Media Archives - Page 10 of 12 - McLellan Marketing Group

Your future customers are behaving very oddly

May 21, 2007

Many in the B2B world are dismissing social media as something "kids" are doing. Or are nodding at their B2C brethren and saying it’s their problem.

Maybe today that’s sort of true. But guess what your future customers are doing. Yup — building a new habit of using social media. Do you suppose that’s going to just go away?

Social networks have changed the way that people interact with each other and with media, according to an April research report released by Fox Interactive Media. The research found that the 70% of Americans aged 15-34 who engage in social networking activity are doing so during the primetime hours. According to the research data, these social networkers aren’t just dabbling; they tend to use social networks more than they use other forms of communication and entertainment. According to the report, a majority of social networkers choose interacting on sites such as MySpace as their favorite activity online or offline ahead of television viewing.

Other findings:

40% of social networkers say they use social networking sites to learn more about brands or products, and 28% say a friend has recommended a brand or product to them.
69% of users say they use social networking sites to connect with existing friends and 41% say they use the sites to connect with family members.
More than 31% of social networkers say they spend more time online in general after starting to use a social network.

Here is the question for marketers. If the 17-34 year olds are already engaged in social media, do you suppose they’re going to unplug when they hit 35,40 or 50?

Imagine how differently we will talk to the next generation as they approach retirement. Are you already seeing this in your work? If your product or service targets the mature market — how does or will this affect you?

Source: Word of Mouth Marketing Association

Effective or stupid?

May 16, 2007

Here’s the question: Effective or stupid?

Assume, based on the casting, the audience is adults 45+. Taking into consideration the audience, the message and desired outcome — effective or stupid?

Are blogs more credible than traditional media?

May 7, 2007

David Meerman Scott says they are.

"Readers of blogs view the information shared by smart bloggers as one of the few forms of real, authentic communication there is," Scott says. "Audiences consume advertising with skepticism and consider pronouncements by CEOs to be out of touch with reality. But a good blog written by someone within a large or small company, a nonprofit, a church, or a political campaign commands attention."

Scott’s new book The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing & online media to reach your buyers directly will be released by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. in June. (Apparently short titles are passe!)

Scott goes on to say "For decades, only journalists held the power to make or break a story. But today the Web is like a huge online city teaming with individuals and organizations of all kinds. Corporate blogs written by employees are the sounds of independent voices just like the sports fan on the barstool or that friend of yours who knows everything about stereo equipment. Corporate blogs and business bloggers are now important and valuable alternative sources of information, not unlike your next-door neighbor or the helpful salesperson at your favorite shop."

Most of us know Scott from his blog Web Ink Now.

What do you think? Is this a chicken little yelling that the sky is falling (traditional advertising is dead?) or is Scott right on the money? How do you reconcile Scott’s premise with my recent post: Name a new product from 2006?

Name a new product from 2006

May 6, 2007

Advertising spending rose from $271 billion in ’05 to $285 billion last year. And yet, according to a survey conducted annually, 81% of consumers could not name one of the Top 50 new product launched in 2006.

Could you? (And saying Dr. Pepper Berries & Cream is cheating!)

The number of new products released in 2006 was 32,624. Surely we could remember just one. This 81% lack of recognition is an all-time high.

Here are the numbers:

2006 81%
2005 57%
2004 56%
2003 50%
2002 33%

The survey noted that most of the products were launched via traditional media. So not only is 2006 an all-time high. It is an all-time high in a big, bad way.

Why?

Do you think TiVo had anything to do with it?
Do you suppose the fact that most cable and satellite companies now supply DVRs had something to do with it?
Do you think the fact that magazine circulation is down has anything to do with it?
Do you think Sirius or XM Radio have anything to do with this?
Do you suppose 15 million active blogs influenced this number?

If you had a brand new product and a reasonable budget, how would you launch it today?

Don Imus: The dark side of citizen marketing?

April 13, 2007

Let me cut to the chase.

I have never listened to Don Imus. I could care less what he says. I could care less if he got to keep his job or not. Do I think he’s a boorish pig, based on what he said about the Rutgers basketball team? Sure. But he certainly does not hold exclusive rights to that label.

To me, all of that is irrelevant.

Because the issue isn’t Don Imus. It isn’t racism. Or political correctness. Or respecting women. If it were about those issues, most of the shock jocks and reality TV producers would also have lost their jobs yesterday.

Imus isn’t the worst of them…he’s just one of them.

What matters in the Imus firing is who fired the fatal shot. And why.

We’re experiencing the birth of a new era – Citizen Marketing. We’ve all celebrated it. But perhaps that is only half the story.

In the old days, the power rested in the hands of a few. The zookeepers, or the sellers, ran the zoo. They decided what the animals ate, which animals were in the petting zoo and what the hours of operation were. It was at best, a very paternal relationship. At worst, it was a one-sided dictatorship.

But today, the chimpanzees have the keys. And in this early phase of this marketplace shift, where the buyers are actually the ones in power, it’s more than a little chaotic. There are no rules. Bananas on tap 24 hours a day!

On the good side – the chimpanzees’ exuberance can be very contagious and they can encourage/force the zookeepers to be better at their job, just to keep up with them.

But because there are no rules, the chimpanzees can also just as easily decide to pick on a particular zookeeper and fling feces at him. And because there are so many of them and because human nature says, "join the crowd," once a few of the chimpanzees start tossing poop, many of the other chimpanzees join in. Without really stopping to understand why. Mob mentality flashes hot and bright. And reason rarely has a starring role. That doesn’t mean the mob is always wrong. But it does suggest that the firestorm doesn’t allow for a lot of introspection or consideration.

Let’s face it. Don Imus earned ratings and advertisers because he was a boorish pig. And the chimpanzees (in this case…advertisers and the target audiences of those advertisers) rewarded him by buying more advertising, giving him a more prestigious time slot, more guest appearances, more fame, etc. etc.

I am also quite sure that the Rutgers comment was not Don’s first racist or sexist comment. I’m even willing to bet that some things he has said in the past were even more hurtful and offensive to some. But the chimpanzees screeched and hooted, loving his antics.

Until one day, a few chimpanzees didn’t like what he said. Who knows why. He was shooting off his mouth saying vulgar things, like they had trained him to do. But for whatever reason, this particular statement got everyone’s attention. And the chimpanzees started making a different kind of noise. And throwing feces. Pretty soon, they were making enough noise that others noticed. And joined in. And pretty soon, the only way to calm the chimpanzees was to get the zookeeper out of there.

And its not just Imus.

A story about an American Girl store and a 6 year-old’s Target doll garners over 409,000 Google results in less than a month.

A story about a blogger who received death threats now has an excess of 553,000 Google results, A CNN appearance, and professional and personal lives altered forever.

Mob mentality. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Who knows?

Who will the chimpanzees go after next? A good guy? A bad guy? Your favorite brand? Your company?

Should Don Imus have been fired? I have no idea. The truth is, he’ll have another gig in less than a month and we’ll chalk this up to, "well, that’s Imus." And he’ll still be a boorish pig.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that we need to understand that just like there was a good and a bad side to the zookeepers being in charge, there’s a dark side to citizen-driven marketing as well. It’s a glorious day at the zoo until the chimpanzees start tossing the feces in your direction.

We are the citizens of citizen marketing. We’re going to set the course.

Unless of course, we get swept up into the mob.

Flickr photo courtesy of jj_mac

Bloggers sharing for profit — the next wave?

April 6, 2007

After only two months of blogging, one of the best things I’ve noticed is how sharing and supportive most bloggers are. They’re eager to help others get noticed and read through tipping, links and kind references. There seems to be very little ego in the marketing blogosphere.

So it doesn’t surprise me that Drew, on getting his 1,000th comment at Drew’s Marketing Minute, would invite the author of that comment to write a guest post. What a wonderful and generous way to mark a milestone. And how fortunate for me that the 1,000th comment happened to be mine.

Drew’s invitation is typical of the sharing mindset that is pervasive throughout the marketing blogosphere. I think it’s a major reason so many of us become active bloggers.

But what do you do when someone asks you to share information when it’s for their commercial gain?

As blogs are becoming recognized by marketers as an important form of social media that can influence and motivate, public relations and advertising agencies are starting to pitch bloggers, in hopes of gaining write-ups about their clients’ products and services. Since blogs are such personal forms of mass communications, marketers realize they can be powerful persuaders.

In the past several days, I received my first two pitches from PR people. Each represents a different end of the spectrum of professionalism.

My first pitch came from Harley Jebens at Click Here, a Dallas interactive marketing agency where our blogging friend Cam Beck works. Harley’s email to me was simple, straightforward and professional – he identified himself and his agency and said he was attaching information on a campaign my readers might find of interest. No hype – no obnoxious push. A news release and website were attached, if I wanted more info, along with a promise to answer any questions if I gave him a call or email.

Although I have no interest in talking about The MySpace page for the Travelocity Roaming Gnome it was a professional pitch and my compliments to Harley for a good try.

The second pitch came from a book publisher’s PR department. It was an email full of hyperbole about a book unrelated to anything I write about. In the email, the publicist tells me (not asks) that it’s something my readers will want to know about. How could she know that if, obviously, she hadn’t done her homework by looking at my blog. It wasn’t even addressed to me by name; it said Dear Blogger. The pitch told me where to buy the book. (You want me to write about your product and you won’t send or offer to send me a review copy? Thanks a lot.)

In the 30 years I’ve been doing public relations at agencies large and small, including my own firm for the past 15, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. The second pitch method does not work. It wouldn’t work if I were pitching a writer at a newspaper or magazine, and it won’t work to get into a blog.

I approached several bloggers on a client’s behalf for the first time back in January. After researching to find blogs on parenting, I viewed as many as I could, to get an idea of what they write about. I emailed the authors, with an approach similar to what Harley did when he pitched me – honest, transparent, not pushy.

The response was encouraging. Most responded by asking questions and/or asking to talk with my client before they told their readers about the product. Some took me up on my offer to send a product sample. One blogger asked me to have my client post a comment on her blog, talking about the product. A few didn’t respond and probably chose not to talk about the item. Overall, the client got some positive reviews and spirited discussion of the product’s merits in comments.

Key is that the approach was done gently and professionally, with full disclosure and no deception or trickery. No attempt to sneak onto a blog by posting a "sell" as a comment, as I saw tried just this week on two blogs. (One of the bloggers was annoyed and quickly deleted the comment. Lucky for the offending PR person that he didn’t choose instead to blast the product being pitched.)

You may have already been pitched by a PR person. If not, I bet you will in the coming year as the PR profession discovers the blogosphere. How bloggers are treated by marketers and their public relations representatives seeking to use their channels of communication will make a difference, since, ultimately, the decision will be yours as to what you care to share with your readers.

How would you prefer to be pitched?

~ David Reich, My 2 Cents

Eye tracking study yields surprising results for bloggers

April 4, 2007

The Poynter Institute wanted to take a scientific look at how people read news and if there was a difference when the news was presented in an online, tabloid or broadsheet format.

It’s the largest study they’ve ever done and is the first time they’ve compared both print and online media.

The Institute just released the results of their EyeTrack07 study.

Here are some findings that will not be a surprise:

People are drawn to alternative story forms like Q&A’s, timelines, sidebars and lists
Photos get a lot of attention in print
Real photos got more attention than staged or studio photographs

Here’s the surprise:

The largest percentage of story text read was in the online format.

77% online
62% in broadsheet
57% in tabloid

And…nearly two-thirds of online readers, once they selected an item to read, read ALL of the text.

Interestingly, the study was partially funded by mainstream print newspapers. You can download a teaser of the research results. They’ll also be selling the full results in mid-April.

Microsoft takes on Apple’s iPhone with ZenZui

March 27, 2007

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image by via CrunchBase

Maybe this is why Apple and Steve Jobs announced the iPhone when they did….

Yesterday, Microsoft Corp. announced the launch of ZenZui, an independent company with the mission of transforming the way people engage, consume and interact with Web content through a revolutionary mobile user experience and information ecosystem.

With ZenZui, your phone screen is a portal into your own customized Zoomspace, an information landscape of personalized, cached content that we call Tiles because they reflect your lifestyle. Using a single thumb, you fly in and out of your Zoomspace — two simple taps gets you directly to any Tile.

Read the official press release over at Virtual Generations.

:60 ticks marketing tip: Left is perfectly right

February 18, 2007

Grab it fast…it’s gone in about a minute. A :60 ticks marketing tip is 150 words or less…so read it in a minute and implement it in the next!

There is a myth that goes like this…print ads located on the left hand page or in the back of a magazine or newspaper will get substantially lower readership.

Like most myths, there’s not much truth to it. A recent study shows that there is less than a 2.1% difference in average reader interest for left versus right pages. As for front versus back of the book, the difference is only 3.2%.

Not surprising, the #1 factor in influencing readership is creativity. How interesting and useful is the ad? In the end, it’s about what you have to say and how you say it.

So, next time you are placing an ad, worry less about where you put it and more about what you put into it.

That’s it…go put it into action!

Niche publications going wiki!

February 12, 2007

Meredith Corporation, publisher of magazines as mainstream as Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes & Garden, Parents and Family Circle also has an entire division of special interest or niche magazines aimed at very segmented audiences.

These titles include Diabetic Living, Decorating, Kitchen & Bath Ideas and over 200 additional magazines aimed at women particularly honing in on homebuilding, remodeling, decorating, gardening, crafts and cooking.

They access and influence over 75 million women with their titles. That’s a lot of power and because of the narrow focus of each title — a lot of passion.

Meredith announced today that it has signed a contract with Wetpaint to create a series of Wikis for its company’s most popular special interest magazines and Web sites.

The first Wiki to launch will be Scrapbooks etc.

So what do you think? How will this influence circulation? Advertising dollars?

Do you think this strategy would work as well in a more mainstream magazine like Time or People?

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