The Communications Department

As I prepared  for a couple of trips this summer, I found myself relying on user-generated review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp to help me make decisions about hotels and places to eat. As a result, I started to wonder about the impact of these reviews ultimately have on business. After a little research, I came across a comScore study, which included these interesting tidbits of information:

• Nearly one out of every four Internet users (24%) reported using online reviews prior to paying for a service delivered offline.
• Of those who consulted an online review, 41 % of restaurant reviewers subsequently visited a restaurant.
• More than three-quarters of review users in nearly every category reported that the review had a significant influence on their purchase, with hotels ranking the highest (87 percent).
• Study participants were willing to pay up to 50% more for a meal for a high user-review rating.

(Source: comScore and The Kelsey Group, 11/29/07)

As for the accuracy of the reviews? “Ninety-seven percent of those surveyed who said they made a purchase based on an online review said they found the review to have been accurate.”

From my perspective and the influence user-generated reviews had on my purchasing decisions, the study rings true.

So what’s a business to do? A great place to start is Google. Google your business and look for the “reviews” link. Google pulls reviews from multiple sources, so business owners can see which sites contain reviews. Also, check out the more popular user-generated review sites, like Yelp.com, TripAdvisor.com and OpenTable.com. Some sites, like TripAdvisor, allow the business owner to respond to specific reviews so readers can get both sides of the story. Once you get a sense of what’s out there, think about how user-generated reviews factor into your social media marketing strategy. 

I think this study makes a compelling argument regarding the impact of user-generated reviews on the bottom line. Businesses, especially hotels, restaurants and other service-related businesses, need to know that people are talking about them and it may be costing them a lot of money.

I guess it’s true. No one reads anymore, even when they’re supposed to be reading. According to a story in USA Today, CBS and Pepsi Max recently announced that they would run an ad promoting the upcoming Fall television season in Entertainment Weekly that shows video clips of upcoming CBS programs. The video runs on a wafer-thin screen and, according to the story, “the sound is akin to one of those talking, musical greeting cards.”

And, remarkably, the player can contain up to 40 minutes of video and play continuously for up to six hours.

The article does not state the cost for producing the video ads and insert. However, as with most things, as the technology grows and become more prevalent, the odds are good that whatever the price is, it will come down over time.

There are several implications of this technology that are interesting to think about. Imagine medical text books with video and sounds of surgical procedures, or health benefits collateral with a video explaining how your health savings account works. Kind of makes me think of the newspapers with the moving images in the Harry Potter movies. 

The improved portability of the video also is impressive. We are now viewing video without the need for a device to view it – no DVD or VHS player or Internet hook-up required. Video just got even more portable, which is quite a statement when you consider the recent advances in just the last two years in video playback on handheld devices like cellphones and PDAs.

I’m not sure of the quality of the video that will be used in the ad. There’s only so much you can expect on a screen that thin and only 2-inch-by-1.5-inch screen. But I’m guessing the quality will be fine for what CBS and Pepsi Max are hoping to accomplish: getting some buzz about the new television season.

I look forward to seeing where this technology is going to take us. Hopefully, I won’t have to explain to my grandkids what a book is. But then again, I have explained to my son all about records and 8-track tapes.

This is progress, right?

So many of the conversations about corporate communications revolve around how to do it efficiently and effectively and with impact. All critical goals, but what if we can communicate in way that can positively affect the health of the person to whom the communication is directed?

I have the good fortune to work with some friends who are committed to bringing people together to explore social conditions that are the major influences of health and illness.  (For more on their work, check out www.communitiesofhealth.org.) Working with them has given me access to some interesting thinking about the underlying causes of poor health, as well as unconventional approaches to improving health.

Recently, four articles in particular have given me pause to think about how we approach communications in an organization could potentially positively influence the overall health of an individual. (The approach also could have a negative health impact, but for this blog posting I will only focus on the positive.)

The four articles are:

“Love is Real Medicine”– In this Newsweek article Dr. Dean Ornish wrote a few years ago, he highlights studies he conducted demonstrating the positive impacts relationships have on people who had heart attacks.

“What are Friends For? A Longer Life” — A recent NY Times article highlighting a study that shows people with good friendships live longer and are healthier than those without close relationships.

“Ning Hits 1 Million Social Networks”– The one millionth social network was recently created using the build-it-yourself Ning platform.

“Whitehall II Study” — The last piece is not an article, but a study. The study was “set up by Professor Sir Michael Marmot to investigate the importance of social class, psychosocial factors and life style as determinants of disease by following a cohort of 10,308 men and women.” The study found the following:

A person’s health is influenced by the conditions in which he or she lives and works. The “Work, Stress and Health” booklet summarises some key findings from the Whitehall II study including:

• The more senior someone is in the employment hierarchy, the longer he or she might be expected to live compared to people in lower employment grades.
• The combination of high demands and low control at work predicts poor health.
• Workers reporting high effort-reward imbalance are at increased risk of coronary hearth disease and poor health.
• A healthy diet, exercise and quitting smoking all reduce the risk of disease and promote well-being.

After reading these and other writings on the connections between relationships, stress, autonomy and health, I am left wondering if health improvement could be an effective goal and measurement for a company’s communications strategy. If the anwer is yes, how could we achieve something like that? Other questions to consider include:

• With social media becoming a larger part of corporate communications strategies, is it possible to leverage them in such a way so they become a mechanism for people to form genuine friendships? What would that look like? Should an employer encourage these kinds of relationships?
• How can a company use an application like Ning to create a platform for communications that give employees a sense of autonomy and control? What kind of control would a company have to let go of to make this happen?
• How can knowledge of the benefits of relationships and autonomy influence a commuincation strategy and implementation?

I am sure there are more questions and implications from thinking about communications as a driver for improving health, so feel free to post them here. In the meantime, I will keep searching for the study that shows hanging out on Facebook has better health benefits as hitting the treadmill. You never know. This stuff is always developing . . .