Grounded In Reality

We’re wrapping up day two at Forrester’s Consumer Forum, and it’s just about time to head back to the airport. Unfortunately, I still haven’t seen much of the city, but it’s been a good two days. Sightseeing will have to wait until the next trip.

We heard another round of great speakers and panelists today. The highlights for me were Josh Bernoff, Vice President of Forrester Research; Christina Norman, President of MTV Networks; and Henry Jenkins, Co-Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies and author of the book Convergence Culture (a good read). A few highlights…

1) Josh Bernoff’s presentation was a nice bookend to Charlene Li’s presentation yesterday. He discussed business strategies to succeed in the groundswell, reinforcing the point that objectives, not technology, should drive your strategy. He described 5 ways to turn the groundswell to your advantage:

• Listening: learning from what your customers are saying
• Talking: two-way conversation, not just shouting
• Energizing: helping your best customers to recruit others
• Supporting: enabling your best customers to help each other
• Embracing: involving your customers in your product development

While the language is a little different, this is very similar to the World Class Digital Media approach we talk about at GCI (Listen, Influence, Engage, Community). Importantly, a good digital media program has to start with listening and knowing your audience. The technology piece comes last.

2) Christina Norman shared four truths MTV lives by:

• It’s not the medium, but the content that matters most.
• You need to build an emotional connection with your audience based on the foundation of that creative content they want to invest in.
• You need to give the audience the means to find each other.
• You have to let your audience help you shape your brand.

Christina shared many great examples of MTV communities and entertainment platforms, but I was really excited by a new one called Think MTV, which she described as the largest online activist community ever. The community unites passionate young people around a variety of issues ranging from discrimination and poverty to the environment, faith and human rights. It’s a social network that allows people to submit, rate, bookmark and share content on these issues; connect with people like them to mobilize action; and actually get rewarded for taking action. I was skeptical of the rewards piece at first, but MTV makes a good case for it here. They’re creating a badge system that puts the “reward back in rewarding” by offering not only recognition among peers, but a variety of cool prizes.

We work with several non-profit organizations, as well as cause-minded corporations, and this seems like a great place for them to get involved to engage and mobilize a Gen Y/Gen X audience.

3) Lastly, Henry Jenkins gave an entertaining presentation on convergence and participatory culture. He defines convergence as a cultural, rather than a technological process, and says “we now live in a world where every story, image, sound, idea, brand and relationship will play itself out across all possible media platforms.” Generally, this happens organically - within a passionate fan community - from the ground up. But if a company really listens and understands its audience, it can help enable this kind of “trans-media storytelling” from the top down.

Jenkins challenges companies to ask themselves: What communities are out there that feel a deep connection to your brand or products? And what are they doing now that may be hard to do, that you can make it easier for them to do? For example, if customers are finding your ads or creative content online and creating their own mash-ups, don’t resist this. Give them the assets they need to do more. In many cases, this means giving up some control, but the rewards in this participatory culture can be great to marketers who understand and embrace it.

Thanks to the Forrester team for a great conference. Off to the airport!

I’m here in Chicago for Forrester’s Consumer Forum 2007, where the theme of the two-day conference is “Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” It’s my first time in Chicago, and I’m sad to say I’ve only seen the airport, hotel and one restaurant so far. But on the bright side, Forrester has a phenomenal line-up of speakers and topics like Charlene Li, VP and Principal Analyst for Forrester Research in the social computing space; Christie Hefner, Chairman and CEP of Playboy Enterprises; and Robbie Bach, President of the Entertainment & Devices Devision for Microsoft. And that’s just day one.

My head is spinning with ideas, but I wanted to share a few key insights from day one:

1) Word of the day: “groundswell.” A central theme of the conference, Forrrester defines groundswell as a “social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.” Check out the winners of Forrester’s Groundswell awards here for great examples of organizations using social media to achieve their business goals.

2) When developing a social media strategy, technology should be the last part of the equation. Charlene Li recommends a four-step approach that can be remembered as “POST,” which stands for People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. Start by assessing the social technographic profile of your customers (see below). Then list your objectives. Next, determine a strategy for achieving those objectives. And lastly, identify the right technology. So next time a planning session begins with, “We need to be in MySpace” or “We want to blog,” take a step back and think hard about the audience first, their current behaviors and the relationship you wish to build with them.

3) Christie Hefner reminded us that while technology is evolving, basic human instincts - to meet someone, to be liked, to laugh - are eternal and universal. A good digital strategy should still tap into these instincts. She also commented that the term “brand” is overused, and I tend to agree. Not every product name is a brand; a brand represents a point of view, attitude and lifestyle that can move from one platform to another.

4) Manish Mehta from Dell (a GCI client) and Stan Joosten at Procter & Gamble teamed up for an interesting panel moderated by David Armano at Critical Mass. The topic: “Always in Beta: How Big Business Can Benefit from ‘Little’ Innovation.” The key messages: approach marketing as an R&D lab, experiment with new marketing techniques, don’t worry so much about ROI if it’s the right thing to do, and give employees permission to fail… as long as they learn something. This really resonated with me, as I frequently find myself having the “ROI of social media” discussion. The thing is - you don’t have to spend a lot of money to dip your toe in the water with social media, and small risks - or “incremental experiments,” as Stan would say - can truly transform a company.

More to come on day two…

With automobiles being such a community driven and brand loyal product, it’s encouraging to see a car manufacturer finally jumping at the chance to offer a digital media hub for its enthusiasts.

Chevrolet launched a comprehensive social media campaign with the release of Chevynation.com. The site features user-generated as well as branded videos, links to MySpace pages of fellow Chevy owners and six distinct channels of content aimed at different segments of Chevy drivers—all compliments of the Warren, Michigan-based agency, Campbell-Ewald.

OMMA magazine interviewed three digital creative managers about Chevynation.com in their July issue. The trio consisted of Agency.com’s Mat Zucker, Mick O’Brien of Digitas and Atmosphere BBDO’s Arturo Aranda. The results were positive for Chevrolet.

Here are some notable excerpts:
OMMA: What are your initial thoughts?
O’Brien: It’s got a really cool vibe – the feel is almost one of nostalgia. This isn’t the right reference, but it almost has this American Graffiti feel to it where cars are king, and your car is an extension of yourself.
OMMA: Each channel offers a link to a MySpace page. Is this the best vehicle for community, or should Chevy have built a community of its own?
Zucker: I think it’s smart for brands to integrate with existing communities rather than create their own. The Web is an open, interconnected network of communities, and brands are smart to connect. The more you do that, the more successful you’re going to be.
OMMA: Do you see potential for this site to grow and evolve?
O’Brien: Definitely. What’s interesting about the city metaphor is you can put up a new building and take one down. Cities are living, breathing things.
Aranda: Yeah, that’s what’s great about building this idea of community, embodied within a city – it’s modular, you can keep on updating areas and nobody is going to question if a whole building or a whole storefront starts to shift or evolve.

Not only did Campbell-Ewald create a community atmosphere, they did it with such amazing graphics and attention to detail that it would make any true car lover grasp their shamee in delight.

Christy Leger
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.

Recently, a Danish Ph.D. student, Malene Charlotte Larsen, made a list of perspectives on youngster’s online social networking. The list is extensive and contains 35 perspectives all in all. The perspectives differ a lot from the materialistic perspective to the democratic perspective.

Below I have listed a few of them:

1. The Consumer Perspective
Social networking sites are money-making machines creating a need for added value among young people causing them to spend all their pocket money on extra features such as VIP profiles, widgets, gifts for friends and so on.

10. The Branding Perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people learn the mechanism of branding and learn to sell and brand themselves in a positive manner.

11. The Network Perspective
Social networking sites are places where young people learn the crucial importance of being able to network which they can benefit from in their future professional life.

I like the idea of a list like this. I like (and dislike) a lot of the perspectives. Some of them are real and some are simply opinion. But I’m wondering - are they specifically Danish perspectives? Some of the perspectives are generic, but how about no. 21 The Time Consuming Perspectives or no. 22 The Anti-social Perspective? Are they culturally bound? Does an American and South African teenager or teenage parent share these perspectives?

I must admit that I don’t know the answer to this. But from a communication and marketing point-of-view, it would be valuable knowledge when determining target audience outreach.  With this knowledge viral campaigns and other forms of online communication could be optimized to fit the (global) market they are aiming for.

And I’m sure that with so many social networking sites – there MUST be a lot more perspectives than only 35. When I know them, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, feel free to help.

Kristian Levring Madsen
GCI Mannov, Copenhagen

It has been 36 hours since the Technorati refresh and my team has been generally pleased with the new, speedy Technorati.  Here are some observations:

• Use search.technorati.com (or s.technorati.com) for a targeted blog-only search and, more importantly, to have the ability to filter by authority.  The authority filter, which has been removed from the general user interface, is a useful tool to narrow down the universe of blog posts to the most influential bloggers.
• The authority filter can also be exposed when using Advanced Search.
• Text and image ads are taking up more real estate—an opportunity for clients to execute smart keyword and banner ad buys, particularly when there is a spike in the news or search volume.
• To perform a keyword search within a select group of blogs: Sign into your Technorati account, create a list of Favorites, and use the search function to find posts (from a pre-defined list of blogs) that contain your keywords.  This is not a new functionality, but I noticed that I can no longer force an RSS feed for this search.  I’ll need to look for a workaround.

Lastly, check out the Technorati Kitchen for new stuff that the Technorati team is cooking up, particularly microformats.

Google has quietly rolled out a GPS-enabled, mobile version of Google Maps.  As an existing user of Google Maps on a mobile device (and a perpetually lost traveler), I can attest to the ease and intuitiveness of the mobile version.  Enabling GPS functionality provides a “You Are Here” functionality and, most importantly for marketers, a new channel for presence advertising.

Imagine receiving opt-in offers for a latte on your BlackBerry® when you walk by a participating Starbucks (a GCI client).  Show the barista the digital coupon and enjoy a cool drink to ease your travels.

Granted that this is an early adopter technology as majority of mobile devices are not GPS-enabled, but the BlackBerry® 8800™ is a good example of the new wave of mobile devices with in-built GPS.

Watch for a refresh of StarWars.com tomorrow when Lucasfilm releases 250 clips from the six “Star Wars” movies for fans to mash up.  (Yes, this means that you’ll finally fulfill your wish of terminating Jar Jar.)

Given his reputation for protecting his intellectual property, embracing consumer-generated content is a big step forward for George Lucas—he previously sued a Maryland company for making “Star Wars”-like light sabers and sued rapper Dr. Dre for using the audio boom at the start of the “Star Wars” films in his album “2001.”

This is a perfect birthday gift for fans as the “Star Wars” saga turns 30 this year.  Additionally, StarWars.com will host and aggregate hundreds of videos—some previously unreleased and some already on fan sites such as AtomFilms.com—as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations.

Goodwill to the “Star Wars” fan base aside, this is yet another brilliant marketing move by Lucasfilm to breathe new life into the “Star Wars” brand and make it relevant to the next generation.

ps: The rumor mill has it that Lucas is thinking of a new “Star Wars” movie, set at the time of the Old Republic, when the Jedi regained control of the galaxy from the Sith Lords.  I hope he doesn’t direct it.

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 race to provide ‘on-demand’ TV in the UK is really heating up. Out of the major networks (that means no set-top box required), Channel 4’s 4oD was the first to market in December 2006 and has already claimed one million viewers watching a total of 20 million programs since it was launched. Although I understand from the Guardian’s Kate Bevan they still have to smooth out some compatibility issues.

Hot on it’s heels is the BBC iPlayer (sorry Katie Green another non-Apple lower case ‘i’ user to add to the list). The new service is located on the BBC and allows viewers to catch up with programs from the previous seven days and store them on a computer for 30 days.

This is all good for the UK consumer and means that we no longer have to wait or miss out on the programs we want to watch. However, in terms of marketing and general awareness, there’s still a lot to do.

I think the digital area is still riddled with unnecessary jargon and at the moment a lot of the messages are still aimed at ‘early adopters’. For the needle to really move we need to make things a bit more tangible. For example, I’m not a soap fan but most people in the UK probably don’t know that they are only ‘two clicks’ away from watching Coronation Street whenever they like…

If you are trying to get your head around what the UK networks are up to right now it’s worth checking out this well researched and, almost, impartial run down courtesy of the BBC.

For those with a pathological desire to square the circle or just have a serious aversion to ‘hype’ why not try out one of Ofcom’s beautifully crafted documents on digital TV. Sleep well.