Forrester Consumer Forum, The Transformation Was Live
This year’s Forrester Consumer Forum personified at least part of the conference theme, Transformed by Social Technologies. Indeed the transformation was everywhere.
I say this based upon both the Forrester analysts, invited speakers and panelists who provided enough rock solid data, how-to’s, best practices, advice and experience to forever kill that sacred cow….
but also because of the Creators who not only live blogged, but Twittered, streamed, and drove the Groundswell into living rooms and offices around the Globe. This is the future in real time, this is permanent Beta.
Think that the Critical Mass Beta Cam was cool enough where it was?
It was, until David Armano pushed the innovation curve a little further and took it live live. Mo’ live?
photo Deb Schultz
What’s live live?
As Henry Jenkins noted, “in a world of media convergence, every story gets told’….and in a culture of participation, not everyone is at the top of the ladder. 
At this conference though, the creators never stopped…..
If you are a marketer and understand that the world has been transformed by social technologies and are not participating, start your climb up the ladder….you can’t win, if you don’t climb.
More posts forthcoming….
Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act: DOPA Extra
Senator Ted Stevens, who last entered our radar screen when he described the internet as a series of tubes, has introduced Senate Bill 49 which appears to encompass everything we objected to about DOPA, plus more. DOPA, after passing with an overwhelming majority in the House then died from stagnation in the Senate, with the end of the Congressional session.
Though some are calling it DOPA, JR, it might be more aptly name DOPA Extra since it goes well beyond DOPA.
The Bill’s stated purpose is, "To amend the Communications Act of 1934 to prevent the carriage of child pornography by video service providers, to protect children from online predators, and to restrict the sale or purchase of children’s personal information in interstate commerce." It is broken down into three sections"
Title 1: Requires that those distributing adult online content not include the adult content on their homepage and that each page of the site include a warning that it contains sexually explicit content. It only applies to content producers in the US and does not cover content producers distributing pornography from overseas. So, the thought seems good, the execution may be lacking.
Title 2: Which is very much like DOPA. In fact it is titled Deleting On-line Predators 2007. It limits access to social networks in schools (only those receiving Federal subsidies via the E-Rate Program ) and seems to encompass the same sites as DOPA, everything from MySpace to Wikipedia; additionally the schools would be required to monitor, or perhaps track, the online activities of students if not supervised by faculty. Also included in this section is a mandate for the FTC to set up a site to warn of the dangers of social networking and interactive sites.
My original objections to DOPA still stand: The Internet is a wonderful source of knowledge and learning for children; restricting this will not eliminate on-line predators.
Title 3: Is about protecting the privacy of children. It makes it illegal for anyone to purchase or sell private data about someone they know to be a child. Can’t object to that.
As noted previously, MySpace is set to introduce Zephyr, to alert parents about the ages and other information their children are using on their social networking profiles. Although it seems that MySpace has been unable to find the technology to verify ages of users, it seems that Anheuser-Busch has age verification on Bud-TV visitors. Perhaps they should share their toys.
Andy Carvin at PBS who is covering this extensively and impressively points to GovTrack.us, a legistlative website "independently tracking the US government" where you can subscribe via RSS and track it yourself. This is a fascinating site.
Linda Braun at YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) provides in PDF, 30 Positive Uses os Social Networking Compilation plus 1.
Tags: Media 2.0, DOPA, Protecting Children in the 21st Century, DOPAJr, MySpace, YALSA, Andy Carvin, Social Networks, Senate Bill 49,
Anheuser-Busch
href="http://technorati.com/tag/Bud-Tv" rel="tag">Bud-Tv, Wikipedia, Ted Stevens
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Umbria Connect: Blog Monitoring or List Sales?
Tish Grier just emailed me about Umbria Connect which is a new product offering from Umbria, a research company that specializes in "mining the blogosphere for market intelligence." The press release for Umbria Connect says the following:
"Umbria Connect(TM), a service that provides URL source lists to companies eager to connect with individual bloggers who are passionately blogging on topics of high interest, and engage with them in a more personal dialogue."
Umbria is selling the URLs of the individual bloggers in blocks of 25 on a subscription basis. Suggested uses for those buying the URLs are:ﾃつ ﾃつ
ﾃつ "ﾃつ Seed a community of passionate supporters for:
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ * Product/feature attitudes and usage trends
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ * Word-of-mouth campaigns
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ * Test marketing and advertising concepts and positioning
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ * Test receptivity and feedback to product ideas, new applications,
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ and/or product line extensions
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ — Build custom marketing panels that provide objective feedback
ﾃつ ﾃつ ﾃつ — Gather information on competitive perceptions and insight"
Well, is "seeding"ﾃつ the same as mining? Or more troubling, does "buying" a url from someone who doesn’t own that url give permission to the purchaserﾃつ to contact the owner of the url? It sounds like selling lists to me.
Tish writes, "Okay…it’s bad enough that our mailing addys are sent to whomever will pay for them. And it’s so bad for our telephone numbers that we had to start a National Do Not Call list. But *selling* our URLs??
Shel Holtz writes that he is expecting pitches for "Viagra, poker parlors and mortgages any day now"; as if we don’t get enough of those in our email!
I wonder if they will offer bloggers an opt-out option? I will put that on my Christmas list.
The bottom line: Its not that I have an issue with aggregating blogger urls within a specific category or segment; its the concern that having the data will be mistaken for with ﾃつ having the connection with bloggers. The former is similar to having a list from a list broker; the latter is a blogger relations program that is developed based upon marketing strategies and objectives.
Suggested Reading: From Blogger Relations to Blogger Relations Programs on Diva Marketing or Blogger Relations: Rules of the Road on the WOMMA Summit Blog.
Tags: Tish Grier, Shel Holtz, WOMMA, Marianne Richmond, Umbria, Umbria Connect, Toby Bloomberg, Blogger Relations, Blog Monitoring
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Pay Per Post Changes Disclosure Policy Following FTC Announcement
Pay per Post is scheduled to announce a change in their disclosure policy and will require bloggers to disclose that they are being paid for their posts. Techcrunch has an advance copy of the press release and notes that "FTC" is mentioned a number of times thereby indicating that the change was no doubt inspired by the recent FTC announcement on word of mouth marketing.
On December 11th the FTC took the position that companies engaging in word of mouth marketing must disclose the financial relationships that they have with those endorsing their products.ﾃつ They declined to field a full scale investigation of word of mouth marketing practices as requested by Commercial Alert. This announcement highlighted the prominence of the word "disclosure" in a world where traditional advertising has become less believable than personal recommendations and consumer generated media and brandﾃつ "ambassadorships"ﾃつ are becoming increasingly common.
WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) distinguishes between word of mouth marketing, which involves disclosure of relationships, and stealth marketing, which does not. WOMMA recently issued an Ethics Adoption Toolkit for use by companies to develop ethical policies and guidelines for their word of mouth marketing efforts. They have endorsed the FTC position. (Full disclosure: I have blogged for WOMMA conferences and received comped conference fees and hotels)
ﾃつ Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group, believes that word of mouth marketers are "perpetuating large scale deception" and that " word of mouth, or buzz marketing as it’s also known, {is} "fundamentally fraudulent and misleading." In October, they petitioned the FTC to require paid "agents" to disclose their relationships and financial compensation with those whose products and services they are endorsing. According to Annys Shinﾃつ of the Washington Post, Commercial Alert mentioned Sony Ericsson’s use of fake tourists in a New York and Seattle campaign in 2002 as well as P&G’s Tremor’s use of teenage volunteers to promote their brands.
ﾃつ The FTC already has a policy on commercial endorsements and deceptive advertising but according to Mary Engle, the FTC director of advertising practices as quoted in the Washington Post, the FTC wanted to be clear on disclosure in light on the increase in word of mouth marketing and the likelihood that consumers would make decisions based upon a presumed independence on the part of product recommendations that was in fact, not independent.
While Commercial Alert calls the FTC announcement a giant Christmas present for the word of mouth marketing industry, Andy Sernovitz, CEO of WOMMA calls the FTC’s efforts "supportive of the industry."
It would seem that the Pay Per Post announcement, which is a reversal of their prior positions on disclosure,ﾃつ indicates that they heard the FTC message as the warning it seems intended to be. This is a good thing.
Tags: PayPerPost, FTC, WOMMA, Commercial Alert, disclosure, Marianne Richmond, ethics, blogs,,ﾃつ Andy Sernovitz, Mary Engle, Washington Post, Sony Ericsson, P&G, Tremor
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President John Edwards Delivers the State of the Blogosphere…
A John Edwards presidency may be that moment that we look back upon and say, "He was the first president of the social media age." He seems to "get it." His wife, Elizabeth seems to "get it." I am not saying that just because he was the keynote speaker at Gnomedex. Visit his website and you will see a veritable showroom for social media…not only does he have a blog, he launched it in Beta.
You can receive updates on your mobile device; he has podcasts, he has video. He is using YouTube. Want to know what he talked about at Gnomedex? That’s correct, go to YouTube. He has a blogging family, Elizabeth and Cate. You can chat and there is community.
If John Edwards delivers the State of the Union in January of 2009,
can we expect authenticity and transparency? Will we nod and say, "its
the blogosphere, stupid." Will there be a national dialog on the
question: "Are all links created equal?" Will we need laws that state
that discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age and Technorati
links is not permitted? John Edwards, if elected will become our first
blogging president; Elizabeth will become the first blogging First
Lady. Pass the Kool-Aid, please.
Tags: John Edwards, blogs Gnomedex, podcasts, videoblogs, Elizabeth Edwards, Technorati, YouTube
AAF: MySpace and YouTube, Yes; Blogs, Not Really Very Much
An AAF (American Advertising Federation ) survey of industry leaders on digital media trends indicates that advertising agencies are not confident that Fortune 500 companies quite appreciate the effectiveness of digital marketing. Sixty three percent of Fortune 500 companies according to the survey are, "generally behind the curve when it comes to online strategy." However, the agencies executives themselves acknowledge that fifty-eight percent are "personally "struggling simply to manage existing online efforts, let alone stay ahead of the curve."
Well, what a shame about that curve; agencies think clients are behind the digital curve but agencies admit they can’t stay ahead of it. While the agencies and the client in this surveys are roundingﾃつ Dead Man’s Curve they might want to drive by Todd Copilevitz’ and see why they are Advertising Themselves to Death.. Another eye opener awaits as Todd notes that General Mills has told its agencies that they will now be compensated based upon the dreaded RESULTS.
Might be important to realize that the Future of Advertising is NOW: Its not about whether the advertisers or the advertising agencies "get it." The consumer gets "it" and that is really all that matters. According to Yankelovich and Forrester, seventy percent (70%) of consumers say they like products such as TiVo that block advertising and ninety two percent (92%) of these users fast forward through advertising. For more data, check out the Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMMA) Research Blog and to experience the future in real time join me next week at the Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMBAT 2) Basic Training Conference.
OK, and how does the AAF regard blogs and "user generated content sites"? "Advertising executives find blogs a riskier, less effective advertising vehicle than user-generated content sites such as MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Sixty-two percent (62%) stated that "blogs are too risky to advertise with due to lack of predictability of the editorial content," while only 53 percent agreed with the same statement about user-generated content. Despite these concerns, an overwhelming majority said advertisers "should exploit the viral marketing opportunities" of user-generated sites and, to a lesser degree, blogs.
Well Yankelovitch did report that 55% of consumers still enjoy advertising "itself’. Of course that reminds me of the oft quoted John Wannamaker comment about the 50% of add dollars that are wasted but he just didn’t know which half.
Tags: advertising, marketing, word of mouth marketing, WOMMA, WOM, digital advertising, digital media, YouTube, MySpace, blogs
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Robert Scoble, Attention,Get a Life, Which Life
So, if I hadn’t been working on Saturday night (Get a life) and didn’t suffer from advanced, possibly chronic continuous partial attention I wouldn’t have tuned into Techmeme on a Saturday night and read the news by way of Silcon Valley Watcher:" Microsoft’s top blogger Robert Scoble is leaving…."
Well, that news has been well dissected today from its meaning in the blogosphere at Diva Marketing to what it means for Microsoft at Randy Holloway Unfiltered to a focus on starting something, not leaving at Cruel to be Kind. The range of blog posts are well organized at Techmeme.
To me, the news highlighted some other related concepts that are being discussed on line. One is, of course the concept of attention and/or continuous partial attention that led to my awareness of the Scoble news; and the other one is identity: digital life/real life. Attention, and my own frustrations with it, is a topic that I have written about before. The last time, I included a promise to pay more attention. Liz Strauss did the same, but I think she is doing better at it since she is writing about tools, organization and backing up files and I am still writing about attention.
Returning to the behavior that this post started with, its Saturday night and I am working, and instead of attending fully to the task at hand, I multi-task my way to techmeme; this moves to the otherﾃつ issue: digital life vs real life. Joshua Porter at Bokardo has been writing about, "The non-collision of relationship and independent George." George? George from Seinfeld. And this provides a feedback loop in and of itself because Seinfeld is one of my 15 year old son’s favorite TV shows and he frequently asks me to watch it with him and although I frequently do, I frequently don’t;ﾃつ yes, he is asking for attention and he is not getting it.
Bokardo’s uses the intersection of George as defined as someone in a relationship versus George as just George meet. Bokardo’s point is about our digital lives on our blogs, email, aggregators vs our real lives and is there a difference in our identities between the two. If we believe that there are two of us, or two or more of us.
He references Nicolas Carr at Rough type who writes, "When we communicate to promote ourselves, to gain attention, all we are doing is turning ourselves into goods and our communications into advertising. We become salesmen of ourselves, hucksters of the ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ的.ﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ In peddling our interests, moreover, we also peddle the commodities that give those interests form: songs, videos, and other saleable products. And in tying our interests to our identities, we give marketers the information they need to control those interests and, in the end, those identities.ﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ
Carr’s concerns is that as we provide our lives as content on MySpace and YouTube and involve ourselves in the lives of others we are becoming "digital narcissists" and he quotes Scott Karp who writes,
"This is why MySpace canﾃ｢竄ｬ邃｢t effectively monetize its 70 million users through advertising ﾃ｢竄ｬ窶 people use MySpace not to GIVE their attention to something that is entertaining or informative (which could thus be sold to advertisers) but rather to GET attention from other users. Why is it so appealing to MySpace users to be able to post messages publicly on other usersﾃ｢竄ｬ邃｢ sites? Because they can GET attention as a function of GIVING it."
Bokardo believe that " the dichotomy of a ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ電igital lifeﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ being somehow different from our ﾃ｢竄ｬﾅ途eal lifeﾃ｢竄ｬﾂ is becoming more false every day. Not only do people understand how web technologies work, but theyﾃ｢竄ｬ邃｢re leveraging them to improve all parts of their lives." This is illustrated well at Toby Bloomberg’s Blogger Stories.
So, what about the intersection of digital life vs real life? Well we are both products of our environment and producers of our environment, online as well as off line. The self is a social product of the dynamic interaction between ourselves and our environment( social cognition theory, symbolic interactionism) and human interaction is dynamic process of reciprocal role-taking.
Technology has made our interactions with "others" significantly different than originally imagined by the pre Internet. theorists in that "others" isﾃつ merely a much larger group and a much more self-selected group.We are not limited by proximity and therefore have much more control over our interactions. The first modern technology driven change was with the advent of television and "old media." Media social influences were "symbolic" role models and influencers and communication was one way.
Next technology enabled two way interaction on blogs and social networks, on an expanded level so thatﾃつ our environment has expanded exponentially. Now, not only are we able to interact online with an expanded environment, we are producing and starring in entertainment content on places like YouTube in a world where everyone’s lives can be viewed as a TV sitcom or a drama. Digital narcissism? Of course; a natural progression from confessions on Oprah and my tragedy, my best seller.
Another point to consider is made by Anne Zelenka. We have different roles for different aspects of our lives; our identity is fluid whether online or off. Our identity is contexual isn’t it?ﾃつ We are parents, children, spouses, employees, teachers and students all in the same day and as Goffman says we play parts during our daily performances.
So, here is the point where attention meets identity in this story. I would have continuous partial attention regardless of technology; technology enabled access to information has only provided more choices. Multi-tasking is a way of life for me; part of my identity. It lead me to the Scoble news late Saturday night.ﾃつ I don’t know Robert Scoble other than through his blog and his book.But, by virtue of his identity in the blogosphere, I thought it was noteworthy and passed it along. Which made me start thinking about identity. This was big news in one corner of my life, on line. In the offline corner it was non-news. Hey kids, Robert Scoble is leaving Microsoft!ﾃつ Robert who?
Tags: Identity, Robert Scoble, MySpace, YouTube, Toby Bloomberg, Anne Zelenka, Nicholas Carr, Joshua Porter, Liz Strauss, Attention, Continuous partial attention, logs, social networks
Word of MouthSpace
What space do gymnasts, cheerleaders, Fall Out Boy fans and gay guys share? http://www.myspace.com/stickitmovie.According to Reuters,ﾃつ Jessica Bendinger, the director of Stick It aﾃつ movie the opened April 18th from Disney’s Touchstone Pictures devised a word of mouth marketing campaign through niche outlets and a MySpace page.
Disney promoted the movie in a two week flight of TV advertising using 10 and 15 second spots on syndicated shows such as "America’s Next Top Model." The actress, Vanessa Lengies, one of the stars in the movie asked Bendinger is she could set up a MySpace page for the movie. Vanessa set up the page but after several weeks Bendinger hired a freelancer to build traffic on the site.
Bendinger identified the target audience, gymnasts, Fall Out Boys fans, cheerleaders who were familiar with Bring it On (a cheerleader movie from 2000) and gay guys.They built the site to 6000 "friends".ﾃつ Then Disney took over the MySpace site and upgraded the design and features which added another 4000 "friends."
Bendinger definitely gets the effect of the 10,000 MySpace friends as she recognizes that 10,000 friends who have anywhere from 50-3,000 friends can sell a lot of tickets to a movie. But, Bendinger also had a few other buzz building tactics. She sought out a gymnastics writer to draft press releases for college magazines and newspapers highlightingﾃつ all the NCAA gymnasts who are in the movie.
She also worked with Disney to package the movie’s trailer andﾃつ the Missy Elliotﾃつ music video to the 30,000 International Gymnast’s subscribers. Their subscribers gymnastic are gyms clubs…..there are 3000 clubs in the US and each club represents hundreds of gymnasts and gymnasts-to-be who are all high potential ticket buyers.
As Wired noted MySpace is a community site that converts electronic word of mouth into the hottest market strategy since MTV. Of course, it would have been interesting to have seen the impact of a blog strategy and to have seen what would have developed on the Stick It My Space site had Disney not taken it over.
And, yes, of course, you can see a clip of Stick It on YouTube. In fact there are several.
Tags: YouTube, MySpace, WOM, CGM, Marketing, Media, gymnastics, NCAA, Disney, Touchstone, MTV, Direct Mail
It is FPRA Blog Week
Members of the Orlando Chapter of the Florida Public Relations Association are holding FPRA Blog Week from April 10th-14th at FPRAblog.com. and there are lots of really great conversations going on there. Topics range from volunteerism to networking to crisis management and much more.
Josh Hallett of Hyku, blog friend and Florida based Blog and Social Media Consultant, is part of the conversation and is on the schedule for Day 5. Josh’s topic is Blog’s: The Birth of "Public" Relations. And of course, speaking of birth and public relations, Josh continues to announce the birth of PepperRubel. Apparently Josh was able to negotiate a cease fire between Jeremy Peppers and Steve Rubel which resulted in this Kodak moment:
I think that there is a possibility that Josh had other reasons in
advocating the PR group hug, for instance replacing another highly
popular Steve Rubel photo in the Flikr most requested of all time PR photo.
Josh has been in the other news quite a bit lately on the topic of business blogging, with mentions in the Orlando Sentinelas well as the St. Petersburg Times and the Atlanta Business Chronicle , the latter along with Toby Bloomberg .
Most intriguing was Josh’s last sentence in his post regarding the articles, "I plan to post something later about this lack of big business adoption. My take? Who cares?" I am definitelylooking forward to hearing what Josh has to say on this since …. some of us have different opinions.
Looking forward to more posts at the FPRAblog also!
Technorati Tags: fprabw, fpra, PR, Steve Rubel, Josh Hallett, Toby Bloomberg, blogs, blog marketing, Jeremy Pepper, media, conversations, social media, networking, volunteerism, Steve Rubel
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