Category: Advertising

  • News out of the paper

    Its not exactly breaking news that newspapers are almost in desperation mode now (no, don’t throw ink at me, this is in the US market context) to make sense of the wild wild web, as the very public who used to pay for the print editions now want it on the web, and more importantly for free. An issue that newspapers are still grappling with. So, with fears of revenue models collapsing, RSS feeds, PDF editions, user generated content, podcasts etc are now being force fed into print journalism regular usage. (How American Newspapers Used the Internet in 2008).

    The point to note is that the internet with advertising as a revenue model is not going to be the salvation, web entities which rely on that are also going to be in trouble. There are some experiments happening in the news space online as well – News Mixer is a great example, it aggregates content and has integrated Facebook Connect for users to comment on stories. The integration eliminates anonymous handles and also means that it can highlight the views of your friends so that you can know what their take on a story is. (via RWW) A member of Yahoo’s BOSS team has found a great way to use Twitter’s search function and relevance (different tweets to the same story) for fresh news and come up Tweet News. Ice Rocket’s Big Buzz pulls different live sources (Twitter, Flickr, You Tube etc) on to a single page. (via Steve Rubel) In fact, I see the last one as a sort of threat for Google News – real time news, a scenario which can be extended into the larger context of Google Search soon, because I don’t think Google has cracked real time yet (from what I see around).

    Meanwhile, hyper local entities are being created to fill the gaps being created by local newspapers shutting down. But while the monopolistic doyens are struggling, there is a paradox happening, new media empires might be getting created as web entities are making forays into print- The Printed Blog, is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper in cities across the US aggregating localized blog posts. (via Wired)

    In fact, though the state of the Indian print media is not the same as in the US, the same phenomenon (web to print) is happening here too – Mutiny, which started in 2006, and wants to be India’s Huffington Post, launched its print edition a few months back. Burrp, which started with restaurant reviews, and later expanded into lifestyle events, and TV listings, apparently have a few print plans of their own.

    So there must be potential  in the 2 cents of journalism (Seth Godin’s excellent post on the death of newspapers) even as there is the danger of ‘right now’ news. Seth Godin rightly says that “The web has excelled at breaking the world into the tiniest independent parts.” The challenge for newspapers will be to find the 2 cents that they can provide and people will pay for.

    In India, low figures of net penetration mean that the US levels of ubiquitousness will take a while. But the mobile could be a bigger threat in the short and long term. Various players like SMSGupshup, MyToday, Mobme etc already offer subscription based services, though the source seems to be mainstream media sources. Newspapers have long relied on distribution might to thwart specific competition. But with a digital platform, that is nullified. From my consumption needs, the only thing I cant seem to find online are the hyperlocal news (that also includes local retail deals and discounts – eg. Springfield had a 60% off sale in bangalore last week, try searching for  it online). So far, in India, all the tiny independent parts that Godin has spoken of, haven’t been brought online. In that sense, the net’s utlity is incomplete in an Indian context. The real threat will start when that happens. With their huge network of reporters/other sources, is there a digital revenue model for newspapers in the real-time and/or hyperlocal news space?

    The double whammy for newspapers is brought out due to the fact that advertising is the major revenue source for most newspapers in India. Most of the brand ads that I see in English dailies is targeting the young urban dweller. This segment is becoming increasingly net savvy, and I feel that brands will figure this out in the short term.

    Vernacular dailies might be a better off in this regard, since even if net penetration in their major markets accelerates, (read about the government’s rural internet plans here – CSCs) vernacular content is not yet at challenging levels. (the IAMAI-IMRB report on rural and state of vernacular content in India). There is an opportunity for newspapers here, especially the vernacular ones and even those which can translate English content into vernacular.

    until next time, selling news on platforms

    PS. Toy for you -HP’s Tabbloid – start your own newspaper 😉

  • Brands among sheep

    A few days back, I read a post on Adage, about how Facebook has become a place to collect friends. A large part of the post was about how people one barely knew became ‘friends’, how we all seem to be involved in each others’ lives in superficial ways, merely by sharing stuff we do, how we are failing to live the moment because we have to update our status first. 🙂 Not surprisingly, he was burnt at the comments stake.

    At some level, the author is right about the ‘collecting friends’ part. This would explain the success of Burger King’s ‘Whopper Sacrifice‘ app, in which sacrificing (deleting) 10 friends would get you a sandwich.  Somehow, Facebook didn’t seem to find it that cool, and took action.  Meanwhile, Facebook has been trying its bit to customise the news feed by allowing ‘more/less about’ options for status updates. In addition to the grouping of friends, an obvious Orkut like classification of friends, acquaintances etc might help too. Meanwhile, I read about what seems an interesting new network that aims to put an end to the random friend addition – hipstr.

    Meanwhile, the post actually did raise a couple of interesting queries, which were lost in what was seen as an anti-Facebook rant – one, in this communication avalanche that’s happening among consumers, is it possible for brands to squeeze in their communication at all? And are friends becoming the new platform for advertising? I’ve seen several Facebook ads that use friends as an ad platform, and most of the ads that I see with my friends’ endorsement are without their knowledge. (xyz uses abc app) I dont think that’s the scalable model we’d want.

    The easy answer to the first question (as described in many comments) is context and value creation. But in terms of advertising, I think (and this is highly debatable) Facebook lacks a definite context. I update, I share photos, I write on the Wall, I play a few word games, try a quiz out and so on. So I wonder whether context can play as good a role as it does on search, because the intent for which I frequent Facebook is completely different. It made me wonder if an all encompassing generic network like Facebook will find it difficult to be of commerical use? Like I commented on a good discussion on social media we had on Twitter, perhaps, in the realms of social networking, the scope is for vertical networks (there are many which’ve already popped up) that cater to more specific interests. The version 1 of that would be LinkedIn (business networking). The scope for context and value addition could be much greater there.

    But perhaps better mining over a period of time will give feasible solutions like say, integrating the birthday calendar with a gifting opportunity. So if my friend abc has his birthday today, and is a fan of a particular product/service on Facebook, then Facebook will ask me if I want to gift him that product/service. No, not just virtually, really. Or say, a status update of mine says I’m having a house party, and the Pizza Hut app sends me a mail asking me if I’d want to consider its services. Of course, design, privacy issues etc are to be kept in mind.

    I’m also hoping that the above premise will be taken to a whole new level with Facebook Connect. Mashable had a good post a few days back on 10 great implementations of Facebook Connect. It includes a traditional media brand (CNN) and an energy drink brand (Red Bull). Perhaps Connect will bring in the much required context.

    until next time, dont throw a sheep 😉

  • Nick Niche

    Trendwatching has a small preview of the consumer trends of 2009 – half a dozen, to be exact. You can catch all 6 here. The one that interested me most was “nichetributes”, which is defined as

    the power of making products and services relevant by incorporating ‘attributes’ and features that cater to distinct (if not niche) consumer lifestyles and situations.

    While the explanation does say it’s different from the long tail, and is about “additions to existing products”, I am not convinced that its so disconnected. I’d say that its the long tail within the product users. How many times have we wished that this product had just that extra feature we were looking for – from apparel to furniture to electronic goods? But yes, I am in agreement with the fact that it is a hot trend. The explanation of nichetributes ends with the following line

    * NICHETRIBUTES is decidedly not about advertising, i.e. tailoring a mass product’s message to a specific audience; it’s about tailoring the product itself to that specific audience.

    I agree with that too, but why not advertising too, thanks to the web and social media. In fact, I think it would work great if collaborative product building was backed by a communication to let customers know that customised products can be made to happen. This would help engage the ‘minority markets’ that look for these specific features/attributes in their existing product. It could mean more affinity for the brand and may even bring in new users who were waiting for this feature. There are quite a few brands that allow customisation- NikeiD comes immediately to mind.

    In fact, I’d say that this is perhaps a great way for brands to start out on social media. While mass advertising could cater to the consumers that constitute the head of the long tail graph, social media could cater to the thinner portions. It would be great to have product customisation happening side by side, but it could also start with customised advertising to specific ‘minority markets’ – the long tail of brand communication.

    until next time, minority reports

    PS. while on trends, a great read 🙂

  • @ the friends within followers

    Sometime back, I’d written about micro ambassadors, where I’d also touched upon the long tail of twitter influence that is made up by individual users, and marketing opportunities therein. I read a few posts recently that made me think on the subject a bit more.

    Some of the posts referred to a research paper on Twitter, by HP, which reveals that

    the driver of usage is a sparse and hidden network of connections underlying the “declared” set of friends and followers.

    A few numbers on the respondents (from the study) – 309740 users (this sample is 6% of the twitter universe, info courtesy Jeremiah’s post, the comments on the post are also very interesting), who on an average posted 255 posts, had 85 followers, and followed 80 other users. Among the 309740 users, only 211024 posted at least twice. The average @ replies ( conversations between 2 or more users, specifically mentioned in the tweets) were 25.4% .

    A few findings I thought were interesting. The number of posts increases with the number of followers but saturates after a certain point. However, this saturation does not occur if we consider the number of ‘friends’ (followers with whom a user has had 2 or more @ conversations). The study also shows that on a number of ‘friends’ vs number of followers chart, the number of friends saturate after a certain number of followers is crossed. Understandable, since in a day, one can only have so many conversations with so many friends. My twitter statistics (though not the same as the average user in the study) corroborate these friends and usage findings more or less. It is thus debatable whether there’s any sense in just increasing the follower count. A certain Guy definitely wouldn’t agree, and it does finally depend on the intent. 🙂

    It also questions the follower-influence- WOM marketing model, and its scalability. I’m actually quite happy with this since I have never been comfortable with this line of marketing strategy on a trust based network. While its not scalable generally, there are exceptions – Guy’s Alltop is one easy example.  The relationship he has with his ‘followers’ obviously doesn’t fit into the followers-friends definition discussed earlier.

    The echoing powers of RT (re tweeting) is another thing to be kept in mind. If I follow someone, and i find some content interesting/informative, there is a good chance I’ll RT that, even if I do not have regular conversations with that person.

    Lastly, this equation might change if Twitter implements groups. Even though its limited to Japan now, there is a good chance that the rest of the world could get it soon. Meanwhile, you can always use Twittgroups. Groups would allow consolidation of crowds interested in certain things. Marketing would definitely be easier then.

    And finally, to wrap up, the favourite twitter pastime- revenue models. If such marketing is not a scalable option, and will not excite brands to use twitter a lot, what will? I read two very good posts on the subject of revenues. RWW has a post on the search of Twitter being used as a revenue tool, since it gives live results from all of Twitter, and doesn’t wait for any indexing like Google does. In fact, the idea of companies using Twitter as an early alarm signal is something I have come across before. Nick Bilton has an interesting idea on Twitter throwing up the kind of immediately relevant ads we would like to see with “some really intelligent data mining and cross pollination”. I quite like that idea too. 🙂

    until next time, tweet and ye shall find 🙂

  • A TVC viral ?

    Some of you might remember this ad of Bajaj for their 125 cc bike .

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gydm0ndfUQA

    It had 2 guys comparing their bikes at a traffic junction, and shows how the Bajaj bike scores on many parameters for a lesser price. Decent, but nothing spectacular.

    What caught my attention though was this Sun Direct ad that i caught on TV a couple of days back. After having seen some earlier ads of the service in a few inhouse channels, I was thankful that they had started acknowledging advertising as a profession. So this work, which did a cool take on the Bajaj ad, took me by surprise. Take a look.

    httpv://in.youtube.com/watch?v=NZAoP1C3Y-A

    As you’d have noticed, this time the roles have been reversed. I thought it was a good tactic – to piggy back on a much aired and (decently) identified ad and more specifically, its characters. After all, the intent was the same- compare the product with existing players in the market, and show its superior qualities.

    The good part is that these are just characters, and nameless ones at that, so I don’t think they can be copyrighted (correct me if I’m wrong) I’m wondering if other brands will have fun with these two, if so, we’ll have a good TVC viral; and different stories like Krack and Jack, only with multiple brands. I don’t think Bajaj will mind. After all, its a completely different category, and moreover, it adds to the recall for their brand. Maybe Sun can give Bajaj XCD 125 customers a free set top box?

    Zatak and Axe, though, are a completely different story altogether.

    until next time, ad value