Cats and the Groundswell

Let's face it, everybody loves to watch good cat videos every once in a while! I do! And YouTube is one of the best places to do it. There are quite a few famous internet cats such as Snoopy Cat, Maru, Grumpy Cat, Nala Cat, Lil BUB, Hamilton, Oskar&Klaus and even a cartoon Simon's Cat! Each of them is unique in a certain way and has a vivid personality.

I'm sure you recognize at least some of them unless you've been living under a rock!

Besides entertaining videos these lovely creatures participate in commercials and cooperate with famous brands. Right before Christmas 2013 Friskies aired a music video called "Hard To Be a Cat at Christmas" on its YouTube channel starring some internet-famous cats - Oskar the blind cat, Nala Cat, Colonel Meow, Hamilton the hipster cat and Grumpy Cat. The commercial claimed that Friskies will donate a can of wet food to cats in need for every video view starting after 500,000 views.  The video has over 3 million views. BTW Grumpy Cat is featured in at least 13 videos on this channel and has a separate playlist Grumpy Cat & Friskies®! And this isn't a coincidence - Grumpy Cat got Lifetime Achievment Award at The Friskies in 2013 for the best cat video. Since then Friskies and Grumpy Cat started their partnership. She was also named 2012's most influential cat by MSNBC.

Hands down Grumpy Cat is probably the most popular and richest cats in the world. Grumpy cat - a.k.a Tardar Sauce - known for her grumpy facial expression, has a fortune worth $120 million which is more than some Hollywood's biggest celebrity humans have. Tardar Sauce became Grumpy cat over two years ago when her picture was posted to the social news website Reddit on September 22, 2012. Since that time her popularity hasn't stop growing. Internet is full of memes with her pictures and funny sayings. She is everywhere!

Of course there is an owner behind each of these cats whom we not necessarily know by sight, but who started all of THESE and boosted the popularity of their beloved pets. They started their involvement in the groundswell and it looks like there is no way back.

These felines prove that the groundswell is not only for humans.

With this kind of involvement in the groundswell with millions of views and thousands of followers there is a whole market waiting for the buyers. You can find any kind of things featuring famous internet cats from wall calendars and look-a-like plush toys on out to books and films.

Maybe someday these cats will have stars on Hollywood Boulevard or monuments to perpetuate their names.

We can draw a conclusion that owners can use their cats to help other animals via the groundswell. Cats are a good tool to attract and engage people.

Even a cat can swim like a fish in the groundswell so why can't anybody?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumpy_Cat

https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/new-idea/real-life/a/25713506/grumpy-cat-worth-a-whopping-120-million/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2864212/Not-grumpy-Cat-internet-star-owner-64million.html

Online clothing shops and the groundswell

So the reason why I chose this topic is simple...recently I ran out of new videos in my YouTube subscriptions feed so I dared to find new channels to watch and subscribe to. The first thing that came to my thirsty for shopping mind was my favorite online clothing shop - ASOS. I was very much surprised by a small number of subscribers (comparing to some entertainment YouTube channels that I watch) so I decided to check out a few other popular online retailers' channels such as Topshop, Macy's, Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters. And I found that non of them were any close to pitiful 100,000 subscribers! How come? Do these companies even participate in the groundswell?!

Let's first take a dive into the theory! Shall we?

In Groundswell, the authors mention the marketing funnel that shows the way people become buyers (101 Groundswell).

Where do online clothing shops meet the groundswell? Well, everywhere! But I would like to turn your attention to the part where communication happens.

The Social Technographics ladder

The authors of the book point out that marketers have little control over what happens in the middle of the funnel as it is heavily influenced by the groundswell, which means that customers here are engaged in conversations on different social networks (101 Groundswell). The conversation includes customers of all Social Technographics Profile groups, however the dialogue itself is made by Creators and Critics (posts, blogs, comments, etc.) and never goes unseen by Spectators(43, 102 Groundswell).

In the modern economy companies should not only keep their eye on this activities - they should participate in the communication! And the better they participate the more buyers they will get.

Nowadays this kind of company-buyer communication happens on social networks. What are the most popular social networks that are used by the modern companies? Some of them may vary, but the most common and widespread are Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.

Now we are turning back to the first page. Let's compare social network involvement of those popular online retailers mentioned in the beginning of this blog:

as of 2 February 2015

	Facebook	Twitter	Google +	Pinterest	Instagram	YouTube
ASOS	3,596,057	798K	2,260,567	402,111	2.6M	38,962
Topshop	4,130,773	1.06M	2,255,927	97,805	3.7M	50,128
Macy's	14,718,980	734K	-	104,258	254K	16,643
Nordstrom	3,096,476	548K	-	4,418,975	744K	20,650
Urban Outfitters	2,127,314	967K	-	155,125	2.4M	20,282

As you can see it's just YouTube that isn't quite popular, there are more participants on other social networks. And you can see that ASOS and others are doing quite alright after all!

But we all know that having a big number of followers or subscribers doesn't necessarily mean that the company is keeping up in the groundswell, but it still gives the general idea. I doubt that unsatisfied costumers would not unsubscribe from those social networks, and by "unsatisfied costumer" I also mean those whose issues and concerns got no answer from the company.

Have you ever had a good/bad experience communicating with a company via social networking website? What would you like it to improve?