Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

What Is The Blogosphere?

James Cherkoff — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:46:20 +0100

In an interview this week the Grand Madame of Madison Avenue and uber-boss of Ogilvy, Shelly Lazarus, spoke about current client queries noting that, among other things, brands wanted to, "know how to deal with the blogosphere." Remembering that the type of clients that Lazarus talks to are super-senior grand fromages of their own, this comment bears scrutiny. First of all, what is meant by 'the blogosphere' these days? People who use blogs you fool, I hear you cry. Well, while that may be technically correct, it is in increasingly misleading. The term blog lost any precise definition sometime ago as people used it variously to describe websites, forums, social networks, Twitter, Flickr, del.icio.us, YouTube and mostly just people doing stuff online. On occasion this was overlaid with a mysterious sect of folk called 'bloggers' who were viewed as troublemaking, angry, mischevious loners trapped in a strange echo chamber of their own making. Then, further confusion was added to the blogosphere when professional journalists started using Wordpress et al in anger, bringing huge media brands into what had previously been a lively coffee morning for the world's geeks. In a time when most Facebook profiles probably see more action than your average blog site, and the idea of sharing your life online, for some demographics at least, isn't weird but just what you do when you get up in the morning, it's unwise for clients to talk about 'the blogosphere'. Instead, they should be relieved that they can drop the techie references and strange language and revisit the blogosphere as something they know all about. Yes, it may be a new style of networked organisation and an ever-evolving environment. But the blogosphere is driven by something they are completely familiar with. People.

Social TV

James Cherkoff — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:33:44 +0100

When I met Miles 'LG15' Beckett last summer, prior to the launch of Kate Modern, one part of our conversation stayed with me. Discussing the launch of the Bebo drama that was to go on and become so successful, I asked him what the plot line for the show would be like. To my bemusement he responded in the vaguest terms, as if it wasn't terribly important. I followed up with an enquiry about where the web drama would be shot. Once again Beckett mentioned a few different places almost as if he hadn't considered details such as location. Finally, I requested information about budget and commercial deals and he said they were a few pending, some of which looked more promising than others. Putting the lack of specifics down to an embryonic plan, I asked Miles when it would be possible to launch the show. 'Next Monday', he replied precisely. The degree to which this differs from normal production planning and scheduling outlines the different mentality required to operate online in networked media. Miles went on that day to describe to me that almost nothing could be pinned down finally until the community was up and running and feeding back into the plotline. I was reminded of this chat today whilst watching this Tech Confidential interview with Beckett and his partner in the LG15 universe, Greg Goodfried, as they prepare to extend their online universe of 'social shows' with the launch of The Resistance. Here's a snippet : "The way that you actually construct the narrative, the way that the plot points flow over the course of the week, the way the site interplays with the video, the way the community works together and talks to the videos and talks to the characters, is all different."

Lies, Damned Lies & Media Metrics

James Cherkoff — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:32:42 +0100

In the coming years, as clients focus on effectiveness more than ever, marketing metrics will be revolutionised. Taking traditional media metrics online hasn't been a great success. The only information it seems to provide about consumers is how uninterested they are in banner ads. But the moment we step outside of the 'impressions' box, the scope for innovation becomes enormous. Just look at Google PageRank. The simple idea of measuring influence by noting who is pointing at what content was enough to fire up a whole industry. Then by adding another simple media metric innovation in the shape of AdWords (ie only pay us when it works) Google solved the '50 per cent' question and created an irresistible commercial offer. Which also had the bonus effect of making alternatives such as BARB panels and ABC figures look prehistoric. It could be argued that these two metric innovations alone, and how they have moved the mindset of the market, is where Google's dominance lies. So what next? Well, at a Microsoft mega media blitz I attended in Paris last year, the company started talking about 'last click' being a poor way to measure anything because it doesn't offer any insights into what drove people to that point. Was it a TV ad or a quick dip into a product forum that led to them searching and sealing the deal online? In response MS was offering a vast joined-up platform - MDAS - which would effectively follow the consumer in their commercial journey and map what they paid attention to. Over the last year, Microsoft has established the Atlas Instititute to promote this thinking, which now, mercifully, goes by the ad-friendly moniker of Engagement Mapping. In part it's a strategic stick with which to beat Google. However, there is a common sense element to it that advertisers may find appealing. As all media is dragged onto a single platform (aka the internet) in some way shape or form and people's journeys through different media become visible, the ability to track these routes to product could be very valuable to global marketing clients. But why stop there? The splendid Purple Motes writes of the possibilities for marketing when its metrics go beyond media to embrace other aspects of the 4Ps: "Considering other factors relevant to user response highlights the meaninglessness of managerial allocation of credit for ad clicks. An attractive, well designed product helps to induce users to click on ads. Should the contribution of product design be ignored in allocating credit for last-ad clicks? Should the contribution of product reliability be ignored in allocating credit for last-ad clicks? What about product feature set? Why should Engagement Mapping just allocate credit to advertising expenditure?" Which I think points at extending the social side of marketing metrics. He goes onto say that, "In practice, allocating credit is mainly valuable as a tool for personal and bureaucratic justification," which I think is economist-speak for Creative Awards! The big challenge here is, as ever, execution. Of course, technology will get there in the end, but whether Big Media is able to crawl out of its siloes and start sharing their precious data is another matter entirely.

Online Video To Beat Downturn?

James Cherkoff — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 08:48:18 +0100

Andrew 'Rocketboom' Baron puts forward a thoughtful (albeit partisan) view on why the economic downturn will lead to success for online video: "Good, inexpensive content that creates a spark will be attractive and more viable to an advertiser looking for a targeted, valuable audience. The better the content, the easier it will be. Meanwhile, naturally, there is a trend of more and more people coming online to consume media. This is one very nice strongpoint that we all enjoy for living during a period in history where the online population is rapidly growing. Perhaps your desirable audience demographic will grow over the next several months and even years, regardless of the economy. According to another US study released last week (Market Watch) “the number of consumers watching video streamed through a browser has doubled over the past year, going from 32% a year ago to 63% today.”

[UPDATE: Also, check out Furturescape's findings about how much web drama you can buy for £1.3m. As long as a piece of string it seems!]

Online Video - Where's The Money?

James Cherkoff — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:45:02 +0100

David Carson on the challenges to online video and Web TV: "The Internet is a noisy feedback machine where billions of people can provide input. This is the medium’s inherent strength. People participate, while with television, people observe. This is not the same argument as the old “Lean forward, versus Lean back experiences”. The differences between the two are far greater than simple body positioning. One provides a way to feedback, while the other does not. So what does this have to do with online video? Everything! People can share, embed, create, and sculpt their own video experiences with extreme ease. They become part of the experience, as opposed to being observers of it. Online video companies try to facilitate and encourage this kind use. The “show” is not the experience, the user’s activity is – not unlike the way we think of the difference between TV and video games. You don’t watch video games - you play them."

Book Review : Crowd Surfing

James Cherkoff — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:53:48 +0100

Crowd Surfing by David Brain and Martin Thomas is the perfect read for busy executives who need a succinct update about networked media and its affect on marketing and business. All delivered in a refreshing 'let's not get too carried away' tone. The points that stayed with me were the discussions about Apple, which despite apparently ignoring all the 'rules' of openness and transparency, continues to attract the most passionate levels of brand advocacy and even fascination. This highlights one of my ongoing themes with clients that there are no rules in new networked media environments and every organisation should be looking to find its own style with sensible experimentation. IMHO, the reason that Apple works in the modern environment is because they provide the tools that people use to pursue their passions, whatever they may be. Which is entirely in keeping with the spirit of today's empowered consumer. And furthermore, Steve Jobs seems to make a habit of understanding the landscape and creating new modern marketplaces that have the old guard begging him to relieve them of their profits. Which gives the blogging community much to drool over. So in short, Apple's networked media - or crowdsurfing - strategy is to make the tools that people use to operate in networked environments. Just like the people who provided the spades during the gold rush.

AppStore + AppMarket - The Pocket Bazaars

James Cherkoff — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:31:40 +0100

Earlier this year, I raved about the iPhone, not for it's groovy accelerometer but its potential as a market maker. And my, hasn't that potential paid off in the shape of AppStore. The iTunes mobile widget shop has served up 100m items in a mere sixty days, which is amazing even by the standards of today's mega-web. The really remarkable aspect is the revenue share that Jobs' service is offering, with developers picking up seventy per cent of any takings, leading to stories such as Steve Demeter picking up a handy $250k for his iPhone game, Trism. As a client of mine remarked the other day, in terms of business that is, 'like opening up a shop and sitting back as your customers arrive to stock the shelves for you.' However, AppStore follows the cool-yet-closed Apple model, which means developers are restricted which shelves in the shop they can access. Google is now looking to blow that thinking out of the water with the Android App Market on October 22nd, a purely open source SDK, where developers can not only provide the goods but also write the merchandising plan. However, it seems that Google see its mobile OS mainly as a way to build mobile search share. And even the Big-G might find it difficult to compete with the might of iTunes which is now the biggest music retailer in the US. Lordy.

Guest Post : Where's The Ad Cycle Going?

James Cherkoff — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 09:35:10 +0100

Regular commenter Rory MacDonald has kindly written this timely guest post. After the traders, it is the Trad-Ad’ers who will be the next to go. I was chatting online nearly a year ago about the fact that spend around the Beijing Olympics was the only thing holding up the Big Ad agencies. In an economic downturn, marketing and advertising agencies are always the cat that gets kicked twice as hard by their downtrodden clients. And yes, doom and gloom mongering is just so easy to do at the moment that it is already very tedious. However, as traditional advertising takes its cyclical beating, this time there is someone new on the sidelines watching with a sense of schadenfreude, knowing that the market is actually turning to their advantage and that it may never fully turn back. It's not just that the big advertising firms don’t get online (James posted that they do when he got back from Cannes). But I think it is that they don’t want to. Real, Open Source, online marketing brings the same free culture market dynamics to a stagnant, over-monopolised market that Open Source has done to the software world. We are unlikely to see Sir Martin Sorrell selling the Big Issue any time soon. The Microsoft equivalents of the media and advertising world will we be around for a long time and run alongside the free culture upstarts. But these monoliths will be faced with the same dilemmas as Microsoft, in that the only way they can collaborate with the new world is to cannibalise significant chunks of their bloated businesses. And further down the chain there is a whole ecosystem of smaller traditional marketing, PR and advertising businesses that now really do have to evolve to survive, rather than just paying lip service to the online world. As this recession bites, it will spark off a vicious circle in traditional advertising. Not only is it tougher to find clients, but the clients that persist are increasingly boring to a vast majority of the audience. Magazine pages filled with irrelevant ads for cars and other un-affordables and TV commercial breaks that are the sole preserve of price comparison sites, Unilever and Nestle. So the media itself gets qualitatively worse and in turn becomes less attractive. As this happens, talent is downsized from the traditional industry and left looking for something more inspiring to do. So real online marketing based on free culture just sits there quietly in the wings, waiting for the inevitable.

Why Not?

James Cherkoff — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:50:19 +0100

When I started Collaborate, a common reaction was 'What?' as people struggled to understand what blogging and networked media was, let alone its potential use to them. After a year or so of this, people's reactions changed to something more like 'Why?' as they understood what the tools were but didn't know if they were going to be relevant to their daily lives. There was much talk about innovation, strategic possibilities and opportunities - but more the opportunities associated with jet-packs and space travel than real customers or balance sheets. Having worked through this phase, and the rise of mega-social networks such as MySpace and its subsequent sale, conversations turned to 'How?'. This period was often characterised by one or a few individuals in their firms evangelising, aka banging your head against the wall of a small, solitary office. For the last couple of years, the question has turned to 'When?' as it was accepted that this new stuff was here to stay and the decision became one of timing. Over the last year I have noticed a new step. It's when people can clearly identify the job that social media can do for them and it becomes very real. I've experienced this a few times with clients and it's always a rewarding moment. It's when the conversation turns to practical steps, and previously theoretical discussions about measurement, ROI and scalability just fade away. 'Why Not?', they sometimes say.

Sea Monsters

James Cherkoff — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 08:27:19 +0100

While on holiday this summer I went swimming in the sea a few times. Initially, when I got a short way out I turned back, despite being a decent swimmer. Not because I was worried about the tides, but because I was concerned about what was beneath me. I didn't know how deep the water was, but more importantly, I didn't know what was down there. Irrational I know when swimming off the Atlantic coast of France but my imagination got the better of me. However, it was also exciting and there was a pull to go out further and further. It struck me that this sense might be similar to the fear factor that some marketing folk feel about the web and specifically networked media, such as blogs and social networks. What's out there? Is the risk worth the reward? Why not just stay in my comfort zone? Will I look like a fool compared to the surfers and hardy sea swimmers zooming out to the horizon? On my holiday, of course, I was easily able to paddle back to shore and as long as that was the case I really had nothing to worry about. So after a while I found my own space and started to enjoy looking around at the strange creatures nibbling my toes. And it was a very refreshing change to be away from the hot crowded beach.

The Pivot After The Tragedy

James Cherkoff — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:05:02 +0100

"This isn’t a post about 9/11. It’s about what happened afterwards and the longer term effect on us. In the weeks, months and years after the tragedy, we desperately reached out. We turned to our computers. We emailed, we poured over the thousands of stories on blogs. We searched for the people who had been there or who were sharing their personal stories. We commented, we connected, we asked why. News broke faster over blogs and email than traditional media. At the same time our government quickly learned that their systems weren’t built to connect the dots the way we really needed them to." From the splendid Go Big Always.

Five Billion - The Magic Number

James Cherkoff — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 12:12:55 +0100

There's so much (very entertaining) noise in the online world that it's sometimes hard to hear the signal and get a sense of quite how big the scale of change taking place is. However, two figures jumped out at me this week which seem to underline quite how greatly the tectonic plates of marketing and media have shifted. Apple announced last week that iTunes customers have bought five billion songs making the service America's biggest music retailer. Whilst in online video world, YouTube served up almost the same number of videos in a single month - July. Hard to argue with those sort of numbers. Oh yes, and note iTunes is now serving 50k movies a day!