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The eye rolling and derisive snorting I used to get by mentioning Twitter have been replaced by a thin-lipped, folded arm silence.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The eye rolling and derisive snorting I used to get by mentioning Twitter have been replaced by a thin-lipped, folded-arm silence.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?

“four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass”

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My pal Mal points us to this brilliant Craig’s List ad. I’m tempted to buy the car just to meet the man (?) who wrote this.

“OK, let me start off by saying this Xterra is only available for purchase by the manliest of men (or women). My friend, if it was possible for a vehicle to sprout chest hair and a five o’clock shadow, this Nissan would look like Tom Selleck. It is just that manly.

It was never intended to drive to northstar mall so you can pick up that adorable shirt at Abercrombie & Fitch that you had your eye on. It wasn’t meant to transport you to yoga class or Bath & Body Works. No, that’s what your Prius is for. If that’s the kind of car you’re looking for, then just do us all a favor and stop reading right now. I mean it. Just stop.

This car was engineered by 3rd degree ninja super-warriors in the highest mountains of Japan to serve the needs of the man that cheats death on a daily basis. They didn’t even consider superfluous nancy boy amenities like navigation systems (real men don’t get lost), heated leather seats (a real man doesn’t let anything warm his butt), or On Star (real men don’t even know what the hell On Star is).

No, this brute comes with the things us testosterone-fueled super action junkies need. It has a 265 HP engine to outrun the cops. It’s got special blood/gore resistant upholstery. It even has a first-aid kit in the back. You know what the first aid kit has in it? A pint of whiskey, a stitch-your-own-wound kit and a hunk of leather to bite down on when you’re operating on yourself. The Xterra also has an automatic transmission so if you’re being chased by Libyan terrorists, you’ll still be able to shoot your machine gun out the window and drive at the same time. It’s saved my bacon more than once.

It has room for you and the four hotties you picked up on the way to the gym to blast your pecs and hammer your glutes. There’s a tow hitch to pull your 50 caliber anti-Taliban, self cooling machine gun. I also just put in a new windshield to replace the one that got shot out by The Man.

My price on this bad boy is an incredibly low $10,900, but I’ll entertain reasonable offers. And by reasonable, I mean don’t walk up and tell me you’ll give me $5,000 for it. That’s liable to earn you a Burmese-roundhouse-sphincter-kick with a follow up three fingered eye-jab. Would it hurt? Hell yeah. Let’s just say you won’t be the prettiest guy at the Coldplay concert anymore.

There’s only 69,000 miles on this four-wheeled hellcat from Planet Kickass. Trust me, it will outlive you and the offspring that will carry your name. It will live on as a monument to your machismo.

Now, go look in the mirror and tell me what you see. If it’s a rugged, no holds barred, super brute he-man macho Chuck Norris stunt double, then contact me. I might be out hang-gliding or BASE jumping or just chilling with my ladies, but I’ll get back to you. And when I do, we’ll talk about a price over a nice glass of Schmidt while we listen to Johnny Cash.

To sweeten the deal a little, I’m throwing in this pair of MC Hammer pants for the man with rippling quads that can’t fit into regular pants. Yeah, you heard me. FREE MC Hammer pants. Rock on.”

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]