Archive for the ‘Digital Media’ Category

4 March 2010

Social CRM: A work in progress?

by Guest Blogger: Denis Pombriant

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CRM’s infatuation with all things social may be taking a bite out of its backside. Too often CRM vendors focus on outbound messaging through products like Twitter and Facebook while forgetting about Stephen Covey.

Stephen Covey?

CRM’s infatuation with all things social may be taking a bite out of its backside. Too often CRM vendors focus on outbound messaging through products like Twitter and Facebook while forgetting about Stephen Covey.

Stephen Covey?

You might remember him as the guru who told us about “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” Remember Habit 5? “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Brilliant stuff—something we all should have been taught at home though I confess I don’t recall that memo. My bad. I caught up eventually.

A recent article in The Economist brought a lot home to me. The article quotes work by Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, a Harvard Business School professor and one of his MBA students Bill Heil. According to The Economist, the researchers surveyed more than 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 and reported results that include:

  • More than half said they tweeted less than once every 74 days
  • The most active 10% of Twitter users published 90% of all tweets

That last bullet should give anyone who believes in the wisdom of crowds reason to pause. What kind of crowd? Ought to be the first question we ask, followed by, who is in it? This goes right back to Covey—understand the audience before beginning your sermon. The first bullet proves another kind of wisdom; the kind that understands that membership is not participation.

Of course there are times when the proverbial (or Monty Pythonesque) blind horse could tell you all you need to know, as in when you start getting complaints that a product or process is broken. But that’s called feedback and often we confuse it with discovery.

When you really want to discover what your customers think—their attitudes, behaviors, biases, and unmet needs—it really helps to know that the data you are collecting is coming from a reasonable cross section, not the noisy ten percent. Just as there are names for processes like “feedback” and “discovery” there’s a term that describes that noisy ten percent. They’re often called outliers.

CRM’s work with social media so far seems focused in various ways on the outliers, and predictably vendors are still trying to figure out social media’s true potential. If you understand the value of communities, it should be obvious.

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2 March 2010

Moving from Social Media to Social Business

by Guest Blogger: Peter Kim

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Thanks to Diane and company for giving me an opportunity to share thoughts with you via Verbatim. I’ve been following Communispace since 2006, when I covered social computing as a research analyst; now I see the value of what the company is doing through a lens of social business design.

Over the past decade, we’ve been witnessing the rise of social media. While we are fundamentally social beings, technology advances and cultural preferences have driven proliferation of these behaviors online. The series of tubes that carry data are wider and reach further than ever. Moore’s law still holds true, as does Metcalf’s—to which 400 million Facebook users across a variety of platforms can attest. We have become conditioned to share opinions on anything and everything in our new digital forums, salons, and echo chambers.

Thanks to Diane and company for giving me an opportunity to share thoughts with you via Verbatim. I’ve been following Communispace since 2006, when I covered social computing as a research analyst; now I see the value of what the company is doing through a lens of social business design.

Over the past decade, we’ve been witnessing the rise of social media. While we are fundamentally social beings, technology advances and cultural preferences have driven proliferation of these behaviors online. The series of tubes that carry data are wider and reach further than ever. Moore’s law still holds true, as does Metcalf’s—to which 400 million Facebook users across a variety of platforms can attest. We have become conditioned to share opinions on anything and everything in our new digital forums, salons, and echo chambers.

At the same time, many of us seem to have realized that pursuing work/life balance ends up as corporate Samsara. Instead, we’ve intertwined work and life to the extent that we do what we love and love what we do. (Or perhaps have gotten much better at fooling ourselves about it.) Along the way, we started bringing our toys to work and realized that our personal technology was better than the company’s.

Good businesses follow the action and most brands finally realize that these trends can be harnessed for commercial benefit. But using social media for business is easier said than done—so far, many brands have been tacking on social real estate to campaigns the same way they’ve been doing with digital microsites and banner ads. To make social media work, businesses must participate in this space differently than consumers; in other words, they’ve got to take a social business approach.

I think Communispace provides a great example in helping companies participate in social business. Using a framework developed by Dachis Group, here’s how I see the company creating social business value:

  • The Ecosystem. Providing connections with prospects and customers to help extend organizational functions beyond those on the payroll, e.g. marketing research.
  • The Hivemind. Allowing brands to become more culturally calibrated with their customers. Understanding motivations paves the way for social calibration.
  • The Dynamic Signal. Bringing out insight from previously unheard voices. The silos in existing listening processes prevent weak signals from being heard.
  • The Metafilter. Moderating discussion and drawing out signals from noise. Listening requires a balance of automated filtering and manual curation.

It’s time to shift from social media and get down to social business. Finding the right partners to help you get there matters.

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29 January 2010

The Source of Bauer’s Power

by Rocky Prozeller

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All posts by Rocky Prozeller

The following takes place between 9:00pm and 10:00pm.

Monday night means a Bauer power hour, a sixty minute stay in the land of make-believe following the FOX show, ‘24’. Engaging in our weekly espionage means moving lights to their “off switch” and a vow of silence from all sofas—a tradition eight years running.

The following takes place between 9:00pm and 10:00pm.

Monday night means a Bauer power hour, a sixty minute stay in the land of make-believe following the FOX show, ‘24’. Engaging in our weekly espionage means moving lights to their “off switch” and a vow of silence from all sofas—a tradition eight years running.

Through the years, the couches, company, and even the TVs used to take it in have changed, but the time dedicated to the drama has not—it’s always a full sixty minutes. Despite the advent of the DVR, advertisers are still guaranteed complete attention to their commercials among our group, a ritual reserved solely for this single show.

The commercial breaks, often overruled with the frenzied fast-forward button, create a chance to build anticipation as the two-plus minutes are spent agonizing over the story line and what comes next. Simply stated, speeding through sponsorships would stall the total satisfaction served by Bauer.

TV networks turn to Nielsen to verify their viewership and judge consumers’ jubilee for a given show, but what the ratings don’t reveal—the show finished a tough third last Monday, even falling behind a rerun of ‘Two And A Half Men’—is the manner in which the show is seen.  

Our fixed formation of five viewers adds a solitary stat to the show’s overall ratings when we watch on a single TV—missing not only more numbers, but the show’s status as a weekly event. Beyond the basic data lies a paradigm probably produced for other programs (everything from ‘American Idol’ to NFL games): a show’s ability to create an experience for its viewers.

Because we extend our enjoyment by watching real-time rather than recording, we tend to talk through the two minute respite—often about the commercials providing the pause.

As advertisers roam through the bevy of broadcasts to pick their placements, they’d be wise to noodle a new metric of success, one which accounts for audiences by gauging the richness behind the ratings—now that’d be something even Jack couldn’t stop; well, not in a single day anyway.

–

As you march on through the waning days of January’s winter-wonderland, we encourage you to stay warm by dancing as if no one was watching.

2 Responses to “The Source of Bauer’s Power”

  1. Matt D. says:
    February 2, 2010 at 7:59 am

    I have viewed the program from its inception 8 seasons ago from many a couch, with an ever-shifting band of 24 brethren beside me. And yes, we do enforce the “shut your mouth between clock-beeps” law that naturally pairs with such a show when it is being presented in “real time.”
    Still, as I finally exhale from the fast-paced, Bauer-fueled action to take a deep breath with a word from our sponsors, I am not sure how closely I watch the ads. I agree that the 2 minutes plus adds the needed level of anticipation to the show, which luxuries like DVR allow us to avoid, yet I seem to use those minutes to break my fixed gaze on the screen to reflect upon Jack’s uncanny ability to overcome any odds (be it a nuclear blast or the shakes from heroin withdrawal).
    You have a great point that ad exec’s are now faced with a new demon to slay…the viewer’s ability to fast forward commercials when they have DVR’ed a show. I am not sure there is even a way for them to conquer that beast, unless they approach TV execs to develop more 24-like shows that need the commercials to increase the show’s intensity.
    I do find one thing interesting related to ads after so many Bauer-soaked years though. I tend to pay close attention to commercials featuring 24 actors. Be it the bold and morally fortified, late President Palmer making sure I’m in good hands with Allstate or Keifer using his “sweet” voice to purr about Sprint, I can’t help but watch and remember good times from past seasons.
    Maybe that’s the key…cast all advertising with 24 staff.
    Kim Bauer on the hood of a Mustang slinging car wax? Chloe convincing me how well Ex-Lax works?
    Now that would be one hell of a day!
    …beep-beep, beep-beep…

  2. Kate DeVagno says:
    February 2, 2010 at 5:20 pm

    The only show I’ve ever dedicated my (real) time to was “The Shield” on FX. Despite not watching much TV, during “The Shield” I was keenly aware of the edgy commercials… especially a Ketel One Vodka ad that was largely panned by ad agencies but really made an impression on me. I never DVR’ed through that one, and we have Ketel One in our freezer.

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4 December 2009

Yahoo! What The Top Searches of 2009 Might Tell Us

by Diane Hessan

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All posts by Diane Hessan

Jon Keller, of WBZ-TV, recently asked for my perspective on Yahoo!’s “Most Popular Web Searches for 2009”. If you haven’t read the list yet, guess what made the Top Ten. What might we have wondered about in 2009? Obama? The war in Iraq? Sarah Palin? Twitter? Mad Men? AIG?

Jon Keller, of WBZ-TV, recently asked for my perspective on Yahoo!’s “Most Popular Web Searches for 2009”. If you haven’t read the list yet, guess what made the Top Ten. What might we have wondered about in 2009? Obama? The war in Iraq? Sarah Palin? Twitter? Mad Men? AIG? 

Most people I interviewed were surprised at the results:  a roundup of pop culture icons—and escapist activities ranging from video games to WWF to American Idol. There are many implications of the results, not the least of which is that as marketers we shouldn’t assume we understand what occupies people’s minds these days, because we’d probably get it wrong. Here’s the link to the Jon Keller piece, where he and I agree that our collective fascination with relatively “shallow” topics is probably more related to needed therapy in stressful times than it is to a Cultural Armageddon. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

2 Responses to “Yahoo! What The Top Searches of 2009 Might Tell Us”

  1. Twitted by CommunispaceCEO says:
    December 4, 2009 at 10:56 am

    [...] This post was Twitted by CommunispaceCEO [...]

  2. Twitted by paulinechu says:
    December 4, 2009 at 11:04 am

    [...] This post was Twitted by paulinechu [...]

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23 November 2009

Branding in the Age of Relational Media

by Guest Blogger: Ted Morris

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In 1989, George Fields (the founder of ASI Market Research) gave me a copy of his book, Gucci on the Ginza—a fascinating exploration of Japanese consumer culture. In his book, Fields employs the term Shinjinrui—meaning, in a most literal sense, a new type of person. This idea remains valid in this age of relational media—Shinjinrui march to their own tune and don’t always run with the crowd as we have seen with Facebook, YouTube, and of course Twitter. Shinjinrui also engage with brands on their own unique terms and expect the same in return.

In 1989, George Fields (the founder of ASI Market Research) gave me a copy of his book, Gucci on the Ginza—a fascinating exploration of Japanese consumer culture. In his book, Fields employs the term Shinjinrui—meaning, in a most literal sense, a new type of person. This idea remains valid in this age of relational media—Shinjinrui march to their own tune and don’t always run with the crowd as we have seen with Facebook, YouTube, and of course Twitter. Shinjinrui also engage with brands on their own unique terms and expect the same in return.

Here’s why… crowds by their very nature are amorphous masses whose only identity is the mass itself. Crowds, like sleeping giants, can be easily awakened. At the slightest of provocations, crowds turn very ugly and morph into mobs (as was recently witnessed at the Web 2.0 Expo). Similarly, when I worked for a social/relational media monitoring company, we found that there were a lot of ‘brand haters’ out there—racists, extremists, shills, and scam artists, all of whom had no interest other than compromising the reputations of many of the institutions and organizations that make our society a civil place. This brings us to the importance of community and how it can contribute to brand building.

Brands by their very nature are unique and distinctive unto themselves: UPS’s logo and uniform models of brown trucks, Big Blue—the IBM logo, and the Nike ‘swoosh’—a brand that doesn’t even need a name to be recognized universally. Some are even represented by characters that are symbolic of what their brands stand for: Ronald McDonald, Frosted Flakes’ Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean, and the grand old man of 111 years, Bibendum, a.k.a. The Michelin Man. Bib, incidentally, is currently on a campaign to reduce gasoline consumption worldwide.

So this raises a key question: how does a crowd relate to a brand in the first place? I don’t think it can, because it’s the individual customer who has the brand experience at the 1:1 level. It is the customer who relates in their own unique way to the things that brands stand for, such as Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’. If these brands do reach out and touch consumers at the individual level, why would they seek out the opinions of the undifferentiated masses? Brand communities are composed of homogeneous groups (segments) that have a set of shared interests and lifestyles that engage with the likes of Dove beauty products. As Diane Hessan mentioned early in the year, “…if the crowd is smaller, more intimacy leads to higher engagement.”

It would be ironic, perhaps poetic, if some prolific texting Millennial brand manager, likely a Shinjinrui, stood up in an agency briefing and declared: “We need to identify a specific consumer segment and do some target marketing.”

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17 November 2009

Second Lease on my Second Life

by Mike Jennings

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All posts by Mike Jennings

Back when we thought Second Life could be the next Facebook, I entered the virtual world to see if there were any opportunities for marketers. I remember having fun designing my avatar and came up with the name of Goffman Ochs by combining the last names of my favorite social theorist and a ‘60s folk artist.

Eventually boredom set in and to be honest, the whole scene was a little too sexual for me. I left Goffman, the sociable singer songwriter, sitting on a park bench in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Back when we thought Second Life could be the next Facebook, I entered the virtual world to see if there were any opportunities for marketers. I remember having fun designing my avatar and came up with the name of Goffman Ochs by combining the last names of my favorite social theorist and a ‘60s folk artist.

Eventually boredom set in and to be honest, the whole scene was a little too sexual for me. I left Goffman, the sociable singer songwriter, sitting on a park bench in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Time went by, Twitter became the new Facebook, and the other day my cousin told me our mutual friend Brian chaired a recent SL Convention. I hadn’t thought of SL in so long and suddenly a wave of guilt came over me…

  • How could I do that to Goffman?
  • How could I leave him slumped over on a park bench like that?

I met up with Brian Perry at his home in Newton, MA to see if we could find my avatar. I was relieved when I logged-in. There was Goffman, right where I left him. Sunlight danced off the Pacific and clouds floated through the sky as he walked around for the first time in three years. The improved graphics were immediately apparent and navigation was easy due to a redesigned search capability.

Back in the real world, Brian and I had a conversation about the current state of SL. Here’s what he told me…

  • Second Life is changing—it used to be that the SL population was one-third gamer, one-third artist, and one-third social misfit. Not anymore.
  • Second Life for collaboration—more and more people are using SL for actual purposes.
  • Second Life for a healthy life—Brian chaired the healthcare track of this year’s SL summit. Topics included the use of SL for clinical trials, cancer outreach, and stress relief.
  • Second Life for learning—one of the biggest groups in SL is SLED, which is dedicated to educational opportunities in SL.

In 2006 I went into SL with the wrong attitude. I observed a subculture that had its own brands and I didn’t think there were a lot of marketing opportunities. I left, but Goffman lived on, and so did his surroundings. While it may not have the mass appeal of Facebook, SL is a great place for groups to come together and collaborate, and unlike Facebook, the company actually makes money.

5 Responses to “Second Lease on my Second Life”

  1. MSGiro says:
    November 17, 2009 at 10:27 am

    Hey Mike,

    I’m glad to hear that SL is picking up some steam again. It helps that I’ve recently been asked to consult on an SL specific project; something I haven’t done for over a year. Without having intimate knowledge of their technology improvements the biggest reason I soured on SL, after a few years, were the limitations. I’m willing to bet a fair amount still exist. The one thing I love about Twitter and Facebook is the ability to simultaneously communicate with thousands of people simultaneously and quickly gather information. SL, with it’s 100 person on an island at one time limitation (which you could never achieve if you actually built something on the sim) was a HUGE problem. It killed so many great ideas and was probably the single biggest reason many brands shied away. For the longest time I couldn’t get HTML or Flash inside of SL so the integration non-SL, but online, related initiatives was impossible. Limitations in design; i.e. not being able to use readily available 3D design software to import inside were a huge strain on costs. You had to find specialists or retrain those folks who were experts in existing software. That led to there being a lack of 3rd party integration. If collaboration is what SL is best at then we should have a plethora of tools at our disposal to utilize for those purposes. Marketing and sales don’t have the time to wait for the improvements and now Twitter and Facebook exploded due to its accessibility. They aren’t the best tools, but they are certainly easy to use.

    Fortunately I have met and worked with many folks from Linden Lab. I wish them nothing but the best. They are great people and have a powerful product in their possession. I just don’t think it’s the software platform I always hoped it would be. I hope they can prove me wrong.

  2. Mike Jennings says:
    November 18, 2009 at 6:06 am

    Hi MSGiro,

    I agree that Second Life is probably not the be all and end all of collaboration tools. One new feature that interests me is the new voice capability because I have never been a fan of IM. Thanks for sharing your Second Life experience. Anyone else want to tell us about their Second Life?

    Mike

  3. Claire-Voe Ocampo says:
    November 19, 2009 at 7:27 am

    Hi Mike,

    I really enjoyed reading this post! Please keep us posted on Goffman’s state. I wonder if he looks like you. :)

    Claire-Voe

  4. Mike Jennings says:
    November 20, 2009 at 6:11 am

    Thanks, Claire-Voe. I’m glad you liked my post. Goffman is a little taller than me!

  5. Charlotte Daher says:
    November 20, 2009 at 6:22 am

    Mike,

    I think the BBC got word of your post http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8367957.stm :) Looks like you’re not the only one who left their avatar hanging on a park bench.

    Cheers!

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29 October 2009

Dishing with Diane: Jeffrey Rayport on how great brands connect with their consumers

by Diane Hessan

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All posts by Diane Hessan

Jeffrey F. Rayport, currently an operating partner at Castanea Partners, formerly the founder and chairman of Marketspace and a Harvard Business School professor, recently paid me a visit in our Boston office. During his visit, we sat down to talk about the transformative power and evolution of digital media; strategies for marketers as we emerge from the recession; and how the greatest brands are delighting their customers by connecting with them at every level.

Jeffrey F. Rayport, currently an operating partner at Castanea Partners, formerly the founder and chairman of Marketspace and a Harvard Business School professor, recently paid me a visit in our Boston office. During his visit, we sat down to talk about the transformative power and evolution of digital media; strategies for marketers as we emerge from the recession; and how the greatest brands are delighting their customers by connecting with them at every level.

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12 October 2009

Owned Platforms: Up-cycling sponsored media in the digital world

by Guest Blogger: Ted Morris

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The idea of “Owned Platforms,” otherwise known as private label media captivates me. Procter & Gamble recently announced that The Guiding Light, its oldest sponsored TV soap opera was finally going off air after 72 years on radio, then television. The company then announced that it was launching its own private digital media platform. Initially, Pampers will be sponsoring a series of webisodes called A parent is born about young couples expecting a child. Other projects include digital casting for a variety of product categories in partnership with the likes of NBC Digital Networks.

The idea of “Owned Platforms,” otherwise known as private label media captivates me. Procter & Gamble recently announced that The Guiding Light, its oldest sponsored TV soap opera was finally going off air after 72 years on radio, then television. The company then announced that it was launching its own private digital media platform. Initially, Pampers will be sponsoring a series of webisodes called A parent is born about young couples expecting a child. Other projects include digital casting for a variety of product categories in partnership with the likes of NBC Digital Networks.

On October 7th, Procter & Gamble with the aid of its Canadian ‘mommy blogger’ community, launched Rouge Magazine a new magazine and online edition, into the US. It’s targeted to 11M households and “beauty-involved females.” The underlying objective is to build a massive database using the information of those that will be engaging with the brand across multiple owned media platforms. Rouge is beyond freemium…it’s chock-a-block with coupons for P&G beauty products.

One of the reasons owned platforms caught my attention was that it reminded me of traditional sponsored advertising—coming back full circle to digital media but delivered directly by the brand rather than a TV network. Conceptually, the first example that came to mind was when television programming was ‘brought to you’ by a ‘proud sponsor’ like Kraft, Molson, or General Motors. Fast forward…sponsored advertising of old has come full circle into digital.

Ford, out of the automotive industry, is also going deep. The Financial Times has suggested that ‘aggressive’ sub-branding, by companies like Ford, are creating owned platforms and individualizing online sites. For example, Facebook is being used effectively for the Fusion and Fiesta brand hubs where loyalists and potential customers participate in the online community.

The redesigned Fiesta specifically, the worldwide launch of www.fiestamovement.com, makes use of trust agents on-the-ground and online across various digital media to build a high degree of awareness and brand building. It’s getting business results too: over 50,000 inquiries for the Fiesta have been generated in advance of the US market launch.

It’s remarkable how the process of branded product advertising is coming around to look like the early days of television—only the media mix is broader and is being up-cycled. Companies with owned platforms are delivering their brand’s message and driving consumer engagement from any of all of the three screens—sponsored television, Internet, and mobile.

So here is the question: Are companies emerging as ‘social OEMs’ who, through the deployment of owned platforms, are bringing back control of their brands to create equilibrium of push and pull marketing? If so, the science will be in bringing all of the right media and branding elements together; the art will be in reaching brand communities tailor-made for these emerging owned platforms.

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