This week, everyone buzzed about the Golf Channel’s epic fail as the cable station tried to spin the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as a golf story. Another big story that had everyone talking was Kevin Spacey’s delivery of the James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, where he schooled the television industry for failing to recognize that viewers want control. If you haven’t watched the speech, it’s must-viewing; you’ll find highlights versions as well as the entire 46-minute lecture on YouTube. In the meantime, a lot of other news and research was reported that you may have missed—or just want to revisit. That’s what you’ll find in the Wrap. I collect the stories that I consider for inclusion in the Wrap (as well as my podcast) on my link blog at LinksFromShel.tumblr.com.

YouTube is king of shopper research

You know all those product reviews, unboxing videos and other merchandise-focused videos on YouTube? They’re the primary research tools people use when they’re looking to make a purchase. Not Amazon reviews. YouTube videos. And YouTube isn’t only the preferred channel for pre-purchase research. It’s also where people go to discuss a purchase after they’ve made it. That’s the word from Adweek‘s Zach James, who says one reason for YouTube’s rise as a product research channel is that “any product can be reviewed…there are still plenty of products and services that you simply won’t find on Amazon or your favorite e-commerce site; those sites are limited to reviews of products they sell.” The lesson for marketers: If you’re going to send demo products, make sure the list of recipients includes those who routinely do YouTube video reviews, and monitor the conversation, since there may well be opportunities to jump in and participate on behalf of the brand.

Social media is tops for customer contact

YouTube is the world’s second-largest search engine. It’s also a social network. The item above should be enough incentive for brands to engage there with existing and prospective customers. Brands also need to beef up their engagement on Facebook, Twitter and other channels, since new research indicates social media is the fastest and most reliable channel for customer contact. (If the brands that leave customer questions sitting unanswered for weeks on Facebook read this, they should feel properly chastised.) According to a study from UK-based eDigital research, “around 80% of consumers who have recently contacted a brand through social media platforms heard back from the company within 12 hours, compared to just over one-third (37%) who heard back within the same time frame when contacting via email.” The study, reported by Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog, adds that “social media is currently the only customer contact channel that guarantees a response from a brand. Of those consumers surveyed who have used social media to get in touch with a company, all of them received a response to their post, comment or tweet.”

Can you train your customers to be more civil when they’re complaining to you?

While accommodating the shift to social media for customer contact, companies are tolerating a lot of vitriol in the complaints many customers leave on Twitter, Facebook and other social channels. I have to admit, I’ve let my anger get the best of me more than once when notifying a company of a problem via Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps companies can use social media as a means of “encouraging customers to think twice before behaving badly,” suggests Michael Schrage in a Harvard Business Review blog post. “Social media make wonderful platforms for ‘nudging’ people into making choices that reduce the chances of unhappy outcomes.” Schrage points to Uber, the car-hailing service, that lets drives rate customers as easily as customers can rate drivers. “Airbnb, the pioneering travel renting/share company, similarly encourages renters to rate guests and guests to rate renters.” As for companies outside the collaborative economy, Schrage says “customers—and clients—who ordinarily might not think twice about making a scene or being difficult (as opposed to demanding) can now find themselves ranked and rated in ways that create genuine costs.” For example, an “unusually picky and quarrelsome guest at a popular hotel chain (might) find it impossible to get any of its discount rates when you book.” Other vendors will adjust their terms if they identify you as someone who enjoys “litigating contract disputes or insisting on arbitration.”

An object lesson for anyone thinking of gaming Reddit

Reddit’s rising profile must be tempting to a lot of marketers looking to manipulate social channels to their brand’s advantage. Warner Bros., the movie studio, gave it a shot recently in an effort to bolster box office for the movie “Getaway.” Based on the reviews, they’ll need all the help they can get, but it turns out planting posts and links and ginning up fake conversations in hopes that Redditors will help spread the word doesn’t pay off. AdAge‘s Simon Dumenco reports that Reddit posted an item to its homepage that scolded the studio. Reddit General Manager Erik Martin wrote, “We have always promised that if we catch companies trying to game reddit we will call them out and let you know…I am coming here today to let you know about a transparency issue with a studio that we have already taken care of.” Reddit had launched an internal investigation that found IP addresses of fake “Getaway” comments matched those owned by Warner Bros. The posts were “all heavily downvoted” as a result, and “all accounts have been banned and we have spoken with Warner Brothers and let them know this is unacceptable.” Martin noted that the activity appeared to be the work of “just a few employees and not some company wide or systematic thing.”

How many Twitter accounts do you need?

A new study from Brandwatch finds a striking increase in the number of brands with more than one Twitter account, from 7% to 63% in the last three years, with an increase of 28% in just the past year. “It appears that having a separate Twitter account for each department or function of a company is how brands utilize the microblogging platform,” writes Helen Leggatt for BizReport. Leggatt notes that Dell has 44 Twitter accounts, making it “less confusing and more convenient for consumers to get in touch with the people most able to address their query,” according to Dell Outlet’s Richard Guerrero. According to Brandwatch’s Gina Horton, “Having different twitter accounts makes a brand more human, as the customer knows it is a person on the other end and that they are specialists in resolving the problem you are facing.”

Gawker takes a new approach to native advertising: in comments

Most native advertising—also known as sponsored content—involves an article or some other form of brand-produced content appearing right in the content stream of publications ranging from the Boston Globe, Atlantic and Forbes to the Huffington Post. Nick Denton’s Gawker is trying a different approach. Instead, the financial services company State Farm is forking money over to Gawker so celebrity scientist Bill Nye can take questions in the comments section of Gizmodo. Writing for AdAge Digital, Alex Kantrowitz says Gawker is “working with advertisers to host sponsored discussion sessions on its Kinja commenting platform, hoping to turn its community into an engaged audience its advertisers can tap into.” State Farm is running four such sessions as part of a “Summer Science Symposium” with different scientists chatting with Gizmodo readers. “State Farm, of course, will need to figure out whether having its brand next to an intriguing conversation unrelated to its offering is worth the money it’s shelling out,” Kantrowitz writes. “The campaign’s goal, (Gawker in-house creative chief James) Del said, is to drive home a message that a State Farm agent is a trusted adviser. And making scientists available to chat with consumers, he said, is a good way to do it.”

Pin It button outperforms Tweet This

Up at the top of this article, among the various sharing options, you’ll find a button that lets you tweet this story and another that lets you pin it to Pinterest. (I’ve started adding art to all my posts just so there’s something to pin.) If my readers represent the trends captured in recent data, you’re more likely to pin the story than tweet it. The data—from SEO Promotions and reported by MediaBistro’s All Twitter—reveals that there are 10 times more clicks of the Pin-It button than the Tweet This button. An infographic shared by Allison Stadd also shows that Pinterest drives more traffic and retains and engages users at higher rates than Twitter.

Don’t overdo the Facebook marketing

While customers may turn to Facebook and other social channels for customer service (see story above), too much marketing on Facebook could motivate customers to abandon these channels altogether. (And there’s a very healthy mobile messaging app alternative waiting for them.) A Pitney Bowes study, reported by Bulldog Reporter’s Daily Dog, found that “60% of consumers in the Uk would abandon Facebook and other social media if mass marketing were to bombard their personal wall—indicating that the relationship etween social media, brands and users is a delicate one that needs to be managed sensitively.” The research found that consumers in France and Germany are even less tolerant: 80% would leave Facebook in France; 75% in Germany. This doesn’t mean you need to do less than your audience wants. The Cleveland Clinic has found that its audience is tolerant of more than 15 posts a day. The trick is to find the sweet spot for talking about your brand to your audience.

12 brand characteristics determine its word-of-mouth potential

Brands are “born” with a measurable potential for word-of-mouth that correlates with a dozen of its characteristics, according to a new study published by the American Marketing Association in the Journal of Marketing Research. Reported in a press release, the study finds the nature of online and offline conversation different, as people talking offline want to share emotions while online, they broadcast to express uniqueness and status. “Consider, for example, the role of product differentiation—an attribute that received much attention in marketing and economics due to its strategic role in competition,” the press release explains. “This study suggests that by mentioning a highly differentiated brand in a conversation the consumer can express her uniqueness. Thus, it is expected that (1) the higher level of differentiation, the higher is the word-of-mouth, and (2) that this relationship is stronger in an online setting.” Other brand characteristics related to word-of-mouth include perceived quality, premium vs. value brands, relevance to many consumers, visibility, excitement, satisfaction, years since the brand was established, complexity, familiarity, and perceived risk.

Another cool idea you can steal (er, adapt) from The New York Times: Tweetable highlights

It’s common to include a “tweet this” button on stories that let readers share the item with followers. But The New York Times—one of the top innovators when it comes to digital content—is trying out something different. For an oral history of Saturday Night Live auditions, the digital team has added highlighted sentences you can click to tweet. While the Grey Lady isn’t planning to roll out the feature sitewide, it’s still a nifty idea that bears some study in the worlds of marketing and PR. In the Poynter Institute post about the experiment, Andrew Beaujon writes, “You’re not required to tweet the same sentences the Times chose, but a tweet using that link will drop you onto that exact point on the page.” In addition to providing a utility for sharing, the highlighted passages serve double duty as pull quotes.