To Trust or Not to Trust the Customer?

During the summer of 2014, I interned for a small cafe & coffee roaster in Worcester, MA called Acoustic Java. It was an easy choice: I was a loyal customer and business seemed solid. But I soon felt overwhelmed by the marketing challenges of a small business. So I created a customer feedback card to enable customers to speak for themselves.

This, I thought, would help solve the question of promoting the new product, coffee and tea subscriptions, to the actual customers who were physically coming into the store. I could worry about fortifying our online presence later.

The back would gauge how many of the actual customers were even aware of the social media presence and what aspects of the business's activities and products they would engage with - which would also be promoted by the new email list. 

Then while doing marketing research, I came across this article by Josh Piagto on Entrepreneur.com, called 4 Steps to Knowing What Your Customers Want Better Than They Do.
Right off the bat , it destroyed my approach.  

Basically Pigato said that you need to start using "implicit data," which is gathered from observations of actual customer behavior versus "explicit data," which is provided by customers. His approach explicitly privileges observing customers over listening to them to predict their behavior.

This left me feeling stumped. Listening was all the business could afford.

Reading Listening to the Groundswell, chapter 5 of the text, helped me reconcile my instinctive trust in the customer with the statistics about implicit data. There are definitely flaws with surveys like the one I designed, but it's not because customers don't know what they want. 

Main Points

1. The right incentive. Instead of offering an extrinsic reward, you should make responders feel part of a community in which their feedback is valuable. A survey with a one-time reward (like a free coffee) doesn't encourage the participant to care what happens after the survey is completed. Online communities like the ones created by Communispace recreate social networks that provide the users with a sense of belonging.
2. Natural interaction. Communispace tapped into the popularity of the social media network, which can easily become a part of a user's routine. 
3. Observation of the user in their natural habitat. This seems like a necessary tool to monitor the success of products already out there. 
4. Generation of insight. Narrow-minded questions might not tap into the issue you're actually trying to solve. For example, I could ask "What are you interested in...?" on the customer feedback card, but the language I used in the choices provided might not connect with the reader. 
5. Prediction. Pigato may have been right that explicitly asking a customer to predict what they will want can be unproductive. However, customer feedback can help immensely if you can pin down insights and apply them to your company.

Identity Issues & Awareness Alive in Social Media

Feminist Blogospheres

Recently, waves have been made by a lot of (mostly female) celebrities who have, intentionally or not, found themselves at the center of debates about gender, race, and sexuality. 

Successful bloggers know how to have gain a following by marketing their personal voice, and big scandals that generates a lot of buzz across the internet (on search engines, social media and news sites) offer the opportunity to do that. Bloggers can capitalize on the the uproar and confusion of these complex discussions to deliver their own polished responses to guide public opinion. They can also be easily shared through networks of social media. This can be a valuable opportunity to someone who wishes to promote or share their opinion, but doesn’t want to open up to personal attacks.

Here are some of the events that have seen the most blog response: 

• March 20, 2013 - Robin Thicke released a video for Blurred Lines, which was labeled by one blogger as a rape song because of the lyrics implying consent to be a "blurry" issue. It also inspired the feminist parody Defined Lines. Bloggers also responded to Thicke's dismal attempt to rebrand the song as a feminist movement. 
• June 3, 2013 - Miley Cyrus released a music video for We Can’t Stop, which was criticized most notably for her sexual objectification of black backup dancers and appropriation of African American culture. 
• November 17, 2014 - Lily Allen released a music video for Hard Out Here, intended to be a satirical remark about the double standards for women, particularly, their unfair treatment in the music industry. Several frames directly parodied Thicke's video. Critical responses like, Some ‘Bitches’ Have It Harder Out Here Than Others, accused her of practicing "white feminism."
• August 25, 2014 - Actress Sofia Vergara performed a skit at the Emmy’s that put her on rotating pedestal while the other announcer made a joke about always giving the audience something interesting to look at. In response to the criticism, Vergara told audiences to "lighten up."

And of course, there have been ongoing posts about Beyoncé’s brand of feminism and controversy about her use of sexuality.

Photo of Beyoncé performing at the VMAs from Time

In this cultural era of endless parody, these blogs attempt to sift through objectification, and layers of symbolic meaning to get to the truth of representation. One common theme is that these bloggers often expose how satire can often reinforce harmful stereotypes regardless of the artist/performer's intentions.  

Challenges

Given the emphasis on of visual stimulation, short attention spans, and easily generated memes, blogs attempting to engage in sophisticated cultural commentary with these high exposure events have a lot to compete with. They need to be shared with audiences that will actually engage with them and take time to read them. Too often these issues, especially when involving sexuality, devolve into objectification reiterating the male gaze. Audiences gawk at and dissect female bodies, and voice their approval or disapproval based on aesthetics. 

I recently came across an article about how Nicki Minaj, the famous rapper, has been using her Instagram account to point out racist double standards for the interpretation of female sexuality. The rapper recently has generated a lot of buzz with her album cover, which featured her in a revealing thong. Using her Instagram account she compared photos of slender white female models baring their flesh with the caption "acceptable," and another similar one of herself captioned, "unacceptable." However, when I googled “Nicki Minaj instagram” looking for the article, most of the results were sites analyzing if she'd had butt implants or links to sexy photos.

Even though Minaj used her popular official Instagram account, only this article by The Daily Caller actually mentions Nicki Minaj’s attempts It seems that possibly accusations of racism lodged against white artists get more attention.

The constant volley back and forth of public opinion related to feminist issues may tire some people  and make them less likely to engage when there's a high volume of material on social media. These blogs also might make it seem difficult to do anything without being offensive. 

Despite these challenges, blogs connected with social media also have the unique ability to get attention with their own unique material like this popular French video that presents a flipped gender inequality. 

Whichever way these blogs use to gain attention, it seems important that these discussions can be generated and popularized.