Foreword
Listening is hip! If you are a marketer and not doing it, you are likely to be criticized by somebody. Or do you look in the mirror and think you see someone who is out of it? So, what do marketers and agencies do? They put “listening” on their to-do list. And then they go off and do some listening. Good. It's a start.
But the problem just begins here, because there are so many easy ways to check “listening” off your list. Take a look at Google Trends, talk to some companies about sentiment and brand analytics, set up a community or two, or get IT looking into software solutions.
But is this listening? Is this consistent with the historic opportunity to hear your customers talk honestly about your brand? Or recognizing, as one pundit said recently, that “Twitter is free mind-reading!” I think not.
The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) convened its first of four Listening Workshops in November, 2009. Listening is exploding, right? Well, it is, if you count all those projects that are started to get listening checked off the list. But the disturbing thing to me was that many speakers seemed to be preoccupied with the obstacles to effective listening—no budget, nobody in charge; where is the statistical rigor; is it projectable; tough organizational issues; hard to sell internally; ROI difficult to determine; legal has major issues….
So, what's up with this? True listening is scary, that's what's up. It's a big change from our traditional way of thinking.
Consequently, ...
