Porn, Kittens & Your Remote

Mike Arauz had a cute post up last week, reminding people that their online work needed to pass the "I'd rather be watching porn" test. (Or, for the less pruriently-oriented, the "I'd rather be looking at pictures of kittens" test. (In other words, remember, there's a lot of stuff people would rather be doing online than looking at your brand-sponsored content-- ads included.) It's a basic message, but given how frequently it's ignored, it's well worth repeating.

To that end, I'd like to introduce the corrollary: if you've created a TV commercial, all it needs to do is pass the "I really need to find the remote" test: if it's not awful enough to make the viewer go scrambling for the remote so s/he can change the channel or fast-forward, well, then you've got yourself an impression.

Bottom line is that despite popular perception in certain quarters, it's much tougher to make a splash online. Your competiton's much stiffer.

Boardroom Broadway

I’m convinced that one of the reasons we wind up with so many overly clever and completely useless websites is that the wrong people are often assigned to handle the projects.

As James Hipkin sagely noted in a comment here the other day, one key factor is what he calls “Boardroom Boredom” – the fact that what entertains attendees in an otherwise dry meeting to discuss media expenditure is rarely the sort of thing consumers are looking for in a website.

Now part of this comes from the agency wanting to put on a fun show. But if you're running a brand, ask yourself how much of if comes from the make-up of your marketing department: are you heavily invested in ex-agency people, whose experience has been in launching TV commercials, print ads and flash banners as opposed to websites? (And remember, it’s not the same thing: the ad’s job is to get you to consider making a purchase. The website is for when you’ve already decided you’re interested and want to find out more or actually buy the thing.)

Utility doesn’t have to equal dull and boring. But it does have to, you know, provide utility. Not bury it inside a cutesy video that made everyone laugh during the meeting.

Sloth

People don’t live a purely online or offline life, though far too many marketers and ad agencies act as if they do. Online initiatives rarely (if ever) receive offline promotion beyond a throwaway url hidden at the bottom of a print ad where the 800# used to be, despite the fact that people who read newspapers and watch television also use the internet.

The primary reason I hear bandied about for this lapse, from people who readily admit it makes no sense, is that it’s just too difficult to coordinate budgets between the various divisions. It seems the digital budget is separate from the offline budget and don’t even get them started on social media because that’s a whole different group of decision makers and getting everyone on the same page is just about impossible.

It’s a pretty compelling argument. If your end goal is to eventually go out of business.

Otherwise, I can’t imagine it’s all that difficult. Companies that continue to place marketing and related activities like customer service and design way down on their list of priorities are going to pay for it sooner than later as the Service Era makes them seem even more out of touch.

Not to mention extremely lazy.

Real Time NBA Playoff Scores Are Back

In one of those quirks of Googledom, if you enter the phrase "real time NBA Playoff Scores" (sans quote marks) into Google, you get this:



It's all because of a post I did last year. I've been getting a couple of dozen hits a day from people looking for them, so who am I to dissapoint: they're back, about halfway down the right hand sidebar.

I Like Search

While search, search consultants, the end of serendipity and the putative value of paid posts have been the topic of much discussion as of late, I'd like to put in a word in defense of search optimization from a consumer POV.

Because if nothing else, search optimization makes my life a whole lot easier than it was even 5 years ago.

It's the little things, like being able to put in the name of a local ice cream parlor and getting a map and all 6 locations as the first result. Or searching for a very specific technical question and finding the answer I was looking for more or less immediately. All that happens because more and more companies are optimizing their sites for search.

Point here being that while search is a great tool for marketers, the true benefit is to the consumer.

Randomness

Funny to see the spate of stories as of late by tech guys writing about media and media guys writing about tech. Neither side seems to have the slightest inkling about the other, but this does not stop the bloviating and floating of ridiculous-but-buzzworthy suggestions. Clear violations of the old "know what you don't know" theory all around, but that seems to have gone out the window as of late.

How long before "Mexican Swine Flu Is Coming" replaces "The Economy Is Collapsing Faster Than You Realize" as the media meme du jour? (If it hasn't already by the time you read this)

What's the next Twitter? Place you bets now, because writing a post claiming "X is the new Twitter" is poised to become the blogger meme du jour. (UPDATE: And just 36 hours later, the race is on: this post from Steve Rubel and his complementary column in Ad Age start it off.)

If I could invest in TV show, "Penguins of Madagascar" a Nickelodeon show based on the animated movies would be a clear bet. The show's a latter day "Bugs Bunny" with lots of adult jokes in it, and every child (and adult with a child) I know seems to be buzzing about it.

Front page New York Times story on how Wall Street bonuses/salaries are back to last year's stratospheric levels may either be a blip or a harbinger of increased populist outrage. Depends on how Mexican Swine Flu tracks over the next week or so.

And speaking of the New York Times: check out this great prototype reader that helps bring serendipity (e.g. finding something you weren't looking for) back into the user experience equation.

Enjoy the weekend.

101

Wow. The post I did about "The Trolls of Madison Avenue" generated 101 comments over at AgencySpy. That's a pretty incredible number. Clearly hit a nerve with it, let's hope it results in some better/kinder online behavior.

One of the most fascinating things to see was the difference in tone between those posting anonymously (or via pseudonym) and those posting under their own names. (Would love to do a more detailed analysis of that.) Though by and large the commentary was all pretty tame and above board, with much intelligent input.

The Future of Twitter?

About two years ago, David Armano wrote this post about how celebrities might change Twitter and what that business model could look like. With the onslaught of Oprah, Ashton and their followers, I'd be surprised if this is not the exact model that emerges.

Great call on his part.

Armano graphic above, entire post here.

Different Audiences, Different Perspectives

The print edition of Creativity (Ad Age's sister publication, aimed at the creative end of the ad business, both traditional and digital) has a section called "Creative Briefing" that deals with breaking trends. (I can't find it online, otherwise I'd link to it.)

One of the trends they spot this month is Twitter, citing the increased use by members of Congress (McCain twitters.) "You might say the last month or so has been a big coming out party for Twitter" the story opens

But ask someone involved in digital media when Twitter had its big coming out party and they'll likely tell you that it was at SXSW in 2008.

Different audiences, different perspectives.

Search vs Serendipity: Some Proof

Nick Kristof has a great column in the Times today called "The Daily Me" that lays out much of the research showing how new media options allow people to only see news they agree with. He doesn't offer a solution but lays out the problem in nice detail as some of the commenters here seemed skeptical of the proposition.

Transmedia Critter

Leo Burnett was something of a revolutionary in his day for the way he introduced his “critters” –animated characters who became the personification of certain cereal brands. (e.g. Tony the Tiger for Frosted Flakes.) It was breakthrough for its day because until then most products were sold on their attributes alone: creating a character to represent the brand was something completely different.

I’ve been thinking about how that would likely play out today: Tony wouldn’t just be a commercial spokesman. He’d have his own cartoon show, either online or on a cash-starved network that didn’t mind the blurring of the lines between editorial and advertising. Also available on DVD. There would be toys galore. T-shirts, sheets, Halloween costumes, board games, online games, theme songs… the whole shebang that propels something like Dora the Explorer into a multi-zillion dollar business. All carefully orchestrated and rolled out at once, unlike the original version where toys and tchotchkes were part of random promotional efforts.

Like it or not, he’d be a transmedia critter.

Waiting on Facebook

So Facebook announced a whole bunch of changes which my friend Ian Schafer neatly sums up on his blog. Foremost among them is the ability of brands to have actual pages that you can friend them on (and vice versa).

Which would, of course, seem to violate the cardinal principle of "Your Brand Is Not My Friend."

My initial thinking is that most of the Prom King Brands will have success with this. (A "Prom King Brand" if you recall, is any brand to whom a large number of people impute a certain degree of coolness; that coolness factor is all the "candy" they need to listen to the brand in the social media space. Prom King Brands include the usual suspects: Apple, Nike, Starbucks, plus sports teams and entertainment properties (rock bands, movies, TV shows, resorts.) The litmus test of a Prom King Brand is whether someone would unironically wear the logo on a cap or t-shirt. If yes, then you've got a Prom King Brand.)

I mean heck, I'm already friends with the NBA. But your average brand is likely going to struggle with this. But I'll wait till the redesign actually launches to give my long-winded take on how to play this.

Shiny Happy Tweeple

(Okay, I hate the word "Tweeple" but it worked in the headline.) Because you see, I've noticed that people on Twitter seem far less concerned about the economy, far more optimistic about the future, than people anywhere else I look online. While most every blog, newspaper site, message board and the like is filled with "the sky is falling" rhetoric, Twitter is all about accentuating (and retweeting) the positive.

And while I'm not sure whether that's due to etiquette, ignorance, denial, prescience or some combination thereof, it sure as heck is comforting.

Which I why I think I've been spending a whole lot more time on Twitter lately.

It beats drinking.

Culture of Excess

The New York Times delights in retelling anecdotal stories of corporate greed, but this one, buried inside a Dining section article on who should pick up the check, struck me as particularly telling:

One wealthy woman, the wife of a securities company executive, said he and his work friends used to play a game at dinner they called “credit card lottery” to decide who would pick up the check.

Each man, she explained, would take a credit card out of his wallet and toss it onto the table. Then someone — usually their server — would be asked to pick a card and bellow the owner’s name so everyone in the restaurant could hear. The “winner” would pay the bill, which often tallied $1,000 or more.

“It was disgustingly awful,” she said. “The waitress hated it. The wives were uncomfortable. It was a guy’s betting kind of thing, you know, ‘I’m a macho master of the universe.’ Thank God, no one is saying let’s play that game anymore.”

Now I live in a town with many Wall Streeters and have never witnessed anything remotely close to this, but it's less about how common it is than how outrageous. There's a lot of anger at bankers and brokers and corporate executives that's starting to flow over into all things corporate and official, including brands. It's something marketers need to be acutely aware of over the next year or so, when missteps will be amplified and potentially lethal.

In other words, here's one more reason to make your marketing plan customer-centric.

In The Interim...

Apologies for the lack of posts this week: the entire Wolk clan was laid sick (nothing serious, just a flu-like thing that's going around my kids schools) and as last man standing I was doing double duty.

Everyone is finally on the mend and things should be back to normal by Monday, but in the interim I'd recommend you read this post by my friend Brian Morrissey about the 200 comment article in Adweek about DDB and BBDO.

Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed To Repeat It

Dave Trott is a UK ad legend whose influence extends way beyond the London ad scene.

His blog, simply called Dave Trott's Blog is a real inspiration in that he shares all he's learned over the past decades and it's all still incredibly relevant and important to the challenges we face today.

Anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that I am skeptical of "experts," "thought leaders" and the like.

But Trott is the real deal. So much basic knowledge of how marketing should work is lost on those working in digital media and (particularly) social media because of their insistence that all the old rules should go out the window. Oh, and because some of them never actually worked in marketing, advertising, PR or corporate communications.

But I digress.

Read Trott's blog. You will learn so much more from it than from any self-evident list of "Ten Great Ways To Improve Your Tweeting."

Really.

Tipping Point

Now that a goodly percentage of my Facebook friends are people who don't work in advertising, marketing or anything remotely related, I've stopped having Twitter automatically update my Facebook status.

The result is my Facebook status updates are mostly about broader life events while my Twitter updates are primarily work related.

It's a bit more work, but I find that my friends and family members are now actually reading my Facebook updates (and commenting on them) rather than dismissing them as "more of Alan's work-related geekery." And since I finally figured out how to link Facebook to Delicious, I can share articles I like without overwhelming people, since Facebook posts them as a list. (A trick I learned from Noah Brier, who I often joke serves as my personal online librarian.)

Not sure if this is a harbinger of things to come or my own personal tic, but curious to hear how others are bridging the gap.

I Had No Idea

Yesterday I wrote a post asking why Facebook hadn't launched its own Twitter-like service for the Status Update, given how many people already use Twitter to update Facebook.

I had no idea that Facebook was planning on answering that question today via their link-up with the CNN.com coverage of the inauguration.

The CNN feed wasn't perfect-- it dropped out a lot-- but the Facebook integration worked really nicely and allowed for real time conversation of the sort that went on via Twitter during the debates. (David Burn of AdPulp articulates some of the reasons here.)

But what was probably the most crucial thing here is that many social media newcomers got to see what a shared experience felt like. Regardless of platform. And while clearly the inauguration was far more significant, in our little corner of the world, this felt pretty significant too.

Time For iYahoo?

So I had really come to rely on the iPhone optimized iGoogle home page.

I had it set up so that every morning I could read the New York Times headlines, the local weather and my Google calendar (with appointments) all from the same page.

It was a great solution and the page looked really nice. But this weekend, Google pulled the plug on the iPhone optimized page, redirecting it to the cheesy looking mobile page. Where Google calendar and the Wall Street Journal feed don't work and the rest of the functionality is pretty useless.

What's worse- they didn't tell anyone- like nearly every other pissed-off user on this Google help forum page, I thought my phone was broken for a day or so. Really a bad move on Google's part.

This creates a golden opportunity for others, Yahoo in particular, to create iPhone optimized versions of their portal pages. Let's see if they grab it.

Stanza Rocks - Update

So I finished reading my first book on iPhone's Stanza app (see original post on it here) and I'm definitely pleased with the experience.

The typeface was easy to read (much easier than reading email or web pages on the iPhone,) the application automatically took me back to the last page I was at, and there was no need to keep the lamp on if I wanted to read at night (an occasional bone of contention in our house) and I didn't miss the feel of the actual book anywhere close to what I'd anticipated.

It's definitely a habit I'll keep up, especially if Stanza keeps getting more and better titles.

UPDATE: Even cooler: Someone from Stanza got in touch with me on Twitter to thank me for the post and to ask for any suggestions. Nicely played.