10.01.21
Want to get some insights into what some of the smartest people in marketing are thinking 2010 holds in store?
Along with nearly 40 other smart folks including Radian6′s David Alston and Tipping Point Labs’ Andrew Davis I contributed my thoughts to this eBook of content marketing trends and predictions published by Marketo and ClickDocuments.
Check it out and let me know what you think! (my thoughts are on slide 36)
10.01.19
A few days ago I blogged my thoughts on the shape of the social media marketing ecosystem as we enter 2010. The key aspects of the system from my perspective were:
The line between public relations, advertising or social media is artificial – the overlap between the disciplines is becoming greater and greater. While I doubt the disciplines will ever completely merge, the ‘Venn diagram’ of communications disciplines is moving closer to being a single circle at a rapid pace.
When we talk about integration and lines blurring, it’s easy to head down the thought path that you need to excel at everything. I’d argue it’s not that simple.
Public relations agencies (for example) don’t need to shift to pitch pure-play advertising accounts. However, agencies of all disciplines do need to hire or train people who can think media-agnostically when developing communications strategies. I’d argue they also need to be able to execute the integrated tactics that sit in the grey areas between disciplines. PR firms won’t suddenly start producing TV ads, but they may start to roll online advertising campaigns into their service portfolio.
As always, it comes back to:
Is this new thinking? No. Is the urgency for a shift to integration increasing? Yes. It’s a long road to travel to build those skills-sets, but the need is pressing.
Instead of differentiating by marketing vertical, we may need to approach our strategy from a different perspective – whether we’re marketing our clients or our own agencies. To fail to do so raises the risk of fragmented, ineffective communications and sub-par results.
The question is, what form do those strategies take?
10.01.18
I’m going to tell you a story about my weekend. Bear with me – it goes somewhere…
This weekend Caralin and I flew down to New York to see our favourite comedian Eddie Izzard at the Madison Square Gardens. I’d heard great things about the Roger Smith Hotel from people like Chris Brogan, Keith Burtis and Julien Smith, and after spotting their Bacon Package online, it was a natural choice for our place to stay.
When we arrived, we immediately noticed that the bacon truffles promised in the package we’d purchased (no, really!) weren’t in our room. No biggie, but as we’d looked forward to trying them I called down to the desk and mentioned it (I threw out a tweet too). The person manning the desk said they’d check into it, but that perhaps they were meant to arrive the next day. A few minutes later, we received a call from the front desk manager, who apologised and said he’d like to send us a bottle of wine for the mix-up – would we like champagne, red or white wine? I also got a response to my tweet (and subsequent “wow” tweet) from @RSHotel – their own Twitter account. Needless to say, we were very impressed, and my non-social media friend accompanying us was floored.
Fast forward a few hours (and a bottle of wine), and as we tried to sleep we discovered that our room’s heater apparently had a whole family of badgers in it – that, or the steam made it incredibly loud every few minutes or so. As a result, we slept very poorly and were exhausted in the morning.
After staggering downstairs bleary-eyed we mentioned it (sheepishly – I don’t like complaining) to the front desk staff the next morning. Without skipping a beat, the lady at the desk apologized and immediately offered us an upgrade to our room, to perhaps the nicest suite I’ve ever stayed in.
This isn’t a story about our weekend in New York; it’s a story about customer service winning-out over problems which could have become a focal point of our stay in New York.
Yes, the problems could have been avoided. The room might not have been possessed, and the truffles (which I now crave, as we never did receive them) could have been there as promised. Still, these things happen sometimes. However, the response of the staff at the Roger Smith Hotel to these problems was fabulous. From start to finish, they completely won me over with their friendliness and helpfulness, choosing long-term reputation and loyalty over short-term savings. No amount of marketing budget could build the impression I have of them now. Lots of companies could benefit from this approach.
As a result, despite the problems (in fact, perhaps it’s because of them) I’ll be staying at the Roger Smith Hotel whenever I travel to Manhattan.
The moral of the story: It’s not just the problems that matter; it’s how you respond to them.
What other companies have you had this kind of experience with?
(Image credit: Retro Housewife)
10.01.04
Forrester Research analyst Sean Corcoran recently posted an insightful breakdown of some of the differences between owned media, paid media and earned media. Given the ongoing convergence I’m seeing between different communications disciplines which I’m seeing on a daily basis, this got me thinking.
The thought process ultimately led me to sketch out my take on the social media marketing ecosystem in which corporations operate – shown below.
This is my take on the ecosystem within which the new wave of hybrid marketing agencies like ours need to operate as we enter 2010.
(Update: yes, I know there are no ads on Flickr. It’s illustrative.)
This is pretty complex, so I’ve broken it down into different system elements below. Note though, that the different elements work best when we succeed in breaking out of communications silos and integrating our communications strategies.
Key elements of the ideal corporate social media ecosystem:
Key elements of the mainstream media portion of the ecosystem:
Features of the corporate advertising ecosystem:
Together these different elements combine to form the more complex (yet still simplified) ecosystem displayed at the top of this post.
This is clearly far from complete. I’m curious as to your thoughts – let me know what you think in the comments and let’s refine this together.
09.12.17
Cheryl Andonian (aka Momblebee) suggested in a comment that Michael Arrington’s “McDonalds content” issue I wrote about yesterday goes beyond news and content, and affects marketing as a whole. She says:
“This “McDonalds” issue is larger than just news and content. It is affecting creative work as well. Talented and trained professional freelance writers, graphic designers and web designers are competing against a glut of low end slingers who will give businesses “creative” work for pennies.”
Essentially, she say we’re seeing an increase in “McDonalds marketers” who capitalize on their clients’ lack of knowledge of creative and strategy – people who hand over low-end work at low-end prices.
Still, haven’t we always had this? There have always been “marketers” (whatever their stripes) who hawk standard, low-investment tactics in place of carefully crafted strategies. My argument would normally be that people will see the results of these efforts for what they are and that “survival of the fittest” would enable the real professionals to prevail (despite my cynicism when it comes to “social media experts“). However, Cheryl seems to suggest that this trend is a growing problem.
I wonder:
What’s your take?
09.11.23
Browsing through my Google Reader feed this evening, a story in the New York Times caught my eye. The story was about ad.ly – a relatively new service that pays Twitter users to insert advertisements into their Twitter stream.
In the piece, Brad Stone gives a reasonable outline of the service, which counts “celebrities like Kim Kardashian, Dr. Drew and the musician Ernie Halter” among its customers. It also includes a quote from Robert Scoble:
““It interferes with your relationship with your friends and your audience,” said Robert Scoble, a technology blogger with more than 100,000 followers on Twitter, who says he “unfollows” people on Twitter who send him ads.”
Checking the site, ad.ly also counts Darren Rowse, Jason Calacanis, Jeremiah Owyang, Brian Solis and Gnomedex founder Chris Pirillo among its users.
I’ve made my feelings about advertising services on Twitter known in the past. Notably, I got a little upset when some advertisers started posting misleading ads through a service called Magpie back in April this year.
However, I feel a little conflicted about this story.
Money on the side
Ad.ly lets Twitter users generate additional income with little effort.
Control the ads
Users have full control over the messages that are posted – they approve every message posted through their account.
Disclosure
Every message, according to the site, is disclosed as an ad:
“The end of every Ad.ly tweet (except tweets for charity) is marked with “(Ad)” notifying your audience that this is an advertisement. In order to ensure authenticity, every Ad.ly Tweet has to be explicitly approved by the Twitter publisher and is disclosed as an ad.”
Hijacking your connections
People don’t follow you to hear about the services that pay you to broadcast their messages. They follow to hear about the things YOU like. Still, I don’t watch TV to check the ads out there, but I do watch them. That said, I don’t like it.
While I don’t recoil to the same extent as others (Shannon Boudjema outlines her concerns succinctly here), I still feel uneasy about the concept.
Social media becoming unsocial
Ad.ly inserts ads into your Twitter stream. It’s traditional media piggy-backing on social media. There’s a disconnect between the “push” mechanism in use and the two-way nature of the medium.
Gut
Logic aside, something just doesn’t feel right for me. I have nothing to back this up – perhaps it’s because I don’t consider monetizing my Twitter followers often, but it sits wrong with me.
In case you can’t tell, I’m finding this one tough. Most of the solid logic points to the idea being reasonable, especially given that the Tweets are both approved by users and disclosed as ads. Still, I can’t bring myself to consider using it.
The logic is there, but… there’s a but. but it doesn’t feel right for me. I can’t put my finger on this one.
What do you think?
09.11.13
In recent weeks, I’ve become fascinated with the location-based social network Foursquare. While I’ve been using location-based apps on my Blackberry and iPod Touch for a while (Google Maps is a good example), Foursquare is the first service that has made me stop and think about the potential of hyper-local marketing on mobile devices, not just down the line but right now.
I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with April Dunford (wannabe Mayor of Thornley Fallis) recently, which have really spurred that thinking.
If you haven’t tried Foursquare yet (and most people haven’t), here’s the deal.
Foursquare describes itself as “50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.” If you live in a city that’s currently supported, whenever you arrive at a new place you can “check in” to tell the service you’re there.
Each time you “check in” you earn points, which go towards a “leaderboard” of you and the people to whom you’ve chosen to connect. If you’ve visited a place more than anyone else in the last 60 days, you become the “mayor.” It’s largely meaningless, but cute.
So far, nice and simple. And right now, that’s where the service ends. That’s a problem, because the people signing-up for the service can get bored – quickly – if there’s nothing more.
Right now Foursquare seems to be focused on growing the number of cities it supports. I’m not sure that’s the right approach. If I were them, I would work to build a critical mass of people in a few cities by building-out the product to the meet its full potential.
The team announced a campaign yesterday to allow a company to sponsor its homepage by donating to a charity, so they’re clearly open to ideas. So, let’s stop and think for a minute about Foursquare’s room for enhancements.
Friends
At present, when you check Foursquare, you can see where your friends have checked-in in the last three hours. That’s lovely, but if someone was somewhere three hours ago (unless it’s work or home) they’re probably not there any more.
However, if you were to check into a hotel downtown, it would be great to know if your buddy Steve had recently checked-in somewhere nearby – you could give him a call and see what he’s up to. Maybe the app could pop up an SMS window or offer to dial his number.
Simple, but effective – enabling real-world meetups.
Offers
As a fairly heavy Foursquare user, the company knows where I hang out. I spend my days at the Thornley Fallis offices; I go to the same places for dinner a fair bit – that sort of thing. That kind of real-world behaviour offers an opportunity for them to present me with offers. If I were to be offered $10 off a meal in an area in which I already hang out, I’d be highly likely to take advantage of the offer.
It’s a powerful concept, which can branch off in various directions:
Similarly, we’ve already heard about “Mayor Specials” (for example at Coffee Groundz in Houston, Texas) where the mayor of a certain location gets special treatment. There’s room for a concerted push in this area, beyond their own website, to the owners of businesses that have proven popular with users.
Advertisements
Google has made its billions from providing contextually relevant ads to its users. Google Maps goes one further, providing slightly more targeting based on your search. Foursquare can go even deeper, targeting the areas that you frequent.
This is gold. Online retailers have a relatively easy solution to generating traffic – online ads drive people to your website. Real-world businesses have a different problem. It’s harder to drive people through your door through the current web channels.
Imagine, though, that I received ads targeted to the place where I am now, whenever I checked in. As a small business owner, why on earth wouldn’t you want to invest in ads targeted people who you know are right outside your door? The conversions are a little harder to measure than through an e-commerce site, but it’s a powerful concept.
All of these things require one foundational step: focus,
Foursquare needs to focus on developing a critical mass in its core markets. Only with a significant number of users in a market does Foursquare become a viable investment for businesses. Right now, just one Toronto business is running a Foursquare promotion, and only one person has checked-in there.
New York, Boston, Toronto – wherever these markets are, the Foursquare team should think about how they can drive deeper adoption of the tool in those communities, first from a consumer perspective and then from a business perspective – where the clear business model lies.
What do you think? Have you tried Foursquare? Where do you think the potential lies?
09.11.10
The growth of smart phones – from a consumer perspective, the iPhone in particular but also Blackberries – has really driven mobile apps into the limelight at a faster rate than almost any technology out there recently.
Over the last couple of years, and especially the last few months, we’ve seen mobile applications vault more and more into the mainstream. We’re at the point now where many people don’t think twice about downloading the latest Facebook, Google Maps or gaming application to use on their mobile device – any more than they would about downloading something to their desktop.
Mobile apps even appearing for business functions now (beyond regular email) – email campaign service Constant Contact launched an iPhone app yesterday to let people check in on their email campaigns, for example.
(Caveat: Of course, many people aren’t there yet. I know plenty of people whose phones don’t even have bluetooth, let alone data plans)
So, if mobile apps are becoming a current “big thing,” what’s next?
My take: local.
While as sites like Yelp have leveraged user reviews at a local level, the best mobile apps over the next couple of years will pair GPS, cell tower or manually-set location information with contextual content.
Consider FourSquare. I started playing around with FourSquare fairly recently. Essentially, it’s a social network that lets you tell your contacts where you are right now. There are a bunch of other game-playing features wrapped around it, but it’s basically a location-based social network.
Think for a minute about the potential simple extensions to a network like this:
Take that kind of thinking and consider the optional extensions to your favourite apps. I might like to know which nearby restaurants my Facebook friends have eaten at. I might want to be notified about breaking news from near my location, whereas I might have to proactively check a news app to get other news.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to every application. I won’t go as far as Kate Imbach and suggest that you care what your neighbours are eating, but there are plenty of extremely interesting applications even for recipe-based sites (perhaps showing you which stores in your area stock the ingredients you need).
Stop and think for a moment – could your company or your clients be working location-based applications into their marketing mix?
What do you think?
(Additional: I’m on the look-out for good books on mobile marketing, especially those considering topics like this. If you know of any, let me know in the comments!)
09.09.03
We in the public relations industry seem to love to look down upon those on the advertising side of the communications industry when it comes to social media. They don’t get conversation, we tell ourselves smugly. They think in terms of one-way information pushing, not two-way dialogue.
Stop and think for a minute, though. Regardless of the media buy budgets, advertising agencies command big dollars. They land smart, creative people. They execute highly original ideas. They have a voice at a senior level. As much as folks on the PR side might hate to admit it, we can learn from the advertising folks. This is especially true as the different communications disciplines converge.
We’ve recently hired a creative director from the advertising side, and his perspective is breathing new life into our approaches.
So, what can we in PR learn about social media from the advertising side?
Relationships are important and conversation is key, but results are king. Successful businesses are built on scale – of sales; of profits; of customers. Advertisers understand that for a consumer-facing product to become a true success, it has to break outside small cliques and niches.
As the public relations, marketing and advertising worlds converge, we increasingly find ourselves competing for the same business. This means we need to compete not just for strategic vision and execution, but also for creativity. What’s more, clients will pay for big, creative, results-focused ideas.
If we’re to go head-to-head with other disciplines, we need to measure the heck out of our programs. They certainly do, and they use it to make the case for their programs. This is one lesson I’ve found easy to adopt. I’m a big proponent of measurement and measurable objectives, so I welcome this.
Remember all those ads you didn’t like? They weren’t targeted at you. Good advertisers are laser-like in their targeting as they know you can’t please everyone.
I read a great piece the other day (unfortunately I don’t remember where) that said something like:
Good advertising sells product. Great advertising sells the aspiration behind the product.
In PR, we have an additional challenge when it comes to the publicity side – not only do we need (in some cases) to accomplish this, but we need to craft messages that get our clients in the paper in the first place. For, unlike on the advertising side, our coverage is earned with journalists rather than bought.
Rocket science? No. Important? Yes.
What else?
09.08.12
“It doesn’t matter. People are lazy.”
A friend of mine informed me of this last night when I tried to sell her on (what I think is) a cool new online tool. It was a powerful reminder that it doesn’t matter how cool something is – if it isn’t simple and easy then people just won’t use it.
I’m a busy guy. You’re probably in the same boat – you have 28 hours-worth of things to do in any 24-hour period.
In this context, the things that we’re likely to pay attention to – the things that we will try or buy – are the things that make our lives easier. For example:
Given this context, providers of online applications need to make them easy to use if they want our attention:
Make life easy for people, or you won’t have any people to deal with.
(Image: Shutterstock)
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