Most of the people reading this will not have heard of advocacy marketing. If you put advocacy into Google then none of the hits on the first page will even mention advertising and instead will read about health and law. I believe that this will change rapidly in the near future and that "advocacy marketing" will become a mainstream phenomenon. For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, I will attempt to define what I mean by advocacy in a marketing context.
Brands are built on, and driven by, human emotions. These often irrational bonds are the lifeblood of all businesses and for as long as there have been brands, there have been advocates. Someone who believes in what a brand does; not what it says, and wants to share those beliefs with those they care about.
It's a simple concept, one that is as old as language itself. It's natural to want to share information with the people we care about, that's part of being human. In fact advocacy is a major part of conversation. During your lifetime, I'm certain that you will have acted as an advocate. I'm equally certain that other people will have advocated products, services and brands to you, often without you even soliciting their advice.
I know that a personal recommendation is more potent than an advert. Who takes the advice of advertising over their friends? No one. If a person I know and trust makes a recommendation to me, I listen. That is the crux of brand advocacy, the acknowledgement that personal recommendations are powerful and that they are influencing consumer purchases every day.
Throughout my working experience, I have witnessed a paradigm shift in the brand consumer relationship, consumers no longer want to hear brand sermons instead they appreciate brand democracy. The speed of communication offered by the Internet and the explosion of social media have combined to facilitate peer-to-peer recommendations on an unprecedented scale. Simultaneously, the Internet has created a permanent store of online opinion, putting brands in 'glass houses' stripped bare before the world.
These elements combine to make today's consumer more knowledgeable and more powerful than ever before. As a result the effectiveness of traditional marketing is being seriously challenged by this new approach. Advocacy marketing does what traditional marketing used to do - shapes trends, provokes conversation and generates social currency.
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in the youth market. Generation Y is tech savvy, disconnected, knowledgeable and in demand. As a result young people are a powerful group in society and they are hungry for authenticity. Brands looking to target the youth market must accept that it is no longer a legitimate strategy to try and purchase young people's attention. Instead, those that focus on the youth market must nurture support among young people by improving their quality of life and the world they inhabit and embracing the apparent desire for connectivity enabling deeper relationships between them and their friends.
Whilst advocacy marketing is certainly not a mainstream concept, some brands are already employing the techniques to their advantage. Red Bull is a prime example. Whilst Red Bull sells an energy drink they actually market 'energy' itself to their audience. By employing jets and high speed cars, and challenging members of the public to fly personally built contraptions across rivers (to name just a few), Red Bull clearly demonstrates an understanding of high speed and energy. It's what a brand does, not what it says, that has resonance with young people.
On top of this understanding, Red Bull has an extensive network of ambassadors who represent the product within their own social spheres. Red Bull incentivises these individuals with rewards and equips them with the tools and products required to disseminate the brands message to their friends. The efficiency of these methods speaks for itself; Red Bull retains 42% of the UK energy drink market whilst charging more than any of its competitors.
It's not just youth brands who are employing the power of advocacy. When Microsoft launched Widows 7, 40,000 launch parties were arranged in twelve countries. Each host invited ten friends to test the system and share their experiences online - eight weeks later 64% of US party goers and 42% of people who discussed Windows 7 with a partygoer, had purchased the product.
Advocacy marketing hasn't arrived because it never left, but the Internet has enabled advocacy on an enormous scale, and brands are starting to wake up to its untapped potential.