Gzones1974

A virtual wall for everything

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:33:00 +0000

We have been learning, thanks to Facebook, a new way to communicate. Now millions of us not only have e-mail or IM to communicate online, we have also "The Wall" or open public or semi-public boards in where we can post about a topic or about a person. It is interesting how we learn to post comments that more than our target will read.

During my previous birthday I received more posts on my wall and mentions on Twitter, than e-mail or phone calls and there are multiple cases or reasons for people to use this channel instead of the regular ones.

I consider that we are using SMS, e-mail and IM to communicate with our top relationships (siblings, parents and close friends). We use Twitter and Facebook to communicate with our community (All friend, peers, colleagues, etc) and there are new tools to communicate with others about an specific topic or to meet people (Pineterst and now Quora)

So this communication channel is great, it's open, it's fast and enhance collaboration.

You might know I am one of the founders of Droneme, in where you can also create an publish Walls, but the interest thing here is that you can create a wall about anything or everything without registering and you can share these walls on the off-line world through QRCodes. The posting process is also open (without registration) so we were looking to have and offer the fastest way to publish about any topic using digital and real walls. That's it!

why?

There are the basic walls, like your school, building, office, street, in where the related community can post in an anonymous way. Why????? to also enhance HONESTY. A trend that we have seen in walls is that due the relationship to our profiles, the conversation is limited. In some cases too nice, in some other just a few participate, so having an open wall in where you can post without registering and without your profile will give everybody the chance to express them selves which as consequence will drive better content.

We are not embracing anonymity to do wrong, we are embracing anonymity to grow, to have better content.

Better content = better experience = better collaboration

Try it, create a wall. Write something about me http://www.droneme.com/gzones1974 or about Droneme http://www.droneme.com/droneme

There are multiple ideas about how to use it, but the must important is the one that it is going to be useful to you.

The trend is not only the wall channel, the trend is open collaboration and community communications

Remember what Gabriel Garcia Marquez said:
Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life

For the Public life you have Facebook and Twitter
For the Private life you have e-mail and SMS
For the Secret life you have Droneme

Thanks

The power of being anonymous

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 10:55:00 +0000

These days all what we say is attached to our persona. There are comments with value and posts really not useful at all, but what are the things people have on their minds and they can not say because they think is not appropriate or they do not have the courage to say it? How many things we do not know because they live just in somebody's mind but they are afraid of sharing it?

Social media brings the opportunity to access the knowledge or ideas of people in an easier way but these are not all their ideas and thoughts... how can we open that door? being anonymous has been always, from my perspective, a way to hide, a door for people who are not responsible, but is it? or our society limits our head just because the rules we have or we set up for us?

The power of being anonymous is getting bigger and bigger and that is why I started Droneme. A way to be anonymous to say what we can not... to express our selves completely, to really finishing sharing all what is on our heads.

There are sites like www.4chan.org in where we can be anonymous but all the content is categorized in such a way that we have to go through a trail of comments or discussions that are meaning less, so when we created Droneme we also were thinking in a way in where you can access info by topic or just by specific keywords without going through a mandatory path full of spam.

In Droneme.com users can say what they want to say without any registration and tagging their comments, so others can come and go directly to the piece of info they are looking for. How to use it?

Imagine you want to shout to the world how much you love, hate, care, or think about your boss, partner, mom, peer, friend... you just come here write whatever you want to post, tagg it and then... zaz!!! is shared with the world. Every post is shared not only within Droneme.com but also is shared on Twitter on one or multiple Droneme accounts like DMESanFrancisco or DMENewYork, depending also in your location so what you are sharing has a bigger audience...

Also you can come to Droneme.com and just go directly to find about you or the topics you want to know, for example I can go day after day or every 2 hours just to www.droneme.com/jorgeherrera+pfizer and find out what people are expressing about me... so I do not have to go to the home page and see others comments that are not related to me or I do not care... Imagine you go directly to www.droneme.com/google or www.dronemecom/ipad and see what people express about those brands or www.droneme.com/ciprinai and see what people are saying while they are on the restaurant or about the restaurant.... or I go to www.droneme.com/latino+blueshirt+newyork and see what people who I do not know is saying about me based on what I am wearing because they do not know my name.... Is like opening the door to everything and everybody...

finally we clear everything after 69 hours... why? because being anonymous should be just a stage, just for a period of time... giving the capability to all to know that what they are saying will be forgotten so they can feel a relive knowing that a trace wont be happening...

for all of those things I am sure droneme.com is key in today's social communications, for fun, for private conversations, to approach to somebody, to meet somebody, to release anxiety without secondary effects...

try it... we are just on the first iteration, knowing that we need to evolve based on people's needs but having on this first version a base line to growth and make from being anonymous the power to know more and have access to expanded knowledge.

Twitter and Facebook are key for social communications but they have the limits that we define in our heads... Droneme is the complement to do not stop saying everything we want to say

Is the paper book dying?

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 08:57:00 +0000

I was in a conversation last Saturday in where as many other times, someone challenged the e-book readers vs the paper book. Do you think paper books will disappear ? (that was her question).

As usual the people in the table, having an after dinner conversation just shared their personal point of view, some of them said "No, I love reading a paper book; No, what will happen with book shelves; No!!!", and some others "Yes, I can read my books anywhere now, I can carry multiple books, etc"

Here is what I have to say, my personal perspective and what I do not usually share on these dinner conversations, because I could be killing the "entertaining conversation" which is there to be more fun than a real round table of experts looking forward getting to conclusions and defining a plan of action based on a mission... so I do not pretend to show off or being boring and then I just smile...

Books, in any format, are one of the most popular methods to transfer information (paper, electronic, audio books...) and from my perspective there are 2 groups of people:

a.- The ones who LOVE the format.

People who love the concept of reading, carrying, collecting, smelling and contemplating a book on its paper format. These are the ones who love to go to a book store and go aile by aile, book by book, reading the sides, watching the cover, getting in love of the page AND also they like the content; but the format means a lot to them. I can compare this group to a similar group but in music. People who love the Vinyl LP Record (long play record), the CD or any other not-digital format 100% electronically distributed, this group love the artwork, the booklet, having CDs on a shelf, the process of taking them out of their cases and putting them on a player. Some of them like the LP format, because they can play more with it if they are DJ's and some others like them because the quality of a LP is better than CDs (wich is true with CDs, but the new Digital Music above the 192kHz/24-bit DAC is better than LPs). So these people read books not only driven by its core content, but love books due the "book experience concept" in where the content of the book is just a piece of the total experience but not its 100%. They like to have a more holistic experience

b.- The ones focus on the content and convenience

It is not that this group do not care about the look and feel of a paper book, but this group is more focused on paragraphs, chapters, references. This group is more into the "information" and not its distribution method. This is the group who like the idea of having multiple books inside a small Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Nook, etc. This is the group who is happy to have access to the biggest book store anywhere at anytime and download a sample or the complete book that they browsed based on its core content. Just to continue with the comparison with the music experience, there are people who find amazing, having access to almost any record at any time from stores like iTunes and who find awesome carrying all their music inside a small piece of technology like an iPod, so they can play their music anywhere at anytime.

So who is right and who is wrong? Who will loose and who will win?

First of all, I think we all are or will be in both groups. I find very useful reading on my Kindle, iPad and iPhone but not all the books! I like graphic design; architecture and photography books and for those specific type of groups I like the holistic approach in where the book is ALL (cover, font, smell, page by page, etc) and I am assuming that maybe people who declare them selves "Paper book lovers" they will find out that for some specific topics (maybe technical, school, business, reference, etc) kind of books, in where they do not care a lot about the cover, putting them on a shelf or the way they smell, they will be ok with the utility of an electronic format to access them (this is just an assumption) .

But will the paper book will disappear?

I think paper wont be the most popular format, and we are experiencing day by day a market share growth for the e-books (E-book sales represented 8.32 percent of the trade book market in 2010 vs 3.20 percent the previous year for the reference click here) so it is clear that we will see every day less paper books.

So the Kindle and other e-readers are our future?

No, they won't either!!! They are a format that bring us convenience and based on that, new formats will appear. What we know as e-readers now, won't be with us in 25 -30 years (this is a personal prediction based on Ray Kurzweil's vision) With the evolution of nano-technology we will access information directly from our brains so we will be reading without using our eyes and hands, just our brain connected to any book at any time.

So answering the frist question: Do you think the paper book will disappear? Yes for specific topics, mostly reference books, but we will see some other topics, more related to emotions still in some shops, more expensive as they are now. Paper books wont die at least in our era, but they will be collectors material, backup, art, etc and the volume of new books printed will be very small compared with what we have now and this during the next 25 years, not next year...

We are in 2011, we are moving faster than ever and we will move even faster year after year and month after month, so what we need to understand is that change wont be an option, and if we are still considering methods something that we enjoy, then change will not be easy. We need to learn how to adapt faster and we also need to identify what we really enjoy and if it is a paper book, then, that is great, but do not say " I love ALL paper books " without really analyzing what you really like about them, which topics you enjoy and you will always enjoy with your holistic perspective, and do not say " books will disappear " do not be that naive, because they wont on their totality. The interesting thing is that nobody is talking about how will be reading in the future, how we will be consuming information and that is what I would like to talk about after dinner....

an extra reference to see how e-books sales are growing:

http://idpf.org/about-us/industry-statistics#Additional_Global_eBook_Sales_Figures

QR Codes, are not there yet...

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 19:24:00 +0000

This morning I was on my way to the office, when I saw an excellent graphic execution, creative and with a potentially very good performance.

JetBlue is offering their getaways vacations to New yorkers who are tired of winter, etc, etc and that is right. They are not only attracting the attention with a BIG QR Code filled with beaches pictures, but at 7:00am, trust me it is something I want to read more about and knowing JetBlue, the offers will be customized to me... right?

Well, the graphic executions is great, the media planning is perfect BUT... They thought on using QR Codes to attract attention and also to deliver more (targeted) information... but the QR code doesn't work because the picture of the kid and also... they are using the ad space next to the train doors, so if I want to take a picture of the QR Code, I will be bothering the person who is sited in front of it, finally... there is no cell phone connectivity on the subway (until today) so I can not download data while I am infront of the Ad. And this is the ALWAYS story, something great as an idea, draft, mock up, plan, etc... can not be 100% exploted, due a poor implementation. Sometimes agencies do not look all the details or they do not push too strong with the client. The consequence could be that JetBlue analyze the results and decides that the campaign was ok, the product was attractive BUT the QR codes did not have the expected response and that might be the end of an experiment and everything, just because someone forgot to tell the graphic designer to move the kid from the code and the media implementation team, forgot the context of the ad space...

QR Codes are not for everything, now I can see them everywhere and we need to remember that this are not easy to read, these are not just scan and read, these are 1.- take the picture, wait; 2.- read, wait; 3.- open web page, wait. The VALUE behind the action should be higher than expectations, otherwise the user wont be using the codes too much.

I think the codes will find their right usage during the next 24 months and in the mean time (like we have been living it for the last 36 months) they will remain as a trend / experiment.

What uses do I think will be interesting (just 2 examples from the multiple that could be)?
1.- Real State: It will be awesome to just scan a code on a "on sale" ad, outside of a building or an apartment and see the photos and extra info
2.- Drug info: Contraindications, Instructions, The comments of your doctor...

These 2 things will be great as mobile content on the go in where faster than a keyword search, we just point our phone to the QR Code and we get the content, but besides working on having useful and great content, the QR readers should be easier, the phones should come with that as a default, no app, no open and click, just scan. Would it be great if I just point my phone and everything happen without me opening an app, then pointing, then clicking and then waiting? that is not how the bar code scanners work... you just scan it in less than a second... until that moment, the QR Codes are just fashion and not very useful today.

I do not know if they will last for more years, but I am sure this or some other codes will work the same way I explained above and this will happen in the next 18 months (the scanning part and the content). In some countries they are almost there (Japan, Korea)

Is Google dying? (my perspective)

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:03:00 +0000

This is my answer to the question at Quora http://www.quora.com/Google/Is-Google-dying. The question was asked this morning and this is what I think

I do agree Google is not dying, but it is not growing either (the way they used to grow) They have a big challenge on expanding and evolving their services. We are living 2011 and the search results are very similar to the ones that we had in 1999, yes, more relevant, but not a big evolution in 10 years... so, my point is. Yes they have great talent, but what are they doing? yes they have the biggest share in search and they are growing in some other areas, but... they are just expanding what they have or replicating what others are creating... They are not pushing us to evolve as they did more than 10 years ago.

Google will die if they do not go back to their origins. They are becoming (from my perspective...) what they tried to avoid to be 10 years ago. They are afraid of risk, they are not pushing us to do better things, they (like any other public company) want to listen the customer to ensure sales, without doing anything else but what the users want (that was Yahoo! in 2000). They stop listening them selves on what they can evolve from the world, because they do not want to jeopardize revenue.

Why do I think this way... they created Google to give us a better way to search the web... (great!!) they created (bought) Android, because mobile is (going to be) a big search market, not because they want to change the world... they want to meet stakeholders expectations. They are killing "Wave" because it did not grow enough to be a revenue center, it was an expense growing very slow and NOW Google is first a business than 2 guys wanting change the world (which is ok... for GOOG the stock price and in the short term)

So... I do not think Google will die, but it will be another Yahoo! , Microsoft, AOL, etc but it wont be an Apple anymore. Google had (still has) the opportunity to change the rules / world, etc they just need to stop analyzing markets and doing more for people (not through a Market Research or usability tests). Bring us a new and better way to find what we are looking for, something that not even us know could be better... Google did not asked anyone when they first started, they had a vision... and now they have WStreet commitment instead. So... as a Company you will do ok, until the next guy with vision bring us what you are afraid of now to do...

It is easy to write this when I am not Larry Page, but he had a dream once and we are thankful with him for that, and we know Google can give us more, due their talent, knowledge and once upon a time vision.

I hope I am wrong and they help us evolving the world again, risking and fast and not making decision based on stock price.

What the new Apple TV meant to me and how 2011 will be the TV apps year

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:09:00 +0000

There is nothing new about the new Apple TV, some tech bloggers and publishers confirm. Besides the price almost all of them see something very similar than the previous Apple TV and I am not talking about technical changes, like streaming vs. syncing or size, because there are some obvious evolutions there... but the one that impacted me the most and made me realize that we should be TV ready is the AirPlay future!!!

AirPlay will not only allow to stream video content from your iPod, iPhone, MacBook or iPad. In the future (and I think early next year) will be open to stream any kind content from these sources. what is this potentially amazing?

Let's talk about the obvious potential benefits:

1.- Gaming:

Kids, young adults... all gamers will be able to bring to the big screen their games, while keept the ipod or iphone as their joystick with all it's current capabilities (motion, speed, etc) but not only that... a big screen will bring not only a zoom to current screens (like the iPhone apps behave on an iPad) but I assume the apps will have the iPhone user interface and the one to be streamed taking advantage of the TV screen with more content and better images (in size terms) . Multiplayer with out a console? in a big screen? and with best joystick? (buttons on my phone to control the games on TV... the joystick creativity will explode, between motion and now having private images for the player or new controls ideas...

2.- Video / TV new and better sources

It is very difficult to do alliances and partnerships in all over the world with all the TV networks and content producers, but what will happen if they can serve them selves and can create their own apps (by show or by channel). We will be able to have the Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, NBC, CBS, FOX, CNN apps not only to stream recorded content, but to see live content and pay per subscription or on-demand and they will be able to set up their own prices.... But better than that we will have an user interface competence between all of them. I see a 2011/12 in where my CNN app will allow me to stream the live news to my TV while having the user to interact with the content on my phone... (stocks graphs, references links to wikipedia or related news on my phone) I will be able to stream the US Open from CBS and have all the statistics and tournament info on my phone or iPad, like the way we do today, but live, not with a delay and with the capability to have an extra level of interactivity (replays, camera control, tickets to buy, etc...) I know you might say " today we can do that" and it is true, but in the future will be just with ONE click, just ONE app will bring you all of these features... convenience will drive the more and better content consumption and interaction.

We wont have any more boxes next to our TV in our home in 2015 and 2011 will be the beginning... the phone or tablet will be our box to manage video content, live and recorded.

the utility for other industries will be amazing! no more laptops to connect in the meeting rooms, schools sharing the best technology at a low price but great volume, Zagat will give us the info of the restaurant, while we stream a slide show or video of this one to share it with our friend and family in the living room before leaving to have dinner.

The TV wont be the 3rd screen for the users... will be our best extension in where we will be able to stream our recorded and LIVE content.

why this will be also a great opportunity for Apple? They are on the content distribution business, but also in the apps business... they will be making more money... they do not have to build the marketplace trying to sell a new console... they already have hundreds of millions of iPhones, iPods and iPads around the world who will be ready to push content to their TVs...

Now I know why the Apple TV was a hobby... because (I think) that will be just a temporary enabler, but in the future I think Apple will allow TV Manufacturers to implement AirPlay as a standard component...

Thanks for readying these ideas, I am sure you must have great ones and will be great if you share those with us

Gracias

The new Digg

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 13:58:00 +0000

b207617e49fe4a1dbd2964bf3470bc2

I really like the new Digg. Not only because you can connect your RSS just validating it with a key but as a user I see now a better benefit, versus following news on Twiter or Facebook. I am planning to use Digg as my news source early in the morning instead of going to multiple sites or using aggregators like Pulse.

Go to Digg.com use it and let me know what you think about the new site

We all love the future! and I hope it comes more health care related

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 20:08:00 +0000

I had the chance last week to listen to John Battelle, Wierd Magazine co-founder at the IAB Conecta event in Mexico City.

That might be the presentation that impressed me the most! not only because he is a great speaker who has access to very relevant information every other day, but, he shared with us his honest aspirations covered of vision and passion.

We all love to hear about the future, but when talking about technology we can hear the most amazing or weird ideas and we do not know what the future will be... maybe the crazy non sense idea will be the one we live... Anyway, Battelle focus part of his conversation on how the integration of mobile, location, augmented reality, web of things and e-commerce could be in the near future.

"we could go into an apparel store, check in, put our phone over the jeans wall and easily identify our size and style... we can take the jeans and just leave with out going to the cashier or using any clerk... and we will be charged on our selected credit card for the exact amount, plus personal discounts or assigned coupons immediately. Awesome! and real"

We are not far from that. today we can check in a lot of places... we can use augmented reality to bring information to real things, that if it is related to us, can be filtered, etc, etc, etc... Who could be working right now on this? who will be the innovator who will bet on this and probably will loose, due the low consumer adoption, but that will build the pilars of the future... ? who is that guy?

but not only for this.. who will be building it for health care? it is clear that consumption drives our lives in terms of innovation (in a lot of cases, not in all of them) but what can we do to start building or developing similar technologies but for health care? Nowadays I am sure there are a lot of tech innovators creating useful and incredible technologies for health care, but I am not sure if there is one integrating technologies in order to make something like the previous story but for health care...

how the story could be for health care? there are a lot of potential uses but I will share the first one that comes to my mind:

Physician in a drug store:

Physicians will be able to be informed and updated in places like drug stores, just pointing from outside the counter to a new drug, being able to pull not only the latest info, but the summary of the latest symposiums related to the desease that the drug helps to manage... the summary of the yesterday's presentation done 10,000 miles away from that drug store... or the latest clinical trials to demonstrate effectiveness OR compare live between presentations or competitor drugs... imagine the potential to educate not only all the time, but helping them to not spend the time, but as soon as he check-in all the info is presented to his specialty and based on his medical preferences... if he is more oriented to try new treatments the basic comparisons will be like that and he actually will be able to leave a recommendation just to his/her patients no matter from where city, state or country, in where he will be able to share info to be delivered in any format JUST to his patients at the moment they stop by any drug store with the intention of buying the drug related to his/her comments....

This is not new... it is possible today... what is behind is the user... what is behind is the GUI or NUI simple development for this kind of applications... I hope the universities are giving this ideas to future physicians so they can ask for them

I am sure there are companies not just thinking on how to make this happen now, but also building more incredible things and if not!!!! do it!

This is not just a fancy idea is the future of information sharing, maybe not exactly like this, but easier and more powerful. I hope the Sermo's Symposier's Ozmosis and all others have this kind of things on their pipelines

Thanks

Groupon, is it really a good option?

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 11:48:00 +0000

I just want to express a big disappointment. During the past year or more, Groupon.com became not only a hot new company, a trend and a great option for buyers in the USA and afuture good option in other countries, including some in Latin America.

There are now hundreds of copycats and vertical solutions on different industries.
I wont discuss the GUI or business model, but the deals. In March 13th, 2010 I wentto Groupon interested on a sailing deal.

It was to me a great deal, saving me more than 50%, from $180 to $79 USD...

Wel, I went this morning to the vendor's site, in order to find out more about how to register or book my lesson and what did I find?

The regular cost is just $1.00 (one dollar) more than the "deal" that I bought... I really hope I'm wrong, but it doesn't look like I am... how many deals are not really "hot deals"? how many buyers are just paying a little bit less? I do not have a big issue for 79 USD, but why this is happening? supposed to be a mega deal and now it seams it was just advertising. I am sure Groupon can no control their advertisers price list, but how to expand the business without loosing control on this matters, that actually are the real utility of the site?

Now I will be buying "deals" only of things that I know the price before I see the deal, in where I am aware of the price range before... I do not want this to happen again and maybe I wont be using Groupon.com again...

The web is about utility, usability and likeness... I always repete this, and what supposed to be a great utility... was just an illusion. this hurts the web, the trust on e-commerce and the attractiveness of new trendy sites

The 4 step process for Digital Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:32:00 +0000

I know all of us have our own method or we adopt what we think is the best for us.

I like to share this time the process that I built for all the Digital projects in where I participate. This is not an official method from the company I work for, this is what I do on my DM projects.

Also, I had the chance to present these ideas on March 24th at the Eye For Pharma, Latin America Online Marketing Summit 2010.

Intro: Nowadays we can find a lot of Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and some other Social Media efforts from the Pharmaceutical Companies. I do celebrate the effort and experimentation, but each one of them knows what they are trying to achieve. Social Media is an open forum in where we should drive the conversation. For corporate or personal use, these forums are not to talk to all, about all or participate in all the discussions. There are specific channels for specific conversations or process. As a personal human... we won't answer a request that could impact our security or jeopardize in any way... I AM NOT TALKING about openness, I am talking about defining the GOAL of this channel or platform and then improve and adjust on the way, but based on a goal. I think that it is not healthy for any one to listen, communicate or interact about all topics in the same channel, because this will create noise and the benefits will be lost for all the participants. Well, my point here is that Big Pharma is testing the water and now, some of them are publishing corporate news, investor relations, general info and some other actions, but I am sure no one already found out the best way... and I think is because we are "testing" the channel and not supporting a goal, so that is why I "think" it was relevant to re-enforce the method and not promote the experimentation for experimentation. I do agree with pilots, but Pharma has been experimenting and killing digital opportunities, because we tend to think in the opposite way "pilot the channel with out an specific goal, different of experimenting the channel will always fail".

I want to say again that I acknowledge the efforts from JC, J&J, AZ, PFE, etc... but I do not think the brands or other Pharama companies should think that they (the ones above) have a best practice... they are just practicing .

That is also why I want to share my process (which is from my own perspective and it could be wrong from some others perspective... I am not saying this is the holly grail)

1.- The steps are easy:

Identify Challenges
Define Actions
Produce
Distribute

I always add an extra one which is Optimize, but for the purpose of this blog it is not relevant

2.- Identify Challenges
Marketers, Communicators, Sales, Customer Service all of these areas have challenges, opportunities, risks, etc... and that is why the Marketing, Sales, Brand plans are for... to define strategies to helps us achieve our goals, right? so why I keep hearing that the goal is to use Twitter???? that can not be a goal. and believe me, we still hearing the "let's do SOMETHING in Twitter, lets USE it"instead of being open during the plan development process or the optimization process to these and other Digital alternatives. That is why I remember always to my clients and team that we should understand first the GOAL and then... the next step

3.- Define Actions
I am not proposing to limit our actions just to one... The beauty of the Internet is that we can do all 3, but if we not define which one will help us to tackle our goal, then, we will be lost trying to do all of them.

Research (Listen)
Publish (Communicate)
Interact (Engage)

These are the 3 only activities that we can do online... all that you can think or want to add is inside on one of them and we should think what will need to produce or set up for each one of them. We can limit our selves to just Listen, but then we wont deliver or we can communicate without listening, but that will be like just talking in an empty stadium. Or we can communicate different things from what we listen and then we wont engage with our audience. We should think very well how and which actions will help us to achieve our goal

4.- Produce
Utility, Usability and Likeness... All the above actions should have a process and a deliverable with these 3 principals. It has to be useful (the content, process, topic, ALL); it has to be usable (the GUI, the IA, the PROCESS behind each action, the access to our information or the process to engage...) and it should be attractive (the style, look and feel, everything) should be as our audience is expecting it from us

5.- Distribute
Finally! identify how to distribute your actions. a Website? a micros site? a Twitter account? a Fan Page on Facebook? Search marketing? it could be a lot of these, but now you know that these are going to be distribution or gathering channels, but NOT the goal

In the presentation below I post some examples:
a.- M3 in Japan is the #1 physicians site and its a site in where physicians find video presentations from different Pharma companies... distributing through content partners or this kind of sites it is important, we could have the BEST web site with live video support from sales reps... but our audience goes to other place to do so and not just from you, but from all pharma companies... So do not hink that ALL your actions should be in a website... maybe is just creating content and publishing somewhere else

b.- Be up to date. Telepresence is a technology that allow us to have a better distance collaboration experience, not just for corporate meetings, but to interact with our partners and customers... that is also Digital! Digital is not only a PC, the internet lives every day more and more outside the PC as we know it

c.- Adjust the experience to your audience. A video or webcast its not for every body or the Graphic User Interface to find the content could not be the most friendly to all our users or for all our purposes. If you know what you want to do, understand your audience and define your actions, then when defining the utility and usability + likeness, you will define the best scenario to deliver your action and this is a very good example in where the content was posted in a 3D environment that allowed the audience to find the presentations in a way they knew how to do it! because they go to multiple life congress, then.. for a month, a virtual congress was set up for them

d.- When delivering a message or listening your audience, go where they express them selves in the same environment wish you could listen or help. Do not approach a client when he or she is with he or her family or friends, or resting, or entertaining... in this case... try professional networks, like Sermo, Ozmosis or Symposier

Bellow you will find out the presentation that I used during my lecture. Again this is my personal perspective and I just like to share it with you

thanks!!!

The Digital Marketing Process

View more presentations from Jorge Herrera.

Sitios anti-nice que funcionan wow! para hacer dinero. Los infomerciales en Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 11:46:00 +0000

Tengo algún tiempo queriendo compartir mi punto de vista sobre algunos sitios que considero carentes de diseño, pero que tienen resultados brillantes en cuanto a ventas. Mi punto no es criticar el aspecto gráfico de estos sitios, sino enfatizar como el diseño gráfico es "subjetivo" y NO es necesariamente el factor principal para algunos targets o en algunos contextos. Un sitio provee una experiencia satisfactoria, cuando cumple en cuanto a utilidad, facilidad de uso y es atractivo desde la perspectiva y las expectativas de su audiencia objetivo.

El contenido, su arquitectura, el estilo, accesibilidad, formato y diseño son los factores que hacen relevante a la información... Un sitio puede ser un éxito entre críticos de diseño tipográfico, pero probablemente NO para su audiencia, ya que no cumple al 100% con un contenido útil o simplemente no es fácil de usar o accesar... de ahi que continuo insistiendo que esos 3 criterios son los mas importantes (utilidad, facilidad de uso y atracción). Y hoy quiero mostrar sitios que NO cumplen tanto con la parte gráfica, pero eso no significa que no son atractivos, utiles y fáciles de accesar para su target.

Estos sitios son como música POP, la cual no es la favorita de los conocedores y conocedores, pero cumple y rebasa las expectativas de la audiencia a la que va dirigida.

Vamos... estos sitios son como Here I go again de White Snake... Ningún experto o fan del metal lo considera Heavy Metal o ni siquiera Rock... fue muy criticado, pero vendieron muchos millones mas de discos que varios de sus críticos, y esto fue, porque su audiencia no eran Metal fans, sino fans de música POP con curiosidad sobre el Metal, por lo tanto... White Snake y esta canción, el video, el look de la banda, etc.. hicieron click perfecto

Quiero también mencionar que existen sitios que considero MUY atractivos gráficamente, como el sitio de Get the Glass de la campaña de Got Milk http://www.gettheglass.com o el sitio de Water Life http://interactive.nfb.ca/waterlife/ . Estos sitios no los he revisado en cuanto a su utilidad, usabilidad o que tan atractivos son para su audiencia. tienen estupendas herramientas de usablity y son graficamente MUY atractivos, pero no los he revisado por completo y solo los incluyo como ejemplos de sitio gráficamente muy bien logrados.

Por otro lado tenemos sitios que son MUY útiles, tanto, que se han convertido en los sitios que utilizamos con mas frecuencia y esos sitios son como todo

s los de la lista de Time " 50 Best Websites 2009 " pero tampoco voy hablar de estos y sólo los incluyo para ilustrar el concepto de utilidad, pero sin que haga algún análisis completo.

Finalmente! hablo de sitios que son HORRIBLES gráficamente, pero que son útiles, prácticos y atractivos (atractivo NO es simplemente en cuanto al aspecto gráfico) para su audiencia. Sitios que veo cada vez mas en Internet, que no son una tendencia gráfica, pero que las micro, pequeñas y medianas empresas están utilizando cada vez mas, para hablar algún producto en específico y sólo quiero enfatizar algunos aspectos de ellos, que me parece que son una buena enseñanza y que probablemente son algunas de las razones de su éxito.

1.- La propuesta de valor es lo primero que se lee y la plantean muy bien a partir del problema del cual son la solución. (un básico del marketing y que aveces olvidamos...) ReplaceMySlef.com te recibe con un gigantesco header que te explica rápido el propósito del sitio y servicio. Y no sólo te presentan la propuesta, sino que te la venden como si fueras MUY afortunado por haber encontrado el sitio y te van a revelar un secreto (Un tanto tipo infomercial). Me parece que la intención de hacerlo ver tan pobre gráficamente, es para venderle la idea al público, de que John Jonas, quien es el que vende el servicio de consultoría de Replace My Self, es una persona cualquiera, y que hizo esto con mínimos recursos, para compartirnos esta "maravillosa" oportunidad... Nos vende con este look, que atrás de el no hay una empresa con un músculo de marketing haciendo y diseñando campañas... sino que el simplemente prendió su computadora, se conectó y comenzó a escribir, para compartirnos su experiencia... Me explico? nos está vendiendo el concepto del Yes we can!!!!

A mi lo primero que me evocó fue desconfianza... pero al leer toda la historia que cuenta.. es evidente que él tiene todo MUY bien planeado y por eso el sitio se ve como un blog. NO oficial! John Jonas vendió a través de esta página mas de un millones de dólares el año pasado y vende un servicio de información. No hay nada que se entregue! no hay nada que se produzca! y ATENCIóN, NO es un blog! aunque así parezca! se ve como uno, pero no lo es y BTW revisen cuantas veces repiten estos sitios que te van a dar algo gratis antes

de comprar...

2.- Cuentan una historia completa (relatan un cuento), en múltiples formatos (video, texto, audio, imágenes), para llevar y te regalan la solución a tu problema

Estos sitios tienen un formato tipo blog, pero no son actualizados como blog, asi que la audiencia se encuentra con un formato en donde sabe que puede hacer scroll y terminar de leer el mensaje sin que tenga que cambiar o hacer click para profundizar mas. Estos sitios cuentan CUENTOS muy bien. No te describen los features como si fuera un sell sheet... te cuentan como descubrieron la oportunidad que te van a ofrecer y te presentan MULTIPLES testimoniales. http://www.myfatcure.com/ tiene un video en donde

el presentador comenta como fue que descubrió esta cura para adelgazar y te "regala" un pdf con la info para hacerlo. En el mail que te envía está el link que describe la solución, uno no tiene que pagar nada mas, pero CLARO, el presentador ya hizo parte del trabajo que se requiere para comenzar esta dieta y si haces click en un link, te explica como te puede ayudar directo él y ahi muestra multiples testimoniales de su solución. O sea... en el home de su sitio te explica como adelgazar GRATIS, pero como requiere mucho trabajo el preparar la dieta, aunque no lo necesitarías... le puedes comprar su producto... Y POR ÚLTIMO... YA NO TE PUEDE VENDER NADA, POR QUE ESTA SOLD OUT!!! asi que te ofrece el que te puedas inscribir a una lista de espera! wow!!!

Quiero destacar también que en varios de estos sitos puedes leer la historia, bajar un mp3, ver un video o algún otro formato! son buenísimo en cuanto a accesibilidad. se adaptan a ti no tu a ellos

3.- El mismo call to action por todos lados!

En todos estos sitios hay varios botones para ordenar el producto o continuar leyendo hasta convencerte. Muy bien logrados hay botones de "Buy Now", "don't wait more", "do it", etc.... Muchas veces creamos sitios que se ven como piezas de museo, pero no hay un call to action claro, estos sitios que menciono, tienen varias veces EL MISMO call to action. el sitio del famoso programa en USA P90X www.p90x.com es un buen ejemplo de los call to action, no sólo puedes comprar online, también está el teléfono todo el tiempo.

No creo que esta enseñanzas apliquen al 100% para todo, pero si son interesantes ejemplos. Es un nivel superior a eBay o Craig List, pero NO es algo profesional; es como comprar en un fleat market ...

Mi punto NO es decir que estos sitios están bien y otros NO, sino que cada día mas y mas gente puede comenzar a vender de una forma semi-profesional o tener este approach de fácil acceso y vamos a ver mas y mas de estos infomerciales online de gente como nosotros, ya que están funcionado en cuanto a ventas, cuando el producto es un buen producto.

Google BUZZ is "good" but Yahoo! WTF????

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:22:00 +0000

Sorry for switching to english again, but it will be just for this post, as I want Yahoo! to be able to read it.

Background: I used to be a Yahoo! employee during 2007 (Mexico's Business Development Director) and I was a Yahoo! mail/finance/front page/ myYahoo!/ sports/ Delicious/ Flickr and other properties user since long time ago....

Google Buzz is having a lot of attention and I should admit I have been readying and playing with it and so far I do not have a strong opinion about it. I do not know if it is going to be the next big thing or the next big forgotten thing in some months (like Wave, which maybe will comeback in some months and I think it is awesome), but when I first saw and played with Buzz and then I started to see comments and articles, like the ones from Jason Calacanis.... in where he suggest Buzz is better than Facebook and Twitter... I started to remember with disappointment again to my dear Yahoo!

Buzz can not be the next Facebook very soon, as it is embedded into Gmail, which is good for the current users, but Gmail it is not the leader on web mail or even e-mail, so when we think in all the Buzz potential to be adopted very fast by a lot of users... that sounds like a relative reality, because it will be adopted by just a % of the current Gmail users, who are less than 15% (maybe more in reacent months, but not too much) of the e-mail users...

I do not want to write about Buzz and if it is good or not, but I like to talk about Yahoo! Their #1 property is Yahoo! Mail and 2 years ago they started to talk about their plans to make it more social (like Buzz) and nothing big really has happened.... As usual Yahoo! is slow, slow, slow and unfocused.

Here you have a Jerry Yang's video (from CES 2008) in where he describes how mail would be evolving to something more social... some of the things that he presented are now part of Y! Mail but NOT ALL OF THEM, NOT THE INTERESTING ONES and that is Yahoo! they do not evolve from that hypothesis, they do not even implemented ALL the ideas! where is my all messages monitor? or my friends comments on other social networks? or the map to browse my friends' local status? if these features are already there, why do not know about it, why there is no buzz!!!!! on it?

The thing with Yahoo!, to me, is that they become too much afraid. They do not risk. I work now for a Pharmaceutical company who is faster developing and implementing IT and digital marketing initiatives than Yahoo! and I say this based on experience in both companies. Yahoo! became too complex losing their capability to innovate. They can deliver new experiences to more than 500 million users and they let others to do so. I like to have new alternatives from start up companies, I believe a big chunk of innovation comes from them, but the R&D department inside Yahoo! (or at least the R&D practices) is good, but we do not see their efforts very often because they keep testing and testing and testing and testing, trying to avoid risks... well now their risk management process became their own new risk!!!!!

be faster, give us an alternative on Yahoo! mail! finish what you promised 2 years ago (and not just with Yahoo! mail) do not invest in fancy campaigns just be more like a start up and less slow than a turtle, that is why all your users (like me) uses every day less and less Yahoo! products.

I wrote all of this with an honest feeling about Yahoo! I really respect what the brand achieved. We can talk a lot about how they do things wrong, but they still are the #2 destination on the world.

They just do not get it. They are loosing every day more and more and that is because of them, not because Google or Facebook or anyone else.

The learnings to me are:

1.- we have to minimize risks but we should not stop risking, we NEED to risk in order to win

2.- be fast, fast, fast and good, good, good

Thanks and let me know what you thinkg

La ya muy trillada iPad

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:01:00 +0000

La semana pasada vivimos el lanzamiento de la iPad de Apple. Hay que reconocer que la expectativa era grande y también que la atención que tuvo el evento es digna de un blog por separado.

Muchos comentarios, percepciones, evaluaciones, opiniones, etc ha generado una pieza de tecnología. Algunos decepcionados (que no usaban una Tablet y esperaban poder usarla o querían una Mac Tablet y no un iPod Tablet), otros muy motivados y unos más proponiendo como usarla y como mejorarla.

Yo simplemente quiero compartir mi punto de vista y el como planeo aprovecharla.

(sobre la expectativa que se generó, sólo quiero decir que varias empresas pagan millones de dólares por tener sólo un 1% de la atención que tuvo el evento, el cual logró una alta audiencia, como consecuencia y premio a lo bien manejado de la marca, al cumplimiento de promesas y al ser la plataforma de innovación para otras grandes empresas... Apple marca (o refuerza) tendencias, que evolucionan gracias a ella) ...ok, dicho lo anterior:

1.- La iPad para ventas

La utilización de "Tablets" para ventas no es nueva, desde el lanzamiento de las primeras talet PCs, las fuerzas de ventas vieron la oportunidad de utilizar una mejor plataforma para mostrar contenido multimedia a prospectos o clientes. Girar la pantalla fue un gran avance y varios asi lo han aprovechado. Hoy en día hay mejores tablet PCs, mejor desempeño (imagen, velocidad de encendido, procesamiento de imagenes, peso, etc). Podemos decir que las Tablet PCs son una buena herramienta que está evolucionando a ser una herramienta estándar dentro de las fuerzas de ventas corporativas, ok... bueno, las Tablets ahora tienen un nuevo benchmark en cuanto a performance, La iPad tiene una excelente imagen, se enciende muy rápido (no hay un sistema que inicié en mas de XX segundos), está diseñada para manejar audio y video perfectamente, ligera y a un mejor precio o similar que una Tablet PC (no una Netbook, pero si una Tablet).

Ahora las empresas podrán crear aplicaciones de uso privado entre sus fuerzas de ventas, que permitan administrar el contenido que muestran en el campo sus clientes comerciales. Una aplicación que sincroniza, genera y permite editar presentaciones creadas en Keynote (el sistema para crear presentaciones en Mac). Estas aplicaciones podrán estar ligadas a los sistemas de SFA, CRM o eTMS, para dar seguimiento a lo que se muestra y cuánto tiempo dura cada mensaje frente al cliente, distribuir video, aplicaciones fáciles de usar de cotización, evaluación, etc, etc, etc. Aplicaciones que la plataforma de desarrollo para iPad, iPhone e iPod permite no sólo desarrollar facilmente, sino que proporciona una mejora y mas fácil manera de usarse. Las desventajas como la carencia de flash, usb, etc no son tan críticas y no se comparan con los beneficios

2.- Aplicaciones para el mercado de Madres e hijos

Definitivamente no creo que sustituya a las netbooks en las universidades, pero si permitirá a Mamás e hijos pequeños poder contar con un medio de entretenimiento e información. Este mercado encontrará mucho provecho en la iPad. Mostrar videos en el auto, tener un GPS y buscador local, tener acceso a herramientas de administración del hogar (lista del super, to do de pagos, agenda, etc...) es la nueva cartera de Mamá que además entretiene al niño y también a ella mientras espera en el coche o en las clases de natación... Fácil de usar y mucho mas práctica que una computadora. Sin problemas la iPad cabe en la bolsa de Mamá (y una netbook NO)

3.- Extensión technologica de jóvenes

La gran mayoría de jóvenes de 12 a 16 años, tengo entendido, utilizan mas PCs que Laptops o Netbooks y para algunos va a ser mas fácil cargar con una iPad en la backpack que una netbook, no porque no quieran usar una computadora, pero si prefieren un iPod mas grande... 300 amigos en Facebook se ven mejor en una pantalla mas grande que la del teléfono... el resto de contenido de entretenimiento (además del que se pueda desarrollar de apps para la escuela) son un tanto obvios y me los brincaré

4.- eReader y mi iPod

Yo soy un decepcionado usuario del Kindle de Amazon. Me gustó, pero no fue muy práctico, el Kindle merece el reconocimiento por su innovación, pero no por su experiencia de usuario... si puedes cargar varios libros, la tinta electrónica es muy práctica, es ligera... pero a algunos usuarios como a mi.. no me resolvió la experiencia de las revistas, mas que la de los libros y espero poder ver Fast Company, Businessweek, Wired, Inc, HBR y el WSJ en una iPad.

Los usos serán varios y la creatividad e innovación de los desarrolladores de aplicaciones nos impactarán en algunos meses. Yo definitivamente SI me compraré una en cuanto estén disponibles.

La movilidad para juegos, las capacidades de manejar mas info en un ambiente más fácil de usar, la portabilidad, etc... detonarán el progreso de las Netbooks y Tablet PCs, las cuales estabán mejorando, pero no evolucionando el concepto y eso es lo que sabe hacer mejor Apple.

Y bueno... pude estar por lo menos cerca de él... en este día tan memorable

(eso si, espero ya la evolución de Apple TV... urge)

(todavía no uso una, mis comentarios están basados en lo que vi, en haber adquirido un Kindle, en tener una Netbook y en haber intentado comprar varias Tablet PCs, pero no encontrar un beneficio real)

Gracias Apple

Answers, Questions, Social Search... a good example of doing things better

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:50:00 +0000

I do not use these services too often, but I really enjoy them when I try it. I liked Yahoo! Answers when started, but I stopped using it as the answers started to low their quality. I also tried Google Answers some years ago and the quality and process were great but all of us know what happened it (the rumor is that they will open it again in english as they keep using it in Russia). Paying for an answer is not a problem to me when I am looking for something and I do not have time or its more sophisticated than usual, for that Mahalo has been very useful during the last months.

Well... other services for specific verticals like Sermo or Symposier for physicians or some others to ask questions from patients to physicians are also great services, but the experience its very similar in all of them (it is not bad) and we do not know if it is the best or if there are better alternatives for the asking and answering process...

I tried Aardvark for the first time this week and the usability is great! you interact through your IM client, not only to ask but also to answer. I like also that you set up your expertise areas, so you start your collaboration process without going to the site. I really do like that.

My comment it is not about just these social search services, but about how to keep challenging the process definition, user interface, usability, etc.

Aardvark challenged the standard process and I think will become a very good alternative. What do you challenge you on your site, brand, product, service, etc? We always have to challenge our utility, usability and likeness!!!!

A best practice should be a base line to us and not a mandatory process or UI to replicate

The year 2010 will start in 48 hours! let's challenge our all and push to be always better!!!!

Enjoy the 2010!

A connected life. We are ready!

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:32:00 +0000

How is your product connected to the web?

Nowadays we can find a lot of new services online. There are new web tools almost everyday. Students, programmers, small, medium size companies and large corporations are developing and using these services.

We can find from Enterprise 2.0 tools to Crowd sourcing platforms (like Crowd Flower); from managing photos and share them with our families and friends to platforms to collaborate online with professional high resolution images; from the grandma webcam chat to the Telepresence meeting.

Anyway... we are getting used to these kind of things. It is becoming part of our regular way of thinking and living and what is next? we are creating, using and changing tons of data, data that we have to input to these services, sometimes uploading by one or by chunks, other times inputting data on fields. Data that lives many times in the thing that interact with us. We need easier ways to post information, not only different interfaces to browse and we need also things posting info by them selves.

Would it be possible to let the food I eat to send their nutritional data automatically ? when would it be possible to hang up a conference call and receive in automatic the tasks, agreements, etc? After taking a picture post this immediately tagging people, places, time etc?

There are pens now that record all your notes and send them to the web. Scales that post your weight to your personal data base... all of this without you plugging it into your computer.

What are you doing with your product (not your online product only) to publish info in an easier way? fast, safe, automatic? My TV, lights, notes, refrigerator, camera, etc.

I hope there are a lot of R&D teams, from ALL industries thinking about how and what for publish their information in an easier way to enhance their client experiences.

Share with us all the examples that you can find now, like LiveScribe (The pen that records your notes and meeting) ; The Scale from Withings.

The practices of connecting things to the web started some years ago and it is known as Web of Things. for more reference about this go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_Things

Promoting your content on social media it is not just making comments...

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 17:30:00 +0000

Social Media increased the number of content creators. Now we also see new platforms in where we can publish in different ways, for different purposes, different kind of messages, etc.

How to use Facebook, Twitter and a lot of social sites for marketing or branding reasons became also a trend. You can find a lot of books, blogs and web sites talking about that, but... as I mentioned in my previous post, there are a lot of implications and considerations on it.

I like to talk about my experience on blog comments.

I'v been receiving spam comments on this blog, and I also saw a very big amount of spam comments on other blogs. Comments like " hello I just want to share my site with you" , then you click the link and you find out an arbitrage links page or some other garbage stuff. But there are some other comments that you find useful and these are also part of a marketing effort. what is the difference? The famous "join the conversation" and not the "screwed the conversation"

Today it is easy to find who is talking about us or topics related to our brand / services or content, and we can add value to that blog, video, twitt, forum, etc if we do it right, but do we have to track ALL and post in all of them? the answer is obvious so here are some personal recommendations for this practice.

1.- How is your destination?

We work too much some times in promoting our content, but the experience on our sites is very poor, so the first task is easy, be sure that your site, landing page, destination its great (focus always in three things: utility, usability and likeness)

2.- Identify your keywords / topics

Like SEO, a very important activity for web 2.0 linking is identify the right keywords and topics, these will be the base for you to look for the right conversations in where you want to join in. Define specific keywords and sentences, avoid general things, this would just make you more inefficient on your conversations searching process.

3.- Search the conversation

You can search blogs / articles on blogger, google blogs, technorati, google news, digg, etc. When you look for things always focus on looking for very specific results and then, be sure that you just focus on those written on the past 5 - 7 days (not more than that). When looking for video content, look for videos posted on the last 30 days and when twitts or other real time platforms, posts from the last 3 hours.

4.- Second filter, site popularity

After identifying those relevant blogs, articles, twitts or videos. It is a very important task to select the most popular ones. You can see their total views (if you are in youtube), the # of followers, the # of diggs or the # of visits (you can find out part of this info on Alexa or using SEO digger tools). Once you know that you just found a very well written, popular and recent social media post... then you can proceed starting or participating on their conversation

5.- Undersand very well the content

Once at the blog, video or other, read very well, very, very, very well what they are talking about, what they are looking for with the content.

6.- Participate

After you understand, then you are ready to participate: Start writing your understatement of their publication, tell them what was valuable about their post and finally GIVE, deliver value to that post, do not just post your link, enhance their conversation, either with a reference from you, or your point of view and access to go dipper on the topic, either through you directly or your customer services channels, but be sure that you GIVE VALUE to them

7.- Always be you

Do not hide your self thinking that the audience will read better a 3rd person. that could work once, but it is not honest and once some finds, the consequence could be the worst (loose your clients trust). If you have to sign in order to post something, post with your name or your brands name and your position

The join participation process is not about volume, it is about value. Learn how to do this and then slowly and step by step, start growing this, either to more comments, from more representatives, etc

Finally, remember that it is more important to listen and answer, that just post words that do not give value to anyone

I'll keep a continuous improvement process on this and some other web 2.0 marketing practices and every month me and my team analyze the results (customers reaction and goals achievement)

Thanks!

Social, social, social... ok, but...

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:00:00 +0000

It has been a while since I do not write on my blog. This time I have some thoughts that I like to share again.

During the past years the digital marketing opportunity became more active (which is good). The web communications keep growing and growing and every day we see more brands and companies participating on-line.

But... during the past months all of them or almost all of them want to do something related to social.

I like their excitement about that, but... do they know what to do? do they have a real strategy? or we are starting to build just based on buzz?

How many brands are doing social web experiments right now, but they just are "doing" something, but they are not developing a strategy. How many brands are going to fail and they wont try to do anything else in the future years, because they tried, and they did not have any result as they expected?

Now we hear that they want to be on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or they want to build their own social platform, but just because they want to be there or build their own social network and not because they can enhance the client experience (better product, better service, support, marketing...)

Their main focus must be first in their own product, then on how to communicate it to their own targets and then build a relationship and YES they can support their commercial funnel using social platforms but only if it is necessary. Nowadays we can see that we can be part of a group, fan or follow brands and products that we might use, but our relationship with these brands do not motivate us to have an ongoing communication with them, or we do not want to share our private spaces with them or we do not want to share with others on sponsored platforms.

My point is:

1.- Brands. Please focus first on your product

2.- Based on your marketing strategies define what is the best medium to do awareness about the products or services

3.- If the brands want to have a conversation with their targets "maybe" the on-line platform could be part of the solution, but identify if your brand has a personality like the one the targets want to get in touch with or if the product / service or brands is only a commodity to their target or they do not want to see it next to their friends or interests.

4.- All on-line destinations could be the solution, but it is important to define what to say and then where to say it. I could follow the latest bargains to fly to a vacation destination, but that (to me) do not mean that I want to be a fan, be part of a group, enroll in a sponsored social networking platform related to an airline. I want to follow a topic, not an airline.

I learned that all implementation should focus on

Utility

Usability

and Likeness

All your communications should be useful for your target. Your website, your keywords, the comments on a blog, the posts on social platforms, display ads, etc...

Then all of the them should be on the right context. Maybe a social platform or maybe a lot of them, but also maybe just distributing your content on Non social sites, but highly related to your topic and audience. Think how usable your message would be on the environment you are planning to share it

Finally... work on the best way to show it (the best possible copy, image, etc...) if the message is the right one, on the right medium, but it is not attractive to your audience, then you could fail

I wrote all of these, because the web YES it is for everybody, but the social / web 2.0 platforms are not or at least you should think how to participate, maybe is just analyzing the content and not building a YouTube mimic site for your brand or company. There are more options that could give your better effectiveness.

Finally.. work with people who have real experience and not people who just finished a web 2.0 book or always read TechCrunch or other blogs. Work with agencies who understand the medium not who says they know how to do. It is incredible the amount of "consultants" who claim to know about this, but they just have good intentions, but any experience.

I know a company who wants to do something, leverage the power of the communities, but they want to build something and it is kind of obvious that their audience do not want to be in a brand sponsored environment... The real opportunity it is the connection development between the brand and its audience, but not having a site and track visits

Anyway these are just my thoughts and I wanted to share it with you

The content distribution strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:32:00 +0000

Congratulations for the 2009!

3 years ago I was with a couple of brand managers and we were discussing about the right strategy for the Internet... I remembered that conversation during the past weeks and I like to share some thoughts.

First of all (I think) brands and companies should have a strategy and not an "Internet Strategy" and I am sure almost all companies and brands have their own annual or whatever strategy and they do not want to create a strategy for each channel (TV strategy, Radio strategy, etc) what they meant was that they were trying to understand how to participate, take advantage, use, implement and manage the Internet as a communication channel, because they did not know well at that time.

After a strategy is designed (sales, marketing, etc...) it is important to identify which channels will be the ones which will maximize our efforts or the ones that we need to accomplish our tactics, etc. The Internet is nowadays one of the most powerful channels to start a conversation and/or deliver a message. There are a lot of tactics to bring your audience to your message or to deliver your message to your audience (email Marketing, Search Marketing, Seeding, etc...) . All of this is not new to marketers today. All of the most common Internet tactics are helpful, but in today's environment are not enough. Some marketers believe that they can just create a website with their different messages and then implement tactics as Search or Display Banners to bring their audience to their content, but that is not enough...

In today's environment we should distribute our content and not just keep it in only in one place (our site). Social Media is increasing the content and perspectives from our audiences, but all of this is thanks to the different platforms which are offering an alternative to post or BROWSE content. Digg for example is an alternative to be updated from different content sources. It is not a blog or article search engine is a place in where the content from different sources is posted from different users who think that, that content is relevant now. Delicious is kind of the same, and there are everyday more and more different alternatives, inside the "famous" social network platforms (Bebo, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc) and new different alternatives.

So... how to use these tools? there are a lot of practices, but the way I see it and what I recommended to those Brand Managers 3 years ago was to use it to "distribute" your content.

Is your content ready to be published in these alternatives? is it possible to "digg it" or post it at delicious? Are you posting your videos at Youtube and the different vertical video sharing platforms? Are you posting your new communications at the Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networks groups, forums or shared links? Are you uploading your pdf's or other different file formats at Docstoc or ScriBD? Are you posting your slide decks at SlideShare? Do you agree with the content about you, posted at Wikipedia, Mahalo, Yelp (not as comment, but as your official description)? Are you giving updates through Twitter to your community? if yes... how often are you doing it? if not... when are you going to start?

Obama did it, a lot of artists and more top brands are trying to do it... and it is because is effective. Your audience is looking for you in different platforms, don't you want to "deliver your message"?

You should identify which are the most important platforms for your audiences and in where categories are they looking for info related to you or your product / service. Then, publish your content, customizing the title and description in order to be aligned with the platform. It is different to post at Twitter, than Digg, than Facebook. There are tools to simplify the posting process; to identify the most relevant sources and to track results. Do not forget to track.

And you need to train your agencies (PR or Digital) to do this in an effective way. They probably know, but in my experience they say they know, but they do not understand well how to do it, and that is fine, this is new, but they need to understand the purpose and create a method.

Google is a great starting point and the official news sources like Yahoo! News, CNN, etc are also great platforms used by the consumers, but they are also increasing day by day the usage of the different platforms which are offering them an alternative to browse in a different user experience, what they are looking for. The list of emerging platforms is longer every day and you should define how to approach to them, how often to manage your content posts at there and how to manage a "conversation"and not only a one way message. I agree that there are not to many professional services who can help you to manage your communities, but if you find one ask them to manage not only the community questions or requirements, but to distribute your messages also.

Agencies, we need more community management professionals.

Brands, we need to hear from you in the different platforms.

Platforms we need a better user experience every day and APIs to be able to manage the conversations in a better way.

This content distribution concept, plus the traffic management practice will become a day by day task for top performers in all categories of brands.

Thanks and remember that you can find more about me at my LinkedIN profile

In my next post, I will be talking about how to track conversations or what your audience is talking about you (and where) using platforms like Radian or JackBe

The sites and tools that I liked the most during 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 17:47:00 +0000

Something that I really like about the web are not only the tons of info, but the great tools for different purposes and all of them with great results.

During 2008, the tools that I used and liked the most were:

1.- Animoto (http://www.animoto.com)
Great platform to create videos. If you need to create a great quality video at a low budget or without budget, then Animoto is a great solution. You can automatically create videos (in minutes) and the outcome is even better than some "professional" produced. I really like Animoto

2.- Get Satisfaction (http://www.getsatisfaction.com)
This is a free tool to implement a suggestion in-box to your site. It helps not only to manage the feedback for the site, but it does it also by page or category as well.

3.- ScreenToaster (http://www.screentoaster.com)
If you have a site and you have a FAQ section, then a video (walk through) would be the best answer illustration. Now you can do it for free with Screen Toaster. I like it a lot for my sites help sections

4.- SlideRocket (http://www.sliderocket.com)
I did not use slide rocket as often as I wanted to, but it doesn't mean it's not a great tool, because it is. PowerPoint can not deliver final presentations like the Apple Keynote ones, but with Slide Rocket, you will be able to upload your ppt and make it as nice as an Apple's Keynote presentation (or even better)

5.- Google Insights for Search (http://google.com/insights/search/)
I see it as the evolution of Google Trends. It is just great. Try it, you will see great insights from the search terms that you are interested into. From Google I also strongly used the Webmaster tools, Analytics, Maps, Documents. When I was at Yahoo! I tried to look for similar things from Y!, but Google is far away with this kind of tools. you must try a lot of these tools

6.- Scribd and Issuu (http://www.scribd.com and http://www.issuu.com)
These are not just sites in where we are able to search for different kind of documents (like SlideShare or DocStoc also) but the thing that I like about these two, is the capability to use their document browsers at your site, so you can provide now a better user experience in your own site and it will be powered by Issuu or SricBD. You do not need to invest in code or wait for the development.

--

The other links that I will post are related to the sites (not tools) which I consider interesting to me. The design, experience, innovation, etc are the things that made me went there more than 10 times, just to see the site, read it or use it.

7.- Pandora (http://www.pandora.com)
I do not need to explain Pandora, for me... the best on line radio experience, with an awesome user experience in terms of the GUI and how do they post the ads inside the site, that is something that I admire also

8.- Razorlight (http://www.razorlight.co.uk/)
What???? yes this is a band web site, and... WOW!!!! what a great way to use video in a site. just go there and see what I mean. I hope they still have the full screen video experience... reduce the browser window (do not minimize it, only make it smaller) and you will see how the video goes smaller also, with out loosing the streaming delivery. The GUI, the music, etc... what a great site. I used to design a lot (more than 8 years ago). If you are a designer, then try it. The full experience is the music, image, video, font, etc... that is design, the hole package

9.- TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/)
My number one source for new things, news and for my own daily entertainment is TechCrunch. My proffered blog. I strongly recommend it

10.- Revision 3 (http://www.revision3.com) and other through Apple TV
Diggnation, Tekzilla and GreekBrief.TV (http://www.geekbrief.tv/) are my top video resources through my Apple TV, also the CNet content and much more. Try the video blogs through this video streaming boxes (like the apple tv) It is truly something better than TV

Thanks for 2008 and I hope we can have a better 2009. Let's not just hope it, but fight for it. It has to be a better year.

Regards
Jorge A. Herrera Rojas

The marketing effectiveness analysis future

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 13:06:00 +0000

We have been looking for better ways to reach our customers and to deliver effective messages to them.

Behavioural Targeting gives us the opportunity to deliver messages to our audience, during its related to us decision process and through segmentation we can reach our potential consumers. These practices are evolving better day by day and their purpose is to give to marketing the ability to be more effective with the marketing investments. If we can deliver the right message to our potential consumers and/or if we reach them when they are planning to buy something from our category, then the marketing investment would be more product ivy, right? well, that is correct "in theory", but to have the information to analyze the segments and behaviours demands a lot of data and that process is not standardized (until today) between all the targeting and behavioural targeting vendors and consultants. There is now a new association looking for the standardization of the concepts and methods. Today some of them offers the same information, but they develop this knowledge based in different data and the outputs are different. Some of them are correct and some of them are not accurate, the risk in the future will be the lost of trust from the advertisers in these practices.

Thinking about what info could be the one that I as an advertiser would need or the one that would help me to analyze my segments, its behaviour and my marketing / channels effectiveness, I developed a simple ideal scenario, which I hope to see in the future (maybe by 2015)

It would be great to have a tag to follow all my customers cycles:

1.- The channel delivers a "tag" to its audience.
It will be great if the TV screen, newspaper, pc, radio or other channel could deliver a piece of data to its audience. Today almost all these channels can have a data delivery component and it can deliver it to other component in a wireless environment. The TV and laptop can deliver a piece of data to those consumers who are watching a TV ad or banner (any kind of internet ad). There is now also "ePaper" and we know that the future of paper is not in jeopardy, but it will evolve to dynamic paper, with electronic components, so it will be ready also to deliver data to its readers.

2.- The audience collect and host data from different channels
The channels are ready or almost ready to start delivering data to its audiences, but how the audience can receive it and host it? are we going to host a chip inside of our body? more or less... yes. Today the credit cards can host data and this data can interact with different channels. The chip in the cards would be able to host info from different channels and related to the ads and info that we saw. This info could be managed based on different business and gov rules, for privacy and also for data analysis, etc... the info could be also hosted in other different personal and portable receptors like music players, watches and mobile phones, so the data wont be only hosted in 01 (one) device, but in all our personal devices (to ensure be accurate)

3.- The transactions, buyers, ads, channels, demographics, etc are all together now.
When the consumer makes a purchase through any channel (life, telephone, internet or other) the ads info, frequency, channel and other could be delivered on regular bases and integrated with all the purchasing information at the point of purchase and with all of this info I can analyze what was the last ad, the frequency, my competence effectiveness, etc and obviously evolve from one consumer to all consumers and redefine, find or manage my current and future segments and their behaviours

If we can have all of this data, in an open environment, the advertisers will be more effective, but the most interesting thing for the consumers will be that this will increase the competence level between business and the winner always is the consumer. Better marketing, products, distribution etc its always the result of better competence. Today we keep hearing incredible sentences or superlative adjectives in almost all ads and we should be hearing only the true, so if we have an open environment the consumers can analyze also what is the best product for similar segments.

I am assuming that we will be able to deliver TV, radio and paper ads also based on targeting rules and behavioural strategies. The ads could be based on the watcher(s) id from phones, credit cards or other devices, if we can do this we will be able to deliver ads based on consumer(s) info, content and context. family wathcing a movie on starudary night, will be different to couple watching the same movie or a alone 40 year guy. so we will be able to deliver all the ads personalized

Well, maybe this is a dream, but that is why I will be looking forward to see in the future

This is a simple diagram to illustrate my idea

Do not copy these examples, make them your benchmark, your food for something new and good, but do not copy them

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 17:58:00 +0000

We have been talking about how to deliver a message or drive users to our message. Social Advertising, Traffic Management Marketing, Rich-Media, Behavioural Targeting, Mobile, etc... and what about the content of the message? the landing page? the site? the game? the beef of our message? many times great campaigns increase your expectation and the final destination is a total disappointment. Last MIXX finale, is a "Gala Award Night"where they award the best efforts in many categories: Brand Awareness, Product Lunch, Search Marketing Campaign, Mobile, Widget Marketing, etc... you can see all the winners at http://www.mixx-expo.com/2.8/awards_gallery_2008.aspx

What interested me the most was the ability of almost all of them to impress me. I consider my self some one who browse, surf, analyze, research and search a lot in the Internet world and I love to be in this kind of events, because its like a 2 hours (or 3) of creativity. Like a guided ride through the best places of the Internet, its like seen the future but you know is the past for them. Many times you want to be ahead but there are others who are really ahead.

I do not mean that I saw new technologies, but different and effective ways to support a commercial purpose through technology and really admire that and that is why I was so impressed. I respect the work of this guys and agencies. And I do not mean only that this are great graphical executions or awesome code, but all of that attached to a unique concept, which supports a commercial strategy.

I will talk about some examples:

1.- Layer Tennis.
what!!!!! yes... Adobe lunched a site http://layertennis.com/
Adobe looked for a different way to advertise and lunch the CS3 (now Adobe is in its #4 Creative Suite, so this was lunched at least one year ago). Layer Tennis is a great concept, where every Friday there are design matches. The participants have 15 minutes to create something and posting (that is a volley or the length of a turn), then they post the result and the other competitor have other 15 minutes to add, change, edit or evolve the piece of art. Both competitors have 5 turns and at the end a panel of judges selects a winner. The viewers in the mean time can comment about each posted piece. WOW!!! right? the site is an archive of all the produced pieces and you can see past matches. ...Well all should be produced using CS3 and its the best advertising. Great and incredible pieces of art, produced in 15 minutes. The best part (for the business readers) is that through this tactic / channel, Adobe achieved more than 60% of its annual CS3 sales, and they did not spent a penny in other media advertising channels (off line).

The result is amazing and showed us the benefit of the digital marketing, through viral and social tactics and an open platform for the designers community.

2.- American Express Open Forum
Amex is looking to be a partner for business owners, and that is why it brings the platform and the content base for this site / community. It is a great site with guides, training information and blogs about finance, marketing, innovation, leadership and management. Do you want to know how can you have a B2B relationship using the social media, networking and web 2.0 new tactics? well Amex did it great and their goal was NOT to use the tech trendy tools, but they saw an opportunity to develop a better relationship with their client community in where they can provide something that their client community can consumer, maximize, growth and value.
http://www.openforum.com/

These are only 2 examples of great strategies on the digital marketing arena. more than video, webinars, web 2.0, wikis, mobile, etc. these brands were taking risks and now they are receiving the benefits and showing to the rest of the industries how to take advantage of the on-line marketing

Is very frustrating to see how other brands copy the concepts. if could work for you, then do it, I do not agree but do it. Many times the brands copy with out an impact or benefit analysis, without trying to develop something tailor made for its own brand, some times brands just follow other brands and that is why I ask for the "Do not copy these examples, make them your benchmark, but do not copy them. I am sure that all can do something that fits their needs, that will helps the consumer, to the brand, to the media, etc... lets build and do not copy something as it is. You can take and apply best practices, that is different, but copycats are just wrong

Android,The Google's mobile platform is ready and I do not why I am angry....

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:28:00 +0000

First of all I am happy to see that they accomplished what they promised, even though many analysts envisioned that Google would fail on the Android Project delivery for this year.

Here you have a fast demo of the phone and the platform:

Ok... why this makes me angry?

Apple launched Macintosh in 1984, Microsoft was part of the application developers and had access to the Macintosh platform and information months before its launch. Months after the first Mac launch, Microsoft lunched Windows.
Mac only for Apple Computers and Windows for any other personal computer.

why is this relevant? I will copy and paste the paragraph above and I will replace only the name of the brands and the year.

Apple launched the iPhone in 2007, Google was part of the application developers and had access to the iPhone platform and information months before its launch. Months after the first iPhone launch, Google lunched Android. The iPhone software is only for Apple telehphones (so far) and Android for any other phone.

We know how the story evolves. Windows developed a not very good system (until now) but they own the pc market. Microsoft was able to bundle MS Office and they are the market leaders of the productivity applications and finally they were able to take Netscape out of the business, because they bundled Internet Explorer and they forced to their partners to take out Netscape from the pre-sold pcs. Microsoft has a monopoly thanks to windows and they did it based on a stole idea / creation.

Are we going to experience the same with Google? Apple will never learn? Why Google complains about Microsoft if they are doing the same in other arenas like mobile, display advertising, browsers, productivity apps, etc...?

I am a Google user but a monopoly decelerate innovation and we are not ready yet to slow down. The Internet opened again the technology race, but the years before it were the worst in software innovation .

This is another Android video, this is from Google. you will see why I am so angry

By the way... and related to the new Microsoft ad

I am a forced pc at work but I am a Mac at home, an Apple TV, an iPod touch and an iPhone. And I also ware glasses

A mobile up-date from Yahoo! at MiXX

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:30:00 +0000

One of the mobile presentations that I saw, was from Yahoo!. I like to go to their presentations not only because I consider them a great platform but also because I used to work there.

well... the presentation was about Mobile Marketing and how this is growing, there are not new numbers as far as I saw. Every day more people are using their phone for web browsing which is nice, but these still are 20% of them. I did not see effectiveness studies about it and there is some doubts (from my side) regarding the future of the mobile display platform. The screen is short and if we add ads this could be very intrusive for the users, I do not know if the CTRs are less, but maybe the engagement is bigger. I see also in the near future a very big fight between the big players (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Yahoo! Go) and other platforms, trying to win in this arena. The benefit for the users is that they will be competing to get us (better users experience, apps, content, etc). So based on that I do not see standards in the near future.

What I do saw was a new Yahoo! application. One Connect http://mobile.yahoo.com/oneconnect/iphone is ready for the iPhone. This Y! application lets you integrate your contacts from different social networks, track all their status and also update from one source all your social status. I already tested it and works fine. I remember that the idea of this app was to be lunched early this year and with other phones, not only the iPhone (that is the bad thing). any way... the application is nice because lets you manage your contacts for the phone in your current contacts base (social sites), integrates SMS (only in the US) and its future could be very good if they evolve fast adding friends localization maps, voice messages to my firends and posted on their walls / emails. The ads could be something between viral and collaboration marketing, more than display (from my point of view)

well I will give more info in the future

The afternoon at MIXX (Engagement Mapping and Behavioural Targeting)

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:50:00 +0000

Engagement Mapping

On February of this year Microsoft announced their proposal of the Engagement Mapping as a new standard to measure the impact of digital campaigns.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/feb08/02-25EngagementMappingPR.mspx

And yesterday the talked to us about a compression that they did versus the last ad theory. They also published a communication about it at
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/sep08/09-22EngagementROIPR.mspx?rss_fdn=Press%20Releases

The engagement mapping really liked me. I do not see it as a standard to start using now, but we are soon to that measure methods. The advertisers look for this info, but the agencies and the publishers are not ready yet. It is not that difficult to start doing this, but you need some one helping you to set up the tag pixel (to track the ad effectiveness) and also some one to interpret it in the right way.

You can find more info at http://www.atlassolutions.com/institute_engagementmapping.aspx

The things that I like the most:

To measure our ad campaigns, we need to have conversion metrics, and Microsoft propose the following conversion attribution:

Conversion Attribution = Frequency / Recency / Ad Size / Rich Media (Day part, order, targeted, interactions

Other thing that I liked is that we can see the benefit or the integration of Atlas into Microsoft, after they bought them you can see the real benefit of this synergy. The Atlas knowledge and the Microsoft power. that is nice and we are still expecting something more impressive from Google and Double Click and Yahoo! with Right Media and BL (maybe this week we will hear more about APEX, which is one of the integrations of Right Media with Yahoo!)

BT

Later... I participated on a behavioural targeting session and I can not say to much about it. I can see that Behavioural Targeting, Mobile and Metrics are the top topics, but regarding BT, I can read from the speakers that this is on the future, "you can start now"but there is not enough data to move forward for the behaviour that you are targeting... so... if you are selling mid-prize cars BT is ready for you... but the benefits are not clear either...

WOW!!!! really... I think this will be big (not very, very big) and will be part of all the advertising, but right now is more an experiment for the brands than the thing to do. My conclusion is: if you have money and you can experiment do it now, help the industry to evolve about this, but if you are not ready for digital marketing yet, start but do not use BT as part of your strategy (only if you sell cars)

The first session: Inventing: Interactive Shapes a New CMO

noreply@blogger.com (Gzones1974) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 13:03:00 +0000

The speaker is the Chrysler CMO,
"Beyond awareness" was the slide from her that engaged me the most.

I was hoping to hear something different but, any way... We saw a very nice campaign that they will lunch for a new truck. They will create 5 different reality show webisodes (video episodes) in where the participants will need to win a race on their new trucks. I liked the production that they are developing for this strategy. what we saw was very well produced.

After the nice videos we saw the site that they will be using to host the webisodes and the will have a Yahoo! site (like the Pontiac some months ago, maybe more than a year now). A site with the videos, but also a site with info about groups , photos and answers about the truck, reality show participants and also the webisodes.

The take away for me is that Chrysler is investing every day more on-line and they are not experimenting any more, they are risking, really moving forward. I like that. They understood that 80% of their consumers starts their research on-line and not in an car dealer shop. Like cars, there are a lot of product and services, where their audiences uses more the web than any other channel, but the brand managers do not risk as the car industry is doing. Every day we see more like this efforts and I repeat again, this are not experiments, this is the tactic that a company with sales problems is implementing to solve it.

The site will be RamChallenge.com

Another thing that she mentioned, that I liked was "web driven communications strategies" she understands that today we influence perceptions and the users are there looking for info in order to build their own point of view... this reminds me "traffic management" I really believe that the brands are loosing opportunity on this win-win tactic. Consumers create (NOT SEED) social media based on their experience. If the product is good, the content will be great and the brand can advertise this content as a sponsored link, the creator wins traffic, the brand have the best content available, which is "True" experience content, the researcher receives best results as at the results page, etc... isn't this a great ecosystem? I am really pushing for it