October 08, 2004
Corporate Blogs - Are You Ready for One
Corporate Engagement: Corporate speak and corporate blogging Very good input from Trevor Cook on how to think about corporate blogs. Take a look again also at Scoble's "manefesto" on the topic.
October 04, 2004
As blog readership grows, will revenues?
The Media Drop: As blog readership grows, will revenues? Great question? Been spending some time thinking about this. When the web first started people wondered how it would ever become a commercial medium. People wanted it to remain the wild west. And then huge consolodation and the entry of big players happened. Wonder if this is in store for the blogsphere to meet "mainstreet"?
October 03, 2004
Radio Situation and Outlook Discussion - Part II
Here is the second part of our interview with Mark Ramsey of Radio Marketing Nexus about the situation and future of radio as a medium. Interesting stuff (for part one click here).
Marketing Playbook: We were talking about the playing field for radio. What about from the perspective of radio's customers - listeners and advertisers? What are their ABCs? What is missing for them and how can/could radio fill this gap? What about the much talked about shift away from broadcast, how can radio be positioned to fit in this purported trend?
Mark Ramsey:
For advertisers, Radio is spontaneous. It’s point-of-purchase if you’re in your car with a McDonalds on your left and a Best Buy on your right. In that case, we have a simple positioning - we’re the only media (X) which can drive potential customers to their door (Y) while they’re on the road and in need of what the message is selling (Z).
For listeners, Radio is the only source of music, entertainment, and information (X) which is mobile – it can go in the car and make the drive easier – or it can go to your office and make you more productive at work (Y) at times you need a laugh, a soothing background, information, or companionship on a long drive or while working (Z).
Marketing Playbook: What about the competitors for these targets' attention and dollars? The web, TV, print, heck blogs. What are their strengths, weaknesses, gaps? How can radio fit in?
Mark Ramsey:
Radio is still a MASS medium. In fact, Radio’s “reach” is nearly 100% of us all. The web, print, blogs, satellite radio, iPods, streaming audio – none of these media can say that.
Radio is also predominantly LOCAL. That is, despite similarities across the country, every radio station in your town is broadcast from your town. The studios and the talent may be elsewhere, but the sales staff and others are right there in your community. Radio is keenly aware that local connection – through information and community involvement – is key to its long-term success.
Radio is also MOBILE. Satellite Radio is in the car, but not usually in the home or on your belt. iPods are mobile, but your music collection is not the same as your community connection.
Finally, Radio is EASY. No technical experience is required. No special equipment. No heavy lifting. No retraining. It’s familiar, it’s convenient, it’s everywhere.
In terms of content, it will be the non-music elements that really help Radio to stand out in the long run. Back in the 40’s, Radio was primarily comprised of comedy or dramatic programs. Then along came TV and Radio became more music-oriented. Today, as music-only choices begin to proliferate, we’ll see Radio’s personality strengths move to the fore. For example, Howard Stern could not have become famous on the web or on Satellite Radio. Only conventional Radio has the penetration and the frequency to build that kind of an audio brand.
Marketing Playbook: What do radio station owners, programmers etc. need to do to make this happen? What play do you think makes most sense?
Mark Ramsey:
Station owners are taking a wait-and-see attitude relative to these evolving technologies, and that’s prudent. After all, Radio is much bigger than many of these technologies at present. For example, for all its hype Satellite Radio has only a few million subscribers nationwide. Radio has that many listeners in a single mid-sized market!
As time goes on, we’ll have to consider what our competitive advantages are, and chances are they will be related to things like comfort and tradition, convenience and ease of use, local connection and information, and the power of unique and compelling personalities.
Marketing Playbook: Finally, what do see as the relationship between radio and the web or blogs?
Mark Ramsey:
Radio stations tend to view the web as a destination for advertising, although in Radio terminology that tends to be code for “thrown in for free with a spot buy.”
My view – which is not yet widely shared – is that the web (a station’s own site in particular) has one primary purpose: To attract listeners and boomerang them back to the station. You see, one hour of radio listening is SIGNIFICANTLY more valuable to the station than any number of hits on their website. Such are the economics of Radio.
I would like to see every station with a high personality morning show maintain a blog for that show – the background “behind-the-scenes” stuff that can serve as A) an audience magnet for the website and B) fodder for conversation on the air. Then you have the station pushing listeners to the blog and vice versa.
I also feel that the station’s website is its primary engine to generate buzz – but very few stations exploit this power sufficiently.
Marketing Playbook: Mark, what about Mercury Radio Research?
Tell me your story.
Mark Ramsey:
Mercury Radio Research was founded three years ago to apply some of the marketing and branding smarts cutting edge companies everywhere are using to radio stations in particular. We do strategic research and marketing consultation for many of America’s largest stations and broadcast groups, such as Infinity Broadcasting, Clear Channel, and many others. We also work for SIRIUS Satellite Radio.
Marketing Playbook: Thanks so much for your time and insight. We'll be staying tuned.
Mark Ramsey: Thank you John! And I can’t wait to buy your book!
October 02, 2004
Radio as a Medium - Personalization vs. Simplicity/Cost?
With the growth of satelite radio and mp3, there have been a lot of entries lately on the web, in print and in the blogsphere about the decline and fall of radio as a medium. Personally, I love radio and I always liked it as an ad medium both for its rich and the type of creative it could force you to. But, hey, I'm getting old so rather than trust my opinion I thought we ought to talk to someone who really knows what they are talking about.
Mark Ramsey of the Radio Marketing Nexus was nice enough to give us his take of both the current playing field for the Radio industry and what he sees as the right play or plays for the media owners/stations as well as the media buying universe. Here's a summary of our discussion in two installments:
Marketing Playbook: So what is all this about the decline of radio?
Mark Ramsey:
The reports of Radio’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Despite some of the dire predictions from recent publications like Barrons and Fortune, here are the facts, courtesy of Arbitron Ratings:
Radio reaches about 94% of all persons age 12 and over, and that percentage is down only about 2% overall in the past five years.
What IS true is that people are spending less time with Radio than they used to. In any given quarter-hour listenership is down an average of 17% - rocketing to 30% among 18-24’s.
The reasons for this are many – from the rise of Hispanics and Spanish-Language tastes which broadcasters have yet to catch up with to the splintering of tastes in general. It should not surprise us that as media options of all kinds increase the share of attention received by any given one (whether radio, TV, newspaper, or whatever) should decrease. Radio is not at all unique in this regard. In fact, it would be remarkable if Radio didn’t follow the same trends as other media. Nonetheless, none of the new options are gaining the kind of massive audience traction that Radio continues to enjoy. The markets have a fixed number of competitors and a comparatively robust advertising market. What’s more, Radio is an ideal vehicle especially for the local business who is promotionally active and for whom a mobile, active audience is the primary target. All this adds up to an enviable business.
So what’s wrong?
Radio has dramatically consolidated recently. A few companies own vast numbers of stations (although, I should add, vast numbers of stations are also owned by many small companies, too). With size and consolidation comes the temptation to make big promises to Wall Street – promises which may at some point become unsustainable. Such aggressive promises to Wall Street can make any performance look mediocre.
Strike one.
The easiest way to increase revenue is to bulk up on spots. That is, until you reach the point where both clients and listeners start screaming – as they are doing now.
Strike two.
The biggest criticism of Radio is perceived “sameness” across the dial and across the country. While true to some extent, I’m seeing a lot more risk-taking now than I saw in the years before consolidation, because in the old days one radio station was the entire portfolio – today it’s only a very small corner of a portfolio, so risk can be spread much more thinly. Now is the time ripe for innovation. Nevertheless, the popular bias says: Big + Consolidated = Little Variety.
Strike three.
Fortunately, Radio is by no means “out.”
Marketing Playbook: What do you see as the overall ABCs (current situation, desired future, gap that needs to be bridged between the two) of the radio industry?
Mark Ramsey:
A. Today: Radio is current with audiences everywhere: in their cars, on their hips, in their homes, and we’re aiming for a future where we will always be their number one source for convenient information, music, connection, and entertainment.
B. The gap in my mind is the degree to which we can continue to innovate and grow talent in our industry at a time when many other industries are much more attractive to talent at all levels.
C. The challenge is: How do you make Radio cool again?
Marketing Playbook: Let's go further with this assessment on a few other dimensions. First, what is the effect of bigger market or technology factors on the use and economics of radio?
Mark Ramsey:
Technology personalizes audio – but at the cost of complexity.
That is, you can design your own radio station (which is what an iPod is) with some degree of effort. But it will always be the station you design and nothing more. Nothing on it will ever surprise or delight you. And doing the designing will always take a non-trivial fraction of your time – more of a problem for folks past their student years who are time-poor.
Radio, conversely, has to navigate in a music world where folks can always hear a music mix they like better than what the radio’s playing out of their own home-grown station. Well, Radio’s passive and easy – but also not quite your favorite mix. So it’s a trade-off.
What Radio will always have that your home mix won’t have is distinctive personalities. Growing our talent base is, I suspect, one of our most formidable challenges – particularly at a time when a very vocal minority spend their abundant free time plotting to rid the airwaves of some of our most compelling entertainers.
As for economics, that remains to be seen. As you know, lots of these technologies are not advertiser based, they’re consumer-based. That is, you pay for them or subscribe to them. Perhaps the greatest competitive advantage of all for Radio is this: Radio is FREE.
More soon...
September 28, 2004
MyYahoo's next move - an open medium?
Today MyYahoo launched it's refresh, including RSS feeds. For a long time MyYahoo was basically personalization that was "anything you want, as long as it's on the list of My Yahoo content." I used it and still do, but because it was so closed now it's moved from being my place for everything to my place for weather, driving directions and my horoscope.
Davenetics notes that this is about time. Blogs/rss have become the newsletter writer's remedy for spam and having a name like Yahoo can really help.
What I would love is for all these things to be able to merge with each other. Wouldn't it be great if MyYahoo had a Bloglines export/import function?
More on this here and here (for a historical view of myyahoo too.)
September 10, 2004
Ads in Subway Tunnels -
From Venture Wire today, "Sidetrack Technologies Inc., a newcomer in the alternative advertising market, has made its first U.S. installation of a subway tunnel commercial [in Boston], as it makes plans to raise a $3 million to $5 million venture capital round."
Although advertising in subways is not new (check out video advertiser SubMedia in NYC, or any number of Asian and international countries where ad and screens are more and more ubiquitous), Sidetrack has a twist. The campaign, for Royal Caribbean, is not on a screen at all it is actually a series of still images that look like a movie. When the T accelerates, it breaks an infrared beam that turns on lights over 400 such images running along the tunnel wall for about 1,000 feet. Kind of making the train itself the film projector with no screen installation required.
Only question - will I ever be able to just zone out in the train again?
August 19, 2004
Talk about reach and frequency...
One thing that cannot fail to impress you in Shanghai and Beijing is the presence of advertising. Going beyond broadcast seem like a passion in this country. Anywhere, I mean anywhere you find yourself waiting, you will be reached with ads.
While waiting for your bags
While waiting for the elevator
While waiting for someone to answer your call.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Outside subways, inside subway trains, inside cabs. And it's not just static. This is 15-30 second quality spots. Everywhere.
One of the companies leading the charge is Focus Media. Interestingly, they don't do anything fancy like refresh the ads over wireless or anything. They just have fleets of people on bicycles driving around swapping out DVDs. It may seem primitive but it's working enough for them to think about going public soon.
What's next, ads in your hotel shower?
August 01, 2004
Are Boys lost to advertisers...
Perception Analyser highlights a recent Wired Article "The Lost Boys." Read the whole thing but there is a great little summary called Gone in 30 Seconds. Basically:
"Young men (18 to 34) are tuning out broadcast TV
as they turn to games and the Internet
where porn, music, and auctions are top draws.
As audiences shift away from network TV
the networks still raise their rates
and advertisers turn to cable and the Net.
Five companies haved 'changed channels' " (Anheuser Busch, Coca-Cola, Ford, GM, and McDonalds)
Interesting ABCs according to David Raines, the Coke VP in charge of divvying up ad money:
A: Yes, 18-34 year old males are a critical target
B: But, although they haven't stopped watching TV, they're doing a lot of other stuff, too, going online, watching DVDs, playing videogames.
C: So, ad dollars have to follow them where they go.
"Of course, some media are more immersive than others. As young males drift away from the tube, advertisers are trying to focus on entertainment that grabs their attention and holds it. Tops on that list is videogames." Example, last year Coke followed them into The Matrix Reloaded and Atari's Enter the Matrix videogame. So much so that Jeff Brown a VP at Entertainment Arts said, "We're eating the networks' lunch!" Maybe a bit early to claim this but interesting.
Also, look at Atom films. The cult political online clip they distribute, This Land by JibJab, starts with a Toyata spot that looks like a video game.
July 01, 2004
Billg Blog
The BlogFather: Bill Gates may be launching a personal blog!
Can't wait to see it. Talk about blogs as marketing. When/if Bill does this he will have a terrific ongoing pulpit to drive Microsoft thought leadership. If he does it well and does not sanitize it too much.
Who cares if lots of people disagree with what he says. Controversy will be great. The thing could end up being more closely watched than American Idol.
June 20, 2004
McDonalds: WHO'S Loving It, Really?
McDonalds CMO, Larry Light's recent comments in AdAge about McDonalds move to Brand Journalism have set off a large flurry of blogmentary. (Hey, if he can push a new phrase why cant we?)
Across all these comments there seem to be three basic threads:
The Death of Mass Media
Buzz Machine sees that McDonalds is only now catching on to what has long been inevitable. McDonalds is just one more of the big brands to shift away from broadcast.
Pheedo agrees and sees finding these niches in blogs (look for an at least semi-official golden arches blog soon?)
The validity of McDonalds' message/real value proposition
As usual Hugh Macleod of Gaping Void, cuts through a lot of this and just wonders what the heck the Brand Journalism buzzword really means.
AdRants shares this confusion, notes that this really adds up to abandoning the whole concept of a unique selling proposition and doubts whether adding hiphop music to the I'm Loving It campaign is going to make McDonalds any more relevant.
Seth Godin, as always, challenges us to think a bit deeper and look at the real value. Taking a page from Starbucks book he suggests moving the Golden Arches from just the home of the Big Mac to a real meeting place.
Robert McLaws/The Bleeding Edge agrees but kinda wonders why, if "you can get a Sausage McMuffin with Egg, hash browns and a cup of OJ for the same price as a Tall White Chocolate Mocha," that more people hanging out there.
Finally, Planet Brand, also agrees but gives Larry Light some credit for progressive thinking.
Our two cents:
First, seems like diversification away from mass media, just makes sense. So here here. Just because it's inevitable doesn't mean it's not hard to do.
Second, all the buzzwords aside, the real issues all seem to center around Positioning. What the heck are their XYZs?
What's their Category X? Is it a fast food place? Or is it a meeting place? Which is more relevant, which is their strength?
Who is their Customer Y? Yuppies who want to hang out or budget conscious families?
What is their uniqueness Z? Their menu?? Their decor? Or their happy meals?
Seems to me that for all the talk about trying to target, to adapt and evolve, it might make sense for them to look to and to refresh their strengths. Maybe I'm dating myself too much but I really remember the jingle "McDonald's is our kind of place." It was a great expression of thier value. Which went way beyond burgers. It was a fast, clean, affordable place for families who didn't want to cook at home. And it was so memorble that the take-offs on it were endless and fun.
Maybe they should look back to that simple target, understand their wants and desires (I've got kids and they still love to go, get their happy meals and play on the indoor playground). Maybe rather than a place for business people to meet, it should be a place for parents and kids to meet. Maybe, instead of starbucks they need to study folks like Chucky Cheese and offer conference rooms, support groups, massages for parents, and the equivalent of slot machines for the kids. Just a thought.
June 09, 2004
Sorting through the clutter
the media drop: Having difficulty reading all your news and feeds?
Media drop notes that Microsoft is working on something that will sort through all the media feeds you get and pull out just what you are interested in. Hmmm.... We'll see.
Meantime, it's hard enough just on blogs. If you are trying just to do key word search, we use BlogPulse. It's also got some cool tools. For tracking the blogs you know you look at Bloglines is pretty darn cool. But what if there are just subjects and themes you want to stay up on? Boy, that still seems hard. Searching is easy, intelligent, focused browsing, not.
Well, today, had an interesting chat with the folks from ThinkTank23. They created some thing called Nav4 which does great info retrieval and they are working on a whole bunch of fun blog search, and browse stuff in thier labs at Waypath. Mostly still beta, and not fully indexed but worth checking out. They also have 2 blogs: Blog23 and Waypath Weblog.
Always on the lookout for other good tools. Let us know if you have any suggestions.
June 03, 2004
More about truth...
Great exposition by the folks at The Media Drop on our Jefferson quote about truth in advertising. They clearly note that in some ways ads are forced to be more truthly both by law and by what they describe. Where news and other media have to make tons of choices about what they cover and don't cover, face the biases of their reporters, owners, advertisers etc. Really interesting. Makes me feel less bad about being a marketing shill.
June 02, 2004
Advertising: a three legged stool?
John Battelle's Searchblog: Toward the Endemic: What's missing in PPC/Behavioral/Contextual Ad Nets
John Battelle was at AdTech Forum too. His entry - on Endemic Advertising and what's missing from all the behavioral, contextual ad targeting - sparks an interesting discussion.
A highlight is the reminder that traditional advertising really involved three groups who all basically knew that they were in a relationship with each other: the publisher, the advertiser and the reader/viewer.
Battelle asks what has happened to this relationship. And what is the impact of the ad content and readership/viewership experience now that everything is driven by machine observation of the click actions of the viewer/reader and the content choices of the publisher.
I know when I was an advertiser that the publication itself, what it stood for, what kind of content and editorial it had mattered a lot, at least in part of my media buying choices.
Blogs are an interesting topic here. They have an editorial spirit and personality and they enjoin the reader to participate in a kind of "conversation." But (with some exceptions) blogs are still hard to deal with as a major advertiser. (Remember in the old days, one of the most important parts of this three way relationship was the awesome parties that media reps would throw for advertisers. Well, one party in this discussion notes that maybe this is what is needed for blogs too, a new class of salesman: The BlogRep.)
Meanwhile, there is a ton of debate around sorting fact from fiction in blogs. Maybe, as Jefferson said, here too the ads will be the most truthful thing.
May 27, 2004
AdTech Forum - Is the bubble back?
Just got back from AdTech Forum. Was supposedly much bigger, hypier and more well funded, and attended than before.
But hey, at least I brought home some nice tchotchkes. My kids especially liked the flashing bouncing ball from Whos Calliing, the weird belt clip light from Atlas Search and the frisbee thing from Digital Envoy. The little flashing light thingee from Google was cool but too sharp for play. And honestly the little sticky-note book from AOL was not good enough, they should do better. Oh, yeah, and I didnt win ANY of the many raffles for free iPods and TiVos. What a rip. (Strange, I got much better swag from an insurance industry conference I went to recently)
Oh, but I guess that was not what I was there for. Sorry. Ill get to the actual content now.
Who was there? Tons of vendors like DoubleClick, Revenue Science, GoToast, CasaleMedia, Atlas DMT. Consultants and agencies like SBI Razorfish and Advertising.com. Media owners, aggregators, brokers etc like Claria, Tribal Fusion, Fastclick, and Kanoodle, and of course, the company everyone wanted to be like, Google. Just to name a very few.
The Big themes: accountability, integration, the death of TV, contextual vs. behaviorial targeting, pay for performance, measurement, measurement, measurement - CPA vs. CPM vs. ROI vs. eieio, other stuff like promotional and other marketing vehicles. And most importantly, why is online still such a small % of the total ad spend?
Whats Hot supposedly: analytics, consulting $, SMS marketing, DVRs shaking up the world, metrics, mixed media schedules and planning, broad-reach/interactive integration and planning, local, email, search and more search
Whats Not supposedly: interactive TV, streaming ads, promotions.
See the VC discussion for more on this. Everyone of course wanted to know what Mark Kvamme of Sequoia (Yahoo and Google of course) had to say. Which was really good, but the other panelists had a bunch of other observations. Like deal prices are starting to get scarey again, also that we've really only seen the beginning of the shift to online ad spend, about how important local is but how high the cost/advertiser acquired. About how wireless is super cool and could leapfrog PC/internet for streaming video.
Biggest Gap: strangest thing to me at least was how little attention blogging as a business opportunity got, even after all the Billg talk. Most pooh poohed it as not investable, needing an ad model, and needing editorial quality control. Humph. Well, at least Mary Hodder found some enthusiasm about blogs there.
Other, final impressions: Lots of buzz words like new information economy hyper-changing leverage. Lot's more optomism and excitement but I sensed an undertone of Vienna before the Anschluss, waiting to see if the shoe drops. Really nice to see a guy like Mike Windsor take the whammy out of a bunch of the claptrapier stuff said. Favorite quotes are from him.
"It's about money. Remember that. So then we have to go where the money is. The billion dollar not million dollar budgets. And they are with broad reach clients not interactive clients. Until interactive is a significant and regular part of the ad program we will always be fighting an uphill battle." Also "Online represents less than 10% of the budget but more than 90% of the analysis. Why, because it can be analysed. Not because the analysis really tells you any more about the true ROI of the effort or how it performs relative to anything else."
May 15, 2004
Really Good Summary Article
ANA Marketing Musings: Great (Not Just Good) Times Are Ahead for Marketers
About what is happening in the marketing and ad playing field. Again the ABCs of
a. economy growing, marketing spend increasing but
b. less and less tolerance of "half of my $ wasted, but which half?" and increasing need for accountability
c. so see lots of upside for smart marketers, the internet and things like ad id, addressable TV, and outdoor.
Slippery slope? Google Banner Ads?
Adrants: Google to Offer Banner Ads
What is the world coming to? Just when you thought Google was the last safe place on the web. Maybe they too expect to suffer from the same problems all the other media are suffering from?
May 12, 2004
More on why broad reach is suffering
What's Your Brand Mantra?: Advertising Overload
See the previous entries on this (ABCs of big media buyers, more on lost youth) decline in the power of mass media. But we can all agree that their power is declining and that advertising is becoming less effective. Why though? This entry on Brand Mantra is really intriguing.
One simple view - or at least a contributing factor - is that ads are just too boring. They all look alike and they don't grab you with anything memorable...
"I am one who believes that one of the greatest dangers of advertising is not that of misleading people, but that of boring them to death."
- Leo Burnett
"People screen out a lot of commercials because they open with something dull ... When you advertise fire-extinguishers, open with the fire."
- David Ogilvy
May 06, 2004
More on lost youth...
Brands too Square for Teens MarketingVOX|NEWS
Lots of Bs (remember the ABCs) here on this topic. B. Problem - current brands are not hip and don't relate to young people.
C. What to do about it. One person's opinion is that reaching them via new media is necessary but not sufficient. Need to inject new life in the core value proposition. Hmmm... Big challenge.
A slightly different view on BIG TV
From a person I respect a ton. Christopher Ireland. From her perspective there is a slightly different set of ABCs:
A: Yes, broadcasters are having a hard time
B: But, they (if you include cable) still provide a barometer of the pulse and tastes of a good chunk of this country.
C: So, ignore them at your peril. Especially if you are trying to get votes.
The ABCs of Big Media Buyers
Adrants: Advertising and Media News With Commentary, Gossip and Opinion by Steve Hall
-----------------
Really interesting to see big, traditional buyers like packaged goods and auto moving at least partially away from broadcast. The Marketing ABC logic here is simple.
A. Yes, we need to reach big audiences
B. But, current broadcast media is struggling and our younger audiences are moving to new outlets
C. So, we have to find some new ways to get out the brand.
What is that other way? Outdoor, online? What about blogs?
Well, they must be getting legit. AdAge is finally writing about them.
