HotHouse makes brands work for people online

As discussed in our most recent podcast, online conversational marketing requires a different mindset to traditional marketing techniques.

Here are a few places you can go to find some good examples of conversation marketing in action:

• A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples – this master list, set up by social media expert Peter Kim, contains almost a thousand examples of social media campaigns.

• Now is Gone – a good historical list ranging from Burger King’s Subservient Chicken campaign in 2004 (which even back then generated 17 million hits and resulted in a double-digit boost to chicken sandwich sales) to cause marketing through Facebook for the Nature Conservancy.

• Cases2.com- Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, who made the most recent list of 100 Most Influential People in IT, has created a short but detailed collection of social media case studies.

Treat your marketing like a garden and you’ll survive the economic downturn.

Have you seen the classic film Being There? The main character Chauncey (played by Peter Sellers) is a mentally-challenged gardener who through a few twists of fate ends up being a respected political adviser and commentator (I can heartily recommend you getting it out on DVD – a funny film with pointed social commentary that still stings today).

Anyway, when he’s asked his opinion on world events, Chauncey starts talking about the only thing he knows – gardening – and he slowly and deliberately describes the process of planting seeds, watering them, pulling out weeds, pruning, and harvesting. Everyone who listens to him puts their own spin on what he ‘really’ means, and he quickly becomes an internationally respected political guru.

Chris Abraham, interviewed for our recent HotHouse podcast, says Chauncey Gardner’s gardening analogy is particularly apt for online social media marketing today.

Abraham, online PR specialist and president and COO of online consultants Abraham Harrison, based in Washington and Berlin, argues that despite the right-now, viral nature of the Internet, building a company’s brand through social media takes time.

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HotHouse content director Ray Welling talks to Chris Abraham, president and COO of online consultants Abraham Harrison, based in Washington and Berlin. Chris is a leading expert in online public relations with a focus on blogger outreach, blogger engagement, and Internet reputation management.  An international pioneer in online social networks and publishing, he works as an Internet analyst, web strategy consultant and advisor to firms across the globe. He specializes in web 2.0 technologies, such as online collaboration, blogging, and consumer generated media.

Chris talks about the ins and outs of social media marketing, which he calls “online conversation marketing”, and why good gardeners make good social media marketers. Listen to the podcast below.

 

 Chris Abraham podcast [34:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The annual Hitwise Australia Online Performance Awards recognise outstanding online business achievement and acknowledge the most successful Australian websites, defined by the market share of user visits to a website received during 2008.

Hitwise reports on the anonymous online usage of approximately 3 million Australian Internet users and more than 140,000 local websites throughout the course of the year. The awards program recognises excellence in online performance through public popularity.

“This is truly a ‘people’s choice’ award, as ultimately, organisations receiving a Hitwise Online Performance Award have been determined by Australian consumers,” says Michael Walmsley, General Manager of Hitwise Asia Pacific. He adds, “Website visits provide an excellent measure of a website’s success and popularity”.

The 2008 winners, include major online and offline brands such as AMP, Wotif.com, ninemsn, and  Medibank. First time recipients of the award include  Webjet, Fox Sports , JB Hi-Fi Australia , and our client  Toyota.

Recently I have been debating in my head, whether or not the internet is essentially just a workable platform for communism. As absurd as this sounds the more I look into it the harder it is to dispute. I mean Wikipedia’s definition of communism sounds ridiculously close to its own creed:

“…an egalitarian, classless, stateless, society based on common ownership……allowing every member of society to participate in the decision-making process.”

Has Communism snuck up on us when we least expected?

Whatever your thoughts are, it is difficult to dispute that this revolution (the digital one) has successfully given ‘Power back to the People.’ If you are still not a believer, just check out who is writing the news - http://digg.com/

The old chestnut “Half of my advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half” doesn’t apply to online advertising. While there is as of yet no foolproof formula for measuring online success, the data you can collect from visitors makes it much easier to find patterns and test various methods to determine which ad works best.

Here are a couple of places to go to learn more about how to do this for your business:

• Search Marketing Now (SMN) has produced a webcast that covers the basics of ad tracking. As SMN says, “Any good Internet marketing professional knows that assigning all of the value to the last ad clicked on before the conversion is inherently flawed. Most Internet advertisers, however, lack 1)The tracking technology required to determine the actual team of ads and their sequence that lead to the conversion; and the valuation methodology to properly assess each ad’s true contribution and value to the conversion…. there is no industry-accepted standard or method for assigning relative value to ads in the path. How do we effectively attribute which ad - or group of ads - ultimately led to the final conversion?”

• The Conversation Marketing website states boldly that  “Advertising exists to help you make money. That’s it. There are no moral victories in marketing.” Advising that you need to track the ROI of online advertising “every bit as carefully as other media,” the site outlines four simple questions that enable you to measure the effectiveness of each of your Internet assets: 1) What’s the goal of your web site? 2)What’s that goal worth? What’s the value each time you accomplish that goal? 3) How many times did you achieve that goal? 4) What did it cost to achieve it? Find out more here.

• Measuring the Social – Shifting Towards Online Advertising – Dan Neely, founder and CEO of social media and customer intelligence company Networked Insights, has produced a short video explaining the increasing importance for companies to measure and understand the complete online social situation as it affects online advertising. He says, “The current macro-economic environment will impact both offline and online ad spend….In the recent meetings with the ‘big three’ US auto makers in Washington, General Motors CEO James Wagoner said that GM would be shifting a substantial amount of their $500 million ad budget online…. Although this is smart, it’s only the first step as its not simply about shifting ad dollars online, it’s about doing this efficiently and intelligently - targeting the right people with the right content. Check out Dan Neely’s video here.

As discussed in our most recent podcast, many marketers are hesitant to embrace online advertising because of the complexity it adds to their roles. Here are some inspirational examples of online campaigns that pull together several aspects and do it well, from the Digital Buzz Blog:

• “The best job in the world”: Here’s an Australian campaign that has really taken off. Tourism Queensland launched a campaign revolving around the recruitment of a caretaker for the Barrier Reef Islands, whose main job will be to report back via blogs, Twitter, etc. what’s happening in the islands. According to Digital Buzz, “By now, everyone has seen or heard about the Island Reef Job Campaign by Tourism Queensland, it’s been everywhere, with the campaign being incredibly well executed across Twitter, Facebook, Blogs and website. Tourism Queensland was looking for 400,000 new website visitors over the campaign and enough applications to draw solid media attention, but that forecast was looking thin after the website had over 200,000 new visitors on the very first day of the campaign.” Launched in January, more than 2.5 million people by the time applications closed in late February, with more than 11,000 applications for the job (via one-minute video). The story has been picked up by more than 1,500 blogs, as well.

• Cadbury makes a mess of it: Cadbury’s Goo the Egg bus shelter game, executed in the London, has been called a brilliant interactive execution. Check out the video link to see how splatting chocolate Easter eggs leads to brand recall. Cadbury is getting a reputation for viral success with its Eyebrow Dance and Drumming Gorilla ads.

• Tweeting about laptops: Over the Christmas period Dell used Twitter to tell customers about great offers. They reportedly earned more than $1million from Twitter traffic alone, so Dell is now offering exclusive deals via Twitter every week. As Digital Buzz says, “They are providing real-time feedback, information and customer service to their followers about anything dell. I just can’t believe more brands aren’t doing this. With twitter users generally being very active in a social crowd, the benefits of using twitter to increase customer satisfaction, sales and support will be invaluable in 2009.”

Many advertising and marketing executives wish they could just turn the Internet off, but others welcome the opportunity to create messages with measurable impact.

While traditional advertising in Australia followed the rest of the economy over the cliff at the end of last year, online advertising stayed strong, with annual spend in 2008 up 27% over 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau Australia’s latest Online Advertising Expenditure Report.

Despite the doom and gloom in Q4 – many analysts predicted that online spending growth would slow to a crawl – online advertising was $462 million, up 22% on the same period last year, which includes the lucrative Christmas season.

Sure, this compares to 34% growth in 2007, but the rate has been slowing for several years, since that growth comes off a much bigger base every year.

Search advertising in Australia grew 30% in 2008, while classifieds dragged the chain at ‘only’ 23% growth. IAB chief executive Paul Fischer has been quoted as predicting growth will be 17-18% in 2009, which is brilliant compared to the rest of the industry and the economy generally, which is widely tipped to contract and slip into recession.

Meanwhile, another Australian survey, Webtrends’ 2009 Australian Analytics report has found that 48% of Australian businesses consider Internet marketing critical to recovering from the economic slowdown…. read more

Simon van Wyk talks to Brendon Cropper, director of the Digital Training Academy and former director of media services company Starcom Digital. Brendon Cropper is one of Australia’s internet pioneers.

With more than 17 years in media planning, digital training, and online sales, Brendon has worked for leading digital agencies like DDB, Carat and Starcom on hundreds of blue chip global brands. He was a founder of Real Media Australia, one of the country’s first online sales networks.

Brendon speaks to Simon about how online advertising makes marketing and advertising more complicated today – and why that’s a good thing. Listen to the podcast below.

 

 Brendon Cropper Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I had a bad new media week last week, a bad interactive media week, and a bad social media week.  It’s been coming for some time but it all culminated with ad:tech.

I’ve been in the interactive media industry since 1994 when we were making CD-ROM titles for the US market. Like many others, I was attracted to the industry because we were given an opportunity to be at the forefront of a new technology.  We were in a position to challenge the status quo and to do something that mattered.

As an industry the last 15 years have been extraordinary.  The world has changed.  Minnows attacked huge existing businesses and won.  In some cases those traditional businesses are still around. But in many cases they are not.  There are many examples:

• Why did Brittanica not become Wikipedia? They had a start, they had the content.
• Why did LexisNexis not become Google? They had a start, they had the content.
• Why did Trading Post not become eBay?
• Why did Dymocks not become Amazon?

Too lazy, too stupid, not ready to take a risk?

And the examples go on.  Small businesses have in a short time overtaken and beaten traditional business by changing the game.  To be part of all that has been a privilege.

So what started this rant for me?  Some of it was the plethora of new jargon at ad:tech – some of it was lameness of the examples, and some of it was reading B&T again.  I think the interactive industry wants to be the advertising industry, we think it’s cool.  They have great offices and the parties are fun but they work people like dogs, get treated like shit by their clients and we want to be like them.

Here are a few things that got up my nose:

Brand Dialogue: What a load of crap.  I’ve worked out what it means.  It’s a Flash site with some un-navigable metaphor and takes ages to download.  The interactive industry despise them because we know they are a waste of time.  Most of them get a campaign URL and Google does not take it seriously because it’s new.

Advertising agencies tell their clients it’s part of the brand dialogue and measure hits to the websites.  We never hear bounce rates quoted; that would be embarrassing.   Agencies tell clients they can do some things to help get the Flash site indexed by Google.  But we’re not really telling the truth.  Agencies build them because they are the closest thing to a commercial.  They understand those and clients seem to like them because they’re familiar.

Companies succeeded on the web because they solved a problem: they found a way to facilitate a transaction.  Even Apple, the high water mark of the “brand dialogue” debate, just facilitates transactions.  Everything they do makes it easy to transact.  Despite all the hoo-hah you read about corporate social media, consumers don’t want to talk with brands – we just want the Internet to facilitate an easier way to do business.

We, the interactive industry, know this, we can see it in the numbers.  Why don’t we adopt our own language and help our clients build business on the web?

Social Media: I was at a dinner party.  The people there all used eBay, bought music online, had laptops, iPhones and used BitTorrent for downloading TV series.  I asked if they knew what social media was.  They did not.  Sites I called blogs they called websites.  As far as they are concerned Facebook is a website, LinkedIn is a website, MySpace is a website.

PR agencies are distributing press releases to bloggers and calling it social media.  Banks are getting 50 comments on a blog and talking about it.  In the old days you took your clients to a lunch and got a better return.

In 1997 we built a website called Manhood in conjunction with psychologist/author Steve Biddulph.  We sold the site on and it’s untouched (you can still see it at www.manhood.com.au), so it’s a bit weird now; however, we built in every feature you see in a social media site.  Then it was common sense – now it’s social media.

As marketing people our job is to go where the customers are and find a way to tell them about our product.  We in the interactive industry know where these people are to be found, we know how to engage with them and we do really know what social media is, but we’re dumbing down our business is an attempt to look like an advertising agency.

Posting a few images to Flickr, the TVC to YouTube and putting the URL on the TVC is not really going to work.

Then there was the Naked stunt for Witchery.  The only interesting thing about this was the fact the SMH chose to publish it on the home page.  The interactive industry knows the only measure of success here is, “Did you sell any jackets?” That’s been the mantra of our industry – what’s the outcome – and yet we’re swept up into a cycle of debate on the topic.  It’s presented as an Internet/social media strategy, but it’s neither.

Let’s go back to what we know is true – if it works by delivering commercial value to the client it’s a good thing.  Let’s leave advertising agencies and PR companies to the rest.

FMCG: Every second person we interview wants to talk about our FMCG clients.  Well, we don’t have many.  Now Skittles is kinda interesting, but really who cares.  It’s a sweet.  The purchase decision is made in a store and this is more interesting to the industry than the target market.

There was more traction from the guys putting Mentos in diet Coke than any of this stuff and we, the interactive industry know this but we want to pretend to be advertising agencies.

When I was a kid you had cereal box competitions - collect tokens and win etc.  Most FMCG websites are nothing more.  They are not cool, they are not clever they are not worthy of debate, but they get written up and talked about at conferences like they matter.

Metrics: A friend of mine stopped reporting clicks, conversions, etc. to her client because it raised more questions than she could answer. Clients have been pumping money into TV for years without any real sense of a return. All they ever asked was how did the show rate.

Sometimes we can’t quite measure the impact on sales.  There is often a lot of air between the website and the sale but we can measure everything else.  We, the interactive industry, know how to do this. We’ve worked through the issues for years, but we’re allowing ourselves to be dragged down the reporting on ratings path when we know we can do better.

Media Planning: Rex Briggs, the king of measurement, says most organizations should be spending 20% of their budgets online.  It’s not happening.  Media buyers run the same ads on the major portals despite the fact the interactive industry knows creative wears out quickly. And why don’t we make more creative? Because the media buyers do a deal with the media companies for 16 sizes to fill all sorts of stupid holes.  Instead of running two sizes and rotating creative we get 12 sizes and blow our budget.  The interactive industry knows this is wrong.

Why are we on these portals, anyway?  Sometimes it makes sense, but most of the time it’s because it’s too difficult to do a proper job.  The real engagement is down the other end of the traffic curve - the niche sites where people are spending time and returning regularly.

Media people will tell you it’s because they want their brands associated with the prestigious brands.  What a crock – the interactive industry knows it’s a crock.  Have you seen the “quality advertisers” filling the unsold inventory on the major portals? It makes 3am TV look like quality.

Advertising Agencies: Every single agency in town had the opportunity to own the interactive space.  They had the clients they had the mandate and they blew it.  The top 10 digital services companies in Australia would, I suspect, all be web companies, not agencies.  Just like the Trading Posts of the world, the ad agencies did not grab the opportunity to change.

Some larger organizations use their procurement departments to run the tender and selection process for the advertising agency.  This puts agencies in the same league as stationery, toilet paper and the company car fleet.  They would not dream of doing the same for the legal partner, the strategic consulting partner or the HR consultants.

The interactive industry can avoid this horrible fate, but we need our own sense of pride and culture. We don’t want to talk like agencies, we don’t want to aspire to be part of their magazines; why would any digital person want to be on the Gruen Transfer for example?

It’s time for our industry to re-establish an identity separate from the agencies, to make sure the work we do delivers a real return and to work on things that use our energy and intellect to make a difference for our clients.

I’d like to propose an Interactive Industry Code of Practice:

1. I will always propose the least expensive, simplest solution to any problem.
2. I understand Google is the homepage and I will ensure everything I do is sensitive to this fact.
3. My job is to facilitate business. When I start talking brand dialogue it’s only because I can’t find a way to really add value.
4. My job is to help you with the interface between your company and the customer on the web. They are using the web for utility; my job is to find that utility wherever it may exist.
5. We’ll be clear about the returns.
6. We have a chance to do things better to improve from our learnings.
7. The Internet has changed the world; let’s make sure we treat it with the respect it deserves.  It took us many years of TV to develop the technology to skip ads.  Let’s not clutter our communities and forums with useless messages that add no value. Consumers want to hear from companies who are relevant to their circumstance; let’s work with that.
8. Our job is not to sell our ideas to the client.  Our job is to sell the clients product to their customers.