Influential Marketing Blog

Marketing In The Age Of Disposable Email

Some guy named Bob probably hates me. I don't know him and he doesn't know me ... but he's the unfortunate registrant of Bob.com and has used his first name for his email address. Yup, you guessed it - that makes his email address bob@bob.com. That also happens to be the email address that I have used for the past ten years to fill out forms that require an email address that I don't want to give. For more than a decade, Bob has been getting my junk email and to tell you a truth, I feel bad about it. That alone isn't the reason I've had to give up my use of Bob's email, though. The reason is that I can't pick up those confirmation emails that you need to click on in order to activate an account.

Recently, I came across a site called Mintemail that has found an interesting solution ... disposable email. This is essentially what it sounds like - an email address that is good for four hours, usually just long enough to use to register for a site, get a confirmation email and pick it up. The service has lots of smart features built in, such as automatically saving the email address to your clipboard so you're ready to paste it into a form. Every once in a while, there is a solution so simple you wonder why no one else has done it first. I love seeing things like that and this definitely qualifies. If you have a form that requires your audience to enter an email address they are not interested in giving you, it looks like you won't be able to rely on the confirmation email to get you a working email address anymore. In the age of disposable email, it looks like you're going to have to work harder to earn the right to ask for a user's email address. I suppose the upside is that now those bogus emails will bounce after four hours. I bet poor Bob wishes I found this site a lot earlier.

Link Credit: http://www.vqcdesigns.com/blog/

PNI: Introduction ... Get Your Exclusive Download!

As part of The Official Reader's Group for Personality Not Included, I just released a first look at the full introduction for the book on my Facebook group. If you're not yet a member, you may want to join now so you can get access to exclusive content like this, and find out first about all the great launch parties and activities happening over the next few weeks. Otherwise, you'll be a few hours behind when I post everything here. Here's the link to get the introduction:

www.personalitynotincluded.com/introduction.pdf

Though I feel a bit like a guy in a dunk tank encouraging people to hit the target ... if you have a blog and haven't had a chance to submit your 5 questions - make sure and send them to me so you can feature a virtual interview on your blog on Friday.  I know I'm getting dunked (so to speak) with another set of questions to respond to (I'm already nearing 35 bloggers I need to get back to!), but its all for a good cause (promoting the book).  And speaking of good causes, if need a great place to order PNI, or any other book - visit the Ultimate Marketing Bookstore. It's a store I set up to benefit DonorsChoose.org, a wonderful charity dedicated to helping teachers do the most for their kids. All the Amazon affiliate fees from your purchase will go straight to Donors Choose. Great books, great cause ... what more do you need?

Be Part Of The Personality Not Included Book Launch On March 28th

There are a lot of ideas for how to launch a book online. As I head toward launching* Personality Not Included this Friday, I've looked at most of them. Some authors create a group and ask all their contacts to all hit an online bookstore like Amazon at one time to create a surge in sales.  Others coordinate big launch events in the real world and aim to use those to propel interest in their book. Bigger books might buy advertising to announce a launch and, of course, there is the old PR method of blasting lots of press releases at people who may or may not be interested in the book. There is one big problem with all these approaches: none of them are very conversational.

A conversation does not start instantly with a big spike and then trail off. A really good conversation builds momentum steadily and eventually turns into something more powerful. So my aim today is not to create a short term spike, but to start a conversation about the central idea of the book - which is that personality matters, and continue it over the next few weeks and months. To jumpstart this conversation, I'm asking for your help - and offering you something in return.

My idea is simple: if you send me five questions that you want to know about the book or personality, I'll write you a response on Friday that you can publish on your blog. Let's call these virtual interviews (ie - interviews by email). You choose whether to post the interview on your blog or not after you get my responses, but I am essentially offering for ANY BLOGGER to send me interview questions and I will respond with answers that are NOT cut and pasted, but specific to your questions. I will send all my responses to you on Friday in the order that I get your questions, and I will link to all the posted interviews on Friday.  On Monday, I'll be running a competition on my blog to let readers vote on the Best Interview. The winner will get a signed copy of my book and a gift certificate for $100 from Amazon. Here are a few reasons you may want to do it:

1. For relatively little effort, you'll get a customized post by me that you can use exclusively on your blog
2. Your blog will be featured in my follow up post compiling all the interviews (getting you more visibility)
3. You have a chance to win a signed copy of my new book and a gift certificate for from Amazon.com if your post is voted "Best Interview" by the readers of my blog.

That's about it. I'll be answering review questions in the order that I get them, so please send me yours soon at rohitaustralia [at] gmail [dot] com and I will add you to the list. If you don't have a blog, you can still ask questions by leaving a comment on this post - there will be a prize for best question from the comments too. For the latest news about the book launch and access to exclusive content which you can't get anywhere else, be sure to join my Facebook group for the book if you haven't already and also follow the launch in real time by adding me to your Twitter follow list (Twitter ID - rohitbhargava), or friending me on Facebook (which republished my updates if you are not a Twitter user).

Update (3/26/08): Up to 25 interview requests in less than 24 hours ... thanks to all the bloggers for your interest - I'm hoping to make it to 50 request by Friday!

* The book bindery date is this Friday, which means the book is complete and printed and they will be shipping out to those who preordered over the weekend or on Monday (so you should have your copy by early next week). The official date when they will be in bookstores across the US and Canada is likely to be around April 14th - and the book will be released internationally about 4-6 weeks after that (across Europe, Asia, Australia). If you have a specific query about your country and when the book will be out, please send me an email and I can let you know.

Everywhere Mag and the Arrival of the User Generated Magazine

As someone passionate about travel and the travel industry, I pay a lot of attention to sites that are out there.  Travel has long been an active industry online, whether you talk about people's behaviour with increasingly booking travel online, or the slate of review and opinion sites that let people share their opinions about travel destinations. From Yelp to Driftr to Dopplr there are new travel sites that let you do just about anything you want and they are all great ... yet none have quite found the right formula to harness the one thing that travel enthusiasts like me all have in common: a passion for talking about travel and sharing my experiences.

Sure, I could post a review on Yelp or publish my own travel blog - but what about something a bit more ... substantial?  Something that I get a bit more credit for.  Travel magazines are usually substantial in that way because they do manage to capture the wanderlust that characterizes many travel enthusiasts and offer a real experience you can hold in your hands.  The problem is, very few of them build on the great content being created by individual travellers online because they have a professional editorial staff to do it for them.  Everywhere Magazine is a publication composed entirely of user generated content.  Every month, the editors select the best articles and photos (based on their editorial team and a system of voting on their website) and lay out a new magazine. This is brilliant for a number of reasons, but most specifically the costs they save on hiring a staff of writers and paying their expenses is put into the production of the magazine which is every bit as professional and beautiful as any other travel magazine likely to be on your coffee table. 

I joined the community and have several ideas for articles that I am just itching to write about, because they relate to places or things that I experienced and am passionate about, or tips for travelling better.  Either way, it will be interesting to see if this model of a completely user generated magazine could work in other industries.  Is this unique to travel because of the passion people have for writing and photography in this category, or could it work for any industry?  Anyone seen other examples?

6 Reasons Twitter Rocks and Sucks Simultaneously At SXSW

If last year's SXSW was Twitter's coming out party, this year it achieved utility status.  A utility is something that is always on, and essential.  To lose it would be to thrust yourself into the dark ages.  Water, electricity, gas ... and Twitter.  Sound like an exaggeration?  Not for anyone who has spent the last few days watching the incessant live twittering at SXSW.  Because not every reader is as tricked out in extreme geekdom as those at SXSW, here's a brief description of Twitter:

It is a tool that allows you to broadcast your answer to the simple question, "what are you doing?," through writing a short 140 character text message.  That message is posted online where a group of individuals that are "following" you can see it.  Following someone is the equivalent in Twitter language of becoming their friend of Facebook.  Popular Twitterers have several thousand followers.  Through this steady stream of updates, at an event like SXSW, you can watch the live pulse of the event and what people think about it real time.  So, without further ado, here are the reasons why Twitter rocks and sucks simultaneously at SXSW.

Why It Rocks:

1. Helps you decide where to go. SXSW is a huge tradeshow and knowing which panel to attend or which party to spend 30 minutes (or longer) waiting in line for is not easy.  By watching what your Twitter friends are saying online about these events, you can decide where to go real time based on the feedback of the community.  It is the ultimate live rating tool that allows you to make an informed decision about how to spend your time.  In the evenings, as the "official" SXSW parties had lines around the block, just about everyone used Twitter to create their owh "flash parties" at other bars and locations around Austin.  The best?  Easily Gary Vaynerchuck (of WineLibraryTV) organizing a flash party in the lobby of the Marriott with free wine.  Within 30 minutes, he drew more than 100 people to the spot, gave aways lots of wristbands and free wine, and got the party busted by the cops.  Free wine rocks.
2. Allows you to ask a question to everyone without spamming. Why is this important?  Well, in any other medium, in order to get an answer to a question, you need to ask someone.  Even in a good community you can ask a subset of people.  The problem with this is that sometimes you are not sure who has the answer.  For example, I needed to know the address of a party.  Am I really going to send a mass email to everyone I know asking for that?  Of course not.  But putting out a Twitter message (known as a "Tweet") about it allows me to invite anyone from the community to provide an answer.  And usually I can get one from an unexpected source (that I may never have otherwise thought to ask) within a few minutes.
3. Let's you be like God (all seeing).  Whether or not you believe in God, most people say he (or she) is all knowing and all seeing.  To me, that means knowing everything that is going on everywhere and what everyone is thinking.  Twitter is a way of doing that in real time.  You may not have a question or need to get a particular piece of information, but the stream of real time reports from across the event allows you to know about everything as it happens.

Why It Sucks:

1. Destroys "real" conversations. At many parties or other events with some high profile Twitter users, they are spending so much time updating the community and answering direct posts that they forget about the moment and individuals that are around them in real life.  From sending a Twitter update to someone across the room (rather than talking to them) to focusing on Twittering about a conversation rather than actually having it ... overuse of Twitter can destroy real life conversations and I saw this happen more than once at various points during the show.
2. Turns individuals into nothing more than a user ID. With everyone on Twitter, the first question many people would ask one another when meeting was what their Twitter ID name was.  Though this is certainly a form of connecting, it doesn't tend to tell you as much about someone as, say, asking where they work, or what they like to do in their spare time.  Each of us has a story to tell beyond our Twitter ID, and some people didn't get past it.  Luckily, I'm relatively safe because my Twitter ID is just my full name (rohitbhargava).  Imagine if it was "personalitynotincluded" and I didn't get a chance to explain that this was the name of my book?  I probably wouldn't come out too well. 
3. Encourages ranting rather than reasoning. One of the problems with the short length of Tweets, and the speed with which you can post them is that the model encourages you to rant with a thought of the moment rather than taking a second to offer a reasoned thought or point of view.  As a result, sometimes the quality suffers.  Of course, this varies from person to person, but on the whole there are many people who might post opinions or thoughts in a Tweet that they would never share either in real life or on their own blog.  The challenge is to maintain a high enough editorial standard for yourself in Twitter as you might elsewhere.  There are lots of Twitter users who fail miserably at this, which makes Twitter suck.

For those either at SXSW or just users of Twitter who are not at the show, what do you think?  Discuss (here or on Twitter).

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10 Easy Ways to Piss Off A Blogger (from SXSW)

At SXSW yesterday, I ran a "core conversation" called 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger.  This year at SXSW, these aptly titled "conversations" were a type of speaking slot where there was a round table and the challenge of engaging people in a discussion about a particular topic.  Mine was one close to my heart ... the best way to piss off a blogger.  I had created a Facebook event page before the session to try and build the buzz and going into yesterday I had almost 50 people signed up.  So I figured we'd get about 20 to 25.  After the session, I spoke to one of the participants who said he counted about 70 - so we had a really tough challenge of having a conversation with 70 people.

Learning from some of the feedback that came from a panel on Social Media Metrics that I had participated in a day earlier, my main aim was to make sure everyone walked out of the session with what I had promised them ... the 10 easy ways.  The format of the session was a bit different too - as there was no presentation or powerpoint, and I didn't walk in with the 10 ways.  Instead our aim was to collaborate, discuss and walk out with the ten.  I think we managed to make it to more than ten.  A few folks kindly offered to take some live notes and have posted about the ten, but without further ado ... here are the 10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger, as defined by a group of super smart and engaged folks who all made it to be part of this conversation:

1. Invite bloggers to participate in something and don't give them a chance to talk about themselves. This was what I opened the session with, followed by letting people around the group introduce their name and their blogs.  A list of people who chose to share their names and blogs is at the end of this post.
2. Pretend to be a "long time reader" when you actually just visited the blog once and read a few posts.
3. Use a blogger's content or identity without giving proper attribution
4. Send irrelevant information that exhibits no understanding of what they care about or fail to personalize it
5. Add them to a PR list and don't let them get off of it
6. Make it hard for them to link to something by hiding your content behind usernames/passwords, giving them uncertain directions or requiring them to take multiple steps
7. Ask for favors as part of your first outreach to them without building a relationship or earning the right to ask them to help you
8. Fail to identify yourself or falsely represent yourself as something or someone you are not.  This includes failing to mention something about your or your employer that is relevant.
9. Set an unreasonable expectation for a blogger and expect things in an unreasonable amount of time ... ie - sending informaiton and expecting them to post within a few hours.  Quick poll of our session showed that for the vast majority of bloggers, it's not their day job.
10. Get the journalism relationship right.  Some bloggers consider themselves journalists and others don't.  It was clear from the participants that this is a tricky subject, as some people also noted after the session. 

I think we actually ended up with more than ten, but these were the main ones.  I'm looking forward to hopefully hearing more thoughts from some of the participants as the SXSW haze settles and they get a chance to get back to their computers.  It's a crazy show ... lookout for a post here tomorrow on what I think has been the most interesting cultural and technological story of the show: the dominant use of Twitter.

Finally, special thanks to Aaron from Longstation and Steve Harbula (Director of Marketing for the Denver Broncoes) who were both kind enough to take live notes and post them almost right away after our session.

============================

Partial List of Participating Bloggers (from a list passed around - we missed many bloggers, so please add your name and thoughts in a comment if you were there and I'll update the post):

• Destin Joy Layne - The Green Fork http://www.eatwellguide.org
• Biray Alsac - Fitness & Technology Blog http://www.befitwithberay.com
• Beth Carls - K-Ized Mindoh! http://mindoh.wordpress.com
• Lindsay Yaw - Body, Mind & Soul http://www.bethree.com
• Sunil Doshi - http://blog.swiftmob.com
• Adam Brohman - http://amediacirc.us
• Brian Buser - http://www.minggl.com
• Daniel Englander - http://www.greentechmedia.com
• Meghan Warby - http://withoutayard.blogspot.com
• Ruth Ward - http://ruthward.wordpress.com | http://www.sxswm.com
• Jonny Goldstein - http://www.jonnygoldstein.com
• Eric Bryn - Real Estate Relativity http://www.realestaterelativity.com
• Heather Barmore - No Pasa Nada http://www.nopasanada.com
• Amy Bills - Bullblog http://www.bulldogsolutions.com/bullblog
• Eloy Zuniga - http://www.eloyz.com
• Aaron Long - http://www.longstation.com
• Greg Swan - Perfect Porridge http://www.perfectporridge.com
• Danielle Kozich - http://danipennsylvania.blogspot.com
• David J. Neff - Futuring and Innovation in Non Profits http://www.fispace.org
• Marjan Jindrich - Consumers Union Blogs http://www.consumersunion.org/blog
• Tara Anderson - http://iquitforlijit.typepad.com/i_quit_for_lijit/
• Eric Berto - http://www.etelos.com/blogs
• Jackie Huba - http://customerevangelists.typepad.com/
• Samantha Warren - http://www.badassideas.com

Also, thanks to Maura Welch, Sanjay Sabrani, Tracy Locke, Liz Link, Shannon McKarney, Gladys Kong, and many other participants who didn't add their names to the list for sharing their perspective as people who interact with bloggers and want to do it better.  We may have focused on ways to piss off bloggers, but clearly there is some great interest and emerging guidelines on how to end up with happier bloggers.  For reference, the guidelines from our 360 Digital Influence team that I mentioned to several of you at the session can be found here: http://blog.ogilvypr.com/?p=244

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MicroSharing: Inside the One Trend Most Marketers Are Ignoring

Not everyone is a content creator.  Open up any report of statistics on social media, and you will usually see some standard ratio of content consumers to content creators that typically ranges from 1 in 10, or less.  This means, on average, that in most communities less than 10% of the individuals in that community are creating content.  This post is about the biggest myth many people believe about the other 90%.  The easiest way to describe behaviour online is by breaking it into two buckets: content creators and content consumers.  The creators make the content, and the consumers watch, read or listen to it.  If you think about this in relation to business, the correlation would be businesses and brands that make something, and consumers who purchase it.  The problem with this model is that it forgets the third leg of the model: the middleman.  In business, this usually someone who facilitates transactions between two others.  So, if business has this additional layer, why shouldn't content and media? 

Actually, it does and it always has.  This layer, of course, is alternately called the editors, producers, studios, or just about any other title you want to put on the layer of people who decide what content we get to see.  As consumer generated media has gotten more and more popular and prevalent, it is easy to believe that this middle layer is vanishing.  After all, everyone is talking about the democratization of media and how it means that anyone with a message can reach anyone else without being forced to go through the gatekeepers in media.  In some regards, it is.  But there is a phenomenon taking its place that brands need to start paying more attention to, because of the impact it has on public perception about their brand.

This phenomenon is called microsharing and it refers to the act of individuals sharing pieces of content with others in a group who have similar interests or needs.  Some common activities today that would constitute microsharing range from saving a link on del.icio.us to posting an interesting story or video on Digg.  Tagging an existing piece of content or using a "send to a friend form" are also examples of this.  The most interesting thing is that as the volume of content continues to increase, more and more people rely on this microsharing to get the information they need.  It is the new editorial model, and the editor is each of us.

The implication for brands in this is clear.  There are certain individuals who are tastemakers and influencers.  They are the ones who apply their own lens to content out there, and sift through it to provide a boiled down list of what people should pay attention to.  They are not so much content creators as they are content aggregators, and they serve an important role.  The next time you put together a social media strategy dedicated to getting people to create content and others to consume it ... make sure you also have a smart way of engaging those who will be microsharing it.  This is a population of people you can't afford to ignore anymore.

Why Brands Should Skip the "Conversation" on YouTube

My job is all about conversation.  Having one with clients and peers, and helping them have one with their customers.  To a degree, my own book is about conversations so this may seem like a strange observation coming from me ... but I don't see any point in publishing a video on YouTube and allowing comments. 

In every other medium, from blogs to microsites to forums, comments are great.  They invite conversation and offer a chance for dialogue.  As a result, comments that are not relevant can usually be ignored and or caught by spam filters.  Look at most blogs, and the comments will likely add to the dialogue.  That's not the case on YouTube, and I think we are all noticing it.  For example, watch this promotional video recently release by Google on YouTube:

Now click the link to go directly to YouTube and read some of the comments.  There are people posting racist views about kids, using swear words and having all kinds of useless, mean and idiotic "conversations."  Most other videos on YouTube generate similar comments that people would never say out loud.  The problem with YouTube is that it has become increasingly common for hundreds of these comments to come on just about every video.  I dare you to find any video with at least 25 comments that doesn't have a significant number of these types of comments.  These are not just isolated dumb comments or spam ... this is a plague that seems to affecting YouTube disproportionately.  For some reason, commenting on videos encourages stupidity.

Am I saying people shouldn't be allowed to discuss videos that are posted on YouTube?  No.  But I think a far better solution right now is to either moderate comments on YouTube (which surprisingly few brands adding videos to YouTube seem to choose), or embed a video that is posted on YouTube on your blog and encourage comments there.  Comments on YouTube videos today are just a forum for people to share moronic comments anonymously.  Comments on YouTube should certainly not be any part of metrics to measure.  Having hundreds of comments on a video is meaningless.  For any brand putting videos on YouTube, if you are looking for conversation - my advice is to embed the video elsewhere and choose to moderate or remove comments on YouTube altogether.

Spamments and Spamversations: How Do You Stay Out of Unwanted Conversations?

There has been a firestorm of discussion lately after Chris Anderson, editor of Wired Magazine and author of the long tail recently "outed" all the PR professionals that had been contacted him with anonymous spam style "Dear Editor" communications.  On a day where he had more than 300 of these, he finally decided he had enough and fired off a post banning those PR folks from contacting him and adding him to his blocked sender list.  The conversation has now been discussed to death on all kinds of blogs with most people essentially taking one of three viewpoints:

1. PR people are spammers and they deserve it.
2. Chris makes a fair point, but its unfair to publish people's email addresses or offer them no way to get off the list.
3. Chris is a self-important blowhard who should get used to the email because he's an Editor of a major pub.

At this point, I really don't think there's anything I can add to the conversation ... especially because I don't consider myself a PR pro in this sense and have never actually pitched a media person for anything.  I am a marketer, and the concept we deal with all the time is spam - or more broadly speaking, unwanted conversations.  It got me thinking about the different types of unwanted conversations we all must deal with today in a world where conversations are happening all around us and often directed to us whether we want them or not.  In my estimation, there are 5 methods of dealing with these unwanted conversations:

1. Filters, blockers and blacklists.  These can be a combination of automated features and manually set up lists.  Chris Anderson noted in a follow up post that he manually blacklisted all the emails of the PR folks that had sent him unwanted emails.  Personal blacklists in your email can be a great way to do this.  My blog also has a list of blocked words for comments like "viagra" and "casino."  Spam filters are increasingly standard to catch the usual spam phrases about body part enlargement and the like.
2. Barriers, verification and validation. The next stage of automated checking are CAPTCHAs, requiring a login in order to comment, or using some other method to verify that there is a real person trying to connect with you.  It is commonly used on blog comments to make sure there is a real person behind the conversation.
   
3. Ignoring or screening them. This is the time honored way, and usually works.  The only downside is that if the volume of these conversations is very high, it can get tougher and tougher to do this.  The other negative is that it is not very satisfying, as you don't get a chance to let someone know that their message was irrelevant and ignored.
4. Selective friending. With the growing number of social network profiles we all have, the real problem with unwanted conversations is that they can often come from "friends."  Once you have granted someone access into your circle, you have unwittingly given them permission to start an unwanted conversation with you.  The only real way around this is either to be more selective with your friending, or to take the rude route and either ignore the conversation or (gasp!) "de-friend" a frequent offender.
5. Closed Responses. This is often the last resort for unwanted conversations, and one that most of us probably find ourselves using more and more.  Closed responses are the ones that answer a question, but leave little room for follow up.  They are the best way to deal with conversations that you may be baited to join (by people trying to pull you into controversy) or conversations that for whatever reason you are not completely involved or interested in.

What do you think about these methods?  Are you using them all equally or is there one that you rely on more than any other?  Or perhaps there is a sixth method that I missed ...

Lufthansa Proves Sweden Is Full of Gorgeous Blondes

Typical marketing advice says that you should never focus on marketing your category, but instead focus on what makes your service distinct from your competitors.  Marketing an industry or type of service is usually a losing proposition because even if you convince someone they need something, you have not convinced them that they need to get it from you.

In the travel industry, this lesson is somewhat different.  Today American travellers are increasingly choosing destinations outside of Europe for their vacations because of the weak dollar against the Euro.  Europe needs to find a way to get its appeal back and Lufthansa (an airline with many of the most frequented routes from the East coast to Europe) is helping the cause with a smart new campaign called Rumor Travels at www.rumortravels.com.  The site offers a few videos focused on three of the greatest rumors about great European countries:

1. Sweden is full of hot blonde women - Watch Video
2. Germany has beer everywhere for every meal - Watch Video
3. France is full of lovers who cannot stop kissing each other - Watch Video

The videos are meant to visualize silly stereotypes and all end with the compelling tagline, "you'll never know if you don't go."  There is a contest on the site where users can submit their own videos to win 2 business class tickets to Europe and a new Sony digital video camera.  Strategically, the campaign works on on several levels:

1. Demonstrates the necessity of travelling in a world of increasing virtual experiences.
2. Positions Europe as the ideal destination to travel for challenging your preconceptions (something people may usually associate with other more "exotic" destinations)
3. Targets the young, professional and single travellers (who will likely be least deterred by the negative exchange rate between Dollars and Euros)

Of course, it doesn't hurt that each video features attractive people and focuses on the romance of travel.  Europe, romance, professional, single ... you get the picture.  This campaign seems like it would work - if only Lufthansa was doing any perceptible amount of marketing around it.  I read about the campaign on Adrants and most of the less than 20 blogs that are listed on Technorati as linking to the campaign come from people reading about it on Adrants.  Even the Lufthansa US homepage only features a blurb on their promotion with Iron Chef instead of any links to the RumorTravels.com site.  The video views on YouTube are still super low, and the contest ends in just 2 days.

As far as I can tell, it seems like a classic smart, strategic and engaging campaign that will ultimately underperform and fade into obscurity because the team behind it was unable to coordinate enough marketing support from whomever controls the ad budgets for Lufthansa.  If anyone has insight into the campaign, please share.  I would love to be wrong on this one ...

A Recap of Ideas from Nielsen's CGM Summit 2007

I spent the day today at the Nielsen CGM Summit in NY listening to some panels and presentations from Nielsen and many of their clients about the future of measuring CGM.  One thing I was looking forward to about this event in particular is that the percentage of brands vs. agencies in attendance would be much more favored toward brands.  It is sadly ironic when you think about all the events that agency folks attend to basically talk to themselves, while their clients are all interested in (and spending time attending) events on measurement (which few creative folks from agencies would be able to stay awake through).  I must admit, I had a bit of a hard time staying awake myself today ... but to be fair, that was probably due to my redeye from the west coast to NY last night. 

In any case, I managed to stay awake throughout the day long enough to take some notes on some key takeaways from the summit which you will find below.  I also had the chance to meet several folks in person that I have been reading or known from afar, including Peter Kim, Henry Copeland, and Emanuel Rosen (author of The Anatomy of Buzz).  Though some of the "wonder of Nielsen" presentations that I expected throughout the day ran a bit long (not yours, Pete!) - overall the day was a great deep dive into all the ways we can and should be measuring.  As one speaker shared earlier in the day, "media is not an island" and is interconnected as consumers watch and interact with messages across mediums. Marketers may be specialists in one particular channel (TV, Online, Mobile, WOM, etc.) ... but consumers are most definitely becoming experts in all of them and use them concurrently. 

Anyway, here are some key notes and insights I took away from the event:

1. Influencers are emailers.  There was an interesting data point in one of the presentations that said that 55% of people who were considered "speakers" (those who share opinions vocally) have emailed directly to a company about a product that they liked.  This was a big insight throughout the day, as it indicated that brands seeking their influencers may simply need to listen more closely to the feedback they are already getting.
2. CGM generates powerful insights, not just influential voices to "target" - In response to a question from Max, I shared this point of view during the recap of the day and it was something that came up repeatedly throughout the morning.  Listening to CGM can drive strategy if you find the gaps which you can use CGM and social media to solve.  One example I shared was using CGM to find the conversation about Julian Beever (a sidewalk chalk artist) before we started our Fountain of Youth program for Aveeno.  We learned that there was lots of discussion online where people wanted to see more of his images and know how he does it.  So we created a Flickr gallery of all his images and a video of him drawing to rave reviews online.
3. Buzzphrase #1: Consumer Fortified Media - This was a new concept that Pete introduced in his presentation about how brands are putting their commercial messages online (like Dove Evolution), and consumers are talking about them and adding credibility to these messages, thus making them fortified.  Of course, there is a handy acronym for this as well: CFM.  (I suppose it could be CFM2 when those commercial messages are for products already "fortified" ... um, like Fruit Loops).
4. A new reason 2008 Superbowl ads will be better than the game - The guy from Fox Interactive shared that next year Fox has a deal with the NFL to create an official site where the 30 second spots will be accompanied by "long form video."  The smart marketers will take the chance to create "making of" secondary ads around their $3 million Superbowl spots.  Not sure how CGM plays a part here (unless lots of brands do the "you can create our Superbowl ad" thing again), but I still thought this idea of extending the most watching ads in the world with long form content behind them is a great concept.  Maybe worth an idea bar post at some point ...
5. "Getting out of the way" is a strategy - During the panel where media brands shared what they believe will happen in 2010, the guy from CBS talked about the things that they are doing and noted a significant moment where a random user placed a clip from Letterman where he interviewed Paris Hilton on YouTube and the clip got millions of views.  His point ... we didn't go after him, which signifies a great case study.  I loved the irony that getting out of the way is now considered a strategy.  Actually, sometimes it's the best one. 
6. Buzzphrase #2: Consumer Emulation - In this second concept from Pete's presentation early in the day, he talked about how we are in the midst of a wave of "consumer emulation."  Citing examples like the JetBlue and Mattel CEOs addressing the public as if they were doing consumer produced Youtube videos, or politicians and celebs who have Facebook or MySpace pages  - the point he made is that the pros are sometimes emulating the amateurs.  And of course, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't ...
7. It's not about volume anymore - The great conflict with how brands used to purchase media to buy influence online versus how they do now is that tricky measure of CPMs.  When you are buying in blocks of thousands of impressions, it is impossible to say you are not buying volume.  Yet as many marketers noted today, less is really becoming more.  One thought I shared is that sponsorships of blogs and social media sites that are persistent can offer a much higher value, but not measured in terms of page views, but rather in terms of brand perception.
8. The silo-fication of marketing remains a barrier - Many of the brands that participated in the day were large ones, and all seemed to struggle with similar issues when it comes to ownership.  This was not about the typical debate on whether blogs belong in corporate comm, or product development, or marketing, etc.  The silos on a macro level are those between marketing/communications, customer service, product testing, and other large divisions.  In many large organizations, these groups are in geographically disparate locations.  CGM may be a brilliant place to gather insight, but if the marketing team who gets the blog monitoring reports isn't sharing them with product development, or the customer service team who is speaking with a blogger doesn't share that information with marketing ... the power of CGM is never realized.

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Blog Action Day: 7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

One thing I can't resist is an ambitious project.  As a marketer, if there is a groundswell for something that I believe in or find interesting, I am highly likely to try and be a part of it.  That's why I join all sorts of groups, and why I try to lend my voice to causes that I believe are worthwhile.  The latest effort that I have been looking forward to being part of is also the reason why I'm posting twice in a single day ... something I don't usually do.  Today is Blog Action Day - something I have been promoting on the sidebar of my blog for several weeks now.

The aim of the project is to collect together all kinds of bloggers to talk about the environment.  The site featured a very smart way of letting bloggers sign up early and attaches a currency to being first in how all the blog participants are listed (in order of joining rather than by size of blog - so I'm in the 4001 to 5000 list).  The built in measurement of the site is also done through aggregating the readers via RSS, which they planned for by requesting the RSS link for every blog that wanted to participate when you signed up.  So far, it's a brilliant model for how to run a blog centric social marketing campaign - and the results are stellar so far.  The site boasts more than 15,000 blogs participating with an aggregated RSS reach of more than 12 million readers, and is publishing real time updates on buzz on the Blog Action Day blog.

Let's consider this reach for a moment.  One of the big measurement challenges in blogging is to equate an RSS reader with a regular old impression.  Impressions are typically measured on a monthly basis and multiplied out.  RSS readers are individual readers and therefore far more accurate.  I happen to believe an RSS reader is more involved than a regular impression as well - but how much more?  Even if you conservatively say it is worth 2x as much, this gives the reach of Blog Action day nearly 25 million readers.  On a single day.  That's pretty impressive.

But the point of this post is to talk about the reach but to talk about the environment.  My original thought was to come up with something new to say about it ... but while I was live blogging at the Corporate Climate Response event a few months ago, I published a post about tips for eating differently to impact climate change.  That's my contribution for Blog Action Day, republished below:

7 Tips on Eating Differently To Impact Climate Change

During a session run by Tara Garnett from the Food Climate Research Network at the Corporate Climate Response Conference, she shared a wide range of interesting research that was likely difficult for most participants to absorb quickly enough (and extremely difficult to keep up with for blogging purposes!). Luckily, FCRN has a fantastic research archive published online at their website and also provide links to an assortment of research from other groups collected into a single archive. One of the more interesting points Garnett raised was what steps regular consumers could take in order to change their own eating habits to make an impact on CO2 emissions. This is often a little talked about topic, and as Garnett noted, it is notoriously difficult to ask consumers to do - mostly because of the huge cultural significance of food and the difficulty of sacrifice. For many consumers, however, it may simply be a lack of information. For all of them, here are 7 tips Garnett shared about ways you can change your eating habits to have an impact:

1. Change the balance of what you eat (less meat and dairy, “lower down” on the food chain)
2. Choose seasonal field grown foods (require less storage, heating & transport)
3. Do not eat or purchase certain foods (including foods that are hothoused or those that are air freighted)
4. Reduce your dependence on the “cold chain” (get rid of the second freezer, choose less processed robust foods and do more frequent non car-based shopping)
5. Waste less food (improve your “food turnover” to eat what you buy sooner and reduce wastage)
6. Cook more efficiently (cook for more people and for several days at a time, use the oven less frequently)
7. Redefine your ideal for quality (be willing to accept variability in quality and supply

In addition to this post, here are a few other posts from this blog over the past year which may hopefully inspire your thinking and perhaps even inspire some action:

"Greenest Hits" From Influential Marketing Blog:

• The Greenest Sports Event on Earth
• The Marketing of "An Inconvenient Truth"
• Live Earth Includes DC, Thanks To The Native Americans
• One Hour No Power Campaign - And Other Ways to Save the World
• Wikimapia, Google's Green Summer and Marketing Mashups

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10 Truths of Marketing in a Web2.0 World

I am in Austin today participating in the eMarketing Summit as part of the Innotech Conference.  I had the chance to do a lunch keynote presentation following Allen Olivo of Yahoo - focused on marketing in a Web2.0 world.  The presentation had a great crowd of engaged people and most (surprisingly) managed to stay awake despite my excellent spot right after lunch.  Below is the presentation I gave at the event, and I am told there will be a podcast of the presentation with audio synched with slides online in the next day or two so I will share the link for that as soon as I have it.

Update (10/15/07) - Read a Dutch Translation of this presentation from Enthousiasmeren

Influential Marketing Blog Featured in Wall Street Journal

Many of you may have already caught this yesterday, but this blog was cited in the Recommended Reading  section of the Wall Street Journal yesterday in an article by Keith Huang.  As Jay Berkowitz from Ten Golden Rules shares on his team blog, my blog was one of 60 resources that they recommended to the journalist as part of their reading list and was selected from that list as a recommended resource for companies looking to "optimize their online presence."  Here's the writeup:

Influential Marketing Blog, rohitbhargava.typepad.com
Rohit Bhargava's blog is intellectual and educational. In a recent post, he discusses the art of stamp collection and how, even today, many smaller countries use stamps as a key marketing tool. He writes, 'Next time you pass a post office in any country, pay attention to how they are using their philately to promote the country, cater to tourists, or commemorate moments of significance.'

It is a great media hit and to be selected from a list of what I am guessing were 60 stellar resources is flattering.  I'm in awe at being included among the other bloggers and authors mentioned in the article - including Seth Godin, Steve Rubel, Matt Cutts, John Battelle, Chris Anderson, Joseph Jaffe, and Danny Sullivan. Thanks to Jay for including me in this great list, and to Keith for selecting to include my blog!

8 Unique Reasons People Like Twitter (And Why Microblogging Matters)

On the surface, capturing what you are doing on daily, hourly or even minutely (double meaning intended) basis seems like a useless activity.  Who has the time to send these incessant "tweets" all day long?  As it turns out, lots of smart folks with respectable jobs, but that's besides the point.  Driven by Mark Simon's dismissal of Twitter and my hectic travel schedule of 5 cities in 5 days last week, I decided to give Twitter a real test run and become an active user of my dormant account I created several months ago but never really used.  This post is a compilation of the lessons I learned about Twitter and an inside look at the appeal of microblogging and why smart marketers should pay attention to this trend and some ideas for the possibilities it offers. 

1. Broadcast Yourself For Real. This may be YouTube's tagline, but it really applies more to Twitter.  As you start sending these messages to update what you are doing right now and gain "followers" - you start to feel like you are broadcasting yourself.  When you're Twittering, you're on the grid and sharing your thoughts and actions real time.
2. Replace Invasive Instant Messaging. I don't use instant messaging at work, because it is interruptive.  Even when you set your status, you'll often get instant messages that are hard to ignore.  Twitter has the same qualities of instant messaging, without the interruptive qualities.  As a result, it lets you send quick short instant messages to people that they can view and answer when they have a moment.  I found myself quickly using direct tweets the way I might use instant messaging to ask a quick question to one of my contacts.
3. Build An Entourage Quickly.  With the easy import feature from Gmail and the relatively low barrier for following someone, I was up to more than 70 contacts in my Twitter account within 5 minutes of starting to use the site.  Not bad for a quick payoff, considering how long it would take to build a friends list of that many people for a new user of any other social network like Facebook or Linkedin.  Even better, the vast majority of people who you follow will start following you right away.
4. Get Satisfaction by Venting. Throughout the week last week I found myself occasionally annoyed at a stupid ad or a flight delay.  I would never "waste" a blog post on these topics most of the time, but found myself twittering them with great satisfaction.  Somehow, just sharing the negative experience of having to walk all the way to the last gate in the B terminal at O'hare made me feel better about it.
5. Always Find Out What's New.  With Twitter, I knew right away when Matt posted a photo of the guys from our panel at Promo Live, and when Gordon Moore finished his chat at IDF.  The running commentary of the latest news from my contacts was actually really useful and somewhat addictive.  Longer term, at the very least I'll be sending a Twitter update every time I publish a new blog post.
6. Fills A Gap Left By Blogging. Now that I have gained a few thousand consistent readers, I find myself considering more carefully what I write about.  The people who subscribe to this blog invest their time and expect to find something of use ... and there are often times when I abandon a topic because I don't have a strong point of view about it.  My blog has never been about pointing out things out there without some commentary.  Yet sometimes there is something that is interesting which I would just like to share a link on, but not necessarily write about.  Twitter is the perfect way to share those links and a quick thought without spending a whole blog post on it.
7. Highly Useful for Live Blogging. There are several events in the past few months that I have had the chance to attend and live blog.  For most, my live blogging consisted of taking notes during sessions, coming up with a point of view and posting a blog post on it.  This is what I did at the CCR event, and the Ogilvy Verge event.  At Intel's IDF and Promo Live, I tried using Twitter for live blogging instead and found it to be really useful because you can get your thoughts out much more quickly, you can really do it real time, and it forces you to focus on capturing the really key points.  I'll be Twittering many of my other upcoming events now as well.
8. Facilitate Meetups.  When I was heading to a media event after the first day of IDF, I was looking for bloggers to invite to the event.  Luckily Karl from ExperienceCurve spotted me on Twitter and suggested we meet up.  This is one of the earliest benefits that I realized some time ago about Twitter, but it was really nice to see it in action.  Imagine this blown out beyond cities to destinations and you can really visualize the potential power of Twitter.

So what does this all add up to?  For me, Twitter is a compelling platform that can easily become addictive once you start to use it ... a quality that many great sites share.  The marketing opportunity here is super simple:

1. Start following people that care about what you do
2. Respond to their messages where appropriate to start dialogue
3. Send consistent and substantial updates of your own
4. Use Twitter as a platform to inform your followers of news they might care about

Today the end of my week long experiment, I'll be continuing to use Twitter and I'd suggest you give it a go as well.  Now I need to go and send an update to my group letting them know this post is live ...

Add Your Votes To The New SxSW Panel Picker

For those who follow this blog, you know that I attend and speak at a lot of events.  Each has a different vibe and type of attendee - and I've been to some amazing events and heard many fantastic speakers.  This past year, one that stood out was the annual South by Southwest Festival that takes over the town of Austin, Texas for more than a week.  During that time, there is a film festival, a music festival and the interactive event - and the atmosphere around the event is unlike any other for interactive marketers.  Because of the combination of music, film and interactive - it is a haven for creativity and this past year it was a big venue for new sites and services to try and launch their betas and get them in front of influential individuals.  Many trace back the fast rise in popularity of Twitter back to SxSW this year.

Next year's event in March 2008 promises to be no different and is going to be very important timing for me because it is likely to coincide closely with the release of my new marketing book which I've been fairly silent about apart from announcing the deal back in June of this year. Look out early next week for much more detail about the book - but in the meantime I have several panel ideas up on the interactive panel picker for SxSW and there are more than 600 entries from great minds and influencers from across the interactive industry.  Visit the Panel Picker at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ and check out some of the great panels in the lineup. 

Here is a direct link to go directly to my three panel submissions: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/index/2/q:ogilvy

Also, here are the descriptions that I provided for each idea that you can read on the panel picker:

1. 10 Easy Ways To Piss Off a Blogger (and Other Mistakes Marketers Make) - The short history of blogging is filled with the examples of clueless marketers who have suffered being flamed, outed or ignored by the "cruel" blogosphere. Yet approaching bloggers is not as risky as it might seem -- it just requires a new approach. In this session, you will see real examples of 10 of the most common mistakes marketers make when approaching bloggers and how to avoid them. Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/20
2. Creating the Ultimate Personal Brand With Social Media - Starting a blog is easy, but getting it to stand out among millions of blogs is going to be tougher and tougher. In this session, you will get real tips for how you can make your blog, social networks and online profiles all work together to help you build the ultimate personal brand -- to help you make money, get your dream job, sell that big book deal or rank first on Google for your name. Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/19
3. The Authentic Business: Making Your Personality the Secret Weapon - Despite what you might have heard, transparency doesn't matter. In an age of authenticity, the rise of social media means that customers are looking for the true identity behind a company or a product and just letting them in is not enough. This session will show you how to make your business stand out by using your real personality.  Vote for this panel now - http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/21

If any of these seems interesting to you, I hope you register on the site and add your vote.  In addition to my own submissions, there are lots of other great panels worth voting for.  I have not yet had time to go through all of the more than 600 panel ideas, but I already cast my vote for several that stood out for me.  Here are a few of the ones I recommend checking out (I'll put in links when I get a chance to do the cutting and pasting - but for now you can use the search feature to find any of these):

• Michelle Osorio, DivX - How Filmmakers Got Their Voice Back
• Anastasia Goodstein, Ypulse.com - Totally Wired Teens: How Teens are Using Your Applications
• Zadi Diaz, Smashface - Immersive Entertainment: The Next Step in New Media Production
• G. Kofi Annan, Annansi LL - Africa 2.0: Affecting Change Using Technology
• Tim Ferriss, Author - The Art of Speed         
• Daniel Hope, MotivateMedia - Blog on Company Time Without Getting Dooced
• Henry Copeland, Blogads - The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007
• Rachel Clarke, Behind the Buzz - Stories, Games and Your Brand         
• Mike Monello, Campfire - Persistent Engagement: Why Your _____ Isn't Enough
• Ned Desmond, Time Inc. - Cover Story: Building Brands for a Digital World

Happy voting and hope to see you at SxSW next year!

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What If Consumers Could Generate Ads They Want To See?

Last week I sent myself an email to generate a Google text ad.  As any Gmail user knows, Google serves ads based on the text content of your email.  So corresponding back and forth with a good friend of mine whose wedding I will be attending in Peru next month results in several offers for Peru travel advisors.  Those ads are relevant, so I am likely to click on them.  Of course, the saavier among you is probably reading this thinking it's not so different from text ads on any search engine.  After all, if I typed in "lima, peru" into any search engine, I would get lots of ads.  The problem is intent.  When I am just learning about Lima, all I want is background information.  At the point when I am ready to purchase, I want to see offers.  Keyword advertisers are getting smarter about targeting intent, but it sometimes seems like banner ads are getting left behind. 

Often they are still purchased based on the demographics of a site overall and simply served in random order.  Most would agree this doesn't work.  But think about how a printed copy of the yellow pages works.  These are essentially filled with banner ads and organized by category.  What if there was a site where banner ads were organized the same way?  As a consumer I could enter by region, category or even individual product.  Going to the site would give me a list of banners with the current promotional offer that the vendor has on right now for whatever I am seeking.  The ads, in effect, could be generated by page based on a user's search terms.  This is consumer generated advertising - but where they are calling up the ads that they want to see rather than creating ads themselves.  Thinking even more broadly - what if you could also call up television ads from an archive to watch based on what you were interested in buying?  Would someone in the market for laundry detergent watch three ads back to back from three different companies before making a decision?  Maybe not.  But if I'm looking for a hotel in Lima, or a new car, or a digital camera, or a new kitchen appliance ... you bet I would.

Behind the Scenes At The Battle of Kruger

One of the hottest videos on YouTube this past year is the Battle at Kruger video featuring the amazingly watchable battle of lions, crocodiles and buffaloes on a Safari.  The video is nearing 8 million views in just a few months, and is an obvious prediction to take over the crown from the Free Hugs campaign for video of the year in 2007.  Chad Hurley, founder of YouTube, even pointed it out as his favourite video at the recent Webby Awards.  Here it is in case you haven't seen it:

A good friend of mine from college, Jason Schlosberg, was one of the pair behind the Internet phenomenon which was just featured as the lead video on NBC News' new program, i-Caught (which premiered last night).  The show is just one amongst several others that features popular online viral videos, but takes the slightly different approach of featuring the stories behind the videos and how they were made and why there were uploaded.

Watching the show, and seeing my friend and his story, the most interesting part was when they interviewed a pair of videographers who had been shooting video and documentary footage for 25 years.  The pair listed off all the hardships they had gone through, from suffering malaria to dealing with near desert climates.  And they had never witnessed a moment like the Battle at Kruger.  This is the next evolution of the funniest home videos.  It's no longer enough to capture moments of extreme stupidity (staged or real) on grainy footage.  The new age of amateur content creators are capturing once in a lifetime moments that even the professionals watch with envy.  Welcome to the new world of media.