A Word About Online Advertising

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October 30, 2006

If you had any doubts that the future of advertising lies with more online presence, this should dispel some of those doubts. The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported the following statistics at the end of September.

1. USA Today: 2,269509, (-1.3%)
2. The Wall Street Journal: 2,043235, (-1.9%)
3. The New York Times: 1,086,798, (-3.5%)
4. Los Angeles Times: 775,766, (-8.0%)
5. The New York Post: 704,011, 5.3%
6. Daily News: 693,382, 1.0%
7. The Washington Post: 656,297, (-3.3%)
8. Chicago Tribune: 576,132, (-1.7%)
9. Houston Chronicle: 508,097, (-3.6%)
10. Newsday: 413,579, (-4.9%)
11. The Arizona Republic, Phoenix: 397,294, (-2.5%)
12. The Boston Globe: 386,415, (-6.7%)
13. The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J.: 378,100, (-5.5%)
14. San Francisco Chronicle: 373,805, (-5.3%)
15. The Star Tribune, Minneapolis: 358,887, (-4.1%)
16. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 350,157, (-3.4%)
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland: 336,939, (-0.6%)
18. The Philadelphia Inquirer: 330,622, (-7.5%)
19. Detroit Free Press: 328,628, (-3.6%)
20. The Oregonian, Portland: 310,803, (-6.8%)
21. The San Diego Union-Tribune: 304,334, (-3.1%)
22. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times: 288,676, (-3.2%)
23. The Orange County (Calif.) Register: 287,204, (-3.7%)
24. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 276,588, 0.6%
25. The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee: 273,609, (-5.4%)

While not a nail in the coffin of newspapers, it demonstrates what is a continued trend away from print-only media. The future lies with those entities that are able to pull off a truly integrated approach, placing the right message in the right place at the right time.

As Online Spin notes, we're at a point of severe fragmentation, consumers who are already time-crunching and the advent of many easy to use tools and services.

So put down that newspaper and get to work!

Labels: Advertising, big media

Posted by Scott Monty at 4:15 PM

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And Now, a Word from Our Sponsors

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As promised on Friday, here's the new EepyBird Diet Coke/Mentos experiment (#214, for those of you keeping track). This time, it's wholly supported by the product manufacturers.

Not quite as exciting as the first one, but innovative nonetheless. I predict that it will get passed around, but it won't have the same buzz as the first video.

Labels: Video, Viral

Posted by Scott Monty at 4:03 PM

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Friday Fun Video

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October 27, 2006

Better late than really late. Five months later, Coca-Cola has finally decided to embrace the Diet Coke & Mentos craze. If you recall, the original video was embraced by Mentos, but Coca-Cola distanced itself from the viral video and wanted no part in it.

This time, Coca-Cola has sponsored the EepyBird guys and is challenging viewers to submit their own videos of zany concoctions of Diet Coke and God knows what else. Coke. It's the real thing!

I guess I'll have to do a special Manic Monday Video entry to follow up on this hype.

Thanks to Joseph Jaffe for the lead.

Labels: Friday Fun, Video, Viral

Posted by Scott Monty at 12:54 AM

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Blogging Etiquette

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October 25, 2006

The father of social media, Rohit Bhargava at Influential Interactive Marketing has started a Writeboard exercise on blogging etiquette, called The Golden Rules of Blog Etiquette.

As the blogosphere is rapidly expanding and changing, it's important to recognize that there are many new contributors and readers out there, and that there are no standardized protocols for handling blog-to-blog interaction. Which is why Rohit started the Writeboard.

Really, most of what is written (and what I imagine will be contributed) should be common sense. After all, social media is an extension of social interaction. Similar rules of etiquette should be followed as in "real life."

It's an open forum, so anyone can contribute. Find it at:
The Golden Rules of Etiquette (http://123.writeboard.com/3e555ed9feb34b374)
Password: begood

Trackback

Labels: blogs, rules, social media

Posted by Scott Monty at 10:22 AM

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Take Your Technology to Work Day, Part 1: Podcasting

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Great article in the Personal Journal section of The Wall Street Journal today: The Boss Puts the iPod to Work (free access until 11/2/06).

Evidently, some managers have come to embrace the iPod as an enabling technology that goes beyond listening to music or watching TV episodes. Some business uses of the iPod include:

Language classes for employees
CEO announcements
Sales seminars
Audio and video training files

Siemens discovered that it could cut down on the $125,000 it spent on each sales seminar (there are typically 4 per year) by purchasing 100 iPods for its staff at a total cost of $30,000. And companies are discovering the joys of productivity, as employees can listen to company podcasts while commuting or doing other work.

It's encouraging to see that this "new" technology (well, not completely new - the iPod just turned 5) is being brought into the mainstream. As the market continues to mature, I'm sure we'll see other great examples of business uses of blogs and iPods, among others. Have you got any examples? Let me know.

Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series, where I'll talk about a unique new use of blogs that we're trying at my agency.

Labels: b2b, New Media, Podcasting

Posted by Scott Monty at 9:19 AM

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Why Blogging Matters

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October 23, 2006

As usual, Logic + Emotion has a great perspective on blogging. This time, Dave Armano has taken part in a group post with other high-power bloggers.

Together, they develop 6 Degrees of Perspective on Why Blogging Matters:. I'll just cover the highlights here; definitely check our their longer post if you need some proof points to incorporate blogging as a standard practice in your company's or client's marketing efforts.

#1 - PR and Blogging – A Love Story or Peaceful Coexistence
Covered by Dan Greenfield, VP of Corporate Communications at Earthlink -Bernaisesource

#2 – Blogging and the “new influencers”
As seen by Eric Kintz, VP of Global Marketing Strategy at Hewlett-Packard - Marketing Excellence

#3 – The role of blogging in the changing world of advertising
From the perspective of Will Waugh, Senior Director of Communications at ANA - Marketing Maestros

#4 – The role of blogging as part of an integrated web strategy
With a view from David Charbuck, VP of Global Web Marketing at Lenovo - Charbuck

#5 – Drive Harmony in Conversational Touchpoints
The opinion of Peter Blackshaw, CMO, Neilsen Buzz Metrics - Consumer Generated Media

#6 - Creativity, Innovation + Blogging
As host, David Armano, VP at Digitas gets to go last, with some sub-points on the usefulness of blogs:

Instant feedback from a qualified network of peers
A digital journal, scrapbook and sketchpad
The ultimate marketing and brand challenge

Labels: b2b, blogs, David Armano, Marketing, strategy

Posted by Scott Monty at 9:31 PM

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Color Me Impressed

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I recently blogged about giving Second Life a second chance. It seems that there's more to Second Life than I initially thought. Consider the following:

IBM recently broke ground in Second Life for hosting corporate meetings;
The Economist did a piece on living a Second Life;
InfoWorld remarks on the uniqueness of this "fundamentally social" outlet;
According to current statistics on the home page, there are currently 1,097,422 residents who have spent US$580,371 on the site in the last 24 hours

And, perhaps most significantly of all, Joseph Jaffe, C.C. Chapman, Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz are the first to found a company completely within Second Life called crayon. Neville notes that crayon is "both a real and a virtual company," which will be housed on Crayonville Island in Second Life, but will operate in the real world as "a true mash-up that combines the best in traditional and new thinking about marketing, advertising and PR."

Shel also covers it well on his blog, noting that crayon is "a startup that features a killer team of communicators and a laser-like focus on New Marketing."

crayon is something of a mashup...not an agency or a consulting firm...We’ll approach our assignments with fresh eyes that see the new environment in which traditional marketing and advertising is failing so dismally...Engagement, conversation, co-creation, involvement—these are the approaches that we are anxious to bring to our assignments. Not as an afterthought or add-on, mind you, but as the cornerstone of our work.

If you've never listened to C.C.'s shows or read his blog, his enthusiasm is incredible - you can really sense how excited he is to be part of this entity. I'd be just as excited if I were in his shoes. This is groundbreaking stuff.

The official launch of crayon in Second Life is scheduled for Thursday. Stay tuned to see how this A-list team leads new marketing to new heights.

Labels: 2.0, Advertising, Marketing, New Media, PR, social media

Posted by Scott Monty at 11:20 AM

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What's the Deal with the GooTube Deal?

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October 21, 2006

A lot of people have been asking about the value behind the $1.65 billion that Google paid for YouTube. Why would Google pay that much? Isn't YouTube going to be sued? What did Google really get for its money?

An article in Fortune makes the case that GooTube is in good shape, no matter what happens to he broadcast TV market:

Sure, all you can see on YouTube right now are relatively short, low-resolution clips, but if you imagine a day when we have much fatter digital pipes into the home, you realize that "feeds" à la the YouTube model are a much better and more gratifying way to consume video than the cumbersome video-downloading services operated by Apple Computer , Amazon.com and others.

Even if the future takes a while to get here, Goo-Tube wins. Google's interest in the video-sharing site has a lot to do with its belief in the staying power of conventional broadcast television and cable. YouTube gives Google a platform where TV advertisers can test and tailor campaigns.

With regard to the lawsuit claim, evidently YouTube is in good shape. Just before the deal was made with Google, three of the four major music companies struck a deal for a stake in YouTube. They stand to gain $50 million from the deal, which effectively shields YouTube from lawsuits.

Labels: big media, New Media, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 9:02 AM

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A New World Order

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October 20, 2006

Congratulations to the crew at Jaffe, Holtz, Hobson and Chapman on the new entity they have created to bring new marketing/social media to the boardroom.

Personally, I think this is a watershed event in the marketing world. With these four powerhouses working together to shape the future of new marketing, I'm confident that the concepts of new marketing/new media will be brought into the forefront of business and that more BtoB and BtoC companies will embrace the techniques.

Talk about a dream job!

Labels: Advertising, Marketing, New Media, PR

Posted by Scott Monty at 12:01 PM

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Friday Fun Video

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This week, most of the world is following the Dove Evolution of Beauty video, in which a seemingly average woman is tranformed into breathtakingly beautiful model thanks to makeup artists, hairstylists, the ubiquitous modelling fan and Photoshop.

I'd like to take a different approach and mention a video that we put together at work. It's our weekly happy hour, during which we drop work for a bit, unwind and socialize together. We showed this video to a potential client in a new business pitch, in order to show a little bit of our personality.

Labels: Friday Fun, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 10:46 AM

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Lesson Learned

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October 17, 2006

The Edelman/Wal-Mart fiasco has been playing itself out in the PR and marketing blogosphere over the last 5 days or so. It finally reached its nadir when Richard Edelman stepped in to officially address the issue.

The irony here is striking: a company that established the guidlines for WOMMA went ahead and completely ignored those guidelines, using professionals and being completely covert on the Working Families for Wal-Mart site.

This lesson serves to reiterate a valuable lesson in social media: transparency. If you're trying to gain a unique audience share, it's important to be upfront with them about who you are, what point of view you'd like to take, and what you have to say. While there are one or two notable exceptions (LonelyGirl15, for example), if you're in a BtoB role, your readers moreso than others need to be able to trust you.

If Edelman's reputation suffers in the short run from this situation, it's unfortunate. But they've served a valuable purpose - letting us all learn from their mistake.

Labels: Risk, rules, social media

Posted by Scott Monty at 6:13 AM

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What's Good for the Goose...

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October 13, 2006

A couple of weeks ago, pundits and liberals had a field day with the Clinton Gone Wild video. That produced a huge wave of views, but I don't have stats here because so many users uploaded the FoxNews video; the views are spread widely over many uploads.

Conservatives struck back this week with a video explaining why North Korea has the ability to conduct nuclear weapons testing in 2006.

Labels: Friday Fun, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 12:26 AM

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Show Me the Money 2.0

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October 11, 2006

The San Antonio Express-News Business section has picked up on the wave of Web 2.0 activity. A quote from the article that we already know here: "Social media are a huge opportunity for business."

Some Web 2.0 stats from the Pew Internet & American Life Project survey covered in the article:

Percentage of Internet users who have done this Web 2.0 activity:

34%: Used the Internet to get photos developed or display photos.

30%: Rated a product, service or person using an online rating system.

27%: Shared files from their own computer with others online.

26%: Shared something online that they created themselves, such as artwork, photos or videos.

18%: Taken material found online — like songs, text or images — and remixed it into their own artistic creation.

14%: Created or worked on their own Web page.

13%: Created or worked on Web pages or blogs for others, including friends, groups they belong to, or for work.

11%: Used online social or professional networking sites like Friendster or LinkedIn.

8%: Created or worked on online journal or blog.

These numbers are really remarkable, because just 2 years ago, they were probably about half this size. I would hazard a guess that in the next year, we'll see an explosion in the above, with more consideration being given to these entities in the BtoB space.

Labels: 2.0, New Media, social media

Posted by Scott Monty at 10:17 AM

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Beware of Falling Social Networks

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October 6, 2006

After only 10 weeks, Wal-Mart is closing their attempt at a social networking site, The Hub. Evidently, they went a little overboard with product promotion, and users quickly lost interest in such an obvious self-serving site.

The firms that get it right are the ones who stand aside. My definition of social media helps to clarify the role of companies in the process:

Social Media is all about making tools available to enable and track conversations about your brand or product.

These conversations are already going on. If you want to be the fly on the wall, you provide some vehicle, some nifty little tool or some cool new site that allows users to have these conversations more easily, and you follow the discussion.

You don't market your product, you don't smack down or erase negative comments. You let it happen naturally. That's when customers will be themselves and will be more likely to trust your brand.

Labels: 2.0, Risk, rules, social media

Posted by Scott Monty at 10:52 AM

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Friday Fun Video

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Nothing realted to marketing to remark upon. This is just a Geico commercial that I like, particularly because I'm an aspiring voice over artist and this video features Don LaFontaine, one of the VO greats.

Of further DLF interest is Five Guys in a Limo, clearly an inside joke prepared for an industry award show. Worth a look.

Labels: Friday Fun, Video

Posted by Scott Monty at 12:07 AM

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Do You Want New Media with That?

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October 4, 2006

As usual, David Armano at Logic+Emotion makes a great case by analogy, both in writing and with one of his really cool images. He's a creative type, and does this much better than this humble account guy, so I'll let his work speak for itself:

"Today’s marketing mix has its own challenges. RSS feeds, Podcasts, Blogs, Viral content—it all sounds so yummy and immediately gratifying. Just like fast food. But We all know what fast food leads to. Putting together a marketing mix that looks like “one Social Media Network with a side of Viral, hold the mayo”—may not be the best thing for your business and brand."

I've said it before on these pages, but allow me to reiterate it by extending Armano's analogy. If you think of your marketing plan like a diet, we all know that it's best to strive for a well-balanced diet. To live only on junk food - or on a single food group - is unhealthy.

Now, there are certain individuals who can't eat sugar, or who are allergic to gluten, nuts or lactose. And there are those who make a conscious choice to abtain from eating meat or carbohydrates. Any good nutritionist (or in this case marketing advisor) needs to have a conversation with the patient (client) to understand what is feasible and what is not, before recommending an approach.

For example, I have a client in the biotech/pharma space who is very open to hearing about new media. However, she steers clear of a corporate blog, because of the legal and regulatory issues that would be overwhelming in that industry. Creating an informative podcast is another story - one that is much better suited to their disposition, needs and strategy. But this is all backed up with a solid and comprehensive marketing plan across all media.

In western Massachusetts, there's an annual food/agriculture/cultural festival called The Big E. It just wrapped up its nearly 3-week stint, but not without offering a handy guide "The Big E Diet -- how to survive on 5,000 calories/day." From the morning sticky bun (560 calories) to the large fries at lunch (578 calories), to the modest snack of a turkey leg (148 calories), all the way through a late-night dessert of a cream puff (a whopping 618 calories), it's a mashup of comfort food and a cardiologist's nightmare.

The point is you just can't live like that. For normal people, a pork chop sandwich with a side of cream of broccoli soup in a bread bowl is an anomoly or a curiosity. So do a frank assessment of your marketing diet and see what you have the appetite for. Maybe every once in a while, a cream puff is just the thing the doctor ordered.

But please, make sure you keep eating apples.

Labels: Advertising, David Armano, Marketing, New Media, strategy

Posted by Scott Monty at 9:38 AM

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What's a Social Media Debate Between Friends?

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October 2, 2006

My colleague Douglas Reynolds of Douglas Reynolds | Experience (nice new banner, branding and favicon on the site, Doug!) recently noted that this whole Web 2.0 thing "sounds like the portal strategy of years ago," as well as "the familiar frenzy of money eager to be relieved of its value," and "a lot of questioning of the business model for social media sites."

To which I would reply: "Yes and no."

While there is a sort of frenzy out there, the money being thrown around is nowhere near the astronomical an irrational figures of seven years ago. I would argue that the market has learned from its mistake, and if anything, venture capitalists are even more conservative with their investments as a result.

The difference between Irrationality 1.0 and Irrational 2.0:

The Intenet is much more wide-spread and universal in use and therefore the new media have a broader reach
Technology is such that many individuals and companieare developing applications, solutions, and business models
Operating margins for a single-person shop doing a blog or some unique application code are almost neglible
Any small investment in such entities will not sink the market overall

That being said, I would agree with Doug with the fact that there is a frenzy going on. Sites like Micro Persuasion, TechCrunch, and eHub are dedicated to enlightening readers on the coolest 2.0 applications on a daily basis.

It's what we do with these offerings that makes all the difference. A cool tool is useless until someone figures out a way to monetize it. It's one thing to show such a site to friends and family - but have you figured out how to present it to a client in a profitable way?

Footnote (added 10/2/06, 10:35 a.m.): BtoB Magazine has a post called When will the social media bubble burst? Answer: never.

The social media bubble isn't going to burst any more than the e-mail or instant messaging bubbles burst. In fact, there is no bubble. Bubbles need an air supply in the form of venture capital and inflated expectations from investors. They also need a payoff. Almost none of that exists in this market.

Labels: 2.0, New Media, social media, tools

Posted by Scott Monty at 1:10 AM

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Giving Second Life a Second Chance

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October 1, 2006

I first took a look at Second Life about four months ago, when I created an identity and promptly didn't do anything with it. Frankly, the concept of creating a persona in a "meta" universe just didn't do it for me - it was too similar to Dungeons & Dragons.

Lately, I've been hearing about Second Life at every turn: advertisers such as Toyota, Sun Microsystems and Wells Fargo are turning up there; Leo Burnett just added a presence, evidently to link their creatives and to better understand the space.

What's all this about, then? Real entities setting up shop in a virtual world? I suppose it's the next logical step from MySpace, in which it's a two-dimensional world. Second Life, in short, could be considered a mashup of MySpace and SimCity. Take the social networking aspect of the former and combine it with the ability to create something physical in the latter, and you've got the setting for unlimited advertising.

The Economist does the subject a bit of justice with Living a second life.

I think it's a little early to expect masses of people to create critical mass on Second Life, especially with so many other forms of social media that are easier to understand and implement. I can see the future potential of a BtoC advertising presence. At this point it's tough to see a strong BtoB application. One might be a life sciences company setting up a virtual call-in site or center of excellence for customers to interact with their experts for advice.

But mainstream this is not. Let's face it: some individuals are still striving to get a first life.

Labels: 2.0, Advertising, b2b, New Media, tools

Posted by Scott Monty at 11:41 PM

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