Grounded In Reality

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.

Matthew Creamer of AdAge wrote an article entitled Facebook’s Map Might Lead Advertisers Astray about the ever approaching ‘social graph’ for Facebook. The ‘social graph’ will be a tool that, by using profile information, will help advertising and marketing campaigns be successfully targeted to a desired demographic or network. This author appears to be a mild skeptic, pointing out the Achilles heel of all social network profiles; how honest are they?

He posts:

“What (Mark Zuckerberg) is essentially proposing is a new cultural role for the mass online social network that recasts what has been mainly a time waster as a useful and efficient communications tool for business and personal use. …In Mr. Zuckerberg’s high-minded conception, one’s collection of Facebook friends should reflect one’s real-life social network by providing accurate data about users and by being a close-to-comprehensive map of all the important nodes in one’s life.”

He best summarizes the problem with this concept by giving an example from his own life that I feel is fairly universal:

“In the absence of empirical data, I turned to my own circle and asked how well their online networks of Facebook friends reflect their real-life, offline networks — the sum of their business, familiar and social connections. For some, their day-to-day contacts aren’t there. For others, Facebook is wholly a work thing and family members are missing. Two middle-age respondents even expressed frustrations that their college-age children have so far declined to join their network. Without being pressed much, just about all of the respondents — generally heavy users with oft-edited pages — indicated significant gaps or holes in their networks.”

I find this to be very true. I, for one, have complete segments of friends, co-workers and family members who aren’t on Facebook. Admittedly, I’m a heavy user of the network and update my information often, but with key people and information about my life not being represented on my profile, how does Facebook except to capture a true picture of my social network for its graph?

So, the main thought is this: If the information presented on a Facebook page could be false and if your network is incomplete with your real-life counterparts, why introduce a graph that is based on this information? As much as I personally advocate the use of Facebook for networking and brand awareness, I must say I’m pretty skeptical of this new social graph they are proposing.

I liked the author’s concluding statements on this topic and felt it best summarizes the “take with a grain of salt” attitude that many people don’t tend to use with digital media:

“Even if Facebook ends up ‘only’ succeeding as a major ad play, Mr. Zuckerberg can always take solace in the example of a company that’s been an enormous success despite not meeting its high-minded goal. A little firm called Google started out with boasts on nothing less than organizing the world’s information. Its only unimpeachable achievement has been to own the area of search advertising — and a $210 billion market cap.”

Christy Leger
GCI Read-Poland
Austin, TX

Unilever announced last week a 12-episode, weekly broadband series on Yahoo! Food called “In Search of Real Food.”

The shows feature Food Network personality Dave Lieberman as he travels across the country talking to people about their favorite recipes for “real food.” The site has a lot of cool features, including a real food blog, user-generated videos, recipes, local dining guides and more.
I actually learned about the campaign through a commercial that aired during “The Today Show” this morning. At the end of the ad, the voiceover read, “Go to Yahoo! and search ‘real food’ to join the conversation.” Interesting. Unilever is reportedly spending between $1 million and $2 million in ads on Yahoo!, as well as driving traffic through print and TV ads and jar caps.

The campaign has received a lot of attention from advertising/business press and bloggers, but it will be interesting to see if consumers can get excited about mayonnaise. I don’t like mayonnaise, but I’ll check it out.

I had a recent conversation with a friend this past weekend about the new SUV taxis that were adorned with “Yahoo! Green Taxi”-lit signage.  Of course, the conversation continued to assume that NYC taxis started using hybrids and the new signage would tell you which ones made the switch. 

Today (literally and figuratively), Mayor Bloomberg put all assumptions to rest:

The mayor announced the new plan this morning on the NBC News program “Today,” saying it would entail gradually phasing out the roughly 1,200 Crown Victoria taxis that make up about 90 percent of the city’s fleet. As the old Crown Victorias are retired, they will be replaced with hybrid vehicles that run on a combination of gasoline and electricity and provide nearly double the fuel efficiency.

Under the new plan, the number of hybrid vehicles in the fleet will grow to 1,000 by 2008, and will increase by 20 percent every year until 2012. The new hybrids will have a fuel efficiency of about 25 miles per gallon, far exceeding that of the current Crown Victorias. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Crown Victorias — although roomy — get only 10 to 15 miles per gallon on congested city streets. A cabdriver can pay as much as $100 a day to keep the tank full.

It is definitely good to see, I will admit.  The article mentions using Toyota Prius, Toyota Highlander Hybrid and Ford Escape, but I have only seens Fords, so far.  I also would like to know how Yahoo! got this sweet marketing deal.

…and when will we see the GPS systems, so my cabbie knows how to get through Brooklyn?!?!

The revenue model for traditional media needs fresh thinking.  Mentioned in today’s Journal (subscription required), “Papers’ Web Hopes Dim a Bit: Ad Growth Online Slows as Sources for News Burgeon.”  Highlights below:

• Online ad spending for newspapers will likely fall to a percentage in the low 20s this year from 28 percent last year, Borrell Associates estimates.
• Primarily, it seems that marketers need more convincing when it comes to moving their ad dollars online.  A survey of 273 U.S. advertisers last year found that 67 percent of the companies with annual revenue of $500 million or more will dedicate less than $1 million to online ads, according to Jupiter Research.
• Media buyers also indicate marketers are beginning to look beyond traditional journalism sites, realizing many news junkies go elsewhere, too.

More at paidContent.

I naturally assumed (as did TechCrunch) that this would be a push by MySpace to target a new demographic…but in reality, it is a boost for one of their most popular advertising groups — films. 

SearchEngineJournal says:

A study was published yesterday by Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield estimating that MySpace is now generating over $30 million per month in advertising revenue.

Recently, MySpace has taken advantage of movie promotions to increase (from 10 to 300) the number of photos one can store to their personal page, based on sponorship from the film 300.  Following the increase of photos was the ability to create albums (and later removed) that was sponsored by a movie (maybe X-men).  At this very moment, the photos are being sposored by ‘The Transformers: Transform your photos’…which I assumed would be an editing feature, but its not.

I digress from photos, back to video.  

I think this is a wise move by MySpace (Fox) to take advantage of the large amount of interest they receive from the film business to show trailers on log-in pages and in the ‘Featured Movie’ columns at the ‘Home’ view.  MySpace TrailerPark feels like a mashup of YouTube and MySpace SecretShows page and a real trailer park.  I do think it is nice for MySpace to finally provide you with the coding to embed the video or image (rather than having to find one yourself).

However, I have yet to see a video on the page because every attempt shows a very sad, crying face, similar to this one.   Not to mention my personal problems with MySpace…(the accusation that my account has been phished, and the lack of ability to prove that I am me, in order to unlock it)

MySpace is also dabbling in politics…