Category: Advertising

  • What do you recommend?

    One feature that helps add weight (generally) to a LinkedIn Profile is ‘Recommendations’. I’m not getting into debates on how it’s used etc, that’s a subjective thing, but someone else acknowledging that the concerned person has certain skills does help. Facebook recommends friends, Twitter recommends users to follow. These are three layers – in LinkedIn its a human, in Facebook its an algorithm basis the user’s location, friends etc, and as for Twitter, well, Twitter just decides – no algorithms. But its ok, we recommend links to each other on Twitter. 🙂

    A few activities recently made me think of recommendations. Two from Google and one from Facebook. A TechCrunch article from a few days back states that Google Friend Connect now has a widget that can help publishers know (and display) which parts of their websites their visitors like best. So it helps both parties. I’m guessing it should also help Google figure out a little more data on who reads what where, and therefore some thing that can be used to improve Ad Sense’s effectiveness. 🙂

    One of Google’s services that uses a recommendation mechanism is Google Reader. Google has now added a feature on Reader that lets you know which of your friends are still worth following on Reader, basis your consumption of their shares. I wonder if they’ll utilise this data for new users – eg. if A and B are existing users and C joins the service, will Google use the A’s and B’s data to help C start off? I also think users should have the option of sharing their own trends data with each other, tools can be used to enhance utility – eg. if i know that 90% of my friends are following TC, then I might share less of TC items.

    Meanwhile, RWW thinks that Facebook has to be working on some recommendation technology. With those thumbs up and down signs on ads, I won’t be surprised if Facebook uses that on friends – ‘Manu liked this ad’ (so we’re serving this to you, since you’re his friend) and one more ‘rebellion’.

    Also, from RWW, a related topic, for a larger perspective – Linked Data. “Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year, evangelizing Linked Data. He said that Linked Data was a sea change akin to the invention of the WWW itself.” We are moving towards a web that’s increasingly inter connected.

    That made me think – we’ve reached a state where you can now login to Facebook with your GMail id (not vice versa yet), thanks to its working with OpenID. There are tools on existing social networks (and new services) for location based social networking. Made me think of the potential of a larger recommendation based web experience, that can then spill over on to real life. Recommendations are already being used, even in online commerce.

    But what it actually made me think is about a larger system where say, Facebook, the ad publisher and I will all share revenue if the friend does some positive action on the ad served to him, thanks to me. And of course, Google will then use this info to serve ads to me later, or utilise this on its own Friend Connect + iGoogle+ AdSense . 😉

    Virtually connected lifestreams and real money. The friends of friends of friends connection utilised upto a huge degree (with privacy controls) – its not a real social connection, only an algorithm that would calculate relevance basis the degree of separation and the history of activities. Recommendations of ideas, links, ads, people, jobs, music, books and any kind of products, services etc.. an algorithm boost to ‘serendipity’, if you will 🙂 It even works the other way, so  if you say, log in to a site to check out products, it immediately searches to see if there’s a recommendation it can push at you. Trust automatically plays a key role, and how well past recommendations have worked for you.

    Meanwhile, let’s hope that Google doesn’t make a social algorithm to top the one they’re working on now – to identify which of its employees are likely to quit. A recommendation feature that allows one employee to suggest another would be a Google killer. 😉

    until next time, ahem, some social advertising -I’d recommend watching this space – for a virtual interview 😉

  • The evolution of Content Marketing

    A few weeks back, the eMarketer released some statistics about the kind of web advertisements that elicit reactions from readers.

    emarketer

    Clearly, the crowd likes to see ‘advertisements’ within content – I think advertorials would be a subset of that. This trend is all the more prominent in the younger audience, when the demographic profiles of the respondents are considered. (check out the statistics here)

    The graph shows that advertising in content is also ahead of sponsored search links, perhaps because the human writer would obviously have a larger sense of context than the ad serving Google. More importantly, there is a trust factor involved when the ‘advertising’ comes from a ‘known’ blogger/writer. There have always been debates about bloggers ‘selling out’ and plugging products/services, but sponsored posts are a reality, and so long as the disclaimers and the disclosures are in place, I am quite okay with that. I’m quite sure that if the concerned blogger gets greedy, the crowd will straighten him out in time.

    Content marketing is definitely different from traditional marketing/PR and raises interesting scenarios for all three parties involved – advertisers, publishers and consumers. Before you go further, I’d suggest reading up Chris Brogan’s (slightly old but) informative post about content marketing.

    The advertisers could range from large brands – products or services, to those serving niche sections. Trendwatching had written recently about sellsumers –

    SELLSUMERS: Whether it’s selling their insights to corporations, hawking their creative output to fellow consumers, or renting out unused assets, consumers will increasingly become SELLSUMERS, too. Made possible by the online revolution’s great democratization of demand and supply, and further fueled by a global recession that leaves consumers strapped for cash, the SELLSUMERS phenomenon is yet another manifestation of the mega-trend that is ‘consumer participation’.

    Advertisers would have to figure out if they want to establish and maintain their own content marketing platform, or rely on on a network of entities like sellsumers – that could be individuals or a content marketing service that aggregates independent websites/bloggers, or encourage their regular consumers (/prosumers) to speak about a brand they use, or just support activities/communities and hope for good word of mouth. Perhaps it could be a combination of any or all of the above, with a different objective (a brand goal or a sales goal),  and different measurement criteria for each. In any case, this could prove a great way for brands to explore their long tails of products/services and communication too. It would also mean that brands would have to work harder to ensure that they reach the desired audience in the desired way, in an increasingly fragmented media landscape.

    Publishers, as mentioned above, could be the brands themselves or sellsumers  – individuals or a network. Perhaps newspapers could explore this as a revenue stream, since they’ve always been content aggregators with specialist columnists. The existing social networks are trying to evolve a revenue model out of this. Celebrities could build up an audience across social networks and create an endorsement 2.0 version. For any of the above, the key would be to establish and maintain a set of users, with whom they have an equity- a social capital, to whom they can provide a value, even when they’re doing content marketing. In essence, while the old publishers used their reach for any advertiser who could pay the required price, the new publishers would have to be focused and would have to live with the involvement of consumers in who they sell the reach to, and how.

    The end consumers will seek out networks they can trust, ones which can provides non intrusive ways of connecting them to the product/service they might have an interest in. They would play an active role in creating and maintaining relevant publishers and networks, by ensuring that they are trustworthy sources of information.

    Going forward, it is possible that all the entities we see on the web now, including us, will play all these roles at various times. Unlike the clearly demarcated advertiser-publisher-consumer system we have now, the new systems would be more fluid, with flexible options for all parties. The standards and norms of content marketing need to evolve. Perhaps the disruption we are seeing now, with the decline of traditional media and rise of social web is a prelude to this flexible system.

    until next time, role play

  • Social Media – beyond strategy

    Unilever CMO Simon Clift, at Ad Age’s Digital Conference, spoke about the increasing role of social media in brand management, and said that the internet allows consumers to hijack conversations inspite of the huge money spent on advertising. From Unilever’s experience with Dove also comes the understanding that its not just the communicated parts of a brand that comes under scrutiny, but also the corporate’s entire set of credos – sweatshops, impact on environment are a few things he mentioned. Unilever has prominent corporate signatures in its advertising in UK. He also spoke about the increasing penetration of mobiles, of “marketing program with social benefits”, and a product centric approach.

    In essence, it reiterates the decline of one way communication, consumer participation, of brands being ‘deeper’ than the marketing that is done for them. But it was good to hear it from a leading FMCG corporate. The most interesting part of the article for me, however, was this, from the author of the post

    Social media is not a strategy. You need to understand it, and you’ll need to deploy it as a tactic. But remember that the social graph just makes it even more important that you have a good product. Put another way: The volume and quality of your earned media will be directly proportional to the impact and quality of your product and ideas.

    I think that nails it. All this while I was considering social media as strategy. Now I think its more than that – its something that will make the organisation really focus on what they’re delivering to their consumers, how they are doing it – not just from a delivery platform/operations pov, but also from how socially and environmentally conscious and responsible they have been. In Mr.Clift’s words “enlightened self interest”. The ways and means of communication – brand advertising, promotions, PR etc, will follow much later.

    Meanwhile, the Marketing Pilgrim asks an interesting question – does social media really have the pulse of the people? It cites the Johnson & Johnson Motrin ads that had raised the hackles of mom bloggers a while ago, and caused them to remove the ad. Apparently a research was done later that threw up some interesting stats – 90% of women had never seen the ad, and when they did see it, 45% liked it. It also speaks of the Skittles – Twitter experiment, and a research in which only 6% of 300 people sampled had heard about it. Those on Twitter would’ve heard about both these, but the Pilgrim asks whether these voices resemble those outside at all, and how much of influence do they have outside.

    I, for one, still think social media is a good microcosm of the real world. It does give varied perspectives, and the key is in evaluating the perspectives, digging further where required, and deciding on a course of action that fits larger objectives, and not knee jerk reactions. Wonder if there would have been different results if J&J and Skittles had attempted to carry the community along in their efforts.

    But the bigger opportunity, I have always felt is that it allows brands to experiment with segmentation. On one hand, the net allows extremely targeted communication to a core segment, and on the other hand, cheaper distribution allows the brand to also communicate with different segments of the long tail of consumers. It means that brands can play different roles according to the consumer’s interests, and varying with the context, by tweaking its communication, even while sticking to its core objectives. There are new monitoring tools being developed that will aid of this.

    Most importantly, it allows brands to find evangelists in each segment and work with them to improve and communicate. Consumers who find a product interesting and appealing will communicate it on their own, adding their perspective and giving a human touch of ‘interestingness’. I’m increasingly seeing posts about marketing ideas that have differed from the norm – Penguin India’s ‘Blog a Penguin India Classic’, which I wouldn’t know about if Karthik didn’t mention it on Twitter or his blog (though I do think they could’ve done it better by using social reading lists like Visual Bookshelf – on Facebook as an app too, Shelfari etc to reach Penguin readers – can easily find that through book titles), product placement ideas for Nestle evolving from the “Mad Men” on Twitter. Cisco’s comic book experiments via Chris Brogan’s post (Webex in Marvel Comics), and Kara Swisher on All Things Digital ( The Realm, an entire comic series). All appealed to me as a marketer, and one as a bibliophile too. Social media is not one thing – the channels vary in audience, kinds of interaction etc – Facebook, Twitter, You Tube all allow new ideas ( I thought Volvo’s Twitter stream inside a YouTube banner ad was very interesting) and fresh engagement rules, and ways to break advertising and brand communication stereotypes.

    I wonder about the role of strategy in a social media landscape where many things are still unfamiliar. The standards, processes and even objectives are in most cases, hazy, and evolution is happening on a regular basis. In such a scenario, perhaps organisations should first take a long look at themselves and their customers – current and potential, and start by setting goals that go beyond social media.

    until next time, lab time

    Bonus Reads: Social Media tools popular among marketers (via Digital Inspiration)

  • A plus cases on Twitter

    Last week, @aplusk beat @CNNbrk in the race for one million followers. In plain English, Ashton Kutcher, an actor, challenged CNN on Larry King Live – who would get to a million followers first – to prove a point that an individual could have a reach equal to a large network on Twitter. Twitter joined in the fun, because unlike the norm, users couldn’t unfollow either of the parties, of course smart tweeps found a way out anyway.  Point taken, AsKu, though the irony was that until a  week back, the CNN account was not run by them, though for sometime they’ve been managing the account through the person who created it.

    For more than two years, the CNNBrk account (for breaking news) had been created, maintained and run by a 25-year-old British Web developer who just wanted a way to beam short news alerts to his cellphone.

    And that’s the beauty of this user driven service. Something that I fear might change with the ‘mainstream’ spotlight and the rush of real celebrities. Its only a matter of time before a new celebrity thinks of a new stunt. But it is to be noted that  Kutcher is donating 10000 mosquito nets worth $100000 to a charity. In fact, one week before that, I’d read about Hugh Jackman’s donating AUS $100,000 to charity via Twitter, the charity to be selected via Twitter pitches.

    Now, I’ve always maintained that users should figure their own comfort levels and use the service accordingly. But I also feel that a sudden influx of people with no intent other than rooting for a celebrity might be the kind of inorganic growth that will work against the service and its more regular users. This could range from a disruption of the service due to the load to a change in the ‘culture’ of the service.

    Kutcher’s point was about getting a reach higher than a media giant. I’ve always had a problem with numbers – followers, updates etc as a means of measurement on Twitter. I find it a paradox for a place which became popular because of a qualitative measure – conversations. CNN will deliver breaking news regularly, and (as someone suggested on Twitter) Kutcher followers will just have to wait for those occasional Demi photos. Reach has been an index to sell traditional media space, is that the benchmark Twitter wants to take forward?

    There was a very interesting post on Tech Crunch on whether Twitter should remove its follower count. Like I tweeted, I’d agree. Once upon a time, it was a medium to share an instant – something you thought/read/saw/felt to make others smile/think/share their own expressions. With growth came the ‘how a tweet might cost you a job’ and ‘5 ways to increase sales with Twitter’ theses, and the instant was lost. Perhaps you will ignore that as a subjective grumble. But think of the times you see the ‘need 5 more followers to get 500. please RT’ and what you feel then. What happens when that’s the norm and the service changes to accommodate and encourage that culture because that’s what helps them make money. [Note: I’d love for Twitter to make money, but I’m sure they’ll find better ways]

    While on celebrities and Twitter, closer home Gul Panag has been quite active on Twitter the last few days. The Twitterverse has had its share of imposters and has been trying to ensure there’s no ‘identity crisis’ this time, so much that poor GulP might have one soon. This tweet of hers caught my attention. (Oh, okay the dimples too!!)

    gulp1

    Spicy Jet news. Poor them. It reminded me of a post I’d written sometime back on ‘Social Ambassadors‘ – what would happen when the transparency of social media met celebrity bloggers? In this case, micro bloggers. In fact, micro blogging is even more ‘dangerous’ since the interaction is real time, and not like a PR draft that can be posted on ths site, and replies given in a few hours or even days. This becomes all the more important if celebrities use social media as a personal broadcast medium to their fans. Of course, brands can use the media to their benefit too – for example, create conversations between celebrities (a Twitter conversation between Aamir and Gul basis their Tata Sky TVC would be fun), use celebrities to communicate beyond the obvious advertisement etc.

    The challenge is for celebrities too. Perhaps it will also make celebrities more responsible when making endorsement choices. (It would be fun to ask SRK/Aamir why they switched soft drink brands in between.) Also, can celebrities retain their ‘interestingness’ when they are in touch with the fans all the time, unlike a traditional system when news about them was less abundant?

    On an aside, when celebrities move to direct-to-crowd platforms, what happens to the go-between media for whom they were the news makers, and we were the news consumers? And what happens to the micro celebrities on Twitter? 🙂

    until next time, when twitter streams meet mainstream

  • @having Maggi

    A couple of days back, I happened to see the TVC made as part of Maggi’s 25 years in India celebrations, and the association with the brand was so strong that I had to check it out and write a post on it.

    Right from school, when I used to exchange part of my lunch gladly for a classmate’s Maggi, until a little more than a year back, when Sunfeast Pasta replaced it, Maggi noodles used to rule the category. And even now, it makes its presence felt in the household, in the form of sauces and soups.

    The TVC has been well made and features the Maggi moments in the lives of different consumers – “camping wali maggi”, “first impression maggi”, “hostel ki maggi” etc, and even a “mumbai flood maggi”. I hunted for the TVC on YouTube, couldn’t find it, but thankfully remembered the site url from the ad. So you can take a look at it here – meandmeri.in – unfortunately no permalink, so click on the watch, and then ‘Currently on air’.

    From a consumer’s perspective, Maggi has built its entire equity based on a great product (they actually lost market share when they tried to change the product taste) . From a marketer’s perspective, the positioning has been awesome, they’ve created some memorable campaigns (most of us would still remember the Maggi jingle), and all of this has led to much emotional connect.  There are a million Maggi stories waiting to be told. So, to me, the web provided some great opportunity for the brand to connect with its consumers.

    I wanted to start with this urban legend(?) of a research which I have heard in B school, about how market research had predicted that Maggi would bomb as a product in India. It was often cited as THE example to ridicule the MR loyalists. I couldn’t find it online, but what I did find were some very cool notes. For those interested in Nestle’s brand strategy, positioning etc, here are a few links – Growth Strategy, an interview with the Nestle India MD (2007), and a case analysis.

    So, what are they doing online? I checked out the Nestle India corporate site and couldn’t see any mention there on the campaign or the microsite. Thankfully I remembered the microsite url, though I wonder why Maggi does not figure in it. The microsite is built on the concept of consumers sharing their Maggi stories, pictures, videos, and even recipes. The interface for that is decent. But what I liked best was the Maggi time machine, which shows ads from years back!! I wonder what prevented them from enabling comments on them!! So, in essence, except for a few ‘stories’, I couldn’t find a lot of conversations there.

    Later in the day, I was on Twitter, and lo and behold – Maggi conversations.

    maggi

    (click to enlarge)

    I also got to know from @additiyom that there was a Facebook fan page too. While I did get a couple of Maggi pages with 5 figure fan followings, they were the international versions, and I thought this one (found on page 3 of search) with close to 300 fans was the desi version. There are many Maggi groups on Orkut, one with almost 40000 members, and 4 others with more than 5000 members. In the first group, there are about 160 responses for ‘which maggi flavor do you like most?’

    It made me think once again, of how brands make a website and  forget about the internet strategy. I’d have loved to see a more well thought out web campaign – with the microsite also serving as an aggregator of content from places where the conversation is happening, for starters. By all means use mass media and promote the site, but if the idea is about getting in touch with consumers, it definitely helps to seed and maintain conversations over at the usual suspects – Facebook, Orkut, YouTube and even Twitter. The audience is already there.

    until next time, 2 minutes definitely makes sense in real time 😉

    PS: Remember the old Maggi joke when Sourav Ganguly was out of form? 🙂