CorpComms Magazine

There is a short film on YouTube of Tony Bilsborough, head of external communications at Cadbury Schweppes Great Britain & Ireland, telling a group of students there was no chance the company would bring back Wispa, the chocolate bar. His performance was filmed about 18 months ago, three years after Wispa had been discontinued because of its faltering commercial sales.

At the time Bilsborough believed his comments to be true. By last October, however, Cadbury Schweppes had revived Wispa for a limited period: 23 mn bars were snapped up in two months; typically a production run of that size would take twice as long to sell out.

Such is the power of a new social group with a range of monikers, including 'new influencers' and the 'recommendation generation'. These are people with an unusual level of influence who are not from the typical sources of authority, such as politics or religion. In the case of Wispa, the campaign was led on Facebook, the social networking site. There are more than 2,500 members of 'Bring back the Wispa' and almost 1,300 people belong to 'Bring back Cadbury's Wispa (Dairy Milk Bubbly is no substitute)'. The groups backing the return of the Wispa Gold bar have even greater support.

Given that this is a modern phenomenon driven by the internet, the financial impact is little short of staggering: research by Royal Mail and think tank the Future Foundation suggests recommendations by this group account for £750 mn in UK online sales. More than 27 percent of people using social networking sites bought a product from a website as a result of a recommendation found on the likes of Facebook and MySpace. And with 84 percent of consumers forecast to have internet access by 2012, this group's power will only grow.

All aboard the bandwagon
PR firms have really cottoned on to this idea. Online Fire was founded six months ago and much of its communications work involves manipulating the phenomenon for its corporate clients. 'We are trying to create conversations online, get new angles,' explains Graham Lee, an Online Fire director working on an advertising campaign for the German beer Beck's. 'We can cause people to talk online about the beer and provide a link back to the Beck's website.'

Shlomo, the beatbox vocalist, is fronting the campaign. His performances for the new television advertisement will be placed on key social sites, such as YouTube. The most stand-out footage is expected to create a buzz and chatter about Beck's, which will translate into increased sales.

Another brand to have benefited is Primark, the low-cost clothing chain. Typing 'Primark appreciation society' into Facebook brings up no fewer than 54 groups, including one in praise of the store's £2.50 handbag. Geoff Lancaster, head of external affairs at Primark, says the groups started 'completely spontaneously' and insists the company has done nothing to encourage their establishment.

Lancaster recalls becoming aware of their importance in late 2006, when there was huge demand for a £14 sequinned party dress. About 1 mn were sold and Primark had to reorder stock three times. 'People exchanged information online about where to find the dress, and websites were used to locate stock,' says Lancaster. The dress became so popular through this word of mouth marketing that one dress changed hands on eBay for £80.

Power of public opinion
The impact is not just on the product, however - it is also helping to drive Primark's expansion strategy. There is no current Primark outlet in Peterborough, for example, and residents there have formed a Facebook site demanding the company remedy this situation. The group has nearly 1,400 members, and Lancaster found himself in the local news in February explaining that Peterborough is a priority area in which to open a store.

It's not just about Facebook, either, although that site unarguably has the most influencers setting up groups and starting conversations. When it launched in 1999, Review Centre.com was the UK's first consumer review site. Today, people provide reviews on everything from insurance to car accessories, and the site has 5 mn visitors every month, just over half of them from the UK.

Negative reviews can be incredibly harmful to a company. Paul Nadin, Review Centre's chief executive, says he publishes bad reviews only if their authors have tried to resolve the issue with the company - so it is difficult for anyone with a misplaced grievance to wreck a company's reputation; the anger has to be justified. This precaution is driven by the fact that a Google search for a company will often return the bad review as the first result, making it plausible that an internet user will have a bad impression of a product before even entering the provider's website.

'Things like electrical gadgets, such as cameras, tend to have positive reviews, because people want to write about their hobby,' explains Nadin. 'It's the reviews of customer services that are largely negative.' He estimates that, on average, he is contacted once a week by companies asking him to investigate why their product or brand has received criticism. One mobile phone services provider had more than 50 negative reviews about its customer services; as a result, it dedicated staff to manage its reputation problems. That team responded to the author of every review.

Positive influence
David Racadio, research director at Ipsos MORI, the polling company, led a corporate responsibility survey of more than 23,000 people and 3,131 'new influencers' from 23 countries last October. The research found that influencers are twice as likely as the rest of society to shun a product if they believe the company behind it behaves unethically. 'They encourage others to boycott companies that don't behave sustainably,' says Racadio. 'We kind of sensed the breakdown of traditional sources of influence - the state, senior company directors - and found those avenues had weakened as communication became more internet-driven.'

The research also found that influencers take a greater interest in politics and social issues, such as crime, than their peers, as well as typically having more friends. Racadio stresses that these people do not necessarily possess the traditional characteristics of influence, such as money or positions of power.

Indeed, only 18 percent and 17 percent, respectively, of all those polled in the UK and the US said they trusted business leaders, while those in emerging economies such as India (63 percent) and South Korea (53 percent) were far more supportive, suggesting that the new influencer phenomenon is a predominantly western one.

The Wispa campaign remains the best example of this movement. Cadbury Schweppes even cleverly courted the Facebook groups by sending members badges advertising the fact that they had helped to bring back the chocolate bar. However, it took Cadbury Schweppes time - as well as up to 20,000 Facebook group members (there were also groups on Bebo and MySpace) - to believe the campaign was genuine and not just a wave of trendy but meaningless student inspired nostalgia. Even then the company decided to be careful. The relaunch of Wispa was a limited edition designed to assess just how real demand was. 'We said publicly, Prove to us this is not froth. Prove to us it is true democracy in action,' explains Bilsborough.

And everyone has been rewarded. The influencers were afforded the opportunity to bite into their beloved chocolate, while Cadbury Schweppes had a product that was outselling the Mars Bar - and, at 42p per product, earned the company the best part of £10 mn, vital in a year when it suffered a 9.2 percent slump in pre-tax profit. What's more, the type of publicity Cadbury Schweppes got from the influencers' campaigning couldn't be bought, adds Bilsborough.

There will be long-term gains, too. Bilsborough does not quite promise a permanent relaunch, but he might as well do. With a mischievous chuckle, he predicts: 'We're certainly reviewing the situation. We should have good news for Wispa fans soon.'

Cadbury Schweppes certainly appreciates the sway influencers have when they write their blogs and campaign for change on the internet - as well as the revenue that surely follows.

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