• Don’t Shoot the Bear! – YouTube made interesting by Tipp-Ex. Great campaign for driving user input. Be creative with your ideas. Try: fishes, dances, rap, tickles, picks up, shoots and eats to get you going… (It will all make sense when you are there, trust me.)
• Another YouTube creation, this time with Sly and some friends…
• If you missed the Apple special announcement yesterday, then you won’t want to miss this. Finally, a place where Apple “fanboys” can go and communicate with the like-minded.
• Last week we looked at how Vodafone is using Lewis Hamilton. This week, we are looking at another “Gillette boy”. Roger Federer goes viral with over 5 million hits last week. Real or Fake? No-one’s telling…
• Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Mother Teresa, the Internet… They (may soon) all have one thing in common.  Click here to find out.
• Planning to build your own Startup Company? Need a service/site idea? Try this generator and strike digital gold.
• Is it Christmas? Sometimes it’s the simplest sites that give you the best answers.
• I saved the best for last. Here is a really great example of HTML5 when brought together with some creative thinking and a lot of processor power. It’s still just an idea and a first stab at that, but it really highlights the power of open source solutions. Great track too.

What is it about this deal that seems to have wound people up? Here are my thoughts.

“Intel McAfee acquisition is biggest, and worst, deal in security history”

Richard Steinnon, Chief Research Analyst at IT-HARVEST LLC, wrote a piece entitled “Intel McAfee acquisition is biggest, and worst, deal in security history”. He looked at the deal from various angles (Technology Acquisition, Brand Enhancement, Investment etc), and couldn’t find a single thing to redeem it, saying “Some deals just don’t make sense”. In this case I don’t agree, but it’s his analysis of the ‘technology acquisition’ angle that interests me.

Surely, technology acquisition is exactly what Intel are doing?

OK, so we’re not necessarily talking about running McAfee’s products ‘as-is’ in silicon, but perhaps we can look forward to some hardware-accelerated desktop/server security products, and we’re definitely talking about acquiring the smarts to secure mobile devices, aren’t we? More on this later.

Overpriced?

Another criticism leveled at this deal is that Intel are paying too much for McAfee, but my guess is that value is in the eye of the beholder, and that to all intents and purposes, McAfee is worth exactly $7.68 billion if you’re Intel.

Moreover, Intel and McAfee already have a trusted, strategic partnership in place, and they think the businesses are a good fit. This is why Intel haven’t acquired one (or more) of McAfee’s competitors; there are dozens to choose from.

Even if the business was not worth the price Intel are paid, the deal has effectively split the commentators into two camps: those that think Intel know what they’re doing, and those that don’t.

Intel Software Acquisitions. Source: arstechnica.com

The 3rd Pillar

Intel have a pretty clear strategy with regards to software acquisition and are betting a few things are going to happen:

First, mobile devices (not just handsets) are going to be the growth market in the next 10 years. Intel’s Atom range competes with ARM and PPC in this space and they want to put their products in as strong a position as possible. Intel reckon there will be 15 billion mobile Internet-connected devices worldwide by 2015. Ericsson CEO Hans Vestburg thinks this is conservative and is betting on 50 billion by 2050.

Second, threats — that according to some “have yet to materialise” — will provide a new market for security vendors. In this context, Intel believe security will form the 3rd pillar of computing, alongside energy-efficiency and connectivity.

Third, it is better to offer an integrated bundle of silicon (Atom), OS (Wind River) and security (McAfee) to market than just sell processors and chip-sets.

Is this a good thing?

I think so. Recent history has shown that if it’s possible and profitable for certain types of people (e.g. criminals) to take advantage of security vulnerabilities to make a profit or a point, they will do it.

If the prediction of the ubiquitous 50 billion connected devices is anywhere near correct, then this is going to be a huge market for criminals (and idiots) where consumers and business will need to be protected. This is also probably the reason that Intel’s Software and Services Group would be a global top-ten software company if it were an independent entity.

Couple this with the changes in Internet usage as a result of  iPad, iPhone and Android devices, and it’s a potentially explosive situation.

What will it mean to Intel’s competition?

That depends on who you ask and which competition you’re talking about. AMD might be reasonably sanguine and may even see it as an opportunity to chip away (pun intended) at Intel’s share of the laptop/desktop/server CPU market if Intel’s focus is elsewhere.

In the long run, though, mobile/embedded device security is Intel’s main motivation for this deal, and clearly believes it will be a key differentiator between themselves and the likes of ARM in the energy-efficient processor market. And, that the answer lies — at least in part — with McAfee.

Over the next few years as the embedded-thing-connected-to-the-internet-market explodes, I think we’ll see Intel and McAfee vindicated.

• Can Chatroulette actually be used for something useful? One agency thought so. Does it go too far? You be the judge.
• Twitter becomes a social paintbrush to convince America that Canada is great!
• What happens when you mix glittery vampires and product placement with a social media strategy? Great idea or cringe worthy cash-in?
• With better mobile processors, operating systems and downloadable content, augmented reality takes another bold step in shiny Google boots. Review & Download here!
• Slackers deserve credit too. Puma agrees. A great spot for the non-athlete athlete.
• Old Spice may have set a precedent for the grooming industry, but who’s this clawing their way to the top of the pile?
• Sometimes, a great idea doesn’t need to sell anything at all. Here’s a great flashmob just to make one guy have the best birthday ever.
• Execution by Schweppes. A little remote and underplayed, but think of the possibilities? Anyone else thinking; “Yellowstone!”
• Everybody loves Gary, the Walkers Crisps man, right? So what happens when you ask Lionel Richie (yes, him) to do a Walkers crisp ad?
• Even Hugh needs to get in on the act. Read about Mr. Hefner’s hunt for a Social Media mistress.
• Do you think Vodafone was running out of ideas on how to use Lewis Hamilton for their campaigns, what with the NOT winning races? Anyone else thinks this is a little… lame?

First out is SEM Konferansen in Oslo (14–16 September). Here we’ll run a couple of sessions with a main one-hour event dedicated to share our insights on B2B search marketing.

Following this we’ll continue our Nordic journey and venture across the border to Stockholm and the world-renowned SMX (28–29 September). With no-less than three speaking sessions penned in it’ll be a busy couple of days.  We’ll be digging into the Google quality score and how to integrate search and display advertising.

Back in London we’re running a retargeting session at the always-excellent A4UExpo (12–13 October). This is the premier UK event for affiliate and performance marketing, and a brilliant opportunity to understand more about this exciting marketing model.

If you’re planning to attend any of the above events, please write a line in the comments as we’re always happy to catch-up over coffee in-between sessions. Otherwise you’ll surely find us networking in the bar.

The policy is already in place in the US, and will soon extend to the UK, Ireland and Canada.

Furthermore, as a consequence of Google’s recent win over Louis Vuitton in the European Court of Justice and also French High Court that allowed competitive trademark keyword bidding, this will now be opened up across the EU. This is already the case in most other markets such as the UK.

Both policy changes are planned to come into effect on 14 September.

Read the full press release.

The concept of deep-linking isn’t specific to search. It applies to all online marketing activity, such as display, email and social. The difference however, is that the search phrase is an additional data point that should be used to segment and effectively funnel the user towards desired action.

Consider the site structure below for a moment:

Just a few years ago, it wasn’t rare to find campaigns that were all pointing to the home page (or worse, the many times severely limited internal site search functionality).

The first issue with this approach, is that someone arriving from a specific search such as “product x specs” will not immediately see the product they are expecting, and possibly just hit the back button in frustration and appear as a “bounce” in the site analytics.

Secondly, even if they are determined enough, and decide to give the site a second chance, they still have to find their way through via internal navigation and search functionality. This leaves them vulnerable to getting lost, frustrated and ultimately giving up, and return to their search engine of choice for a better match to their original query.

Simplistically, there are two levels of segmentation when it comes to keywords and landing pages:

1. Type: e.g. Category, Product, Service
2. Intent: e.g. buy, compare, complain, trouble shoot

At the first level, advertisers will send category searches (e.g. “printers”) to a category page, and product specific searches (e.g. “brand X model Y”) to the product page. Isn’t that nice and simple?

At the second level, the advertiser will utilise the search modifiers to better understand what the consumer wants. E.g. a search for “brand X model Y specifications”) will send traffic to the corresponding sub page or section of the landing page.

While this might seem like common sense and straight forward to implement, there are a few things to consider. The second level of segmentation increases the complexity of the campaign by quickly multiplying the number of individual landing pages. These individual landing pages need to be checked so they are up to date, accessible and have the required call to action for up sell or cross-sell.

In return when all stars align, advertisers can expect happier site visitors and improved conversion rates.

Earlier this year Banner organised a Search Huddle. This was an intimate session for B2B marketers with speakers from Autodesk, Avaya, and Microsoft.

While the event was rounded off by Cedric Chambaz, marketing manager at Microsoft and myself, by looking at the latest developments of search and what lies ahead, what generated the most debate was how to get the fundamentals right; what can you do today, to make a tangible difference to achieve your objectives?

Dominic Jukes, web marketing manager at Autodesk shared his experience of managing international paid search campaigns, and highlighted recent corporate structural changes that had helped facilitate increased ownership and subsequent coordination of their search marketing efforts.

Avaya, represented by editor-in-chief Jerome Toulorge, used paid search in a different innovative fashion. With the objective of generating sales through their channel partners, together we had created a paid search reseller program that was rolled-out with selected partners across Europe. The challenges faced where not so much about technology as it was about communication and education.

The event clearly highlighted that although search can many times be perceived as a highly technology focused marketing channel; the biggest factor to success is still the people driving it.

Why are search engines doing this? The adverts CTR is an important signal of “quality” for search engines. The logic is that if the advert matches the users query, they will click it. Therefore the higher the CTR, the more relevant the advert is assumed to be. And of course, since the search engines charge advertisers per click, their revenue increases.

The following chart outlines the main factors that determine the quality score for a keyword on Google Adwords. This quality score is then used in an algorithm that determines click-cost and position.

Due to this, it’s very possible that an advert appearing in top position is paying less per click than the one below. The search engines are of course maximising their revenues by the higher number of aggregate clicks that the top CTR advert is producing.

To make things more complex for advertisers, consider the following scenario: an advert with lower CTR is converting very strongly on the website, as it effectively pre-qualifies the traffic. In comparison a high CTR advert for the same campaign converts poorer, as it doesn’t seek to filter out unwanted traffic at the ad level, but instead on the landing page. Which should you run?

At this stage you would need to calculate the actual cost-per-action and volumes that can be achieved, depending on objective.

In practise, it’s difficult to make this type of direct comparison on a live campaign, due to the ever-changing nature of competition, quality score, positions and costs. However, from experience, typically for b2c the benefit of a higher quality score from optimising ad copies towards CTR (with resulting lowered CPC and higher position) outweighs the alternative, whereas for B2B it might not be the case.

As an approach, they can be pretty helpful. They provide a shorthand way of looking at an audience – one which enables us to form more targeted strategies that speak to the real needs of our key targets.

The problem, however, is that typically they are simply made up.

That’s unfair of course. These segments represent portraits of groupings of characteristics as seen by the researchers. We get a group of people that kinda, sorta look like X. But the point I’m making is that exactly what these groupings are is fundamentally down to the subjective view of the researcher.

Myers-Briggs – the ultimate segmentation?

A few years back, I decided to try to do better. I’d been on some leadership training course and taken a test to determine my Myers-Briggs personality. I found what it told me to be both accurate and intriguing.

Many of you will know of Myers-Briggs – it’s been around some 50+ years and is based on the work of Carl Jung. Essentially it breaks the world down into 16 personality types (which can be clustered into 4 groups). The individual types are given 4-letter codes. Mine is INTP which means I’m Introverted, iNtuitive, Thinking and Perceiving. I won’t go into more detail here as you can find out all that on the hundred’s of sites already devoted to the topic.

The key thing for me is that over the years millions of people have taken Myers-Briggs tests (the most widely used is called the MBTI). This means that we have a huge body of evidence about what makes an individual personality type tick. I began wondering whether we could use these types as a kind of über–segmentation system.

Typing IT buyers

We decided that the only way to find out was to try an experiment. At Banner, we created a kind of Myers-Briggs-lite test that could be completed in a few minutes online. We then tested it to see that it broadly delivered the same results as other tests. And then we invited IT professionals in the US, UK, France and Germany to have a go. Everyone who completed the survey got a copy of their results and a little bit of analysis for their effort.

We got just under 1,000 responses. And the results were rather remarkable:

Focusing just on Europe for a moment, out of the 16 types, two alone accounted for 40% of the IT professionals we surveyed. One was my own type, INTP (which we termed Architects) with 22% and the other was ISTP (which we called Craftsmen).

We then compared Europe to the US – astonishingly the top personality type in Europe accounted for just 5% of US IT professionals.

And France and Germany were almost polar opposites.

A presentation of the top-line results is embedded below. You can download it from Slideshare.

The good and the bad

So is this really the panacea for segmentation? Well, not quite.

Where it appears to work well is in specialised job roles. As soon as it is extended to more general business roles (eg general management) the individual personality spikes vanish and the distribution returns to that of the general population.

There are those who are not convinced by Myers-Briggs as an approach to personality – Google ‘Criticisms of Myers-Briggs’ for a pretty comprehensive list. There are a whole bunch of other competing systems.

But, as a possible approach it at least removes some of the subjectivity from segmentation. The profiles we built up (by reviewing every piece of literature on the subject) gave us over 60 different personality attributes – from how people make decisions and how they like to be communicated with through to what kind of parents they make and how they react under stress.

See what you think.

But here’s the rub: whichever you chose, you chose wrong.

In the land of the blind

After all these years, it still amazes me that so many in the industry think in these kinds of binary terms. Brand or demand. Strategic or tactical. Even marketing or sales. It’s a recipe for death by silo.

The truth of course, is that the decision is never binary. Every piece of demand activity you produce is an embodiment of your brand. Likewise every brand communication should drive demand.

To focus on demand generation for a moment – there is a tendency in the industry to think purely in terms of the numbers. How many clicks/downloads/sales/whatevers did this communication achieve? It often leads to a nail the problem, hammer the offer, forget the brand approach (well, we did follow the guidelines). And you know what? It works. To a degree at least.

The problem is that this tends to focus so heavily on what we do it leaves no room for how we do it. The end obliterates the means.

Demand meet brand, brand meet demand

As soon as we focus on how we generate demand and what it means for the brand, something interesting happens.

For one thing, the customer comes more sharply into focus. We think more about how we can help them deal with the problems they face and less about simply what carrot we can dangle to get them to do stuff.

We also take a longer term view. Not of the results – we still need to hit the numbers. But we begin to consider the legacy of what we create. What effect will it have on our reputation? What will the recipients say to friends and colleagues about us? What will they think, the next time they see something from us?

And, while I’ve focused on demand generation here, the benefits also extend the other way. By making more brand-focused communication responsible for growing demand as well as brand, we give it focus. We avoid the upward creep that ends with brands trying to capture lofty ideals that are irrelevant to the context their customers find themselves in (the world peace syndrome).

The result will be a stronger brand, greater demand and increased loyalty. Now doesn’t that sound like a good decision?