marginally subversive

Universal McCann's wave 3: Tech-empowered Connections...

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

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It's all about the experience...

I stumbled upon this interesting slide show on content marketing - at least that's how it was labeled on SlideShow.Com.  However, I think that it does cover more than just content marketing as a discipline.  It covers a far bigger, far richer view of the consumers' experience-sphere - and how brands can make/unmake their positions within this circle.

It's all about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands - that's the raison d'etre of media, channel, and messaging experts.  It's not about buying a TV ad or a print ad or a banner ad in some number 1 portal somewhere.  It's not about buying search keywords and optimizing them to the hilt.

It's about enhancing consumers' experiences of brands.

And I honestly think that content marketing - what used to be called (or is it still called?) "branded content and sponsorships" (though I think it's far more than that) - is one pillar that is currently underutilized in the media planning industry.

A lot of clients that I have spoken to about this have just one reply: "We are not a publishing company".  To which I say, "... but the mere fact that you are creating ads, buying media to send those messages into the market, and getting PR people and CRM writers to create campaigns - contents, essentially - don't these make you a publishing company?"

 

Content Marketing = Brand New Marketing?

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Innovation

A thesis: Technologies designed to meet said and unsaid needs of consumers is what's going to drive innovations. 

Innovation is a careful balance between what consumers think they want now and in the near future - and what they have not yet thought about.

The real challenge is not really "meeting consumers' needs" - as made evident by surveys or any other "emotional, ethnographic research".  But creating technologies that enhance the experiences and lives of consumers.

Google did just that.  So did Apple's iTunes + iPod combo.  So did Amazon.Com.  They looked at how they could create better experiences for their consumers (and well, increase their bottom-line).  And they did succeed.

Simple.  Classic.  Elegant UIs.  That actually work.  And eventually get trusted.

Technology is important - but it is an enabler.  An important enabler.  But it's not the end-all/be-all.

Of Post-Buys, Rigor in Planning, Coke Zeroes and Vodka Martinis (that were probably shaken... or stirred)

I was just speaking with someone who's been part of my 'batch' of media planners and strategists in the Philippines.  She was lamenting that "the young ones are too impatient to climb up the ladder - looking at promotions as rewards; if only they knew what a promotion entails and how much it takes away versus how much it gives".  To that, I said "Well, I am sure our bosses also felt the same of us when we came out of uni and were driven to prove our worth - and well, pay off those student loans".

She also lamented that media planners don't do proper post-buys anymore.  And she went on reminiscing:  "You know, those times of actually staying up late at night to 'marry' data from one data-source that tracks the exact time of airing of a 15s ad to another data-source that contains the exact ratings at that point in time?"

For those who don't understand the preceding:  In the mid-1990s in the Philippines, we had two monitoring systems - the Philippine Monitoring System - or PMS (and yes, even if I never had the 'luxury' of experiencing one, I am sure it was not purely coincidental that it had the same monicker) - which monitored the exact airing of a TV commercial.  Then there was the Nielsen Telescope, which monitored exact ratings to the minute. 
A fresh-grad and new planner would be tasked to do this - marry the two data-sets.  The process sounds simple - you run PMS, you print it out, then you reinput the data into the other software, then press "run".  But recall that this was the mid-1990s in the Philippines: colored monitors were a luxury - I had a green one in Basic Advertising.  Processing power was very limited - so one 4-week campaign will be run overnight on PMS so as early as 8am, you can start entering the data into the other system, which would take another 2-3 hours of runs.  Oh, and the dot-matrix printers - which always found a way to screw up.
For me, it was a test of patience - it was baptism by fire (apart from having been assigned to the McDonald's account during my first year of professional existence as a media planner!).

And to that question which she posed, I said, "Yes.  The new ones have got it all easy."

And to which she responded, "But do you also notice that the rigor has been gone?"

She went one:  "Back then, we had to conduct not just analyses of the programs - but we made projections on how programs and breaks are going to be like.  We had to create reach-curves across different scenarios and mixes of buys - and predict how certain mixes can result to some probable reach.  It wasn't just the last 13 weeks or last 20 weeks.  It was the last 26 weeks - and past-year's similar period!  And we would determine if they were statistically different - or not.  And if they were, why!  These days, we just see media plans with ratings in them."

I just laughed:  I knew where she was coming from.

"And don't get me started on post-buys!  These days, they celebrate when they get 33% or 50% more GRPs than they planned to achieve.  They celebrate if they achieved 10% reach points more than what they planned to achieve - highlighting it to clients as if they were great things to be proud of.  Hello!  Wastage!

"If you delivered 50% more GRPs than what you planned, then that means you wasted money - since you didn't need that extra 50%.  You could've used that elsewhere... perhaps in another medium, another week, another... I don't know... events?"

"These days, post-buys are simply a reportage of what happened.  There's nothing in there that makes it relevant to the business and the future campaigns.  It just - a piece of paper!  A report!  What a pity!"

I tried to calm her down:  "But you see, things are changing, too.  Post-buy tempates of TV are probably not applicable to post-buys on digital."

She stared at me: "Oh no, no, no, no, no.  These digital post-buys that are seemingly so enamored with the idea of clickstream here and clickstream there... hello!  So what does that mean to me?  That they clicked on this ad and landed on this site... Then what?  They said the web is the most measurable of the different media - and it could be true.  But informative?

"All I have seen so far are fancy charts with lines and curves and percentages and ratios...  I don't see the "so-what?"  and I don't see the "what's next?" I'd like to know more:  so if this is what's happening, so if these keywords aren't performing, so if these banners are not delivering as much as the others, so if these are the likely exit-pages, so if these are the likely entry-sourves... so what?  And what's next?

And with that, we chugged down our drinks - me with my no-sugar Coke Zero and her with her Vodka Martini - shaken or stirred, she doesn't really care.  ("I am not James Bond.  More like Miranda Priestley and Wilhelmina Slater combined.")

Wanted: Digital Planners who can think brand- and media-planning - and vice versa...

Having been re-immersed back into the world of communications planning and advisory, a realization - or a "re-realization" struck me.

Whilst we are in a world that is increasingly becoming more "digitized" and where certain media vehicles are becoming more and more a "concierge service" - i.e., a centralized service to stay in touch with all things - we are still lacking in real integrators.

Digital planners - who can think of the brand beyond the digital medium and its intricacies - I think, are still lacking.  Don't get me wrong: digital planners are a great bunch of people.  And by the innate nature of the web as being very measurable and accountable, digital planners hold a very critical role in any communications plan.

However, I have the belief that digital planners - who are specialists in their own right and could command great respect from the rest of the marketing planning community - needs to take into consideration that brands are not created overnight.

Just because click-through rates or CPCs or CPAs or keywords or widgets or RFIs are high relative to eyeballs doesn't necessarily mean a successful campaign.  These - IMHO - are measures of "efficiencies" rather than effectiveness:  How much dollars is a campaign generating versus the investments that are being poured into it.

There is still a need to look at brands - and these metrics that measure how consumers interact, experience, relate, and animate a brand cannot be captured by merely looking at CPCs and CPAs and other conversion measures.

True:  all businesses ought to be measured in terms of their revenue-generation capabilities.  And therefore all campaigns that support this businesses need to generate sales.  HOWEVER, a brand isn't built overnight - and the impact of so-called "branding campaigns" are not necessarily immediately felt or measurable.  Heck, if we can measure overnight the impact of a "branding campaign", I think that would be the ideal scenario.  However, sticking to our CPCs and CPAs and SEMs and SEOs and other measures an tactics as "mere campaign measures that matter because they are closer to the company's bottomline" could well be a myopic viewpoint.

Media planning as an industry has evolved - strategic planners from mainstream creative and agency-companies are now welcome in the world of "noughts and crosses" and are changing the way media planning is bein done.  These strategic planners do not necessarily use numbers - but they "adapt" their knowledge of how brands are created and how consumers encounter/experience brands not just through messaging strategies but also through the message's interaction/synergy with the medium that carries that message - regardless of what that medium is.

The same is true for digital specialists - they have to "adapt" their technical knowledge and expertise to include a deep understanding of how brands are created - online and offline.

This is not to say that the digital medium ought to be an after-thought, after all the traditional, offline media have been fulfilled and their budgets optimized.  What I am trying to say is digital specialists should also be able to talk about brands and brand-building - in the immediate and in the long-term - within their specialised field - and at the same time, outside the digital realm.

At the end of the day, we are aiming to provide better brand-consumer experiences that would transform target audiences into brand users (and revenue-sources) and into brand ambassadors.  Clicking an ad - in Google, in MSN Search, in Yahoo.Com, or in some other vertical - is one aspect of that experience.

But it is not the only aspect of brand-building.

Brands are created over time, across multiple experience-opportunities, with the end-user reinforcing her relationship with the brand at her own time, at her own choosing.  Revenues in the short-term are good and they are good for the bottomline of the company for this quarter or this month.  But businesses - the last time I checked - are in it for the long-haul.

Google + Digg = ???

I had a bit of a discussion with our digital lead in the office about Google and Digg.  As of early last week,  talks are probably making some headway.  TechCrunch had even had a stronger 'pronouncement' that the talks are in the final stages with Google paying 200Mln USD (only?) for the deal.  Of course, Digg had to respond to such talks.  Its CEO, Jay Adelson, denied that these talks are in place.

As of the latest news, there seems to have been a breakdown in the negotiations.  Google, apparently, walked away from the deal, according to TechCrunch.

What's driven Google to this?  Well, we can only speculate.  But this perhaps could give us a glimpse:  It seems that Google is experimenting with integrating user-votes into their algorithms to further refine the search results that the search engine churns for its users.

This entry from TechCrunch demonstrates how some early tests that Google has been conducted in the area of "social/user-votes-integration" into search results.

All these are of interest to me as a campaign planner - and for marketeers.

First, the idea of integrating a social-dimension to search results is probably a good idea from the end-user perspective.  Right now, Google's PageRank and other technologies (Microsoft's Browserank, which debuted on SEOBook.Com) are dependent on "referral links". 

(Microsoft's BrowseRank looks at user's behavior and the time spent per 'referring link' to ascertain the importance of the 'target link'; OK - that's putting it simplistically...)

Adding on a social component to search results is essentially "sourcing the wisdom of the crowds" - crowds, who I should add would be or are going to be very likely to be interested in the same things that any individual user is looking for.

The technologies of referring links (and other metrics gathered through sophisticated algorithms based on web-crawlers and others) will have an added, truly-interactive dimension - which means that with this, users get to have a say on what's relevant and what's not.

Will it lead to better results?  I am no algorithm expert - but I would think so.  If I were searching for "Ducati motorcycles" (which I have been doing for the past 2 weeks), I would want to have more relevant information on Ducati - way beyond what the corporate website of Ducati says (which always comes up tops on the list).  And right now, I will have to follow every single link that the Google search results page spews out.

With this added dimension of "vote-ups/downs" from other end-users who may have searched the same keywords as I have done, it might just make my life a little easier.  The ones that were voted up by people who did the same search earlier than I did would most likely be relevant to me, too.  It may not be perfect - but at least it is a starting point.

The end-user, I think, will benefit from this greatly.  She may lose out on a few interesting websites - but even then, she can vote-up/down on her own volition results which she may have found to be relevant to her search.

On the other hand, there are questions on "search results manipulation".  If we had incidents of "click-fraud" in the CPC model - then we'll have to live with (or at least get Google to put a lid on) fraudsters who will be exploiting the possibility of artificially bumping up/down ratings.

On a cost-basis (which in these troubled times are beginning - or are becoming a more frequent point of discussion in marketing meetings - traditional or digital), costs per click or costs per acquisition are probably going to increase.

The results no longer are just dependent on Google's algorithms - with the social dimension of the search results, the crowd contributes.  Essentially, people who have done similar searches as I am now doing, for exaple, will have already paved the way for me to the most relevant results - which could potentially be relevant to me, too!

Now, isn't that more valuable than pure, algorithm-derived search results?  If I were google, I would do the same thing.  I would put a premium to this - whilst controlling the possibility of fraudulent vote-ups/downs.

Bottom-line:  Google is living up to its vision - "to oganize the world's information".  And if and when this incorporation of the social dimension comes through, it would have been a step closer to realizing that vision.

For now, Google + Digg is probably not going to pull through.  But it seems, Google has got its head around the issue.  And it seems that they are on the right track.

Paid Search Ads Not the Holy Grail

This is a very interesting video from Yahoo! Tech Ticker, an interview with Jonathan Yarmis of AMR Research conducted by Sarah Lacy.  Yarmis believes that there are four pillars to disruptive technologies that will define the future - not in silos but in terms of how each pillar interact:

1. Social Networking Phenomenon, powered by the technology
2. Cloud computing
3. Mobile access to data
4. Monetization beyond the traditional search ads

Yarmis also suggests that "paid search ads in a social networking phenomenon" (and I will add, in other technologies - for example in mobile access to data on a phone or a wireless device) are not the only way to monetize all these.

(Think of it this way:  If you are talking/networking with your friends on your PC or on your mobile device, would you really click on a text ad that's irrelevant to what you and your friends are talking about?)

The internet, Yarmis says, will remain to be free - and I do agree.  Capex from tech companies that are funding these "free" internet services won't be able to maintain these levels of interest.  Monetization will be critical.  However, most companies are still very much stuck to the old "advertising mindset" of capitalizing on "inventory" rather than creating new ways of monetizing these.

LinkedIn versus Facebook: Shall they ever meet - and compete?

Will we ever see LinkedIn and Facebook meeting - and competing?

There is a view that most would have a Facebook account for 'fun' and LinkedIn for a more serious, professional image.  That's what I do, too.  I think - though - that there is more to LinkedIn that just that.

I have used LinkedIn to be heard - one of the major sources of traffic to my blog Marginally Subversive is my LinkedIn profile.  I have had projects - and job inquiries - on LinkedIn, and I have also established 'connections' (for lack of a better term) with other professionals in my field and with people who I would not have had a chance to connect with in the real, flesh-and-blood world.  I have, for example, academicians in my extended network - people who have accepted my request to connect for the purpose of perhaps, helping me out in the future when I hit a snag in my academic quests or projects.

LinkedIn's two-pronged strategy of generating revenues through subscriptions and through ads is interesting.  But I think there is more to that:  sure, LinkedIn's probably limited in terms of its inventory and its ability to deploy ads (i.e., it doesn't have Google's Ad-serving strength), but the quality of the people who are in LinkedIn is significantly higher than any other social network that I know of.

That's the beauty of social networks - the value of social networks do not rely on mere "quantity" and "breadth" or number of users.  The value of social networks is also based on the quality of its users.

Look at Facebook:  Its exclusivity to university students was what made it interesting and unique.  Now that anybody can have a Facebook account, its sexiness has gone - and it has gone the way of "portals" and "search ads".

LinkedIn's business model is by no means perfect.  But it is teeming with opportunities.  However, it should be careful with how it evolves.  Its users are what make LinkedIn precious - and I hope (as a user) they don't evolve into another "too-ad-driven" site.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: LinkedIn, Social Networking, Social Web, Digital Web, Digital Advertising, Digital Models, Business Models, Strategic Planning

No more ads...

Well, the truth is there are still ads.  But I have been not noticing any ads.  If you asked me now what web ads have I seen in the last couple of days - or even the past week (apart from those which I had to "see" as part of my job), I wouldn't be able to name one.

Which leads me to the question: Are digital ads really declining in effectiveness?

If that is so, then why is everybody so hung up on ads (at least seemingly)?  Microsoft and Yahoo and Time and AOL and Google.

Everybody seems to be thinking that the reason why these companies have made the moves they made in the last couple of months is "advertising".

I would beg to differ.

Advertising could be a part of it.  But it's beyond that.  The fact that Yahoo seems to be so intent at avoiding the bid and Microsoft is so intent in pushing the deal - and everybody else from Google to Time to AOL - are all trying to get into the ruckus themselves suggest that there is something else beyond advertising.

Advertising is on a decline.  People don't want ads to be shoved down their throats anymore.  A new way to - all together now - "communicate" is necessary.  (And no, social networking ads?  C'mon.)

The days of "inventory-based advertising" - regardless of whether it is in display or search - are on entering the "wane" period.  Whatever you call the next phase - engagement planning, IMC, IPC, CCP, Comm Planning, Media Neutral Planning, Atomized Planning - it will not be solely 'inventory-based' anymore.

Live Search is getting better...

OK, I am no search-guru.  The farthest I have gone to implementing a search strategy is watching my colleague who is a search guru do a demo on how to do a search strategy.  But I am an avid user of search.  My search default right now is Google - primarily because I search a lot of research materials and their scientific/academic journals search seems to be good.

For other non-serious stuff though, I tend to not really stick to any one.  I want my search to be everywhere I am at - which is mostly these days within the MSN Windows Live network.  (Since I am a Live Mail fanatic and Windows Live Mail desktop app heavy user [it's always on and it aggregates all my email accounts - both for work- and non-work-related email]...)

I stumbled upon this site on the developments in Windows Live Search.  Pretty impressive.  I particularly liked the idea of the photo-search/image-search.  My biggest problem with Google Image Search is that I have to click through to so many pages to look at all the images - and not only that, I have to get to the source file/site in order to see whether that image is indeed what I was looking for or not.  Waste of time.

The one on video search is good, I thought.  Google has integrated video results into their search - and have a dedicated search sites for Video.  But I think this one from Live Search is good:  You get to see lots of videos in one go - and preview them without actually leaving the search results site.

Hey, not bad.

Do people need this?  I surely do since I tend to multitask and want things done in a jiff.

I wonder though when are they going to roll this one out.

And when will they make other people know more about these pretty powerful stuff?

C'mon, guys.  Just because you got something good you can't relax and say "they'll come".  Do some marketing - for once, be a marketing company.  You've made the first step towards making great strides in improving the search experience - and you may have stumbled upon something that could be useful to people.  Get them on the bandwagon if they are not yet.

It's time that we tell people how good and consumer-centric Microsoft is.

Media and Ad Agencies, Technology Companies, Marketeers, and Audiences

In another life, I delivered a vision for a business division that I was working on and the bigger company that owned that division.  My vision was predicated on something: 

What we were offering now (it was 2005 then) will become commoditized.  It will remain
to be  significant part of our business - for business won't change overnight.  But it will be one that will see lower profits because it will demand a lot of human resources.

What we need is to look into the future.  And the future is in the realm of providing accountable advice - frameworks and solutions whose results can be measured against an  agreed-upon set of standards prior to us coming into the picture.

Such businesses will not merely be won by the discounts and savings - though these will remain to be a part of the criteria, perhaps - as old habits are hard to change.  But we can go beyond that.

One pillar is the integration of due diligence and rigor into our business - acting as objective consultants bordering on being academic and theoreticians, yet delivering real, measurable results.

The second pillar is the integration of technology into every aspect of our operations:  to streamline repetitive mundane tasks and reduce overhead costs, to reduce "communication costs" by capitalizing on new technologies, to automate processes and "thinking processes" into databases of expert systems and algorithms.

More importantly, the integration of technology in the analysis of audiences and markets, and in the delivery of message to audiences and markets - both in the back-end and in the store-front.

Essentially, Marketing departments have to embrace technologies - and we - as their partners, their vendors, their suppliers, their contracts, and whatever way they want to see us - need to embrace it too.  And we need to embrace it much earlier than they do.

Decision-making processes need to be aided by technology.  Predictive techniques need to be grounded on technology and theory.  Real-time data and accountability are needed - and these too will be driven by technology.  Simulations - pricing and demand and communications and worst-case scenario planning and most-likely scenario planning - all these will be driven by technology.

Should this be driven by "digital planners"?  No.  They should be driven by "traditional planners with a keen sense of business".  Should it be driven by one business unit?  For now - yes.  But it will need to cascade - the sooner the better - to the rest of the organization.

This is the only way we can avoid being a commodity - and being relegated into the background as mere vendors, as mere contractors, as mere suppliers.  This is the only way we can escape the never-ending discussion on "discounts-value-adds-freebies".

I guess I didn't do enough to make these thoughts clear (and I doubt if the above is any clearer!)

But think about it:  If technology is so pervasive in the lives of our audiences, then why shouldn't agencies and marketing companies embrace technology as part of their systems, processes, and well, communications with consumers and with other stakeholders?

Digital Media, Risks, and Balls

photo from Flickr from joey.ganoza

Jeremiah Owyang had an interesting post in his blog about Facebook marketing demanding a high tolerance for risks in order to achieve success.  He summarized these into the following theme - which I thought captured the realities that marketeers and marketing planners now have to contend with:

Successful applications were experimental, embraced risk, and quickly iterated - everything (that) big brands will struggle with.

I think that hits the issue on the right spot.

And I also believe that at least in Southeast Asia, that encompasses not just Facebook marketing - but marketing in any new forms of advertising and communications, including online and digital marketing.

What struck me in Jeremiah's entry is this comment from one of the speakers in the event that he's attending (Graphing Social Networks), from Rodney Rumford:

“Most of the people (at big corporations) who are making the decisions for Facebook are 45 or older, and are not immersed in Facebook”

... to which I say is one of the many challenges that we are facing.

There are more challenges in Southeast Asia for digital communications planning to truly take off and be more than just a "by-the-way":

1. Lack of Real Experts.  We lack experts who can truly guide people.  Now - one would argue that there are now a lot of digital shops out there.  And with all due respect, these digital shops are churning out great creative stuff.  However, I think that we're barely scraping the surface.
   
   We cannot impose traditional media and advertising planning philosophies from before into the new paradigms that the web is now offering us.  We can't merely measure reach and frequency and impressions anymore.  We have to go deeper.  And some experts are yet to come to grasp with this.
2. Data.  Data is sorely lacking in the region.  ComScore supposedly has data on most Southeast Asian countries - but so far,it has not moved into making their data to be a currency.  I am certain that when data comes in, it will be a watershed - it will be a starting point in getting planners to start thinking about the digital world.
3. Risk-aversion.  I read in an article (which I cannot find now in my box) that the reason why media planners are not too keen about recommending digital media to clients is that because they are not sure how clients are going to react with a digital media campaign.  Hence the reliance on what has happened in the past in the context of traditional media.
   
   I also read in the same article that the reasons why clients are not too keen about digital media is because their agencies are not recommending them - and if they are, the "signal-to-noise" ratio is so high that they don't know what to believe in and how to decide.  Besides, "TV has always worked for me".
   
   This risk-aversion, which Rodney Rumford's quote above suggests, needs to be addressed.  It's a case of waiting for the other to start.
4. Old Modes of Thinking Still Dominates.  Seth Godin, in his book "Meatball Sundae", raises important questions and offers important thoughts.  For one thing, most clients are asking their agencies "How can we make all these digital media work for us?  How can we make Facebook, Friendster, and other social networking sites work for us?"
   
   Seth Godin believes that that is not the right question to ask - the right question is "What can we do in our business to align ourselves with the new "normal" that are being symbolized by the increasing usage of social network sites?"
   
   That's a total turnaround in terms of thinking.
   
5. Inventory-focused Vendors.  Vendors are still thinking in terms of inventories rather than on creating differentiating and (buzzword alert) engaging audiences.  It still is based on "how many impressions can I sell today?" - a remnant of the TV- and print-selling process.  I believe that a shift needs to happen, too.
   
   And the shift will need to be towards "depth of experience, engagement with the content (not a webpage, not a set of websites), affinity with the service and the technology, and personalization - without invading my privacy".
   
   Inventory needs to be rethought.  Vendors ought to be selling experiences to audiences - empowering experiences.  Not another website, not another webpage.  Depth of pages is not necessarily going to deliver depth of engagement.  People get engaged with things that matter to them.  Identify it.  And then develop these services to meet their needs.
   
   The idea that "if you build, they will come" no longer is a surefire way to get audiences and engage audiences.  Check.  Feel the pulse.  And respond.
6. Banners are not the end-all/be-all panacea.  Most of the people I have worked with in the past have the impression that "if you have a print campaign material, you can change that into a banner and into a micro-site".  Not anymore.
   
7. Raw, individual level data are ignored.  Now, more than ever, audiences and tech-users are offering information.  There needs to be a way to harness these information (without sacrificing privacy of the users).  This is sorely lacking.
   
   The days of percentages and aggregated data as the only solution to a quantitative question are almost over.  We need to know movements, the dynamics of users - and more importantly, their mindsets whilst moving in the digital sphere.

There are more barriers, but these I think are the ones that need to be addressed soon for digital media planning and communications to take hold and accelerate even further.

Unless these are addressed, I don't think that we will make significant in-roads into the area of digital media communications.

The Opportunities in Social Media

Social media is here - and that's probably the understatement of the year (and it's only February 2008).  But in my discussions with customers and with partners, the talk - regardless of whether it's about digital marketing communications or search or media planning - always leads to the topic of social media.

The questions - expressed differently by different people - were all centered on one thing:  What do we do with it?

To be honest, I have no idea.

I have learned things about social media - about what works and what doesn't, what 'endears' and what 'pisses' audiences off.  I think that social media and the technologies that are powering these media are changing a lot of things in our lives - privacy, for example, seemed to have taken a backseat in the priorities of consumers - until Facebook falls flat on its face in the late-2007.

Anyway, so what do we do with it?

I still have no idea.

And the truth is, I don't think a lot of people do.

There is one blog though that I have been following - Jeremy Owyang's blog.  He has a lot of things to say - and he does make sense.

His latest entry tries to define what we can do with social media - and how social media goes beyond the metrics of search.  I think the statement that best sums up his position on this is:

The greatest opportunities lie where companies (become) a part of (the) communities where ads may not even be present.

And I couldn't agree more.

While some vendors and ad companies see social networks as another additional medium to air/advertise and deliver messages, I believe otherwise.

Social media are conversational media.  It is where audiences get to talk with one another directly.  Audiences are using social media in addition to - or in lieu of - email, instant messsaging, and other 'traditional' forms of communications.

Advertisers rudely interrupt the conversations.

(Think of it this way:  You're talking to your friend about your new shirt - and suddenly, out of the blue, an advertiser - say, GAP - butts its head in and starts advertising.  How do you feel?)

I think clients, marketeers, and agencies should start thinking about beyond "interrupting conversations" - and actually joining in the conversations that are already happening.  (Remember the ClueTrain Manifesto?)

Advertisers would be forgiven if they asked "... But how do I advertise?"  That's their 'essence' as advertisers - they advertise.  But the challenge is for advertisers to become more than just advertisers - they need to become real marketeers.  They need to become "Real Conversationalists".  They need to be "story-tellers", not just sellers.  They need to be listeners - not just talkers.

But hey, isn't that what Cluetrain was all about? 

Well.

Social media have always been around - it's only now that it has taken on the internet by storm powered by new technologies and digital connectivity.  But social media have always been around - rumors, blind items, neighbors talking "over the fence", people gathering in the town-center to discuss things...

And it is part of human nature.

What should advertisers do?

Nothing.

An emerging favorite...

I am beginning to fall in love - yet again - with a new service on the internet.  After having fallen in love in Flickr.Com a few years ago, I have discovered something else.  Not as flashy as Flickr (if you consider Flickr flashy) - but useful, really.  And clean, easy to use.

This time, it's SkyDrive that's keeping me up all night.

The thing is, I have so many photos on my laptop that I want to share with only a few people.  I am sure that Flickr does that - you know, choose who sees your photos.  But seriously, not everyone seems to be interested in taking photos.  But what do they have?  Hotmail.Com accounts.

That's where SkyDrive comes in.

That's where I park all my photos nowadays.

The only thing that worries me:  It's still in beta.  And it's only got 1GB so far of available memory.

But seriously - I want this to be my 'cloud drive'.  I want this to be more than my storage space - I also want this to be my special place where I can share photos - and documents - with people whom I love and consider important.

Anyway...  try it out.  If you've got a Hotmail.Com or Live.Com account, it's good.

And the other thing to note:  A Hotmail.Com account gets you a blog on Spaces, Photo Gallery (which is integrated in your Spaces blog), SkyDrive, and a few other stuff that you can use.

 

What makes a social networking campaign effective...

Interesting starting thoughts on what makes a successful marketing campaign on social networks.  This is from Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research.

What's really interesting is how the conversation is going on after Jeremiah started it.  I found the original article interesting - and to my 'social-tech-newbie' mind, comprehensive.

Until I got to the comments and realized that there are more that needs to be considered.

Look at how the conversations between the author and the commenters are evolving - and clarifying the main theme.

I would call this a successful - hmm - campaign.

Questions and Answers

I have a conversation with an ex colleague of mine about the future of the media planning and communications planning industry.  And here are some excerpts of what we talked about:

Him:  So do you think that advertising is going to decline this year and in the next few years?

Me:  Well, in terms of adspends that are being monitored, yes - it is very likely.  TV is already showing signs of slowing down at least in Singapore and in Thailand.  In the Philippines, FTA-TV is getting to be more and more challenged by alternative forms of entertainment.  And in Malaysia, the growing strength of Cable versus FTA is already something worth mentioning.

What should media agencies do?

They are in a very good position, in fact.  They hold all the data and information that can transform the media industry into something beyond the media planning of the old.

What kinds of data do they have?

Do you believe in the maxim "You are what you read or watch or listen to"?  That however you interact with different kinds of media channels define who you are - say, if you want to watch a lot of serials on TV - it says something about you.  And that if you are addicted to lifestyle magazines or say, the sports section of a newspaper - it says something about you?

Well, the data that media agencies have are all these.  And I just don't mean "data as percentages".  I think media agencies need to dive more deeply into these and uncover more stories.

But they've always worked - we've always worked - on the levels of ratings and percentages?

Which I believe is insufficient.  We should have dove a little deeper.  I know that some companies have tried getting elemental data for optimization purposes - "individual level data" apparently is good for optimization.

But it's more than that.  Imagine being able to cluster people based on the likely-TV behaviors.  Imagine being able to cluster people not just in terms of their psychographics - based on answers to surveys with a battery of attitudinal statements - but based on their actual behavior on TV: when they switch, how often do they switch channels, what kinds of programs make them switch, what kinds of ads make them switch, what programs make them  loyal, what artistes make them loyal to a program. 

All these are in the usual TAM data that Nielsen Media Research, TNS, and other research providers give out regularly.

It's just that we've never dove deeply.

Is it because we lack the intellectual capacity?

Of course not - and I take offense at that!  (A bit of a chuckle)  It's because we are content with percentages - with measurements of the old - GRPs, reach, frequency, CPMs, frequency distribtuions, demographic and affinity definitions.

We have just become complacent - we have just become contented with what we have.  We need more metrics.  We need more curious and disciplined people.  We need people who are willing to experiment with numbers - and with the combinations of numbers.  We need people who will say to their Western counterparts that "Look, guys, these are some ideas that we have because we think that our media landscape is far different from yours.  We need to measure this and that, beyond ratings and GRPs."

Is it then a matter of will?

And curiosity and the boldness to dream big.  The funny thing about being bold is that it lifts you up above the rest and you become more of a target.  But that's the price of being bold.

So what are you proposing?

The past several years have seen some strides in the maths and statistical theory world.  There's this thing called "Hierarchical Bayes" methodology, stemming from Bayesian theory.

There's also the field of computer simulations, and good old econometric modeling and similar regression techniques - but done on an individual, respondent level basis and on a cumulative basis.

All these are pointing to richer, far more powerful usage of already-available data.

What of content?

What did Marshall MacLuhan say?  "The medium is the message."  A lot of people think of that as a "goal" - some think that that is all about "integrating the medium and the message".

I think differently.

I think it is not the goal - "the medium is the message" is a declarative statement, a factual statement.  It is essentially suggestive of the reality that we cannot separate the medium from the message - nor the message from the medium.  The medium is the message - and vice versa.

What drives people to watch TV is not TV per se - it is the TV + the content that it contains - the messages that are contained within TV.  What drives people to go online is not just because online is online - but because within online, there is a content - a message - that if it were not available, people would look for elsewhere.

The medium is the message - and the message is the medium - are facts, not goals.  It is not something that we work towards.  It is a given.

So where does that leave the divide between creative and media planning?

Who has the data?  Media planning departments.  Who can best explain the needs of the consumers and uncover these needs?  Media planners.  Who can best describe the underlying thoughts, wants, needs and "motivations" of consumers?  Media planners.

But it is the creative - the messaging department - that puts flesh to these.

But isn't advertising all about selling?

True.  But like all seasoned sales people would know:  you cannot sell unless you have somehow made an argument - emotional or logical, rational or irrational - to consumers.  If you have not connected, you can't.

Where does information management, Bayesian theory, simulations, Hierarchical Bayes, and multiple-level regression analyses come into the picture?

Richness in understanding who the consumers/audiences are - based on what they actually do, not just on what they say or claim to say - and not just on demographics.  But real behavior.  Real-time, real observable individual-level behavior.

Will it be a panacea?

No such thing exists.  It is a first step - a significant step away from percentages (which treat all consumers as equals and as "mere statistics").  It is a first step towards real understanding of consumers and audiences.

Doesn't it already exist in the digital world?

To a certain extent it does.  But the digital world is also battling issues in privacy - it is so "close" to personally identifiable information that it is quite scary.  At least in TAMs, in PeopleMeters(R), there is still some sense of anonymity.

So what should media companies do?

Be brave.  That's the first step.  Be more than just order- and brief-takers.  Be more than just mere "OK, we'll book it by tomorrow" sayers.  Think through each and every media plan - and go beyond the percentages.

================================

 

How do you teach someone to think strategically?

I have been asked by a friend from Vietnam to mentor someone who wants to be a strategic planner.  I am not mastered the art and science of strategic communications planning.  And sometimes, the strategic directions that I come up with are first glimpsed whilst showering or lounging by the pool or swimming (and drowning) with Excel-tables and PowerPoint reports.

When I got offered a job by a start-up company, I was first asked "How do you create strategies?"  My answer - which I felt was simple, but not simplistic (at least I felt it wasn't simplistic) - was "You don't create strategies; they reveal themselves to you as you tease stories out of the data and information that you have".

I remember talking about an "integrative mind" - a mind that freely moves from left- (the rational side) to the right-side of the brain (the creative side).  I also recall talking about how phenomenology (remember that from philosophy?) and metaphysics actually help - how you break things down to pieces and examine them in abstraction from the whole, and then bringing them all together again into one bigger, more holistic whole.

But all these are things that may be innate.

I have toyed around with strategic frameworks in the past - and boy, I love 2x2 matrices.  I loved the frameworks of Kenichi Ohmae and of Micheal Porter - as well as the book "Thinking Strategically" by Dixit and Avinash.  I enjoyed talking about Game Theory, the book "A Beautiful Mind" (which discussed in some detail the Nash Equilibrium), and a whole lot of other things.

Did they help in crafting strategic thinking?

Perhaps.  But Mintzberg (from Strategy Bites Back, another book) says that strategic thinking goes beyond all these frameworks.  Strategic thinking comes when you've considered all the things that you need and have to consider - and take a calculated risk and leap into the unknown.

I would be honest and say that some of the strategies that I have come up with were what I would call generic - because the questions and the issues were generic.  But there were solutions that demanded more than just a generic response - it required the amalgam of different models, different thought patterns, different truths.

So how do you teach someone to think strategically?

I think it is akin to teaching philosophy:  My Philosophy professor from University said that "Ang pilosopiya ay ginagawa" - which means "You do philosophy, you don't lean philosophy".  From him, I learned the value of questioning the questions and the assumptions that lie behind the questions.

And it has served me well.

Perhaps that's the starting point:  learn to question the questions and the human motivation behind such issues and questions.

After all, the questions posed by humans are tainted by our own humanity.

Does that answer the question - on how to teach strategic thinking?

I am, for once, at a loss.

Great Products, but No One Knows...

Back in the mid-1990s, before the tech-bubble burst, a friend of mine ventured into the digital world in the Philippines and created a portal which in all honesty, I cannot even remember what it is for now.  He had the entire plan in his head - and well, I suppose, in some form of a PowerPoint presentation somewhere in his apartment.

There was one thing missing, though:  His marketing plan.

So I asked him, "How would you let people know about your product?"

"Oh word of mouth.  Besides, if you build something great, people will come.  And then you'll have a blockbuster.  And then you'll sell out," was the response.

I guess - sad to say - it didn't pan out.

(He kept his day job - so right now, he's still ok.  Bruised ego, perhaps, but not entirely in ruins.)

If you build something great - relevant, useful, beautiful, etc. - people will come.

Is that still true?

Well, Google's saga and phenomenal growth did come without any marketing.  Crocs did the same in Singapore - and Havaianas are the same.

But is it a "principle"?  Is it a "law" that applies to pretty much everything?  Is it a "universal, overarching law" that cannot be wrong?

My view?  It's not

There are some great products out there that are not being marketed and disseminated to consumers properly.  Either the owners of these brands are not doing anything - or not doing anything at all - to get to their consumers - and rely too much on "well, people will discover me and they will tell others about it".

People are unpredictable (sometimes).  They may have had a great experience of your brand or service - but they will not always talk about you with their friends or family members.  And even if they became ambassadors - free and unpaid ambassadors of your brand - remember that communication is a two-way thing:  The receiver may not necessarily act on it.  She may believe it - and in fact, she may be cognitively and affectively be persuaded by it - but it just may not be somewhere near her top of to-do list.

You still need marketing - a structured marketing approach - even if it's just word-of-mouth or buzz generation of a simple "Hey, I have got something" or "Tell your friends and get rewarded!".

I don't think that just because you have great technologies and great services out there, people will come and people will adopt your service and your technology.  You need to push them, inform them, make them aware, entice them, seduce them, and impassion them with what you have and what you are willing to give them.

That's the whole point of marketing communications.

Entertainment Planning is on the rise...

From e-Marketer.Com:  US Internet Users are Glued to Video.

In this study by BURST Media on January 1, 2008, it shows that more and more people in the US are watching the internet online.  Leading the pack are the Males 18-24 year olds, who from memory are the most difficult groups to reach.  More than 1/3 of this demographic actually watch a video online at least once a day.

Women 18-24 are not too far behind:  At least 55% will have seen at watched one video online in one week.

What does this say about traditional media planning?

Traditional media planners still look up to TV (mostly in Southeast Asia) as the best way to reach consumers for "motherhood statements":  "Audio visual properties have been proven to be the most effective way of delivering messages to consumers; it has the highest reach and GRPs to be delivered in one week; it creates the best awareness levels and therefore return on investments."

But that