we are living in an analog world
January 24, 2009
People often pigeonhole what my team does as Digital Marketing. It’s a term that seems to cover all PC and mobile-based web marketing. In contrast, there is an ATL team, a BTL team, a retail team etc etc.
My team mates have started to refer to all these “non-digital” practices as Analog Marketing. It sounds ludicrous (which is the point) and obviously paints a picture of outdated thoughts and technologies, which suits us.
But a few days ago it dawned on me that, actually, we live in an Analog world, and that as good marketers we should remember this.
Analog data is continuous. Good marketing is now aware of the continous conversations that exist on the internet, and activities should be born to live, not born to die.
Analog has unwanted noise. With as many as 5000 advertising messages per day, good marketers have to accept noise too. In such a noisy environment, shouting louder won’t work. Instead, we have to draw people in with something of genuine value, and get people to voluntarily block out the noise and give you their undivided attention.
Also, no good marketing stays digital for long. For example, ESPN showed this great Youtube clip on TV, then did their own great remix/response, which of course ended up back on Youtube: Digital to Analog back to Digital.
Also, it’s easy to forget that 4 million unique users of Twitter in December means less than 0.1% global penetration rate. Similarly for all the talk of online buzz, 93% of word of mouth happens offline (although people who research online are more likely to have these offline discussions)
So, as much as we tend to think everything is becoming digital, it might be a good idea to remember that Life will always, actually, be lived in Analog.
anti-social media
January 21, 2009
Television has the reputation of being anti-social. But it is possible to share a television experience. Cuddling on the sofa with someone and enjoying the latest episode of a great TV show is a profoundly social and human experience.
But as I immerse myself more and more into so-called social media, I find it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the real world around me. And for sure my memory is getting substantially worse, with Wikipedia withering my brain like my unused appendix.
Andrew Keen reviews a review of Elsewhere USA (metareviews it?). I haven’t read the book, but the principle of Mass Autism was interesting to me. Some symptoms of Autism do feel familiar to me nowadays, such as constant distraction. And it certianly seems that more and more people have Echolalia.
Twitter is, in my opinion, likely to make the Mass Autism and Internet Addiction situation worse. I read that Twitter was the fastest way to find news about the recent plane crash in the Hudson. My response is: so what? Why is it so important to get extremely fast news on an event that actually had so little to do with any of us? Why don’t we all slow down a little and wait until the news has been ratified and researched. Are we all really such rubberneckers?
It seems we are addicted to consumption of information, needing information as it happens. Muji’s response to this over-consumption trend is to say that their products are just good enough. Not the best. Not something you need to strive your whole life to get. But just good enough. That feels so discordant with the recent past, but is perhaps what is needed for a sustainable economy.
Perhaps this is why people are reverting to older media formats. It seems that all the cool kids are geeking out about books and paper. It is about the analog media’s “thingness”. In a time of such media overconsumption and ubiquitous digital data, vinyl also seems like a treat for my soul. But it’s also about slowing down and breathing in, loggin off, and enjoying the things around you.
don’t hate the playa
January 19, 2009
I’ve found myself hatin on this TV ad in the UK for T-mobile
It’s a cute enough clip. It also does what I think a TV ad should, which is create conversation. The comments on Youtube are full of people saying it is genius, the best ad ever etc etc.
But to me (and a handful of the commenters on Youtube) it’s just a copy of the work of Improv Everywhere, mixed with a bit of Philipino jail dancing. It was exactly what I expected as soon as it strarted, with no element of surprise. The only surprise was that it was on TV and not just a viral. (ps viral is not a noun, but a consequence of something having KUDOS)
My team talked about doing almost this exact same thing over a year ago, and I’m sure we weren’t the only ones.But we didn’t get it done. And they did. And they are hailed as geniuses. Of course they’re not, and neither were we. They saw a fairly obvious opportunity and managed to get it done, and then they put it on TV at a time when people needed cheering up.
As with entrepeneurship ideas don’t count. It’s all about timing, and getting it done.
And anyway, as Jim said, nothing is original anymore.
disrupting expectation + topicality
January 11, 2009
Burger King launches a new campaign on Facebook: you de-friend ten people to claim your free whopper. As they put it on the promotional web site: “You like your friends, but you love a whopper”
This works because it has Conversational Capital. Its playfully harsh approach disrupts the expectation we have of campaigns on Facebook: We are so used to Facebook applications asking us to spam our friends, that being asked to actually remove friends really shocks the system.
Also, this campaign comes at the right time. Topicality is essential to conversation – something that major brands often struggle with if they use 6-9 month processes to create campaigns. But this campaign taps into a trend for reducing and simplifying the friends lists that have got frankly out of hand:
“Social graph shrinkage: Sure, the total population of social media users will continue to grow but with the rise of mososo and a resurgence of in person networking, many consumers will scale back on both the number of accounts they maintain AND their number of so-called “friends” and “followers.” We’ll start using online social platforms to stay connected with the people we actually know and care about. Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter.” Greg Verdino, in Peter Kim’s Social Media Predictions 2009
Amen to that.
2009: The Year of Mobile Social Media.
January 6, 2009
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As far as predictions go this one is fairly obvious: 2009 should be a breakout year for Mobile Social Networks: Always-on, Context-aware devices + microblogging behaviour comes together to create possibilities far exceeding those of PC-based media.
This feels so wrong and uncool, but I have a confession to make: I prefer microblogging my status on mobile Facebook than on mobile Twitter.
In fact, I’m hooked and check status regularly on Facebook mobile (m.facebook.com). No special app, just the mobile site. First thing I see is a list of statuses (stati?). Most of my Nokia colleagues are on Facebook, and are doing the same. Even though Facebook was clearly not set up as a mobile network, it is working just fine for us.
I spoke to Christine Perey about this when she visited us at Nokia HQ. She somewhat patronizingly said it must be that Nokia Employees do not know about the “better” mobile social networks and the technical enablers that are available. That is rubbish of course, partly because we’re building some interesting ones.
What this actually proves is the power of the network. Metcalfe’s Law. The value of a telecommunications network proportional to the square of the number of people in the network.
One distinction is that whereas telecommunications networks are, apart from the people in them, basically otherwise identical, virtual social networks do have differences in terms of User Experience and features etc. Perhaps we can add in the quality of the user experience into the equation, since this does impact the value too.
Value of a Social Network to an individual =Uex(N)2
Where Uex = the quality of the User Experience and features to the individual, and N = the number of people in the network… or at least the number of people the individual cares about.
Since more people I care about are spending their time on Facebook than on Twitter, it appeals to me much more, even if it is not designed with microblogging in mind. (Although the fact that you can comment on a status seems much better than having to put @someone, which seems a very clumsy way to communication to me: wastes valuable characters and means you can’t easily see a conversation stream).
I mentioned once to Jyri Engeström (founder of Jaiku, former Nokian and all around nice fella) in Helsinki that the barrier to entry for microblogging has been going down as people realise that it is after all just like updating your Facebook status. People don’t think they are microblogging, but they are regularly updating their status (especially if they check Facebook from their mobile device). Now Jyri is hoping to move the industry forward by achieving an interoperable microblogging network, which would get over this need for people to be using the same service as each other. Then the value can truly be in the Uex, and we can get back to building remarkable social services, without the size of the network being the determining factor in people’s decisions.
Good is the new best.
January 1, 2009
Seth says that a “good” product is the worst thing you can be given as a marketer.
As often is the case, Seth is being idealistic and antagonistic to illicit response.
Clearly, nobody who has ethics wants to market bad products. However, being given a good but apparently unexceptional product is in fact the ultimate challenge for the ethical marketer. How do you build a tribe for a product that is not obviously exceptional? How do you persuade others that there is merit in believing in this product as opposed to others, even if it is only good enough? Finding the remarkable in the apparently mundane takes skill and passion and an understanding of what turns people on.
Being given a remarkable product is far worse situation for a marketing professional: since the product basically sells itself, the most you can hope for is that you don’t mess things up too badly. And where’s the fun in that?
