I have unashamedly lifted this from the excellent Razorfish Digital Outlook Report (2009) which you can & should read HERE
The Web Gets a Pulse
The “real time” nature of the Web is taking on a new dimension:
This year, we will close that gap between archived information and what’s going on right now. Not only is the Web becoming more social — it is becoming instantly reactive.
From twittering and yammering to live online social events to intelligent, location-awareness mobile connectivity, the Web is beginning to take on a pulse —
or, a life — of its own.
Social Web users, whether they are connected teens or digital mums, are increasingly unable to draw boundaries where their physical and virtual worlds divide, or to distinguish between their known and anonymous peer groups.
And as Obama demonstrated, there is untapped momentum in social media environments, which, when leveraged well, can create a movement of scalable proportion. However, movements cannot happen alone.
In this environment, marketers need to listen, monitor and learn. They need to understand what value they bring and how to work with their agencies and media partners to create their own dynamic experiences.
Does your brand — whether you are a media company or a marketer — have a pulse?
Fragmentation Moves Beyond Media
It is no surprise that audience fragmentation continues to challenge marketers, but in 2009, it is increasingly challenging to content owners.
Media content was once relegated to a platform with an established, advertising-supported business model: TV, print,online, mobile or out of home. But as consumer attention splinters,so, too, will the content, the platform and the media revenue
model.
With economic pressure and ever more complex distribution channels, will our business models sustain themselves? Will premium content survive? While the long tail of the Web depends on technology and data to monetize its inventory, traditional business models with long-standing histories and complex infrastructures like TV have not been as quick to change.
2009 will be a test for premium content owners, the TV and print advertising establishments and the digital world as we brace for potential and unexpected change to our business models brought on by years of continued fragmentation.
What will define the media company of the future?
The ability to let content travel across a myriad of platforms, devices and lifestyles. The will to embrace new forms of measurement, data, technology and digital infrastructure to manage complexity. And the vision to compete on the future.
When the Going Gets Tough...
No doubt the recession is on everyone’s minds as we enter a new
year.
A flat year would be a good outcome for digital advertising in 2009, and while many major publishers will see a year-over-year drop, there will be winners.
We are in the midst of a historic time,when industries that some would argue were the foundations of our economy may be challenged like never before, but there is also
an opportunity for new business models to take root and thrive.
2009 will be a tough year for all media, even digital media; it will be a time for exploring new buying methods — such as conducting business through ad exchanges — and learning how to employ social influence marketing strategies that have value for consumers and brands alike.
While growth may be curbed, there is no time like the present to innovate. Innovation will take many forms — new messages, new channels, new products, new business models.
Whatever happens, one thing is for certain: we’ll all learn how to do more with less. And be smarter for it.
3 Things Every Digital Marketer Should Know In 2009
Are my nuts bigger than yours?
@zoescaman's nuts are 18.43 lbs!
How big are yours - size em' up here: http://tweetnuts.com
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
I'm making an important point here so listen up!
Over the past few months i have seen numerous online engagement strategies & campaigns talked up, talked down, loved, hated, envangelised & trashed.
Many of the executions have experienced wildly contradictory reviews and caused debate amongst everyone.
We've discussed the positives, the negatives, the right way and the wrong way, the great elements which could have been done better and the fact that some shouldn't have been done at all...
We put our two cents in because we can, because we didn't run the campaign so therefore we're well within our right to criticise, publicise & exercise our opinions.
But i have just one question which i am addressing to everyone (me included):
DO YOU ACTUALLY HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'RE DOING?
We call ourselves social media experts, digital strategists, engagement planners...the list goes on (and you can find most of the iterations here on a blogpost by @anotheradwanker entitled Help name a social media guy) but do any of us really know how to run a successful 'social media' campaign?
No, we don't.
There is no formula, no handbook, no 'idiots guide to engagement planning' and no right & wrong...
It's all about experimentation, different perspectives, optimisation, try, fail and try again.
To give you examples of what i mean i have collated a few of the discussions i have come across recently surrounding some of the more controversial campaigns:
GIRL WITH THE JACKET:
Anonymous (on Mumbrella article):
While you all have very good points… a particular post caught my eye from Simon - “Ask them if they sold any jackets’
I work at Witchery and we aren’t actually rolling out the men’s range until March.
I think the whole campaign was mainly aimed at creating awarness of the fact that Witchery are doing something new.
Regardless of whether people are actually interested in the product, the campaign resulted in major publicity and has been rather controversial - an outcome significantly more successful than if simple ads were placed in regular medias.
To conclude - they weren’t interested in selling jackets, but instead creating awareness, which by judging from this blog and the media attention recieved, certainly worked!
Paul (on the same Mumbrella article):
Naked are a shameless bunch of no integrity wankers and bullshit artists. Woebetide the dumn clients like Coke and Big Pond who retail them.
SKITTLES WEBSITES (aka SKITTLEGATE)
NextBrett (on Laurel Papworth article):
Hey Laurel,
I agree the widget style branding on top of the page makes the navigation somewhat confusing.
However i like the attempt to integrate social media channels with the parent skittles brand (i.e. twitter, flickr, facebook, youtube etc).
Could probably do with some jump page style message better explaining the idea..
I say good on them for the attempt but probably leaving users confused as it comes across as some kind of stunt.
Excerpt from 'thisisgoingtobebig' blog:
Instead of reaching out into the community and showing up in our spaces, they took our spaces and brought them back to their site. Instead of sending traffic to us, they took our stuff and made it all about them. What's the point, other than generating a lot of chatter about the campaign, rather than about the product?
VIRGIN MOBILE V FEST APP
Excerpt from my blog:
Every single person there (not including freebie tickets of course) had shelled out circa $140 for a ticket which is alot of money, so i don't think i'm alone in thinking that the Festival Buddy service really should have been free for each & every attendee as an added benefit within the ticket cost.
Excerpt from @anotheradwanker blog:
It wasn't about Virgin sucking up to non-customers. It was about Virgin showing the love and saying thanks to their existing customers.All these add-ons made me feel loved by my telco. Not many brands (especially in telecommunications) can pull that off.
And there are thousands of others which you can research yourself such as Tourism Queensland, NAB, Pimp My Kettle etc etc....
My point, if i haven't made it as clear as mud already, is that there is no correct way to enter into an engagement strategy and there are no rules.
What we are doing, what we are ALL doing, is dipping our feet in and having a go!
The success or lack thereof is judged purely on opinion, perspective & objective which differ widely across different groups of people (god forbid that includes the client and the agency themselves!)
Why do you think the success stories we saw at Adtech were decades old? It's not because no one has attempted anything since, it's just that their newest experiments may not have been as triumphant...
So if you think of yourself as a 'social media expert' and believe there is a winning formula to all of this, may i (politely)suggest that you get back in your box and stay there until your ego deflates to a manageable size once again :-)
Bridging the Gap
'Bridging the gap' is another one of those catch phrases which i normally hate along with others such as 'jump in', 'get involved' and 'start the conversation'.
They have been misunderstood, over exposed & generally corrupted over time hence they now form part of one of my favourite games - Bullshit Bingo (see below & feel free to use!)
So i was pleasantly surprised in a meeting earlier on today when the term 'Bridging the Gap' was used in conjunction with a real understanding of what it meant.
We'd been throwing around different explanations & iterations of how social engagement and personalisation helped Brands connect with customers until we came up with a simple but succint way to show it (see below):
We start off with a great divide between Brands & Customers. There is no common ground, no understanding & no accessibility...
In the past we have utilised traditional media to speak to these customers but that only gets us so far...
This gives us what we can call an 'Indirect Brand Experience' where we are exposed to advertising messages but it doesn't neccessarily connect with us, whether that's due to lack of relevance, personalisation, resonance etc
So what we are aiming to do is connect with people on an individual level to create the much desired 'Direct Experience' which can drive increased purchase consideration, brand advocacy, repeat business etc which is where social engagement comes in to 'Bridge the Gap'...
Therefore what we end up with is Indirect & Direct experience:
The other key thing to note is Critical Mass. The Indirect Experience, as expensive & unconnected as it can be, does play an essential role in building mass awareness & exposure and cannot be ignored.
Therefore the Social Engagement side, whilst being at the core of any strategy and being key to 'Bridge the Gap' and build Direct Experience, can rarely be the summation of a campaign execution.
This, for me, simply & effectively outlines the challenge we are all facing in the ever-changing communications landscape.
Is anyone willing to pay for content anymore?
News was released last week that The Independent and Times Online may look to charge for content and are investigating online subscription models in the face of sliding ad revenues.
As previously stated in another post here around large publishers struggling to find ways of maintaining profits & audiences, this issue has become prevelant within the content publishing world.
Last week many other publishers spoke out against implementing such paid content models and instead stated they prefer to focus on online advertising and paid-for products, however, it is a platform already in use by the likes of the Financial Times and Wall St Journal.
So my question is: Is anyone still willing to pay for content?
The general viewpoint at the moment is that charging for content would only suit niche publishers such as the Financial Times, whose content is not available elsewhere, but it would not be suitable to those publishers whose content is not unique and which could be easily substituted.
My personal opinion is that as information is increasingly syndicated, shared & shared again, the corresponding appetite to pay for content or to sign up for a subscription will rapidly decline whether the content is niche or not.
Thoughts?
V Festival: 'Festival Buddy' mobile app = complete rip off...
Along with around thirty thousand other people, I attended V Festival on Saturday.
It was an awesome day with a great line up, great atmosphere and great weather.
The only three things that pissed me off on the day were the following:
1). Huge queues (up to and over an hour long)at the beer tents stemming from not enough beer tents!
2). Scheduling ERROR by not putting Snow Patrol on the main stage
3). The 'Festival Buddy' mobile application
I am unfortunately unable to make suggestions regarding Beer Tents and Line Ups because i am not an Event Organiser, but, may i suggest that next time around you increase the alcohol accessibility and do not make us walk 15 minutes from one stage to another to see equally brilliant bands which results in us missing some of the performances.....that sucked.
However my real gripe that i can whinge about was around the 'Festival Buddy' mobile application.
When i first saw this on the map print outs & line up guides i was so excited that they had finally utlised the mobile device in the perfect way.
The application allowed festival goers on any network to find line-up information, create a personal schedule, find site-specific information, and download free V Festival related content including ringtones, wallpapers and videos by simply texting a shortcode to get the download.
Sounds great right?
Wrong.
'Festival Buddy' is marketed as a 'FREE' downloadable tool which is easy to use - but what they neglected to widely promote is that fact that each update text you recieve throughout the day will cost you 55 cents PLUS there is no cap on how many of these texts you will recieve as updates are unlimited!
To add to this if you are not with Virgin Mobile (the majority of the Sydney population) then you will be charged data costs for any downloads you perform.
Perfect! So i can keep up to date on what's going on and who is on which stage but at the same time i'll be rinsing my mobile bill!
My first thought on having discovered this: 'you tight bastards....'
Every single person there (not including freebie tickets of course) had shelled out circa $140 for a ticket which is alot of money, so i don't think i'm alone in thinking that the Festival Buddy service really should have been free for each & every attendee as an added benefit within the ticket cost.
How hard would it have been to have a quick chat with the main mobile carriers and have the WAP site, data downloads & SMS zero-rated? Honestly?
Paul Shulver, music sponsorship manager for Virgin Mobile said “The Festival Buddy offers the chance for V Festival attendees to completely tailor-make their festival experience.”
Well Mr Shulver, the 'Festival Buddy' left a slightly sour note to my experience because in my view it was total rip off.
TED Talk: Evan Williams: How Twitter's spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses
A talk given by Evan Williams, the genius co-founder of Twitter & Blogger.com at TED.
Amazing stats:
- 47 members of US Congress have Twitter Accounts
- Twitter originally setup as a side project to Odeo
- It was just a broadcast platform, the @ replies were built much later on...
- Platform has evolved from originally being used to keep up with family and friends to now being utilised as a mass communication device upon which people help eachother out
- Evan Williams: "when you give people easier ways to share information, more good things happen"