Jonathan Dodd: New idea? Put it to the panel

Cadbury is a heavy user of custom community panels. Photo / Supplied

Most businesspeople will now be very much aware of social media and the maelstrom of commentary and discussion surrounding it.

However, the discussion surrounding the business of social media is much lighter on its use beyond classic marketing, PR and customer service.

Many of the case studies available are really just direct marketing (DM) campaigns in a different guise; PR via Facebook or Twitter; or the re-formulation of fanbases or customer service initiatives via social media platforms.

There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but there are social marketing applications of significance overseas that have yet to develop much presence here.

Perhaps the most exciting of these developments is the custom community panel. Panels are research-speak for lists of consumers who have opted in to be regularly surveyed or otherwise consulted, usually for a reward.

Panels can be very large (SmileCity has over 100,000 New Zealanders) or relatively small and specialised (Synovate has a panel of several hundred NZ GPs).

Such research panels are recruited and managed by companies for the primary purpose of charging for access to the panellists.

Commission an online survey of the general public in New Zealand and chances are you'll be paying to access panellists from SmileCity or ResearchNow.

The main limitation of these panels is that businesses cannot as a rule market or otherwise communicate directly to the panellists, and frequently it is only a small sub-group that are the target market.

Businesses simply buy some time with panel members - proper brand-building relationships are not an option.

In the UK and US in particular the solution has come in the form of custom community panels, sometimes also referred to as advisory panels, custom panels or proprietary panels.

These all comprise dedicated groups of existing or potential customers (or other stakeholder groups) that the panel owners have recruited to engage with through social-media-like interactive surveys and discussion forums.

Sectors such as sports, retail, media, travel, FMCG, technology and cars are highly successful users of custom community panels. Brands such as Nike, MTV, Cadbury, Audi, Harley-Davidson, National Geographic, Bloomingdales, Qantas, Unilever and the NBA are heavy users of such panels.

New Zealand viewers of BBC World are also able to participate in one, and customised panels are already being used in various forms by some of New Zealand's largest companies.

A key difference between these community panels and simple email lists is that panel members have to log into a (usually) branded website in order to participate.

Once they log in, the panel management software enables panel members to engage with the panel interface via the full spectrum of social media applications now expected from the web - multimedia sharing, online focus groups, surveys, product feedback and so on.

It is this experience that transforms a surveying or DM email list to a focal point of marketing, branding, consultation, PR, customer service and viral promotions.

One only has to see the plethora of fan-initiated Facebook pages for brands such as Coke, Apple, BMW and Steinlager to see there is plenty of scope for branded websites for social media-type interaction with consumers.

Owning a custom community panel means customer consultation such as concept testing, trend-watching, product development, advertising assessment and surveying can be done extremely fast and relatively cheaply.

When checks with a company's most interested and loyal customers (or interested prospects) are so easily, quickly and cheaply available, the amount of customer consultation conducted usually skyrockets within those companies running such panels effectively.

The consumers on such panels cannot be assumed to be representative of the total population, and as such panels can't be used for market simulations or volumetric studies.

Of course, the set-up costs for such custom community panels can be high (but costs should be paid from marketing as well as research budgets), depending on how the panellists are recruited, and day-to-day management.

But most companies generally find the ease of using the panels encourages more customer consultation, gradually bringing down the "per survey" cost so that research expenditure eventually provides considerably more value for the dollar.

In 2008 Gartner Research stated that by 2010 more than 60 per cent of Fortune 1000 companies would have some form of online community that could be used in marketing, and in the same year Forrester Research concluded that "if you haven't already got a panel or community, get one".

Closer to home, Sylvia van der Waal, research and strategy director of ACP Magazines, runs a custom panel of women magazine readers at www.allwomantalk.co.nz.

Van der Waal says the site gives ACP instant feedback from New Zealand women on the magazine landscape, on products and on advertising campaigns: "It provides us with invaluable insights into what is happening in New Zealand women's lives right now."

Van der Waal runs her panel in-house, although many market research companies provide similar services too.

* Jonathan Dodd is a research director at market research company Synovate.

jonathan.dodd@synovate.com