Understand the mindset, not just the media moment

According to ExactTarget's 2008 Channel Preference Survey,  younger consumers favor IM and text messaging for personal communication, but they prefer email for marketing communication. And 56% of those 18-24 had made a purchase because of a marketing message received vial email, down a little from 35-44 year olds, 66% of whom had purchased vial email.

The distinction is a clear indicator of the need to go beyond media usage alone as a targeting criteria, and to define the mindset associated with the use of a particular media form in order to understand the potential role of marketing for a particular user of a particular medium.

THINK's model of media usage clearly defines texting and IM usage among 18-24 year olds as an "interaction" mindset, and commercial email as a "transactional" mindset. Based on this model, brands would be wise to take very different approaches to each medium. This latest research bears out the distinction.

The right creative for behavioral targeting

As marketers, we are always emphasizing relevancy. With online media becoming more targeted to particular behavioral segments,we also push to tailor creative to match the right person with the right message. From the media placements to creative messaging to the landing page to the conversion path, the experience must be relevant to your consumer. To put a strategic plan in place, Dave Morgan from TACODA mentions four targeting strategies in his latest article, Why Your Creative Needs to Catch Up, that can help tie the creative to the media segmentation.

1. Preference targeting - Using anonymous consumer browsing behavior, media can be segmented by perceived preference. Example: Beverage product targeting food content should communicate differently with those showing interest in home entertaining verses healthy meals.
2. Life-stage targeting - Use media to target life-stage events that often trigger large amounts of consumer spending such as graduating college, getting married, having a baby, buying a home, or retiring. Example: The 'Movers' target would have different messaging for a soon-to-be-married browser verses a recent retiree looking for a home.
3. Purchase-funnel targeting - Consumers differ according to their stage in the purchase process. They may be just starting research, evaluating brands, or focused on price and location. Example: In the automotive purchase cycle, a consumer might start browsing different brands and models then six weeks later be focused on price and local dealerships.
4. Lifestyle targeting - Media can target a group of consumers who share common life themes. Example: Messaging a broadband service to an online gamer needing a faster Internet connection would be very different than a busy mom looking for a family solution.

While media planning is expected to strategically customize campaigns using targeting, the extra time and investment in customizing creative and the conversion experience to increase relevancy should not be overlooked. They all work together.

Advertising's chaos senario 2.0

Bob Garfield has a long thought-inspiring article at Ad Age on the chaotic conditions facing advertisers. In short its all about niche verses mass and the old global agencies and traditional media outlets are not structured to make the transition.  Bob comes up with five truths about the current situation.

1. People don't like ads
2. But they crave information
3. The consumer is in control. No, really.
4. Diversion of ad budgets
5. Pay-per-view

"In imagining Chaos 2.0, you must follow the no-money. And when you do, you'll have taken the Chaos Scenario one step further: to a digital landscape in which marketing achieves hitherto unimaginable effectiveness, but in which display advertising's main role will be to quickly, straightforwardly, informatively draw you into a broader brand experience."

Brand acceptance in Second Life

A recent survey by Komjuniti shows that Second Lifers are not that excited about brands in-world. The study shows 72% are disappointed with branded activities, 42% were unaware of brand presence at all and only 7% said that in-world branded activities had a positive influence on their brand impression.

“Disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” comments Dr. Nils Andres, managing director of Komjuniti. “All the hype about Second Life in the traditional media has served to raise people’s expectations to a level that the technology and the companies taking part simply are not yet in a position to fulfil”.

MIT Advertising Lab summarizes the learning, "The aim has to be to build communities around Second Life sites and look to serve them over the long term. One-off promotional initiatives are punished over the long term with a lack of attention by Second Life users and can provoke a negative consumer backlash effect on the brands in real life."

The Desperation of Viral Campaigns

Scott Donaton's article on Advertising Age brings up a point that we all know: most viral campaigns suck. The fundamental reason they suck: "They are not the end result of an actual idea or strategy but are born of a desperate desire to do something, anything, in the new-media space."

Scott looks at the Folger's Tolerate Mornings: "This is Folgers' attempt to appear cool and ironic by offering slow risers such appealing goodies as a wake-up call on their mobile phone from "Lucy," billed as a "sexy way to rise and shine (for the fellas)," or a "boss tracker," in case you want to catch a few z's at your desk. The fact that it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek makes it somehow sadder, like a dad trying to act cool in front of his teenage daughter's friends."

Viral campaigns are so hard to create for brands because the viral aspect relies on the content being edgy, irreverent, graphic and funny.  Those are hard to manage for most brands. The best viral videos have, in most cases, not come from the brands themselves, but rather from the consumers, like the Diet Coke/Mentos videos. Therefore one strategy is to be watchful for consumer content and then have a plan to capitalize on that conversation.

Scott's take away: "Doing something just to do something still leads to nothing."

How to handle citizen marketers

Guy Kawasaki interviews Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell, authors of the new book "Citizen Marketers" and the blog "Church of the Consumer."

Guy asks the pair how companies should handle events like the Diet Coke-Mentos video.

Answer: There are three different ways to respond to amateur grassroots efforts like that:

1. Say nothing and let the citizen marketers have their time in the spotlight. It’s a safe and conservative approach.

2. Use your company website or blog to point to the citizen marketers in the spirit of “what people are saying about us.” This opens the door to ceding control, and that’s a good step. Just remember that citizen marketers don’t follow instructions. This approach requires company spokespeople to have a sense of humor. That wasn’t the case with the Coke, whose spokesperson was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as scolding people for not drinking their precious beverage!

3. Quickly build a program around what’s happening. It can be beneficial but also tricky because it can taint the grassroots nature of what’s happening. Keep it simple. The “firecracker” nature of something like Diet Coke and Mentos has a short half-life. Better to openly solicit ideas from the people or community involved and keep it simple. Follow the lead of the community. And keep the company lawyers locked in a cage.

The $31 billion local search and ad market

Local search and ad dollars are running away from local media.  Google would seem to be the logical benefactor of that shift.  However, AskCity wants to change all of that.  The LA Times states, "For now, Ask's main strategy is to gain market share by persuading its current users to do a few more searches each month. In October, 23% of U.S. Web searchers did at least one search with Ask, compared with 65% at Google and 53% at Yahoo, according to ComScore."

Om Malik interviewed AskCity CEO, Jim Lanzone recently.

"OM: So why should I care about this launch. I can find a lot of information from other sites.

JL: You should care because search engines are the #1 online most-used resource for local information, ahead of yellow pages and local newspaper sites, and local searches account for about 10% of all searches on major search engines. Yet local is the category with the lowest user satisfaction in search. So there is this gaping need for better local search. We think we’ve got it."

Local media companies are not ready to capitulate and are struggling to adopt new production methods like Mojos and new local product offerings like Metro New York.

Branded Entertainment: $7.5B by 2010

Will Waugh at the ANA reveals some data about branded entertainment from a recent ANA publication, "Best Practices in Branded Entertainment: Case Studies and Accountability," by Richard C. Sutton with Barbara Zack. The big data points are, according to PQ Media, branded entertainment will a 7.5 billion dollar industry by 2010.

Will also points to an excerpt from the book listing the ten best practices of branded entertainment:

1. Is it brand relevant and brand positive?
2. Does it build brand awareness?
3. Does it break through advertising clutter?
4. How long is the integration on-screen? Is it long enough for viewers to notice?
5. Is it organic?
6. Can the integration build buzz?
7. Is there a demonstration of your product or service in the program? Or, can the program highlight key brand attributes?
8. Will the program generate positive publicity and media coverage?
9. How does the program relate to the rest of your brand marketing? If it’s an event, does it have a beginning, middle, and end?
10. The prize is ROI. What’s the return on investment? What results do you plan to measure – and how will you do it?

As viewers turn from TVs to the internet for more of their entertainment, brand sponsored content is going to be more and more important for reaching your target audience. 

Second Life crosses million user mark

According to the Second Life blog, in-world residents now number over 1 million.  Not only that, they expect to sign up 50,000 new user today alone.

Second Life has been in the news lately with a number of major brands moving in-world. Recently Wired Magazine, Reuters, Intel and IBM all revealed Second Life projects. Advertisers like BBH and Leo Burnett are also moving into the new space. From an article in the New York Times today called "A Virtual World but Real Money," there are over 30 companies now in-world with scores trying to figure out how and why to join.

The buzz around Second Life could not be much stronger. Many marketers may be searching for a little perspective. 

Second Life is not a game.

Think back to the original definition of cyberspace by William Gibson: "Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding, (69)."

Second Life is a virtual location where people can meet to have conversations, make friends, create items, build buildings and make money.

Second Life is not free.

Well, its free to create a character but not to own land or build objects. Many brands choose to create islands so that their brand will not be influenced by other brands or residence's creations in close proximity.  A private island costs $1,250 to create and $195 per month to maintain, before construction begins.  While that is a drop in the bucket for major brand budgets, it still represents a commitment to exploring a new medium.

Second Life requires a fast computer and Internet connection.

Rendering out virtual worlds requires horsepower.  To really see texture details you need a good bit of video ram.  For today's gamer the graphics will look 5 years old. Second Life, as its is presented today, requires patience and a willingness to suspend desire for graphic quality found in most current games. 

With so much momentum its hard to predict what will happen next for Second Life.  However, the population of multi-player virtual environments continues to grow rapidly and marketers may find that the best place to engage consumers is in a world in which they are already immersed. (Chart from MMOG Chart)

Grasshopper, there is no kimono

It's become clear that a fundamental shift in thinking that needs to take place if marketers are to make the transition to a media 2.0 world. We've all heard (and probably said ourselves) expressions about "opening the kimono" and how the internet was the medium that required doing so -- well, true, but not far enough, because the entire concept retains media 1.0 artifacts of thought that can critically damage your brand -- as evidenced by the Walmart/Edelman "flog" fiasco.

In a 1.0 world, there is a "kimono" -- a veil of separation between your brand and your marketplace -- that marketers choose to open and close to varying degrees at various times and in various media. Marketers in effect wholly own their brands and play the role of geisha, cleverly and seductively showing a little ankle in order to entice markets into a branded relationship.

In a 2.0 world, it's clear that brands are co-owned with your markets. This isn't a new lesson -- the New Coke debacle/triumph (depending on where you are re that conspiracy theory) illustrated this concept years ago. New media vehicles just exacerbate the issue. When you have truly wrapped your head around co-ownership, you will find that you have very different notions about how to use these vehicles. 2.0 blogging for Walmart? Well, on the one hand, your brand co-owners will expect a highly authentic blog from Walmart leadership, addressing the real issues and opportunities facing the brand in the marketplace. Marketing campaigns that incorporate blogging are fine -- but are either openly "made up" -- think about an interactive ad campaign in which an obviously manufactured teen cartoon character blogs about back to school -- or "authentic" - in which, say, four real moms (and a single-parent dad) blog about getting their kids back to school and the real challenges they face. OK, these ideas are off the top of my head, but serve the purpose to illustrate the  principle at work here: wake up and smell the sake, folks -- there is no kimono.