Destroying the Funnel With "Denny's"

I don't eat at Denny's. The last time I ate at one was when I was in San Francisco five years ago and there was one across from my hotel. Living in Worcester and being surrounded by awesome independent diners can really spoil you.
Regardless, Denny's is on my mind. I know what the chain restaurant is up to, I know their current campaigns and promotions and what's new on their menus. All because the corporation has been hijacking the groundswell and exploiting all of its resources in order to gather a loyal and loving consumer base.

Chapter 5 of Groundswell focuses on the impact that listening can grant a company, claiming that "your brand is whatever your customers say it is." This causes brands to belong to the customers or those who are talking about it. There needs to be a respect for the customers instead of a separation. The more human and relatable a brand can be, the more likely that the consumers would want to interact. 

In order to listen to the audience, you need to know how to talk to them. Chapter 6 includes the graphic shown above - an outdated and difficult to manage representation of the process that advertising goes through. The model stands in that reaching out to customers goes through the same process, except with the introduction of the groundswell, people are now learning from each other instead of only from what their eyeballs see at the beginning of the funnel.

Groundswell outlines four easy and basic ways to talk with the groundswell (and in turn, adding a catalyst to the funnel): post a viral video, engage in social networks and user-generated sites, join the blogosphere, and create a community. 

This is where Denny's comes in.

1. Post a Viral Video

Denny's has an active and social YouTube channel. They post all of their television commercials and some special behind the scenes shorts for subscribers.

In conjunction with their special Hobbit themed menu tied to the release of the Desolation of Smaug Denny's uploaded this exclusive behind the scenes video of the film. Despite it having no visuals of bacon or brunch specials, it reminds viewers of the Hobbit menu and garners a loyalty from interested fans. Even though it only has around 200,000 views, the response is very positive. 

These comments were on the video above - Now they will be attuned to the channel for Hobbit updates and will be getting Denny's updates as well!

2. Engage in Social Media and User-Generated Site 

This is where Denny's truly thrives. Their website puts their social media outlets front and center, providing links to their Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube. It is apparent that Denny's wants to communicate with consumers and has made a great effort to conform their social media sites to the fads and jargon that are prevalent. 

Denny's Tumblr presence has caused quite a stir. Tumblr is a blogging site where people can upload original content (text, photos, gifs, videos, audio) or they can "reblog" posts from other users on their blog represented by "notes" that the post receives. There is a particular language that exists on Tumblr, with favorite memes, popular gifs, and a quick-witted silliness that pervades its sense of humor. Denny's understands Tumblr-speak and exploits it in order to reach out to Tumblr users and possible consumers. Simple posts like a text post only saying "baecon" (a play on "bae" a popular slang word for a significant other) or one containing the gif below receive thousands of notes and reblogs. Denny's gets the word out through those who repost their content. By only listening and conforming to the societal norms of the specific site they can designate more than half of their outreach to be done by consumers instead of employees.

3. & 4. Join the Blogosphere and Create a Community

By being so active in their social media outposts and by using Tumblr on a daily basis, Denny's has joined the blogosphere successfully. 

As seen on their Tumblr page, on the right they have links to their most popular posts (tagged bacon, gifs, text posts - like the "baecon" post mentioned above, Denny's fans - where they post submitted pics from fans, Denny's selfie - any photos with a Denny's building in it, and Denny's things - a play on a Tumblr meme to put inspirational text over an intriguing picture). 

By putting their fans in the spotlight and playing along with popular jokes and memes a community is formed of Denny's and their fans. Fans feel like they can speak to them as they would anyone else that they follow, opening up conversation and keeping the smell of bacon and pancakes fresh on the mind.

To have a company in the time of the groundswell, one must be patient. There can't be a hierarchy where the company is unreachable and distant. By taking advantage of the social media sphere, companies like Denny's show that they are "just like us" and understand where we are coming from. Groundswell reminds us in Chapter 5 that "communities add lasting value, even for research." As people that follow Denny's Tumblr reblog more and more gifs of bacon, Denny's realizes that "their people" have a love affair with that particular cut of meat and can introduce it into more of their dishes and promotions. 

"Consumers in the middle of the funnel are engaged in conversations on blogs, in discussion forums and in social networks," according to Li and Bernoff. The funnel becomes more of an open tube as consumers are interacting more with each other and with outside influences than attempting to directly with the company. Denny's has embraced the groundswell by ignoring the antiquated proceedings of the marketing process - they have made a community with the new set of consultants and informants: the people of the internet. 

The Inevitable Hacking of Social Media - The Secret App

The scope and reach of the internet has allowed users to find confidence in anonymity, as it is easy to construct a persona to hide behind, with little consequence or judgement. The juggernauts of social media such as Facebook and Twitter have the capacity for creating false or hidden identities, but the idea behind them (to connect with others) promotes the use of one's "true" self (or at least a version that they wish to project).

Over the past couple of years in conjunction with the immense global popularity of mobile phone applications there has been the popular option of "full" anonymity. Apps such as Snapchat provide the guise of self-destructing photos: the idea is that you can take a photo and send it to a friend knowing that it will only last a predetermined number of minutes before it is permanently deleted. This has given users the confidence to "snap" whatever they want without having to worry about the picture being around to haunt them. Problems arose though, as people realized that they could screenshot the photos they were sent or that despite the photo disappearing the company keeps copies of everything that goes through the server. Situations such as this solidify the idea that everything you put out on the internet and the social media sphere can never be permanently deleted.

Enter the app Secret that is available on iOS and Android.

The app allows people to share messages anonymously within their circle of friends, friends of friends, and publicly. Unlike other apps in a similar vein (PostSecret, Whisper, Yik Yak) this app is specifically made for sharing primarily with friends, which in turn makes it more interesting and addictive for people reading the updates. 

The app was founded by two social media moguls, David Byttow who was the former technical lead for Square Wallet  and Chris Bader-Wechseler who has worked at Google+, Photovine, and YouTube. One would think that an app built by people who have had extensive experience in the social media realm would be immediately successful, but initial forays were lackluster. Social media enthusiast Dawson Ingersoll downloaded the app last year about three months after its launch. "I downloaded Secret and I didn't find it to have a large enough community to continue with it," he said. Dawson said that he deleted the app after only a few weeks of having it. 

A couple of months ago,  the app had around 5 million downloads, which in the scheme of things is not many. Despite this, users have found a way to hack the main draw of the app - its secrecy. Two users who are also security researchers, Benjamin Caudill and Bryan Seely were able to infiltrate the app's system and expose the origins of specific posts. The leak was discovered as the men were trying to find bugs and weaknesses within the app's operating system. After figuring out the weakness, they reported the problem to Secret and now the company assures users that their secrets will be safe from exposure. 

Though the hack was staged and not malicious, the fact that these professional security researchers were able to not only break into the fundamental baseline of the app, but were also able to contact the founder directly through Twitter and initiate a scare to the system proves yet again the ever changing stability of such applications. Over the past month or so there have been numerous hacks to the Cloud, notably the leaking of salacious and/or private celebrity photos. There is an overwhelming feeling that permeates through the social media and digital world that precautions have to be made and users run the risk of being exposed or exploited. Can an app such as Secret ever truly live up to its name? Is there any way that things put on social media and the internet can be safe and protected? The more and more apps like Secret that come out make it easier for professional researchers and any hacking enthusiast to infiltrate. What will be hacked next? Can any social media be foolproof in the wake of groundswell?

Even though Caudill and Seely were professionals and their job revolves around exposing the weaknesses in applications and the like, it doesn't mean that the non-professional can't do the same. As Li and Bernoff simply put, "lawyers and entrepreneurs aren't the most powerful force on the Internet. People are." By having the app so readily available to anyone with a smart phone, anyone can mess with it and examine it to the point where they can hack the system, as it is the "technology in the hands of the almost always connected people that makes it so powerful". Caudill and Seely get the spotlight because their attempts were successful and they aimed to market their company Rhino Security Labs. They took advantage of the groundswell in that they used the technology to "get things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations." Their security company gets publicity from the hack, but they also help fix a glaring mistake in the coding of the app. Even in the bad news that Secret received from the hack, there is an inevitable boost in those who are aware of it, reminiscent of the cliche that all press is good press.