The long tail: digital myth or not?

The “long tail” has been a theory accepted as fact in the digital community. It described and explained what we believed in so well, and it all makes sense. In fact, to some of us it was a source of credibility for whatever it was we’re doing, selling, or referring to: the power of the individual, individual experiences, tailored and customized offerings in a distributed and digital world that makes all of that possible.

Now, some people are rocking the boat and saying that it was all a hoax. Not a surprise, really. Every theory has a counter-theory. Surprising is that it took this long.

http://tinyurl.com/3rg5gp

Found on Alan’s friendfeed

On PR 2.0 and killing version numbers

In our network, we also have a global PR agency. Recently,we have been working more closely with them, and it’s been a great experience that has given me insights about a totally different way to work on brands. In this collaboration, I’ve come to notice the changes that are going on in the PR world too. Obviously, the fact that everything has changed for traditional marketing communication because people have been empowered by digital technologies has also arrived in the PR world. In fact, the say they knew it before the old traditional agencies even started thinking about changing their ways.

And some of that is true. If we look at Al Ries’ book “The fall of advertising, the rise of PR” which was authored around 2000, we can see that the trend was there for many to see. And it is true, that in the type of brand work PR agencies do, they have always focused on the more immediate human opinion and context in which they can positively influence brand opinion. But the thing is: it’s not that PR agencies were rising by because their work got better, or their approach drastically different. Isn’t it more likely that traditional agencies, which were the main mass media opinion shapers for brands started sucking? Or to be fair: ad agencies were conveniently repressing the fact that mass media started bleeding its effectiveness to digital channels and 1:1 and social media interactions.

What will be interesting for me to observe is: will PR agencies make some of the mistakes that ad agencies made? Like: “Hey, here’s an idea, we’ll just start an interactive agency that can adapt our stuff online,” or will they be less prone to the “channel-adaptation” mistake? I think they might. Why? Well, since the PR guy’s job is to influence opinion of people in a way that is different to regular mass media communication (the staple of the ad agency), it has always been about word-of-mouth, even before the web. Think about it: if, on one side, you have an expert of influencer opinion and how to use it to influence others, and, on the other side, an expert on creating single-minded propositions for mass media: who has an advantage in a landscape where single-minded messages are being fragmented, spoofed, barely measureable, and generally ineffective and where everyone can have an opinion, influence product design, brands and author about everything on a free blog? Yes, it’s definitely the PR guy, not the ad guy. So this is where they have the leg up, but I think they’ve had this advantage rather unconsciously. Now that the web is mainstream, even traditional PR (even if it was more modern than the traditional ad business by design), has to think about PR 2.0 just like advertising has to think about advertising 2.0. And they do, and they might want to break some of the negative PR stereotypes as they go along.

Okay, you say, but digital agencies obviously knew before. Yes they did, and if we again look at Al Ries’ book, you will notice it doesn’t even go into any detail of the potential of how digital channels are changing peoples’ behavior. And here is my point: while some PR agencies had started working closer to the context of the people in order to influence human behavior than traditional ad agencies, most of them still did it in a traditional channel mindset. The reevaluation of what a traditional ad agency has to do, or if in fact, it is still advertising it needs to create, is also taking place consciously in the PR world now. In fact, the question is: if the word “advertising agency” is passé, is “public relations” also a bit yesteryear?

The funny thing is, as the process of redefining the ad agency and the PR agency is underway, look at the schools of thought out there on this topic:

• Markets are conversations, not messages
• it’s about listening not talking
• Engage people on their level, not as abstract consumers, insulting their intelligence
• and so on and so on…

Doesn’t that sound all too familiar? Isn’t everyone saying the same thing?

Yeah, again, nothing new to anyone who worked in a digital agency, in, say 1995. The only difference is: now everyone is talking about it and it’s mainstream, oh, and bandwidth is better. This is good, mind you, but it also let’s me beg EVERYONE who works in this industry, whether they are in ad agencies, PR agencies, media agencies, digital agencies and even marketing people: don’t we all say the same thing, no matter who said it first, or who put out the best “integrated” campaign? Can’t we just decide that communication is a people business, not a brand business and that therefore everything we do should start with people, not brands, or products or categories or marketing toolkits?

And for chrissakes, can’t we stop putting version numbers on our respective displines (advertising 2.0, web2.0, PR2.0 and media 2.0) just because we want to tell everyone that we finally got the fact that people are in control?

Acts, not ads!

PS: I will be off on a vacation, so there will be no posts for a while.. Cheers.

Stating the obvious: Online Social Media generate awareness, influences opinion.

Okay, sometimes I have to repeat stuff I’ve already said before, even if it is the equivalent of stating the obvious. I do this usually when I find a study with an air of scienctific credibility that supports something that is being talked about, but lacks the digits.

In this case, I stumbled upon an article in Adweek which states that a new study was release proving that some of the most desirable consumers use the opinions of others from blogs, and social media applications to make their purchasing decisions. In fact, 74% of people polled do this. Of course this means that the brand message and promise seems to be becoming less important than what other people say about the brand and customer experience they have had. Which in turn means, that mass media advertising is becoming less important. Thanks for the statistics, but as I said, it’s still a “duh-moment.”

Still, I like it when marketing people are quoted with something that is a Heureka moment to them. Here it is:

“This study indicates that there is a growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies,” said Ganim Nora Barnes, a senior fellow at SNCR, in a statement. This demo includes adults 25-55 with a college education, making over $100,000 a year. “These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

Yeah. Stop making advertising to generate awareness if you cannot listen, respond and improve. Otherwise you will get grilled and served with a slice of lemon on a nice “ineffective traditional advertising sampler platter.”

Reputation Defender

Doing some research, we found a site called reputationdefender.com. The concept is very simple: as more and more of people’s lives are becoming transparent as they sign-up to a plethora of social networking sites, write blogs, comments on other blogs and give opinions on products and services or describe their experience, the question is: does it damage my reputation? What can people construe about me that could ultimately be bad for me?

In comes reputationdefender.com which will scour the Internet for you and inform you about your visibility and “destroy” things you don’t want. I am not sure how they go about that aspect, but it’s an interesting idea. Also, the site allows you to protect your privacy against direct marketing and telemarketing, as well as your child.

Tools for retaining creative knowledge

Great post by my former colleague Tim Büsing, now at NetX in Aussieland, on the difficulties of retaining knowledge within creative and planning processes. Enjoy it and dare to be insprired by something no creative would usually really even look at.

 http://lab.netx.com.au/?p=79

Duh 2.0

How nice. Finally some people are waking up to the fact that web2.0 is sort of a hype consisting of stuff that has been around for a lot longer, except that you got some more bandwidth and the fact that your granny might be on the interweb too.

I congratulate the analysts at Gartner who caution wild marketing sprees into the virtual and web2.0 worlds without any understanding for the channels used, and construed based on the mere pressure of: “crap, we need something on second life, cuz the others do too.” Come on, we’ve had this thing happen before. Let’s not make bubbles where no bubbles are due.

Read the article here:

http://news.com.com/Gartner+Risky+business+in+virtual+worlds/2100-1043_3-6201899.html

or in German:

http://www.zdnet.de/itmanager/kommentare/0,39023450,39157048,00.htm

The case for Experience Research.

As someone in the line of experience planning, I know how, over the years, hard it has always been to convince companies to pay a little more to learn more about their customers. Even if you get them to pay for research, it is usually limited to research on perceptions and messaging in line with traditional market and consumer research methods, while the methods of user or shopper research such as shadowing, task analysis, user testing, etc have been even harder to sell.

Most of these insight generating practices aren’t even that expensive and bring truck-loads of new insights you wouldn’t have even imagined when you designed your product or service. In the end, this saves a lot of money when you market a product that has usability faults, or when your marketing does not conquer the “last stretch” into the customer’s life-style.

In my opinion, marketing can’t be about awareness and campaign-thinking only. In order to build long-lasting repeated product usage, you need to invest in this type of stategic planning. After all, the product or service your customer buys stays with them longer and/or has a more immediate effect on their opinion of your brand than the advertising you do. It is certainly as, if not more, important than to pretest your print ad on whether that caucasian male in the key visual looks urban enough to the target audience.

Maybe because some of the methodologies come out of software engineering and user experience design, brand and marketing clients have been slow to pick up. However, as the success of brands depends more and more on how relevant they communicate in the context of the touchpoints of today’s empowered digital customer, it’s a good idea to ask your agency whether or not they have capabilities in this line of research, regardless of how digital your product or service is.

It’s good to hear that some companies do invest in this sort of research and allow the customer help build their business. After all, it the an effective way to help brands communicate in a relevant fashion.

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2007/07/03/let-your-customers-build-your-business/

Nostalgia of how it all started

This made me feel nostalgic: Check out this video by Digital Corporation making the case for the Internet and its endless opportunities in, yeah, 1994.

As a company pushing the medium, it’s sad, they seem to be completely out of the game.

Three cheers for “exuberant, foolish, mad overinvestment!”

With all the worry going around about Web2.0 being yet another bubble, Slate columnist Gross takes a counterintuitive look at economic bubbles—those once-in-a-generation crazes that everyone knows can’t last, and don’t. With each one, we lament having gotten in too late, and then not having gotten out soon enough, and finally shake our heads at the inevitable bankruptcies and lost jobs and general financial wreckage. The pattern is all too familiar, which is why Gross’s argument is so intriguing: that these bubbles, with their hype and madness and overenthusiasm, are not to be feared—they’re actually a primary engine of “America’s remarkable record of economic growth and innovation.” The author surveys modern bubbles and finds the benefits far more durable than the disruptions: in each case, most investors flopped, but businesses and consumers found themselves with a “usable commercial infrastructure” that they quickly put to new uses. The telegraph “led to the creation of national and international financial markets”; extra railroad lines made national consumer brands possible and gave consumers access to distant stores; extra fiber-optic capacity gave everyone Internet access after the bust. Gross drops zingers throughout his cheery history, amusingly highlighting parallels between past and current bubbles. He concludes—with admirable practicality—by calling for a “real bubble” to jump-start alternative-energy programs. Amazon.

My Diatribe on “Digital” vs “Traditional” Agencies

Just found a video which was presented in Cannes about “Digital Creativity” with some good quotes from senior creatives with some opinions such as:

• the Internet as Medium isn’t just one channel it is as many channels as you make of it
• that it hasn’t just changed the requirements for how to communicate, but that it has changed the landscape completely
• that traditional agency tools do not cover these new developments, in fact that they never had to do as good of a job in tradtional media as they would have to do online
• that all big ideas will come from the Internet because it is the most relevant medium today, just like TV used to be in times past
• that everything keeps changing rapidly, and there is no one approach or methodology to predict anything with

Apart from not understanding what they mean by “digital” creativity (in comparison to “analog”creativity??), I agree with most of the statements themselves. In fact, I am surprised that some say that people don’t know of the importance of the internet or believe otherwise or refute its validity. Over the years, most of the people I have worked with have been making statements like that for, what, 12 years now. And now people who previously were unsure about the digital space suddenly go tooting the digital horn?

Like, hello? Welcome to the “interweb”. Glad you could make it.

So yeah, within the argument of the video, it is an easy point to make that certain traditional agencies (as well as certain of their clients) have been missing the boat on like, errr…, 12 years of stuff going on, demanding to keep making their money with a 12% cut off the media budget, due to their business model (built on the TV network and media structure of the 1960s-80s), their antiquated consumer and market research methods, out-of-touch view of the “consumer”, their philosophy of creative as an end to a means (as opposed to a means to an end).

Obviously then, it is equally as easy to point out the results of this: Increasingly irrelevant communication concepts, back-slapping award shows, dipping sales and the fact that consumers themselves now create more compelling messaging for brands than the companies and agencies actually tasked with it.

And yes, more and more touchpoints will become digital. More and more awareness, consideration and retention processes will be influenced by the increasing digital lifestyle, and as a result, more ideas will come from creative solution processes for this digital lifestyle. Even offline touchpoints and communications as well as underlying business processes have already changed and will change even more.

However, the perspective some digital creative agencies have adopted suggests to me that they are bound to make the same mistakes as the so-called “Traditional Agency”. They use their medium-specific creative and technological development capabilities and equate them with “being the most creative” or “the most relevant”. If they don’t adjust their capabilities and retain a flexible innovation architecture in order to be able to generate more than digital insight, digital strategy and digital communications, they will be overwhelmed by the next big thing, just as traditional agencies were. My guess is, the next big thing isn’t gonna be webx.0, but rather “Marketing 5.0″.

In the end, the weakness inherent to the 100% digital proposition isn’t that you can’t make money with it now, or that it won’t remain a really important factor of how communications will be played. The weakness is that building a services structure that doesn’t consider all touchpoints and examines all types of consumer experiences and brand experiences will ultimately only be able to be sold as a specialized solution, not a provider of encompassing big ideas. Because, the last time I checked, we don’t live as disembodied avatars enjoying our Burger & Coke digitally, bringing our kids to school digitally, getting a high from corporal excercise digitally, falling in love digitally, etc.

So, while the digital space is a driving force behind a lot of factors for consumer expectations and brand communications, to me, the most interesting task in all of this is: How do we generate better insights about this changed landscape, and come up with new types of developing strategies and ideas and then apply them regardless of a “channel”? After all, ideas are ideas. The factors of what I call the Four Rs: reach, relevance, resonance, and response of communications cannot be owned because you know how develop for a particular medium du jour. Creating powerful communications has always been owned by the most relevant insight, the most strategic idea and the most compelling creative, whether it is the radio of the 30s or the TV of the 50s or the latest version number of the web today.
To the consumer of today, the channel is irrelevant anyway until he doesn’t get the experience he expected from it. He adopts technology in search of this experience, doesn’t give a fetid donkey’s kidney on how a company and marketer produces content, services or products. He wants interactions with brands his way, when and where he wants it.

“Convergence”, “Channel-agnostics” and “Through the line” aren’t just cool things to do, it is what people expect anyway. In fact, it’s not just brands who are in the position to create new things to then convince the consumer of. It is actually the consumer now who is convincing brands to finally deliver what he has been expecting anyway.

To end this diatribe, the Internet as integrator of all channels is key in making articifical differentiation between “lines” (ATL/BTL) go away to enable more relevant “brand experience delivery”. But what really sets the boundaries for the competitive playing field of communication agencies isn’t which medium they develop for. It is how well agencies will be able to help companies deliver the delayed fulfillment of brand experiences regardless of medium, based on the understanding that, weirdly enough, the medium is indeed the message, but only because, today, the medium is the individual consumer himself.

It’s off to the races, no training wheels on.