Grounded In Reality

Late last week, Paul Walker spoke to the New York office about crowdsourcing and the general open source mentality that is further perpetuating itself in marketing communications, interpersonal communication and technology development. I got a chance earlier in the same week to witness a unique model of the “open source philosophy” in action.

On February 12, I attended a Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit in New York City hosted by Pat Coyle, Executive Director of Business for the Indianapolis Colts. The concept of a sports marketing summit itself is not unique. How it came together, though, is distinctly “2.0.” Nearly 60 communications and technology professionals met in Manhattan, many of them for the first time. Most had come to know Pat through his blog at PatCoyle.net which discusses issues in sports marketing now that “fans are in charge.” Pat also created his own companion social network at Sportsmarketing20.com using a platform from Ning.

Over the course of a half day, there were panel discussions on measurement, engagement, communication and socializing that included representatives from a host of technology, sports and marketing entities from Rick Wolf (Business Development, RotoWorld/NBC) to Takkle.com CEO David Birnbaum to Hooman Radfar, founder of widget giant Clearspring Technologies. Conference attendees included ad agencies, companies developing social networking platforms and technologies, email marketers, as well as representatives from individual teams (New York Jets, Washington Redskins) and leagues (NBA, NFL).

Overall, it was a great learning experience and more (albeit unnecessary) evidence that the environment for marketers has changed. Many discussions centered on how to engage consumers online, how to measure engagement, how corporate sponsors can integrate content and monetize their online efforts and ways we’re interacting with certain technologies. A solid summary is offered by event attendee Brian Litvack from wRECK Sports here.

Below are a few other interesting examples of engagement referenced during the course of the day. I’ve got a complete list of attendees and would be happy to further discuss with anyone interested.

Dunder Mifflin Infinity: virtual home for fans of NBC’s “The Office”

Takkle.com: bringing the challenge concept to life with high school athletes

NBA.com Suns: an NBA franchise offers fans a peek inside the locker room

MyColts.net: Online community for Indianapolis Colts fans

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Steve Bonsignore
GCI Sports

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

Over the past week, Dell has been the topic of many conversations in the blogosphere, spurred by a Forrester Groundswell Award and BusinessWeek article discussing the company’s transformation from digital bystander to leader.  In reading these posts, I am incredibly proud of the GCI team that helped make this happen. (NOTE: Dell is a GCI client)

Below are a few highlights from the blogosphere:

• BusinessWeek: Dell Learns to Listen: Jeff Jarvis takes a guest columnist role to discuss his two-year relationship with Dell and an overview of Dell’s social media initiatives. The online version is complete with a 25-minute video of an interview with Michael Dell (also available on Jeff’s blog: BuzzMachine).   He also posted the un-edited version, which notes a very measurable impact of Dell’s programs:

“Thanks to this new relationship, the company learns about issues online before they do in the press or sometimes in-house. They are stanching the flow of bad buzz. By their measure, negative word of mouth in blogs has dropped from 49 to 22 percent. And my Dell Hell posts, which used to come up third on a Google search for the company, are now relegated to second-page search-engine Siberia. ‘That change in perception just doesn’t happen with a press release,’ Menchaca says.”

• Direct2Dell - Dell’s Blog: Lionel Manchaca did an interview with Jeff near the end of the day and posted the vlog that resulted on Direct2Dell.

• Forrester’s Groundswell blog also mentions Dell’s transformation when referencing the Forrester Groundswell Awards that were given out last week.

Company transformation. Dell.
We created this new category to capture the powerful changes happening across all functions at Dell. The Dell Customer Advocate program, which pursues fast resolution of support problems, decreased the negative share of online comments about Dell by 25%. Direct2Dell, Dell’s frank and informative blog, generates 3.5 million page views per month. Ideastorm, Dell’s innovation community, tallied 500,000 votes for over 7,000 ideas and generated a new product, Dell PC’s with Linux pre-installed. And Employee Storm, an internal idea community, has generated 2,700 ideas and seen visits from 22% of Dell’s employees.

• From Geoff Livingston at The Buzz Bin:

Relationships and RELATIONS are about being human — not God. Together as humans we experience life and grow together. Mistakes happen, and good PR can overcome this. Consider Dell’s incredible lesson in admitting wrongs, listening and changing. This week’s BusinessWeek story is a celebration of relations.

• Our own Paul Walker mentioned that he is “really proud of the people and programs mentioned in the article. Thanks, Dell, for letting us be a part of it.” 

On behalf of GCI, I want to give the entire team a big pat on the back! The consistent creativity and innovation in new media waters is something to be extremely proud of.

An interesting new crowd-sourcing site appeared recently, still in Beta, of course, from The Nielsen Company and is (not-so-cleverly) called: Hey! Nielsen.   The site requires that you register to participate and share your opinion, but without registration, you can search through the results of other folks recommendations.  Feels to me like a mix of Digg, IdeaStorm (for Dell, a GCI client), and TV Guide.

There are a couple of things to look at on the site:

• Opinions
  In topics labeled TV, Movies, Music, Personalities, and Internet, members can post opinions about current shows, bands, songs, people, Web sites, etc.  Then the crowd gets to agree or disagree and add additional comments.
• Rankings
  “Each topic (TV show, Movie, etc.) earns a Hey! Nielsen Score, determined by user opinions, comments, and ratings. Calculated daily, the Hey! Nielsen Score also factors in internet buzz via BlogPulse.com.  There is currenlty about a 7-hour avg for updating statistics information.”
• Calendars
  Soon enough this will be the “TV Guide with opinions”…but it will have to launch first.
• Members
  Looking similar to other social networking profiles…and very similar to Digg’s latest ‘profile’ launch, you will be able to click on a member to see which shows, music, etc they like and dont like.  The earlist member date I saw was in May for NatGuy who claims “I’m one of the folks involved in helping to build this site.”  Nielsen lists how many recommendations they have made and lists all their posts.
• Widgets
  What would a site be if you couldnt see if scrolling on your blog? :)  Therefore, they have created a nice scrolling widget for you to keep up with the latest and greatest recommendations on the site.  Hopefully this will become customizable.

Naturally, if you are related to the entertainment industry, this would be an ideal place to gather consumer insights and responses to your content.  However, it would not be an ideal place to promote your entertainment client unless you are extremely open and transparent in your role.

Eventually, Nielsen sees using the information as statistical evidence in each catagory, but personally I think you will need to let the site live for a good amount of time before you can qualify the information collected as valid.  I am also still stuck on the problem of the ‘online demographic’ setting the opinions of a whole set of humans.  I still feel like it is skewed unless mixed with other forms of information collection.

I am interested to see how others respond to the site and the use of the information as statisical analysis.  Would you believe what they say, just because its Nielsen?

My observation is that most pr pros rationalize away the act of monitoring as beneath them.  In the past, monitoring is typically reserved for the junior staff and/or a third-party vendor; while measurement dashboards and executive summaries are the critical slide wares that pr pros arm themselves with for client briefings.

The rub is that today’s half-second news cycle is forcing us to get our hands dirty and wrestle with raw data gleaned from the trenches.  This is because of the (1) lack of a comprehensive monitoring solution (2) speed at which online reputations are made or broken by digital influencers (think Apple & Engadget).

The business case for near real-time, online monitoring (blogs, forums, social network, etc.) is that:

1. You need to find a blog or learn more about a specific blog or digital influencer.
2. You need to monitor an issue to determine if it is escalating.
3. You need to understand online conversation and identify influencers and engagement opportunities.
4. You need to manage online reputation 24/7.

Your monitoring goals are likely four-fold:

1. Amplify the positive
2. Resolve the negative
3. Correct misinformation
4. Understand the conversation in order to join the dialogue

I’m not thumbing my nose at monitoring partnerships (we need them) or debasing the many bright minds working on comprehensive monitoring solutions (GCI works with several preferred monitoring vendors), but rather suggesting that online reputation monitoring needs a new approach in the digital age.

There will come a time in the near future when online monitoring will be as structured and methodical as traditional media monitoring; in the meantime, be ready to jump into the fray of online monitoring to help your clients make sense of the digital information overload.

The raise of digital media has presented more opportunities for the digital media team to consult on both Web site content and technical (SEO) optimization. To that end, I believe that the new version of Google Analytics will further break down the IT and marketing silos; and both Webmaster and PR professional will be held to higher standards of what works and what doesn’t for online content.

I recommend your spending 5 minutes to watch this features overview video to appreciate how easy it is now for the executive to measure ROI.

Thereafter, send your client an e-mail to discuss embedding the Google Analytics script on their site.  Fair warning: Don’t get too obsessed checking those Web metrics.

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UPDATE:

comScore responds (Techmeme, official press release)

“As part of our efforts to achieve transparency, we have opened our methodology and processes to an evaluation by the Advertising Research Foundation.  We are in the final stages of this evaluation and hope that the results will be publicly released in the near future.”

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau sent an open letter to comScore, Inc. and Nielsen/NetRatings on Friday asking them to submit to an outside audit.  Highlights below:

The discrepancies exist between the audience measurements of comScore and NNR and those of the server logs of the IAB’s own members. Further compounding these differences are the disparities between comScore’s and NNR’s own measurement results. All measurement companies that report audience metrics have a material impact on interactive marketing and decision-making. Therefore, transparency into these methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers’ confidence in interactive, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to the platform.

“To persist in using panels that potentially undercount or ignore the diverse populations that are the future of consumer marketing is to deny marketers the insights they need to build their businesses,” writes IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg in an open letter to Magid M. Abraham, the President and CEO of comScore, Inc., and William Pulver, the President and CEO Nielsen//NetRatings. “And it certainly appears to us as if these audiences are being undercounted or disregarded.”