Ways to Engage Your Customers

I recently ran across a video that’s too good not to share. In fact, it’s so good that it got me thinking about ways in which businesses are engaging their customers. Just thinking didn’t do me much good; all I came up with was the usual suspects, from uploading photos and videos to running contests.

First I took a look at Super Bowl 2011. Not ready to hear about the Super Bowl yet? Neither am I, really, but if you are going to do a social media promotion you have to start early. What I found was a list of contests:

• Doritos is back with what appears to be the 5th year of “Crash the Super Bowl” video contest according to a good post on how these things are run.
• Pepsi concluded its not-for-profit effort from last year and is running a video contest off the same “crash” site; good leverage
• Go Daddy, famous for over-the-top ads, is running a contest this year. Wonder what kind of entries they will get??
• This one is worth including for Troy Polamalu’s hair alone, although the sweepstakes appears to be more tied to the NFL season than to the Super Bowl.

• GM is giving weekly winners tickets to the Super Bowl and one Sierra Denali pickup. Seems to me they would have gotten more brand buzz if they had reversed that, but I guess even Super Bowl tickets are cheaper than a truck, even if you are GM!

Then fast forward to today. Just as I was beginning this post I saw an article on Subway’s new Facebook based-promotion. It is described as “a new crowd-sourced entertainment program… dubbed Subway High School Heroes.” At its heart it is a contest to nominate people who have been influential in the lives of teens—a worthy endeavor—but it has entertainment elements beyond the usual contest. Check it out.

Back to my starting point. The Tipp Experience video has been achieved viral status this fall. While that’s difficult to do, if you’ll just take a minute and play (with) this video, you’ll see the heights consumer engagement can reach!

Engaging With Customers

So far we’ve talked about how to listen to our customers and how (and whether) to respond. The next step I suggested in an abbreviated strategy development process is to engage. This is hardly a new subject; I found some good case examples not long ago.

Since I believe it’s important to have a common understanding of what we’re talking about, I searched “definition of customer engagement.” I got 150,000 hits, pretty much what I was expecting. The Advertising Research Foundation’s 2006 definition is widely accepted; here is a good article with an elaboration of the definition. The common thread in the subset of the 150,000 definitions I read is that we want to encourage interaction with our customers—real give and take that adds value to the customer’s brand-related experience.

A recent publication from Alterian quotes some statistics. Note particularly the second one. Customer service experts have long known that resolving a problem for a customer can make that person more loyal than the person who has never experienced a problem. It also supports my hypothesis that the customer experience concept--if it did not grow out of what we know about customer service management--is at least a first cousin. Contemplate the steps recommended by the Opinion Research Corporation. They say the goal is a differentiated customer experience. The strategic questions are:

1. How well do our employees deliver on our brand promise?
2. What are our customer’s expectations of experiences with our organization?
3. What is the gap between our brand promise and the customer experience/customer expectations?
4. How consistent is the delivery of our brand promise across all channels of customer interaction?
5. What are we doing to deliver a differentiated experience from that of our competition, and/or in comparison to other non-competitive organizations?
6. How is all of this information utilized by our organization to close the gap between the promise and the experience to ultimately enhance the overall customer experience?

The focus on brand promise is the unifying theme—the one marketers want to embed in all communications channels, at all customer touchpoints. While this makes sense to me, it’s more operations focused than interaction focused. Getting customers to interact with us seems to be the goal; it’s not enough that they just go away satisfied.

Let me give you two quick examples. I went shopping over the weekend. I had a few staples to pick up at Macy’s; of course that led to browsing other departments and, of course, that led to buying some stuff that I only needed marginally, if at all. But I was having fun. Sales associates were being nice to me; two of them stretched the definition of “red” to give me the discount for the “Go Red” AHA promotion (note more cause-related marketing here). One associate wrote her name on the register receipt and encouraged me to evaluate my experience. I got good service everywhere I went, so I did write a review when I got home. I thought that would be the end of it, but a couple of days later I got a thank-you email from Macy’s. It’s nice to be thanked and I was interested to see my review was being forwarded to the local store. Too bad they had to spoil it with a lame subject line! But overall good try.
The second is what’s becoming the ubiquitous video contest. This one does seem to tie in well with the brand promise. You probably know Flo, the terminally perky sales rep who sells insurance “packages” for Progressive on TV. Now, apparently, Flo needs help! You can send in a video in a contest for a live tryout, presumably for a lucrative ad contract. You can watch the “tryouts” but I don’t see that viewers get a vote. They certainly are encouraged to “share.” Progressive is clearly serious about it; there have been two days of tryouts in New York already and they are taking the road show to Miami next week. The program, of course, has a Facebook page and is being promoted by Tweets from the Progressive account. As I said, these contests are becoming ubiquitous, but when the campaign needs refreshing can you think of anything better???

Macy’s tried, and I did appreciate being thanked. However, there was no real encouragement to try to get me to interact further. I do expect to get more emails though! Progressive will probably come up with another cute spokesperson—is “young” part of the strategy, I wonder? And what will they do to ensure that all the contestants go away happy, if not richer? And will they use the entries to build any kind of relationship? Keep an eye out.

And if you ever believed in “build it and they will come” forget that now. It all takes persistent effort. That’s what builds a social media strategy!

Repower America's Video Wall

As the climate summit began in Copenhagen I received this email from Repower America. While none of the supporting activities are strikingly new, some of them are interesting.

Their communications in and from Copenhagen center around a wall created just for the purpose. It’s worth either watching the video or going directly there. Videos on walls are nothing new; a video wall is new to me. So much for the technology. The content blends contributions from corporate promoters of efforts to halt climate change with the submissions of well-known people in the field and of the general public. That alone is interesting. The corporate activists are interesting; some are acting in terms of their mission, some clearly in self interest, and others were something of a surprise to me. You can mouse-over the wall and see for yourself.
It took effort to get the wall up and provisioned with a credible number of videos in just a month. I’m sure that they did a lot of reach out; here’s how some of it went in the blogosphere.

This is a little different from the usual cause-related marketing in which one corporate sponsor usually plays a leading role, whether or not there are multiple sponsors. I was going to use Komen Race for the cure as a good example; I see they’ve gone beyond a single major sponsor plus many lesser sponsorships. Their sponsorship page is fascinating. It links to a page with 5 questions corporations should ask when considering cause sponsorship. The questions are excellent; they provide a useful framework for non-profits that are considering a major sponsorship push.

I’ll make the point again. Cause-related marketing not only is a heavy user of social media, it is part and parcel of social media strategy. Corporations are searching for ways to relate to and engage customers and potential customers in a way that does not mimic the intrusiveness of traditional media advertising. Cause-related marketing presents one superb solution, aligning the corporation with a worthwhile cause and providing visibility and support for the cause. Everybody wins!

Carz I - Can Ford Make the Fiesta Cool?

One of the car sites called it “the ultimate social media experiment.” Basically, it’s giving 100 lucky people the opportunity to take a six-month long test drive. The car won’t be available in the US until 2010, so 100 German-built cars are being used for in the Fiesta Movement campaign.

According to Ad Age, about 4,000 people applied online to take part in the program. The cars weren’t scheduled to be delivered until the first week in May, but the happy recipients are already blogging, Twittering, posting videos to YouTube—in other words, doing exactly what Ford wants them to do!
The home page of the Fiesta Movement site is a live feed of photos, Tweets, blog posts, whatever! It’s fun, and the users provide a spirit totally absent from the typical corporate site. Each “agent” has his or her own page to display all their content. There’s also a page for monthly “missions” starting in May. Road rallys, other events? It will be worth watching what they do to keep the interest up and the buzz alive! Of course, there are opportunities to share any/all of this content and a registration page if you want to be kept informed (lead generation, anyone?).

It will also be interesting to see what Ford does in 2010 when the Fiesta is introduced in the US. Will they have a large, traditional TV advertising campaign? Or will they continue to feed off the social media foundation they are laying?

The auto brands that aren’t busy just surviving are doing interesting things to reach people in more direct, personal ways. They have long known how to generate and nurture sales leads through the conversion cycle. They are learning how to generate leads in social media. I’m willing to bet that the ROI on the social media investment (cars included) would compare favorably with that of traditional mass media advertising. Ford won’t tell, but time will. If we see more social media campaigns as the focal point of marketing strategy, we’ll know it’s not only working but that it’s cost effective.

The message seems to be getting around the industry—more to come!

Facebook Grows Up and Twitter Grows Large

We all know that Facebook has been growing rapidly, reaching 200 million global users earlier this month. It gave itself and the whole Internet community an interesting celebratory present by setting up Facebook for Good.It also made itself a celebratory video with an interesting heat map of the distribution of Facebook users. Note the high level of activity in the US on the east and west coasts and in urban centers around the globe.

Facebook has long had a cause app. If you take a look you quickly realize that Facebook is not a good place to raise money, although a lot of people clearly have good intentions. We all know, however, that it’s a place to reach out—if you do it right.

So Facebook set up a special page. In its own words:

we've partnered with 16 charity/advocacy groups who are making the world a better place. When you purchase one of these gifts, 90-95% of the cost will go to that organization to support its efforts.

On this page you can also share your stories about how Facebook has helped you to give back. I particularly liked the posting from Sri Lanka.

This is a different approach to charitable works than the Ashton Kutcher/CNN Twitter challenge. If you missed that one yesterday, the first to reach 1 million Twitter followers would donate 10,000 mosquito nets to world malaria day. Kutcher edged out CNN by only a couple of thousand followers (see his celebration party). It made for a fun day of live television and got CNN (as well as Kutcher, obviously) lots of new Twitter followers, including me. Why don’t you comment on Anderson Cooper’s blog (he seems to be the one who spend the most time promoting the challenge) and ask CNN to make its donation anyway—as several of us already have done.

That’s what Web 2.0 is all about. Intrusive advertising is out. Doing well by doing good is in!

Video - The Beat Goes On!

Every time I ask a group who has recently watched television programming on the web, I get a substantial show of hands. A lot of them are thirty-somethings, so I don’t find it too surprising. I was, however, a bit surprised when I saw the headline in the WSJ Online recently saying that older viewers were being attracted to Hulu—long form video, especially entertainment programming. It turns out that “older” is 25-44 instead of the more traditional 18-24 video demographic, but it does point to a slightly different audience for time shifting by watching television programming on the Internet. Here’s a glimpse of today’s most popular on Hulu; it’s an interesting mix of program episodes and SNL snippets.
The growing power of online video is highlighted in ComScore’s December 2008 video report as published by Internet Retailer:

• 78.5% of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
• 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
• The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

The networks post their own videos and Marketing Charts recently reported the online stats for top programs. Almost 1.5 million unique viewers for Lost—amazing!


I’m still chewing on the “older” part of the WSJ headline, so I looked at Quantcast. The demos for Hulu are fascinating. The 50+ boomer group is represented, but the 12-17 virtually not at all. Jeremiah Owyang, who tracks the social media activity of the boomers, has often repeated that while they do consume social media content, most do not create it. That makes it easy for social media marketers to miss the activities of boomers on their platforms, so care should be taken.

Back to long-form video sites; who can you reach? Profitable, “older” demographics seems to be the answer.

The even more provocative question is the one asked in the WSJ article. Does this represent the real convergence of the television and Internet channels? If so, what are the implications? More “made for the Internet” programming, perhaps with emphasis on audiences that are slightly older than the general “YouTuber?” A long, slow downhill slide for television, as it continues to lose desirable eyeballs to the Internet?
Or have we not seen the full implications yet? Stay tuned to your favorite Internet video channel to find out!

Social Media Countdown to the Super Bowl - Pepsi

Read the earlier installments here.

A couple of weeks ago Pepsi sent me an email (I’m on their list) and told me I could get free tickets to the Super Bowl. The email takes you to a site called Dear Mr. President that’s populated with videos from celebrities, many of whom like Will.i.am were highly visible during the inauguration itself. The idea is a group letter to the new president, and viewers are asked to submit their videos.

The videos are submitted on YouTube, so I went there and took a look. There’s obviously a lot of other stuff in the Pepsi channel, but it looks like over 3,000 videos have been submitted for the “Dear Mr. President” project.

If you don’t want to make a video, you can submit text on Tumblr. This is a site I’m not familiar with, but it looks like a collaborative blog. Interesting. But the contest doesn’t end until February 9, so it isn’t going to be over by the time of the Super Bowl. However, when I clicked on the basic link, I got a popup saying I had been entered. Maybe I could win Super Bowl tickets or maybe a flip camera. It’s hard to tell. But it is clear that the winning videos are going to be posted on this site; I don’t think they are actually going to be part of the Super Bowl, although the Refresh slogan is being used in several ways to tie it all together.
While I was looking around I found another Pepsi Super Bowl promotion, pretty much by accident. This one is on a blog called “The Full Mommy” (cute, huh) and on a long list of other mommy blogs; the ones that that alert readers to coupons, promotions, etc. This may be a “reach out to bloggers” promotion; I couldn’t tell for sure but the rules on The Full Mommy site are interesting:

1. Leave a comment telling us your favorite Super Bowl Snack
2. Blog about this giveaway
3. Tweet the giveaway
4. Subscribe to The Full Mommy in a reader
5. Add our button to your site

A joint promotion between the site and Pepsi? It looks like it. You can get up to 5 entries by doing the further promotion; looks quite viral for both Pepsi and the participating blogs.

Put the two together and it’s especially interesting. Pepsi is doing traditional Super Bowl advertising (well, sort of; they’re doing one in 3D). They have related promotions which apparently are not actually going to show up in the Super Bowl itself. The Super Bowl Party Pack(s) will be awarded before the Super Bowl. The Dear Mr. President goes on until afterward. All of it is tied together as part of the Refresh 2009. It will be interesting to see if there’s any mention of these promotions in the Super Bowl, especially the halftime where Pepsi will be featured.

So that’s my update for this Friday. However, if you are still boning up for the Super Bowl, here’s an advertising report from TNS. If you find it interesting, I offer it to you with my sincere hope that you soon get a life!

So the Super Bowl countdown continues!

New Video Metrics

According to October data from ComScore and reported by MarketingCharts, “More than 147 million US internet users watched an average of 92 videos per viewer in October.” That’s incredible! The article goes on to say:

• 77% of the total US internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 274 minutes of video.

Yes, young people 18 – 34 watch more, but we’re all watching them. Here are the charts for number of videos and number of unique viewers.













Hulu, with its emphasis on “long form” video is coming up fast. When I ask groups how many have watched videos lately, everyone says yes. And a lot of them respond that they are watching video of things they weren’t able to see live—time shifting. A final observational note; if you haven’t signed up for a YouTube video channel just to see how a channel works (and think about how it could work for marketers), sign up for the President-Elect’s transition channel and see how they are using it and experience a channel. Don’t worry—you can unsubscribe later, but the fact is, YouTube only sends me an update once a week. A setting probably—I don’t remember--but the point is that it’s not obnoxious.

Back to the point, which is meaningful metrics to understand and learn to make use of all this video that’s going back and forth in cyberspace.

ComScore measures traditional metrics with panel data. As you see from the charts, the basic metrics are:

• Total unique viewers and number of videos viewed
• Engagement metrics such as duration and videos per viewer
• Key demographic statistics for viewers of online video by site and category

If you want to know more, they have good video demos.

Quantcast, which describes itself as “a new breed of measurement service helping buyers and sellers quantify the characteristics of digital audiences against which they can activate addressable advertising solutions.” Translate that: they measure directly, by getting publishers to sign up with them and allow their site traffic to be monitored.

That’s what they’ve done with video. MTV Networks has over 350 digital properties, with the largest and best known including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nickelodeon.com, and ComedyCentral.com, The addition of all these sites to Quantcast’s network of directly-measured properties will certainly add to their ability to provide metrics in the rapidly-growing video field.

Interested in the differences between ComScore and Quantcast data? There’s been some back-and-forth in the blogosphere. Here’s ComScore’s statement and Quantcast’s reply.

The arguments about how best to measure key metrics has been going on since the dawn of mass media, and it continues into interactive media. New developments in metrics are important to all marketers, and we need to keep track of what’s going on!

Video Ads Are Now DIY

A few days ago I stumbled on a mention of Jivox, which immediately sounded like AdReady, but for video ads instead of display. Looking at the site, I think my initial assessment was right, and that SMBs may be delighted to discover it just in time for holiday advertising. According to their site, their ad network consists of “over 600 premium - branded local television, newspaper, radio and weather related sites as well as some national brand sites and portals.” I see one of the major news sites in Boston on their list and others whose name I recognize, so the network looks credible.

The business was launched in March 2008 with venture funding and presumably is still in Beta, although they don’t make an issue of that. It allows users to create their own video ad or to run an existing video ad on their network. They describe it as a simple three-step process. Creating the ad is free, or they can arrange production. Let them explain the pricing in their own words as stated on their FAQs:

I thought the service was free? Why am I being asked for credit card information? There's absolutely no cost associated with creating your ads with Jivox. A conventionally produced ad for local television can cost $10,000 to $30,000, but you pay nothing for ads created with our revolutionary AdSlate technology. We charge you only for the advertising itself: running it on the sites in the Jivox network. Once you've create one or more video ads, you set your daily, weekly or monthly ad budget to place it on the Jivox network. Jivox will automatically match your ads with the audience that is most likely to respond favorably to your campaign. In addition, once you have a live campaign, we provide automatic upload to YouTube and to local search providers such as Google Maps and GetFave, free of charge.

The ads are created with an embed link so the customer can put them on a website, blog, etc., so they can do double or even triple duty.


There’s a gallery of ads and a page of case histories. These ads probably aren’t going to win creative awards any time soon, but a video ad could be a real breakthrough for a small local business like the B&B mentioned in a WSJ article about Jivox.

From the standpoint of both advertisers and publishers who accept the ads, this is another in a step toward making rich media advertising available to even the smallest local business in a way that makes economic sense. It’s also a way for publishers to monetize their sites, at least if the sites are advertising appropriate, as a lot of social media are not. That said, it puts a lot more pressure on the free content/advertising supported business model. Can that model carry the weight for publishers of content? That remains to be seen!

Viewing Socially

I’ve noticed announcements of CBS’s social viewing rooms for some of its most popular series. I’m not much for watching entertainment videos on the web. However, I have been known to watch a show or sporting event from the comfort of my sofa while talking on the phone to a friend who’s also watching it—I guess that’s the non-social-media version of the same thing.

Anyway I decided to check out the social viewing rooms. I had the direct link, so I looked at the roughly 30 that are available (includes Survivor and The Young and the Restless and lots of sitcoms, which probably indicates a young target audience—surprise, surprise!). However, they have the original Perry Mason series also, so they must have hopes for older viewers.

I clicked on NCIS. That took me to a login page where I could actually register and sign in or just use a temporary name if you want to remain anonymous. I signed in using a ficticious id and was taken to the room for the episode I had chosen. I was the fifth person in the room; 3 of us anonymous, 1 that looks like an avatar, and a kitty with a green hat. I really need a cute identity for these things. . .

In any event, when you sign into one of the rooms you join a program in progress--after viewing an ad, of course. There were two rooms open for this particular episode; Room 2 appeared to hold three of the same people. Were they looking for an earlier entry point? I have no idea. There were occasional quizes about some of the esoterica of the show itself. A comment box was available, but I didn’t say anything.

I thought that in order to watch from the beginning, you have to “View by myself.” That is true, but along the way I got lost. I could get back to the NCIS home page, but I couldn’t get out of it and get back to the page that lists all the series. I eventually had to go to the CBS home page and intuit that the Watch & Chat link would take me to the social viewing rooms. It did, and that might work better for the average user than the “social viewing rooms” link I was looking for.

Some of the comments on the NCIS page are pretty funny. I especially liked the young woman who had to wait until she got home to watch because they’ve taken off her video at work. Wonder why?

But issues of work vs. entertainment aside, it’s an interesting experiment. As is often the case with social media, it looks to me as if it’s going to attract primarily the young, which is fine. I can’t get to the advertiser metrics, of course, but based on my short experience, I’d be careful. I’m pretty sure there were only 5 unduplicated viewers at this particular moment even though the 2 rooms held 8 viewers. I suspect there are engagement metrics—viewed completely, took quizes, commented. Those would be the most interesting, but not terribly relevant unless there’s more advertising at the end. I didn’t stay for the entire episode.

I wonder what other applications might exist for this type of platform. I don’t see anything terribly obvious, but the social media space is evolving in interesting ways. This is a Beta worth watching.

I'm an Avatar: Can I Help You?

Yes, perhaps they can. Since the early days of the Internet artificial intelligence experts have been touting the potential of “virtual people” to provide customer information, service and support. I’ve been writing about them for most of that time and run into the same problem each time; the firms whose products I used as examples before are no longer around. This has been a really difficult market in which to get sufficient traction to survive.

That’s why a post on Dave Jackson’s Weekly Web Tools blog a couple of weeks ago caught my eye. He focuses on small businesses and really cares about customer service, so his evaluation of some of the current services was thought-provoking.

SitePal essentially allows you to create “talking FAQs” using their avatars or customer avatars from a photo you supply. All their services are based on a one-time fee. They have 3 service packages ranging in price from $9.95 to $39.95 per month based on usage and number of avatars. Check it out for yourself, but turn the volume down; all their pages open with an audio message—that’s what they do, after all.

Live Face on Web (also opens with audio) produces those little people who walk onto your screen and start talking to you. These are essentially videos, so they have a different business model—a one-time fee for production. Prices range from $259.95 for a 15-second/50 word video to $3,281.95 for a 300 second/1,000 word video.

The difference between these live avatars (is that an oxymoron? I don’t know!) and the earlier chatterbots is that these deliver audio, either automatically or on request by the visitor. Earlier versions were chat or SMS-based. They are the “chat with a live agent” functions that you see on many ecommerce sites, just using the bot to put a face on the chat. The Marketing & Innovation Blog reviewed several of these back in March. The VirtuOz site, for example, offers several agents, each to perform a specific task, from customer service to lead generation and conversion, on your site.

MicroSoft Live Agent also offers chat-based agents. You can take them for a trial run on their site and they have a good gallery. They offer APIs so developers can customize applications for their own sites.

There are lots of solutions out there. Hopefully some of these will survive, because the possibilities of improving customer service and support in a cost-effective way are real. The early developers loved to say that these agents don’t take coffee breaks or vacations. True, and the opportunity for consistent service 365/24/7 is important. Marketers have to remember, though, that good customer service requires access to a human agent if the automated services don’t satisfy the need. The trick is getting people to use the automated services before they pick up the phone or fire up their email program.

These autoplay video avatars are intrusive and annoying to some of us (not to mention the person in the next cubicle!). However, they may be what’s needed to say, “Use the cost-effective automated support service first.” How you say “then you can access life help if you need to” without encouraging people to go directly there is a problem. I’d suggest that you probably don’t make the offer until the automated service is finished. What’s for sure is that a good plan for customer service escalation is required to keep customers happy and costs low!

Creative Strategy for Rich Media

DoubleClick was one of the first ad serving agencies and now offers a broad range of services to marketers. Because of the ad serving activity they have a lot of data and they’ve used it to provide many useful reports. I recently came across their “Creative Insights for Rich Media” report, which can be found on their Research Reports page (under the Insights and Innovations tab).

I was especially interested in the video formats although the report contains data on standard ad formats, with and without video. Here’s a table that summarizes the data related to video.

Video Formats In-Page Expanding Video Expanding Non-Video In-Page Video	Click-Through Rate	Larger creative sizes give higher click-through rates
	Interaction Rate	In-page and larger creative sizes give higher interaction rate
	Interaction Time	Format plays little role in interaction time (content is key)
	Expansion Rate	Video formats produce higher expansion rates than non-video ads
	Video Complete Rate	More videos are completed in expanding formats; even more in the in-page format. Fewer auto-play videos are completed than are user-initiated videos

The report concludes with two recommendations, both of which sound like no-brainers.

1. The marketer must know the definitions and methodology behind the metrics she is using. We all know CTR; the definitions of the interactive metrics are more complex. Those definitions are detailed on page 13 of the report.
2. "Only compare and contrast data that comes from the same system and that adheres to the same methodology." That sounds pretty straightforward also--right? For example, it's all DoubleClick data; isn't it comparable. No. They point out that they've updated some of the computations of some of their metrics recently--and other producers of metrics do the same. The marketer has to be vigilant, even when tracking the same metrics over time.
   

As I read the report, I remembered that MSN.com used to have a really explanation of rich media formats, including video, on their advertising page. So I went there to look for it. On the way I got sidetracked.

I saw the ABC ad on the MSN home page and decided to "Visit ABC.com."

There's lots of media on the ABC.com site; that's no surprise. Actually, I was most interested in the banner at the top showing Bill Gates. It invited me to "rollover" and I did.

That opened a page at Microsoft; apparently a new marketing program, "A PC is not a stereotype," whatever that means. It's some interactive "advertainment"--you can see who's a pc, or in the other tab you can see what you'd look like in various advertising venues--Times Square, for example.

Quite a few people have uploaded pictures to play their game. I expanded Steve Ballmer's picture. I love it when CEOs participate!

By that time I was tired, and the post is getting too long anyway. MSN has improved their rich media formats page since I was last there and they have an excellent creative gallery. Check them out for yourself. And think about the power of these new media!

What is UGC Saying About You?

The recurring nightmare of any marketer who has programs in the social space is user generated content that reflects poorly on her brand. The Internet is awash with posts, comments, reviews, photos, videos and more. How can marketers use positive UGC to their advantage while mitigating any damage from negative commentary?

Most of us do it simply—from moderating comments on blogs to using Google Alerts to see what others are saying about us/our brands. These solutions tend to be labor intensive, but they work for the small publisher or a brand that’s not too much in the public eye. When the volume of Internet buzz becomes great, however, protecting the brand’s reputation becomes a massive project.

The issue becomes even more complex when the marketer wants to advertise on social networks, which will be a growing activity according to eMarketer (August 29, 2008). How can he keep up with UGC on far-flung sites? It’s even worse when the ads are placed on networks, making it difficult to even entirely know where ads are being run.

Enter a firm that promotes a comprehensive moderation product. Keibi has a product that helps online communities identify and moderate questionable content. Content includes videos and images as well as text. They also offer moderation services.

In a lengthy presentation from a recent conference Keibi points out that moderation can be done at three points:

• Moderate all content before it is posted
• Moderate only user-flagged content
• Moderate most or all content (after posting) each day (slide 31).

Each level obviously requires a different level of effort and amount of human resources.

They stress the importance of well-thought-out terms of service. Enforcing the terms of service provides a safe environment that gives a good user experience and makes advertisers comfortable with your site (think Facebook and the difficulty it still has in monetizing its huge traffic; slide 44). Part of the presentation deals with legal issues affecting content (slides 44 – 63).

Finally, there’s a case study of Piczo, a teen communications site that has had success in creating a trusted site using these tools. From this chart (slide 68), they have the active cooperation of their audience, and that’s clearly a plus.

The entire presentation can be accessed from this page. Slides 18-44 are the most relevant for most marketers. The earlier slides give an overview of social networks. If you want a comprehensive overview of advertising issues associated with social media advertising, try this recent IAB publication. They list a number of kinds of advertising on social networks:

• "Overlay” video ads that appear part way through the video and cover only a small part of the screen
• Conversation targeting, essentially souped-up contextual targeting
• Building your own community; wonderful if you have a willing audience and the time and resources
• Brand channel (on a site like YouTube)
• Brand profile (think the Boone Pickens Facebook page)
• Brand wrappers, which are sort of templates under another name
• Widgets in all their many variations

There may be more, but you get the idea. Social networks are where people are today—all ages, but especially the young. Marketers need to be there also. Products like the moderation suite from Keibi are needed to give them confidence in being there!

Video Calling Anyone?

When I noticed that a startup called TokBox (pronounce it “talk box”) had received a new round of venture funding, I decided to investigate this space. It’s not one of my favorites. The concept of video calling always conjures up the 60s ad (which shows up on PBS and other reports from time to time). The whole point of the really insulting ad was that a woman would have to do her hair and makeup before answering the phone. I can’t find the ad on the Net, although I’ll bet it’s archived somewhere. I did find a piece of interesting history on the Picturephone though, suggesting reasons for its expensive failure.

Fast forward to the present. Skype now offers video calling; I also found a firm called SightSpeed that seems to emphasize the business uses of its service. TokBox offers a video calling service that doesn’t require either party to download special software, and that seems to be its primary benefit. I was also interested to note that they have a feedback tab (expanded here) on every page of the site—good idea. Not surprisingly, they have a Facebook app. That seems to open up a huge network.

Back to the 60s. Do home users really want to be seen when one of their friends initiates a chat session? Answer that for yourself! I have my own strongly-felt answer to that one!! Seriously, I really do think it’s an issue.

CNBC has a video interview with one of the venture capitalists supporting TokBox. It focuses on the business uses of the technology, which once again seem the most compelling to me.
View the video here.

This space will likely continue to generate new entrants and new applications for the large social networks. Given the stress on collaborative work, and as CNBC points out the growing cost of business travel, there seems to be a lot of room for business applications. In the meantime, for sure some dedicated personal users like the fans on TokBox’s Facebook page, will continue to have a lot of fun with it.

Loopt--Looking for Customers in New Media

In April I wrote about the social network for mobile, Loopt. I commented that there was clearly interest among people much younger than I; I’ve had several students develop marketing plans for a company that would connect mobile users. It seemed like an idea whose time had come.

On Monday MediaPost had an article on Loopt’s new customer acquisition program. Not surprisingly, it’s a new media program. Basically they are sponsoring the popular Black20’s Middle Show hosted by David Price. There are probably several things in that sentence that need translation anyone over 35, and perhaps some under. Black20 is a start-up that makes and broadcasts daily videos. The New York Times has a great story—the founders, where the name came from, how they do what they do. The Middle Show is their popular version of late-night comedy. It is hosted by David Price, recently named by New Media Minute as the “Sexiest Web Host.” I found the announcement on a site called The Feed that bills itself as “The Only News You Need to Know.” Pardon me if I take that with a grain of salt, but I hope you’re up to speed now.

I found the first sponsored episode of The Middle Show on YouTube. The video was posted on July 3 (this is July 9) and has 3,400 views, 26 ratings (4.5 stars out of 5), and 15 comments. Mull that. Some of the commenters are annoyed about the commercial aspect, but they really do appear to like this program. With that in mind, it’s worth devoting 4.35 minutes to viewing the video. I’m not sure this is ‘best in show’ new media advertising, but it does integrate the product into the story line—such as it is. Having watched it, are you inclined to “friend” David on Loopt?

The videos are going to appear on other social sites like Facebook and MySpace. Those make sense. New York’s TaxiTV seems to make less sense in terms of the target audience, but it’s clearly new media.

I know there’s a profound marketing implication here; I’m just having a little trouble finding it in the context of new media programming. Seriously, that is the implication. Loopt clearly has gone where its audience is. They’ve recruited a popular figure in that space to deliver their message. Have they got the message right? That remains to be seen. I agree with some of the commenters that it’s rather heavy-handed promotion. Will the product promotion fade more gracefully into the content of the show as time goes on? Time will tell!

Ubiquity of Content--Users' Perspectives

Read Part 1 here.

This series started with a headline that predicted that users will watch 25% more video five years from now. The challenge for content producers is to make content of all kinds accessible “anywhere, any time, on any device” that users want. How much do marketers know about what they do want? Here are a few of the things we’ve learned recently.

A study by Deloitte reported in eMarketer (newsletter, June 5, 2008) focuses on entertainment and the differences between age cohorts. The fact that this is a trend lead by the young is not a surprise. Look at the Boomers column, though; does it surprise you that boomers participate in a lot of these activities—but mostly on the desktop, not on their cellphones. I’m reminded of the friend who ran around taking videos of a patriotic celebration over the weekend and the discussion of where to upload them that followed. The whole point was to share the celebration with distant friends.

Another study, this one by Ipsos and featured in Marketing Charts, found that the percentage of video watching on TV had gone down from 75% to 70% from 2007 to 2008. This chart gives a lot more detail on the devices used. When you look at it carefully, there’s something really interesting. As you would expect, TV watching is lowest in the younger age groups, but the trend is not linear. Look at the “portable DVD players.” It’s much higher among the very young (too young to pay for one themselves), lowest among the two middle age cohorts, and higher among the two oldest. Is this an affordability issue among the 18 – 34s, who are the lightest users? Or is it a preference? Marketers beware of extrapolating trends!

With that warning in mind, here are some related factoids from two recent Pew studies:

From a telephone survey in December 2007:

• 48% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
• 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site "yesterday" -- the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site "yesterday." Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007.

A later release from the same survey revealed that 62% of respondents had accessed the Internet or data from a mobile device:

• 58% of adult Americans have used a cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA) to do at least one of ten mobile non-voice data activities, such as texting, emailing, taking a picture, looking for maps or directions, or recording video.
• 41% of adult Americans have logged onto the internet on the go, that is, away from home or work either with a wireless laptop connection or a handheld device.

According to John B. Horrigan, Associate Director of the Pew Internet Project and author of the report “People’s growing reliance on their cell phones, together with wireless internet access from laptops, suggests a shift in expectations about cyberspace. For many people, access to digital information and resources is an ‘always present’ utility for answering questions and documenting what is going on around them through photos or video recording.”

Marketers should remember that age matters when deciding how to provide content for mobile users, but it may not matter in easily predictable ways. It’s important to find out how your own target audience wants their content and on what device. You can assume they want it when they want it!

Ubiquity of Content--Producers' Perspective

Your attention may also have been caught, as mine was, by a headline in AdAge MediaWorks (subscription required) a few days ago; “Consumers to Watch 25% More Video a Day in Five Years: Viewing on Computers, Mobile Phones Will Drive Increase.” We all know that video has become an indispensible part of the Internet landscape. This incredible rate of growth has implications beyond video itself to all types of content.

Users expect content to be “any time, anywhere, on any device” more than ever before. And that’s putting strain on marketers to meet their demands in ways that advance marketing objectives. A recent study of media and entertainment executives by Accenture sheds more light on the issue. Their results point to the importance of multi-platform distribution, an open model of content sharing, the importance of digital royalty (revenue) management and a common understanding of intellectual property.
The concept of an open model of content distribution deserves attention. It’s an enterprise concept, not free provision of content. According to a 2006 white paper by PricewaterhouseCoopers, “in order to create shareholder value, companies in the content, technology, and distribution sectors must adopt an open business model, eliminating internal walls between business units and external ones between the company, its partners, and other strategic business allies.” This clearly refers to the creators of content who have already begun to distribute content to users through various channels. To better understand the strategic implications for enterprises, the entire 62-page PWC report is worth reading.

Consider these charts from Compete on two major content creators for TV--NBC and Fox--and the growing share of some of their programming on video-streaming site Hulu. Interesting, isn’t it, that the share of comedy viewing on the Internet is considerably greater than for dramatic programs. Wonder what that implies? Demographic differences, certainly, but probably more.
The Accenture study suggests capabilities that are necessary to accomplish media convergence within the enterprise. The point








being that unless the internal barriers can be broken down, the “anywhere, any time, any device” needs of the user cannot be met. The content companies in the Accenture study believe they have organizational capabilities in place to meet those needs. How many product or service companies can say that they have organization-wide understanding of intellectual property rights, the necessary IT architecture, integrated management of their digital assets, the necessary customer data and insight and a way to track the revenue produced by their content? Accenture believes that content companies are not as far along as many believe they are in this difficult organizational transformation. I’d suggest that even fewer product/service companies are dealing with issues of how to use content to best advantage.

I’ll conclude this segment with a quote from a US media executive in the Accenture report:

“You must break the innovators dilemma and walk away from old paradigms…you must have a keen focus on determining what consumers really need and what makes their lives better.”

I’ll continue with an installment on what consumers really do want.

Read Part 2 here.

Is Video a Maturing Market?

A report from Hitwise caught my eye today. Reporting on the video marketplace they find YouTube with a huge lead in market share and continuing growth, no surprise there. The surprises are two-fold: all the other leading properties had a decline in share and video sites overall lost share of total Internet visits. Their press release points out, though, that time spent by visitors increased during that period of time—March 07 through March 08.
That suggests some interesting hypotheses, so I went looking for data. YouTube is the 800-lb gorilla, but Gorilla Spot is a rapidly-growing newcomer (pun intended). As noted yesterday, Gorilla Spot is a “create/mashup your own” site. The press release mentions Hulu, the site for full-length TV programs. Here’s the growth comparison, and it may well suggest a change in viewing patterns.
Hulu is experiencing by far the fastest growth, although it should be noted that Gorilla Spot is so new it barely registers. Then add somewhat less recent data from the NYT that shows minutes spent, lots of them, on Hulu. It has quite a variety of video content, but if you watch, for example even a part of SNL, you’ve spent quite a few minutes.

I’ve seen the interpretation that this means that viewers are going more for expert/professionally-created content than for UGC. I don’t agree. It looks to me like time shifting—I missed SNL on Saturday night; I’ll watch it during the week when I have time. Gorilla Spot’s rapid growth supports that hypothesis.

But the larger hypothesis is a shift, if not yet a maturing, of the video market. It’s a shift of programming online—whether original content or access to content originally created for another channel. It does suggest, however, that viewers may well settle on a few key sites to satisfy their seemingly insatiable appetite for video of all kinds.
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Make Way for the Mobisode

This is an intersection between video and mobile, with maybe a dash of reality TV thrown in. What it represents is short episodes specifically designed for viewing on mobile devices.Are people actually watching videos on their cell phones and PDA’s? Yes, according to newly-released data from Pew. When they asked about 10 activities beyond just talking on their phones, 77% of respondents said they had taken part in at least one of the activities at some time; 42% engaged in at least one activity on a given day. Text messages and taking pictures lead by a large margin, but watching videos is there. Given the absorption with all things video, one would expect that activity to continue to grow.

Assuming there is content designed for the small screen, that is. Sprint/CW/Warner Bros. TV have just announced a series of episodes made especially for mobile (mobisode) that will feature the Supergirl character from Smallville. It follows a successful series last year that featured the Green Arrow character from the same series.

In case you’re not a fan, Smallville is the story of young Clark Kent—before he became superman. It seems to have a robust cast of characters that should provide plenty of material for screens of all types.Overall, the service is a bit pricey, but it may be the wave of the future! Users want content, and they may even be willing to pay for entertaining games and videos. Spinning off short programming from successful longer series may be a reasonably low-risk way to penetrate this new and growing market.
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