If people don’t like your company, they’re not going to buy from you.

In a new study by my old employer, Weber Shandwick, 69% of participants aid they frequently or regularly discuss how they fell about a product they bought. 70% said they avoid buying a product if they don’t like the company that makes it. And, no surprise, 88% said that word of mouth is still most  influences their opinion of a company.

More can be found here on the Forbes blog.

My take from the study: marketing (brand) and corporate communications (reputation) need to be one, or at least work a whole lot more closely than these organizations do in most large companies.

BUT only 34 percent percent are “very satisfied” with rebels’ ability to provide that value inside their organizations.

Companies want these rebels’ fresh thinking but many corporate cultures are getting in the way of that happening.   For while companies want to innovate the study found that they are uncomfortable when people challenge the status quo, question executive decisions, go around the rules, and ask too many questions.

If changing quickly to  tap into marketing opportunities and challenges is more important than ever, perhaps it’s time to change what our organizations value, model new behaviors as leaders, and teach rebels how to share their ideas in ways that trigger conversations vs. provoking anger.

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about rebels.  Please feel free to share this research in your organizations.  I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in creating organizations where change agents are valued vs. viewed as trouble makers.

I’m writing a rather important speech for an executive to give in Washington, D.C. next week about women in innovation and came across this rather alarming piece of research by Madeline Heilman, professor or organizational development at New York University.

The study found that:

• People viewed women in male-type occupations as less competent than men, unless there is concrete, visible performance information to prove otherwise.
• When evidence showed that the women were as successful and competent as the men, they faced another challenge: people said the women were unlikable. People like men more than women in male-dominated fields like engineering.
• Both competence and likability play a role in workplace success and career advancement. So women in science and technology fields have a double whammy to overcome: prove they know their stuff and overcome biases that they are cold, pushy, unfeeling and generally unlikable.

Other research has found that women in the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math) drop out of their fields mid-career, about 10 years into it. No wonder, with such ingrained biases among both men and women. Who wants to get up and go to work in that environment?

Heilman’s research also found that when people were told that the woman demonstrated “communal” behavior, e.g.,  she encourages cooperation and fosters a sense of belonging for her employees, people began liking her.  Similarly if people learned the woman was a mother, they liked her more.

Women have made progress, but not enough. The guys may have unfounded biases about women in these male-dominated fields, but we working women should know better, and be open and supportive of women who are still breaking the glass ceiling and lab walls.

When you’re looking at your social media data, Chris suggests asking smart question to evalauate what’s going on and what it means to your strategy. Three questions I found especially interesting when looking at the data:

1. What surprised us?
2. So what?  What should we think about doing differently based on what the data shows.
3. What is our intent with social media?  What does the data tell us about how well we’re doing (or not) in pursuit of that intent?

Who cares what your title is, advertisements notify but don’t convince, leadership is earned with ideas, celebrity endorsements are dumb, and an more exciting workplace is more a reason to switch jobs than more money or benefits.

These are some of the highlights of  new study about Gen Y, or Millenials, those people born 1979- 1995, released today by Mr Youth and market research firm Intrepid. You can download the study here.

Some things I found most interesting:

• Value ideas over titles, experience: This new generation of talent could care less about how big your title or how long you’ve held a job. Seniority and tenure are dirty words. They believe that authority and respect is earned and that people with the best ideas should rise to the top. For leaders this means inspiring people with ideas that are relevant, exciting, forward thinking.  Incremental business-as–usual goals won’t engage or retain this group.

• To attract and keep talent we need to create organizations that are stimulating, challenging, friendly, fun: The number one reason Millenials change jobs is “a need for change,” (37%), not a bigger title, paycheck or benefits.

• I want a say: Most of those surveyed said they want to be part of team that makes decisions on a consensus basis. This was much higher than making individual decisions, or taking decisions from others.

Sitaram Asur and Beranardo Huberman built two models to predict the box office sales of movies based on Twitter. The model for predicting first weekend box office sales was 97.3 percent accuraate and the prediction for second weekend performance was 94 percent accurate.

From meetings I’ve had recently with marketing scientists I’m convinced that we’ll be seeing many more mathematical models that will not only help quantitatively measure the return on social media engagement but will also link those measures to business metrics like sales, trial, leads.

MIT’s “Technology Review” article about these Twitter models raises an interesting question:

Can they change the demand for their film, product or service buy directly influencing the rate at which people tweet about it? In other words, can they change the future that tweeters predict?

To download the “Predicting the Future with Social Media” study click here.

Jeremiah Owang has just published a solid report on how to use social techniques and technologies for sales, customer service, CRM, innovation. In other-words, all those critical functions that help a company build stronger relationships with customers.  I found his assessment of the market readiness of CRM use cases, based on market demand and tech maturity, to be especially insightful. Here’s the report.

In one study he analyzed Twitter data to find out what makes some Tweets more viral than others. The full “Science of Retweeting” report can be found here. Some of the things I found most interesting.:

• Asking people to retweet works, especially when you use the  word “please”
• People like to retweet links to blog posts.
• Lists are big (something I have found in analyzing blog posts, as well). Approximately 69 percent of tweets that are retweeted contain links. (Maybe further proving that Twitter is a giant distribution engine, more than a social network.)
• The peak hour for retweets is 1 p.m. EST

In another recent study Dan found that stories with the word “video” were shared more than the average story on Facebook, and less than average story on Twitter, implying that Facebook may be a better platform than Twitter for getting videos to go viral.

Just what causes a story to go viral?  New York Times Science writer John Tierney reports today on a new in-depth University of Pennsylvania study  that found:

• People share articles that inspire awe
• Positive stores are more likely to be shared than negative
• More emotional stories are emailed more often
• Stories about anxiety travel, but no where close to those that inspire awe

Having done my own studies on what people like to share and the power of meaning making (Beyond Buzz, 2007), I found this new study  validating and insightful — especially learning more about what the heck is awe inspiring.

The UPenn researchers used two criteria for an “awe inspiring story”: the scale of the story is large and it requires the reader to see the world in a different way.

The researchers also found that people like to share awe-inspiring stories not to impress others, but to realize a type of “emotional communion.”

Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is a strong emotion,” said Dr. Jonah Berger of UPenn. ” If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

One of my most popular blog posts over the past few years  had nothing to do with marketing but was about an awe-inspiring 18 hours in an urban hospital emergency room. The resulting comments, calls and emails created an extraordinary emotional communion with friends and strangers.

Three weeks ago I finished writing a new book about an awe-inspiring journey. It was the most fulfilling writing I’ve ever done, and it’s the marketing project I’m most eager to get moving. Why?  There’s nothing more satisfying than emotional communion, and the buzz that goes with it.

Good lessons for all we marketers who  too often rely on a heavy-on-the-logic, light-on-the- emotion style of business communications.  To realize the powerful possibilities of social media our content needs to be emotional and show what’s possible.

Hopefulness and individual stories of transformation and progress. Those are the ingredients for successful marketing, particularly for non-profits and humanitarian organizations, writes New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof  in the Outside magazine article  “How to Save the World and Influence People.”

The lessons,  derived from numerous social psychology studies as well as Kristof’s personal experiences in writing about global atrocities, are certainly compelling for NGOs. I  think these ingredients are also relevant and often overlooked for for-profit organizations.  Here’s what triggers action:

• Hopefulness, aspirations, possibilities: we respond to stories of hope  and transformation, not stories and statistics of desperation.  Making people feel guilty or overwhelming them with statistics of despair rarely moves people to action — or donating money. Showing them what’s possible does. Look to profile heroes, not victims in marketing efforts. “All the psychological research shows that we are moved not by statistics but by fresh, wet tears, with a bit of hope glistening below,” says Kristof.

• Individuals, not groups: people  want to help  individuals not causes.  We respond to stories about a person, not a group. “As we all know,” writes Kristof, “one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”   Kristof shares the example of how early movements against apartheid focused in freeing political prisoners without much success. But when the organizers refocused on one individual — Free Mandela! –  it resonated far more widely. There was a face on the movement. Paul Slovic, psychology professor at University of Oregon, has found that our empathy wanes when the number of individuals profiled reaches just two.

• Success makes people feel good: Knowing that our money is working makes us  feel good about giving. (And we do good things, say the social scientists, because it makes us feel good.)  To keep people engaged, show progress and share stories of triumph. (Making people feel good that their donations are working.) Research also shows that people want to save a high proportion of people, not just a large number of lives. One experiment found that people were far more willing to pay for a water treatment facility to save 4,500 lives in a refugee camp with 11,000 people than they were to save lives of 4,500 people with a camp of  250,000 people. Go figure.

For marketers, the lesson is clear: find stories about individuals overcoming adversity and succeeding in ways they never thought possible — and make sure your donors  feel fortunate to be a part in that person’s success. This, says Kristof and Professor Slovic, are the often overlooked ingredients to  to non-profit marketing success.

While the tragedy in Haiti today requires no marketing to nudge people to help. Six months or a year from now, aids organizations will have to work harder to raise money. Let us hope stories of individuals who rose from the rubble to build a new Haiti are plentiful.