More Digital Oldies--This Time Kindle!

I had the conversation again yesterday. “I’m not really up on this stuff; isn’t it for younger people?” It reminded me of a recent article in Time magazine about the age of Kindle users. Guess what? They are on the older side! There are probably two reasons. The Kindle is expensive; $359 for the Kindle 2 and $489 for the larger screen Kindle DX. Second, they are used to read print content like books, newspapers, and magazines. Ad Age recently pointed out that “print is not aging well.” Ouch!

According to eMarketer (May 20, 2009), The device, first introduced in late 2007, accounted for approximately 10% of total North American book units sold in Q1 2009—or about 4 million out of the 38 million books sold. You can also subscribe to electronic content like blogs on the Kindle, all of which should make for happy reading.

But that’s not all. Amazon recently announced a Kindle app for the iPhone. It’s gotten mixed reviews, mostly because the screen of the iPhone is so much smaller than that of the Kindle. However, for those of those who don’t want to carry something larger, reading on the iPhone may present an attractive alternative.

In addition, there is also buzz about Amazon making a college version available with preloaded textbooks. As a textbook author (talk about a broken business model!), that’s long overdue. My Internet Marketing text is available with an e-book option bundled with the print text or as e-book alone. I don’t know what the sales breakdown is, but every time I ask a class I find that few, if any, of the students have activated the e-version. Why they prefer to carry around a print copy is beyond me. “Comfort level” is the best explanation I can think of because most of the things you can do with a print copy (highlighting, for example) is available on e-books. The other issue for college students has been the price of readers. Still, I’ve long felt that colleges had to make book readers the default distribution method for text books.

The iPhone app and the college version both suggest that the age of the readers of e-books could trend down over time. For all of us who believe in reading, that’s good news.

What does it mean about the future of “print” media? Will we consume traditional print content on our electronic readers? Probably. Will there be a way to monetize it? We haven’t found an effective way to do that on the web; why should it happen for electronic readers?

All this bodes well for content on the go, whatever your age. It doesn’t seem to offer strong hope for traditional print media, though. That’s still an industry in search of a savior—and I don’t think it’s a Kindle!

Taking Twitter Seriously

MarketingProfs has just published a report titled Twitter Success Stories. It includes a survey of 200 Twitter users, most of whom are @MarketingProfs followers. Not surprisingly, they are using Twitter to promote their businesses, using both personal and business accounts. They use Twitter for branding and awareness (84%), networking (78%), community building (77%), brand reputation management (51%), customer service (44%), prospecting (30%) and selling (20%). They rate Twitter second only to their company blog in providing value to their business.

For those of you are wondering if/how Twitter might be useful to your business, the 11 case studies have the most value. Some are the usual suspects, about which I and many others have written; Zappos as corporate strategy, Comcast for customer service, Dell Outlet for sales. There are some less familiar names that provide food for thought. Let me highlight 2 of them.

Coffee Groundz is a Houston coffee shop that was looking for a way to stand out in a crowded market. The value it has found in Twitter started accidentally with a request from a regular customer for a breakfast wrap—he was in a hurry. From taking orders it quickly expanded into commentary on issues ranging from the local music scene to how to make good coffee at home. Managing Partner J. R. Cohen is a fan of TweetUps. Over 250 people gathered at Coffee Groundz to watch the Obama inauguration, drink coffee and eat sandwiches. A good example of community building!

Another case history comes from a familiar brand. Disney was looking for a way to promote its release of the Pinocchio DVD and Blue-ray. With the help of agency Razorfish they decided on Twitter as a channel and located Melanie Notkin of SavvyAntie.com. This website helps single professionals buy gifts for their nieces and nephews—talk about a niche site! She’s doing well at it—at the moment she has over 9,200 Twitter followers.

After watching Notkin’s work for awhile, Disney worked out a 3-week deal in which Melanie Notkin posted Tweets about the Pinocchio release. Notice of the sponsorship arrangement was posted on her blog. Neither Notkin nor Razorfish will give specific results of the promotion, but here’s a quote from a WSJ article (subscription required) on the program:

As someone without kids and who doesn’t watch much TV, Melanie’s involvement with Disney was the only way that I was made aware that Pinocchio was being made available for purchase again.— Rob Blatt.

That sounds like the target audience talking!

If you are seriously interested in incorporating Twitter into your business, you may find the $49 for this report a good investment. There are a variety of ways for businesses to useTwitter that are strategic, focused, transparent, and highly cost-effective. Check it out!

Doing Good PR by Doing Good

Have you gotten emails from a non-profit like the Red Cross encouraging you to “vote” in Target’s Bullseye Gives campaign? I’ve gotten several from the Red Cross, the only one of the 10 participants whose list I was on. When you click through to their Facebook page, you can play the video and they give detailed instructions on how to vote, just to be sure.

I’m sure that other organizations were equally active in trying to get their supporters to participate. With each email, Target is adding to its brand reputation and 10 non-profits stand to benefit significantly.

The campaign was also picked up by news organizations and bloggers around the country. I searched Google News over the weekend and found over 5 thousand entries for “bullseye gives.” That’s also major.

When you look at the Target campaign page, you can see that almost 300 thousand people voted. That’s a sizeable number and suggests multiple emails send to large lists by all the organizations. That’s probably the only issue here; the final results are likely to be proportional to the size of the organizations’ email lists, so care should be taken in choosing participants. In this case, each received an amount that provided a nice boost to their fund-raising efforts.

The obvious take away from this cause marketing program is the thousands of news stories and the millions of emails it generated. All of those linked Target with 10 undeniably worthy causes and highlighted both the good done by the non-profits and the willingness of Target to provide significant support to them.

There is a deeper message. The days when intrusive advertising could be counted on for effectiveness are over; I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said that, but it is undeniably true.

Message to business: you have to find new ways of reaching people in the post-advertising world.

Prediction: look for more innovative approaches to cause marketing as a way of reaching people with a positive message in a way that has real social impact.

What’s not to like about that?

Transparency and the Media

I’m working on a post for Reaching Women Daily that includes admonitions on transparency, so Bob Collins’s retweet of an article in TechCrunch about the 104-year old British woman who Tweets caught my attention—thanks, Bob! A little exploration revealed more interesting facts.

First, this story seemed to originate with UPI, part of the traditional media establishment. They should have checked their facts more carefully.

First, does Ivy Bean, resident of the Hillside Manor in the UK, use Facebook? Not exactly. Search Facebook and you’ll see what I mean. I counted 30 or so facebook pages on the subject of this Ivy Bean (obviously there are other people with the same name, but most of the fan pages have picked up the same pic, so they’re easy to identify). This is the largest I found, the Ivy Bean Appreciation Group with 2019 members. She probably deserves the appreciation of this and other fan pages, but it’s not her page.

When you go a bit deeper into Facebook you find several pages with a message like this.

Ivy Bean is 102 years old and has been told she can no longer add anymore friends as she already has 5000 but has another 6000 requests all please join so Ivy bean can have as many friends as she wants as she is 102 thanx for support

I don’t see any Ivy Bean pages with 5000 members, so I’m guessing a prank here that other Facebook users fell for. There are a lot of people who need to get a life and the manager of Hillside Manor needs a lesson in Facebook!

Second, there are numerous blog posts that attribute the Twitter account to the Geek Squad. So I went to Twitter to find out. First thing I saw on my page is numerous people retweeting about Ivy Bean. Some were non-committal, others are calling it an unethical PR stunt. Ivy Bean does have a Twitter page, established on May 14 with 31 updates, as recently as this morning. "She" has over 12,000 Twitter followers; is following 94. I looked at a few of the people she is purportedly following—students, friends of Geek Squad members, perhaps—or just generally looking for a life??

In any event, I judge the Twitter page to be a scam. Worse, someone is perpetuating it, even after it was revealed as a farce.

The TechCrunch post says that the Geek Squad “press-released the hell out of it.” As if it was a serious event, obviously. One assumes that’s where the UPI got it, and British newspapers picked it up from there. Does no one in traditional journalism fact check any more? I just proved that it’s not difficult!

Marketers, do you want your brand associated with this kind of PR? Even little jokes can backfire. This seems to have been a serious attempt to garner press attention with false information. It also winds up making Geek Squad look like they’ve taken advantage of a 104-year old nursing home resident. I don’t consider that positive PR.

And consider the fact that it was bloggers who outed the incorrect information in the traditional press. It’s a strange world; be careful who you believe!

Survival of the Fittest--Marketers, Media, Agencies

I saw the Digital Darwinism article in Booz & Co’s online Strategy+Business magazine a few weeks ago. I read it, thought it summarized important ideas, then pushed it to the side of my desktop where it languished until a couple of days ago. When I received an email that it had been republished as a Resilience report I reread it and was again impressed with its insights.

Part of the reason is some good case studies; author Christopher Vollmer talks about HP and there are sidebars written by Carolyn Everson of MTV Networks and Ajaz Ahmed of digital agency AKQA. That represents their three key players in this struggle for survival; businesses, media and agencies.

The report identifies 5 behaviors that the fittest will use to survive:

1. Getting close to consumers. Hardly a surprise! The point is to “activate” consumers, making them “prosumers.” I think we used to call that brand advocates, but whatever we call it, it’s hard to do.
2. Stimulating conversation. Again, not a surprise. Advertising is out; listening and dialog are in.
3. Recognizing that content and context are inextricably intertwined. This puts a premium on careful media choice and integration.
4. Making better use of customer data and insight. In this fragmented media environment we lack integrated metrics to measure the progress of our efforts.
5. Building new, more collaborative relationships. This is where marketers have to work in close collaboration with their agencies and media to create the kind of meaningful, two-way dialog that will “activate” customers.

This report is essentially analysis of the fall Marketing and Media Ecosystem 2010 report, which I've written about a couple of times previously. While there is nothing startlingly new in the analysis, it is cogent, focused and a good reminder.

A friend commented to me recently that a brand of our acquaintance didn’t seem to have the basics in place. Good point. These are the basics. If your company/your brand doesn’t have them in place your chances of survival in a challenging environment are seriously diminished!