One of the new business friends I’ve made on Twitter is an agency in Pittsburgh called Fitting Group, run by Andrea Fitting. Check them out at http://fittingroup.com. We found each other based on our mutual interest in and work with challenger brands, or big category-leading companies who need to change and can learn from challengers.
Anyway… Andrea wrote a blog post referring to a January 2011 Fast Company article, “Mayhem on Madison Avenue.” In “Mayhem” (and numerous articles just like it) the author essentially explains how and why digital marketing – particularly social media – will precipitate the extinction of advertising agencies. And while she did spend four years at an ad agency (during which time I’m sure she saw plenty of function and dysfunction), the writer has never been a client, let alone a CMO.
Andrea called her blog post “Calling All Chief Marketing Officers (or Those Who Play Them on TV)” and asked several CMOs to read the magazine article and offer our points of view. Here’s mine (as posted on the Fitting Group site).
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Personally, I think the hype about social media being different, experiential, never finished, “perpetual beta…” is hooey. Or rather, the process of smart learning for a CMO is – at a high level – unchanged.
Every channel, every communication vehicle, every media outlet and interaction capability… each has its own ways and rules. TV had its own ways and rules we CMOs had to learn. Email. Radio. Whatever. Now it’s today’s version of social media – it is a living channel with its own characteristics, feedback loop, expectations, organizational demands – all new to the channel, but not a new way of approach to assessment and action for the good CMO. For the great CMO, everything we do lives in a state of constant learning and improvement – it’s how we work with our CEOs, CFOs and teams every day.
And as with all things new, a CMO will always seek real experts and advisors who understand the organization in which s/he operates, can help build a case for new initiatives, can help shorten the organization’s learning timeframe and get sustainable initiatives up and running. Oh, and help the CMO look and feel smart and confident.
The problem is NOT that ad agencies SHOULD be moving toward extinction. It’s quite the opposite: CMOs need and welcome the help. The issue IMO is that too many analysts and agencies are stalled in the shiny object phase, where social media is new and exciting and OOH! look at that Facebook page, and see how smart I am, etc. etc. – as opposed to truly understanding the client’s brand, objectives, operating environment, organizational/budget limitations, the various stakeholders whose concerns must be addressed… all the factors that make an agency a true partner vs. a hit and run “guru” who has no real interest in the less flashy parts of the world in which the CMO operates.
Agencies that can do that will be in business forever – whether the topic is social media or the next big thing or the next one after that.
Last week, I attended Columbia Business School’s Brite Conference 2010. “Brite” stands for brands, innovation and technology, and the event is sponsored annually by the school’s Center on Global Brand Leadership.
The two-day happening gave me enough material for quite a while, but let me start here.
There was a real mix of speakers. On the first day, one of these presenters was Miky Lee (Mie Kyung Lee), Vice Chairman of CJ Entertainment & Media, the entertainment division of Korea’s CJ Corporation.
I know – I never heard of it, either.*
Ms. Lee carefully read her prepared remarks in English, sprinkling her comments with video clips from Korean films, cable television, games, recording artists and the like.
While watching what appeared to be the Korean version of American Idol, I began thinking of my grocery list and wondering if the conference organizers had planned the session to seemingly wander off this way.
The Q&As came. Ms. Lee answered a few questions here and there. She was gracious and considerate. Then an audience member asked if CJ was going to try to break into the United States. The speaker wasn’t nasty or arrogant; he was simply saying that – to be truly successful - CJ would need to access the American culture market.
Ms. Lee stood oddly frozen at the podium until until one of the event moderators jumped in to say that Korea was far – far far far - past the U.S. in terms of digital sophistication and social media in all its forms. Facebook, for example, is pre-historic news in Korea, where a vastly superior social networking site, Cyworld, has been operating since 2000.
Clearly relieved, the polite Ms. Lee thanked the moderator for his comments and then proceeded to explain that the U.S. is no longer the center of the cultural universe in Asia.
“Having grown up in the 50s,” Ms. Lee said that she and her friends worshipped American music and celebrities. American culture was the center of their universe. No more. Today, Japan is the center of Asian life. Kids look to Japan for what’s cool, hip and trendy.
At this point, Ms. Lee was on a (respectful) roll.
She shared a few details about Korean’s online lifestyle. Did you know that Korea is #1 in the world for broadband penetration in the home? This 2009 article puts that percentage at 95%. Ms. Lee said 98%. They’re probably both right. And the United States? As of 2009, we were 20th with 60%.
20th. That’s 2-o-th. Behind Singapore (88%), Taiwan (81%), the Netherlands (85) and others. Estonia has higher in-home broadband penetration than we do (62%). Did you know that Estonia, a country with a population the size of Idaho‘s, has an extremely sophisticated information technology sector? I didn’t. How about the fact that the creators of both Kazaa and Skype came from Estonia? Nope, ‘hasn’t come up in the line at Starbucks recently.
I do know, however, that a moving van showed up at Sandra Bullock’s and Jesse James’ marital home last weekend. Whooo-eee! Come back later: my brain is full.
Anyway, Ms. Lee went on to explain how Korea has leapfrogged everyone else in the world with respect to broadband and mobile usage. Downloading full-length feature films at home or playing games and watching TV on a cell phone are run-of-the-mill activities. And then there’s Cyworld, that social network owned by SK Telecom, Korea’s largest wireless provider. Ms. Lee described Cyworld as essentially a millionth generation of the sites we use in the U.S.: a sort-of Facebook meets MySpace meets Flickr meets IMing meets Blogger. Characterized by CNN as “a license to print money,” Cyworld is used by 90% of all Koreans in their 20s (but also across all age categories) and produces 3x the revenue per user as does MySpace.
And although perhaps she had a right to be, Ms. Lee wasn’t smarmy, or poke-America-in-the eye arrogant: her remarks came across as a 100% sincere call for us to get our *** out of our *** and realize that the U.S is no longer the singular epicenter of cultural or technological innovation. Seek out what’s happening in Japanese culture, she told us, as well as several other sophisticated countries, including her own. Learn. See. Question.
So - wow. I was intrigued. Who was this woman who read awkwardly from prepared comments and seemed uneasy on stage? (You know what’s coming, right?)
I’m going to make this short so it’s not too painful: Lee received her MA from Harvard in 1986, and served as a teaching fellow there for three years. CJ Corporation – the parent company of CJ Entertainment – built the first and largest multiplex chain in Korea. It also operates the country’s #1 cable network. And CJ’s Mnet Media is the leader in cable music television, music distribution and live concerts. Variety considers Ms. Lee to be one of the world’s leading film industry executives, and she was the recipient of the CEO of the Year Award from a prestigious business association in her country. Prior to joining CJ, Ms. Lee was a director or cultural and educational projects at Samsung America. In perhaps her spare time (?), Ms. Lee managed to establish the Parsons School of Design in Seoul and likes to chit-chat with Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (two CJ partners) about their mutual love of movies.
Oh, and of course there’s also the fact that she’s the first grandchild of B.C. Lee, the founder of Samsung Group, the LARGEST CONGLOMERATE IN THE WORLD by revenue ($173.4 billion in 2008), and owner of Samsung Electronics, one of the top 20 most valuable brands in the universe and the world’s largest manufacturer of electronics. CJ, you see, was originally a part of the Samsung world, although it specialized in some sort of foodstuffs before Lee and her brother transformed it into a media juggernaut.
This woman has seen, accomplished, hungered for and achieved things that only a tiny fraction of the world’s citizens ever will.
I… have no real end for this post, other to say that I’m still cringing a week later. The world isn’t hanging on our every word and - in many arenas – has already pulled way out in front of the United States.
And we’re going to use this to recognize that we must be more curious, more open, more interested in seeking out worlds other than our own, right? Right?
There’s a real reputation-meets-revenue battle happening between online.
Today, any advertiser with a Google AdWords account can buy virtually any keyword to advertise its own goods, regardless of whether said advertiser has the rights to use the word. This is particularly troublesome for brands that have spent decades burnishing a brand and consider the associated brand names to be reputational assets of great value. If you go to Google right now and type in “LVMH” (the owner of numerous brands including Louis Vuitton and Hennessy), one of the sponsored ads shouts “Designer Handbags 70% off,” with a URL that includes the Louis Vuitton name. That has LVMH steamed and the company sued Google in Europe for trademark infringement.
Well the ruling is in… and it’s a split decision, advantage: Google. Upon Google’s appeal of earlier rulings (that didn’t go its way) the highest court in the EU has determined that - on its face – the mere fact that an LVMH-protected word is available for sale by Google does not mean that Google is in violation of LVMH’s trademark protection.
Specifically, the court has said that the search company is not violating trademarks if (a) its automatic ad system is judged to be “merely technical, automatic and passive” in its operation, and if (b) the company is not aware and cannot be expected to fully police all the words that advertisers purchase.
Since computers are programmed by humans – and those folks at Google are pretty darn smart – this is fishy to me, but ok. It was not a flat-out win for Google, however, as the court also ruled that Google must remove said ads if the brand owner formally complains about an advertiser infringing on its marks. If Google fails to do this, the court says it won’t be so helpful in protecting Google’s revenue stream the next time around.
The court also reinforced that Google could be held liable for selling keywords that openly encourage or facilitate counterfeiting, which – in luxury categories – is a win (or at least a booster shot) for the brand owners. And lastly, the court also clarified the responsibilities of advertisers who mustn’t be found “using such keywords arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow Internet users to easily establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question originate.”
I don’t know about you, but if I’m an advertiser that gets into hot water for legally buying a word that Google sold to me – and I’m not trying to sell knock-offs – I’m naming Google in my legal response.
LVMH has been on the attack re. this issue for a long time, which is understandable. eBay has also been in the conglomerate’s in the past. This is a worldwide, high-stakes game such a company must play in all sales channels: right here in New York, LVMH was front and center in the effective elimination of a thriving Louis Vuitton counterfeit trade on Canal Street. The company will flood Google “Don’t Be Evil” Inc. with complaints until the search company will at least have to question what (and how much) it is defending by taking on massive legal expense (and bad PR) in order to make money from advertisers leeching off others’ trademarks.
And speaking of buying Louis Vuitton knock-offs on the street, a LVMH board member point of view has been (quote) “Under trademark law anywhere in the world, brand owners have the right to stop third parties from using their names. “Why make an exception for the digital world?”
As the division between online and offline “worlds” continue to disappear, why indeed?
Well, my Tappening idols – Mark DiMassimo and Eric Yaverbaum – are back with a new campaign that got a big write-up in The New York Times yesterday. Boo-yah!
As you may know, Tappening is a grass-roots effort DiMassimo and Yaverbaum started together as a laboratory for a social world marketing experiment focused on the negatives associated with bottled water (which – outside of convenience - turns out to be pretty much everythingabout bottled water). I first interviewed them nearly two years ago about the initiative and covered their first ad campaign back in March of this year. To date, Tappening has sold about $5 million worth of re-usable BPA-free plastic and stainless steel bottles, much of which is plowed back into the effort.
The team’s second campaign turns up the heat. “Lying in Advertising” includes several treatments featuring such claims as “Bottled water causes blindness in puppies” and “Bottled water is the primary cause of Restless Leg Syndrome.” If you cannot see the posters below, click HERE and check out the bottom of the page.
The new campaign has a dedicated website at www.startalie.com from which you can easily ”spread” your lie about bottled water via email, Digg, Twitter and Facebook (a nice touch). My first contribution was “Ben Bernanke says that bottled water caused the global recession.”
So yes, this is another post about Twitter. What can I say? It’s the fastest growing, probably weirdest social media phenom thus far, and I’ve been sucked in.
One of today’s interesting tweety tidbits is a quite lengthy email that Rupert Murdoch – sorry, I meant the Deputy Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal – recently sent to employees outlining “do’s” and “don’ts” for employees on Twitter or otherwise engaged on the “social Web.”
It’s sort of a doozy.
Don’t ”friend” confidential sources, don’t criticize colleagues, and my favorite (verbatim): “Don’t engage in any impolite dialogue with those who may challenge your work — no matter how rude or provocative they may seem.”
Employees may cite (but not push) their own reporting and – well, that seems to be pretty much all they can do. And even that rule, as you can see, comes with a murky qualification.
Some of the restrictions make perfect sense, such as not detailing how an article was edited. Others are ripe for wrongful discharge lawsuits, such as the “don’t” that says you mustn’t recruit family or friends to promote your work.
In most instances, this particular restriction would be nearly impossible to dissect and prove. If I retweet comments from a former colleague who then talks up my work, did I solicit that positive feedback? And, I’m sorry: if my mom claims that I’m just the cleverest person ever ever ever, there’s nothing I can do about it.
So I was thinking that the whole thing seemed very 1984… until I spotted a blog post detailing real tweets that some knuckleheads have posted on Twitter. A sample (with all grammar errors intact):
- “I just got to work (Oracle) and I am doing as little as possible”
- “Huh, with my boss on twitter, maaaybe I should take down that sexy picture of her… but her reaction will be priceless!”
- “hate my job!! i want to tell my bosses how dumb they are and how meaningless this job is, then quit, and be happy!”
- “Workin… This job sucks worse then [sic] the economy!”
The title of this blog post? “TwitterFired: The Top Ten Tweets to Get You Fired.”
Huh. Maybe The Wall Street Journal Twitter police knows what it’s doing.
SFMOGD came across two ads this week that are real… which just seems sort of impossible!
Ad #1 was brought to our attention by our friend, Jonathan Gilbert, and has some disturbing things to say about the condition of German underwear. Here is a billboard currently posted in Berlin’s shopping district:
That would be Chancellor Angela Merkel on the left posing in front of various undressed members of the German government, with her ”weapons of mass destruction” in full view. The ad is part of an underwear company’s national ad campaign. Modeled after the country’s successful ads promoting ”cash-for-clunkers” exchanges, the ad’s copy offers Germans who trade in their old underpants a €5 credit toward a new pair with the slogan ”The country needs new undies.” No mention of whether the old panties need to be (*gag*) washed before you trade them in.
Ad #2 appears to be a real television commercial for a North Carolina furniture store that takes race relations very seriously. Based on the company’s perfectly normal description of the ad on YouTube, the weird humor and full-on racial context appears to have been lost on The Red House. Luckily, it’s not lost on us:
Poor Dominos.
In a nutshell, two employees posted a “prank” video on YouTube that shows them at work spitting and sneezing on food, putting cheese up their noses and then onto pizzas, passing gas on meat then – ouhhhh – putting said meat on the food…
As the beauty says to the gross Ben Stiller character when he asks her out (in that great philosophical movie, Dodgeball),I think I threw up in my mouth. Just a little.
I coach corporate clients on how to manage their reputations and build brands online. I show companies how to proactively create meaningful online interactions with prospects and customers. I use case studies to demonstrate the usefulness of one social community vs. another. I present lessons that apply to all businesses, and some that are industry-specific. And I do train companies how to assess and react to negative content on the Web. Be proactive and, when you must, here’s how to react to problematic online content.
And then there are things that you just can’t plan for. We’ve seen vanity urls (walocaust.com, ihatestarbucks.com) and online stunts created by disgruntled employees and angry investors. We’ve seen rats scurrying along the floor inside a fast food restaurant. These kinds of events are now so frequent that they can and should be part of a company’s online crisis strategy. [NOTE: You have one of those, right?]
But two employees, with no ax to grind, demonstrating phenomenally bad judgment? All a company can do in advance is reinforce its own employee policies with respect to unacceptable behavior and… make sure the Internet is covered. I’m sure that disparaging the company to this extreme is already grounds for dismissal, and these two MENSA members have been fired. And arrested and charged with a felony.
Unfortunately, Dominos is taking a real hit. But the company has come out swinging online - play fire with fire – and I give them enormous credit for that. Take a look at Dominos’ own YouTube response (click HERE if you do not see the video below):
If I were advising the company, I’d suggest a 5-point action plan over the next 90 days. What they’ll actually do? We’ll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, if you order a pizza and think you see boogers… I’M KIDDING!
The Web has a wonderful ability to make historically opaque businesses and transactions far more transparent and accessible.
The Internet did this for car buying years ago: between Consumer Reports, Edmonds.com, CarsDirect and a myriad of other sites, the shopper who would have previously driven to whatever dealerships happened to be local now has a lot more bargaining power… and can buy a car from anywhere in the country if the (online) price is right.
To that end, I recently commented on a TechCrunchstory about a new company called DriverSide. Like RepairPal, DriverSide.com intends to help cash-strapped consumers more effectively maintain their cars instead of having to sell or replace them. My point was that these sites will only begin to reach their real potential when a user can write his/her need and have mechanics compete for the work via online bids, a la an eBay auction.
Almost right after I posted this comment, I stumbled on a unique application of this concept from the Netherlands: Spaarbod. You thought Bankrate made it easier to shop for interest rates? Spaarbod permits Dutch consumers to specify how much money they’d like to bank, for how long and on what terms, and the site (like Bankrate) returns the best rates publically available at the time. You can accept one of these offers immediately, or Spaarbod will send your request (minus your personal information) to participating banks who can then bid on your money. Within 24 hours, you get an email listing the five highest bidders.
The service is free to use, and winning banks pays Spaarbod a commission when bids result in new deposits.
It’s not difficult to imagine these auctions going live, where each participating bank would have an employee bidding in real-time for a user’s deposit.
Heck yeah! And why do I have to shop around for the privilege of giving you my money anyway??
Such a seemingly simple idea but – on a marketwide scale – this model has major implications for advertising and marketing overall. If engaged consumers (buyers) approach marketers (sellers) when they are in the market for a seller’s services, those sellers could potentially spend far less money on spray-and-pray mass marketing… and pass the savings on to the customer in the form of lower prices or, in this case, higher interest rates. The advertiser is likely to spend less and the customer gets a higher-value, more customized outcome.
Doc Searls (who also may have been the first person to use the word “conversation” in a marketing context) first coined the phrase “intention economy” to describe the idea of markets designed around engaged buyers instead of message-pusing sellers. I’ll explore the intention economy in another post.
Skittles’ foray into the social media universe had the marketing blogosphere and Twitterverse on overdrive week.
On Tuesday, Mars replaced the candy’s “normal” website with a live feed from Twitter.com of tweets that mentioned Skittles. If you click HERE, you’ll get a current snapshot of what that site might have looked like several days ago when this experiment first began, but things have calmed down dramatically since then. When I took a look at the feed on that first day, there were tweets full of curse words, comments such as “I found a finger in my bag of Skittles,” “Skittles are made from dead animals,” “Skittles gives you cancer and kills babies,” “Eating Skittles will kill your parents” and so on.
In other words, the idea that anything in a tweet would instantly appear at skittles.com brought adults out of the woodwork to see just how outrageous and inappropriate they could be before Skittles changed strategy. Alas, all these tweets did appear on the site, and it was child’s play (pardon the pun) to get around the site’s age verification tool in order to see every word.
That’s just dumb – and dangerous. If one 8-year old had done something awful as a result of viewing some sort of silly fake directive as to what to do with Skittles… Mars would have had an enormous and entirely self-provoked communications disaster on its hands.
So while many marketers labeled Skittles’ experiment as bold and exciting, I stand with a minority who is not with the “lemmings” on this one. The site started as a confusing mish-mash of wildly unacceptable language attached to a candy, and has since evolved into the most boring site in the category.
Social media is not an end in itself. No tactic ever is. Advertising’s goal is to create goodwill and sales among a product’s target market. Will this effort do that? No. And did the stunt bring non-buyers out in droves? You bet.
While Mars (or its ad agency) may certainly win some wacky 2009 social media award when all is said and done, look for the company to announce that this “successful experiment” has come to an end, and that it is returning to a more standard interactive (and managed) site. It couldn’t happen soon enough. Skittles Skittles_Twitter
Did you see the Oscars telecast this past weekend? Third worst-rated show in history. Just painful. I adore Hugh Jackman (duh), so I watched his interview with Barbara Walters before the ceremony started. The first-time host told Barbara that he would indeed perform and that he felt the awards needed “more show, less business.” I think we just needed less of everything.
Aside from Kate Winslet, “best performance” has to go to Glam Media, the women-focused vertical network boasting over 75 million users and 700 publishers. comScore has named Glam one of the top 10 media properties on the Web.
While the likes of ABC (who did not stream the broadcast!), Twitter and Facebook wandered around trying to figure out how to make money on online Oscar conversations – celebs in the audience and at the parties were twittering, for cryin’ out loud – Glam just went ahead and hosted its ownTwitter widget. Glam then offered advertisers the opportunity to sponsor an edited version of the tweet stream during the telecast.
Glam hand-selected which tweets appeared in the stream, thereby making it safer for brand advertisers who are always (and understandably) concerned about appearing alongside a conversation that veers into unacceptable subjects.
Aveenosponsored the Twitter widget, and Glam says it will introduce widgets for both FriendFeed and Facebook streams running during future shows and other events.
Poaching on other sites’ turf to generate ad dollars, when those sites haven’t figured it out themselves? Nicely done!
Now that Google is laying off staff and its stock price is down, I have to wonder if perhaps it’s time to accept the fact that giving people scads of personal experimentation time may not be so, uh, productive.
First it was the company’s effort to keep us from the 21st century version of drunk dialing: drunk e-mailing. Cute.
Now it’s Latitude, a program that allows users to track others with their mobile phones. Each user must opt-in and can select which of her contacts may be permitted to track them.
I find this to be neither cute nor safe. Anyone could get a hold of a user’s phone and change the settings, or a person could give a Latitude-enabled phone as a gift. And once a phone is enabled, a second party could mask his own phone’s ID, thus ensuring that the first party – or victim, in this case – would be unaware that she was being tracked.
Google says that individuals’ increasing willingness to share personal information, on sites like Facebook, have encouraged the company to create services such as Latitude.
This doesn’t really fly. My willingness to change my Facebook status to reflect that I’m enjoying a cup of coffee doesn’t extend to letting the universe know that that coffee house is on Lexington Avenue at 77th Street. And how that location might change minute by minute.
It’s also a potential Big Brother nightmare. Location data that may be useful to friends and family could also be valuable to the government, your competition, an angry ex or thieves happy to rob your home when you’re not around. And while Google says it won’t store the data (having faced criticism on its privacy policies in the past), the government or others could still ask Google to help track someone being investigated. “As it stands right now, Latitude could be a gift to stalkers, prying employers, jealous partners and obsessive friends,” says Simon Davies of Privacy International.
I see no clear need for this: it’s simply not a case where the existence of technology creates a unique and meaningful improvement or advantage.
I like Google, but its fundamental drawback is that it grants no status to honest or credible content. Perhaps this is par for the search engine course – at least for now. But products that overtly weaken personal rights and privileges? That’s a slippery slope that I do not believe is worth the trip. Google_Latitude Privacy_International
Amazon Customer Reviews “I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said ‘that’s the worst security ever!’ But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.” “Of course, since the Playmobil Dad could not remove his shoes or other clothing items, the Playmobil security agent became suspicious and, after waving her wand wildy a few dozen times, called her supervisor to wisk the Dad into a special body-cavity search room… My advice – educating your kids about airport security with this toy may actually be more harmful to them than just packing them in the damn luggage with some bottled water and hoping they survive.” “Thank you Playmobil for allowing me to teach my 5-year old the importance of recognizing what a failing bureaucracy in a ever growing fascist state looks like… I noticed that my child is now more interested in current events. Just the other day he asked me why we had to forfeit so much of our liberties and personal freedoms and I had to answer ‘well, it’s because the terrorists have already won.’” “I’ve heard that they were going to publish a coupon and code, to allow us to buy this for $9.11, they’re just waiting for the economy to drop a little more then it currently is. It’s a marketing thing I know…” “This toy would be a lot more realistic with about 350 people standing in line for an average of an hour. But it still makes a nice set with the interrogation room.” Playmobil Playmobil_Security_Checkpoint Amazon
Last night, the first annual Shorty Awards gala took place in Brooklyn. The Shorty Awards honor the best producers of Twitter content (tweets) in 26 categories including Advertising, Brand and Social Media.
And, Mon Dieu! - the drama! Accusations of ballot box stuffing, paying for votes and other forms of cheating are rampant! One of the biggest controversies has focused on the winner of the Advertising category, a woman named Carri Bugbee who tweets in character as Peggy Olson (@peggyolson) from the AMC TV series “Mad Men.” When she won, a fellow Twitterer who owns a real ad agency actually got mad and spammed Bugbee with endless pop-ups of a Rick Astley music video (so random…). He had hoped to capture the nation’s attention by winning the award, he said. “She’s not real,” he cried! Yeah, we get that. But she’s good. Better luck next year.
In a charming twist, each winner used a tweet (all 140 characters of it) as his or her acceptance speech. Maybe the Oscars should try that.
Should you be on Twitter? There’s no concrete answer here, of course – and I’m speaking only about individuals at this point, not companies. If you are interested in keeping up with and participating in the changing social media environment, you might give it a whirl. If you think you have something to say and can tweet 3-4 tweets a day (which is considered a decent volume and frequency) I’d say go for it. And another huge advantage is that you can “follow” other Twitterers whose opinions you’ll see on your own page each day. Just beware those who believe “Hmmm. Coffee!” is a good tweet.
Fortunately, Twitter makes “unfollowing” easy, too.
The online/social media environment has greatly amplified the opportunities for customers who love you (or hate you) to spread the word – and spread it more frequently, to a broader audience and with a greater array of tools.
Colloquy has released a white paper reflecting the results of an October 2008 survey that measured the intersection between reward program membership and online word-of-mouth (WOM) activity among those members.
While I hope it won’t come as a big surprise, membership in and usage of a brand’s reward program is a significant predictor of a consumer’s likelihood to speak positively about your brand online. The more active the frequent user/shopper/flyer in your program, the greater the chance that you will experience the happy halo effect of him/her praising you online. This is particularly true among women, who have become a driving force in terms of discussing and sharing products and experiences on the Web (Motrin, anyone?).
The larger take-away here – the hardest one, I think, for large companies to absorb - is that everything is connected now. The idea that you could treat your customers one way and your employees another, without affecting your public persona, is no longer relevant. Cut your charitable activities without the “outside world” finding out? Forget it. Increase mileage requirements in your frequent flyer program, and it will not only affect the opinions of your members, but also those members’ Twitter readers (who may not even be your customers).
One person with an anonymous blog and a catchy URL can impact your reputation around the world.
Of course The New Champion Customers is just a tip of this iceberg, but it offers an interesting angel and chock-full of great charts. Take a look.
I saw an interesting story today about Virgin America – a company infamous for its own tongue-in-cheek advertising approach – suing an ad industry blog for libel.
It seems that Adrants posted a parody ad showing a photograph of the US Airways Flight 1549 jet in the Hudson River along with Virgin’s name and mark, plus the message “Fly Virgin.” Here’s the ad:
The initial blog post, titled “The Hudson Crash: Just One More Reason to Fly Virgin,” provided a disclaimer that the ad’s origin was “suspect” but also mused that perhaps the ad was real given that Virgin had “turned ugly situations to its advantage before.”
While Adrants updated its original post to point out that the ad was a spoof (and removed it altogether after 3 days), Virgin went ahead and filed a complaint in a California district court claiming, among other things, ”trademark infringement, deceptive advertising and defamation.” The outrage! How dare you take advantage of such a horrible event… we would never do that. We are forever damaged! GAH!”
Most experts believe that Virgin is on thin ice (pardon the pun) given that the medium (in this case, Adrants) is commonly known to report “news” with a certain irreverence, therefore making it highly unlikely that a blog reader would be confused into believing that the ad was factual.
But is this even a real lawsuit or simply another “real” example of Virgin’s ability to spot and take advantage of a timely marketing opportunity? I vote for the latter.
Crazy kids! What do you bet this lawsuit will disappear altogether after Virgin has squeezed all the word-of-mouth mileage possible out of it?
AdAge ran a mini-poll that asked “Do you think increasing repetition of TV spots is worsening the viewing experience?” 85% of those who answered said “Yes,” with specific responses such as “If a product is forced on me too many times, I purposely do not buy that product or anything else from that company.”
What no one happened to mention is why TV shows viewed online show you the same ad over and over and over. What is that about??
I am one of the many fans of Lipstick Jungle who watch the show on NBC.com rather than on television. This is such a common phenomenon that it’s one of the reasons the show’s been saved (so far) from the chopping block: each LJ episode picks up 50% more viewers when delayed viewing (including DVRs and online streaming) is factored in. 50! That’s huge.
These are viewers, like me, who have to go out of our way to go to the website, find the show, find the specific link… This is hardcore intent we’re talking about here, with viewers at full attention. So what could possibly be the reason to show the same Dove commercial during each and every commercial break? Or the same car commercial? Even if a brand buys the whole episode online, please show 3 different ads!
I find this quite odd. As a consumer, it’s so boring that I look away from the screen and hit the “Mute” button after I see the commercial the first time. As a marketer, all I see is the lost opportunity and (what I think are) wasted dollars.
eMarketer has reviewed some recent data indicating that Millenials are “born with keyboards in their hands”: that is, that they view the world in a fundamentally different way that assumes the use of hand-picked technology doo-dads to handle just about everything.
You can see the tremendous shift here, particular toward the use of cell phones (and – my opinion – the increasing pressure on phone and cable companies to deliver well-priced digital/cellular phone services packages):
Resource Interactive points out the particular impact of this shift on how Millenials shop and “pre-shop” with their friends. Coupled with an addiction to MySpace, Facebook and other platforms that bring people together, technology has made it simple for friends to get advice from each other (a “communal” blessing, if you will) before making a purchase. “The actual shopping activity in the store… becomes a social activity for them,” says Mila Goodman, the shop’s director of experience strategy.
All of this means that retailers have an opportunity to build brand awareness and loyalty by making it easy and fun to shop “together” using mobile phones and other devices. Among the many reasons that Beacon didn’t work for Facebook is that it didn’t draw me into my friends’ thought process and experience around purchasing something; the site simply reported that my friend had done so. No fun.
Outdoor, magazine, online and even TV advertising could feature a barcode or some other tag that a person could photograph and send to friends; that tag arrives with information about the product and maybe a special offer. It should be easy to download a tiny piece of code and send it along. And when you get someone all the way into your store? Wow: make it count. Give away ringtones, wallpapers (Chanel wallpaper, girls?), sign-ups for special store events and discounts… I think all stores/retailers should eventually make it simple to email high-res product photos that come along with just a bit of sales and promotional info.
If you had the opportunity to get target customers talking about you on their cell phones with every individual ad viewing or store visit, what would you do?
Brandweek recently ran a lengthy article about behavioral targeting. “BT,” or contextual targeting, keyword targeting or psychographical targeting all roughly refer to the same idea: that a marketer uses your own actions or profile to serve up advertising that might be of interest to you. This is pretty standard stuff that has migrated its way from the generic web onto social networks such as MySpace and Facebook.
I did think, however, that the notion of “influencer marketing” was interesting in this context. As with a coming post on how Vaseline built a social network around one key person who helped spread the word about a new product, influencer marketing would mean crafting a message based on how many people you reach in your life and around which issues or topics you may have the greatest influence.
Say I have 350 “friends” on Facebook, 250 of whom are part of the “New York” network. I might get served an ad for a local New York service, the value of which could increase for me based on the number of individuals to whom I send the offer. Or maybe I have 100+ female friends, all over the age of 50: an audience that consumerreports.org is interested in targeting for paid site subscriptions. The site might not only promote specifically to me, but could offer me a free 6-month subscription for referring 15 friends (with verified email addresses). These are examples of how the ”influencer” idea might be used on an “outbound” basis – that’s me communicating outwardly to individuals in my network.
Targeting could be used to equal effect on an “inbound” basis: if a Facebook member regularly posts a lot of positive messages about Barack Obama on his profile to which many people regularly comment, the campaign might want to reach out to that person and ask him to host a house party (particularly if the influencer lives in a zip code that is underpenetrated).
We’ll see if marketers start experimenting with overt “influencer” messaging on social network sites. It holds promise.
Very, very interesting lawsuit making the rounds in Europe right now…
The European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court, is hearing a case that will decide whether Google violates trademark law by allowing companies to purchase brand names to trigger pay-per-click ads.
The case stems from an earlier lawsuit filed in France by Louis Vuitton against Google. LVMH claimed that Google was violating the law by allowing marketers to purchase, say, “Louis Vuitton replica” or “Louis Vuitton fake.” Louis Vuitton actually won this case in France but Google appealed. Le Meridien Hotels filed a very similar case – again in Europe – and also won.
Google has had better luck in the US although it has been sued there, as well. The only case that went to trial was a suit filed by Geico – and Google won. The judge said that there was no evidence that consumers were confused by the ads that appeared as a result of PPC term that included the company’s name. American Airlines has also filed a similar suit.
If the final decision is that Google cannot sell terms including proper nouns/company names to any entity that does not own that word or phrase, this will have major impact on search and search marketing. After all, 444,000 results come up on Google for the search term ”Walmart S**s” alone…
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