Vegas is like being at a party in a house with no kitchen.

This statement is designed to startle your brain, which is naturally in a static state. It uses schemas to keep its carbon footprint at the bare minimum. Schemas are mental short-hand for how the world works, or for how the brain believes the world works. They allow the brain to function without exerting undue effort. Interrupting a schema stimulates thought; the brain needs to actively process the “unknown”, which stimulates conversation. Blending two disparate schemas together into a new mental model also creates the same disruptive patterns.

Academia has long embraced cognitive science as it applies to learning and rehabilitation. Now, application of cognitive science is gaining a foothold in the business world. A great example was presented recently by Steve Knox, CEO of Proctor and Gamble Tremor. They are using cognitive scientists to help understand word of mouth and why people talk.

Here are a few of the examples he gave during a presentation at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s (WOMMA) recent Summit.

Disrupting a schema: Let’s say you arrive in the UK and rent a car. Yikes. Before you arrived, you knew that you would be driving on the ‘wrong” side of the road in a car with a steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. Yet, you talk about it because it helps you resolve the disrupted equilibrium that happens when you disturb your normal mental model of driving. Eventually, you get used to this new driving pattern and do not have to actively think about it as you drive. But, when you return home, you may have to reset your “normal” driving schema.

Disrupting schemas is a way to potentially stimulate conversation and spread word of mouth.

Conceptual blend. This is where you blend two familiar schemas to create a new unfamiliar on. One of the examples that Knox used in his presentation was the I Phone. It was a phone AND a computer; the combination of which created a whole new category. People talked about it because the very combination of two familiar devices created a disruption.People normally viewed the phone and the computer as two separate, distinct devices. When a brand creates a new blend, it owns the space. It is the epitome of first mover status.

Knox cautioned the group that applying these principles requires deep knowledge of cognitive science and hard work to strike the correct balance. The key is to use the following four questions as a guide:

· What is the foundational truth of your brand.?

· What schemas are at play?

· What would disrupt a schema?

· Are there blends that make sense?

So, why does the first sentence of this post make you stop? First: our mental model of Vegas is decidedly not one of a party in someone’s house. And, secondly, every house has a kitchen, right? These disruptions can take us on an interesting path that epitomizes both the art and science of conversation. The application to the science of word of mouth marketing is interesting and intriquing.

Our firm, ComBlu, hosted the Midwest regional judging of the WOMMy Awards a few weeks ago, which are sponsored by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). A group of judges from agencies, not-for-profit and big brands got to determine the bronze, silver and gold winners in the engagement category. It was very interesting to see the state of the art of word-of-mouth engagement programs. The entries ran the gambit from internal stakeholder engagement to big brand extravaganzas. The winners will be announced at WOMMA’s Summit in Los Vegas in mid-November so I can’t say much more about the entries or the winners.

One of the best parts of the day was meeting our fellow judges and hearing their perspectives and different takes on the entries, the industry and their own campaigns and programs. One judge was from a local university and mentioned that they had launched a community for parents a few years ago. She relayed how much they had learned over the past few years and talked about how their skills and point of view had morphed to meet the needs of this new social medium. She told a story that occurred early-on when a colleague commented, “There’s no activity in the community this week; isn’t that great?” We laughed because in this instance, of course, “no news is bad news.”

The whole point of the community is engagement with the parents, helping them have a great experience with the university and to feel secure that their children are in good hands. A great mission for a university-sponsored community. Her colleague was applying old school thinking to a new media solution. In the past, no interaction with the parents was equated with no complaints! In the community model, however, they want action and reaction. They want to hear the good, the bad and the ugly. They want to improve parent/university relations and learn from these constituents in real time. It’s a smart strategy; these parents will have a great story to tell other parents in their networks whose kids are considering this choice for higher ed.

This judge’s story was interesting; more so than some of the entries! Not all of them really had a lesson to teach, which I think is at the essence of what an award winning program must do. Award winners should model best practices against a defined business challenge as well as demonstrate exceptional ROI. They also need to be strategically brilliant and stun us with their creativity. Not necessarily their creative, but their creative execution of a well thought through strategy.

Many of the entries did just that while others are still representative of early efforts to give social marketing a whirl. Nothing wrong with that, but I was heartened to see how far the industry has come. Many of the entries demonstrated solid business results and used some tried and true techniques in unusual or new ways. That we have tried and true techniques alone speaks volumes of the growth and evolution of this marketing discipline. I can’t wait to hear about the winners in the other categories. I’ll share more insights from our group after the awards ceremony on November 18^th.

When helping brands and organizations think through community strategy, we are asked a handful of questions by almost everyone. They fall into three major categories:

· Overall approach and program design

· ROI

· Resource allocation

The first two are very specific to the mission, objectives and business drivers of the organization. To some extent, so is the third but I think the ‘gravity” rule applies. What’s that? Pauline Ores, a community whiz at IBM, is fond of saying, “Community is like gravity; it only come in one flavor.” She goes on to make the case that fundamental principles of community design apply equally across every industry. What works in tech also works in consumer products. The customization comes from the content, tools, and engagement strategy that you employ.

Here are xxx “gravity” principles that apply to community resource allocation.

· Designate a community strategist: This person is primarily responsible for:

•  Identifying business goals and aligning them with community and social marketing programs.
•  Ongoing approach and applying a best practices orientation to the program.
•  Integrating the program with other marketing and operations campaigns
•  Identifying key social marketing and community trends and separating fads from useable applications and tools
• Assuring community profitability: developing cost/benefit models and developing ROI modeling

· Assign a public community manager. This person has several responsibilities. including:

• Serving as the human face of the community. This is the go-to person for members when they want to interact with the company; not just each other.
• Engaging members in a variety of ways. This requires a comfort level with chatting with customers, understanding their concerns and being open about the probability that desired actions will actually occur in a stated time frame. In my experience, many marketers only deal with customers in the abstract. They view them as personas, objects in a video, data points or from behind the mirrored glass of a focus group. They don’t really deal with them day-to-day. The community manager needs to be comfortable in this role and can offer invaluable insights to the organization.
• Managing key community functions and activities. These include:

1. Create quarterly engagement approach
2. Maintain Reputation Management system
3. Direct other team members
4. Analyze trends and work with Community Strategist to determine implications and impact
5. Serve as community advocate for internal company audiences and business units
6. Field and manage requests from other business units for advocate or program access

• Being the voice of the brand throughout the social eco-system. The community manager should be visible both inside the branded community location as well as maintain a high profile at other social destinations.
• Managing customer advocate relations. Care and nurturing of customer advocates is essential for optimizing this strategic business asset.
• Moderating disputes and community sentiment. It is essential for the community manager to intervene as appropriate when the community is veering into negative territory or one of its members is behaving badly. Often, self policing among community members handles this before formal intervention is needed, but the manager must be aware and know when to act.

· Give an Engagement Manager responsibility for:

• Executing engagement strategies including online and offline events
• Managing ongoing recruitment and advocate on-boarding

· Appoint a community operations manager. This person could be the same one as the public community manger but has very specific skill sets. H/her is responsibility for:

• Monitoring community health and wellness. Maintaining an early warning system signals when the community is in distress or thriving. Each call for action; just different ones. This person is part strategist; part analyst.
• Moderating specific actions and activities. The majority of this can be automated if you put in the right back-end and admin tools. Someone with half a lobe working needs to watch, though.
• Overseeing everyday QA of the platform. Nothing frustrates visitors and members more than slow nav and broken tools.

· Allocate dedicated tech genius. Every organization I’ve ever worked with has a long queue for dev work. If your community is going to be successful, you’ll need more than a few forums and standard widgets. If no one inside your company’s IT department knows and understands community beyond what comes out of the shrink wrap, find a go-to outside resource that is platform agnostic, can help you choose the best platform for current and future needs and can help you scale. This person should also bring you new ideas and new social tools that can help you integrate your social presence both inside and outside of your community.

According to Forrester community expert, Jeremiah Owyang, successful community marketing requires dedicated staffing. In addition, a study by Forum One quantifies the optimal staffers for community is 6.5 FTEs. In our experience, this resource load is often too steep for organizations in the formative stages of community building. ComBlu typically takes a “build, grow, transfer” approach with our clients. We serve as an outsource for much of the heavy lifting during the early stages of community building. As we move past pilot into the growth stage, we begin knowledge transfer so an internal team can eventually take over the running and managing of its own community assets.

This model with tweaks for individual needs is the gravity rule for community resource allocation.