in this group are influencers in one way or another.

Opportunities to influence

The maverick cop angle is that it’s not so much the influencers, it’s “opportunities to influence” that we care about. In practical terms, it doesn’t matter how influential something or someone is if we have no direct means of persuading them to do what we want, or if the cost of doing so wildly outweighs the benefit we receive.

We all know that survey respondents cite WOM recommendations from a trusted friend as the most powerful influencer on their decision-making, and this chimes, in most cases, with our personal experience. But the individual reach of these people is miniscule.

“But Mat,” I hear you complain, “surely the viral effect of the internet means that word-of-mouth spreads rapidly from person to person and the total reach of that one recommender now numbers in the millions?”

To which I can only reply: not really, but it’s a bit too complicated to go into here. However, I may have a bridge to sell you.

So here’s how we built our approach:

1. First of all, we think of the people being influenced at any stage as one person. You might want to call them “the victim” or “the perp”, but those of us from a digital planning background will tend to call them “the persona”. We work with four very broad personas here - you guessed it, “the initiator”, “the decision-maker”, “the purchaser” and “the end user”. Of course, all these people might be the same person when it comes to buying - say - a ready meal, but functionally they’re very different. But if you want to keep your street cop instincts honed, try think of them as one person at a time while you’re going through this. Give them names, if you have to - it can help.

2. We generate a list of “potential influencers” - this is mostly guesswork and assumption at this stage. The more people we talk to about this the better. The more web research we do, the better. But if you’re a true maverick, you’ll probably go it alone.

   For each persona (or “victim”, or “perp”) think about what they’re seeing around them. Who they talk to for more information. Who might encourage them to buy something, and who might tell them that they shouldn’t waste their money.

   We’re looking for broad categories of influencer: things like “retailer”, “consumer press”, or “advertising”. I think they need to be concrete, though; things like “previous experience of the brand” isn’t appropriate (and it’s implicit in the “end user” or the “friends & colleagues” influencers.)

3. We grade each one “3/2/1″ (for “high”, “medium”, or “low”) for the following variables:

   Reach

   How many people does the influencer reach? A broadcast channel may reach hundreds of thousands, a website thousands, and an individual may reach only one or two.

   Authority

   How trusted is the source? Bear in mind trust isn’t always rational - I’d sometimes trust the recommendation of a friend who knows me well over the recommendation of an anonymous expert.

   Ease-of-use

   How likely is it that we can talk to this influencer? That we can persuade them to work with us?

   Score for each of these. These aren’t absolute scores, but you should find yourself comparing things and asking yourself, “is this a high or a medium?” I think you’ll be surprised at what you know. The whole process shouldn’t take you half an hour.

   Once you’ve finished, add up the scores. At the end of this process, you should have something like this.

   influencer	reach	trust	ease-of-use	total
   consumer press	2	2	3	7
   search engines	2	3	2	7
   advertising	3	1	3	7
   retailer	2	2	2	6
   forums & boards	1	3	1	5
   friends & colleagues	1	3	1	5

   Don’t worry if you don’t agree with my scoring — you just need to catch my drift. You’ll notice that quite often the wider the reach an influencer has, the less the authority, and the narrower the reach, the harder it is to work with them. That’s one of the central problems of what we’re doing here; and exposing it is one of the ways to help think more clearly about what we’re hoping to achieve in our planning.

That’s enough for today. You’ve already done most of the work and it’s taken you - what? - an hour? Acting on nothing but hunches and your cop gut. Tomorrow we’ll look at how we take the information you’ve created and turn it into something really interesting.