LondonMarketingDept

Irving Penn, Marlene Dietrich, 1948, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Irving Penn © Condé Nast Publications, Inc

‘We don’t call them shoots here. We don’t shoot people, it’s really a love affair.’ Irving Penn

Love the Webby Awards, the top honours for the Internet world.  Don’t always agree with the winners as many sites are more fussy than functional for my tastes.  Case in point:  the Association category award winner, Just Add New Zealanders.   Huh? 

Nonetheless, it’s fantastic to see how the Web has evolved and is able to engage in a way that is not possible via other media.  Stories are told now so powerfully – check out the People’s Voice Winner for the Art category, Live Hope Love, a site showcasing the poetry and people of HIV in Jamaica.  Although not a nominee this year,  MediaStorm also is incredibly powerful for adding voices and faces to tragic news headlines such as consequences of the genocide in Rwanda.

It’s also interesting to note that the Webby’s isn’t just about websites – it now features Interactive Advertising, Online Film and Video and Mobile categories.  Makes sense in this ever increasingly converged world.   Check out winners Wario Land Shake It along with insight behind the creation; and Apple’s iPod Touch online commercial - great examples of how internet advertising has come a long way from the days of static banners. 

Forrester Research recently predicted that Interactive Marketing is set to grow 11% to $25.6 Billion in 2009 and hit $55 Billion by 2014.  All this, at the expense of offline marketing – with direct mail and print being hit hardest.  Taking a look at the winners and nominees of the Webby Awards and it’s not hard to see why - Interactive Marketing has grown up.

Twitter, what is it good for?  We all know about the voyeuristic aspects of learning that Stephen Fry was stuck in a London lift or seeing Ashton Kutcher’s photos of Demi Moore’s knickered bum, as featured in an article in London’s Sunday Times Magazine (the article isn’t online, but the twitter feeds are out there…of course).

More interesting, an article in the Times on Monday about how travel companies are using Twitter.  Most use it as a channel for answering customer queries, posting marketing messages and offering travel ideas and inspiration.  Some efforts were noted as less successful for not having  a clear focus or continuity.  

It’s tricky for companies.  Twitter is a new channel and one that requires continual monitoring and commitment.  Automation tools are available - Amazon uses Twitter bots to pull content from its blog - however, the dynamic and interactive nature of Twitter requires more involvement and strategy.  Like mobile marketing before it, it must make sense and be relevant to audiences and the brand.  Revolution Magazine points out shortcomings in its feature on Twitter failures by major brands.

A recent Businessweek article titled, ‘When Skittles Met Twitter,’ recalls a social media experiment where Skittles turned its home page over to live Twitter feeds, along with Facebook, Flickr and YouTube content.  A few days later, there was a rethink after the users ’deluged the site with inane and often profane “tweets’…Nonetheless, it crashed Twitter and generated broad coverage, so perhaps it was considered successful?  It is a time of trial and error - no one knows what will fly.

So, where does that leave companies and brands?  Clearly, there are benefits of using the channel for customer service, announcing special deals and ideas interested followers can use.  Twitter also offers:

• Buzz Monitoring:  what are the hot topics?  What are people saying about a brand and its core values and issues?  There are numerous tools to track it all.  Tweetdeck offers views for free or there are paid tools such as Trackur.  For trends, check out Twist, which shows aggregated data of what people are saying on Twitter. 
• Crowdsourcing:  looking to get information, ideas or thoughts on a topic?  Or to mobilize people for an event?  Ask the Twitter universe and get immediate response.  Certainly not a replacement for traditional research or other outreach tactics, however, in the right situation, it’s useful.   
• Demographic targeting:  Twitter communities are alive and kicking.  Check out TwitterMoms, the ‘influential moms network,’ a proper social community complete with groups, forums, blogs, videos and events; and a prompt to download the TwitterMom free toolbar.  It’s slick, it’s focused, it’s a marketing opportunity.

Or is it all a passing fad?   US Research Group Neilson recently reported that ‘more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month, or in other words, Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent. For most of the past 12 months, pre-Oprah, Twitter has languished below 30 percent retention.’

Regardless of the longevity of Twitter or its ultimate evolution, it’s a clear example of the quickly changing digital landscape.  According to Forrester Research, interactive marketing is set to be a $55 billion business by 2014.   Looks like it’s here to stay.

Google.  Amazing to think the company was founded just over 10 years ago in September 1998.  What will the coming decade bring?  According to an article in The Independent, one to watch is Wolfram Alpha, touted as ‘the biggest Internet revolution for a generation’ which could ‘put giants such as Google in the shade.’ 

What is it?  Wolfram Alpha is a new ‘computational knowledge engine’ that answers questions in the language and context of  ordinary people.  So rather than getting a list of search results, you get answers. 

According to the piece, ‘The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out “on the fly”, according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in “10 flips for four heads” and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.’

Sounds compelling.  But will Google need to worry just yet?  Not likely.  It’s designed for academics and professionals and lacks in its ability to contextualize popular culture terms and concepts.  Nonetheless, quite interesting and a milestone in the world of artificial intelligence and realization of the Semantic Web. 

What else is coming in the decade ahead?  Taking the ’sixth sense’ concept to the real world, MIT is doing some interesting work in melding information and data to our every day environment, as described in a Ted.com talk by Pattie Maes of MIT Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group. 

Let’s not worry about the implications to marketing and advertising just yet…

Who doesn’t love a good case study? 

As most brands seek to engage audiences with social media, it’s interesting to see how these campaigns roll out.

Cases in point: 

First, an example of how traditional big budget PR/ad campaigns are migrating to the social media format:

The Ford Fiesta Movement:  in a campaign to introduce millenials (those born 1979 - 1995) to the new Fiesta, Ford has launched a social media campaign dubbed the ‘Fiesta Movement.’  that targets bloggers and online influencers.  The launch event had 20 bloggers and online influencers in test drives across Manhattan, followed by a Twitter ’Tweet-up.”  Blogging and social sharing encouraged.  Next up, Ford selects 100 car enthusiasts to drive a Fiesta, take part in ‘missions’ and share their experiences on Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.

Also interesting to note Ford’s ‘digital snippets’ social media pressroom format.  The campaign has been effective at generating media coverage; will it drive sales?  Off to a good start.

Second, a look at using social networks to initiate change on an issue.  This presentation  illustrates about how a non-profit organization, the Genocide Intervention Network, leveraged social media to influence government policy. 

Additional interesting examples can be found on blog postings by Aaron Uhrmacher and ex-Forrester Research analyst Peter Kim.

It’s a new media world.  We all know it, but who owns it?  Companies and brands work with a variety of agencies - interactive, PR, full-service advertising, search engine (SEO/SEM) and now, the ‘tradigital’ agency which offers both traditional and digital offerings. 

Digital strategy could fall anywhere.  A company could hire a web agency to build a site; an interactive group to offer up SEO/SEM, analytics, widgets and social media.  PR firms bring communication strategy and influencer campaigns.  Ad agencies, the brand.  All are playing in the digital sandbox and the lines are blurring.   

Each discipline is also evolving.  Take PR, for example.  Over the past few years, online PR has taken hold with new services and tools such as ‘buzz monitoring’ and the Social Media News Release.  Both are catered to the new world of social media and influencers, including bloggers. 

In the case of the Social Media News Release, it’s about creating a media-rich press release which offers journalists and bloggers an easy way to access all they need to build a story - high resolution images, video, executive quotes, previous coverage, links to reference sources.  It also should feature social media capabilities with bookmarking, RSS feeds, technorati tags and links.  And lest we forget, it should be optimized for search and allow conversation.  Online PR service RealWire offers a good overview and examples.  This is a relatively new tool for PR, but ultimately it crosses into other disciplines - SEO and social media - and as such, requires a broader base of knowledge.

New platforms, new tools, new approaches - it’s definitely a dynamic time and still rapidly evolving.  In a recent BusinessWeek article on social media, today’s digital darling, offers a good quote from early adopter Guy Stephens of Carphone Warehouse,  ”Understanding what motivates your customer and trying to meet that need is still key, regardless of whether you use Twitter, Facebook, e-mail, or pick up the phone.”