Porter Novelli

and horizontal
influence
 This paper on “Horizontal Influence” is critically important.
As I spend time with our clients, I hear over-and-over what
clients are demanding of us. They simply want innovative
and continuously relevant solutions to their marketing and
communications issues based upon a deep level of insight
into their consumers’ behaviour. Not always so simple,
though. They want the big idea – thinking that’s outside the
box. If we could just get rid of that box. They say they want
something so uniquely different from us.

Our role: to arrive at the core idea that’s grounded in

insight – an understanding so compelling that the idea
and the brand are inseparable. We discover the DNA
of the brand. We express the idea through avenues that
are relevant and that create a desire to use and re-use the
brand. That is a desire to invest in the corporation.

Public Relations has the innate ability to prepare a brand

for the market while preparing the market for the brand.
It can recommend relevant avenues for idea expression to
its clients that create the most appropriate marketing mix
because it is not overly invested in any one avenue but
intellectually vested in them all.

PR tends to be innovative by nature, by harnessing word-

of-mouth, horizontal-influence strategies early to support
clients and their brands. Because of this, and because
integration is core to its business, Porter Novelli is
at a perfect point-of-power in the new model which our
clients demand.

Tom Harrison
Chairman & CEO
Diversified Agency Services

3
Word-of-mouth has always been the most
influential communications channel.
Until recently, however, broadcast messages
were louder, and reached more people.
Now things are beginning to change.

4
5
The setting
God tells Adam, “Don’t eat the apple.”1 A few days later,
Eve says, “Eat the apple.”2 Adam chooses to listen to his wife,
and ignores the voice from on high telling him what to do.
Since the beginning of time, people have been more
inclined to act on the recommendation of someone they
know, and who they believe has no vested interest, than
on messages from unknown organisations and individuals
who clearly have something to sell.
However, the impact and credibility of these word-of-mouth
communications is undermined by the small size of first-hand
social networks. Most people only communicate personally
with a few family members, friends, and colleagues. Only
first-hand experience seems to count: the impact of second
and third-hand recommendations citing a friend’s (or a
friend-of-a-friend’s) experience tapers off rapidly. Low reach
has always mitigated the effectiveness of word-of-mouth
recommendations. A happy customer might recommend
you to one other person, while an unhappy customer
might complain to ten others.3 No matter how powerful the
individual result, these are not very big numbers.
This is why mass media communications dominated the
twentieth century. Large-scale influence remained in the
hands of the relatively few organisations that could afford
sophisticated broadcast advertising campaigns and
media-relations programmes. Broadcast communication
compensated in volume for what it lacked in proximity.
But now things are changing fast. On the one hand, the
volume is being turned down on mass media channels.
Increased media fragmentation among traditional
channels, the appearance of new channels, the erosion of
trust in institutions like governments and large businesses,
and changing audience behaviour mean that broadcast is
no longer the influential force it once was.
On the other hand, the volume is being turned up on
word-of-mouth channels. Instead of reaching only their
small first-hand networks, now satisfied and dissatisfied
customers alike can publish their opinions for the whole
world to see. When they do this in sufficient numbers they
can influence the opinions and attitudes of large sections
of the public, and become the basis of mainstream media
stories. Audiences are still acting upon “word-of-mouth”
endorsements from their peers, but peers whom they may
never have met. Technology has freed word-of-mouth from
its one-to-one limitations, and amplified it to a level where it
can compete with formal advertising.
This is the world of Horizontal Influence.
6
7
Many brands and organisations owe their success
– even their existence – to the power and influence
of mass media advertising campaigns. But things
are beginning to change.
Forward-thinking organisations are well aware of
these changes, and are already making significant
investment in new communications technologies,
staff, and processes. But a changing environment
constantly throws up new challenges, and techniques
and practices must evolve to meet these.
Let’s look closely at the challenges we face...
8
Challenge one
In a world of Horizontal Influence, customers publish their
opinions about products. When products and services
displease enough of them, these complaints become
causes célèbres that may be heard around the world,
rapidly working their way into mainstream media, and
companies’ bottom lines. Well-publicised examples of these
complaints have cost Dell4 and Apple5 dearly.
And unlike professional journalists, the Horizontal
Influencers aren’t bound by codes of ethics, or standards
of journalistic objectivity: they can make biased, rash or
unfounded criticisms with impunity. The worst aspect of
Horizontal Influence is that it is governed by the same rules
as gossip and rumour. Personal opinion, prejudice and
conjecture can masquerade as fact, and one-off, highly-
specific events can be blown-up out of all proportion in a
way that is grossly damaging to hard-won reputations.
On the other hand, if many customers approve of
something, the amplified word-of-mouth generated by
Horizontal Influence can rapidly tip it into mainstream
consciousness, and into the mainstream media.
Challenge two
As the effect of Horizontal Influence becomes more
apparent, attempts to harness it can be accepted or
rejected by customers, as Wal-Mart9, and Chevrolet10
learned in 2006.
The power of Horizontal Influence derives from its
perceived authenticity. Suspicious audiences respond
poorly and vocally to what they see as dishonest attempts
to leverage this. So, too, do the mainstream media. When
a “concerned citizen” posted a video parody of Al Gore’s
“An Inconvenient Truth” on YouTube11, the Wall Street
Journal rapidly exposed the DCI Group, lobbyists and
public relations firm for, amongst others, Exxon.
Horizontal Influence cannot be faked. But positive word
of mouth can be encouraged. Record labels, sports clubs,
television studios and games developers have a long
history of working closely with unofficial fan clubs – to their
mutual benefit. The new technologies are making it easier
than ever to identify and support fan activity.
Challenge three
Not every brand communication originates from the
company that owns the brand. In one example, creative
team Dan Brooks and Lee Ford created a short viral film
about the Volkswagen Polo12 called “Suicide Bomber”,
for their show reel. The film leaked and spread rapidly on
the web, causing considerable problems for Volkswagen,
who were forced to threaten legal action13 in an attempt to
stem rumours that they had commissioned the viral.
The controversial film spread so widely across the web that
a Google search on the slogan “Small but tough” returned
nothing but references to the viral film, eventually forcing
Volkswagen to change the Polo strap line.14
But passionate users have – unprompted – created their
own successful advertisements for loved products15. Others
parody, celebrate or remix well-known advertisements,
most notably MasterCard’s “Priceless” campaign which
caught the imagination of a generation of spoofers. Most
famous among these is Scott Quigly’s 2001 film, “Indecent
Proposal”16. On the whole, MasterCard recognises that it has
benefited from this activity, eventually setting up Priceless.com
and encouraging its audience to “Write a Priceless Ad.”
9
Case Study:
Arctic Monkeys
vs. Sandi Thom

10
The success of the Arctic Monkeys no.1 single, I Bet
You Look Good on the Dancefloor, is widely credited to
positive word-of-mouth generated by online file-sharing and
promotion on the band’s MySpace page.6 The popularity
of Sandi Thom’s no.1 single, I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker
is widely credited to positive word-of-mouth generated by
a series of “basement gigs” broadcast free online.7 Both
phenomena represented a marketing shift towards a direct
interaction with fans. However, whilst the Arctic Monkeys
retained a sense of credibility, Thom’s supposedly “DIY
publicity campaign” was accused of corporate fakery,
resulting a backlash that saw a UK national newspaper
columnist described her as “the musical Antichrist”.8

11
Case Study:
Mentos vs.
Diet Coke

12
In 2006, a pop science video showing the explosive effects of placing a pack of Mentos mints into a bottle of Diet Coke17 began making the rounds online. It rapidly gained in
popularity and within months had inspired hundreds of copycat videos.18 The reactions of the two companies could hardly have been more different. Mentos, estimating that the videos
amounted to about $10million worth of free publicity, declared themselves “tickled pink”19 and began organising online competitions for the best video.20 Coke, on the other hand,
declared that the videos didn’t “fit” with their “brand personality” and distanced themselves from the phenomenon.21 “It’s easy to see who spends too much on advertising,” wrote Jackie
Huba, bemoaning Coke’s wilfully missed opportunity22 – a sentiment echoed by the Motley Fool website: “Coke is an Idiot”.23

13
Faced with a world where it seems that their traditional
communications strategies may be undermined, and
that established relationships between brands and their
audiences are becoming confused, clients are seeking
quality, independent advice. To whom should they turn?
We believe that it is essential that they seek advice from
those who have no vested interest in any one particular
answer, or channel.
As a public relations agency with deep roots in both
innovation and integration, Porter Novelli is helping its
clients understand and respond to these new challenges.
We have the experience, perspective, existing tools and
processes, and R&D investment to help clients navigate the
landscape of Horizontal Influence.
Indeed, for us, some of these challenges are not even so
new. While consumers’ expectations of how companies
interact and communicate with them may be changing,
people remain the same. The public relations business has
always concerned itself with monitoring and responding to
public opinion, and with generating positive word-of-mouth.
We already engage our clients’ many audiences in their
communications strategies through listening (and helping
our clients respond) to their concerns, and identifying and
supporting customer advocates.
Our Communications Architecture approach helps
organisations to co-ordinate their communications across
multiple channels and audiences. The new Horizontal
Influence channels fit seamlessly into this model.
These are the very skills needed in what, to other marketing
disciplines, may feel like a foreign land. To Porter Novelli,
Horizontal Influence is just business as usual.
14
15
What’s causing
these changes
The truth is that public relations firms like Porter Novelli
have been helping clients deal with Horizontal Influence
for a good many years. Despite drawing on “Internet
stories” to illustrate the challenges faced by today’s
organisation, we know that the new information and
communications technologies are not themselves the root
cause of Horizontal Influence. We know that they are, in
fact, accelerating and amplifying deeper cultural changes.
If we are to respond effectively to the challenges presented
by Horizontal Influence, it’s essential that we understand
not simply these technologies, but the human and social
context from which they arise.
We believe that – in addition to the new technologies – there
are three key drivers of Horizontal Influence: a gradual but
long-standing erosion of trust in authority; an increasingly
fragmented media landscape; and the blurring of the
boundaries between creators, broadcasters and audiences,
between brands and consumers.
Trust in authority is eroding
Alongside many violent upheavals, the Twentieth Century
witnessed an extraordinary period of social change and
liberalisation. In many ways, authority became something
to be questioned and resisted.24
This shift in perception was in many ways due to the news
media increasing public awareness of the human frailties
of authority figures.
As confidence in authority continues to wane and people
are more likely to place their trust in the experiences of
people like themselves, so Horizontal Influence begins to
outweigh the voices from on high. As one journalist notes,
“People don’t care to be lectured by professionals...”
instead they are looking for “just-plain-folks authenticity.”25
16
Media fragmentation
The widespread adoption of new technologies has led to a
mass of new channels and devices.
The cost of developing content and running a commercial
media channel has radically decreased. This has led to
an increase in niche media of specialist channels and
magazines catering to small, interest-led audiences.
At the same time, media consumption habits are changing.
Once passive audiences are increasingly involved,
scanning multiple channels or devices simultaneously in a
behaviour that has been described as “continuous partial
attention”.26 Time spent watching television or reading
newspapers is down in Internet households.27
Where media planners could once reach large attentive
audiences using only a very few channels, it’s becoming
increasingly difficult to plan and optimise campaigns to
target mass audiences.
 Basic human needs

Mistrust in authority

causes
Device convergence

Media fragmentation

Changing role of audience

Media convergence

Blogs

Search

Social networks

Recommendation engines

Forums

accelerators
Communities

17
Boundaries are blurring between
creators, broadcasters and audiences
The mainstream media increasingly focus on and represent
the lives and experiences of the average audience
member. Increasing availability and quality of home
video equipment are creating a new mass of content.
News channels are increasingly likely to feature video
and photography from ordinary people (or “citizen
journalists”28). For example, many of the first images and
footage from the 2005 London terrorist attacks came from
the cell phone cameras of those caught in the attacks.29
From game shows and reality TV to YouTube the boundary
between what is “audience” and what is “content” has
become increasingly blurred.
The desktop publishing revolution that followed HP’s
invention of the mass market laser printer opened up
journalism to individuals who might previously have relied
on typewriters, stencil duplicators and photocopiers.
Because it has made self-publishing straightforwardly
easy, the web has fostered a correspondingly significant
generation of independent citizen journalists, powering the
These changes are being amplified and accelerated
by the dramatic technological developments of the past
two decades. This is only likely to continue as emerging
technologies that reinforce Horizontal Influence gain wider
adoption:
s 0ERSONAL6IDEO2ECORDERS062S AREUSINGSIMPLE
artificial intelligence to learn people’s preferences, and
create “personal” television channels that show what
they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Music
and television content is increasingly available on the
underground download market, and consumed on
devices that carry no commercial messaging.
s 233FEEDSAREALLOWINGAUDIENCESTOCREATETHEIROWN
news feeds that focus only on what they think they want
to hear, drawing from both the mainstream media and
their peers.
s &ILTERINGSOFTWAREANDHARDWAREAREALLOWINGAUDIENCES
to avoid commercial messaging on the web, in their
email, and on their televisions.
growth of Horizontal Influence.30 And it has provided a s 3TORAGEEDITINGANDDISTRIBUTIONTECHNOLOGIESFORTEXT
ready-made audience. audio, and video are making it easier than ever for
users to publish their ideas, opinions and creations.
At the same time, online marketplaces like eBay have
not only created a global ‘yard sale’ (by the end of
2005, almost one in ten Americans had sold something
online31), but created new small businesses. Consumers are
becoming resellers, with an increasing ability to set prices.
When H&M released a low-cost clothing line from designer
Stella McCartney, it sold out immediately. However, within
a day, items were changing hands on eBay for twice what
H&M had been charging.32
s 3EARCHRECOMMENDATIONANDCOMPARISONENGINESARE
helping to sift through these oceans of new content,
learning and predicting our individual tastes, and
increasingly replacing the editorial function that has
– until now – justified the existence of some huge
mainstream media and entertainment organisations.
s 3OCIALNETWORKINGAPPLICATIONSAREHELPINGPEOPLE
discover and communicate with other people who
share their interests, and putting them into direct contact
with the experts and opinion-leaders, bypassing the
gatekeepers who once brokered these relationships.
18
Changing
audience
Theatre

roles
Game shows

Reality shows

Audience role User content shows

Broadcasters role youtube

19
On the one hand, there is an increasingly complex media
landscape matched by changing media consumption
patterns, making it harder to reach large audiences.
On the other there is an increasingly technologically
empowered audience of media-literate consumers who
are less likely to act upon commercial messages.
As brands and organisations that want to survive and thrive
under these circumstances, it is clear that you must change
the way you engage your public. But what should you be
doing? By definition, Horizontal Influence is something
that organisations and their agencies can’t exert on their
own behalf. Horizontal Influence relies on peer-originated
communications: that’s why it works, why it’s “horizontal”.
A little insight into human nature and motivations
helps place brands in the proper context for the new
environment. Your public are not your employees, your
lobbyists, or your agents, or your media channel. When
they endorse your organisations, people, or products, they
are not your paid hacks – instead, they are doing it for
their own purposes. You must understand this motivation,
and do whatever it takes to encourage the Horizontal
Influencers to promote your products.
What makes people share their opinions about products
and services? At its simplest level, they just need for
something to talk about – what social commentator
Douglas Rushkoff defines as “Social Currency.”33
20
At a deeper level, they are searching for individual
recognition (whether professionally or socially), and
the need to express themselves. They are keen to share
their expertise and opinions somewhere where their
contributions will be valued. They might be promoting
their professional expertise, trying to help a stranger,
or just sharing their pleasure or frustration with a product
or service.
The web provides the platform for self-expression: the ability to
find an appreciative audience of peers, among whom people
can invent, re-invent, and promote their personal brands.34
Putting it simply, people want to define who they are, and to
promote their own personal brands and to achieve these aims
they’re prepared to let certain third party brands help them.
Understanding this, and from many years’ experience
dealing with multi-channel communications, Porter
Novelli can recommend four very simple (but effective)
communications strategies.
21
very simple
(but effective)
communications
strategies...
22
23
1. Listen
Listening, and paying attention to what you hear, is
the essential first step in your approach to Horizontal
Influence. If you’re not already doing this, any activity that
you currently plan and implement to help you adapt to
the changing landscape exists in a vacuum. You haven’t
established the benchmarks you need to assess the impact
and longevity of your activities in this space. And above
Listen to and value anecdotal evidence from your staff: they
bring you news from the front line.
Make information from customer touchpoints (retail centres,
call centres, websites etc.) immediately available across
your entire organisation, and encourage everyone to use it.
Track these stories as they ebb and flow over time,
and learn to identify the trigger points that affect the
Horizontal Influence news cycle. These will differ from
market to market, from brand to brand. This is some of
the most important competitive knowledge that you will
ever gather because:
all, you don’t know how, when, and where to respond.
Before you start planning any activity, you must map the
landscape of Horizontal Influence as it applies to you, and
your marketplace. You must listen to what’s being said
and you must create or access comprehensive historical
archives of digital content that will inform benchmarking
and research.
Be sure that you understand the key issues that define the
conversations around your category.
Know who your high-priority stakeholder communities are,
what roles they play, and what they currently think, feel,
and say to other people about your organisation.
Invest in technologies that scour blogs, forums, wikis, s )TSFREECUSTOMERRESEARCHTHATTELLSYOUWHAT
newsgroups, email lists and websites, for mentions of your your customers are saying about you, and about
brands, your competitive set, and the key issues that affect your competitors.
your market.
s )TSANEARLYWARNINGSYSTEMTHATWILLHELPYOUIDENTIFY
Develop a list of key words and phrases that should alert potential trouble spots.
you to opportunities and threats, and use them to trigger
activity when they turn up in consumer communications. s )TSATRACKINGSYSTEMTHATWILLLETYOUASSESSTHE
effectiveness of marketing campaigns, events, and
Cross-reference online activity and customer-relations media-relations activity.
information with mainstream media coverage, and other
marketing activity. You should be able to identify the
mainstream media stories that create the most online
buzz, and the online stories that eventually surface in the
mainstream media.
24
 Professional product reviews

Call centre

Mainstream media

Staff

Blogs

Consumer product reviews

Chat rooms

Consumer advocacy sites

In-store

Wikis

25
2. Respond
If you know something, and don’t act on it, you might as
well have never known. Listening isn’t enough. Once you
have put in place the tools and processes, you need to
know what the Horizontal Influencers are saying about
you. You must quickly establish a response strategy.
We recommend that you build this around four key ideas:
i. Be Fast
Timeliness of response is essential: news spreads much
faster on the web than it does in traditional media. The
global Internet audience is “always on”, and doesn’t
adhere to predictable news cycles. Stories can blow up
quickly as audiences in different time zones and countries
come online. Plus the Internet doesn’t stop working at
weekends. However, a good monitoring system should
always give you enough advance warning to respond
speedily to both good news and bad.
So you need to be prepared: establish clear policies and
crisis management procedures that describe who should
respond, under what circumstances, and the nature of the
response. Above all, establish clear responsibilities.
ii. Be Honest
Honesty is essential when trying to encourage, or respond
to Horizontal Influencers. Spokespeople must make
their position clear, and not pretend to be anything, or
anyone other than they are. Painful experience shows
that the public are much better at uncovering commercial
activity masquerading as grassroots communications than
organisations or agencies think. Do not underestimate
them. Furthermore, spokespeople must be honest in what
they say and the way they say it: their response will be
picked over by many readers and commentators.
Bear in mind, too, that each and every employee of the
company will be perceived as a spokesperson. In most
cases, they will be your best ambassadors to the Horizontal
Influence because they are real people, and real people
are what drive Horizontal Influence. Blogging policies and
social media policies should make it clear to them that they
must always identify themselves as employees, even when
the views are clearly their own.
26
iii. Be Relevant
The world of Horizontal Influence is a global
conversation, where you should follow the usual rules
of polite society: don’t interrupt or try to change the
topic. You should be sure that what people are saying is
relevant and adds value to what has already been said,
not simply cut-and-paste a pre-agreed company line.
Above all, you must take their time to familiarise yourself
with the opinions, attitudes, and conventions of the
community or blog in which you are responding.
iv. Be Personal
Understand and adhere to the basic principal of netiquette,
“remember the human.” Be personal. Just as you should try
to get to know the person, or community before they begin
to respond, you should work to make yourself known, and
establish yourself as a real person.
People respond better to people than they do to
anonymous positions or roles, and that’s part of the
attraction of Horizontal Influence. Phone conversations,
or even physical meetings with key Horizontal Influence
stakeholders will help develop personal relationships that
will afford your responses better reception.
27
Case Study:
Customer review
prompts product recall
In September 2006, Hasbro recalled quarter of a million
Playskool toy tool benches35 because of a choking risk.
They were responding to a customer story posted on
Amazon.com, picked up during a routine review of
customer comments.

28
Case Study:
Kryptonite Bicycle Locks
In September 2004, a post on a cycling forum showed how a supposedly impenetrable Kryptonite bike lock could be
picked using a Bic biro.36 The information was picked up on by blogs and quickly became a major news story. Kryptonite
were aware of the story from day one, but did not announce their “lock exchange” programme until eight days after the
story broke, nor did they interact with the bloggers who were pushing the story. Whilst Kryptonite’s head of PR, Donna
Tucci, notes that the company were not slow in developing a solution, she admits that if the situation occurred again, the
company would be much quicker in responding to bloggers – thereby avoiding the creation of the myth that Kryptonite
were clueless about new media.37

29
3. Influence
A passive listen-and-respond strategy still won’t meet your
needs: you should expect to exert your own influence
in the debates and conversations that cover key issues
in your market. How you do this will depend on your
audiences, but – at the very least – you should invest in
both a Content Development Programme and a Blogger
Relationship Programme.
Content Development Programme
Horizontal Influencers have an insatiable appetite for all
kinds of content: news, photographs, research, opinions,
statistics, anything. It’s up to you to feed this appetite as
best you can.
Carry out research to understand what your various interest
communities are looking for, and how you can help them.
What do you have that they want that no one else can
offer? Think about what they want to hear and do, not
what you want to say.
Review the information that you already publish against
these needs, and adapt it for an online audience. Make
content available in as many formats as you can: supply
PDF files, text files, spreadsheets, photographs, audio files,
and video. Have documents “chunked” into short, easily
re-purposed files. Publish clear and friendly re-use licenses.
Ensure that your answers are as easy to find as possible,
by optimising carefully for search engines, and investing in
link-building programmes.
Publish your content widely, and not just on your own site,
instead seeking out content repositories where users are
likely to be looking – you might, for example, consider
publishing photographs and images on Flickr. Don’t be
precious about bringing audiences to your website. One
of the paradoxes of Horizontal Influence, after all, is that
audiences are more likely to believe your information when
someone else presents it to them.
Put systems in place to monitor content re-use, so that
you can learn what content best attracts the Horizontal
Influencers, what is most likely to be picked up and
used, and what attracts positive word-of-mouth. Use
this knowledge to implement a content development
programme to create a steady stream of attractive, re-
usable material for the Horizontal Influencers.
Blogger Relationship Programme
From your online stakeholder analysis, you should be
able to identify the key horizontal influencers and opinion
formers in your field. Seek their opinions, and ask for
advice. Treat them as though they were journalists, get
to know them, invite them to events, and send them news
updates. Consider running blog “roadshows”, offering
exclusive interview opportunities to key bloggers and
communities.
30
 Content
development
programme
Content
Input Blogs and forums

Mainstream media

Niche publications
typesPress releases

Product demos

White papers

Community sites Expert opinions

Content repositories Properly tagged assets:

eg. Flickr & You Tube video, audio, photographs

Consumers Research results

31
4. Enlist
Recall that the insight in dealing with Horizontal Influence
is that people need to define and promote themselves.
Bearing this in mind, the final step in addressing the
challenge of Horizontal Influence is simply to accentuate
the positive. Do what you can to make your promoters
louder than your detractors. Ensuring that your customer
advocates have a visible platform from which to promote
themselves will help them promote your products and
messages.

You should develop ways of identifying those who

regularly pass on positive word-of-mouth. There are many
ways you could perform this research, from straightforward
desk research and customer satisfaction surveys, to the
more technically complex sentiment analysis.

Involve them as much as you can. Seek their advice, speak

to them, send them free trial products, backstage passes,
and ask their opinion. Let them try out new products before
anyone else. Invite them to try out new web services,
create special areas for them. Making it special means
making it exclusive – you can’t let everyone in. Maybe
let them invite a few friends – by making them the arbiter
of who’s in, and who isn’t, you’ll give them a reason
to tell their friends. When Google set up Gmail, their
free webmail service in 2004, the scarcity value of the
invitations meant they could be traded on eBay for up to
two hundred dollars.40

32
33
Case Study: 250,000 American teens are members of Tremor, P&G’s
nationwide “seeding trial” panel. An online screening
process ensures that members of the “Tremor Crew” are
both influential amongst their teen peers and likely to

Tremor
recommend products to their friends. The teens involved
are given pre-launch samples and previews of products.
They are also invited to have a say in the way that
these products are marketed, frequently becoming loyal
advocates of the products.41 Because teens are more likely
to trust other teens (see the tobacco “Truth” campaign),
Tremor has had remarkable results – as a launch
optimisation tool, it is reported that Tremor can generate a
10-30% sales increase measured against a location where
Tremor is not used.42

34
Case Study:
Lego Ambassadors
Lego Ambassadors are not employees of the company but, as one AFOL (Adult Fan of Lego) puts it, “trusted allies”.43
The Ambassadors are influential members of the enormous global Lego community who liaise between the company and
their consumers. Ambassadors are not paid in cash, but receive free Legos, special offers, and are invited to one-off Lego
events. Actively embodying the Lego values of creativity and connectivity, the unpaid Ambassadors monitor consumer
opinion, provide feedback, and help develop new Lego products, of which the popular bespoke ‘Lego Factory’, where
consumers can request specific legos, is the best example.44

35
Porter Novelli has always helped its clients listen and
respond to what’s being said about them, and to direct
their internal and external communications as effectively as
possible. We have helped our clients gently exert a positive
and responsible influence in the media, and in public
affairs. We have been able to apply what we have learned
from many years’ experience of encouraging positive
word-of-mouth to each new medium as it arises.
We are good at identifying and engaging key influencers
and opinion formers within our clients’ many audiences.
We know how to engage and amplify genuine grass-roots
support, and we know how to create customer advocates.
We know how to monitor sentiment, how to create positive
word of mouth, and how to smooth away potential crises.
These skills translate neatly and directly into the new world
of Horizontal Influence.

Today our proposition is stronger than ever. The gradual

erosion of broadcast advertising’s dominance over the
communications and marketing mix is forcing organisations
to re-think their strategic relationships. Porter Novelli has
the experience and the tools to give its clients a competitive
advantage today and a commitment to research and
development to face future challenges.

Public relations practitioners have always recognised that

each of our clients is a very important stakeholder among
many in the much larger conversations that surround
them. Porter Novelli’s job is to help our clients navigate
these conversations, promoting their point-of-view, and
responding to the point of view of others. To do this, we
plan and execute across all channels but the democratic
new media channels with their multiple stakeholders and
conversational subtleties are particularly suited to our more
collaborative approach.

36
Case Study:
Florida Truth Campaign
In 1998, Porter Novelli helped the State of Florida develop the highly succesful anti-tobacco “truth” campaign. The success
came from the insights and involvement of those the campaign was aimed at: teens. Teens helped develop the message
and, through a teen advocacy movement, made the anti-tobacco message cool in a way that previous campaigns had
been conspicuously unable to. With teens driving home the “truth” to other teens that grown-up tobacco companies had
lied to them, the percentage of Florida middle schoolers who smoked fell from 18.5% to 8.6% in just two years.45

37
Case Study:
SeaWorld
SeaWorld has rides, facilities and animals but it doesn’t really become SeaWorld until the visitors are there too. Porter
Novelli brought that insight to the redevelopment of their web site, removing the slick professionally developed imagery
and photos and putting customers front and centre as the storytellers for the park experience.

Porter Novelli contacted hundreds of SeaWorld visitors on photo sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa asking them for
permission to use their photographs on SeaWorld’s website.

38
Case Study:
Crayola
With help from Porter Novelli, Crayola is reaching out to new mothers. Crayola has launched a collaborative project with
parents to produce a book about the importance of drawing and “scribbles” to child development. We asked parents to
submit their child’s first scribbles to Flickr, tagging them “Crayola Beginnings.” Their child’s drawings are automatically
included on the Crayola Web Site, and a select few have been included in a coffee table book developed in parallel with
the website, and featuring a well-known child development expert.

Children whose drawings are used receive full acknowledgement, and a large collection of Crayola products. In addition,
a product’s donation is made in their name to the top 10 US children’s hospitals.

39
Existing tools, practices
and research scale
well to the emerging
landscape
40

Our tool kit scales well to address the changes brought
about by Horizontal Influence. Where others can get
bogged down in detail, the Communications Architecture
framework that lies at the heart of our business is a model
that helps us to see the big picture by understanding how
to combine channels, and by identifying which tactics will
achieve our clients’ strategic communications goals.
Using the Communications Architecture framework as
our guide lets us take a holistic view of our three core
communications disciplines – marketing, public affairs and
corporate communications – and the multiple stakeholder
groups they reach. We understand that the interplay of
Horizontal Influence and mainstream media is key to
managing the success of any and all communications
plans. Our robust, straightforward approach has enabled
us to integrate Horizontal Influence channels and tactics
into our clients’ communications planning, not as a knee-
jerk reaction, or opportunistic posturing, but as carefully
considered and valued activities.
41
Built on the foundation of Porter Novelli’s proprietary Styles
consumer surveys, our Viral Mapping tool identifies groups
of individuals who are NetFluencers™— those who both
know and connect a lot of people and are recognised by
others to have authority or expertise for specific categories
of goods and services for example technology or health.
Analysing the data lets us identify the individuals most
likely to serve as trendsetters and “spreaders” for particular
product categories. By combining this information with
other Styles survey items we can create detailed audience
profiles of these NetFluencers™, mapping (among others)
traditional and new media consumption patterns, political
attitudes, and leisure-time activities.
We create panels of NetFluencers™ to collect more detailed
information, and to track shifting attitudes towards issues
and events. Using a combination of online surveys, more
detailed interviews, and focus groups, we define how
Horizontal Influence operates in specific product categories
from the perspective of those who are most likely to spread it.
Porter Novelli is
investing in new tools
and research
42
We have invested in new monitoring technologies that let
us track consumer conversations, opinion, and reviews
across the web. We can set keyword triggers by client,
by industry, and by issue to alert us to sensitive issues on
blog posts and Amazon reviews. New sentiment analysis
technologies let us identify our client brand’s promoters and
detractors, and let us track overall audience response to
triggers such as news stories, campaigns, launches, and
competitor activity.
We are also investing in tools that let us map the
relationships between the stakeholders in a conversation.
Using tools and techniques well established in academic
disciplines such as mathematical sociology44, economics45,
information sciences46, and artificial intelligence and
linguistics47, we can analyse data in ways that let us plan
effective activity.
s 7ECANDRAWNETWORKMAPSTHATSHOWUSHOW s .EWSENTIMENTANALYSISTECHNOLOGIESLETUSIDENTIFYOUR
various stakeholders relate to each other, helping you
understand where to focus your attention to avoid
wasted effort.
s 7ECANIDENTIFYTHEMOSTINmUENTIALBLOGGERS Porter Novelli is committed to further
newsgroups and other Horizontal Influence stakeholders, research and development in these areas.
not just the most popular. Often, “influence” will go
hand-in-hand with “popularity”: the more people who
read a communication, the more influence it exerts.
But when we understand the network map, we can
see that who reads a blog or message can create
disproportionate influence (imagine, for example a blog
with only ten readers, one of whom is the news editor of
a national TV station). When everyone can publish their
opinion about our clients’ products, knowing who exerts
influence and who doesn’t is key.
s )NmUENCEMAPPINGANDCITATIONANALYSISWILLHELPUS
understand what mainstream media stories create online
buzz, and vice versa. Increasingly, we can use the
mainstream to promote online buzz, and anticipate.
client brand’s promoters and detractors, and let us track
overall audience response to news stories, campaigns,
launches, and competitor activity.
43
Conclusion
How should organisations meet the challenges that are
thrown up by the rise of Horizontal Influence?

How will they anticipate and respond to the threats

presented by a space where audiences comment freely on
their products, services and communications, where their
control over their brand and the way that it is presented is
increasingly shared with their consumers? And how should
they build a communications platform that will let them take
advantage of the new opportunities that are presented by
Horizontal Influence?

Porter Novelli’s long-standing experience in managing

multiple audiences and channels, our market-proven
tools and processes, and our unique approach to
communications strategy help us answer these questions for
our many clients.

At the same time, we have been investing in new research,

people, training expertise, and technologies that will help
our clients seize strategic competitive advantage.

The more things change, the more our clients need

seasoned partners whom they can trust, and who have the
skills and knowledge to offer sound advice.

Porter Novelli is confident that, with our help, our clients

will thrive in a world of Horizontal Influence.

44
References
1
Genesis 2:17 17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zh1jYN2JPs 32
SFGate “McCartney Fashion Designs Lead to eBay Stampede” (November 2005)
2
Genesis 3:6 18
http://futurewire.blogspot.com/2006/06/coke-mentos-lessons-in-viral-marketing.html http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=7&entry_id=1753
3
TARP Coca Cola Study (1978) 19
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/mentos_and_diet.html 33
Douglas Rushkoff, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out (2005).
See also: http://www.rushkoff.com/columns/social_currency.html
4
Jeff Jarvis, Dell Hell (June 2005) see: http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/ 20
http://www.mentosgeysers.com/
cat_dell.html 34
See: Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995)
21
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115007602216777497-1mzdx_
5
Matthew Peterson, iPod nano flaw (September 2005) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/ pOFlMBwo9UAiqbsgY6MZ0_20060619.html?mod=blogs 35
Washington Post: “2 Deaths Prompt Toy Recall” (23 September 2006)
hi/technology/4286294.stm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/22/
22
http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/blog/2006/06/mentos_and_diet.html AR2006092201370.html
6
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1599974,00.html 23
http://www.fool.com/investing/value/2006/06/12/coke-is-an-idiot. 36
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,64987,00.html
7
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/netmusic/story/0,,1786403,00.html aspx?ref=foolwatch
37
http://www.intuitive.com/blog/debunking_the_myth_of_kryptonite_locks_and_
8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1793785,00.html 24
See, for example: the_blogosphere.html
Michael Schaller, Present Tense: The United States Since 1945, (2003)\
9
1) Working Families for Wal-Mart (December 2005) Arthur Marwick, British Society since 1945: The Penguin Social History of Britain, 38
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63786,00.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Families_for_Wal-Mart (2003)
2) Walmarting Across America (October 2006) Anthony Aldgate, Censorship and the Permissive Society: British cinema and
39
Paul Marsden, ‘Seed to Spread’, in Kirby & Marsden (eds), Connected Marketing
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/ theatre, 1955-1965, (1995) (Oxford, 2006), p.13.
db20061009_579137.htm
25
Lev Grossman, “Harriet Klausner” (Time, December 2006)
40
Ibid., p.14.
10
Chevrolet Tahoe 2007 User-Generated Media campaign (March 2006) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1570726,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/04/business/media/04adco.html?ei=5088
41
http://www.communityguy.com/index.cfm?commentID=421
&en=280e20c8ba110565&ex=1301803200&adxnnl=1&partner=rssnyt&adxn 26
Linda Stone: http://continuouspartialattention.jot.com/WikiHome 42
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9109661503152931862&hl=en
nlx=1173194193-9g29dHWa2AEGAFYIiw8szw 27
Many studies exist, but see for example, the Yahoo!/OMD Study “It’s a Family 43
http://www.social-marketing.org/success/cs-floridatruth.html
11
Al Gore’s Penguin Army (August 2006) Affair: the Media Evolution of Global Families in a Digital Age” for a view of how
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore’s_Penguin_Army families use different media for different purposes: http://yhoo.client.shareholder. 44
Social Network Analysis: See, for example, Mark Granovetter, “The Strength of
com/press/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=212192 Weak Ties” (1973) or Valdis Krebs, Social Network Analysis, A Brief Introduction
12
In terms of Horizontal Influence, viral videos are just advertisements without a (2006)
proper media spend; when one person passes it on to another, they are probably 28
We Media: how audiences are shaping the future of news and information
endorsing your advertisement, not your product. http://www.hypergene.net/wemedia/weblog.php 45
Input-Output Analysis: See, for example, Wassily Leontief, Input-Output Economics
(1966)
13
“Volkswagen to Sue Polo Duo” (January 2005) 29
Washington Post: Camera Phones Lend Immediacy to Images of Disaster (July 8,
http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1398392,00.html 2005) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/ 46
Citation Analysis: See, for example, Eugene Garfield, “Citation Analysis as a Tool
AR2005070701522.html in Journal Evaluation” (1972). Available at: http://www.garfield.library.upenn.
14
“Volkswagen unveils new Polo slogan” (January 2006) edu/essays/V1p527y1962-73.pdf
http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,1680922,00.html 30
Pew Internet Report “A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers” (July 2006)
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP%20Bloggers%20Report%20July%2019% 47
Discourse Analysis, Sentiment Analysis: See for example, Bo Pang & Lillian Lee,
15
Wired “Home-Brew iPod Ad Opens Eyes” (December 2004) 202006.pdf “A Sentimental Education: Sentiment Analysis Using Subjectivity Summarization
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/commentary/ Based on Minimum Cuts” (2004). Available at: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/
cultofmac/2004/12/66001 31
Pew Internet Press Release, “17% of internet users – about 25 million people home/llee/papers/cutsent.pdf
-- have sold something online” (November 2005)
16
Indecent Proposal (2001) http://www.pewinternet.org/press_release.asp?r=117
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416850/

46
47
www.porternovelli.com