Thursday, March 27, 2008

LIP SYNCH FRIDAY! - LADIES NIGHT! DIVA NIGHT!












The one below is not actually a lip synch, but good tv is good tv. It's the black bra that makes this a genuine ensemble.


Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Great Moments in Television...

Being Thankful

I buy a lot of stuff online, and am thus in a lot of email streams. I don’t open all of them, but I do read a lot, and I am struck by how few companies actually thank customers for their business.

Why thank customers? Well, because they pay your salary, and those of all your friends and coworkers. Because when people buy things from you, they place an implicit trust in you to deliver what you promise. We as marketers should thank people for that trust.

The only time I get thanked, it seems, is by recorded messages that also tell me that my call is very important to them, when it clearly isn’t. There is a difference between a throwaway thank you and a sincere one, and consumers can smell that difference a mile away.

I like it when United pilots tell me that they realize that I have a choice in airlines, and that they thank me for flying United. I remember an email I was sent when they were at death’s door after 9/11, which was signed by everyone at United thanking me for my loyalty.

Yes, I know they sent out a billion of them. I harbor no illusions that it was individually typed. I wouldn’t want them to. I just want companies to recognize that purchases are an act of faith that needs to be acknowledged.

It amazes me how many of my past clients spent 90% of their effort on customer acquisition, thinking of retention as something they’d worry about later, or that isn’t necessary. The worst manifestation is when new customers get a huge discount while the schmucks that have been loyal through 37 purchases have to pay full price. Many companies call a discount offered to a loyal buyer “subsidizing your users” and scoff at the stupidity of it.

I’d like to gently point out that the subsidizing of their relationship is the other way around. Their loyal buyers are subsidizing THEM despite their callous disregard.

But this post isn’t about discounts or frequent buyer clubs or whatnot. This is about expressing thanks occasionally.

I’d have liked it if maker of the dog food I buy had thanked me for retrusting them when it returned to the shelf. They didn’t, by the way, and that still chaps my ass given that I am literally placing the life of the cutest pup in the World in their hands.



I’d have liked it if the American Red Cross had sent a thank you for my tsunami online donation slightly faster than eight months after the credit card got charged. I know that they had lots to do at the time, but a thank you sent eight months late is more disdain than gratitude.

Life can often seem a thankless business. Don’t make it one for your customers. You can thank them easily and simply with digital, and you don’t even have to use some elaborate 2.0 platform. A nice SINCERE email will do it.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Wisdom from the East? Or the Orange?


Hurrah!


A new perspective has emerged from the doors of Catalyst SF. Our own Kevin Long aka KLong has created a digital marketing blog. His first post is up, and it is a winner. Somehow he weaves together water buffalo Disney, Nick and the new GoFish Network. Find it here and add the Digital Sensei to your start pages!

One note: Kevin's blog name is all sage and wisdom of the East and sh*t, but he's actually from the OC - so I will be encouraging him to change the name to DigitalKooKooRoo. I am not hopeful about driving this change however. The fella has airs. ;-)

Seriously, check it out.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Twitter Me This

I try everything online. And often I am dumbfounded. Can someone please tell me WHY they Twitter? Preferably someone over 14.

I want to emphasize that I am not attacking Twitter. I just don't get it.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Doctor Recommended

Find a Date. Make a Sale.

Why don’t more companies leverage the dating sites for marketing? You’ve got millions of highly involved members, all looking for things they have in common, or ideas for what to do on those dreaded first dates.

Relationship sites have done a great deal of partner marketing in recent years, most notably Perfectmatch’s partnerships with movie studios, Lifetime, Today, etc. But if you consider the absolutely colossal populations on Match, eHarmony, and Perfectmatch, just to name three, its absolutely crazy that more brands haven’t jumped on the bandwagon.

I’m not talking about banners. Well, that’s not right. Banners would be OK for an awareness campaign, but I bet click metrics would be dismal. If I’m there checking out potential dates, I’m not going to be clicking on mortgage ads.

No, rather, I am talking about deep integrated partnerships. Like what? Here are a few ideas:

1. Coffee Dates: Work with the backend of these sites to identify the Starbucks that is most convenient for both people. Then, give the asker a pretty ecard to send to their prospective date, asking for a meetup. This’d also work for a beer or wine or spirits brand.

2. Movie Dates: If you’ve ever done online dating, you know one of the challenges is to figure out what to do on those first couple of dates. What about making evites to invite your love interest to the opening of a flick. It’d tie in well with the hype strategy of most movies to get butts in seats on opening weekend.

3. Outfit apps: Have an apparel company work with a site to help people decide on what to buy and wear on their date.

4. New year diets and exercise: Work with a fitness company to help members improve their appearance and their first impressions.

It’s easy to come up with ideas like this. And I suspect that given that the category growth has slowed, many dating sites would be only too happy to develop new revenue streams. This stuff isn’t rocket science but it could be enormously powerful in the lives of singles. Think of the implication of being the place where millions of people had their first coffee date? It makes my heart go pitter pat.

This stuff might require a bit of back end integration, but it doesn’t require a leap of faith about what people will be doing in six months online -- meaning you don't need a crystal ball to identify what the single will be doing online ain six mos. About 50 million of them will be looking for a date. Dating sites aren’t going away anytime soon. And it isn’t getting any easier to break the ice and get the dating ball rolling.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

"Aggressive Online Behavior"

I am a scrounger for free online info, and a white paper hoarder. That said, there are certain things that everyone should read, and this is one of them. It is an excellent white paper on how to deal with "aggressive, destructive consumer behavior" designed to inpugn reputations or interrupt business. If I had a nickel for every company that has asked me about this topic...

The authors, Misters Urs Gasser and John G. Palfrey, Jr. provided a thorough way of thinking about UGC, and a series of steps to prepare and combat aggressive UGC. Download it from the Cymfony website here.

Or join the new site eMarketing Papers free (where I found it) and grab it along with a treasure trove of other marketing white papers. You'll be happy you did.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Will Women Ever Forgive the Ad Biz For This?

The Giant Sucking Sound

Forgive me if I deviate from the topic of digital marketing for a moment -- actually it'll be in here somewhere.

I've been thinking a lot about the digital economy and its implications. Generally speaking digital is good for Northern California where I live. Sure, lots of tech jobs have been outsourced to Asia, but there are still lots of them here as well. And new companies and the promise of biotech generally mean that Northern California won't have to suffer the traumas of Ohio or Michigan or Pennsylvania.

But I live in Oakland, which is the big city in Nor Cal that generally doesn't benefit very much from the digital boom. The schools aren't very good, drop out rates are high, crime is problematic, and real, genuine, empty stomach poverty is by no means rare here. There are also systemic problems in the way digital recruits people. How many African Americans do YOU know in digital? Ditto Latinos? How about even in Mobile, which is a medium disproportionately favored by both groups. Or how about women? How many women CEOs are there in the Valley?

And it brings up a larger question for me about what regular people are going to do in the US in the future. Yes, bigger, more educated minds than mine have discussed and theorized about this subject. But while some of us can capitalize on the digital revolution, there are millions and millions and millions of Americans and Europeans and Mexicans and Canadians and insert names of 92 other countries who largely cannot.

There used to be a place for people who have abilities related to physical work -- you couldn't perhaps be rich as a factory worker, but you could have a house and a couple cars and pay for a state school for your progeny.

And now what? They cannot all be waiters -- in part because companies are figuring out ways to outsource even drive through orders and in part because fewer and fewer Americans will be able to afford eating out.

They cannot all be customer service reps -- as is proven every day when we call the excellent Indian Amazon CSRs. They can't all work in Wal-Mart, especially as they are pursuing self check out. They can't all be car mechanics as cars need less and less maintenance.

So what ARE regular people -- and I do NOT use the term regular as a pejorative, what I mean is people who aren't blessed by accident of birth as I am by Ivy League education and the "pull" required to get and keep a great job. I am talking about people without silver spoons.

I am not a Luddite. I am not suggesting tarriffs on the order of Smoot-Hawley. Actually, I am hopeful that digital will open an array of opportunities for small businesses -- like eBay did, only on an even larger scale. I harbor no illusions about growing a new industrial base in the US -- there is no way a country that cares about people, air, and water can compete economically with slaves in Myanmar. For manufacturing to return to the US, there will need to be some sort of micro model that capitalizes on the passions of individuals rather than the phenomenon of interchangeable parts. An example: a model that enables an avid skateboarder to make and sell skateboards built based on insights from her own experience. I have no idea if this is possible on a major scale.

I am just ranting now I guess. What I am saying is not new. It's no wonder that the people of Ohio picked the candidate that postured so firmly about NAFTA last month. But Clintonian ideas aren't going to create the opps that are going to be necessary. For one, Hillary largely misunderstands the power of the web. Heck, look at her crapass digital efforts. Nope, looking to Washington to do anything but blow a lot of hot air on this topic is ridiculous. This cause needs the best and brightest in digital -- who are arguably the only people creating value in the US economy today.

$850MM for Bebo???

So we all saw the news a week ago. AOL decided to buy social networking site Bebo for $850MM. But for most US marketers, Bebo is in the mental category of the decidedly second tier. $850MM is a lot of green for second tier.

Let’s take a look at the whys of this purchase.

Start with AOL. Remember AOL? They probably got you online. They told you “You’ve Got Mail!” and you loved hearing it, until vIaGrA aS lOw aS $3 a pIlL started filling your box. There was that several month period when you couldn’t get on to save your life because they over grew. There were the ubiquitous CDs in the mail. There were the people that found something to do with those CDs. And there was the it's impossible to cancel cancellation process.

AOLwas the walled garden that got such a giant share of marketing dollars in the 90s that some companies didn’t buy anything else. They made companies sign multiyear multimillion dollar deals. Because they could. You would have too.

Time Warner paid more for AOL in the 1990s than all of the African economies put together. Wait, that may not be true. But you get the picture.

But then things began to change. Like all of the dial-up based companies, they had a great deal of difficulty switching to broadband. It was a math problem. Dial-up service was, for an ISP, more or less pure profit. The consumer paid the phone bill, the ISP provided some numbers to get online, and pretty much pocketed the rest. $23.95 a month times 30 million members times 12 = $8.622Billion. Not bad.

Now AOL had horrendous churn, as did most of the dial up services. I think the number was 6 to 9% PER MONTH. Hence the CDs in the mail. It takes a lot of effort to replace hundreds of thousands of members a month. But then, AOL was making more money as well, because they had so many sponsors and were able to force marketing activities onto members at will.

My Machiavellian side had a favorite such app, the “welcome screen” that popped up a direct response offer that you had to read and close before doing anything else. I worked for a software company at the time, and we bought it three times, and sold over 130,000 $40 software packages. It was TV style marketing in the digital era. Forced viewing. Of course as a consumer it was exasperating. But there you go.

And it doesn’t get any more euphemistic than calling a billboard ad a welcome screen.

Broadband is decidedly NOT as profitable for the old order ISPs. That’s because the connection is provided via DSL or cable, and the companies that operate those services aren’t dumb. They get your $30 or $40 or in some parts of the country $60 a month, and pocket the lion’s share. The old order ISPs had and in some cases still have partnerships with the ISPs, but the rev share is lopsided against them. And who can blame Comcast or ATT for recognizing the value of what they've got?

AOL tried offering a content-centric broadband service – it was something like $10 a month, and offered exclusive content and the like. It wasn't a connection charge. It was a content charge. It didn’t set the World on fire by AOL’s historical standards – I suspect that for most people $60 a month is quite enough to be shelling out for Internet. But any initiaitive on the scale of an AOL offering is big by the standards of most companies.

More recently AOL divided itself in two. They have a connectivity side and an advertising side. AOL now operates a free portal at AOL.com and offers free email and other services, including the IM that you probably use. Advertising is very lucrative of course.

Their connectivity side still offers users access, but now to its free portal as opposed to the walled garden. The ad side sells the ads on AOL.com as well as other sites like its TMZ subsidiary and MapQuest.

AOL.com is worth a visit if you haven't been lately. Look familiar? Yep. You could swap the AOL at the top with Yahoo and not notice a difference. But My.AOL.com is pretty nice. Have a look by registering. You can do it with an existing non AOL mailing address. And AOL search might as well have a rip mark from where the company took the Google logo off and swapped it for the running man.

You can see the company struggling – they are part of Time Warner and thus need to generate big dollars and share. Time Warner doesn’t play fourth place well. They don’t like it a bit.

So now they are entering the social media space in a big way with the purchase of Bebo. ACTUALLY, THAT'S NOT TRUE. AOL actually pioneered social media. Practically invented it. It's just that they lost that lead, like their lead in so many other areas, over the past few years.

You probably first chatted in an AOL chatroom. Most people did.

BTW, Bebo is NOT a second tier site. At least not everywhere. 40% of its users come from the UK, where it is the king of the space. And Ireland, with about 3.5 Million inhabitants, has almost as many members as the US, which has roughly 300 million inhabitants. Bebo is also strong in Australia and New Zealand, and even launched a Polish version which is doing rather well.

Clearly this is a global play. According to Alexa, Bebo is the number 5 site in Ireland, number 7 in the New Zealand, number 10 in the UK, and number 14 in Australia. And if your curious, number 160 in the US.

So Bebo must be pretty good.

And it is. I like it. It offers a more freedom aesthetically than Facebook, and a lot more apps and such than MySpace. A series of compelling channels easily port video and other conent to your page. And here’s the rub: they do it effortlessly. I have no doubt that you can do all this on FaceBook, but it isn’t this simple.

Skins let you decorate your page but avoid the garish ugliness of your typical user created MySpace pages. Blogging facility is yummy.

In short, the user experience is quite good. For an American like me, it just needs more activity. What’s most interesting to me about this social space is how leaders can be also rans in months, and second tier can become dominant is just as little time.

I suggest you watch this user created video about Bebo, made by a member in Ireland. If for no other reason than to see how passionate the users are.


Watch More Videos Uploaded by bebo.com/jane.white8

Will it be a good investment? I dunno. I have no difficulty looking at the fundamentals of a brick and mortar business and making a decent prediction. But in a market as fickle as social media, it’s hard to say. What is plain is that AOL needs to do something big to get back in the big leagues of social. And paying $850MM for Bebo is certainly a big initiative.

There is a slash and burn article about AOL in April's Fast Company. Which makes me bullish about AOL and its abiity to reinvent itself and be a leader again. Why? Because the CW in digital is almost always extreme. And completely incorrect 50% of the time.

Bebo is indeed a big initiative. So were the acquisitions of Advertising.com and Tacoda. The company is clearly in the process of reinvesting itself. This is going to be a very interesting process to watch.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

It's Great to Being Girl

I want to take you on a tour of my favorite CPG website today.
Beinggirl is the web site that began as Procter’s menstrual products site, but appears to have expanded to encompass hair care and shaving brands – a sort of tween/teen personal care hub online.

Available for visitors from 44 countries, the site provides product information but that’s only a teeny portion of what it offers.

The Scoop: A newsletter with editorial about many issues that face young girls and women. And this, BTW, is editorial, not “editorial” as in recipes containing suspiciously large quantities of the advertiser’s product.

Your Period: The basics, its personal significance, advice from peers, a treasure trove of info to demystify and deterrify.

Ask Iris: An advice columnist that will answer questions on or entirely unrelated to the products.

Express Yourself: A sort of forum where girls share stories and provide advice.

Fun Stuff: Podcasts, polls quizzes, and games, from classics like Frogger to a bizarre boyfriend creator called the Manquarium.

The Goods: Product Info and Product Finders.

BG Freshcuts: The inevitable new music app.

Being a Hero: Giving back projects on a global scale.

Solo de Chikas: A Spanglish destination.

Free Samples: Nuff Said

Beinggirl is a gigantic commitment that just gets better and better every year. It’s not new or newsworthy, but if you want to understand how to do a site that reflects the target and sella a product, surf on over. I’ll make it easy for you: Beinggirl.

Now not every brand should do a lifestyle site. No no no.

Understanding how to do a web site for your brand requires really thinking, and really understanding your target. What do they want? What does the product mean? Is there a great deal of emotional significance to the product?

BMW Films worked in part because it was BMW that did it. The brand rubbed off on the movies, and vice versa. Sno-Bol films might have had an entirely different result.

By contrast, consider Inthemotherhood.com, a joint production of Suave and Sprint. The site boasts a series of videos starring my TV fave Leah Remini and other celebs living exaggerated challenges that Moms face. Scripts, according to the site, are often based upon user submissions.

The movies are pretty darn funny, and this from someone who doesn’t drive a minivan or have Pamper’s points. The Sprint tie is thought provoking. Moms are probably huge minute consumers, so there you go. Suave, however, makes perfect sense immediately.

Apparently Moms like it. They had 5.5 Million views last year, and the site had sufficient buzz to get Ellen Degeneris to talk about it on her show. Bravo Unilever.

And the medium fits. Moms aren’t going to visit a site and holla holla for hours like a teen might. But she probably needs a bit of a laugh between getting home from work and doing the 1001 other things Moms have to do to keep things together.

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.