Influential Marketing Blog

YouthNoise.com and Teens Changing the World

When I give presentations to Social Marketing folks, one of my favourite statistics is this interesting point:

In the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, 13 million Americans made donations to relief efforts online and 7 million set up their own hurricane relief efforts using the internet. (Pew Internet)

Think about that for a second.  More than one third of all relief efforts online were from individuals setting up their own efforts and soliciting aid. Even accounting for the inevitable scam sites set up under false pretenses, this fact is still staggering.  Not only for the volume of the effort, but for a landshift in public perception of the Internet's role in a crisis and as part of relief efforts.  Clearly, it is no longer enough to learn about tragedies and send in your dollars.  People want to be more active participants.  Many want to do more than just sign and send a check (or fill out a form online).  Social marketing online is about participation, where anyone can contribute - or choose to lead their own effort. 

So it is not surprising that you have cases like the Invisible Children campaign, where a few young filmmakers create a documentary and start the Global Night Commute movement online to raise awareness of the plight of the invisible children in Uganda.  The younger generation, in particular, has been very vocal in their crusades against injustices of many kinds.  This is a different kind of social networking - all about having a voice in something that matters, and using it.  Another recently launched example is Youth Noise - a site targeted to teens and focused on "changing the world."  You can learn about causes, contribute content, and essentially find your voice on social issues and get involved or lead your own efforts.  One of the underlying concepts of the site is the RE*Generation (how the world can be changed for the better and heal itself).  The term is also used by Virgin Mobile in a marketing partnership, but fits well as a defining tag for the generation.  It would be nice to think it isn't the "me generation" as much as it is the "it's up to me generation." With more efforts like Youth Noise - hopefully teens will continue to find their voice on issues that matter to them.  There are already signs these voices getting stronger. 

(Thanks to Nedra Weinreich for the link to Youth Noise)

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The Carnival of Marketing - Call for Submissions

One of the more popular blogs on marketing and PR today is Media Orchard.  Scott's "Pick of the Orchard" are very useful daily posts on the top five or so marketing and PR related links worth reading online.  Piers does the same thing on marketing news and trends on both PSFK and Marktd.  Every once in a while, a post of mine makes it on one or both of these sites - and generates some great traffic.  This week is my turn to host the Carnival of Marketing, a related effort to highlight the best of the marketing blogosphere launched by Noah Kagan.  The Carnival has a different host blog each week and each week up to 7 posts are chosen by the host of the week to be highlighted throughout the week.  My picks will be posted on July 2nd, and I will probably do an update in the middle of the week to follow up.  Anyone who has posted on a marketing-related topic in the past week is welcome to submit their ideas, and  I have already started receiving some good submissions.  If you have a great post you'd like to try and get included, email me the link at rohitaustralia[at]gmail.com anytime this week - or the email address Noah lists on the Carnival of Marketing description page linked above. 

What will I be looking for?  Smart marketing ideas that go beyond simple reports of what's out there.  Ideally, I would love to use my week of hosting the Carnival to also locate and help publicize a few new blogs that I hadn't heard of or visited before.  I consider reading marketing blogs my best source of new information, ideas and strategies.  As this global conversation about marketing continues to grow on blogs, more sources for aggregating information will emerge.  Hopefully the Carnival of Marketing will be only one of many ways that marketers can add their voices to the discussion, make new connections with one another, and share some of the best ideas.  I invite you to join the Carnival of Marketing this week on Influential Interactive Marketing.

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Why Marketing to Millennials is not Impossible

Last week on Friday I participated in a panel on marketing to millennials (the generation born in the 80s and 90s) as part of the Digital Media Conference.  Unlike some other panels I've seen in the past which can get a bit insular with everyone offering the same opinion - the group collected for this one offer a quite diverse range of experiences.  Two of the standouts were Pam Quandt, a marketing VP at a virtual avatar company called Bandalong Entertainment and Bill Strauss, author of a number of books about the Millennial generation.  Both offered an interesting perspective on how millenials think and how they are different to earlier generations, and in particular Generation X (and even my generation, which Wikipedia calls the MTV Generation).  Aside from the obvious topics of multitasking and their aversion to marketing - the panel also touched on the increasing role of this generation in influencing purchases from older generations, and how they are far less likely to be cynical about the world than most older generations assume.  This is interesting in the context of marketing, as much of what is published about marketing to this group assumes Millennials to be allergic to all kinds of marketing.  This is just plain wrong. 

The fact is, there are many situations where they are actively seeking marketing messages.  It is clear that interruption marketing will never work with this group.  They know every trick to get around ads and are used to ignoring ads and using technology like Tivo, ad blockers, or other hacks to get around them.  But they are also active seekers of marketing information when it is relevant.  They conduct online research prior to purchase.  They send links to others.  They read reviews on Amazon, what bloggers say about a product, and visit manufacturers websites.  And they pass all of this information along to others.  This desire to learn about the products and services they buy, as well as the ability to find all information (good or bad) online about it make them the generation most likely to interact with branded marketing messages along with any other consumer generated content about your brand online.  Of all your consumers, they are likely to know the most about your product before purchasing (or deciding not to purchase).  Providing the right level of detail matters.  For Millennials, the marketing destination is as important as the tag line.  In some ways, it is more important, and the challenge is to not only make it relevant but also ensure that they will find it.  This is pull marketing rather than push - and certainly will not work for every product.  Yet for many brand marketers still wasting money on an interruption marketing strategy ... there is a lesson here worth noting.

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Marktd and New PR Offer Digg for Marketing and PR People

Digg.com is a great resource for client research.  For all of our tech clients, it's a useful site to keep track of the most popular news stories in the tech industry.  The site's model of allowing users to vote for their favourite articles or blog posts and allowing the votes to dictate which appear more highly is changing the editorial structure for news in the same way that eBay's online auction model revolutionized how people sell their old stuff to others.  Yet as wonderful a resource that Digg is, it was only a matter of time before other sites would start to pop up using the same model and extending it beyond the tech industry.  Now in the last few weeks, I have found two in the marketing and PR space: Marktd and New PR.  Piers Fawkes, founder of PSFK is behind Marktd - and often posts links to the site.  On New PR, the most prolific poster at the moment is Constantin Basturea - one of the top PR bloggers I have been reading for more than a year now.  Both are highly credible individuals whom I recognize and their involvement makes me far more likely to pay attention to the sites.  Most interesting about both sites, though, is how I discovered them in the first place. 

Like most bloggers, I pay attention to who links to my site - and it was through links to a blog post that I made my way to both of these sites.  I suspect many early visitors to the site had the same experience.  There is a smart strategy here that anyone wanting to generate awareness of a product or service with bloggers should pay attention to.  Rather than just sending emails to a blogger, or posting comments to their blog - another method of promotion involves linking to a blogger's posts and generating awareness of your site through the assumption that a blogger will follow the referring link to your site.  This is a strategy that we have been using successfully for a client for the past few months, as well as the original concept behind the Ogilvy Blogfeeds that we launched several months ago (though they are now in dire need of an update).  While I will probably end up contributing more to Marktd since I always describe myself as a "marketing guy in a PR agency" ... New PR is definitely one to watch if the success of the PR Wiki and The Global PR Week are any indication.  It won't be long before there is another site like this focused on advertising.

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Do all Indians look alike?

Here's a quick test ... can you tell the difference between the three guys in the photo at left?  Based on my recent experience over the last two days, I have to assume it's extremely difficult.  On the American Press Institute webpage about the community market event where I spoke on Thursday, there was a photo of another Indian guy beside my name (which they have promised to correct soon).  Then I arrived at the Digital Media Conference one day later and during the panel on "The State of Online Advertising" - I saw my photo up beside the name of Shervin Pishevar of Freewebs, Inc.  First of all, apologies to Shervin because unfortunately the wrong photo was not corrected before he participated in his panel.  Luckily the photo was correct on the slide displayed during my later panel on marketing to the Millenial generation.  But yesterday I started to wonder whether this happens with other speaker's photos - or just with the ones for people with different sounding names?  Of course, I don't think any of this is intentional - but it is unfortunate.  Not just that the photos are being switched, but that now at future events I need to worry about whether a published photo besides my name is actually mine ... or just the closest looking Indian guy.

Earning a Masters of Bzz Administration

Earlier this week I had the chance to participate in BuzzAgent's first "MBA" program designed as an education course for Agency folks on how to work with BuzzAgent.  This is another step in BuzzAgent's evolution from a model that competes with agencies to one that embraces them.  Agencies handle the creative and strategy, BuzzAgent works as a media partner to handle execution, logistics, tracking and analytics.  This is a much stronger model that will allow them to realize more of the media spend from companies who rely on agencies to help them distribute these dollars.  This was a fact that BuzzAgent understands well, as a significant part of the day was spend identifying Word of Mouth marketing as "another media channel" that media planners should allocate marketing spend towards.  The most interesting takeaway from the day is how BuzzAgent is taking something as varied as the way people converse with one another, and applying a formula and metric to it that any marketing client would love.  They are pioneering a way to measure the unmeasurable - and inaccuracies aside (the day revealed that perhaps less than 50% of BzzAgent's activity is actually recorded), this is a big deal.  From a media planning point of view, I can now "sell" a client 10,000 real people who will try out their product, talk about it, and report back on what they said.  Money may not be able to buy love, but BuzzAgent shows it can certainly buy more than just an impression or click.  Though this may be fleeting (a point that my table-mate Jennifer Goff from Brains on Fire explores well in her blog post), it is easy to see the benefit for clients who want to have that "instant gratifcation."  It is no wonder BuzzAgent has had exponential growth over the last three years and a rapidly expanding client list. 

So now that I have my BzzAgent MBA in hand (through the form of a custom painting from Seth Minkin), what will I do with this new black belt of buzz?  In a great example of practicing what they preach, the folks over at BuzzAgent clearly had a smart strategy when putting this day long training together.  Not only to illustrate the value of working with BuzzAgent to agency folks who do media planning, but also to give them the BzzStories to take back to their agencies, and write about on blogs like this one.  To that end, I think the session (and others that they run) will be a huge success for them and a model that other companies that are vendors selling to media planners should consider.  From the diploma/paintings, to the Bee cookies for the office - the day was about planting a seed with individuals with agencies and helping them to take that seed back to their teams.  As a result, I know have a deeper relationship with BuzzAgent than most of the vendors I work with.  I am even a BzzAgent myself.  With that kind of brand involvement on both a professional and private level, it's easy to imagine that I will think of BuzzAgent first for appropriate client campaigns and be more knowledgeable about including BzzCampaigns as a core part of interactive marketing strategy.  In terms of follow up effect, I already mentioned the BuzzAgent MBA at a talk I gave yesterday to community market press folks at the American Press Institute.  Dave, consider this blog post my BzzReport ...

PS - For all those BzzAgents out there, I met BzzAgent Jono.  And he is real.

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Wikimapia, Google's Green Summer and Marketing Mashups

Wikimapia is one of the most recent mashups with Google maps getting a lot of love on del.icio.us lately.  The site is a global effort to get people to describe the places they live in the same way that Wikipedia has become a global encyclopedia of knowledge on nearly every topic in the world.  The site has some smart features, such as the ability to describe each place in multiple languages, and the request to all contributors to "please only add places that are interesting to everyone."  In a less globally ambitious effort, Google recently launched their "Have a Green Summer" site in partnership with the Earth Day Network to highlight "green" activities and locales in five big cities.  This is the first Google initiated mashup, but represents a new trend that marketers will soon latch onto.  The power of the mashup is not just for geek bloggers trying to find others blogging in the same vicinity.  As Google's recent effort shows, it can form the basis for a powerful marketing tool.  Hotels will be able to give travellers a wide variety of information on their location and what is closeby.  In car GPS systems will be able to draw on this user contributed data to offer more than just simple directions from point A to point B.  Along the way, businesses will start to see significant traffic from people using these tools to make their decisions on where to go, what to see and where to stay.  In short, mashups with mapping technology will change the online travel industry. 

Through the ambition of projects like Wikimapia, the power of the mashup will not be limited to the travel industry.  From store locators to planning shopping outings that stop and multiple destinations, there is a clear retail tie-in.  Fashion tips on what to wear to particular destinations and where to get them are other potential mashup uses for retailers looking to start using mashups in marketing.  I will be on the lookout for the first really smart mobile marketing promotion that gets consumers to upload location based information into a centralized map that produces a mashup of consumer generated content with a comprehensive map.  Marketing with mashups is just getting started.

For a comprehensive list of the Google Mashups out there, check out Google Maps Mania, the unofficial blog "tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps."  Here are a few of the hundreds of mashups that the site has in its sidebar:

World Cup Team Scream - People screaming for their teams, linked on a map
Earthbooker.net - Mashup with Google Maps and Hotels.com
Jacktracker - A mashup that tracks the location of Jack Bauer, hero of the Fox show "24"

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Why World Cup Soccer Ads Don't Get Skipped

I don't think the 30-second TV spot is dead.  For frequent readers of this blog, this may come as a surprise, considering how often I tend to rail against it is an outdated, expensive, and questionably effective form of advertising.  In the vast majority of cases, this is still true.  But in the midst of the soccer World Cup, I am again reminded of how sports marketing is a completely different industry when it comes to the potential power of the TV spot.  To be clear, I am not suggesting that every ad shown during the World Cup will work - but there are a number of things that make television advertising during sports (and the World Cup in particular) a tactic that could work very well in reaching a target audience.  Here are the top reasons why TV sports programming may offer the only safe haven in the near future for television advertising:

1. Sports don't get Tivo-ed as often. Really, the only sports fans who watch a taped game are the ones who have to because they couldn't catch the game live.  If given a choice, most sports fans will only watch a game live because it's not the same on time delay.  Obviously, if you watch live, you're stuck with the ads.  It is like the old days of TV, before the DVR.
2. Sports fans watch sports ads.  When the "Impossible is Nothing" ads from Adidas come on TV, I stop what I'm doing and watch.  And I've seen them 20 times.  It is the same story with the Gatorade "It's a Whole New BallGame" spots about the US team's journey to the World Cup.  Both evoke the emotion of the game with very watchable stories that soccer fans would love.  And here I am talking about and writing about them.  During the last world cup, it was the same with the Nike "The Cage" spots.
3. Ads actually sell a relevant product.  If someone watches "Lost" - what kind of products would they buy?  This is impossible to know - and it represents the core problem with most TV media buys: they are guessing on relevance and often missing the mark.  Sports advertising has a baseline ... people watching the World Cup like soccer and often play soccer.  So advertising Adidas or Gatorade makes sense.
4. Advertising is anticipated and watched as entertainment.  The Super Bowl is the most extreme example of this, with ad parties springing up where people talk during the game, and observe a nearly religious silence during the ads.  During the World Cup, the resurgence of ads that focus on soccer is refreshing.  As latent soccer fans find their lost love of the game, the ads tap into this emotion as much as the action on the field.

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The Hyper-Satisfaction Challenge

Several months ago, I read The Ultimate Question, a book from Fred Reichheld about how to measure your company in relation to how likely your customers are to recommend you to a friend or family member.  The result is what he calls your Netpromoter score.  The book represents a good reminder for companies on how important it is to focus on customer service, especially in an era where cost cutting is increasingly leading to consumer rage (a topic BusinessWeek recently explored).  Though the book defines the three categories of promoters, passives, and detractors -- all promoters are not created alike.  Asking someone if they would recommend you and be a promoter is a different question than whether or not they do proactively recommend you when the opportunities arise, without being asked.  All promoters are not evangelists.  Evangelists are customers who go out of their way to promote your product or service.  They actively correct misperceptions.  They don't just sit by when someone has already decided to purchase a competitive product.  They take it personally when someone buys something else.  This is the description of a hyper-satisfied customer.  A brand evangalist.

Understanding your hyper-satisfied customers is not based on a single question.  It is based on action and content that they create online, or discussions that they create through word of mouth.  The interesting point about this, is that it can be very different from the Netpromoter score.  If, for example, you have a high number of satisfied (but minimally vocal) customers - chances are you will score highly for the ultimate question, yet low on hyper-satisfaction because you don't have those passionately vocal supporters countering arguments from detractors.  The trick is to get as many of your satisfied customers as possible to be hyper-satisfied, and therefore more likely to become brand evangalists.  Put simply, it's about getting more people who love you (instead of just really like you) to be more vocal than the inevitable people who hate you.  Companies whose reputation are hit hard online, like Dell and Wirefly, have been unable to do this.  The ultimate question, it seems, is how to foster more customers who are willing to take ownership of brand and passionately defend and evangelize it to the world.

The Next Phase of Travel Marketing

I recently came across TurnHere.com - a very cool website that has a compilation of short films about various locations across North America.  Unlike other video submission sites, the focus of Turn Here is about recruiting filmmakers into a professional community and allowing them to house their work in a more professional environment.  Better yet, Turn Here offers opportunities for filmmakers to join their database to get commercial work from local businesses.  I love this idea for a variety of reasons.  Firstly because the site is a hub for high production quality videos taking you into a neighborhood in a certain region.  There is not enough of this kind of content online, and I can imagine it could be hugely influential in helping travellers (and local people) to decide where to stay, where to eat, where to visit and just about anything else that the typical adventure seeking traveller would want to do. 

The site also offers a great network for filmmakers to create a strong personal brand for themselves.  There is a blog profiling filmmakers and many opportunities for potential clients to view information about filmmakers and choose one to work with.  Deliverables range from a 45 second produced piece on your business, to longer more involved advertorial style formats.  The end result is the ability for local businesses to recreate that dream TV media hit only a few are lucky to get from a travel-oriented show or talk show on network television.  For restaurants or hotels, TurnHere also represents a unique opportunity to market themselves in context of their location - and the site even features a cool mashup with Google maps so people can locate the places they see in the video on a map of the area.  Best of all, TurnHere understands the power of content syndication - offering multiple ways for people to reuse and promote their content.  If you have a local business, work in travel marketing, or you are an aspiring filmmaker ... make sure you check out TurnHere.

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