The World Stops Turning

This week ABC announced the end of the run after 56 years for the soap “As the World Turns”.  Each of the over 13,000 episodes was scripted by writters, filmed by photographers, directed by directors, produced by producers, and acted by – well let’s just call them actors.  Lots of effort and cost that happened everyday year after year.  Given the much more cost efficient reality TV and talk-shows it’s become difficult to justify soaps.  But what does that have to do with Internet Marketing?

The internet is a medium for applications and content.  Both costly to produce.  Our history is ripe with examples of the lower cost UGC or “bot” created content trumping professionally created content.  Remember when the Yahoo search results used to be produced by paid humans?  Then Google’s “bot” produced search results without costly professionals deciding what to return for search results.  So when devising how to produce content think through how to produce that content without paying for it.  “As the world turns” has taught us the lesson that paid content will eventually always be trumped by a lower cost alternative.

What’s next — It won’t be long till professional quality scripted content will be created by the fan base.  Think of “LOST” living on past the fifth season but now written by the fans.  Sounds far fetched?  It is already happening.  Fan Fiction has been around since Sherlock Holmes was first written.  So let your fan base become your cheap content producers — and you might quickly realize that your fan base produces better content than the professionals!

Internet Marketing Growth

Forrester’s predicts growth in all areas of internet marketing with the most pronounced increases coming from Social and Mobile.  (Here’s the link)

Thoughts:

• More funds will be directed to online but keep in mind that over 80% will still be put towards “traditional”.  What these top line numbers don’t show is how “Traditional” will merge with “Interactive” over the next few years.
• Social Media is predicted to grow the most over the next few years.  It will be interesting to see how this evolves as Facebook and the others look to develop revenue models.
• Search is king.  Why?  Because Interactive marketing works best for direct response efforts and search marketing is the king of direct response.  As marketers we need to understand when to use which tool and don’t try to shoehorn objectives into unsuited tactics.

I started my professional career out in sales and account management.  I was terrible at it.  So the company that I worked for sent me to a ton of training.  I had it all — from Dale Carnegie to Zig Ziglar.  Some wore off on me.  So it kind of drives me nuts when agencies pitching me don’t have the basic skills to close and keep my business.  This just happened again this week so I felt compelled to provide the following 5 things agencies need to do to get and keep my business.  I have always been on the client side so this perspective might be skewed:

1)  Discover My Business Needs

Don’t come into my office and spew on for an hour about your capabilities.  I don’t care.  A better use of both of our time is to come into my office and discover, through questioning and listening, what need I have that your agency may be able to fill.

2)  Your agency is not an expert in everything

I half jokingly state that if I ask any of the agencies I deal with if they could build me a bridge I would get a proposal from each and every one of them.  Tell me what your core competency  is and prove that you have the experts on staff to deliver what you claim to be good at.  Your not good at all things — so please tell me when you actually can’t do a project.

3)  Leave the fancy “Process” slides behind

I don’t care what your process is.  Every agency seems to have some neat acronym to explain their “process”.  Like “NARB”, “VERB”, SPIN”, and “BURB”.  They always seem to be 4 letters.  Having a “process” is not a selling point.  All agencies have them and they are all the same.  So don’t waste my time telling me how special yours is.

4)  Don’t just say “Strategy” a lot

Actually provide strategies that will help me achieve my objectives.  I meet with a lot of agencies that tell me how great they are at “Strategic” thinking.  But when the proposals come in they are just a bunch of tactics that don’t build up to actual long term business value.

5)  Deliver

It’s fun to be “Creative” and come up with cool designs.  But the hard bits need to be done too.  I need solid SOWs, I need Project Management Plans, I need Wire Frames and Logic Maps, I need someone that will think through all the hard stuff so that the final product rocks.  Do what it takes to deliver.

This was a bit therapeutic.

Cleveland Rocks!  This last week I was in Cleveland for a project that took me all around this great city on the lake.  From Westlake to Bedford I got to observe Clevelanders shopping in their natural habitat — otherwise know as Walmarts and Targets.

What struck me most was how unimportant our marketing message is to our consumer.  As marketers we are completely absorbed at how creative and compelling our marketing communication is.  We spend hundreds of hours crafting strategies and tactics to engage and activate the consumer.  It’s natural for us to come to believe that our messaging is as important to the consumer as it is to us.  But while I observed these Clevelanders going through the routines of shopping I was reminded that:

The most celebrated brands occupy a tiny fraction of the consumers mindshare for a tiny fraction of the consumers time.

It’s obvious.  We all know this but it gets lost as we focus on developing our compelling and expensive campaigns.  So it got me to thinking how the consumer is exposed to and digests the messaging we are trying to get to them and then how that messaging gets translated into sales.  As the consumer gets moved down the sales funnels they are in one of the following “modes”:

Passive Messaging Mode: Passive messaging mode is the classic broadcast mediums attempt to disrupt the consumer and create awareness in a product. This is a TV spot, outdoor billboard, instore displays, radio ad, ect.

Active Messaging Mode: Active messaging is when the consumer is in search of information that may lead them to your product or service.  The classic example is a Google search ad.  But we also see this in restaurant guides handed out in Cleveland hotel rooms (which got me to Saigon on 4th Street for a great dinner!).

As marketers we must create strategies around each of these modes.  How we communicate to the consumer depends on where they are in the sales funnel and their current messaging mode.  In practice this means:

• Passive Mode communication like broadcast advertising builds awareness.  It gets the consumer into the sales funnel.
• Active Mode communication like Google Adwords pulls the consumer through the funnel and into the sale.
• Social Networks like Facebook and Twitter are only good for consumers in the Active Mode.  If the consumer is on Facebook in Passive Mode they will ignore your message.  If they are in Active Mode they will be extremely responsive to your message.

The practical take away from this post is to set up a frame work to understand what state of mind will your consumer will be in when they see your message.  Then tailor your message accordingly.

Google Annouces OS

If you haven’t heard yet — Google announced that they will be launching an Operating System this fall.  WHAT!  Let that sink in a bit because the OS wars are on.  In retaliation Microsoft will be announcing completely online versions of Office next week.  Here’s a couple articles to get the scoop:

Why Chrome OS Now? Because Microsoft Office In The Cloud Comes

Monday.
Five Things Google’s Chrome OS Will Do for Your Netbook

What this means for marketers:

• In the short term probably nothing.  It will take awhile for Chrome OS to gain a meaningful audience
• Google will be a very powerful challenger to Microsoft.  Remember that Google has the Android phone operating system out there. And Google has a version of Office (Docs and Spreadsheets) available through Google Docs.
• Software applications will become distributed through an iPhone Ap Store like model — where the application is either subsidized by advertising/sponsorship, sold for a couple bucks, or on a subscription fee.  Marketers will have new opportunities to engage the audience through innovative value add software.  Imagine being able to communicate with your car through your computer’s Bluetooth connection.  Owners could tweak engine performance against fuel savings from their living rooms.
• Yes, you could do that now — but two things are different.  1)  Everyone will be able to distribute software to the consumers PCs through the open online catalog Chrome will bring.  And there will be a lot of people making and sharing great software (see Iphone Ap Store or Wordpress add ons). Software that doesn’t need to be installed on the PC.  2)  All of your toys will be sync’d up.  Since the software is internet based you’ll be using the same applications on your home PC, work PC, and Cell phone.
• Microsoft’s move to put Office out as an internet based application signals the start of the end of packaged software.  If you’re in the packaged software business (production or retail)  it’s time to rethink the business.  This also goes for Video Games.
• Rob’s prediction:  Apple will deploy a version of the Mac OS that runs through a Safari Browser that will work on any computer with internet access.

Things will be getting pretty interesting.  In the next couple years how we view computers will complete change:

1) Current Paradigm =Chip Set + Hardware Manufacture + Operating System + Installed Software + Internet Browser.

example:  Intel + Dell + Vista + Office + IE

2)  New Paradigm = Chip Set + Hardware Manufacture + Internet Browser / Operating System

example: Intel + Dell + Chrome

Notice that Microsoft’s core is now gone — wow!