Influential Interactive Marketing

BlogDay2005

Yesterday was Blog Day 2005, a day when blogger Nir Ofir suggested everyone post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs (preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude).  Looking at the list of posts about Blog Day, it was fascinating how far the idea travelled, from Ofir's original posting on June 21st through to Blog Day 2005 yesterday.  Timsoft, a Romanian site posted a great review of the impact of Blog Day, including Technorati's account of more than 300 posts that linked about the day.  It's easy for blog readers to retreat into just reading RSS feeds that they subscribe to, or links from blogrolls on favourite blogs.  Blog Day certainly forced me to think outside my world and find new sources of inspiration and information.  And here are my five favourites:

1. Accidental Hedonist - Lots of great content about food and drink - and a really useful list of products containing high fructose corn syrup (in case you were wondering about the source of America's obesity problem - look no further).
2. Global Voices Weblog - A compilation of many international blogs out there ... one of the great blogs I uncovered in my quest to find several new global blogs to add to my reading list.
3. DesiPundit - A listing of sites and news from the Indian blogosphere.  Thank god at least one of the "something-pundit" sites out there is actually Indian ...
4. Scappleface - This has to be my Washington DC based contribution, an anthem of a blog for those who reject traditional news media for it's biases - at least there is a site out there reporting the news "fairly imbalanced."  If only it were true.
5. Adverblog - This blog is in my industry, but all about new campaigns across Europe.  It's a continual source of ideas and inspiration for my work in the US.

(Via Hans Mestrum)

360 Degree Digital Influence

Though I consider myself a marketing-guy at heart ... the past few years of my career have been spent working first in advertising agencies, and most recently in a large public relations agency.  Ok, I know they're all connected - but today I'm glad that I'm in public relations.  With the rise of blogs, and the entire world of consumer generated media - this idea of personal influence in the digital world intrigues me.  But more importantly, I love the opportunity to join and become a part of it through the discussion of my PR peers through blogs.  Somehow, I feel the online PR community has embraced this medium more than other marketing disciplines, perhaps due to our affinity for the written word.  In any case, I think our place as [interactive] PR professionals uniquely qualifies us to advise clients on the topic of digital influence online.

Based on our initial successes in working with several of our clients on this subject, today Ogilvy PR formally launched our expanded 360 Degree Digital Influence capability.  As John Bell notes in the press release (and blog post):

The growth of personal media—blogs, wikis, podcasting—combined with the exploding importance of search have kept us busy throughout the year. We actually see these trends as part of an overall shift in digital influence.  With our new expanded offering we have a more sophisticated approach to help our clients really connect with a whole new breed of influencer.

Of course, I know you could look at our new offering as the latest announcement from yet another PR agency on how to "harness the potential of blogs."  Let me say for the record that there is currently no "Ogilvy Blog" (though we are planning one and have jokingly called it the "Blogivly" internally).  But if you look at our team, you will find that we are bloggers, and we do understand what makes influential communications messages online.  We routinely read, analyze and discuss blogs with clients, we are already helping clients become involved in the blogosphere - and most significantly we were recently able to use blogs (with the help of several generous individuals from the online PR community) to spread the word about our dying colleague Shari Kurzrok in order to help her get a new liver.  That experience continues to inspire our team to build our capability in helping clients use blogs and more consumer generated content for social marketing, awareness, eAdvocacy, as well as consumer marketing, or healthcare communications.  360 Degree Digital Influence is about all that.

Contextual Advertising - The Cure for Database Poisoning

Whoever has the misfortune of the email address bob@bob.com definitely hates me.  If he exists, I'd like to apologize to him for the hundreds of sites that I've avoided providing my real details to by usurping his good name.  Of course, I also have my own email address set up just to register on sites where I need to check the email (for passwords, etc.) too.  In this way, I am just like any other consumer on the Internet.  When presented with a registration form with no distinct payoff or reason for filling it out - I am likely to make up or fake as many details as I can get away with in order to avoid being contacted or make the registration process faster for myself.  An article from Pamela Parker in ClickZ yesterday discussed the concept of "database poisoning" (where users enter fake registration details) - and used the site www.bugmenot.com as an example of a consumer driven eAdvocacy campaign to influence publishers to get rid of these annoying registration forms.  The site offers user-contributed passwords to bypass registration forms for more than 84,000 sites.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the Bugmenot site/movement is in their FAQ section where they note that the top five most requested sites by their users are all online versions of newspapers.  So for newpapers, and the thousands of other content-driven sites that rely on advertising (and segmenting their audience to sell to advertisers) to survive - how can a poisoned database be avoided?  And unless they ask for registration, how will they have any demographic information on their users to share with advertisers?  The answer is: they won't.  The biggest myth in online advertising is that you need to collect demographic data in order to succeed.

Search engines have realized huge success tauting their ability to connect with users irrespective of demographics and based on their online activities.  Google doesn't need to know who I am to present relevant advertising.  If a grandma from Kansas or a new mom from New York are both searching for a new stroller - an advertiser selling strollers must reach both.  On search engines, you can do that.  So, how would this model possibly work on sites that need to serve banners, interstitials, or any other ad unit based on browsing versus search behaviour?  iVillage is one of the few sites leading the way in this regard through their ability to target users based on individual articles or piece of content on their site.  So, if there is an article about strollers, on iVillage you can segment your ad to appear on that page.  Imagine the performance of an ad placed here versus the run of site, geotargeting, or even demographic targeting we do now on most publisher sites.  If we could present ads in context, where they had the most relevance, imagine the performance these ads might realize. 

This is a model that other online publishers need to seriously consider implementing.  As their ongoing attempts to get readers to register details causes more and more consumer backlash in the form of faking details on registration forms and signing petitions on sites like www.bugmenot.com - the details held in any of their databases will be meaningless in a matter of months.  Even the good/accurate data will be impossible to filter from the "bob.com" registrations.  Ultimately, unless publishers improve their methods, advertisers will continue to shift their money to more consistently effective online spending such as search marketing.

Lessons from Dumb Spokesperson Campaigns

In the PR world, I have witnessed no better way to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars down the drain than to pay some expensive and questionably effective spokesperson to do a range of marketing activities, satellite media tours, and limited half-day appearances.  True metrics supporting celebrity spokesperson choices are often difficult to find.  As an article in CMO magazine suggests, using a celebrity spokesperson is often an emotional choice (just feels right) by marketer or agency, where wishful thinking takes the place of intelligence. 

Here are several examples:

1. Catherine Zeta Jones for Tmobile - As if *former* Tmobile customers needed another reminder of how little the company spends on improving their network quality in comparison to ad campaigns ...
2. NFL Refs for Miller Lite - Um, instead of an athlete - you chose the refs?  Point A, no one likes refs.  Point B, people usually think refs make bad calls - not "good calls."  Duh.
3. Cheryl Crow for Dell - In light of the recent "Dell Hell" blog posts - you would think they might find a more credible/relevant spokesperson.  Or at least someone who you could believe actually owned a Dell at home ... 

Clearly, bad campaign ideas don't get better by using popular or well recognized spokespeople.  Relevance is still the ultimate requirement for effective marketing - an element successful spokesperson campaigns such as "Jared from Subway" illustrate (by the way, NOT a celebrity spokesperson).  His ads have single-handledly propelled Subway to achieve their brand positioning as the healthy fast food alternative.  Contrast this with the Baby Bob Super Bowl ads from Quiznos - which were not only stupid, but also helped them to blow millions of dollars.  Spokesperson campaigns are a mixed blessing - with much soul searching involved to get the right person on board.  For more and more of our clients, I have started to question whether it's the right way to go.   

Blogger's Addendum: Ogilvy PR has executed a number of celebrity spokesperson health campaigns, most notably with Morgan Freeman and Katie Couric on behalf of CDC's Colorectal Cancer campaign.  I recently also posted about Yahoo's Blog for Hope initiative using Celebrity bloggers.  Social marketing campaigns with volunteered/pro-bono time from celebrities are in a different realm to paid spokesperson campaigns - and I should note that we have seen extremely strong results from our efforts using spokespersons for these type of eadvocacy campaigns.

Yahoo Taps Celebrities to Blog about Cancer

In a fascinating combination of blog culture and pop/celebrity culture (something Yahoo is getting better and better at - probably thanks to Terry Semel) - the new Blog for Hope is a partnership between the site and the American Cancer Society designed as a 30-day event which enlists the help of celebrities such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Fran Drescher (aka The Nanny) and Deepak Chopra to "share the triumphs, insights, and personal stories of how cancer has affected their lives."  Ultimately the goal is to connect individuals and build awareness and help bring an end to cancer.  Check out Lisa Brown's post for some great details on how the idea got started.

The idea of enlisting celebrity posts is not new - notable examples such as Huffington Post have been out there for some time ... however this combination of celebrity, health and social marketing is a new manifestation of eadvocacy that I find intriguing.  Will this effort result in a groundswell of activities among bloggers to build awareness of an issue that has relevance for the entire world?  It was a similar question we began to explore through our efforts in the blogosphere to help a friend and colleague, Shari Kurzrok, to find a liver donor.  Yahoo, the American Cancer Society, and (to a lesser degree) my colleagues at Ogilvy have all struggled with the same challenge recently: harnessing the power of blogs and consumer generated media to build awareness of a social issue, and move readers from awareness to belief.  In our experience, awareness was significant - with hundreds of sites talking about Shari and linking to her blog site.  I imagine Yahoo's Blog for Hope will accomplish the same thing on behalf of cancer and cancer research.   

Local Radio Station Websites and The Death of Y100

This is old news, but being that I live in DC and haven't been to Philly recently - I only just found out about the death of Y100, one of the greatest radio stations ever.  It was one of the few alternative rock radio stations that played it's part in defining popular music instead of regurgitating it.  With the replacement several months ago of the unique station with yet another Hiphop station in the Philly market, it got me thinking about the missed opportunity of the Internet.  The radio station is now entirely online at www.y100rocks.com with an employee blog and everything, but it's too late to save the station. 

If the Y100 site had ever sold their Sonic Sessions acoustic performance compilation CDs directly, I would have gladly paid a premium to buy them.  I wonder how many other niche stations are in this situation of untapped revenue potential for their websites either through cd sales or other forms of revenue like online advertising?  And will it ultimately lead to their demise as well?  The argument against investing more resources or money into a radio's website is easy to grasp - why would a radio station assume that it's audience would visit their website anyway?  For advertisers on radio, this assumption is backed up by the fact that ad units on station websites are usually throw away "added value" components of a traditional radio media plan.  I don't believe I have ever worked on a media campaign where we paid for online ad units at a radio station site.

Yet the irony is that consistently for some of our grassroots local eAdvocacy campaigns, radio online banners have far outperformed paid placements.  For example, in our recent NKDEP campaign, the banners we placed on a local Cincinnati radio station were the most successful across the entire campaign with click rates as high as 40%!  Other campaigns, both public awareness, as well as consumer marketing have yielded similarly high performance.  Given the apparent effectiveness of this medium, and the rise of podcasting programs which may drive radio listeners online to download these podcasts ... what does this mean for traditional radio station websites?  They may be behind the curve, but I believe they will rise quickly and start to invest more in their websites - and advertisers who see unexpected results will start to take notice.  After all, it's hard to ignore 40% click throughs ...

Announcing a Blog Social Network Experiment

Connecting with an influential group of individuals is a necessary component of every viral marketing campaign.  In any social network, there are the groups of individuals Malcolm Gladwell calls the "Mavens" - who will evangalize a point of view to all in the network because they believe in it or because they think it is interesting.  Comic-Con is an event that illustrates this phenomenon ... one that movie producers believe in so strongly that they market their films knowing the buzz at an event like this can either make or break a film's box office success.

But knowing who the influencers are (and where they are) is only a small part of the battle - for often they are independently-minded and less likely to be influenced by typical mainstream marketing or advertising messages. The question this leads to is where do blogs fit in when it comes to delivering marketing or advertising messages?  Can they be used to build a buzz about an online campaign in a more credible way than other marketing mediums?  In an effort to answer this question, this post is an experiment.  And yes, it's for a client campaign that we are running right now.  I want to understand who the "Mavens" (the most respected members of the group) are in two large online communities:

1. Comic Book/Superhero Enthusiasts
2. Environmental/Green Enthusiasts

Though it may seem like an odd combination, it is for a PSA campaign we recently completed for the Alliance to Save Energy, a group working to promote energy efficiency worldwide.  We want to build the buzz and see how far we can get this message and our viral site www.projectsuperpowers.com to travel in the blogosphere and beyond.  To accomplish this, I am going to be reaching out directly to some A-list individuals in these communities ... and inviting them to become influencers for the campaign, and to get others to write about and link to the campaign.  In addition, there will be many others that I hope will offer their support by visiting this post, writing a quick note about the campaign on their blog and providing a trackback to add their name to the list.   

After two and a half weeks, on August 15th, I will publish another post about the results of the experiment and whether we were able to build a groundswell - or at least what we learned about connecting with influencers in the blogosphere through the process.  Stay tuned ...

One Launches the Biggest eAdvocacy Campaign Ever

For all of us who have struggled to pitch and get a client free PSA placements for their banners (good cause in hand) - here are some numbers reported by ClickZ that offer hope:

The One campaign, which aims to raise Americans' awareness of global issues like AIDS and poverty, is making inroads online. Rich media firm Viewpoint has coordinated the donation and placement of $5 million worth of online advertising across the Web on behalf of the advocacy group.

The One campaign has had some great media hits recently, including the special with Brad Pitt visiting Africa, and all the fanfare around the Live 8 concert.  Even the ebay story about hawkers selling Live 8 tickets for profit had added to the hype.  Comparing this campaign to a recent experience I had working with Oxfam America to drive membership in their own eCommunity, one big difference stands out ... the power of celebrity.

In this case, the recipe is simple: 

1. A single celebrity chooses the cause (ie - Bono). 
2. Single celebrity puts pressure on other celebrities to join (ie - Brad Pitt, etc.). 
3. Celebrities make it a high visibility thing that media wants to get attention from. 
4. Media donates advertising space and ad dollars.
5. Internet offers a lower cost alternative for media to donate these dollars
6. $5 million donated eAvocacy campaign is done online.

Not to be cynical about it, though.  Here's the best part of the entire story ... the range of media partners that are signed on:

Ad space was donated by AOL, 24/7 Real Media, MSN, Google, MSNBC, About.com, Burst! Media, Gamespot, Accuweather.com, Right Media, ValueClick, CBS.com, CBS News and UPN. (Currently delivering 30 million online ads per day and hoping to serve a billion units before the G8 summit begins July 6).

I wonder when Yahoo's going to get on the bus?

Store Wars Viral eAdvocacy Campaign Uses Popular Culture to Influence the Public

The first component of eAdvocacy is getting your issue on the radar screen.  Piggybacking on the release of the new Star Wars movie, a viral campaign supporting organic produce offers a new take on eAdvocacy with a Star Wars parody at  http://www.storewars.org/flash/.  Produced by the same team that developed the award-winning "Meatrix" about the true story behind animal treatment at meat farms, this site is another strong viral effort to build awareness of a somewhat stale (no pun intended) current issue ... pesticides and chemicals used on corporate farms. 

The site uses characters like "Dark Tater" and "Chew-Broccoli" to make its point encouraging users to choose organic fruits and vegetables and reject the produce from large corporate farms.  Clearly, the smartest angle on this eAdvocacy piece is using the marketing dollars of Hollywood to help build awareness.  We face similar challenges on all of our non-profit work.  How do we get viral traffic with no marketing or advertising budget?  Sure, humor helps to build buzz, but Store Wars shows that timing can be just as important.  What are people interested in today?  What's getting coverage in the media?  And what has the most marketing dollars behind it?  Yahoo's buzz index, focuses on what people are actually searching for.  It's worth checking.  The creative concept for the next big eAdvocacy campaign could be there.