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� 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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Word of MouthSpace
What space do gymnasts, cheerleaders, Fall Out Boy fans and gay guys share? http://www.myspace.com/stickitmovie.According to Reuters, Jessica Bendinger, the director of Stick It a 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". 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 all the NCAA gymnasts who are in the movie.
She also worked with Disney to package the movie’s trailer and the Missy Elliot 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
WOMM: Monkeys Confirm Importance of Influencers in Attention
A research study on the time course of attention conducted at Duke University Medical Center using male macaques found that lower status monkeys shifted their attention to a target within a tenth of a second after a higher status money did so and that higher status monkeys shifted attention only half as quickly and only following the shift of other dominant monkeys. The study concluded that "social status of an individual gates that individual’s deployment of social attention" and that there are both reflexive and voluntary elements.
So….there is another biological tie to the importance of word of mouth, in marketing. As was discussed in great detail at the WOMMA Conference, word of mouth is driven by influencers. Consumers care more about what other consumers think than they do about advertising. It’s genetic…
Technorati Tags: Attention, WOMMA, Advertising, marketing
SuperBowl Ad Engagement Measured By Brain Scan
There were two messages that came accross loud and clear at the recent WOMMA Conference regarding new marketing versus old marketing : the consumer is in control of the information and advertisers are there to provide the means to the information; this means that advertising should engage, not disrupt, intrude, or "break through" the clutter.
There has been much discussion regarding the portfolio of advertising presented at the SuperBowl and many different opinions offered as to the effectiveness of the various ads. Researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles’s Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center and FKF Applied Research used brain-scan images of people watching the advertising during Superbowl XL. They tracked the ads by measuring "activity in key parts of the brain areas that are known to be involved in wanting choosing, sexual arousal, fear, indecision, and reward" and then provided their results in terms of engagement: most engaging, middle of the road, and least engaging. The brain images are on-line for your viewing pleasure.
Their press release mentions that their sample was a group of "male and female SuperBowl viewers in their 20s and 30s chosen to represent typical audience viewers of the SuperBowl." Obviously, this has to be taken into consideration when interpreting their findings.
The "Most Engaging Ads" according to the scans were Sierra Mist, "Airport Security" and the Disney "NFL Dreamers" spot although this was engaging only on the first showing. The "Middle of the Road Ads" were Bud Light’s "Employee Incentive Plan" and Cadillac’s "Catwalk". The "Least Engaging" ads were "Aleve with Leonard Nemoy, " Burger King "Whopperettes," Budweiser’s "Junior Clydesdale," and Career Builder’s "Chimps Celebrate."
Dr. Joshua Freedman, UCLA Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and co-founder of FKF Applied Research notes that one of the advantages of brain scanning versus more traditional kinds of ad research such as focus groups, interviews and polls is that with brain scans the viewer’s emotional response is measured without relying on their interpretation of their reaction and without the influence of other’s responses or questions.
Other interesting results of the brain study were the contrast between the results at SuperBowl Ads.Com and the scans. For instance, FedEx Caveman placed #1 in the poll while failing to show activity in the emtional centers of the brain. The Dove "Real Beauty" ad which has been described as tugging at the heart strings did not show significant engagement in the emotional centers of the brain.
So…if the results of the brain scans indicate that none of these spots were engaging, what’s an advertiser to do at the Superbowl? All those consumers dressed up, but where do we go?
Manfred Marek summarizes some recent studies that incorporate neuroscience into the discussion of engagement in advertising. Scott MacDonald of Conde Nast presented a paper at the 2005 Worldwide Readership Symposium which looked at consumer’s relationship to magazine and television advertising. He said that with televsion, engagement with program content leads to
increased advertising resistance. Can we hypothesize perhaps that the more engaged the consumer is with the game, the less engaged they will be with the advertising?
Marek mentioned another study by Starcom which indicated that the most "time-shifted" TV
viewing happens during the most highly rated shows. Again, the message is the more involved the consumer is with the content, the less involved they will be with advertising that interrupts the content. Hence, the increase in product placement makes sense.
Viacoms Brand Solutions (VBS) conducted research using MRI brains scans of TV viewers and found according to Marek "that advertising content that is relevant
to the programme environment in which it appears is more likely to
stimulate brain activity in areas of the brain commonly associated with
advertising effectiveness…But the survey also shows that programme content
primarily activates the part of the brain that deals with absorption,
indicating that viewers lose themselves in the programme. But as soon
as the commercial break starts, viewers re-engage with their
surroundings – memory and decision-making faculties take over again."
A couple of possible conclusions: Superbowl advertising might be more engaging to the viewer if it was relevant to football. Remember Mean Joe Green? Maybe it was so mega-engaging because it was about football! US Today lists 10 Rules to Make Ads Magical that I think make some excellent points…one more might be engage with the programming.
Technorati Tags: SuperBowl, advertising, neuroscience, brain scans, consumer engagement, WOMMA, ad research
Wombat Podcast #10: Sean Glass and Chris LaConte
Sean Glass and Chris LaConte of Higher One talk about how they have used Word-of-Mouth to build their on campus financial services business on a podcast at the Wombat Blog .It is fascinating!
Sean and Chris talk about how when they started the business their first encounter with the influence of word-of-mouth was through negative word-of-mouth generated through misinformation about their on-line bill pay product. They astutely realized the importance of getting the right message to the right people by joining the conversation.
They began working with students to identify the physical locations, the venues, on campus where the conversations were happening and began providing students with the tools to facilitate the spread of information about their products. They gave students copy and content that they could then personalize and pass along to their friends and classmates. They identified students who believed in their products and were willing to talk about them and made them Agents.
The Agents were required to provide written reports of their activities and to encourage students to submit high quality reports, they were given points based upon the quality of their reports. The reports provided Higher One with immediate feedback, both negative and positive, that was then used to make changes, improvements, or otherwise build their business. The Agents functioned as the marketing department as well as the market research department. Impressive!
Sean and Chris say that word-of -mouth can be an entrepreneurs best friend….it is important to give early adopters the tools to amplify word of mouth…this includes finding the venue, providing information to share, and motivating the evangelists. Advertising they said can build awareness and create demand…word-of-mouth drives the decision to buy.
I mentioned Sean in a post in November about Word-of-Mouth Marketing on college campuses and he emailed to thank me and to tell me that he had started blogging. I am sure he will have a lot to say!
Besides Higher One, which is projecting sales of over $18 million in 2006, the 26 year old has among many other accomplishments, co founded the Yale Entrepreneurial Society a non-profit that promotes entrepreneurship in the greater Yale community and ThreadKill.com which I suggest you read his explanation for, and is an investor in Axon Labs, a sleep research labortory that is developing products to enable peak performance based upon research in neuroscience. The Axon web site links to an American Medical Association study that officially declares waking up the worst part of the day. Just visit our house any school day morning to confirm that.
Technorati Tags: WOMMA, advertising, blogging, WOMBAT Blog. word-of-mouth, buzz marketing, college marketing
WOMMA: Blog That Chart! And Other Conference Buzz
There is a lot being written about the WOMMA Conference…the WOMBAT Blog has some blogger updates from the conference and as of this morning has nine new videos from Doug Atkin, Pete Blackshaw, Bob Garfield, Jamie Tedford, Laurie Weisberg, Mark Kingdon, Paul Rand, Steve Friedman, and Ted Wright. The video is also available at the cobrandit site. There is also a request for comments and thoughts about the WOMMA WOMBAT conference.
Here are some other places that show the word getting out. Technorati has tracked 1,420 posts containing WOMMA. Technorati has a relatively new feature called Blog That Chart! and if you enter a tag you can get your own chart. And if you are really chart centric, you can enter some code, post it to you blog and it will automatically update. Just for illustration (and because I could) I have put a Blog That Chart! for WOMMA in my left sidebar.
Other WOMMA tracking spots are Feedster, Blogpulse and IceRocket. And from the main stream: Advertising is Obsolete. Everyone Says So . OK, well that was the New York Times article headline and of course it had just a little spin to it. Advertising is not dead: it is changing. Visit the WOMBAT Blog. Conference coverage was live, not ghost written!
Technorati Tags: WOMMA, WOMBAT, BlogThatChart!
At WOMMA: IKarma
Paul Williams, the CEO of iKarma, a reputation management system company stopped by the blogger table yesterday at WOMMA and introduced himself. He was going to be speaking at a break out session the next day about "Reputation Managment For Fun and Profit."
Paul Williams is the CEO of a company called iKarma
which is an online reputation management system similar conceptually to
the Ebay feedback system. The iKarma system is an open system where
comments and feedbacks regarding your business or service can be posted
by clients and customers. You set up an account with Ikarma and can
start rating businesses and services with a 1-5 star rating and open
comments. The business or person that is written about can respond. iKarma takes your positive word of mouth and puts it into a form that you can use to build your business.
The model is the ebay feedback system; you use a vendor, you fill out a feedback form, it is tallied and put in the database. The next buyer knows how many complaints he has and the resolution of them The consumer becomes informed through the combined feedback of others. The benefit to the "good guys’, the ones that provided a positive customer experience is that their good reputation grows and so does their business.
The form that provides the business the information is below:
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iKarma seems to be getting positive word of mouth from the blogosphere.
Paul Williams suggests that "you can turn bloggers into happy
customers or you can turn your happy customers into bloggers." Your
customers, he said are friendly, already like you, have friends and
family and have active social lives;bloggers already hate you, have
online friends and live at home with their mothers. Customers give you
standard WOM which is limited to your circle of friends. Relationship
Management Systems (RMS) such as iKarma give you unlimited reach and
influence. RMS can add credibility to customer opinions. WOM has more
power,advertising has more reach. RMS has more endurance. Makes good sense.
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