The Best Marketing Video Ever Made

The "Microsoft Designs the iPod" video is still the best marketing video ever made.

Why?

Because it reflects, in a clear and visceral way, the impetus behind what I'd estimate to be around 90% of the unnecessary input into any marketing project.

It's the inability to push back on that input, what my friend Don Miller calls "being pecked to death by chickens" that ultimately dooms so many projects.

The impetus of the fictional Microsoft team-- and that of so many clients I've encountered-- is to create something bulletproof, something that answers each and every critic they've encountered along the way. That includes internal critics (e.g. the ones in their own heads) as well as external ones, critics with valid opinions and those who are just looking for something to say.

While the impulse may be valid, the result is not: each attempt to further explain and clarify just winds up muddying things even further so that the perspective consumer gives up rather than digs in.

I'm always tempted to show that video to the combined team at the start of any marketing-based project. It's a strong reminder of the dangers of ignoring the old dictum: when you try to please everybody, you wind up pleasing nobody.

I Guess This Means We're For Real

Announcing the Hive Awards

The Hive Awards are now live!

The Hive Awards started as a pipe dream, about a year ago, when I was looking at web award shows and realized that none of them rewarded things like user experience, content strategy or even coding. At least not on any significant level. What’s more, the awards that were being given out seemed to go to big, high profile sites in glamor industries. Which is not to say that those sites weren’t deserving, just that they didn’t seem to reward all the people working in the trenches, what I called the unsung heroes of the internet.

And so an idea was born.

When I pitched the idea to International Awards Group, they immediately understood the value of such a show and agreed to work with me to develop it. Together, we came up with the name Hive Awards as a paean to the “hive mentality” inherent in building a web site or application. There are many people with many different roles, all of whom must work together and build off what the others have created. It is only by cooperating and working together that they’re able to create the final product. Our show recognizes that dynamic and seeks to reward each function within the hive.

We’ve also divided up the different job functions by industry category. Because we realized that the content strategy for an entertainment site is always going to be a whole lot sexier than the content strategy for an insurance industry site. By allowing each industry category to be judged separately, we’re leveling the playing field and giving everyone who's done something unique and special a chance to be recognized.

Finally, we see the Hive Awards as a chance to help set standards in the industry and to give newcomers something to strive for. The interwebs are still so new and evolve so quickly that having something to point to and say “this is what good work looks like” should prove very useful.

Since this is our first year (and in keeping in line with the notion of “hive mentality”) we’re looking to our audience to give us feedback and suggestions. (If I was the type of guy who liked using buzzwords, I'd call it "crowdsourcing.") So if there’s something that doesn’t make sense or you feel could be made better, please let me know, either here or on the Hive Awards site.

Discount Deadline ends December 31st, which is sooner than you realize, so start working on those entries.

Welcome aboard.

Life In The Bubble

Over the past year, I'd say well over 150 of my friends and relatives joined Facebook, none of whom work in any sort of media or technology related function.

• Maybe 5% of them post regular status updates
• Maybe 5% of them post pictures beyond the half dozen or so they put up when they joined
• Maybe 2 or 3 of them regularly share outside articles on any topic.
• Maybe 5 of them have actually shared an outside article, period.
• Maybe a dozen of them have used Facebook at some point to promote their own business or a charitable endeavor they've been a part of.
• Maybe 2 or 3 of them do that sort of promotion with any regularity
• Maybe 15% of them have even bothered to "like" someone else's update or article or even their Bejeweled Blitz score.
• Maybe 50% have ever commented on someone else's picture.
• Of that 50%, maybe a dozen of them comment on pictures with any sort of regularity.

I've also had about two dozen of these same friends and relatives join Twitter over the same time period.

None of them stuck with it.

Literally, none of them.

While I'd never be so egotistical as to claim my own personal experience is universal, I do suspect it's not particularly unique: there will always be more audience members than actors.

Just something to think about as we're chasing after all the bright shiny objects.

PS: If you have a minute or two to leave a comment, I'd be very curious to hear what other people's experiences have been with their non-media/tech family and friends.

Enough With The Guilt, Facebook

"Your mother is just sitting there. Alone. In the dark. But that's okay, you're busy. You go right ahead and play Bejeweled Blitz. I'm sure she won't mind."

Facebook has introduced a lot of boneheaded features over the years, but one that seems particularly insidious is the new configuration of the "Suggestions" feature, which "suggests," you get back in touch with people whose wall you haven't written on in a while or whose profiles are only half filled out.

You see, if my "social graph" is any indication, one of the most common Facebook Suggestions is the account holder's mother, followed closely by great-aunts, long-lost cousins and other non tech savvy relatives.

It's a move that would make a room full of old school Jewish mothers proud, but one that's making logging onto Facebook an unwelcome guilt trip for many of my friends.

Only good news is that Facebook's been pretty good (not great, but pretty good) about adjusting features the audience finds unappealing.

And this is certainly one of them.

Towards A Two-Tier System of Media Consumption

One of the trends I’ve been keeping my eye on is the speed at which we seem to be headed towards a two-tier system of media consumption, with commercial free content available for those willing (and able) to pay for it, and ad-supported content for those who are not.

It’s a trend that’s mirrored in other industries, from health care (many doctors in affluent areas no longer take insurance: they have enough patients who are willing to pay out of pocket and take whatever “out of network” reimbursement they can get in return for what they regard as a superior, more patient-centric experience) to the airline industry, where the difference between first class and steerage seemingly grows more pronounced with each passing month.

Media is ripe for this sort of bifurcation as there is a large pool of people who’ll gladly pay to avoid commercials of any sort. For as much as we protest that people “read what interests them” and “find value in well-targeted messaging,” the truth is that commercials are inherently interruptive and that if one is truly engaged in whatever content one is consuming (e.g. if you’re really enjoying that episode of Mad Men) they’re about as welcome as the Spanish Inquisition.

No matter how well-targeted or interesting.

As I noted the other week, once we’ve sipped from the commercial-and-preview-free fountain of iTunes, it’s hard to go back to watching anything else. And while the $2.99 it now costs to buy an HD iTunes episode is pretty cheap, I suspect the networks could get away with charging several times that amount and still find takers who’ll pay a premium for the enhanced experience. (Not to mention the bragging rights.) Apple is allegedly already looking for takers for an iTunes monthly subscription service and Hulu, Google (YouTube) and even Netflix are all allegedly looking at similar models.

Given that scenario and the continued reliance upon the ad-supported model for “free”-- it’s easy to see a two-tiered system evolving for many of the more popular platforms.

It’s not much of a stretch to see either Twitter or Facebook introducing ad-free subscription models (e.g. pay $10/month and you’ll get no ads and some enhanced features while free users will start seeing more and more prominently placed ads.)

That system is already in place for mobile apps, many of which come in two flavors: a free version with ads and a paid version that’s ad-free and comes with a few more bells and whistles.

The two-tier system is not necessarily a bad thing though, except, perhaps, to those trying to market Range Rovers and Rolexes. It allows people to place a value on content according to how important it is to them: I may consent to watch commercials during a show I’m not all that interested in (which would probably increase the likelihood that I’d pay attention to the commercials) but pay to be able to watch a show I do like with no interruptions.

I’d say it’s inherently classist, but the low cost of entry makes it an affordably luxury for most people. If not all the time, then certainly on enough occasions as to make the scenario seem equitable.

As such, I can see the two tier system spreading beyond what we now think of as ad-supported media: cell phone service could be made to work this way: pay a greatly reduced price (or nothing at all) to have ads continuously streaming across your screen or pay more to avoid them. Popular media blogger Ben Kunz has even suggested an advertising model for books that I can see working both for library books and/or for books the reader views as disposable.

The trick here-- across the board-- is going to be striking a balance between what the market will bear and what the provider needs to earn. That’s an equation that’s going to have to be figured out on the fly and there are sure to be some casualties along the way. The end result though will be a system that ultimately gives the consumer more control and makes advertising of all sorts less onerous.

The Stubborn Mule-Like Tendencies of Reactionary Thinking

Three random events transpired recently. Each fairly innocuous, in and of itself, but together they served to remind me how much the world hasn’t changed once you leave our particular neck of the woods. (Or the internet, as the case may be.)

The first epiphany happened during a session with a client, when I was trying to explain why flash sites had fallen out of favor. I decided to use that old standby LeoBurnett.com as an example of the sort of flashturbation and “ha-ha you can’t figure out what to do next” interface that was once held out as the gold standard. And in that ten-second interval before the page loaded, I found myself thinking that surely they must have updated the site, that someone would have realized how out of touch it made them look.

But then the screen filled up and there it was, in all its spinning, black penciled glory. When you moved the mouse, the pencil drew little lines and it was 2004 all over again.

In our world we know that this is just bad UX, that agency sites like those maintained by Big Spaceship, Barbarian Group, Mullen, even Boone Oakley are showcases for what’s good and true and right.

But not all agencies-- or their clients have caught up to that. And there are still CMOs and agency search consultants who are dazzled by the “creativity” of flashturbation and dismissive of the “boring, overly dense” sites we hold so dear.

Another day, another scene.

I’m scrolling down some random web page using a giant ergonomically correct mouse I’ve recently inherited and I accidentally click on a banner for some product I have no interest in. This happens a couple of times a week, regardless of what mouse I'm using. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I intentionally clicked on a banner and I rarely stay on the accidental clicks long enough for the landing page to actually load. And it dawns on me that my behavior (and clumsiness) is probably more common than not.

Yet we’re still judging banners by click-through rates. Or using the negative click-through rate as proof that banners don’t work. We know that click-through shouldn’t matter, that banners pretty much serve to drive awareness and that no matter how much they move and dance and jiggle, no one's going to click on them because they’re too busy doing whatever it was they originally went online to do.

But we are not the ones controlling ad budgets. And the people who are controlling ad budgets still view click-through rates as the Holy Grail and they judge both their agencies and the state of digital advertising on their vicissitudes.

Final event: In our world we understand why the whole “Good Enough” economy makes sense. Wired’s even done a whole article on it. We get why experimenting and getting things out first and changing them on the fly is important, and, more importantly, why it’s what consumers are coming to expect.

But try explaining that to someone who doesn’t get it, as I recently was called on to do. No matter how you word it, it sounds like you’re just making excuses for shoddy work. For something you should have just stayed up later and done better.

And so releases are delayed, products and apps and sites are polished and repolished and clients sneeringly turn away from companies that use terms like “embracing failure” and “fixing things on the fly.”

A few things to take away from this meditation:

1. Change happens quickly at first, then slowly. Once you get past the early adopters, getting the rest of the world on board takes a while. Most people don’t like change, will resist it and will often become hostile in the face of a growing tide of apostasy.
2. We can’t expect everyone else to get it. And we can’t treat them like idiots because they don’t. Patience and reasoned explanation goes a lot farther than anger and hostility. No matter how dismissive you want to be when a client sneers “you’re just going to let people write whatever they want about us on this blog?”
3. We will eventually triumph. Progress almost always does. Rarely as quickly as we’d like, perhaps, but it does eventually triumph. And these truths that we hold to be self-evident, will, in time, become self-evident to everyone else.

Real Time Goes Prime Time

So it seems like both Bing and Google are in the process of cutting deals with Facebook and Twitter to use their databases for real time search.

The result would seem to be a boon for Twitter and a potential land mine for Facebook.

Most people tweet with the understanding that their tweets are public, searchable (on both search engines and on search.twitter.com) and function as a broadcast medium. As such, Twitter results on many topics will be both relevant and interesting. Particularly in regards to breaking news stories.

But Facebook? With the influx of the over-30 crowd, Facebook’s become a very different animal, far more about conversations between friends than a broadcast medium. As proof, I’d offer the number of people who’ve stopped having Twitter update their Facebook status over the past year.

Updating your Facebook status more than once or twice a day is considered bad form in most circles and with the Facebook “hide” feature, it’s easy enough to ding violators without hurting their feelings.

And so Facebook’s become the place where we talk about the larger things we’re doing in life (going on a vacation, spending the weekend shopping for a wedding gown) along with the occasional Dilbertesque quip and Bejewled Blitz score. And if we are sharing links on Facebook, it’s far more likely to be a funny video than a Mashable story about a newly launched iPhone app or a picture of Balloon Boy: Facebook seems to lack that sense of immediacy that Twitter has.

That’s why I’ll be very curious to see what the Facebook real-time results wind up looking like. First off, because they’ll most likely be opt in (or opt out, in the who-cares-what-users-think-let-them-go-to-MySpace-if-they-don’t-like-it way of thinking Facebook often exhibits.) So the results will only be from people who have a certain exhibitionist streak, the sort of people who don’t currently keep their Facebook pages hidden from the eyes of non-friends.

Because the biggest issue for Facebook is going to be that a major part of the sales pitch to the later adopters was the walled garden aspect, the notion that no one except a select group of friends was ever going to be able to see their Facebook page. And if status updates start turning up in search results, you’re going to have a whole lot of freaked out Facebookers. No matter how many times you explain it's other people's Facebook pages, not theirs.

Contrast that to Team Twitter, whose users are more likely to be absolutely thrilled to see their names turn up at the top of a Bing results page and to start trading tips on how to get them there.

We'll learn how this all plays out soon enough, as Google and Bing announce their Real Time Search strategies. In the interim, it's well worth keeping an eye on Twitter and Facebook at they prepare their users.

Or not.