As we kick off 2012, no one will argue that social media is now mainstream...for consumers and brands. A few years ago I was advising clients on social media strategy and how companies should organize for social media. Depending on the client's corporate structure and capabilities, it spanned having a dedicated social media manager or a social media team to a cross-functional "tiger" team where primarily marketing and PR collectively represented the brand. Back then, it was about training a small team within the company to engage with customers. Fast forward a few years and social media responsibility and engagement now rests with almost every employee...as brand ambassadors.
Now more than ever, a company's brand strategy must be clear and understandable and worn on every employee's sleeve as they engage with consumers in social media, sometimes from their private social network accounts. One inappropriate tweet and the entire company is held liable for his/her post. The super information highway was littered with social media road kill this year from brands such as Kenneth Cole and Chrysler.
I've always advocated that defining a clear brand identity as part of a company's brand strategy is critical. The main benefits enjoyed by a strong brand are:
Higher brand awareness that increases the likelihood the brand is in the consideration set
Competitive advantage by simplifying customers' decision making by reducing their search efforts
Price premium due to perceived higher quality
Management in absentia that serves as an organizational touchstone that provides internal clarity and focus
For social media, the last point is the most important: management in absentia. What does the rank and file worker do when the manager is not around and a customer has an issue? This is the customer moment of truth. Does the employee do the right thing? A brand is supposed to serve as a compass for the employee for moments like these. Disney and Nordstrom knows this better than anyone in the offline world.
And Zappos is great example in the online world, where employees are frequently providing customer service via Twitter. Employees are trained and empowered to do the right thing on the company's behalf. It's no coincidence that these companies also have strong brand identities and cultures. It's because employees have fully internalized the brand values. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Vic, Zappos' former Life Coach, a while back. He met with every employee, handed them a huge culture book, and had them go through extensive training and orientation, which included a stint in the call centers. During this training, every employee was asked to start a Twitter account (recall this was back in 2009!) and practice posting in order to ingrain in them that they were all spokespeople for the brand. In the end, (I was told) Zappos is not a company that sells shoes, but a customer service company.
In a nutshell, I call this "digital brand translation," taking the brand strategy and making sure its execution in online channels align with the strategy. A well-executed and fully internalized brand strategy by employees will be the key to social media success.
Is your company's brand strategy ready to take on social media in 2012?
Despite the title of this blog post, I'm not going to recap the top news stories of 2011. Instead, I'm going to talk about a different kind of story.
Remember when "stories" brought up childhood memories of Dr. Seuss?
Well, in 2011, it was a marketing catch phrase. Since the dawn of social media, sharing and user-generated content (UGC) have been key elements of social media marketing. And that has led us to this moment.
In 2011, everywhere I looked -- at the end of a TV commercial, a print ad, and even radio ads -- it seems every brand ran a UGC marketing campaign that ended with the familiar call to action: "Share your story at..."
Usually, this statement ended with the brand's Facebook brand page.
Here are some examples:
Toyota AutoBiography stories on Facebook
Toyota encouraged owners to share their story, from road trips to relationships. On Facebook, it had a cool interactive map to read stories from across the country.
Pampers Miracle Stories on Facebook
Pampers celebrated the miracle of life by encouraging parents to share stories about their babies.
This is similar to the Toyota Autobiography campaign, but the execution is way slicker! It has a cool interactive experience where you spin a globe and pick a location to read stories from hotel guests. Also, you can filter by categories (e.g., beach, romance, weddings) or by keyword.
Fiat Driver Diary
Across the pond, a rejuvenated Fiat, following it's Chrysler integration, asked its customers to submit an entry in the Driver Diary.
Mayo Clinic Story
This stories phenomenon also spread to non-profit sectors. Even the Mayo Clinic had its own "Share Your Mayo Clinic Story" where users can submit an essay or video story.
Facebook Sponsored Stories
Just how meaningful are Stories? Enough for Facebook to monetize them with its Sponsored Stories ad unit, which rolled out in 2011. Sponsored Stories are stories that are eligible to appear in one's News Feed. These show up on the right-hand column of pages on Facebook. According to Facebook, the types of stories that can be surfaced include: Page likes, Page posts, Page post likes, check-ins, app shares, apps used and games played, and domain stories.
Did I miss any other major Story campaign? Share your story below...
Well, it's been a month now with my Amazon Kindle Fire. There's been lots of critics of the Kindle Fire, as many compare it to Apple's iPad. But that's not really a fair comparison as the strategy and target audience between the 2 are different. But last week, Amazon said the Kindle family of products is selling over 1 million units a week. And the Fire was the best-selling item on Amazon the moment they started taking pre-orders. Not too shabby.
From the moment I got it, I noticed Amazon was treating the Fire a little differently. The box it came in was not like my usual giant Amazon cardboard boxes. Instead it was a small, specially-designed (but still) cardboard box that had the Fire fit snuggly in.
It was a bit like Apple packaging because it was not as nice as this:
Inside, the Kindle Fire is presented cleanly. No instruction manual. Just update the software (which took forever over Wi-Fi) and then you log in with your Amazon credentials. It was cool how my Amazon Cloud Music, Apps, and Kindle books loaded automatically. It reminded me of how seamlessly all my Google services synced up with my Droid 3 smartphone upon Google login as well.
The screen is beautiful. Like other critics, I found the touchscreen to be not as responsive and accurate as the iPad or even my Droid. Luckily, I don't have fat fingers.
The Fire has actually altered my behavior and encouraged me to consolidate my music and apps on Amazon services, which was their goal. And the Amazon.com shopping app is well-optimized for the Fire and led to me doing most of my Christmas shopping on it this month. Again, Amazon's strategy worked on me!
It is a drag that they removed the Android Market for apps, but there are only a few apps I have on my Droid that I couldn't put on the Fire. The Amazon Appstore is actually pretty good. And I like how once I get an app on Amazon's Appstore, I can use it on my Droid and Fire because I log in with the same Amazon login.
One major app not in the Appstore nor available on the Fire -- YouTube. This is probably because Amazon is pushing its video services for streaming and purchasing. Of course, one can still view YouTube via the mobile browser. Speaking of the browser, the Silk technology, which supposedly speeds up surfing, is not noticeably faster than my smartphone or iPad browser.
I've gotten over the lack of a hardware solution for sound control. It's really like how PCs are. There's no sound buttons on the monitor or CPU. The volume control is easily accessible in upper right of every screen. Get over it people!
I also just downloaded the WSJ tablet edition for the Fire. The UI is very good. And full issues are downloaded.
Some of my friends ask me how I like my Fire and if I would buy it again. I would because I use it differently than an iPad and my smartphone. It's something I leave at home and the in-between size makes it easy to carry around with an acceptable screen size (which may be making Apple consider an iPad Mini). Plus, I feel more comfortable about handing over the Fire to kids than an iPad.
An over-the-air update is apparently rolling out now, so I look forward to that addressing some of these issues.
Mary Meeker presented her latest state of the Internet report at Web 2.0 today. No surprise mobile Internet usage and smartphone adoption is growing like gangbusters!
It is fascinating to look at this relative to some other recent developments.
Also, only about 425,000 pay phones are left nationwide, down from a peak of 2.2 million in 2000, according to the American Public Communications Council. Again, not surprise due to the rise of mobile phones. But it is peculiar that PTS thinks there is a profit to be made to maintain these old phones.
Phone Books
For the past decade or so, I have recycled my annual print Yellow Pages phone book. Instead, I have been searching online when I needed to look up something.
For the past 2 years, I have been doing more of these online searches on my smartphone. This trend continues to grow as Google says about 1 in 6 searches are mobile.
I stopped getting the White Pages long ago. Thanks goodness! (Tree huggers, rejoice!) So, why do we still get print Yellow Pages? It's because the companies that own these print publications like AT&T and Idearc are maintaining the declining cash cow ad revenue while trying to make the shift to their Internet Yellow Pages (IYP) directories as quickly as possible. But IYP revenue is still smaller than the print directory business.
Still, it would be great to opt-out of these phone books. We have do not call lists, do not mail lists, we can request e-bills to replace paper bills...we can send man to the moon! Why can't we have a "do not mail me a Yellow pages brick" list?!?!
Like many out there, i've been eagerly awaiting and tracking the rumors about the iPad3 launch. And like many, I was disappointed to hear the consensus seems to be that it will not launch until early 2012. =(
The wait has been painful...except Amazon's announcement today of its Kindle Fire has perhaps changed the game...and maybe my mind. For $199, I could get a sweet Android tablet with all the benefits of the Amazon "ecosystem."
I'm already a big fan of Amazon and Android. I own an Droid 3 and had a Droid before that so I am comfortable with Android O/S and the apps, even if there are less in the Android Market than Apple App Store. It does worry me a tad that supposedly Amazon stripped the Market app and only has its own appstore. I haven't compared the 2 libraries, but it seems like the most popular apps are in both stores.
Here's a good video of someone demoing the Kindle Fire I found.
Amazon is taking pre-orders. I am seriously considering getting one because it's only $200! And when the iPad3 comes out, we'll see if I still need it (I mean the iPad 3)...
Today I was talking to my friend Anne about a business intelligence initiative I was driving to help a client develop an end-to-end measurement program to track online marketing campaigns. I was geeking out on how fun it was to roll up my sleeves and dig into Google Analytics, Salesforce, etc., with the goal of trying to connect the dots from click to acquisition. I exclaimed, "Data is king." And she said, "Well, not exactly. Content is important, too." I agreed and that inspired me to write this post.
If "data is king" then "content is queen." The two go hand in hand as the King and Queen of Marketing.
Great content or creative is required to engage customers and often make that emotional connection. It's the hook! It's the "Wassup guys," the "What do you have in your wallet?" and the "Can you hear me now?" from the marketing hall of fame.
Data is required to know if the content actually worked and to prove marketing effectiveness. Without it, even the best content has no way of convincing senior management it worked and to ultimately seek more marketing dollars.
Last year's Old Spice campaign is a great example of brilliant, memorable content like this:
Then, with proper measurement techniques, you can show ROI like this:
Palm was a technological pioneer, a phenomenon, and had an amazing and tumultuous journey. And I was along for most of the ride for over a decade.
Palm Pilot Professional - My PDA love affair started with the Palm Pilot Professional. My b-school friend showed me his "palmtop" and how it could HotSync to a Windows PC to back up all your data. He also convinced me how easy it was to learn Graffiti to write, and it was! It was so awesome! I didn't have to carry my big Dayrunner anymore. I soon became a huge advocate for Palm Pilots and directly influenced many friends and co-workers on their decisions to buy one too. An amazing feat pre-Twitter because I actually had to talk to them 1:1 and not tweet it out to my followers.
Palm III - I used my Palm A LOT! And I was quite fast on Graffiti. In fact, I had used it so much, that soon the writing area got warn out and wouldn't recognize my writing anymore. So I had to upgrade to a Palm III.
Interestingly enough, it was overuse of Graffiti and the Palm's stylus calibration that failed me on each subsequent model I owned that led me to upgrade to the next Palm.
Palm Vx - Then came perhaps my favorite Palm, the Vx. It was metallic-looking and so sleek. This was Palm at its peak. There were countless stories of how the Apple Newton failed where Palm succeeded. Oh, but one can never count out Steve Jobs (foreshadowing).
Palm VIIx - This was Palm's first wireless handheld. I actually won this in a raffle. It had basic web clipping capabilities, but not a web browser. It was bulky though and felt clunky and slow. This was a companion to my Vx and I used it to access information on the Net when necessary.
Sony CLIÉ N760C - Soon, my Vx died. And Sony had licensed the Palm OS. I was so excited because of Sony's legacy in innovation. I got the COLOR (Yes, color!) CLIÉ N760C, which was focused on multimedia, like photos, video, and music playback -- way before iPods and iPhones came along. It even came with some cool headphones.
Speaking of Apple, long before there was Apple's AppStore, Palm Applications existed and a huge ecosystem of developers programmed fun and useful apps for Palm devices. I loved playing IR Battleship, which allowed you to beam your Battleship coordinates to another player. And before there was Mafia Wars, there was Dope Wars. I also loved Documents To Go, which synced Microsoft Office files to my Palm.
Sony CLIÉ PEG-TJ37 - My N760C had a few good years and then I had Graffiti recognition issues yet again. I liked the CLIÉ line and decided to just upgrade to the PEG-TJ37.
When my CLIÉ had stylus calibration issues, I was at a crossroad. Sony discontinued Palm OS devices. By now the innovative Handspring Treo smartphone hit the market. Palm would eventually buy Handspring and launch several Treo models. I was starting to think about the convenience of having a cell phone and PDA in one. But I didn't like carrying such a large cell phone around. So, I decided to get yet another standalone PDA.
Palm Tungsten E2 - I returned to the mothership. By now, most of the industry R&D was on smartphones and the pure PDAs were not that impressive. At this point, it was more about the switching cost for me that kept me on Palm. I had years of data that I loved going back to reference because I was very diligent about documenting my life's events and records in my PDA.
The E2 would ultimately be my last Palm PDA. I kept waiting and hoping Palm would make a Treo I liked and then I was quite optimistic when news leaked about the upcoming revolutionary WebOS. Could Palm re-capture their glory?
The Palm Pre did launch with lots of fanfare and had its fair share of critics and advocates. But its choice to partner with Sprint, and not Verizon, was a deal breaker for me.
Years later, I finally realized that I needed to move to a more viable OS. Smartphones were here to stay and the iPhone changed everything. Eventually I bit the bullet and migrated my most relevant data (it took me weeks) into the cloud and today I am a very loyal Droid owner.
Interestingly enough, there is one feature on the Palm OS that I loved and it is not even available on today's smartphones. Not Android, iPhone, Blackberry, or Windows. I loved the ability to mask or hide private records with a password. It was so awesome for my passwords and sensitive info I carried with me. *SIGH*
Call us math geeks. Or quant jocks. Either way, we MATHIES, as I like to affectionately call us, are here to stay in the online advertising world. With the plethora of data coming in from all the web analytic tools out there, someone has to determine the relevant and insightful trees from the proverbial forest. But a random statistician off the street isn't going to cut it. Rare is the quant jock who also understands the creative side of the business, as well as user experience strategy, technology, and media. And most importantly, she or he can talk to clients in marketing-speak.
Jason Goodman, co-founder of London agency Albion, understands the importance of this next generation of marketers that will replace...or actually, complement, the Don Drapers of the industry, as described in this recent article on The Telegraph.
Being a mathie wasn't always cool. But our time has come.
30 years ago today, MTV (Music Television) was born. MTV is nothing like its original mission. Now it's taken over by reality TV shows like Jersey Shore, instead of the latest Britney Spears video.
The premiere video was "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. Man, this was SO 80's!
Or perhaps more memorable was the December 2, 1983, debut of Michael Jackson's Thriller, which some say is the greatest music video ever made.
MTV has lost its music video cachet and is no longer THE place to premiere music videos. Now it seems like it is YouTube, which incidentally is about 6 1/2 years old. And almost all the major artists have VEVO video channels on YouTube. Britney Spears, Katie Perry, and Lady Gaga, to name a few.
One might say the "Internet Killed the Video Star" by YouTube.
According to BIA/Kelsey Group, local digital advertising revenues will climb to $42.5 billion by 2015, almost double 2010’s $21.7 billion. While local search continues to grow, my personal local shopping experience last week shows it still has ways to go.
I had to replace 2 rear tires on my car and was trying to find a local tire shop. I knew the brand and model of the tires I needed so I simply turned to Google product search.
And what did I find? Nothing!
This surprised me, given how many auto and tire shops I've seen around San Francisco...heck, even the Bay Area. Google couldn't return one single result!
However, in another category, like computer printers, the results were more promising. For example, a search for "hp officejet 4500 printer" returned this result:
And when I click on the 25+ nearby stores - in stock link on the right, I got a Google Map with the merchants and their prices on a screen like this:
That was what I was hoping to find with my tire search. No such luck! It was frustrating that even in today's digital world, I just had to call around and ask friends for recommendations.
So, for at least the tire category, it's not that great despite the fact I was ready to buy with exact product specs. Perhaps some day it'll be as smooth a customer experience as my Barnes & Noble mobile experience from last year.
One that I found interesting is Sync, which Mozilla promises will:
... seamlessly connect your desktop and mobile Firefoxes, so you can access your browsing history, passwords, bookmarks and even open tabs no matter which device you use. Access years of desktop browsing the first day you fire up your mobile, and use saved passwords from your desktop to fill out forms on your phone.
Now you can surf the Web on your desktop, get up in the middle of browsing and have your open tabs ready and waiting on your mobile, just as you left them.
That is pretty cool (Confession: I haven't downloaded FF5 and tried this feature actually yet.).
Yes, it's convenient for consumers. But it's even more intriguing for marketers. If this functions as promised, this presents a potentially huge opportunity for marketers to track a user's online behavior across desktop and mobile...and target ads accordingly. It is extremely powerful to know that someone may have started a search for "SUV" on a desktop computer and then later on searched for "Jeep dealers" on their mobile when he is driving around looking for a local dealership.
Up until now, it was nearly impossible to tie desktop and mobile behavior with a traditional cookie-based approach. So, this browser-based approach is interesting for sure!
For example, we would finally be able to answer the client's question on whether the mobile SEM campaign we ran drove incremental conversions from their desktop SEM campaign? Now, we'll know how many were the same users.
However, before getting too excited, one big concern is I don't know what Firefoxes mobile browser market share is, but I can't imagine it being that big because I don't know anyone who downloads an alternative browser to what's native on mobile devices. And I don't know any device that has Firefox installed by default. But, Sync is an interesting new feature that has implications for online advertising. And if history is any indication, browser developers often copy innovative features from each other (e.g., tab browsing, pop-up ad blocker). So, maybe one day soon my dream will be a reality.
Rovio recently said the game has been downloaded over 250 million times! I think I contributed to 5 or 6 of those downloads alone on all my various devices in my home. (On a side note, I recently downloaded Angry Birds on my desktop Chrome browser and was quite surprised how good the user experience was!) I wonder how many of the 250 mil are unique users?...but I digress.
Back to the point of my post.
Yes, Rovio has a runaway success with this mobile game.
And yes, some of its product extensions made sense:
Plush toys - Got the classic red bird and green pig myself.
Angry Birds-inspired movie, Rio - I had my doubts, but it did well and was still dealing with cute cartoon characters in the movie that was close to the premise of the game.
Angry Birds Magic that leverages NFC capabilities. The Plush toys could activate elements in the game. Geo-location could be leveraged too. Definitely some cool offline/online spins to the core game play.
But egg recipe cookbooks? Come on! I think that's a stretch for the brand. Just because I love the game, do I really trust Rovio's culinary tastes?
I still can't find the Angry Birds Game on Facebook. =(
Oh, OpenTable, on so many levels, you are such an innovator. But, your Dining Rewards Points Program leaves me perplexed on a few things.
First, for a born-on-the-web company, why in the world does it take 3-6 weeks to SNAIL MAIL customers a DiningCheque when they redeem reward points? In today's world of instant gratification, QR codes, and printable online coupons, why isn't this something a customer redeems on the site and instantly emailed the DiningCheque as a printable voucher?
Futhermore, a few weeks ago, I bought a Groupon-style coupon. And that just required printing out an email to bring to the restaurant after I bought it. So, if OpenTable can run Groupon-style coupons like this, how come they can't issue the same Groupon-style coupon for $0 cost and $20 value or something?
The redemption levels also confuse me. What is the incentive to save and redeem at the higher levels when it's the same one cent per point? Why wouldn't one redeem at 2000 points every time? And why would one save to 10,000 points for the same once cent per point conversion rate?
I'm an infographic junkie. I thought I'd end the week by sharing 2 great infographics recently released with great stats for mobile marketers.
The first was put together by Chomp, 148apps.com, and Chillingo that commemorates Apple approval of 500 million apps for the App Store. It offers a walk down memory lane of Apple's highly successful App Store and key milestones, as well as great stats on the distribution on the types of apps, price of apps, most popular apps, etc. You can click on the image below for the full size of the super-long infographic.
Click image for full-size
The second infographic is from our friends at Microsoft. The Tag team compiled stats on mobile commerce and offers some interesting insights on how mobile fits into the customer shopping journey.
Musings of a data-driven marketing strategist. These days I'm fascinated by social media, mobile, the cross-section of the 2, as well as general business happenings.
I'm a marketing strategist with extensive consulting experience helping clients develop innovative, data-driven business, marketing, brand, and digital strategies.
