Category Archives: Business & Marketing

“If you’re not responding, you’re not seen as an authentic brand”

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“If you’re not responding, you’re not seen as an authentic brand”
The eye rolling and derisive snorting I used to get by mentioning Twitter have been replaced by a thin-lipped, folded arm silence. Due in some part, I’m sure, to stories like the one in today’s Wall Street Journal:
“Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They’re also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.”
“Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts. At Ford, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.
Coca-Cola Co. is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will be authorized to post to social media on Coke’s behalf without checking with the company’s PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke’s first head of social media in March.”
If you want my business, you’ll listen to what I have to say, and respond. Or suffer a PR shit storm.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925830240300343.html

The eye rolling and derisive snorting I used to get by mentioning Twitter have been replaced by a thin-lipped, folded-arm silence. Due in some part, I’m sure, to stories like the one in today’s Wall Street Journal:

“Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., among others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They’re also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media.”

“Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts. At Ford, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.

“Coca-Cola Co. is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will be authorized to post to social media on Coke’s behalf without checking with the company’s PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke’s first head of social media in March.”

If you want my business, you’ll listen to what I have to say, and respond. Or suffer a PR shit storm.

“I just work here”

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During my affiliate relations days, it wasn’t uncommon to run into a radio station manger who had a beef with one part of our company and took it out on the division I worked for. And I’m certain it went the other way, too.

In my desperation to save an affiliation, I’m sure I said, “But that’s not me. That’s a completely different part of our company. You can’t punish me for what they did.”

Wrong. He can and he did. It was all Learfield as far as he was concerned. Seth Godin reminds us of this in today’s post:

“If you’re not proud of where you work, go work somewhere else. You don’t get the benefit of the brand when it’s hot without accepting the blame of the brand when it’s wrong.”

Digital marketing no longer experimental

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At Forrester Research they “…interview as many marketers as we can about their plans, identify trends and project future likely conditions, and then we put together some numbers to make a projection.”

That’s the way Josh Bernoff explains it in a recent blog post that focuses on a five-year interactive marketing forecast. A few tidbits from the study:

“Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, television, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.

The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets will decline.

This is huge.

It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway.

It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation. For example, online video ads, which will be about $870 million this year, will grow to over $3 billion in 2014. What will this do to networks plans to put more of their shows online in places like Hulu. How will it accelerate some newspapers plans to become more and more centered around online?

And it means that social “media”, which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn’t even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.

Pundits have been declaring the end of mass media and advertising for years now. From my 14 years of experience analyzing this stuff, I’ve learned that things die very slowly, but there are real trends you can see. If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.”

This was the point I was trying to raise in a company meeting earlier this year when I asked if any of the attendees could imagine a time when there was no advertising.  That “advertising” and marketing as we now know it would probably be unrecognizable at some point in the not so distant future. And are we ready for that?

“a zero billion dollar business”

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I’m almost finished with Chris Anderson’s Free – The Future of a Radical Price. It’s hard for us old dogs to wrap our minds around how free can be a real business model but Anderson makes his case with lots of compelling examples and insights. Here are a couple of my favorites:

“Venture capitalists have a term for this used of Free to shrink one industry while potentially opening up others: “creating a zero billion dollar business.” Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, explains it like this: “It describes a business that enters a market, like classified or news, and by virtue of the amazing efficiency of its operation can rely on a fraction of the revenue that the market leaders need to operate profitably.”

Gulp. And then there’s this little conundrum:

“The nature of the advertisement is different online. The old broadcast model was, in essence, this: Annoy the 90 percent of your audience that’s not interested in your product to reach the 10 percent who might be (think denture ads during football games).

The Google model is just the opposite: Use software to show the ad only to the people for whom it’s most relevant. Annoy just the 10 percent of the audience who isn’t interested to reach the 90 percent who might be.”

Watching or listening to stupid ads that had no relevance for me never bothered me when there were no alternatives. I just tuned them out. Now I find myself thinking “why am I watching Billy Mays scream at me about gluing my pants back together?

Twitter spammers: No clue. No pride.

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I really hate to think that spammers will be able to destroy Twitter in the same way they’ve destroyed email. Okay, maybe not destroyed but made it a pain in the ass to use. And I haven’t gotten much spam on Twitter but know it’s coming.

Here’s the latest. I know nothing about Shorty Small’s –other than they are clueless– but will, in the unlikely event I find myself in Branson, avoid it and encourage you to do the same.

They search twitter for any reference to “Branson” and then put a little commercial in your Twitter stream. In the example to the right, you’ll notice the business didn’t know (care?) that I was poking fun at Branson. BBQ spam. Yum!

YouTube as Home Page

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Remember those early Web 1.0 home pages with the navigation buttons and long “Welcome to our Website” paragraphs? Which eventually morphed into more dynamic content, maybe even a blog? How about just making YouTube your home page?

In a recent conference call I cautioned against being “a PowerPoint company in a YouTube world.” I’m guessing the kids at Boone Oakley don’t do a lot of PowerPoint presentations. [By way of Planet Nelson]

“Sorry, There’s No Way To Save The TV Business”

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A thought-provoking column by Henry Blodget in the Silicon Alley Insider. Here’s his nutshell:

“As with print-based media, Internet-based distribution generates only a tiny fraction of the revenue and profit that today’s incumbent cable, broadcast, and satellite distribution models do.  As Internet-based distribution gains steam, therefore, most TV industry incumbents will no longer be able to support their existing cost structures.”

According to Blodget, the TV business models for the past 50 years have been based on:

  • Not much else to do at home that’s as simple and fun as TV
  • No way to get video content other than via TV
  • No options other than TV for advertisers who want to tell video stories
  • No options other than cable–and, more recently, satellite–to get TV
  • Tight choke-points in each market through which all video content has to flow (cable company, airwaves), which creates enormous value for the owners of those gates.