19 posts tagged “marketing”

There is a vast amount of research that has been conducted recently regarding the consumers' preferred method of receiving marketing communication. A recent study by Forrester Research, and commissioned by ExactTarget, highlights that the majority of consumers today still have a strong affinity towards email.

The important take out: Consumers prefer email at a rate of three-to-one when compared with any other avenue for marketing communications such as social media, Instant Messaging, phone and SMS!

Despite the abundance of research that all points towards email being the marketing method of choice for consumers, why do marketers continue to ignore this?

Despite the spike of Internet users using social media, for example three quarters of Australian online adults use social technologies (Forrester: Australian Adult Social Technographics Revealed 2008), consumers in general are NOT open to receiving marketing communication via this channel. 

As social media continues to boom with new channels for communication being created everyday with new social networking sites and the like popping up, there is an overreliance and tendency to use this medium for all-purposes in order to reach the masses.

Unfortunately we forego the very fundamental principles of Marketing 101. We need to stop, think, plan and go back to basics:

• Who are our customers?
• Where are they?
• What are their preferences for receiving marketing messages?
• What are the right messages for each customer segment? 
• What channel do we use to reach them?

A quick Google search and some top line research is enough to reveal where our customers' preferences sit. It's all very simple. Follow the basic principles of marketing and target the appropriate marketing messages to the appropriate consumers based on their preferences using the appropriate channels!

Sadly, we are missing the point! We're frustrating consumers and, ultimately, not getting the outcomes that we desire!

A big thanks to Julian for pulling together the latest blog list - Advertising Young Minds: The Top 27 blogs of people under 27.

Happy to see that I have been bumped up the ranks a few spots from number 25 to number 19 this year. Now I just need to keep up my end of the bargain and make sure that I allocate a decent amount of time to keeping my blog updated.

I promise in between renovating a house and planning a wedding to make ample time to do my blog and my fellow readers well.

Watch this space my friends!

All the best,

Lex

It was only last week that I was talking about the use of social media and viral videos in particular to promote a brand and cause.

I was specifically drawing a comparison between Tourism Queensland's fake viral video that appeared on YouTube with a woman getting a tattoo of the 'dream job' advertisement on her arm and comparing it with the video of Heidi Clarke, the woman with a jacket to return to a mysterious man that she met in the Sydney CBD.

Early last week it hadn't been confirmed whether this last video was a fake but now it has been revealed that it indeed is a spoof. It has also been revealed that this is the work of Australian strategy consultancy, Naked Communications.

This misleading viral campaign has caused major uproar in social media and has captured many negative comments. These comments are mostly around the idea of using social media to mislead consumers in order to promote a particular cause and also particularly negative comments about the agency itself.

You can read some of these comments here.

Was it a clever video? Yes. Did it get people talking? Yes. So much so that this actually caused a stir in both online and offline world. Would it have caused as much of a stir in social media if Tourism QLD hadn't recently admitted to its hoax video? I'm actually doubtful although I don't necessarily agree with these sorts of covert marketing tactics.

Naked Communications has taken a beating because of its actions. This is a mistake that anyone could have made and one that a lot are probably guilty of but yet to be found out about just yet. Although I caveat this by saying that we are likely to see a domino effect here and I'm sure there are many more dominos that will start to fall now.

We can take a lesson from this. Many savvy marketers are talking about the use of covert marketing and tactics in order to raise brand awareness and eyebrows. Many people believe that this is clever marketing and gets consumer excited. We need to be aware that this is clearly not the case. This sort of behaviour on social media is simpe not acceptable.

Perhaps we need to go right bac to social media 101 again. Do we need to retrain people on the core principles that underpin this very medium? It's all about honesty, authenticity and transparency. And you're most certainly damned if you don't!

Just look at the flack that the likes of Vespa and Sony have attracted in this past year for using covert marketing as a means to promote a cause. Vespa - slammed! Sony Fake Tourist campaign - slammed!

I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on misleading viral campaigns. Do you have any other examples you can share. What other big companies are using covert marketing as a means of promotion?

In another interesting exploration of Twitter and its uses comes this article on Film School Rejects titled "The 8 most entertaining fake Twitter users." Similar to the increasing popularity of fake blogs (think Fake Steve which has since become The Real Dan Lyons), it appears as though people are using this micro-blogging tool to maintain the popularity and notoriety of famous celebrities and TV/ movie stars even well past its expiration date (that is when TV series have discontinued and/ or movies have well and truly left the box office).

In most instances famous TV and movie characters are being perpetuated on the site, along with their nuances and catch phrases being conveyed to fans across the site. Some of the ones listed in the article include the famous Borat (Sasha Baron Cohen), Dr. Tobias Funke (Arrested Development) and Roger Sterling (new show, Mad Men).

The interesting observation to make here is how marketing/ comms. can use Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter to push out characters from new TV series and movies in order to generate buzz around them and build up a larger and truly global fan base. We have already seen this on blogs - although I think Twitter is a faster and more effective approach for this.

Andrew Maiden from Telstra made a comment at this morning's Frocomm session on CEO perspectives regarding the importance of new media. The comment was around how it is no longer about 'work life balance' but that it is about 'work life integration' these days - and I couldn't agree more.

We are noticing this shift more and more thanks to new technologies such as smartphones and the plethora of other mobile devices that provide you with the capabilities to access email, IM, social media applications such as Twitter, social networking sites and other emerging technologies that are making it easier than ever to connect with work and friends from pretty much any environment.

Ultra-portable, ultra-light notebooks such as the Toshiba Portégé R500 or MacBook Air are also making it easier to take your work with you. The exciting thing here is that technology is actually keeping up with the changes of today's lifestyle. The iPhone and other MIDs are perfect examples of this.

I could spend time going into the debate about whether or not these devices and technologies are infringing on our personal lives and making it impossible to balance work and life but I’m not going to. Reason being – I don’t think this is a relevant debate anymore, at least not entirely.  Thanks Andrew for point this out.

I’m not sure that people are still seeking work life balance these days. It’s idealistic and rather utopian if you ask me. By the way, feel free to slam me here if you completely disagree but I am more inclined to believe that today’s workers are happy to tip the scales one way or another from time to time. Let me put this point to life using me as an example:

I wake up early in the morning and check my email when I’m still in my pyjamas or house clothes (call it what you will). I then drive into work, get a coffee, read the Fin Review, the technology headlines and log on to my PC at the same time. I tend to emails mostly, action the important ones, talk to my teams regarding priorities, and then I review and respond to emails some more. It’s then on to client meetings, conference calls, internal and/or external WIP meetings and that will quite safely take me to the end of the day when I head home. Sometimes I go home and log on to email after dinner to do a quick check to see the emails that have hit my inbox from the APAC countries that I work with – but sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and tend to emails before heading to work. Once at work I check my emails and do more of the stuff I talk about above. I then have lunch for an hour, come back and do some work and then leave at 3pm to take my grandma to the doctor – and no, I don’t come back to work and sometimes I don’t even log back on to work emails from home.

I’m a good example of a worker that integrates work with life. I don’t try and squeeze or build my life around work instead I make sure that both complement one another. Some days I may work longer hours but such is the nature of work or responsibility, and any responsibility for that. A relationship takes time and effort – you have to put in the hard yards in these too.

I have the flexibility at my workplace to do these things and I think we are starting to see this happen across more organisations and industries.

Anyway, this is my rant. I’d love to get your thoughts on the shift from work life balance to work life integration. Do you agree/ disagree?

Andrew Maiden from Telstra made a comment at this morning's Frocomm session on CEO perspectives regarding the importance of new media. The comment was around how it is no longer about 'work life balance' but that it is about 'work life integration' these days - and I couldn't agree more.

We are noticing this shift more and more thanks to new technologies such as smartphones and the plethora of other mobile devices that provide you with the capabilities to access email, IM, social media applications such as Twitter, social networking sites and other emerging technologies that are making it easier than ever to connect with work and friends from pretty much any environment.

Ultra-portable, ultra-light notebooks such as the Toshiba Portégé R500 or MacBook Air are also making it easier to take your work with you. The exciting thing here is that technology is actually keeping up with the changes of today's lifestyle. The iPhone and other MIDs are perfect examples of this.

I could spend time going into the debate about whether or not these devices and technologies are infringing on our personal lives and making it impossible to balance work and life but I’m not going to. Reason being – I don’t think this is a relevant debate anymore, at least not entirely.  Thanks Andrew for point this out.

I’m not sure that people are still seeking work life balance these days. It’s idealistic and rather utopian if you ask me. By the way, feel free to slam me here if you completely disagree but I am more inclined to believe that today’s workers are happy to tip the scales one way or another from time to time. Let me put this point to life using me as an example:

I wake up early in the morning and check my email when I’m still in my pyjamas or house clothes (call it what you will). I then drive into work, get a coffee, read the Fin Review, the technology headlines and log on to my PC at the same time. I tend to emails mostly, action the important ones, talk to my teams regarding priorities, and then I review and respond to emails some more. It’s then on to client meetings, conference calls, internal and/or external WIP meetings and that will quite safely take me to the end of the day when I head home. Sometimes I go home and log on to email after dinner to do a quick check to see the emails that have hit my inbox from the APAC countries that I work with – but sometimes I don’t.

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and tend to emails before heading to work. Once at work I check my emails and do more of the stuff I talk about above. I then have lunch for an hour, come back and do some work and then leave at 3pm to take my grandma to the doctor – and no, I don’t come back to work and sometimes I don’t even log back on to work emails from home.

I’m a good example of a worker that integrates work with life. I don’t try and squeeze or build my life around work instead I make sure that both complement one another. Some days I may work longer hours but such is the nature of work or responsibility, and any responsibility for that. A relationship takes time and effort – you have to put in the hard yards in these too.

I have the flexibility at my workplace to do these things and I think we are starting to see this happen across more organisations and industries.

Anyway, this is my rant. I’d love to get your thoughts on the shift from work life balance to work life integration. Do you agree/ disagree?

I read a really interesting article on the emerging social media trend of ‘dark marketing’ which takes a very much ‘covert’ approach. It provides examples of companies that have implemented stealth tactics in order to reach and sway influencers and potential influencers without engaging them directly with a brand.

Dark Marketing was defined as “…discretely sponsored online and real world entertainment intended to reach hipster audiences that would ordinarily shun corporate shilling” by Tom Edwards in this article.

In order to give a balanced account of this marketing approach, I have provided a couple of positive and negative examples. Sony recently launched a ‘Fake Tourist’ campaign in which it seeded Sony camera users in a central location and asked them to engage with people to take their picture with the desired goal to lead to a ‘pseudo-pitch’ around the product. This approach faced widespread criticism as it was considered a sly tactic to try and drive up sales of Sony’s latest camera product.

Another example is Vespa in the U.S. (which isn’t listed in this particular article I am referring to). Vespa actually hired attractive models to ride around on its scooters and up to bystanders in order to lure them, with their looks, into asking for their phone number. At this point, the Vespa driver would hand out a phone number and ride off (kind of like what you would expect to see in a movie). The catch? When the bystanders called the number, they were actually directly connected to a Vespa dealership!

Don’t be disillusioned. There are examples of this sort of activity that can work – but importantly, the activity needs to be ‘smart’ and cannot offend consumers.

An example used in the article of where this stealth tactic has worked is McDonalds and its recent ‘Lost Ring’ campaign. The Lost Ring was a virtual reality viral game targeted at youth and aimed at subtly promoting the McDonald’s brand and its partnership with the Olympics. It was in fact so discrete that it was almost (and still is) impossible to attribute this back to the McDonald's brand. Not one single instance of a golden arch. The interesting thing here is that even post-campaign period – the site has a really simple survey mechanism to solicit feedback from site visitors – and still subtle in its branding.

Marketers are getting smarter – and so they must – especially if they (and we) want to be able to reach out to and make an impact on relevant brand influencers both online and offline.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on covert/ stealth marketing. Do you think it's right/ wrong?

One of my fellow neighbours shared a presentation that that I absolutely love and want to continue sharing with the rest of the world. The presentation simply conveys what social media is all about.

It takes all the fabulous thinking from Cluetrain Manifesto and culminates it into an easy-to-understand representation of what this online space is all about. The thinking is around how markets are conversations and business as we know it is no longer. It is the end of ''business as usual".

"A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than most companies."

I'm not too sure if it is something you could package up and use to sell to all your clients but for those that are not easily offended, it makes sense of 'social media' - which has previously been something that was considered uncertain terrain - something that people have been reluctant to explore.

If you want a more insightful read, please get a copy of Cluetrain - you would think I wrote the book with how I am promoting it - you'd never tell I'm in PR!

Enjoy!

I was reading an article about Twitter on Silicon Valley’s Mercury News today. It raised a good point and one that I wanted to talk about here. The sites describes Twitter as the "...Seinfeld of the Internet". This can also be interpreted as 'the website about nothing'. I have blogged about the use of Twitter in the Marketing/PR industry previously so with this comment, I think it is time to revisit my thoughts on this new(ish) Web 2.0 tool.

Are we wasting time frequenting Twitter? Is there really any inherent value that we can take away from this online tool? To be perfectly honest, i'm not too sure if my Twitter updates, such as those below, would provide any use to any of those that follow me:

• "Just having a caramello koala - hitting the 3pm sugar cravings"
• "Getting fed up with fuel prices...so my car stays in the garage"
• "I want to go home because it's been a long day"

It might make them laugh at me but i'm probably wasting their time (and mine). These people, however, have requested to follow me which makes me think people actually want to hear about my daily rants and whereabouts - as pointless as it may seem.

I don't want to be too pessimistic about the value of Twitter. Mercury News reports that Twitter had "...1.2 million unique visitors in May...". We are seeing it gain value in some parts of the world - particularly with regards to political applications in the United States. For example, Barack Obama has used Twitter to provide updates to the public from his campaign trail.

We are also seeing the tool used for PR purposes. These days, many journalists are also using Twitter as a means of communicating the stories/ features they are researching and writing. Savvy PR consultants are utilising tools such as Twitter regularly in order to keep abreast of relevant engagement opportunities for their clients.

As I mentioned, I see this tool gaining traction in the United States but I don't think we are seeing similar traction across the Asia Pacific - at least not at this point in time. Will we see the journalists/ analysts on this side of the world use the tool to put the word out regarding what they are working on? We'll just have to wait and see.

As far as reaching a wider audience, would my mum or dad ever use Twitter? (No - I really doubt it). I don't even think my friends working at large IT-centric companies would.

The questions I am toying with at the moment (and I ask for your input) - Will we see Twitter move into the mainstream? Will it ever attract a truly global audience? As communication experts, should we be using Twitter on a daily basis?   

Imagine my surprise when I came into work only to find a few blog post links in an email mentioning that I ranked number 29 in the Top 50 Australian Marketing Pioneer Blogs. The list was compiled by Julian Cole.

								Total
1	Banner Blog	6	6	8	6	8	9	43
2	Servant of Chaos	9	5	8	6	6	5	39
3	Duncans Tv Adland	6	5	7	6	8	5	37
4	Corporate Engagement	8	5	5	4	5	8	35
5	Better Communication Results	8	3	6	5	6	6	34
6	Young PR	7	5	6	5	5	6	34
7	Small Business Branding	7	3	0	8	7	8	33
8	Get Shouty	8	5	7	5	4	4	33
9	Personlize Media	8	5	4	4	4	5	30
10	Brand DNA	6	4	6	5	5	4	30
11	PR Disasters	7	5	4	4	4	5	29
12	Ettf.net	6	5	5	4	4	3	27
13	Oneplusoneequalsthree	5	3	5	4	5	5	27
14	Business of Marketing & Branding	6	5	6	4	4	1	26
15	Media Hunter	7	2	6	4	3	3	25
16	Australian SEO Blog	4	4	5	4	6	1	24
17	Wide Open Spaces	8	5	4	3	3	1	24
18	The Marketer	7	3	6	4	3	0	23
19	Three Billion	6	4	0	4	4	5	23
20	Innovation Feeder	6	5	3	3	3	2	22
21	Campaign Brief	6	4	0	3	5	3	21
22	EcioLab	7	5	2	3	3	0	20
23	Adspace-Pioneers	7	3	3	3	2	2	20
24	Publicity Queen	8	4	1	1	2	3	19
25	Filter Media	6	4	0	2	3	3	18
26	Marketing Easy	6	3	0	3	5	1	18
27	Hothouse	6	4	1	2	4	1	18
28	Mark Neely's Blog	7	3	2	2	3	0	17
29	Lexy Klain	7	3	1	3	2	1	17
30	Peter Sheahan	6	4	0	1	4	2	17
31	In my atmosphere	6	4	0	3	2	1	16
32	Elbow Grease	4	4	0	3	2	3	16
33	Falkayn	5	4	2	0	2	1	14
34	Pigs Don't Fly	6	4	1	1	2	0	14
35	Diffusion	7	4	0	1	1	1	14
36	Australian Small Business	6	3	0	0	4	0	13
37	The Jason Recliner	4	4	1	2	1	1	13
38	The Wayfarer	7	3	0	1	1	1	13
39	Adnotes	6	3	1	1	2	0	13
40	Ryan's View	6	4	0	2	1	0	13
41	B&T	7	4	0	1	1	0	13
42	Zero Budget Marketing Ideas	6	3	1	1	1	0	12
43	Blackwatch	5	3	0	0	0	3	11
44	Fresh Chat	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
45	Latin Ocean	5	2	1	1	1	1	11
46	Arrow Internet SEO	7	2	0	0	1	1	11
47	The Sticky Report	7	0	1	2	0	0	10
48	Naked Communications-The Flasher	8	0	0	1	0	1	10
49	Pixel Paddock	5	1	0	1	0	1	8
50	Send up a larger room	7	0	0	1	0	0	8

I try and give my blog as much love and attention as possible, but unfortunately find that my time tends to get cannibalised elsewhere. This new found, albeit short, burst of fame is exactly what I need to give me that extra bit of motivation to make sure that I am regularly contributing my thoughts on the latest emerging technologies and Web 2.0 developments and how these are impacting on the marketing and PR disciplines.

The blog list was compiled using a set of criteria, including Google Page Ranks, Technorati Blog Reactions, Alexa page ranking and Blog Lines. Additionally, a subjective 'pioneer' score was also included, measuring the 'blog's ability to have pioneering thoughts about marketing'. 

The Top 50 Australian Marketing Pioneer Blog list will appear in the August edition of Marketing Magazine. It will also be updated every three months, with the next update this September.

Here's to crawling up the ranks :) Stay tuned!