Grounded In Reality

Earlier this week, several colleagues and I discussed the elements that make web widgets successful. Some of the basic factors mentioned were:

• Utility: first and foremost, does it perform a valuable function for the user?
• Enchantment: does it keep people engaged and coming back for more?
• Community: does it facilitate conversation?
• Usability: does it have an intuitive and user-friendly interface?
• Multi-platform: is it compatible across personal pages, social networks, blogs, and mobile devices?
• Share-ability: does it allow people to spread the word?

What else makes a widget successful? Self-expression seems to be at the core of most. Some of the most popular widgets, such as Where I’ve Been, Slide, and iLike, are all designed around personalized storytelling. Call them what you want: vanity widgets, ego badges, blog-bling. The fact is that people crave tools that help them project their personal storylines. For instance, the Project Playlist widget is something I customized with my favorite music and have synched to my Facebook profile. It’s high in utility because it lets me advertise my taste in tunes. For me, the appeal isn’t the functionality. It’s what it says about me.

When developing branded widgets, marketers should consider how to harness peoples’ desire for expression and individuality. Think about their promotional needs first before you think about your own.

Some of the best moments of the Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference were the “Digital Shorts” – 15 minute case studies presented by creative execs from top interactive shops.  My favorite was a demo of Sharkrunners - an online game created for the Discovery Channel’s annual “Shark Week” series.

The gist of the game is that players take on the role of marine biologists conducting shark research. Participants select a virtual boat and crew and begin charting their course in search of great whites.  Here’s where it gets interesting: the game is virtual, but the sharks are real.  The shark movements in the game are controlled by real-world white sharks with GPS units attached to their fins.

This is a fascinating illustration of how alternate reality games can incorporate real-world situations and locations.  The game is also multiplayer, so participants compete with rival boats for research dollars and prestige. Players can even receive email and SMS alerts during the day when their boat is within range of an encounter. Kevin Slavin, Co-Founder of Area/Code (agency behind the project) talked about the success of this game and how it raised the bar for branded storylines.  On the surface, searching for sharks online doesn’t sound very compelling, but adding in the real-world element changes the entire dynamic. According to Slavin, the game has had a tremendous impact in engaging users and increasing participation and involvement in Discovery’s Shark Week. Props to the Area/Code team for a job well done.

I’m at day 2 of Ad Age’s Digital Marketing Conference. In a room filled with media executives, advertisers and agency reps, the majority of the conversation surprisingly hasn’t been about paid media. It’s been about the rise of conversational marketing and the importance of facilitating and nurturing customer dialogue.

Tom Nicholson of design firm Icon Nicholson made the point that online marketing is moving away from shooting arrows at people and more about providing services and experiences that enable customers to voice opinions, share stories and make informed purchasing decisions. As he put it, “the future of marketing is customer service.”

During a panel titled “Making Social Media and Marketing Work,” Jim Nail of TNS Media/Cymfony polled the audience on which marketing discipline should “own” social media. The results:

• 53% said Marketing
• 5% said PR/Communications
• 9% said Customer Service
• 33% said some new division that hasn’t been created yet

This isn’t surprising considering that the majority of people here come from the marketing/advertising side of the fence. Several conference panelists acknowledged that ownership shouldn’t be narrowed to one discipline. Creative agencies design exceptional content, but they aren’t equipped to monitor, fuel and sustain online conversations with consumers. PR agencies, however, are uniquely suited to build relationships and interact directly with the public online. My personal bias aside, I agree that a blended approach is necessary.

The bottom line is that conversational marketing needs to be a long-term commitment for marketers. It can’t happen in a limited, quick-hit fashion. And it shouldn’t be viewed as just another channel to exploit and wrap an ad campaign around. At last year’s Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference, many attendees were still reacting to social media topics with questions about risk, metrics, conversion and ROI. I’m not seeing that here today. My sense is that the majority of marketers and agencies in attendance “get it” and are moving beyond experimentation to making social media a central component in the mix.

I just returned from day 1 of Ad Age’s Digital Marketing Conference. The morning kicked-off with 2 great panels on the topic of branded entertainment and content creation. The majority of the conversation focused on how brands are increasingly building their own content platforms or aligning with media properties to develop branded experiences.

Key points about content included:

• Ownership: Ogilvy Entertainment’s Doug Scott made the point that “brands should own content rather than rent it.” His reasoning is that the Web gives brands a platform to create long-term engagement with consumers vs. the quick burst model of display ads and 30-second spots. Once display ads are gone, they are gone…whereas branded content lives online forever. I agree with his POV, but would add that marketers must be willing to experiment and fail. Brands turning into media properties overnight is no easy task (a la Bud.tv).

• Quality: Nothing new here, but the point was hammered home: creating exceptional content must remain the top priority. Relying on distribution and promotion will only make a campaign go so far. Frank Cooper, VP of Marketing for Pepsi, commented that “there’s a lot of roadkill out there” when it comes to online video (both professional and user-generated). He talked about the importance of finding the right producers, writers and actors who can create compelling, relevant content that’s built for web consumption and sharing.

  As my colleague Rachelle Spero always says, “comedy can’t be cooked up in a corporate conference room. If you want to be funny, hire a comedian.” Daman Wayans, founder of WayOut TV (“Living Color 2.0” as he calls it) echoed this POV during a panel titled “Talking Talent.” Wayans said the vast majority of UGC is actually LGC – or “loser-generated content.” His message to brands: work with the pros who know how to source, produce or filter content that’s going to resonate and be passed along in an exponential fashion.

• User Experience: several speakers stressed that the internet can’t just be another medium for repurposing TV content bits. The web enables community and dialogue, therefore storylines should involve consumers and be as participatory as possible.

I’m looking forward to Day 2, which has an awesome line up of speakers including NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, David Armano of Critical Mass, and Tom Nicholson, founder of interactive agency Icon Nicolson.

In what could be seen as ‘user generated search results,’ Yahoo is adding a service to its search capabilities called Buzz. Users will be given the option to vote on articles; promoting news they like or demoting news they dislike, that will directly affect what appears on the coveted page 1 of search. An excerpt from an article yesterday on NYTimes.com:

“Yahoo is combining users’ votes with information it gathers from its Internet search service, so that when search traffic spikes for an item or topic, it will get more ‘buzz.’ Yahoo editors, not computer programs, will decide whether an item will be placed on the portal’s front page, which receives more than 90 million visitors in the United States each month.”

BusinessWeek.com also weighed in with a story this morning clarfiying more specifics on how users will interact with Buzz:

“More than 100 major news sites have agreed to place Yahoo “Buzz Up” buttons next to their articles and other content. The partners include Gannett’s (GCI) USA Today, News Corp.’s (NWS) Wall Street Journal, and Time Warner’s (TWX) Entertainment Weekly. A click on the button is tallied as a user endorsement and sent to Yahoo’s Buzz page. Those with the highest scores are considered for placement on Yahoo’s front page. But Yahoo is retaining some editorial control: An internal team will have final say over the stories featured on the main home page. Yahoo says this is to guard against articles deemed lewd, violent, or capable of exposing the company to legal liability…”

Can a service like this really work? What are the implications for businesses that (as a result of Buzz) appear at the top of search results? A demonstration by Yahoo proved to have a surprisingly weighty outcome. An excerpt from the aforementioned NYTimes.com article states:

“In a test of the service this year, Yahoo linked from its front page to content from Esquire magazine for just three hours. In that brief period, traffic to the Esquire.com site, which already allows users of Digg and Reddit to vote on its stories, doubled for the month.”

So the real question is: Will online customer relations now be a company’s SEO strategy?

Services like this one just further implicate that companies must take an interest in what is being said about their brand online. The example above shows a positive spike for Esquire, but what if there were an article about a brand or service that wasn’t so popular? Could developments like these keep your client forever buried in search results?