GORILLA / Phil Collins Ad for Cadsbury and other "nonsensical" advertising

Last Friday when we saw a Cadsbury ad in class which entailed a giant Gorilla playing the drum part to Phil Collins' "I can feel it" song, a student remarked that he could not see why such an ad would attract consumers to Cadsbury at all. Professor Kagan responded that a certain assumed belief in the power of marketing is necessary to see the power in this ad.

I thought it was worth talking about ads that drive great following, both from TV ads historically, or contemporary "link baiting" online ads. 3 come to mind for me that are similar in that they are somewhat "nonsensical" but hilarious. Like the Cadsbury gorilla, there were the Energizer Bunny ads, and the E-Trade Baby.

I bring these ads up because we have learned that keeping keywords and content on sites focused on the central goal of the business the site represents, but conversely we see that "viral videos" and super powerful Link Baiting ads tend to stray from the central characteristics of the product, and create hilarious content to help people pass time.

My ultimate point is that the points are not entirely contradictory: I would think that the Energizer Bunny was super successful because the bunny had characteristics similar to the product, and the E-trade Baby relays the message that even a baby can be successful with E-trade online trading. The Cadsbury Gorilla....not so much.

Perhaps as a general Online Marketing insight, it might be really impactful to combine pure humor and inspiration with tying characters into the advertising message of the brand online, especially since 100% of browsers sight passing time as a major motivator. BUT also key is to tie the funny content with the fundamental characteristics of the product. NOT the gorilla.

Freeformers and the long tail in financial services

Reading about Richard Duvall, co-founder of Egg and Zopa, I realized there can be a connection between the concept of freeformers and the long tail in on-line financial services.

In the early 2000’s Duvall led New Barn Studios, a team of former colleagues and friends that gathered in his barn to discuss emerging trends and how they impacted society. One of the trends discussed was the freeformers (coined by ethnographic researcher Bruce Davis), a group of people between 30 and 50 who want more control and freedom to do things their own way. They reject (or sometimes are forced to reject) the security of a job for life to pursue more diverse lives that give them more satisfaction and an opportunity to follow their passions.

Information technology is behind this change in attitudes and behaviors. Trust based community sites (e.g. eBay, Wikipedia, Zopa, Q&A sites, among others) gather freeformers and allow them to connect and contribute. In the same way that on-line book, music, and movie sellers/renters overcome the space limitation of brick and mortar retailers and extract value from the long tail, on-line trust based communities overcome geographical barriers and can too extract value from the long tail of users that are not served by established businesses.

Take the example of on-line financial intermediation. Borrowers and lenders connect on-line to provide financial products that are customized to each borrower/lender needs and not designed to meet the mass markets segments as defined by traditional banks. This business model also follows the three rules described by C. Anderson. 1) Make everything available: on-line financial services sites can connect everyone that reaches them, 2) Cut the price in half. Now lower it: on-line financial services don’t have much overhead and can offer a lower cost, 3) help me find it: on-line financial services match lenders and borrowers and help lenders diversify their risk.

The long tail concept applied beyond the entertainment industry can be an interesting way to think about unmet customer needs and come up with a product/service to satisfy them.

When Companies Become Publishers

Technology companies care mightily about network effects – the idea that the more users participate in your service or use your software, the more valuable it becomes. Think about Facebook each time a friend of yours joins it, or the availability of applications on Microsoft Windows vs. Mac.

Earlier in my career, I had the good fortune to work at a Fortune 200 company whose products were especially sensitive to network effects among a very specific group of people: software developers. Over time, the pressure to interact with this community became greater and greater, to the point that we launched one of the world’s first corporate blog networks so that our engineers could reach out to the community.

Of course, that also presented a huge number of challenges. Our engineers were hardly publishers, yet we needed to optimize our outreach investments so that our engineers weren’t spending too much time fussing about their blog posts. Graphics needed to be created, best practices needed to be established – a lot of work!

We utilized a hub-and-spoke model, where a centralized team built our tools and reached out to interested members throughout the company. Our mainstay software (as a service) was Omniture, which is best thought of as Google Analytics on five rounds of steroids. It allowed us to test the effect of a link versus a linked image (+40% or so), various page layouts (multivariate testing), etc. Rudimentary stuff for a publisher, but as more and more companies need to build relationships with the customers, such corporate communications tools will become even more important.

Tough life for new websites!

After last Friday class, I realized how new websites could be quite penalized by the way Google SEO ranking works. The “tenure” factor can highly influence the website position in the ranking through the off-page optimization elements and users traffic. Considering everything else as equal, an older website is more likely to be assessed as hub or authority and to have a higher number of backlinks and a user traffic. However even if the new website has a higher quality it will take quite a lot of time to offset the tenure effect in the ranking. Before coming to Columbia I was helping the launch of a web-based family business focused on conventions (i.e., search engine for convention locations in Italy). When the web-site was launched, the incumbent company was on the web since at least 5 years. Even though our website had better content, better design and better database, it was constantly ranked much lower than the incumbent. As our limited advertising budget didn’t allow us to invest in any other media rather than internet, it was extremely difficult for us to raise users traffic. Looking at SEO has one of the most powerful and cheapest way of advertising, especially on highly web-based industries, shouldn’t Google try to select measures that focus more on the quality rather than the tenure of the website?

Engage your Online Audience

I recently came across some rather cool tools which take the concept of 'interactivity' with your online audience one step further. It is something we have all seen but what I was surprised about is how simple and cost effective it is for any business.

Ok enough of the mystery. I am referring to live people you can actually talk to while perusing a company's website to make the experience richer and really engage with potential customers. Liveperson.com is one such example. How does it work? When you go onto a website a proactive invitation pop up comes up in the corner of your screen, with a tailor made message from you inviting customer to ask questions either via chat messages or voice call.

What I like about it is that it is not overly intrusive, if you don't want to talk you just click no. But if you do have questions this service is very beneficial and simple to use. On their website, Liveperson claims that customers have enjoyed the following benefits: 20% increase in online sales(i.e. conversion rates), 25% reduction in service costs and 35% increase in average order values. It appears to solve the common complaint of customers not wanting to talk to a machine.

So if you're business model fits - I would recommend installing a little human touch.

President Lincoln, President Lincoln, President Lincoln, President Lincoln...

I have found myself thinking about the extraordinary power of the internet these days. The democratization of media is pretty incredible and enables people who would otherwise not have a voice to be heard by millions. With so many competing voices and messages it is increasingly difficult to be heard and harder yet without knowing the best way for people to find you.

This is where search engine optimization comes in. It is important to know how search engines work, so you can understand the best way for people to find you. In the case study of President Lincoln, it was important to identify how people search for our 16^th president, and then to repeat this key word as much as possible in order to be picked up and brought to a higher position on the all important search page and to enable your voice to be heard. The problem with this approach is that the very mechanism that enables you to be heard is in a way responsible for dulling your voice—or at least makes it less interesting to listen to.

I am curious to see how the emergence of technology will impact the English language. Will the Yahoo! Style Guide replace Miriam Webster? Will a thesaurus become a relic of the past? What price will we pay in order for our voice to be heard?

What Google Gives, Google Can Take Away

Google’s power is amazing, but also sometimes a bit frightening. For several years, I wrote for a website dedicated to the auto and travel industry. Through saavy, but fair, search engine optimization and linking, it managed to generate 1.5 million visitors per month.

Then, the recession hit, and the site gradually lost visitors. Ad generated revenue began to decline, and the website was forced to lay staff members off. With less and less people to tend to the site, and ensure its Google ranking stayed high, the decline began to feed on itself.

By the start of this year, however, numbers were starting to climb again. The site was down to only 100,000 visitors a month, but the trend was in the right direction as the editor began to work at recovering more and more of the SEO it had lost.

And then, on February 24^th, Google implemented a new algorithm designed to rid their results of link farms. Apparently, a small percentage of legitimate websites were adversely affected. This particular website was one of them; literally overnight they lost 50% of their remaining traffic.

The editor spent the month of March calling, writing and emailing Google to alert them to the problem, with no luck. Google simply called them ‘collateral damage’ and said it was tough luck.

The editor hasn’t given up yet, though. She continues to aggressively pursue a strategy to promote her website on Facebook and Twitter, along with a blog.

It is easy, sitting in class, to simply think of SEA as a game with rules to play and a clear path towards winning. Hopefully this example shows that isn’t always true—simply due to someone unknown change in Google’s algorithm, a legitimate business can lose half its business and be forced into layoffs. When so much power rests with Google, the results may not always be fair.

'TAG' onto the future of product placement

In a segment aired on Comedy Central earlier this month, host Stephen Colbert observed that the new ability to tag Facebook Pages in photos could transform Facebook into the world's largest agency for product placement advertising.

"Photo taggers could charge companies based on their number of friends and demand top dollar for tags in their most-viewed photos," he says. "Think of all the windfall you could reap from dropping products into your most precious life moments, like weddings, births and funerals."

This shift from 'Likes' to 'Tags' in digital marketing aligns with the industry prediction that Silicon Valley would become the next Madison Avenue. As Facebook and Twitter begin to generate more ad revenue, advertising and marketing will start migrating to the West Coast to take part in the talent pull. The trend also highlights the increasing empowerment brands have to disseminate their own messages, bypassing traditional intermediaries in PR and creating high quality content created specifically for the social web. Accompanied by location-based services, social media will continue to bring about transformation to the online advertising ecosystem - well beyond the traditional banners and media buying-processes.

Ad Wars: Facebook vs Google

Who will be online ads big dog? Google (the reigning king) or Facebook? Facebook seems well positioned to –at least in the long-term- steal Google’s crown. For various reasons:

Higher segmentation power: Facebook has more personal information about its users than Google and even better it is information that users provided themselves. While Google might know your name, age and gender Facebook knows your marital status, hometown, profession, etc

The social layer: Only Facebook can map your social life. It knows your friends, where you partied last night (through check-ins) and even what your friends are doing who you are most likely to share interests with.

The local layer: Facebook can easily dial in to compete (or potentially cooperate) with Groupon. Think about this: “You and your friend John live on the same block and you both like Rock music, go to this live concert close to you and save $10 each”

Even search: Facebook is getting more and more integrated with Microsoft’s search engine Bing (Microsoft is a minority shareholder in Facebook) and Bing is becoming Yahoo’s search provider. This will enable Facebook to dig deeper into the search layer of users’ activity online. Bing is now the 21^st most visited website according to Alexa.

And even Mobile: Facebook is very well positioned to benefit from the hot next thing in mobile advertising. There are more than 250 million users accessing Facebook from their mobile devices

Facebook’s main challenge now is to find an ad format that is more effective than the small display ads they have now which are obviously not very effective.

Behavioral Retargeting? good or bad?

Professor Kagan mentioned in last week's class, as I'm sure as he will in many future classes, the impending benefits of behavioral targeting. So far, we have addressed it in the context of SEO, as in the first piece of information (the launch point) retargeters can gather about a non-converted user. I'm sure in the next few weeks we'll delve deeper into how paid search and display media are the vehicles through which advertisers can retarget their non-converted users, but I want to discuss my slight personal aversion to the practice in general. Behavioral retargeting, though it may prove to be monetarily efficient, is in my opinion just another example of information gatherers' refusal to respect online privacy. Isn't it a bit invasive? My computer presenting custom information to me based on my previous searches? To some degree it feels unfair. How do YOU know what I want to see today, simply based one what I saw yesterday? However, this perspective is rebutted by the data. On the one hand, if this were the case, then the results wouldn't be so stellar....the high conversion rates are evidence of the fact that users do find this method useful I suppose. On the other side, I could argue that these conversions are just a measure of short-term gains, and in fact may harm long-term relationships between retailers and their consumers. My point, simply, is that I can't be the only one irritated by this, and we should not throw caution to the wind in the name of a quick sale. It would be interesting to gather long-term data on the effects of behavioral retargeting before we push it as the next frontier.

SEO Lessons Learned

As soon as I had a little time this weekend, I downloaded the Foxy SEO toolbar, and used it to scan the keywords of a website I recently launched for my company. It was fascinating to see that the 'title' of the site was indeed still 'home', as opposed to anything that would actually drive qualified visitors to the content. Furthermore, very few relevant keywords showed up on the page at all.

We had several web specialists on the project -- information architecture and user interface specialists, designers and producers. But none were charged with SEO specifically, and while some many have had a general sense that verbiage on the site would be important, it didn't occur to anyone to make sure that the words were integrated in the most critical places.

For me there are a few lessons learned from this experience:

1. SEO won't happen by itself; someone has to be the point person for making sure that it's a part of site design and content development. Designers know design. Content developers know content. Neither group is thinking about SEO unless someone with bigger vision is pushing search optimization as part of the agenda.

2. We thought that more conceptual and less concrete copy frameworks would be better for our audience. That may be true, but because our copy focuses on vague and general rather than concrete and specific, many of the keywords we need for search are present.

3. Meeting your audience's needs isn't possible if the audience can't find you. The best copy can't achieve it's goals if people aren't coming to the site -- and search (particularly Google) is the single greatest driver of traffic.

4. The keywords that drive traffic may not be the most obvious. We did have a few relevant search terms on our page, but they were so broad that we would not be able to compete with the many other sites in our category on the web. We need to get specific.

Looking forward to playing around with the other tools to see where else we may have gone wrong (and hopefully some places we've gone right!).

Watch out! You may be inside a "filter bubble"!

A recent TED talk by Eli Pariser describes some of the perils of personalized search. He explains how as Google gets better and better at knowing who we are and what we like it starts to filter competing and conflicting points of views out of our personalized search results. Similarly, Facebook has gotten very savvy at figuring out which of our friends we click on most often and bumping their posts to the top of our news feeds. While this may seem like a sophisticated development on the part of these companies, Pariser argues that personalized search is narrowing our awareness of the world and forcing us into an invisible "filter bubble".

Why? If an individual is less likely to click on links about current events than about entertainment and Google notices this and begins to filter news-related links out of this person's search results, there is little hope that s/he will ever become an informed citizen. If someone clicks in a way that shows Google s/he is more interested in one political party than another, and Google then removes all links relating to the opposing party, how will that person ever learn the opposing parties' arguments? Just these two potential scenarios seem to stand in the way of a fully functioning democracy. What else is being filtered out of our search results and what are the possible consequences of these omissions.

How will this play out? Will consumers demand more autonomy in personalizing their own results? Will Google and friends start to see how intense personalization of search can be a bad thing when taken to the extreme? Is Pariser wrong to worry about the "filter bubble"? Is this actually a positive advancement?

How Important is Branding?

Digital media has undeniably changed branding strategy for existing and emerging corporations. URL availability is a primary determinant when choosing a name, but associative naming is still important, and naturally at odds with URL availability. This has led to a new wave of word invention, nonsensical combinations and creative spellings. I have two questions about this new wave:
1.) Is it sustainable?
The limited set of URLS available make this unsustainable. The limiting factor is the availability of URLs and the huge number of squatters sitting on or bidding up valuable URL properties. A new naming schema is going to be necessary but the main obstacle has been normalizing a .com alternative. Alternative top-level domains have not been widely embraced, and a .com address is still regarded as a requirement for a successful brand.

2.) How important is the associative power of the brand name?
This is a much more fluid question, especially as the nature of products in the digital space don’t always line up with previously established industries. I would even go so far as to generalize that the names do not have to be related to core of the service. For example, Google, a creative misspelling of Googol, is entirely unrelated to the search functionality at the core of its business. Twitter, likewise has a name that has nothing to do with its core service. Another question is spelling; here I believe that the phonetics of the naming is the more important factor. As illustrated in class by the blueberries versus blueberrys finding, accuracy is not the determining factor in choosing a good name. Another factor that we discussed in class was the meta tagging of a site could be a more important tool for discovery and visiting, because it is even possible that more people use search to enter sites rather than using conventional URLs.

The China's version of Youtube, Facebook, etc

In the past a few months, there are a lot of Chinese internet companies went IPO in the United States, either NASDAQ or New York Stock Exchange. In their marketing material, these companies were called the China's version of XXX, e.g. Youku, the china version of Youtube; Renren, the china version of Facebook; Dangdang, the China version of Amazon, Qihoo 360, the china version of Macfee...just to name a few. The market shows great interests in these companies. As a Chinese, although I am happy to see that a lot of Chinese entrepreneurs come to the market, build up great companies and the US investors show interest in their companies as well as the China economy, I am still curious to know whether these companies are really comparable to their US counterparts?

China internet market is quite different from the US, in terms of the users' demographics, customer behavior pattern, market stage etc. Research shows that people in China use internet for entertaining rather than networking, business, and e-commerce, which are the main usage of internet in the US. In addition, culture plays a role in the internet companies' development. Facebook is a great place for people to network, they share thoughts, share photos and give comments. But on Renren (the china version of facebook), people are more tended to share news, share interesting articles, pictures, rather than update their own status and photos. Maybe that is because in Chinese culture, people are not encouraged to talk about themselves. This is a small example of what i felt when I used both facebook and renren. I think more thoughts would come up as this digital marketing course helps me build up more knowledge and understanding of the US market, then I could compare it with the China market..

The Zoozoo

Vodafone India unleashed a game-changing ad campaign in 2009, during the Indian Premier League (cricket’s response to the football Champions League). The semi-alien, cartoon-like white-bodied creatures called Zoozoos attracted tremendous attention. The draw was the simplicity of the plot and the characters, and was enhanced by the message they were trying to convey for Vodafone’s value-added-services.
The most interesting aspect of this campaign was that the name ‘Zoozoo’ did not appear on any of their ads. The phenomenon only gained momentum due to an omni-present digital media campaign –
•The official Zoozoo page on Vodafone’s website which consolidated all the online content
•An official Zoozoo fanpage on Facebook which attracted more than 50,000 fans within 10 days
•An official Youtube Zoozoo channel http://www.youtube.com/user/vodafoneipl?blend=21&ob=5
•And even a Zoozoo toolbar for your browser
Needless to say, these platforms created enough buzz. And, common searches for Vodafone ‘eggheads’ inevitably pointed to Zoozoo pages (which were probably littered with meta-tags to draw traffic). Vodafone generated previously unseen levels of engagement with their fans, who even suggested a line of Zoozoo merchandise (which Vodafone eventually launched).
But did the Facebook page hits and Youtube video views do anything tangible for Vodafone’s actual subscription sales? Most people claim that this was a classic case of the campaign overtaking the brand, with Vodafone suffering lackluster sales thereafter.

Shaquille O'Neal's Tout Video vs. Mike Schmidt's Tearful Farewell

One of the biggest sports stories of the past week was basketball great Shaquille O'Neal's retirement announcement. That it was done via the video service Tout made it a big story in the social media and internet marketing arena as well. Never before has such a prominent player ended his career this way, and since Tout is a new service, Shaq brought them a lot of attention too.

Baseball great Mike Schmidt's retirement speech was a typical athlete's farewell, but O'Neal's nonchalant announcement sets a new standard. He was in control, and his message reached millions, including the media (and his team!).

Starting in the mid-90s, "Shaq" helped unite professional sports with the greater entertainment world, as a celebrity rapper and spokesman for many products. Even with his retirement announcement, he has proven himself the consummate showman. We haven't seen the last of "Big Aristotle"! Hopefully he will take over some of Manute Bol's work in Africa or some similarly high-profile role.

Shaq later held an official retirement press conference to make the announcement.

The Rise of Mobile SEO

As the dichotomy of mobile and desktop search becomes increasingly apparent, so has the crucial need to use distinct SEO strategies for each search type. Mobile is increasingly viewed as a key driver of revenue and traffic to businesses, and Google’s Eric Schmidt has noted that mobile search has been growing much faster than industry predictions, at a rate significantly higher than desktop search.

[Credit: Image on Left, Mashable.com]

Schmidt noted that “more than 60% of consumers search for brands from mobile devices before purchasing, and another 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months.” SEO strategies niche to the mobile world range from ‘device agnostic approaches’ to simply applying traditional SEO practices on mobile platforms. The former approach advocates for full content transfer or transcoding from traditional to mobile sites. The idea here is that ‘more is more,’ where stripping key content from a website to achieve an ‘optimized’ site would result in lower page rankings and user browsing experiences.

Customizing status quo SEO practices on a new platform is also important. Mobile, as a whole, is used by consumers for more narrow and focused “task-oriented” searches. Understanding consumer behavior remains an important endeavor for businesses that seek to anticipate search keywords, queries and optimize visibility and detection from search engines.

Ultimately, the linked economy gets assigned even more weight in a mobile world. Integrated content and tight-knit information networks are even more relevant in a world where 20% of email marketing is read from mobile phones. With the advent of HTML 5 and other next-generation technologies, companies that wish to effectively employ the mobile space for their digital marketing needs need to become highly proficient in the world of mobile SEO.

Nothing spells trust like M-O-M…

…and marketers and advertisers have taken notice. With the general public relatively weary of marketing and targeted advertisements and the over-abundance of information and reviews composed by unknown and unfamiliar people, mom is there to help ease the pain. Moms have built a reputation over the years of being knowledgeable, trustworthy and spending conscious and are now well equipped with Facebook, Twitter and Blogging at their fingertips to spread the word. Lucid Marketing reported on a January 2011 survey of moms that 34% use tell-a-friend request or refer a website, product or brand to others, this jumps up to 66% when an incentive for the mom is attached.

To attract moms, companies need to do things right, otherwise they risk losing their support. Stores like the Container Store and Ann Taylor LOFT are two examples Mom Marketing done well. The survey recommends that companies are straight forward, take the mother’s time in consideration and make sharing the coupons easy.

If you are interested in reading more details, here are the articles that I referenced:

HOW TO: Attract and Engage Social Media Moms
http://mashable.com/2009/02/13/social-media-moms/

Social Networking for Mom
http://www.tcapushnpull.com/social-media-tools/momma-said-well-momma-said-a-lot-of-stuff/

Incentives Motivate Moms to Refer Brands to Friends
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008416

Moms on Facebook Are Savvy to Marketers [STATS]
http://mashable.com/2010/02/05/moms-on-facebook/

Research & Reporting for Marketing to Moms
http://www.momreports.com/

At Container Store, Mothers Get Royal Treatment
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007499

Lucid Marketing
http://www.lucidmarketing.com/

Moms Welcoming to Tell-a-Friend Requests
http://www.lucidmarketing.com/moms-welcoming-to-tell-a-friend-requests/

Webutantes
http://webutantes.blogspot.com/

Skeptcal about music on the cloud

I have been following the efforts to establish a cloud based content (music and potentially movies) service by multiple players including Apple, Google and Amazon for a while. What these players are trying to offer is simply storage space where you store your music and that can be accessed from any device.

The main benefits I see out of this service are the following:
1- You can play your music when you are using a device that is not yours.
2- You will not need to synchronize digital music you purchase/add to your collection on one device with your other mobile devices since you can access it online anyway

Sounds nice huh? But how useful is it really?

1- There is an implicit assumption that you have internet access all the time and thus can access your music easily. While our connectivity has dramatically improved in the recent years, think about being in a long subway ride.
2- There is a cost involved (rumors about Apple's iCloud have mentioned a $25 charge). Are users willing to incur an extra cost in order to avoid synchronizing their mobile devices (their phones, tablets and music players)?
3- Storage caps

The key question is will users be willing to pay a premium to get this little extra connectivity with their music/movie libraries? I doubt

Phishing for Marketing?

As I read the NYT article about the recent email security breach at Google, it struck me how spamming and phishing attacks are becoming increasingly personalized and I wondered if the same personalization we seek for creating an effective marketing campaign is being used to target internet newbies into divulging otherwise confidential information.

For instance, a lottery winning notification addressed to 'Dear User' can be easily caught by Spam filters and trashed. But when an email is addressed to you from a friend, and has other information relevant to you, it gets increasingly difficult to separate the spam from genuine emails. A similar example comes to mind where everyday on your Facebook wall you can see dozens of your friends 'liking'strange videos or articles. While you would ordinarily have ignored or suspected such a link on a random website, knowing that its published by a friend lets down your guard and prompts you to click.

As an avid online shopper, I subscribe to a great many retail newsletters and generally didn't hesitate from providing my very basic information (gender, age group, likes, dislikes) for the retailers to send me more 'personalized' deals and information. However in the light of increasing security breaches and identity thefts, I wonder if all the targeted marketing I seek will come at a cost....

Could Social Media Kill Celebrity Endorsements?

Social media outlets are growing exponentially and advertising dollars allocated to these options are following suit. If some of the biggest potential of social media lies in the medium's ability to tap into personal brand advocacy, could this phenomenon present advertisers with a more authentic, trusted and cost effective form of endorsement?

For example, remember the Gillette Fusion commercials featuring Tiger Woods and Roger Federer? Those two pitching razors was, to me, pretty awkward and not at all compelling; plus, the campaign must have cost P&G a ton. I can't imagine I was alone in that thinking.

Alternatively, if a buddy of mine said via Facebook that he really dug his new Fusion razor or liked the product's page, I'd probably be more inclined to try thing. The cost to P&G for planting that seed? Minimal.

Now, how marketers can go about getting millions of social media users to (believably) advocate their products is certainly another discussion. But, I'm convinced that finding a way to do so would ultimately be less expensive and more compelling to target consumers. At the least, it would reduce the amount of cheesy celebrity ad appearances and that's not such a bad thing, is it?

Twitter as an Art

Since we will be exploring the ins and outs of social media and I come from a performing arts background, I thought I’d share a few thoughts and articles where the virtual and art worlds are meeting up.

http://creativetime.org/programs/archive/2011/tweets/

Creative Time Tweets is a series of three commissioned Twitter performances that aims to promote dialogue and engage audiences both in person and through Twitter feed.

The first project, #24hPort took place on May 25, 2001 in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Artist Man Barlett spent 24 hours in the terminal asking people both in person and on-line, “Where have you been?” and “Where are you going?” Conversations were mainly based around memory and geography and produced real-time history of both the artist and audience’s collective experiences. The project also explores the role of the NY transportation system.

The second project explores the journey of the telegraph and the history of communication technologies through an “old-school” Twitter activity. David Horvitz will first make a hard copy of every tweet with the hashtag #5992 from June 17-23 and then on June 24 he will carry the stack of tweets and travel with them by plane from San Francisco to Washinton, D.C. following the original route of the first transcontinental telegram (1861). Once Horvitz arrives in D.C., the collection of tweets will be submitted to the Library of Congress public archive. The website best states that “Serving as an anachronistic messenger in an era in which distance is no longer an obstacle to communication, Horvitz will re-engage with the relatively slow pace of the physical journey as a meaningful and transformative phase in the life of the message.”

The third project is still underway.

I wonder – are these projects art? Are the projects just exploring and comparing our two separate worlds (virtual vs. actual reality or old vs. new practices in communication)? What does the word live mean anymore? Live performance art? Live feed on the internet? Live reactions mixing with virtual reactions? Is creative use of social media its own art form?

Other interesting Twitter and art intersections include:

- Audience members being encouraged to tweet reactions during a performance.

- The world’s first piece of music is being composed from Twitter posts. The Twinthesis project uses a computer program to transform tweets into sounds. Each character has its own tone – a range from high pitched bleeps and deeper humming. The artists goal is to create a global symphony using tweets from around the world.

The Development of e-commerce in Asia

It is interesting to study the path of some major e-commerce companies, such as eBay and Amazon in Asia. Back in the early 1990s, eBay entered the Chinese market and soon found themselves been slaughtered by another local Chinese company, Taobao (also known as “treasure hunting” in Chinese). One of the major reasons of its falls is because of the listing fees it charges to customers. Clearly, the Chinese online market at the time was not mature enough to accept customer service fee and it was more important to nurture the market than to charge listing fees. Taobao, on the other hand, understood the situation and started its advertising campaign among young college students who are the main drivers of online shopping. It focused more on building a shopping community by posting articles and offering discounts on popular online forums.

I could not help but wonder what is the appropriate marketing strategy for e-commerce. Although e-commerce center around the concept of promoting a no-boundary shopping experience, it could not afford to ignore the local culture and market. To some extent, e-commerce demands more interactions among buyers and sellers than the traditional retail business.

Google’s Ever-Escalating War

In a cruel twist of fate, mighty Google may end up struggling against yesteryear’s Yahoo. Sound preposterous?

Not when you consider that Yahoo originally burst into the public consciousness by organizing the web’s links by hand. In other words, your web experience was improved by human mediation. Google’s innovation was to mediate the web by software algorithm, and has run away with the market since then.

But trouble is brewing in Googleville. As savvy entrepreneurs and shifty consultants learn how to take advantage of Google’s search algorithm, a cat and mouse game has emerged between Google and the so-called “Search Engine Optimization” industry. Each time Google improves its algorithm, the SEO industry figures out new ways to game it. A history of these battles is cleverly charted here.

The net result is organizing the web by algorithm may not be as useful – or as trustworthy – as you’d like. But what’s the alternative? One answer has already become clear: Wikipedia’s steady climb up the traffic rankings, to #5 according to Google itself or to #7 according to Alexa, suggests that there is clear demand for human-mediated content.

And friends are even better than a generic human, which is why former Google CEO Eric Schmidt admitted on Tuesday that his biggest failure was a lack of strategy to engage Facebook, the second most popular (and quickly growing) site on the web that does not give Google’s search engines much information to categorize.

To be sure, Google has a huge lead, and not all information is best organized through friends. But Google’s shareholders have hefty growth expectations, and even a moderate dent from human-mediated information networks such as Wikipedia and Facebook could cause Google some healthy trouble.

Thoughts on Groupon's IPO

I've been following Groupon and learning more about their business model for a while now. Purely as a consumer, I love the deals that Groupon offers but lately have been ignoring most of their e-mails. Too many deals are offered in each one and I don't have the time/inclination to go through them, especially since I've never heard of most of the restaurants and want to check them out on Yelp before I buy one at this point. Apparently, most people don't feel the same as Groupon is now preparing for its IPO and there is a lot of hype; it might end up valued more highly than Google at its IPO. As an MPH student, I don't know the intricate details of how tech bubbles or other bubbles grow and burst, but to me it seems like something to definitely keep an eye on. Groupon has a great model and a ton of subscribers, but I've read a lot of negative feedback from many small businesses that have worked with them. I ate out with a friend last night using a coupon from a different site similar to Groupon who told me she thinks that any business that uses them is probably struggling. It seems to me that they will have to come up with some other innovation before they start running out of good deals to offer. Luckily it might not be that big of a problem in NYC when there are always struggling restaurants and new restaurants looking to get their name out there, but NYC is a unique market.

Nike Training in Action

As a late i-phone adopter, I have been furiously trying to get up to speed with the latest apps. Over the long weekend, a friend mentioned that I should try one of his favorites, the Nike Training Club app—the app that Professor Kagan highlighted in our first lecture.

Professor Kagan used this app to highlight how digital marketing can be used for long term relationship building, and that there are different ways to quantify its value aside from a click or a sale. By integrating this app into your daily life and workout regime, Nike is building a lasting brand presence that lasts well beyond the confines of the store or even their online shop. While a typical consumer might only buy a couple pairs of new sneakers a year or work out clothes only periodically, when they do, a familiar brand, a brand that they already have a relationship with may be a good place for them to begin their search.

After two independent recommendations from my peer group, which incidentally demonstrates the power of the network effect used in social media, I decided to download the app and give it a try. It was a free personal trainer after all!

I went outlet shopping the next day and happened to pick up a new Nike sports bra. I had been meaning to pick up a new one and went to a few different stores before settling on the one I purchased at Nike, which was not the usual brand that I favor.

Before taking this class it never would have occurred to me that the app and the unusual brand choice for me were at all inter-related, but after thinking about it a bit more, I am not sure. Was this just a coincidence or are Nike’s digital marketers just that good?

Couponing = Turning shopping into a game

This NPR article about Groupon discusses the reasons for the rapid rise of sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, pointing to the recession and the "gamification" of our day to day lives. The idea being that consumers are so used to playing games online that any aspect of real life devoid of point systems and levels can start to seem hopelessly mundane. However, if while shopping consumers can hungrily hunt down the best deals, it might be possible to alleviate some of the boredom associated with doing anything besides playing Angry Birds. I think this is a really fascinating concept and I wonder if such deep discounts will start to become the norm or if the potential downsides will start to outweigh the positives.

Sites like these have many applications and the power to help or hurt (Groupon takes 50%!) the parties involved. The article lists a few success stories from very small businesses who attracted a great numbers of customers for the first time through a Groupon deal. When a new or small business has nothing to distinguish itself, a great discount from Groupon can be what puts it on the map. Alternatively, there are stories of businesses that get overrun by customers due to a coupon deal and are physically unable to stay open. The article also discusses how really active Groupon users are so concerned with scoring the best deal that they never develop loyalty to any of the businesses they discover through the site. This poses a difficult challenge for businesses who want to include coupons in their marketing mix, yet may end up losing money on the deal and not actually attracting any repeat customers.

Amazon jumped on the bandwagon yesterday with AmazonLocal, but it looks like they don't have NYC area deals yet.

I am really curious to hear what the class thinks about these sites and what role they should play in digital marketing.

Where 85-year-old volunteers rule digital marketing...

That the Internet and digital marketing has infiltrated virtually every segment of society is no surprise. But somehow, it was still surprising to see that first hand last weekend in a very vivid example. I spent the weekend volunteering in Maryland onboard a WWII museum ship. The average age of the crew is somewhere in the mid 70s, and the all-volunteer organization that operates the ship has about 2,000 members. So far, they have relied almost entirely on grants and fundraisers through their 2,000 members for the $250,000 annual budget. However, as more members of the WWII generation die off, the membership is decreasing and the financial returns from those mailings are consequently slipping as well.

With the first digital marketing class still fresh on my mind, I asked the Chairman of the organization, “What are you doing for digital marketing?” He responded very proudly that for the first time ever, the organization was entering the digital marketing realm and all of their efforts were being spearheaded by an 85 year old woman who had no background in marketing- or the internet!

Of course our generation is used to the Internet as a daily, integrated part of our life. But listening to this 85-year-old volunteer talk about banner ads and paying per impression (“I don’t quite understand what that is, truthfully”, she confided), I could only marvel at the Internet’s reach. Perhaps most interestingly, she detailed a new relationship with the local newspaper, which was not only designing their banner ads, but also coming up with multiple opportunities for cross-promotion for the organization and the newspaper. Not only was an 85 year old spearheading this organization’s digital marketing, but traditional media was helping to facilitate this jump in order to save its own revenues!

I also wondered what the digital marketing world will look like in ten years… if 85-year-old volunteers are now starting to care about Search Engine Optimization and banner ads, what does the future hold? If we all become increasingly more sophisticated with our digital marketing, will it again be a case of whoever has enough money in the budget is the winner? Or is there enough room on the internet that everyone will still have a voice that can be found and scrappy but intelligent start ups can still thrive, even without large advertising budgets?

The role of social networks in Libya's uprisings

In the first class of Digital Marketing we covered the topic of Social Networks and its importance for marketing during the past years. Thus I thought it would be interesting to mention the role of certain social networks in the Libya uprisings of the past months. It is no secret that these uprisings were strongly supported by the Internet through blogs, facebook, twitter, and other online communities. As mentioned by an article published by the NY Times on February 23rd 2011, "Among their [the protesters] most powerful weapons have been crudely filmed videos and images of civilian deaths and injuries. The amateurish quality of these has given them an added psychological strenght and impact...". Thus one of the battles between opposition and government has taken place on the online arena which has been flooded by articles and images that portray the lives of the Libyans. One of the most important web sites to show this has been www.libyafeb17.com which tries to unite Qaddafi's opponents around the globe. Others include Almanara, Libya Alyoum, and thousands of facebook groups.
Have you encountered with any other websites or groups of this sort?

Targeted vs. Viral Marketing

After perusing Omar’s “Creating Viral Marketing Campaign” blog entry, I was struck by the question of if and how Viral-marketing overlaps with targeted marketing campaigns. Before starting this class, I assumed these two marketing techniques were mutually exclusive.
Targeted marketing’s assumed purpose was to convey information targeted to the user based on their demographic data, or current and historical needs (like a search results). We talked about this in our first class, but the incredible power of the targeting tools, and the minimal content conveyed through these (predominantly text) ads I didn’t think that the creative and engaging content of a viral campaign was possible.
Before we started this class, I equated viral marketing with raw creativity. I viewed effective advertising in this genre as primarily video campaigns, such as the chicken for burger king (http://www.bk.com/en/us/campaigns/subservient-chicken.html), the naked apartments blog (http://www.nakedapartments.com/blog/creepy-creeper/) and the old spice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE) guy, which became viral hits, I assumed because of their broad appeal, rapid spread and their ability to inspire conversation and become “water cooler stories.”
However, through the first class, I am very surprised to discover that there is a strong science at work behind these marketing techniques, and there is some solid overlap between the two. I would love to hear more from Professor Kagan and our class about the convergence of these two marketing techniques and the ability of targeted campaign to transform into a viral hit.

Creating Brand Ambassadors with Digital Marketing

Whether it's a facebook page, or an area for comments on a company's webpage, providing an online public forum for consumers to respond, rate, promote, or criticize a service or product has transformed the way in which companies interact with consumers. It was mentioned in class last week that certain digital marketing tactics can result in a backlash of negative reviews and comments. While this is true, the negative feedback from consumers can also be seen as an opportunity for the company to further develop its relationship with its customer base. For example, there are many negative, one star ratings for hotels on travelocity.com. However, it is the hotel's responsibility to monitor these remarks and respond to the public posts. Some hotels choose not to respond which further harms the public image of their brand. On the other hand, the hotel managers who choose to respond to the negative posts thereby creating a dialogue between the guest and hotel, helps to enhance the hotel's image as a hotel who cares about its guests. Similarly, positive feedback from other guests at a hotel will usually influence a final decision more than hearing it from a marketer's perspective in an advertisement.

Public perception is a key component of successful marketing, and this is an area in which customer service plays a pivotal role. Collaboration between marketing and customer service departments will allow for a greater opportunity to develop and maintain these crucial relationships resulting in increased promotion and sales by creating brand ambassadors. The accessibility of the internet makes digital marketing an important tool for companies who understand the importance of developing these relationships.

Enterprise ecommerce through a software technologists lens…

..three years ago i embarked on a great digital voyage, tasked with consolidating Liz Claiborne Inc’s portfolio of brands on a common ecommerce platform.
The first to go online on the new platform was luckybrand.com. We then launched kensie.com, and katespade.com. I am still working on juicycouture.com and jackspade.com
This blog post series is my attempt at sharing my experience and overlaying it with lessons from this digital marketing class.
What is “enterprise” in an ecommerce platform? To me an enterprise ecommerce platform is the infrastructure required to run a multi channel business, with sufficient redundancy to ensure smooth business operations, through seasonal peaks.
What are various components of an enterprise ecommerce operation? I have broken it down into three broad areas: technology, operations and marketing.

Technology encompasses the technical infrastructure to support the operation. It includes the transaction and merchandizing engine (some call it the website, but it is a lot more), the order management system, the warehouse management system, the enterprise resource planning system, and technology used to support the call center and marketing.

Operations include business functions like merchandizing, photography, content creation, logistics and fulfillment, risk management, customer service.

Marketing besides the obvious outreach activities, includes managing consumer facing creative, packaging and user experience.

Please watch out for more details next week….

The power of e-commerce

Many many years ago, while I was still an undergrad student studying MIS, I decided to focus on web design. Even though I'm not a particularly creative person, I did well in web design. Little did I know, I was asked to design business school director's website as my final internship project. This professor/director of business school has a side business in which he sells a custom reporting software. Mind you, this is year 2005, when e-commerce was just kicking up and only the so-called "big dogs" are getting into the game, i.e. Amazon, eBay. He advertised his software through word-of-mouth and distributed the software via email. He wanted me to build a "nice-looking" web interface as to make his company a bit more credible. Two weeks later, I presented him a functional and colorful website. He adopted it and started using it ever since. His business definitely grew partly, if not substantially, because of this website.

Right there, after the first lecture of this class, I came to the realization that I partook in the earliest form of digital marketing without consciously knowing it.

Nice.

Answering to Andrea's question on how to choose the most effective marketing mix

Measuring the impact of media channels/halo effects on sales is quite complicated. Some companies, especially in the consumer goods and telecom industries, are starting to use marketing mix models to have a more precise measure of those effects. Two years ago I had the chance to help building up one of those models. This method uses econometric techniques to regress all company marketing levers (e.g., variables on the distribution channel, price scheme, product design, advertising channels, etc.) on sales or whatever the company might be interested in. The regression measures and quantifies the impact of the different advertising channels on sales and it can also give you a good measure of the halo effect of the different channels the company used. Depending on the data you are using on the model, it can get so specific to quantify the impact of $1 invested on the “X” TV channel, with a 30” format, during prime time. Saying that, we have to take into consideration the fact that the model is an approximation of reality, thus its results should always be combined with the expertise and knowledge of media experts.

Are we choosing the most effective and efficient mix?

I’m currently working on a study where we will have to elaborate a comprehensive marketing strategy for a new product. We are in the initial phases of this project and it strikes me how complex it is to come up with an effective and efficient marketing mix for the campaign. The main challenge is to really understand which kind of channel mix to rely on for this product along its lifecycle: today our first concern is to create awareness for the product and to trigger a positive world of mouth which will induce first customer purchase…tomorrow it will be nurturing this relationship building our customers’ loyalty towards the brand.
Currently we are coming across a number of expert studies and engaging in interviews to choose the channel mix for our first campaign.
Over the long term however we intend to introduce some models or tools that will give us a clearer idea on the effectiveness of the different media channels and also on the possible halo effects. Are we really choosing the most effective and efficient mix? I would be interested in some experience from anyone in the class…

Mobile advertising, overhyped?

I get the hype: more people using smartphones and connected devices, huge potential of creating targeted campaigns leveraging user preferences and location. Years of experimenting, some growth, but a very small share of advertising. Will it ever gain traction?

All sorts of players have tried to compete along the mobile advertising value chain. Many innovations happened, lots of interesting stuff out there, but I feel its to intrusive to work.

Traditionally, Telecom players sought to monetize this channel through simple communication (text messaging, multimedia messaging, etc). The idea was to control a larger chunk of the value chain and use advertising as an alternate source of revenues to combat falling voice revenues. Measured against that goal, i would say operators have failed miserably. As it stands today, revenues are low and operators have lost the head-start as the focus shifts more towards mobile apps/ mobile web. One interesting business model out of all this is Blyk, an operator that provides its customers with free minutes and messages in exchange for opting in to mobile advertising.

The latest bets i would say are the mobile web and mobile applications. Google acquired admob in 2009 (for $750 million) which, complemented by its Android platform, is able to bring lots of value to marketers. Apple followed by acquiring Quattro wireless last year to launch its iAds network, again lots of synergies and potential there.

I'm sure both companies will revolutionize the mobile-ad space in terms of providing richer forms of media for marketers. However, will there be enough scale given how people use their mobile devices. I might be mistaken here, but i feel mobile devices are geared more towards efficiency and getting things done rather than fiddling with some advertisements.

When you browse the web, shoot an email or download an app on your mobile phone, you are often in a hurry to get something done. In my opinion, it is time-limit that will eventually cap mobile advertising, beyond which penetration will just flatten.

This is strictly my reading of the situation. Are the mobile ad players betting on the mobile becoming a 1st/ 2nd screen type of device where you would spend more time there? Are the target segments a diff category of users that are willing to opt-in to ads?

The Filter Bubble

I recently came across this video of a TED talk by Eric Pariser, that I think is thought-provoking and decidedly a propos to the topics of search marketing and SEO we'l be discussing in the upcoming class:

I was especially triggered by his metaphor (and slides!) on the "human" and now "algorithmic" gatekeepers that have replaced them. In all, his argument is for, in a way, more ethical algorithms, that don't allow themselves to be the feeder of our own conformation biases.

For marketing, the filter bubble is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, the clearer a person's filter bubble,the easier it is for marketers to target this person based on exactly the type of information he or she is most exposed to. On the other hand, penetrating the filter bubble with something genuinely new, that may actually be of considerable interest to this person is harder, as it might simply not penetrate the tough walls of the bubble.
For me, marketing and especially digital marketing is always strongly intertwined with ethics, and Mr. Pariser's argument persents a new layer of ethical considerations I, at least, had not previously considered. Where is the line between "editorial" search and unbiased search? To what extent can marketers use the filter bubble mechanism to create ever more tailored and intrusive (?) advertising?

I don't have answers, but there is definitely enough to think about!

Online retail is growing at a healthy double digit pace, but many questions seem to remain unanswered. After the class, I’d like to share with you some of my concerns:

• How big can continue growing multichannel retail? We have seen in first session techniques to create traffic on websites, and we discovered how expensive this could be. These investments have impact on online sales but also on offline sales. How efficient are the current metrics to measure the latter? How should we adapt digital marketing to foster sales in general and not only online sales?

• Will market place growth, especially Amazon, continue at the same incredible pace? Today it is not rare that 10 to 20% of brands website traffic is generated by market places. Market places are taking a percentage of each transaction. In the long run, shall brand try to avoid them and keep their margins, or will market places become even more unavoidable?

• It seems that there is an increased level of skepticism around the role of social networks in driving sales. This skepticism seems as strong as was the excitement a while ago. However social networks are inexpensive tools, and seem a good way to both gather information about customers and better target them. How should retailers and brands use efficiently facebook and twitter? Can brands expect to drive commerce from social network soon?

The Social Research and Analytics Opportunity

I was intrigued by the first class on digital marketing, in particular, the impressive stats on the expected growth in just about every channel of digital marketing – search, display, email, mobile marketing. While each of these channels presents significant baseline growth opportunities, on a more macro level, my mind was focused on the tremendous opportunity this presents for meaningful research and analytics in each of these areas.

With several hundred online methods for customers to voice their opinions on brands on the Web – how can companies get savvy about filtering out the crap and understanding the real data on their brands effectiveness? How can they mine and leverage the vast pools of data from social networks to gain competitive advantage? An example of a company that rode the early wave on analytics and has since been phenomenally successful is Techlightenment. Based in London the company started out creating facebook ad campaigns and has since expanded to using analytics for data insights and market research. Some of their tools include powerful front end surveys in facebook, rich media polls and social research dashboards.

As we progress through the course, it will be interesting to learn whether the sophistication of research and analytics can provide real competitive advantage across the various digital marketing channels. Watch this space.

"Marketing is for companies who have sucky products"

I attended the "Startup Pitch" event hosted by the New York Tech meetup group last week. A handful of start up companies pitched to a panel of venture capitalists to get feedback on their presentations and business models. One of the companies has been around for over a year and is seeking to bring online romance to the real world. The company's model was very strong and was written up by many tech bloggers and newspapers but only managed to sign up 4,000 registered users. They were seeking to raise funds, utilizing the majority of the capital on marketing and advertising costs. At the end of the pitch, one of the panelists referred to the controversial article that Fred Wilson wrote in February. The panelist stated that there may be a flaw with their product if they cannot gain traction after being exposed by the different media outlets.

Yes, I do agree that startups shouldn't spend most of their start up capital on marketing however, startups should consider bringing a marketing person on board at an early stage. This helps determine if you have a viable product before wasting time developing a product that may not have a marketplace for it. By testing the market first, entrepreneurs will have good feedback on the product's viability and suggestions for improvement.

The Wrong Marketing Strategy

I thought about this article that I had just read during our first class. Apparently the owner of DecorMyEyes, an online retailer of knockoff eye wear was threatening/harassing customers who complained about his site so that it would raise his search profile on Google. According the the Times he "used several aliases and he threatened to kill or sexually assault customers, going so far in one instance that he e-mailed an image of the customer’s home, which had been obtained from Google maps." He will be sentenced on September 16th and could be getting up to 6 years in prison. Also, Google is attempting to change their algorithm so you can't use negative feedback to positive effect.

Here is the full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/business/13borker.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=threatening%20messages&st=cse

Facebook: Does it pay?

    I recently recieved a text that simply stated: Do you want to make a lot of money? It piqued my attention and I opened the message to read the secret pearl of wisdom. The answer was a three step process: 1) Log on to Facebook. 2) Click on the deactivate button in settings. 3) Get to work. I chuckled at the simplicity and the truth in the message. Today, as Professor Kagan mentioned in class. many of us spend most of our time on Facebook. We are constantly updating our status and checking the pages of our friends. The size of Facebook's audience is simply huge with Facebook heading to their 700 millionth user level. Yet, for many businesses, advertising on facebook has not been profitable.
    I myself have had the same experience when I attempted to promote on Facebook. I even spoke to Professor Netzer to understand why Facebook with its huge audience reach is not delivering the returns that businesses expect. Almost all major companies are on Facebook. The pull of social media is extremely seductive and everyone seems to jump on the bandwagon with trying to understand their audience. According to Professor Netzer, the reason why facebook fails for many advertisers is the fact that when people are on facebook, they are there to socialize and to have fun. Making a purchase is considered a hindrance and ads are therefore seen as a nuisance. Second, many of the products that are advertised consists of items that are not fun or impulsive purchases. Recently, I came across an ad for a toolkit. It targeted the wrong audience at the wrong time.
     Therefore, while there is huge potential in Facebook as a marketing tool, currently the return on advertising dollars have been disappointing for many businesses.

Social Networks: A Place to Meet Up and Report On Your Friends

During class, we discussed a few examples of social networks other than the standouts Facebook and Twitter.

I came across a couple of interesting sites over the weekend which I'd like to highlight for the class:

Meetup.com- You may already be familiar with the site, but basically it lets you join groups that are already meeting; allows you to start new meetings; provides resources to find likeminded people who will want to do things with you; and creates opportunities for these groups to get sponsors. This site was extremely useful for me in looking for social media classes for work. It doesn't seem to have any advertising yet, but clearly there are great opportunities for targeting along with sponsorship for PR purposes. For example, a knitting store can post ads to knitting clubs or provide yarn for the club to create awareness of itself.

MePorter.com- I am brand new to this site, on which people can sign up to post their own hyper local news. They can then share news with their friends and invite others to comment, add to the story, sign in as eyewitnesses and post pictures. The site already features ads and has the potential for lots of hyper local targeting.

On all these social networking sites, including Meetup.com, Facebook, Twitter and all the dating sites, it's interesting to note that their success ultimately depends on how many people the site can attract, as well as whether others want to associate with the people on there. Ads and networks are both only as useful as the eyeballs connected to them.

Creating a "Viral" Marketing Campaign

I started this post as a comment to my classmate's post on how well adults recognize marketing, but decided that based on the different specific focus, this deserved to be its own blog post. The other blog post made the point that many people fail to realize that videos are part of a marketing campaign, particularly when these videos are funny in their own right. I not only agree with this point, but take it further by suggesting that the key to a marketing campaign's success is the ability to get consumers to enjoy playing and distributing the company's advertisements because the consumer wants to for his own reasons (i.e. it's funny or useful or interesting enough to watch and pass on to friends).

This raises an interesting question: can a company "create" a viral marketing campaign, and if so, how does one go about this? While I'm sure Professor Kagan is full of thoughts on this, I wanted to open it up to the class for comments.

My own view is that even though one can create a viral marketing campaign, this needs to be done in ways that dramatically diverge from traditional marketing techniques. For example, in the case of funny viral videos, it may make more sense to hire comedic film producers (like the guys from College Humor) to run a funny campaign with or based on your company's product, rather than to rely on people within your company to suddenly "become funny." Similarly, for viral videos based on usefulness, it probably makes sense for a company (especially a startup on a smaller budget) to scour YouTube for relevant experts in the field, and contract with these people directly to promote your product in the same kinds of videos they have produced with millions of hits.

The Internet and sites like YouTube have allowed anybody to become a film-maker on a very small budget, which allows all companies (big and small) to experiment cheaply in trying to create the kind of "viral" campaign that will stick. If even one of these videos actually does "go viral" and become the kind of advertisement that nobody even thinks of as an advertisement you have succeeded. The question is how to make this happen in the first place.

Standardized Advertising

One particular point stood out to me in last week's digital marketing class, and that was that display media is making a comeback. In 2008, I left Razorfish to go work for a small boutique web design agency, and at that time, paid search was "king". As an SEM manager, life was easy in the sense that budget was rarely an issue - it was hard to argue against devoting more $$ to paid search as it proved time and time again to the be the most efficient use of the advertising dollar. Sure, sometimes there was tension between display and search execs in this regard, but we just weren't at the point yet where we could leverage true synergies between the two forms of advertising. Clearly, since that time, things have changed as Professor Kagan explained during last week's class that display media has found ways to be highly efficient (primarily through more and more sophisticated targeting). What I find curious, however, is the willingness of companies to be "boxed in" to standardized IAB ad formats. I know I'm probably wrong, but I really don't believe I've ever clicked on a display ad unit. I don't even notice them. That is the downside of being a "pusher", and not a "puller". It is somewhat mind boggling to me that a group of marketers decided on some grid formats for the internet a while back and we're all subjected to these standard units now that are almost impossible to change due to the headaches created by attempted deviation. I worked on a project with Barry Diller and Tina Brown called theDailyBeast.com, a curated news aggregation site, and we tried to break the mold by refusing to partake in the standard ad unit model and instead created a production heavy, micro-site flavored ad serving structure where "engagement" was the primary metric. In theory, this approach was enticing, though in execution, it still couldn't compete with the CPM rates and efficiencies standardization brought. I leave the class with the question, how sustainable is it to force all display advertising to follow the IAB approach? Is advertising going to become really targeted, but really boring?

Focus on the Goals

The phrase "focus on the goals, not on the metrics alone" jumped out in last week's class. Over and over again I see companies intent on building website traffic, increasing ad impressions or boosting their number of facebook fans, with little understanding of why these activities might (or might not) be important.

Getting millions of people to your website is only valuable if they are qualified leads -- people who you might convert to customers, donors or advocates. If they are there for a reason that isn't core to your business, they might be a waste of resources.

The misalignment of goals and metrics isn't new (see this piece from Bain for a great non-digital example), but because digital marketing is so unfamiliar to many institutions, the possibility of misalignment is greater. Corporate executives are likely to see social media as an inexpensive "experiment" rather than a marketing strategy that is core to their business goals. Companies build digital operations, but approach them with less rigor and lower standards of accountability than other marketing plans.

Of course there are complications in the digital world. It's far more likely that a media mix will be responsible for a boost in sales than any one channel, and tracking back the "why" of success is often impossible. But the digital world offers tremendous opportunity as well. Right now, Facebook and Google allow information-gathering that have tremendous marketing implications.

Even more exciting, as convergence becomes a greater reality, there is opportunity for better conversion metrics on all media platforms -- particularly television. A "clickable commercial" or product placement would offer previously unheard of data directly related to placement, timing and quality of particular ads.

If marketers can remember that creating cool new stuff and attracting eyeballs are not goals unto themselves, there will be unprecedented opportunity to capitalize on new technologies.

How well do adults recognize marketing?

I'm sure we've all been here before-- your friend sends you a link to a funny YouTube video and tells you that it will change your world, make you laugh, or at the very least, bring you up to speed on the latest viral video hit.

This past weekend, while with my sister, she told me that "Oh my gosh, have you seen those Old Spice videos? You have to watch them. They're hysterical. HYSTERICAL. SO FUNNY. Get my computer. We'll watch them." What we watched was this video, and then clicked on about a dozen more after. Of course I laughed, but I also turned to her and said, "You realize this is just really good marketing?"

She responded, "Yeah...they're still funny".

She failed to realize that I wasn't asking if the videos were funny, they of course, were/are entertaining. I was asking her if she recognized it (had to and turned out to be) was part of a marketing campaign.

It left me wondering how well adults are able to decipher what is marketing and what is a viral video. And while a viral video must help spread brand awareness (i.e. she referred to it as The Old Spice" video), what tactics are being used to focus on converting those who become aware about the brand into a consumer. Looking forward to learning more about the digital marketing world in order to answer these questions.

E-Commerce Takeaway

Prof. Kagan’s first class was very enlightening – it was interesting to understand the structures applicable to the numerous internet companies that form an integral part of our daily life. One relevant company I would like to highlight is Zappos.

For those who are not familiar, Zappos is the largest US e-tailer of shoes, and is the perfect example of a company exploiting the long tail. As a dedicated customer of Zappos since 2002, I have numerous accounts of instances where styles and sizes unavailable elsewhere, have popped up on Zappos; and most importantly, at a lower price! Zappos has created a loyal following of repeat customers with their unique business and service model, growing into a $1BN company in less than a decade.(It has been acquired by Amazon as of 2009).

However, there is a contrarian view to their ability to sustain the long tail. Conjecture is that Zappos’ profit margins have eroded significantly, as it has changed its model from previously coordinating delivery between shoe-producer and end-customer, to now stocking merchandise in-house.

What lies ahead for Zappos and its like? Any thoughts?

Marketing and the Psychology of Media

In a “Psychology of Media” class I am also taking we have discussed the influence of advertising on children, specifically relating to advertisements made for children.

It is pretty obvious that advertising attempts to influence our reality in order to get us to purchase a product. If it works well with us, how much more successful is advertising with children, especially as they interact with other form of media beyond television such as the Internet?

In the article by Ali, Blades & Oates (2009), “Young children’s ability to recognize advertisements in web page designs” the authors discuss a research which has been done with children in the U.K. and Indonesia ages 6-12. As the Internet has become a growing medium for advertisers to market to a younger audience, the authors examine how well children can accurately recognize an advertisement on the Internet, and discuss how the results from their study have implications for theories on how children develop an understanding of advertising on the Internet and how they could be made more aware of marketing messages on the Internet given the increasing time and importance it plays in children’s lives.

Also for us as marketers, it is important to know and understand to what extent children actually recognize ads and how they respond to them. The fact that children can identify an advertisement does not mean that they understand the nature of advertising. Investigating the effects of unrecognized advertisements on web pages is an important issue for future research, because children’s increasing use of new media means that they are more likely to be exposed to advertisements that they do not recognize as marketing messages.

Digital Marketing: The Critical Trek for Multichannel Campaign Management

The recent study by Adam Sarner at Gartner justified Prof. Kagen's discussion about the affect of Digital marketing is prominent across various marketing channels. The key findings from his paper were as follows:

• Online trend has shifted back to social media, communities and networking aspect of why the Internet was originated.
  
  
• Marketers now have more opportunity to engage their customers through various digitla channels, devices and social activities.
  
  
• Adam also predicted that by 2015, digital strategies specially social marketing, will influence at least 80% of consumers' discretionary spending.
  
  
• The Mass-marketing campaigns with 2% response rate will not sustain.
  
  

Adam quoted a great example of the National Basketball Association's Golden State Warriors. How they utilized social campaign through their website to unveil their new logo and raised ticket sales of 440K by spending only5K.

Gartner classify digital marketing into four major type that are contextual, addressable, transactional and social marketing.

Contextual Marketing
SEO/SEM, Mobile Marketing, Analytics, Augmented Reality

Addressable Marketing
Digital Ads, Videos, Signage, In-Game-Advertising, Podcast

Transactional Marketing
e-mail Marketing, Lead Management, E-Commerce, Reviews, Cross selling, Loyalty Marketing

Social Marketing
Social Monitoring, Social engineering, Forums, Word of Mouth, Networking

Link to the Study

Why aren't FACEBOOK adspace prices higher??

Let me qualify what I am going to say by clarifying it is opinion based on my sentiments on Facebook and not on research.

Right now any ads run on Facebook are both underpriced with comparison to other advertising inventory online, as well as relatively ineffective. Why?

To me it seems that Facebook faces a conundrum. To keep the main area of their pages "pure" with the social utility of the posting and messaging, they must make Ad space minimal. SO as long as Facebook is as popular as it is, it seems that Ad space will continue to be minimal. BUT if Facebook becomes less popular, either due to novel competition or burnout, then they have space on their pages that could sell like Gold to the LONG TAIL of the remaining users of Facebook.

So either Facebook sells out some of its most loyal users and puts ADs more centrally located in the pages, and makes more money that way, or membership remains extremely high due to new functions and relatively low ads.

Thoughts?

Email in Online Marketing

During our first lecture, our class also discussed the use of email in online marketing. First, email is the root of almost all internet advertising; it is a terrific way to execute sophisticated marketing campaigns. Almost all interactions between the buyer and seller are recorded via email. To list a few examples, through email, vendors can confirm product purchases, send newsletters, verify a subscriber’s authenticity, distribute discounts to “friends and family,” and of course market themselves. Email marketing expenditures are particularly unique in that the marginal cost of an additional email sent is essential zero, although the cost of the systems that customize and launch emails is high. Given that email expenditures are mostly fixed, marketers strive to maximize the number of emails sent from one system. Considered one of the most important marketing channels, email depends on three types of expenditures: customer retention, customer acquisition, and customer-vendor transaction. Email is also key to consumer authentication and relationship management; one usually has to confirm his or her email’s accuracy to form a relationship with a vendor. Professor Kagan introduced us to some more lingo related to e-mail: Mailbox Provider, Email Service Provider (ESP), Inbox, Junk or Bulk email Folder, Bounce. We will be studying this topic in greater detail during the semester.

Lecture 1: Strategies and Channels for Digital Marketing

In the beginning of the lecture, I was excited to hear that there is a large growing market for online marketing. I was particularly impressed by the substantial growth forecasts for interactive marketing spend in the U.S.; Forrester predicts a 17% CAGR from now to 2014. US online advertising spending is also expected to grow significantly; eMarketer projects 9-12% annual increase until 2014. In addition to discussing growth trends of online marketing, Prof. Kagan introduced acronyms related to digital marketing: CMC (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per action). CMC defines the cost per thousands of ad images (also termed impressions). CPC is the cost per user's mouse click on the ad and CPA is the cost per user's action (when revenue is generated from the ad, for example). When discussing search engines, we learned the difference between SEMs (sponsored links that appear at the top of search results) and SEO (natural links that appear in search results but are not sponsored). The topic of display ads, or space on a website, was also intriguing. Examples of display ads include contextual ads, static images, rich media, and online video. Digital marketing is an entirely new field to me, so I was thrilled to learn about many new topics and the relevant jargon. I look forward to discovering a whole new area of marketing that is becoming increasingly important day by day.

Elvis Costello's Singing Songbook Tour

You don't need a class in social media or internet marketing to see the interactive possibilities presented by the Spinning Songbook being employed on Elvis Costello's latest tour. With a giant wheel of fortune populated with his songs instead of prizes, on stage, Elvis and his assistants create an entertaining and unpredictable show as audience members' spins create the night's set list.

This process creates a lot of excitement for the longtime fans of Elvis Costello, many of whom consider him their favorite artist, and who have also seen him perform possibly dozens of times over the years. Spinning Songbook ensures they will hear familiar songs, but also that an artist who usually challenges his fans with new music in person will be somewhat reined in.

As an attendee of last night's show, I was impressed by the amount of cell-phone documentation and communication that was taking place among the 50-ish audience members. Unfortunately, however, there is no provision for the Singing Songbook to be influenced or include the participation of online and social media communities. This is a tremendous missed opportunity for Universal Music, who controls Elvis Costello's catalog, to activate their releases through this attention and discussion.

A contest or a live YouTube broadcast including fans' choices from the net and Elvis' own participation in the online marketing could have exposed this event to many more people than saw it at the 20 or so shows he has just completed. While I appreciate that the paying customers shouldn't have their shows spoiled, it wouldn't have made a difference to the online community to wait until the last shows of the tour.

Greatest hits tours are a fact of life for classic rock artists, and Elvis Costello has a fresh approach (even though he first did this type of show in the mid-80s, it hasn't been adopted by anyone memorable since). His fans are smart and would have been apt to share and discuss, based on their actions at the show last night especially.

After the Final: Foursquare Redux - How to Cheat at Foursquare

Since every member of the class has now had a chance to pronounce and speculate about the future of Foursquare's business, this article on how to game the system to get points and badges is particularly timely.

It will be interesting to see how many early adopters stick with Foursquare, or whether check in fatigue turns out to be a reality. Chances are, it will all depend on whether real, tangible rewards begin to be developed beyond the badges and points.