Sep
4
Despite my distaste for the V-word, I am resigned to give the people what they want, and humbly submit — in preparation for your coming boardroom brainstorm — these 10 infallable steps to “going viral”:
- Be exceptional
- Be extraordinary
- Be strange
- Be special
- Be unprecedented
- Be inimitable
- Be rare
- Be unparagoned
- Be singular
- Be peerless
Yep - that’s it… 10 randomly chosen synonyms for the word “unique”. Total bullshit, sure; but I’d argue it’s closer to the truth than the volumes of non-sense that have been granted to the reigning champion of advertising lexicon, AND you’ve just saved hours of reading, conference panels, and distraction.
“Viral” is not a tactic… it is, at most, a symptom of being undeniably remarkable, lucky and smart all at the same time. Considering luck resides in the frugal grasp of serendipity, I suppose this list is unsurprisingly as inconclusive as its peers.
I leave you then, with the time saved above, to be remarkable, smart and focused.
Jul
16
In what might be my favorite irony of 2008 thus far, Variety points out that “if [TV Networks] were a person, they wouldn’t even be a part of TV’s target demo anymore.” A recent survey by Magna Global pegged the broadcast networks’ median age for live viewership at 50, a year past TV’s traditional 18-49 demographic. Don’t blame the baby boomers for getting old, though — it’s younger audiences that are not picking up the slack.
CSM’s Horizons Blog attributes the demographic shift primarily to the myriad of interactive alternatives which are making the web the “first screen” of a new generation:
This is one of the clearest signs that the Internet is a competitor to television. While cable TV is certainly another major player, idle surfing, social networking, YouTube viewing, news reading, MP3 downloading, and email drafting has pulled Americans away from the small screen and toward a smaller one.
As audiences continue to fragment across MANY “smaller screens”, media spending has been slow to follow consumer behavior. In fact, event programming continues to increase its premium, despite delivering less for advertisers. In many cases, it would seem that many marketers are holding out hope for the emergence of the next :30-spot.
Don’t hold your breath. Audiences are not simply shifting from one mass medium to another — and even where such mass can be rediscovered, the dynamics, economics and strategies learned from decades of mass marketing no longer apply.
Jun
17
OTX’s latest Teen Topix study looks at the “either/or” media preferences of teens. When framed in such absolute terms, the survey reveals an strong preference for technology in many aspects of their lives; but OTX and research partner The Intelligence Group are quick to point out that while teens have embraced the web, they are not wholly defined by it:
Teens are not a ‘one size fits all’ market and the Teen Topix reports show this group to be complex, sophisticated consumers and media users, just as we all are,” said Jane Buckingham, President, The Intelligence Group.
Given some challenging trade-offs, here’s what 750 teen respondents had to say:
As to their concerns online, teens largely cited fear of computer viruses (78%), identity theft (67%) and unauthorized access of their personal data (65%). [via Research Brief]
May
26
Branding Unbound points to a recent study by IAG which touts the “success” of mobile banner ads in delivering a 2% click-through rate as well as brand recall on par with television’s beloved 30-second spot. Verizon’s mobile advertising arm, who shared the results of the study, claimed to be “blown away” by the findings, but I find myself apathetic to the results and less than hopeful for the future of mobile advertising…
That is, mobile marketing has tremendous potential in the years to come, but grafting the web’s display advertising model to the cell phone is an insufficient answer. These short-term results are illusory and driven primarily by the youth of the medium (and even considering that fact, are still unimpressive). Mobile advertising is currently a welcomed makeshift navigation scheme driving hungry early adopters to a rather limited amount of content. That will change, and quickly. As time progresses, such untargeted advertising will fare the same fate as all of its kindred predecessors, moving ever closer toward total inefficacy as the adoption of the mobile web increases.
Still, this is a great time for advertisers to experiment and refine long-term solutions… I simply don’t hold much hope for the 320x40 banner, or the 40-character text message. Rather, I expect the eventual winners to leverage branded utility and geo-specificity in ways that the current web has only begun to realize, and which will prove all the more powerful across this new channel. An easy first step, which is still rarely utilized, is to employ mobile as an empowering touchpoint for traditional outdoor, print and TV advertising.
May
13
With all of the effort and not-so-small fortunes that go into building a timeless brand, it’s no wonder that company’s try to maintain orthodoxical control and consistency. The problem is: the real brand values are only realized within, and defined by, the mind of the consumer. It’s not who you say you are (most-often through advertising)… it’s what people think that really counts, and that “external” brand is not so easily controlled or manipulated, especially as the efficacy of advertising and interruption diminishes.
BrandTags provides some interesting evidence to the divide between a brand’s expressed values and the consumer perception thereof. The newborn site (launched late last week) asks users to summarize a random brand with a single word or phrase, and then aggregates the results in a tag-cloud (the most relevant application of a tag-cloud I’ve seen, by the way, since it relates common sentiment).
Take a look at the abbreviated perception of Starbucks:
It’s also interesting to note the focus and consistency among successful, single-category brands like Harley-Davidson and Netflix compared to broadly-diversified conglomerates such as Sony (an incredibly successful company by every measure, but spread across so many products that the brand itself becomes somewhat diluted). A brand is most valuable when a vast number of consumers can generally agree on what it represents: Google IS search, Ikea IS cheap chic, Disney IS family, etc. I’d love to see a calculated score added in the future — whereby the highest value is assigned to most consistently-defined brands expressed with the fewest possible tags — even though I acknowledge and embrace that such a system would bias against many successful and diversified brands.
Currently, the site is fueled by a very limited sample so go check it out and shape the results with your own opinion. It is a simple, democratizing experiment which offers a fresh take on the most powerful (and largely uncontrollable) facet of a brand’s real value: perception.
[via PSFK]
May
3
Self-proclaimed “viral marketing agencies” be warned: the days of anonymously trolling blogs, seeding message boards and otherwise posing within the community of social media is coming to an end. That is, at least in the UK, which later this month will enact legislation under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations aimed at regulating the use of such clandestine, faux word-of-mouse tactics.
Specifically, the following will now constitute a criminal offense:
Seeding positive messages about a brand in a blog without making it clear that the message has been created by, or on behalf of, the brand.
Using “buzz marketing” specialists to communicate with potential consumers in social situations without disclosing that they are acting as brand ambassadors.
Seeding viral ads on the internet in a manner that implies you are a simple member of the public.
Does this sound familiar? While I highly doubt the efficacy of government regulation to cure the problem, it is interesting that such measures have become necessary. According to Nielsen’s Online Global Consumer Survey (April 2007), 78% of internet users viewed word-of-mouth recommendation as the most trustworthy form of “advertising” (61% also cited online opinions, recommendations and reviews: effectively a genre of the former). Backed by the relative anonymity of the internet, it’s little little wonder then that some marketers (and/or their agencies) have overstepped common sense and good practice in their desire to influence the conversation around their brand while deluding themselves into the belief that such tactics can actually achieve real results.
In reality, clandestine and intentionally misleading tactics are not just bad practice… it’s poor and shallow strategy. In the worst of cases — the ones which likely and often motivate such thoughtless emergency intervention — anonymous rebuttals are as futile as spitting on an inferno. And in favorable cases it’s a missed opportunity. I’m not quite sure which is worse.
The rise of YouTube has been a particularly detrimental catalyst due to the site’s ambiguous URLs (which coincidentally was the enabling force behind the passé Rickrolling craze) and tantalizing, but prematurely counted, “views” metric. Armed with these two inherent devices, so-called “viral marketers” can deliver tens/hundreds of thousands of views for their client’s half-baked concepts simply by “pounding the pavement” and increasing the link base across the web. But there is a vast difference in the resulting growth curve — evidenced by an expanding spiderweb of connections — of truly viral content (the kind that actually merits, and is driven by, the desire to share) versus fooling 100,000 clicks that are effectively dead on arrival. Companies that intentionally mislead to spike the numbers, or hire unscrupulous henchmen to do it on their behalf, do not understand this essential distinction… and YouTube is really just one of many outlets for this behavior, fueled by baseless hopes for instant viral success.
It seems to me that the problem requires marketer education much more than market regulation — the market will eventually root out the bad and ineffective peddlers, assuming marketers care enough to properly screen the standards and practices of their brand ambassadors as they should. They need to better understand the data and community, define more useful benchmarks for success (in advance) and realize that there is tremendous value in openly listening to, participating in — and in some cases facilitating — the collective conversation.
[via WebInkNow]
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