Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

Breaking The Campaign Mentality

Two conversations I've had with smart marketing folk summarise the problems that the marketing industry is trying to work through.  Last year, a savvy executive at a global, mega-FMCG company told me, 'It used to be the case that if you made three good TV campaigns, you became Marketing Director.  That's not true anymore.'  He then expanded on the point by saying that it went beyond television.  It was just that TV was the main tool in the campaigning approach historically used by the marketing industry and that this campaign mentality was the real problem.  Particularly, he added, as the mega-corp at which he plied his trade was engineered around that mentality and entirely geared up to deliver massive campaigns into the marketplace.  The problem he noted was that the consumer is fed up with being hit by huge campaigns from brands that then disappear - until the next time.  Like a lot of thorny issues in the marketing industry, as it slowly grinds away from a traditional model and searches for a new one, this all sounds in theory like a load of common sense.  In reality, however, fixing it is fiendishly complicated.  As illustrated by the second conversation with a Grand Fromage at a media company who told me about the acid test he likes to keep in mind during these exciting but challenging times.  When a brand manager goes into present the marketing plan to a buyer at Tesco's, an individual who may be responsible for the majority of the brand's distribution, what's going to cut the mustard?  An ongoing, conversational marketing programme, driven by some Facebook applications and a new blog?  Or a £25m above-the-line advertising campaign?  Whilst not as simple as all that, the scenario does highlight the problems that the marketing industry faces.  On the one hand we have a smart brand owner who knows that current practice is increasingly out-of-whack with modern day life.  On the other, a forward-thinking media man who knows that, at least in the FMCG world where the right space in the right stores is critical to the bottom line, innovation isn't *that* welcome.  Tricky, eh?

Open Data And The Dangers Of Moats

As all studious web watchers know, the next wave of internet innovation has been brewing for some time, as massive amounts of data has been pumped onto the web and made available for people to share-and-compare, play with and link to.  Yes, prepare yourselves people, The Web Of Data is on the way.  A world in which databases sit out on the web instead of behind firewalls, allowing new powerful styles of collaboration.  For corporations that have built competitive advantage around IP and black box business models the idea of data being open on the web is, to say the least, a bit scary.  However, in reality, it's just the next step along the journey that the web is inviting the world to take.  Initially, the notion of sharing documents on the web seemed unwise, then opening up personal information on social networks appeared risky.  But both have quickly become the norm, and of course are made up of data.  So this next evolution is just more of the same.  None of which will stop the corporate fear rising however.  In the same way that strange ideas emerged about the dangers of sharing company information using simple social media tools, peculiar fears will surface at the prospect of sharing databases that have previously been held under lock, key and firewall.  In fact, many of these fears are based on misconceptions and misguided analysis.  For instance, in the corporate world ‘open’ is often translated as ‘anarchic’.  Despite the fact that, as with blogs and social networks, there is plenty of control built into new 'open' systems.  For example, if you don't want the crazies to...

Can The Big Egos Please Leave The Building

Most marketing agencies have a few big egos knocking around, often in the creative department.  Frequently the belief is that such individuals are required to come up with the Big Ideas that clients love so much - the brand propositions that everyone in a company can convene around and CEOs can sink the big bucks into.  Sometimes these individuals are able to get away with *ahem* unusual behaviour because it is excused as the flip side of their Big Thinking.  However, this breed may well be coming to the end of its life-cycle.  Why?  As marketing communications become more about pull than push, community over control, peer power not promotion, the personalities involved will reflect that.  Skillful community managers tend to be thoughtful folk - and good listeners to boot.  They are blessed with a natural curiosity about people and an ability to promote the views of others.  Or in other words, a mental make-up that is diametrically opposed to that of your typical Creative Director.  Take Craig Newmark for example, founder of craigslist and one of the world's most successful online community managers.  He has built a 'community service' that covers 570 cities in 50 countries and serves twenty billion page impressions a month.  However, despite being one of the web world's real superheroes, Newmark is best known for his modest profile, including a job title that remains, 'Customer Service Representative'.  Indeed, the idea of a Big Idea seems to be entirely irrelevant to Newmark who says his online empire was built with, 'no vision whatsoever', and that it's, 'all about listening and then listening some more'.  His focus was purely to build a, 'culture of trust'.  Which, of course, all makes a lot of sense.  It's perfectly evident that people would want to join a community based on Newmark's guiding principles of, 'giving people a break' and, 'treating others as you want to be treated'.  Compare this to communities driven by the brand-as-hero school:  my favourite example of which remains Wal-Mart's short-lived community site, The Hub.  The network launched with a range of fun tools for customers to play with, including an invite to create a list of the things they would like to buy at, er, Walmart.  It was the online equivalent of an ego-maniacal CD - 'Enough about me - how do you like my hair?'.  So next time you are with a Big Thinker who is being 'difficult', just relax and let them talk.  Take heart in the fact that the world has heard everything they have to say.  And is just about to switch them off.

When Your Customers Connect

The infrastructure of the web is in constant flux, which is, of course, why it’s so interesting.  However, occasionally a new fault line appears, often over a long period of time, that changes the landscape in a more fundamental way.  The new set of identity standards that have emerged in recent times, under the simple guise of reducing the number of log-ins you need to remember, are exactly that.  At first Facebook Connect, OAuth, OpenSocial and OpenID seem to be basic devices to get around the annoyance of multiple usernames and passwords.  Handy - but no big deal.  However, in fact, they are solutions to one of the main sources of friction on the web.  Currently, as you move from one social network to another, you may as well be moving between countries, setting up a new life in each.  Meet new friends, send some postcards to contacts and family from the old country, and then check out the tourist trail.  Hey, if you want to be a bit more glamorous in this new city, then you can be.  Your old friends aren’t there to ruin the illusion.  My usual cocktail please!  But the new identity standards are about to ruin this party.  And once we’ve got over the shock, we’ll all remember that it’s your real friends and family that count.  We’ll quickly get used to the idea that...

The Unthinkable Marketing Industry

Clay Shirky’s latest essay, that encourages us to 'think the unthinkable', set me wondering about what the marketing industry could be like.  The part of Shirky’s ‘unthinkable scenario’ that leapt out for me was the suggestion that, ‘people would resist being educated to act against their own desires’.  Shirky is, of course, saying that one effect of a networked world is that people have less faith in the lessons being handed out on Madison Avenue.  Now it’s quite clear that media is still the dominant force in the brand and marketing business, which despite tough times, remains a trillion dollar global industry.  Indeed, the idea of building brands through massive investment in this industry is the reason most marketing folk get up in the morning.  And media metrics such as reach and frequency have been a reliable way to fill marketing directors’ pension funds for a long while.  But that’s not the point of Shirky’s challenge.  His suggestion is to think the unthinkable by, ‘simply looking out of the window’.  So, if people are resisting the Mad Men's tutorials and the stranglehold of media is loosening, what’s next?  After all, people still want to find good stuff to buy and use, right? The end of media doesn’t mean the end of consumption or indeed of brands.  All of which requires markets.  But if those markets aren’t going to be media-driven, what will keep them moving along? What will make people act upon ‘their own desires’, and in doing so, keep the shekels flowing into our factories, showrooms and shops?  Where do we begin?  How about if we follow the advice of...

Social Networking - No Longer Just For The Kids

For a long time, social media was just for 'the kids'.  However, one of the most interesting recent online trends has been the take up of social networks by older groups.  For instance, Nielsen's latest research notes that a whopping forty-seven per cent of people who are online in the UK now use Facebook.  Furthermore, the report notes that, if recent trends were to continue, "by mid-June 2009 there would be as many 35-49 year olds on Facebook as 18-34 year olds."  With such developments in mind, the supersonic Danah Boyd has written up a great (and short) talk here emphasising that now social media is the norm, the time has come to focus on its uses rather than the technology itself.  Boyd's work is academic in style, but a couple of sections caught my eye: "Marketers know all about stickiness, but how many of you measure network density? You purchase all sorts of data from Nielsen and comScore that tells you about uniques, but do you know anything about the cluster dynamics of the users? Are you able to see when the network graph is reaching a sustainable point or, more importantly, when things are starting to fracture?".  And when it comes to product development:  "We can continue to design and deploy, but one of the amazing things that is happening in the realm of social media is that folks are starting to iterate with their users. This creates an interesting opportunity for us. We need to be able to evolve with our products as people begin to use it. This can be quite tricky, especially for folks who are used to a build, test, and deploy methodology. As a developer, you are no longer simply an author of software. You are an actor in a process in which software is being developed and repurposed. The key lesson from the rise of social media for you is that a great deal of software is best built as a coordinated dance between you and the users."

Are You Reading Or Sharing?

Thanks to everyone who added their thoughts to the last post about the ongoing confusion in marketing metrics.  Typical of the helpful comments was this one from Nick Buckley from Gfk NOP : "We should stop trying to measure our ability to control and transmit the message - since the ultimate implication of this is that the message has to depart from 'the truth' about our products and services, in order to compensate for the gap between 'the truth' and what we desire people to think and do.  Instead - assuming that social media, and related developments, create ever more transparency and scrutiny of our claims and our performance we should; be open and honest, make good things, provide good services, and *listen* as if our livelihoods depended upon it. [Which they do]."  Nick also liked Charles' idea that we should be thinking, "about the different engagement experiences," to understand better the contrasts between people reading media and the sharing activity that takes place in social environments.  All of which Kevin thought could be explored as different reading "modes".  Whatever the answer, Eaon would like it sooner than later because if he can't offer, "engagement metrics that clients can buy," then search and display models are the ineffective defaults that fill the void.  However, Rory MacDonald suggests we might need a more radical change of viewpoint, possibly viewing all social activity as being too complex to measure in the normal way.  "Do you think Nike are worried about the metrics on Nike Plus?", he adds?  (Evidently not.)  Thanks to everyone for the input - genuinely inspiring.

The Metrics Vacuum

A few weeks ago I met up with a Grand Media Fromage to chat over the state of the social web.  "So where's the money?'" he began.  "Compared with what?" I replied defaulting to my standard line.  However, Mr GMF then took an unexpected tack by saying he thought Social might be at a similar stage to Search (aka Google) when it was 'pre-revenue' (aka skint).  And that it could easily go the same way as the Big G, snaffling many media executives' luncheons along the way.  This was an observation that I've been mulling over ever since.  I've long held the view that we are measuring tomorrow's world with yesterday's tools.  It seems we are now waiting for a social operator (aka Facebook) to find a market mechanism that can unleash the vast latent demand within the media industry for techniques in keeping with modern customers' P2P lifestyles.  Nick Gonzalez gets it just right for me: "There’s currently a metrics vacuum in the social media space and it’s being filled with traditional metrics pulled from search and display. The only problem is that these metrics don’t make sense for brand campaigns in social media."  Which essentially makes it impossible for brands or anyone else to invest at scale.  Gozalez goes onto say: "Branding campaigns don’t have a conversion event, like search advertising. Click through rates and impression volume used to gauge display campaigns are radically different on social media properties. Blogs average a little over one page view per visit, while social networking properties average in the tens or hundreds. It’s not apples to apples. While impressions do adjust behaviour, clicks and conversions also carry a whole different meaning within social media. People click to send messages, make friends, comment, and share."  Of course, the answer could come from anywhere but Facebook's vastness means it bears the weight of expectation.  Which it has tried to meet through Beacon and more recent innovations.  Maybe Zuckerburg & Co. will just follow Google's lead and keep an eye out for smaller entrepreneurs and *ahem* take their lead.  Either way the stage is set for a new marketing sliderule and it will be fascinating to see if and how one develops.  But in the meantime the vacuum grows...

P2P Is TV's Wonderland

Today, the Competition Commission decided that Kangaroo, the UK web-TV platform looking to match the success of Hulu in the US, will not be allowed to move forward.  The reason being that, 'it is a threat to competition in this developing market and has to be stopped'.  What can you say?  The world of copyright, DRM, piracy debates and web legislation seems increasingly out-of-touch with the networked world.  A few years ago I saw Doc Searls make a presentation in which he noted, 'In networked environments, the demand side supplies itself'.  It’s a statement that sums up nicely what is happening in today’s TV industry - all beyond the legislators' gaze.  People aren’t satisfied with what broadcasters are offering.  So they use P2P systems running on free BitTorrent services such as Limewire, eMule, Pirate Bay and Mininova to create ‘services of their own design’.  This allows them to watch whatever they want, whenever they wish, often with the advertising stripped out.  All of which is illegal file-sharing activity of course and therefore hidden away in underground darknets. But it’s increasingly the new norm with more than one-third of broadband users admitting to downloading video content and two-thirds saying they didn’t see it as being wrong.  (Try doing a quick poll in your office about Limewire and watch the shifty glances as a few honest souls slowly raise their hands).  However, despite being largely invisible these systems have now reached a scale and sophistication which dwarfs the professional, mainstream broadcasters.  Mininova, for instance, which launched in 2005, has served more than seven billion downloads, many of which are well-known shows.  Requests for content from the file-sharing network currently runs at ten million downloads a day - almost ten times greater than the BBC's iPlayer.  And while the industry wrings its hands, the Torrents continue to grow and innovate.  An 'invisible' YouTube anyone?  P2P video is creating a vibrant, Alice-like world which is testing the normal rules of the TV industry.  But it seems that the policy wonks and lawmakers don't want to peek down the rabbit hole, in case what they see is too strange.  In the meantime, P2P TV becomes curiouser and curiouser...

[Update : The Doc adds some thoughts here: "Pretty soon the 'TV' you buy will be an Internet file and stream tuner and recorder, with 'must-carry' set-top-box features, so it can still get cable, satellite and over-the-air TV 'channels'. In the world that makes, old-fashioned TV will look as antique as the telegraph".]

Rise Of The Personal Media Platform

People used to say about media, ‘Did you see that?’.  Now they say, ‘Have you seen this?’.  That’s because media used to live in one place at one time.  On TV or in a newspaper with a one day lifespan or less.  If you missed the appointment, it had gone.  The contrast with 2009 is stark.  Today great content is flying around the web waiting to be picked up and pasted in the media scrapbooks that we all create, build and tweak online.  Once these scrapbooks were simple lists of favoured websites or a musty hard drive folder stuffed with random images.  Now they look more like personal media platforms holding music, video, journalism, TV, shopping, games and commerce.   And increasingly these mini-media emporiums are joined together creating a share-and-compare economy.  We share items with our social networks and enjoy what have they have to offer back.  All of which means fun for us, juicy relevance for our network and kudos for those serving up the best digital goods.  This social world used to be composed purely of gonzo media and geekery.   But not anymore.  A more powerful web has allowed mainstream media to pitch in.  However, regardless of production budgets, content without pass-it-on currency, has no value in this growing economy.  It lacks the crucial watermark of social approval. Currently, personal media platforms are messy and can feel like a geek-fest.  More bazaar than cathedral.  Many wouldn’t have it any other way but for the mainstream to join the fun they need to become more user-friendly.  Which they are.  The humble browser is one way...