MarketerBlog

The Interaction Economy: Community 2.0

Mack Collier has a great post on his blog today about the distinction between ‘understanding’ customers and true customer engagement. His comments inspired me to think about the topic, and perhaps take it a step further. 

Back in the old days of Web 1.0 we talked about community incessantly. Of course at that time the closest thing to community was you and the other geeks on the discussion forums, though AOL and iVillage and a host of others tried to claim their right to the moniker. The reality of the first iteration of the Internet was that it was more akin to broadcast that conversation, and that the only true interaction was email. Today all that’s changed and new ideas for communities and micro-communities are sprouting up faster than the VC’s can pour dollars into them. So what does all that mean? 

According to Merriam-Webster the word ‘community’ has a number of meanings, but it centers around interaction and common interests. 

1 : a unified body of individuals: as a : STATE, COMMONWEALTH b : the people with common interests living in a particular area; broadly : the area itself <the problems of a large community> c : an interacting population of various kinds of individuals (as species) in a common location d : a group of people with a common characteristic or interest living together within a larger society <a community of retired persons> e : a group linked by a common policy f : a body of persons or nations having a common history or common social, economic, and political interests <the international community> g : a body of persons of common and especially professional interests scattered through a larger society <the academic community>

Wikipedia takes a simpler, somewhat more scientific approach with its definition, but it comes to the same place: interaction and common interests. 

A community is an amalgamation of living things that share an environment. The individual living beings can be plant or animal; any species; any size. What characterizes a community is sharing interaction in many ways. In human communities, intent, belief, resources, preferences, needs and a multitude of other conditions may be present and common, affecting the degree of adhesion within the mixture, but the definitive driver of community is that all individual subjects in the mix have something in common. This is even true in biological communities.

The technologies and behaviors which come together to shape Web 2.0 have in some sense given us the ability to truly have digital communities. Web 2.0 enables segments to form around concepts large and small. These segments are based on behavior and interests rather than demographics and geography. 

What this means for marketers is that we must learn to put our products and brands in the context of these various communities. If as Mack suggests, we join the community and engage in the conversations (and if our products are worth a damn) they’ll sell themselves. Better still the community will help design the products. This is a huge paradigm shift for mass marketers, but if the success of sites like MySpace and YouTube are any indication, it’s one they better get used to. And like Scott Karp says, metrics and monetization will be very different. 

‘What if the best marketing 2.0 strategies for leveraging the social media network are essentially free, and having the audience DOESN’T mean you can “monetize” it.’

Maybe it’s time to get out the dictionary and look for a new definition of success.

 

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Advertising, CGM, Citizen Marketing,, Marketing, MySpace, Social Networking, Web2.0, YouTube.com

Cultural Anthropology? Heck I Thought This Was Just Marketing …

Shawn Gold, Senior Vice President of marketing and content for MySpace.com gave the keynote speech at the OMMA Hollywood Conference & Expo this week in Los Angeles.  Today’s edition of Online Media Daily (registration required) provides a summary of his remarks, which were something of a “state of the art” with regards to impacts of social networking on advertising and marketing. 

Gold referred to the work of marketers on MySpace as “empowerment marketing”.  He said that word-of-mouth has turned into citizen journalism as a trusted form of media among the Millenniall/GenX crowd.  He reminded advertisers that people don’t come to sites to click on the ads.  Social networking sites are a form of self-expression and discovery, and more than anything a way to build networks of like-minded people with common interests.  An interesting point for the nonprofit world is that cause-related marketing on MySpace is growing.  Bottom line:  sites like MySpace reflect someone’s personality and not just their consumption habits and to be successful marketers need to credibly insert their messages in the context of social networking activity. 

All great points for those of us trying to make the bridge from old think to consumer generated marketing.  Brand managers need to let go of the concept of message control and hand it over to these creative, enthusiasts.  Advertisers need to get beyond the “big is better” concept of media buys and learn how to think in terms of micro-segments and many-to-many instead.  And don’t think this just affects the under-30 crowd.  As more social networking sites like CollectiveX and MyFamily.com come along, Boomers will hop on this bandwagon as well.  Success in the future will be measured in terms of consumer engagement instead of reach, frequency and click-through rates.  And if the recent valuations of MySpace and Facebook are any indication, marketers can take that to the bank. 

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Advertising,, CGM, Citizen Marketing, Marketing, MySpace, Social Networking, Web2.0

The New Way to Customer Engagement: More Big Brands Jumping on the CGM Bandwagon

Sony, MasterCard and Home Depot are the latest Fortune 500 marketers to enter the CGM marketing bonanza.  The Detroit Free Press reports today that these companies are using consumer created advertisements and promotions to help combat growing resistance to mass market advertising. 

"More and more consumers are choosing what messages to receive with video-on-demand and opt-in e-mails," said Roger Adams, Home Depot's senior vice president of marketing. "We want to allow consumers a chance to vote on what they receive in mass media as well."

It looks like Al Gore’s new gig is paying off.  Sony Electronics, Toyota and L’Oreal Paris are asking viewers of Gore’s Current TV network to produce original TV spots for their respective brands.  Current TV viewers are a great target for this kind of CGM marketing effort – they already produce enough content to fill 30% of Current TV’s on-air broadcasts. 

"In effect, we're allowing our consumers to tell us how they want products sold to them, not the other way around," said Mike Fasulo, Sony's chief marketing officer.

Meanwhile the Church of the Customer Blog has an interesting claim about big brands on YouTube.

“Are you the brand manager for a well-known and popular product? If so, go to YouTube.com right now. 
Go ahead. We'll wait.  Now type your product/company/brand name into the search box. Chances are better than even that something about your company will turn up.”

And Time Warner is taking a new approach to development of its next network.  It’s developing a channel that would offer viewers on-demand access to hit shows from broadcast networks such ABC, CBS, NBC, and even competitor Fox.  The new service would allow content producers to reach consumers who are ‘time shifting’ TV viewing. 

"It's just another outlet for customers to do time-shifting," Harrad said. "It wouldn't necessarily substitute for and could complement DVRs (digital video recorders)."

These programs from big brands and mainstream media companies are just more evidence of the growing momentum behind the on-demand economy.  The question is:  when will consumer generated become the “norm” and mass marketing the exception?

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Advertising, CGM, Citizen Marketing, Marketing, Social Networking, YouTube, Web2.0

New Wisdom, Collective Intelligence: Is the Old Guard Finally Getting It?

The blogosphere is buzzing this week about Web 2.0 articles in mainstream media. The catalyst is a piece in the current edition of Newsweek titled “The New Wisdom of the Web”. The article is a thoughtful exploration of the intellectual framework and user dynamics of Web 2.0 as well as some of the early successes among Web 2.0 companies. 

Though Newsweek recasts it as the “live web” (an unfortunate moniker at best), and the blogosphere derides it as “ironic” this examination of various elements of Web 2.0 is well done and should serve as a great primer for those not already engaged in Web 2.0 or consumer generated media. Some of the more salient observations are about shifts in user behaviors, from the domination of online news among the “non-arthritic population”, to the phenomenon of citizen journalism empowered by Flickr and others. 

Some mainstream media outlets still struggle to embrace Web 2.0. (When is the Washington Post going to devise a successful blog strategy?) But it’s clear that others are making great strides. Today’s New York Times reports on Heavy.com, and its brilliant combination of micro-segmentation strategy and user generated content to market Fortune 500 brands like American Express and GM to the 18 – 34-year-old-market. And BusinessWeek has an article about the surge in mobile advertising, and the use of SMS text messaging for consumer promotions. 

So what are the keys to success in this new world? It sounds alarmingly familiar: listen to your customers, don’t treat all customers alike, allow for customization (what I want, when I want it), and market and sell your brand in context. It sure sounds a lot like Web 1.0, or for that matter savvy one-to-one marketing to me. As one of these articles says, Web 2.0 “fulfills some of the outlandish promises that we heard in the ‘90’s”. Maybe now we’ll get it right. 

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CGM, Live Web, Marketing, Newsweek Social Networking, Web2.0

Social Networking By Invitation Only: Nike & Google Launch Soccer Site

In a brilliant combination of marketing insight and Internet-savvy, Nike and Google have teamed up to create a social networking site for soccer enthusiasts around the world: Joga.com.  According to an article in BusinessWeek, Joga.com is a free network where members will be able to create Web sites and send e-mail, photos and video clips, as well as access Nike content.

 

One of the most intriguing aspects of the site is its “by invitation only” member enrollment program. While it’s not clear whether this is a strategic decision or merely a mechanism to gate traffic flow during the early days of the site, it will be interesting to observe its impact on the development of the community. 

Based on the statements in the BusinessWeek article, Nike clearly understands the challenges and sensibilities of corporate-sponsored consumer generated media. Trevor Edwards, Nike’s vice president for global brand management explains: 

"It has to be of the people and authentic and credible," Edwards says. "It's a self-governing community. Our job is to feed it, help it start, but then they'll fuel it. It's a long-term way of connecting with consumers."

For its part, Google is hoping this will improve its burnished reputation in the social networking space, and begin to build its portfolio of interactive communities. To date, Orkut, Google’s only foray into social networking, has met with limited success outside of Brazil  and certain other (alleged) unsavory uses. 

It’s exciting to see big, mass market driven brands embrace the new world order. Clearly Edwards and his colleagues at Nike get it. It will be interesting to see who’s next on the social networking hit parade. To quote Edwards: 

"Our job is to reinvent the way that we connect with consumers," Edwards says. "We have to make sure we stay in their world, stay connected, stay relevant, and, more importantly, we allow them to do what they want. It's their world, their lives. We give them the tools."

Just do it, Nike!

 

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CGM, Google Marketing, Nike, Social Networking, Web2.0

Cannondale Blog: Savvy CGM or Missed Opportunity?

There are several recent profiles of Cannondale’s community blog strategy.  The cycling community is one of the most avid among sports enthusiasts.  It crosses an array of demographics, and is known for its intense interest in the sport, the products and new technologies. Unlike other sports, cycling is highly participatory.  Most racing fans also cycle on a regular basis. 

Cannondale wanted to tap into that affinity and began corporate blogging a little over a year ago.  The company has two blogs, a general Cannondale blog (The Brad Blog) and one for race enthusiasts.  Janet Maurice is Cannondale’s Webmaster. She explained their approach in a recent article in BusinessWeek.

“She explains that the staffers will not necessarily be blogging in the traditional sense, but they will have unfiltered access to update the site with news, photos, press releases, etc. A special section of the site has been added (Cannondale Community) to aggregate the news and information from across Cannondale and also includes the posts made to the two established corporate blogs. There is even a single RSS feed to help you keep track of all of the happenings at Cannondale.”

So how effective is it with the community?  A recent search of Cannondale on Google Blog Search yields 14,504 results, with the Brad Blog at the top.  A similar search on Technorati yielded 5,607 blog posts, and Alexa reports that the Brad Blog rank is 884,253. 

Cannondale deems the program a success, and has plans for future corporate blogs.  But it’s not clear that the cycling community has truly embraced this. A Technorati search for the term “cycling” yields 159,721 posts.  The real measure of success will be how much the cycling community embraces and interacts with the Cannondale blogs and whether it spawns other forms of Cannondale CGM. 

I know at least one savvy  tech-cycler who is skeptical of this approach.  (Full disclosure:  he’s a senior game developer and my brother, so that probably impedes his objectivity on two counts.)

“It doesn't have the "feel" of the things that I personally read a lot of, which tends more toward rider experiences with stuff rather than the misc. babble + marketing.”

Looks like Cannondale has some work to do before they really grok CGM. 

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Blogs, Cannondale, CGM, Marketing, Web2.0

Rules Of Engagement: Or Are We Still Just Dating?

Today’s New York Times has an article about the “new rules of engagement” for building brand awareness. The article covers a recent conference of Madison Avenue types as they extol the virtues of their new customer engagement models. They “talk the talk”, but based on this article it’s not clear that they “walk the walk”. 

Joseph T. Plummer, chief research officer at the Advertising Research Foundation made several astute observations about the new approach by Fortune 500 advertisers. 

"It's turning the mental model of the industry on its head," he added, compared with previous benchmarks like awareness and recall, which are longer-term and have a rational basis.

 Another big difference is that engagement "happens inside the consumer, not inside the medium," Mr. Plummer said. "All the measurements we have now are media metrics: ratings, readership, listenership, click-through rates."

 "What we need is a way to determine how the targeted prospect connected with, got engaged with, the brand idea," he added. "With engagement, you're on your way to a relationship instead of just a sales transaction."

But the examples discussed in the article were little more than consumer promotions using new media channels, and linked to existing ad campaigns. Campbell Soup Company uses its recipe site to distribute its jingle "M'm! M'm! Good!" Subway’s site provides additional information about Jared Fogle, their miracle weight-loss customer.

To effectively engage consumers and build relationships, marketers need to put their brands in the context of the customer’s experience. Most people give little thought to the soup they buy or the lunch they eat. But when marketers find ways to tap into customer zeitgeist, they open the doors to true consumer engagement. Consumer Generated Media offers unprecedented opportunities to do just that, whether it’s by using blogs to derive market insights or encouraging passionate users to create viral videos. 

Of the examples in the article, Wendy’s International is the closest to that type of real consumer engagement. Wendy’s has created Smart Square, a character based on the square hamburger, which was quickly adopted among the MySpace community. If members of the MySpace community start creating their own viral videos with Smart Square, then they’ll know they’ve got a hit on their hands – and a truly engaged consumer.

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Advertising, CGM, Marketing, Social Networking, Web2.0

Measurement & Metrics: Time for the Internet to Join the Grown-Up’s Table

There’s a fascinating statistic in an article posted on the BusinessWeek site today.  The cost of advertising on leading Internet sites is nearly the same as advertising on prime time television.

“As ads spew out more data, their value rises. According to Avenue A/Razorfish, a banner on a leading portal, such as Yahoo or MSN, now costs about $500,000 for a day, about the same as a 30-second spot on a hit TV series such as CBS's CSI.”

Online marketing has made it to the big-kids table.  Ten years ago we struggled to get leading marketers to dip their toes into the water and test just a few banner ads.  Now Fortune 500 companies are buying out search keywords, blanketing online sponsorships and substantial portions of their marketing budgets from traditional media into Internet marketing.  Companies like Ford and American Express are reportedly allocated as much as 30% of their total advertising budgets to online media this year. 

To date, these otherwise savvy marketers have been amazingly tolerant of convoluted reporting and difficult-to-calculate ROI.  Now that they’re putting real money online they want to know what they’re getting for it.  And a new group of ad services and web metrics companies are emerging to meet that challenge. 

Many of them come from legacy marketing firms, such as Publicis’s Denuo, Rishad Tobaccowala, Denuo’s Chief Strategist contends that this shift will force greater accountability and a “flight to quality” in online advertising.  He predicts that the top sites will entice consumers with a combination of trust, high quality and smart promotions, similar to the click-and-brick model of supermarket loyalty cards. 

But that doesn’t take into account the thousands and thousands of consumers who are time-shifting themselves out of mass marketing.  These customers are much more likely to be persuaded by a word-of-mouth referral than an ad – on the Internet or anywhere else.  The blogosphere and blog metrics seems like a likely solution to reach these critical and influential users, and to measure their behaviors.  As Steve Rubel notes in his blog today, that’s far from a perfect science. 

“Everyone tries hard to spin data a certain way to make it seem like they're delivering more qualified eyeballs/ears than their competitors. Auditing keeps publishers humble. With social media networks, however, the game is more than just about numbers. It's about reaching influencers. This means that marketers need auditing that goes beyond reach and explores influence metrics.”

One thing is certain, neither medium can stand alone these days, and it’s imperative that traditional or mainstream media learn how to work with new media, and vice versa.  To quote Sam Wannamaker, half of our advertising dollars are wasted.  Only with a collaborative analytics approach will we figure out which half.   

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Advertising, CGM, Marketing, Metrics, Web2.0

Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile, or Chevrolet for That Matter

AdAge has a story about GM’s new contest to create an online ad for its Chevy Tahoe. The promotion, a link to GM’s sponsorship of “The Apprentice”, offers viewers the opportunity to win cash and prizes for creating a winning 30 second spot. 

As AdRants points out, this isn’t really consumer generated media. Instead of asking people to submit their own videos, Chevy has set up a site where people can click and drag commercial components together to create a canned spot. 

That said, GM is turning consumer generated media on its head, and inspiring brand enthusiasts to create their own ads, which they hope will, in turn, inspire purchase and loyalty to GM.

They’re not alone. According to Steve Rubel, PodGuide.tv shows some major national advertisers that are experimenting with video podcasts, including Nike and American Express.

“This is a start. The next big step for advertisers is to use their video podcasts to encourage the community to co-create and participate. For example, what if Nike urged the YouTube community to remix these podcasts into new creations? It could run the best submitted videos in the feed and encourage viewers to vote on their faves. It could even give the winner a directorial role in Nike's next TV ad. That's what's going to make these campaigns more attractive.”

While it’s exciting to see big brands start to embrace CGM, the possibilities for smaller organizations are even more intriguing. Podcasts, vlogs, and blogs all offer ways for small companies to market and sell directly to their customers. They require little in the way of infrastructure or financial investment, and the potential rewards are enormous.

 

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Advertising, CGM, Marketing, Social Networking, Web2.0

Capital Comment: DC 2.0, a Bi-Partisan Inauguration

For those of you who think that  Washington is nothing-more than a collection of political wonks, last night’s inaugural DC 2.0 event might change your mind. The idea was the brainchild of Stowe Boyd, Dion Hinchcliffe and Ken Yarmosh. They recognized that the post-bust, revitalized technology community in the Washington Metro area isn’t solely focused on security applications for certain three-letter-agencies, nor is it merely the progeny of former AOL and  Telco executives. So they brought together a group of dynamic entrepreneurs, venture partners and others interested in Web 2.0 and its implications for business and technology for an evening of discussion and networking.

In addition to conversation about structuring the concept (something between a Mashup Camp and a conference) there were demo’s from six local early-stage companies. Steve Fisher did a great job of covering the event in his blog, so I won’t replicate the details here. Suffice it to say that it was an energetic and insightful group, and I’m looking forward to collaborating with them to bring together the Web 2.0 community in the Washington Metro area.

Update:
Stowe Boyd  just posted about the event on his blog.  Check out his blog for more information about DC 2.0. 

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DC 2.0, Social Networking, Stowe Boyd, Web2.0