Adventures In Digital Marketing

Recently I keep coming up against a seeming growing obsession with proposing TV ads as legitimate content for digital communication. It burns me up.

I see it in retail stores, on tube media, online and more recently I’ve been exposed to lots of situations where in the process of proposing digital content people (non-digital mind) instantly default to “hey, we could use the TV ad on there”.

Why do people insist on seeing the moving images of TV as being suitable for any and all screens someone might be exposed to?

Tube screen? TV ad.

Instore plasma? TV ad.

Interactive kiosk. Use the TV ad.

Plasma screen. What about (hey you guessed it) TV ad.

But the same logic is invariably not applied to all other consumer touchpoints. Do we see a poster site and say, hey lets take stills of the TV ad and print that!

Or an advertorial and take the TV script. No we don’t and why?

Cause it’s not relevant message for that media at that stage of the consumer journey.

TV has an ever growing tenous role with the growth of digital, but if we do see it as relevant then only at a single  point (hey on TV!), and assuming that it’s universally relevant and pertinent content for an audience to be rolled out at all screens a brand owns is surely flawed?

Lets take, oh i don’t know a plasma at retail. TV won’t provided enhanced perceived value at that point of purchase. That push to buy.

Medium and moment should decide the message and content.

Screen does not = TV!

Paul

At FOWD 2009 year, Microsoft were again a lead speaker. In 2008 we were (ahem) treated to a very loooooong and verbose demo of SIlverlight, which I think crashed at one point.

Unperturbed Microsoft returned to FOWD 09 with a slot entitled Watchmen, having been demoing Microsoft Surface in the lobby I was intrigued to see how they would showcase Surface with the comic property.

Now before I go any further, I love Watchmen. Moore’s graphic novel is a classic piece of English literature for me, as complex a narrative as any classic novel. So yes, maybe my heckles were up.

Microsoft gave a half hour long diorama like version of the book, dragging cut-out versions of the characters onscreen, making them a little bigger, shrinking them down. Jiggling them a little. Then dragging them off screen.

For 30 long mins we saw the same weak visual gag recycled. Now aside from massacring the complex plot of the novel, it was the least flattering demo of what should be an exciting product proposition I’ve seen. No mention of Surface’s capability to … take a breath:

• Create applications to recognise and interact with products when placed on screen
• Upload content (video and photo) direct from devices to screen simply by dropping it on the surface
• Allow custom GUIs to fit your creative execution
• Apply a library of texture effects — water / sand — to interations
• Navigation around maps in realtime
• Handwriting recognition
• Sharing content direct from screen with others

No. All we get is scaling cardboard cut-outs. Truly cutting edge, thank you.

I’d sooner have watched this far more informative (yet slightly corporate) Microsoft demo and reclaimed those 30 mins of my life.

Recently I saw an example of gesture based interactivity in the Orange Store on Carnaby Street. You were invited to interact with Orange’s Mobile portal Orange World through an i-tunes coverflow like interface at the front of store. Now I can’t say if that was  Surface, but we all could have been more enriched about how to adapt this technology had we seen some real world examples?

Thanks again Windows for another great demo, hey there’s always 2010.

And (more importantly) where was the Tales of the Black Freighter?

Paul

I’m not a big fan of display ads, I’ll be honest with you. Banners, MPUs, Takeovers, the like, don’t really get me going. I work with them, of course, and often they’re an essential part of a campaign, but it’s not what makes me get out of bed in the morning.

Every now and then though an execution will catch my eye and give me hope that creative thinking that’s gone into it has been well worth it, and we’re not stuck with another “click the monkey” banner.

This execution for the Honda Insight hybrid car is one such thing - and whilst the advert being shown itself is nothing more (I think, correct me if I am wrong) than a straight conversion of the TV ad, the way it’s hosted and held on video sharing site Vimeo is simply great.

Starting with a page that looks to all intents and purposes like a standard Vimeo page, the user is presented with a truly lovely take-over execution once they click the play button, where-in the whole page fades out to black, and a new video loads in over the top of the page making what was a simple TVC conversion a much richer, more involved, and infinitely more lovely experience than just watching a video inside a flash player could ever be.

The whole page transitions through various stages with the video itself, giving the user a sunrise that moves with the content itself.

Imagery from the TVC extends outside the player area to move into other parts of the browser itself, and as the video comes towards a close the sun does indeed Shine, even adding a lens-flare effect across the whole page.

Finally, the page re-brands itself to the logo that Honda are currently using (it looks like a kind of Orla Kiely leaf pattern) and brings in the brand colours of white and red.

It’s a really great use of a TV ad in a new medium for which it wasn’t originally intended, and as I say, whilst normally just reformatting the TV ad video for use online is a big no-no (wrong type of audience, wrong way of consumption, etc. etc. etc.), the fact that whoever created this piece worked with the technology of the site in such a great way, really using the media space as part of the creative execution and not just the holding place, justifies the straight re-use, and adds so much more in the process.

For a format that’s usually intrusive, hated and generally not loved by consumers, I think this one works so well, and only once the user has clicked play - indicating their true desire to view the content - that it’s use can be forgiven in this instance - it just works so well in my opinion.

Well worth checking out on this link or just watch it embedded below (although you’ll only see the TVC and won’t get the whole takeover experience!!).
http://vimeo.com/4281939

Whoever did this - truly well done. Love it!

Howard
ps - thanks to @paulyd for the tip

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Honda Insight - Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

Verizon CMO, John Stratton, thinks IPTV will change the game for big agencies

Interesting little video snippet over on the adage website, in which the Verizon CMO, John Stratton, says that the thinks tht the agencies that will get the digital, interactive TV, future of advertising will be the smaller, more nimble, digitally minded and DM minded agencies rather than any large ad houses. He sees TV playing a big part in this, taking over as a kind of interactive hub, and as the very nature of TV changes so too will the nature of advertising - and whilst he thinks it may still look like the old broadcast medium we all know and “love”, it’ll actually be different and it’s that subtle different that most creative, technically accomplished, agencies will be able to grab hold of and thrive with.

Wow! Great stuff John - coulnd’t agree with you more - although maybe the larger agencies can do this too - it’s just about whether the people in those agencies can think in a way that’s on a par with the smaller agencies, and introduce process and ways of working and getting stuff done for their clients that will allow them to be just as quick to react and adapt to new ways of doing things.

Well worth checking out the video below.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid20170635001

Howard
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Last night I attended my first IDM event even though I’ve been a member of them for about a year now - actually it was a very timely piece of eDM that made me aware of the event so I guess from that point of view they know their stuff!

Entitled Emerging Digital Trends it had two speakers from very different areas, David Walmsley, Head of Web Selling, John Lewis and Katie Smith, Head of Digital Media, Macmillan Cancer support.

In addition to the two speakers there were also quite a large number of delegates from agency, client and consultancy sides, and I was pretty surprised at the turn out to be honest - pretty impressive.

When I write up events or conferences like this I tend to take short notes during the session itself and then blog it up on the train ride home - like I am doing now - so these are my interpretation of the event and obviously not official notes from the session itself.  Just to clarify…

…So, David spoke first, and went into some detail about what John Lewis have been looking into recently, and what challenges they have faced, and, looking forwards, what trends he sees that as a digital retailer could be important.

David started his talk on the subject of behavioural targetting, and how in terms of both email marketing and website strategy, John lewis have been paying this field a lot of attention.  As we converge in the digital and physical space he commented that in the future, he sees that in many ways our offline lives will be lived online - in as much as things we now take for granted as being not connected to the digital or online world will in fact become connected - but we won’t notice it.

He gave an example of how behavioural targetting is very easy to do in some ways, but it’s also easy to get wrong - using an amazon homepage example of when he bought his wife a Davina Yoga DVD, and for the next two weeks got nothing but Yoga DVDs on his custom amazon page (we’ve all been there David!)

With regard to a lot of the ad network behavioural targetting (BT) that is being offered by some of the biggest players at the moment, he thinks that it’s not really true BT in the strictest sense, but almost like a proxy via technology to really basic segmentation strategy based on the type of websites and nothing to do with behaviour itself.

In terms of email marketing, he’s been looking at RFM recently (Recency-Frequency-Monetary) and how it can be used to segment email lists and target consumers - but this on it’s own isn’t enough - and he believes that by overlaying BT on top of RFM you can actually end up with some very useful segmentations and targetting for your eDM comms.

For the website itself, he has looked into how they can replicate the excellent customer service they deliver in-store through their partners (I love how all John Lewis staff are partners personally!) within the digital environment - and he believes it’s pretty hard to do - but tools like basket analysis, post-basket contact, etc., can help to go towards that (would love to discuss this some more).

He also mentioned that goal tracking during user journeys was very key and also very hard at times.  For example, if a user is within the checkout page, the goal is pretty clear - get them onto the next page and purchase the items in their basket.  But, if the user is on the home page, what is their goal?  This is a much more complicated question and almost impossible to answer if they simply type in the URL and visit the home page afresh.

At the end of the day, it’s about using new tools to better suggest products to customers (in some way’s isn’t that what we are all trying to do?)

That’s current trends - so the future?

Well, from his own perspective, David highlighted the ways in which targetting may become more and more “accurate”, almost seeming like “magic” when we start to predict user behaviour rather than just respond to it - and with this in mind, he thinks PHORM is one to watch (right or wrong, they’re certainly one to watch I think!)

In terms of permission based targetting, he also sugested we look at APML.org - for details on APML, an XML based standard that “tells” advertisers and marketers what your ad preferences are in real-time and allows for very accurate marketing to travel around with you (I’ll def. be looking into this right away and posting my thoughts on it here - I have to admit I’d not heard of it before).

He belives that the best way to target your customers, is to get them to “design your emails and website for you” through intelligent suggestion, monitoring and targetting (seems like a good strategy to me).

He closed with an intersesting story.  Apparently, on their website, more people type the word “TOYS” into the search field, than do click on the top-level navigation button which is labelled as “TOYS”, even though it’s only 6 pixels away from the seach field :)  One for the IAs I fear!

After a short break for some much needed nibbles and wine, the second speaker, Katie, took to the stage.

Katie showed a very interesting and touching video about people with, or going through, or post, cancer and the issues they had to face for which Macmillan Cancer Support were there to help.

Katie pointed out that she isn’t a direct, digital or data person as such, more of a creative web designer and IA, but that she has been involved a lot in the more strategic elements of the online recently.

She also pointed out that on twitter she is @katie3059 (and if you’re interested, I am @howard_scott)

Digital, for her, has helped to clarify what they are as a brand, and it’s changed their positioning as well as their organisation as a whole.

People in general are now much more savvy [sic] when it comes to their own health, and the internet has played a massive role in that (who here doesn’t go straight to NHS Direct or WebMD when they find something weird going on? I know I do!)  As such, Macmillan have had to acknowledge that they, as “experts” need to provide information that the users will want and trust if they are to maintain a position as a major destination (something they achieved recently by merging with another cancer charity who were much more “techy” (for want of a much better phrase) than Macmillan.

One of the problems they face is that when people seach for them on google, they search for the word “macmillan” and so, when they do arrive, it tells them nothing about what they were looking for (as opposed to people who might end up on directline.com having searched the phrase “car insurance”).  In this way they had to try to work out what was an important goal for their visitors from the home page of the site - what did a visitor to the site really want when all they had typed into google was “macmillan”?

Katie also mentioned a couple of trends which they are currently riding on which are proving to be extremely valuable to them - user generated content (UGC) and social-network style community.

People with Cancer, or post-cancer, want two things when they look for advice.  They want expert advice, that they know is from a trusted and valid source - and macmillan can certainly provide this - but they also want reassurance and “insider information” telling them what it’s going to be like.  This is something Macmilland find hard to provide because they simply don’t know. This is where the users themselves can step in.  By providing forums, and other spaces on the site within which users can discuss their condition, symptoms, how an operation went, how they felt during treatment, etc., other people who want to know just how something is going to feel (because, let’s face it, it’s scary stuff!) all users can discuss just what’s concerning them with other people, and as we all know by now, people trust other people’s opinion on the web more than so-called “experts” in many cases.

This UGC aspect to their site, combined with the community they have enabled, means that the macmillan site can provide both the expert, medical, clinical advice patients want when they first do research into a cancer when they’ve been diagnosed with it, followed by the more human, personal, “this is how it was for me” kind of approach only the UGC can provide.

Katie referenced the site patientslikeme.com who have forums for almost every single ailment you can think of, and people who are more than happy to share it with other sufferers.

So, for a future trend?

Katie mentioned finally that they were looking into interactive conversation technology to help users of the site answer questions which they know can prove tricky if they’re not explained sufficiently.  She’s working with technology pioneered, apparently, by a company in the US called jellyvision.com, which kind of “prompts” a user through conversation style question-answer-question scenarios, each new question being based on the answer previously given.  (This is something I’ve seen on the NHS direct site myself, where in order to diagnose a condition, they ask you a series of pretty simple questions you can answer with multiple choice until you arrive at the end result).

Oh, and one last thing, Katie kept apologising for the state of her slides - I think because, as she said, she’s a designer at heart.  Katie, I honestly don’t think any of us would have noticed a great deal if you didn’t keep pointing it out - the content of your talk was interesting enough to make us overlook the slide design - and, let’s face it -it’s all powerpoint anyway!  It’s going to look bad

So, to wrap up, it was an interesting event - I met some knowledgeabe people on various subjects - interestingly there seemed to be people there from a whole variety of digital related fields - eCRM, Search, eCommerce, promotions, and I am sure there were more. There wasn’t anything too revolutionary presented in terms of future trends, although I am keen to now look into APML some more after David brought it to my attention, and of course PHORM was mentioned, but aren’t they often nowadays?

Thanks to the IDM for putting the event on. For those interested I should be getting the slides from it shortly, so when I do I’ll link them from this post.

Howard
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I’m always on the look out for places where digital technology in the (hate to say this) “virtual space” converges with the physical real-world, and this is something I know my colleague @Poate also looks for - but from the other side (i.e. I am digital, he is “real world” physical).

iPhone RFID: object-based media from timo on Vimeo.

So, this is interesting to both of us, and I think it might be to you also.  I found this whilst doing my daily scoot of engadget.com, a nice work-in-progress example of a digital app, running on an iPhone, connected to an RFID reader, detecting tags in physical objects to play associated media clips back on the iPhone.

It’s obviously an early WIP judging from the size of the RFID reader attached to the device!, but it’s a good proof-of-concept and it shows just how handy RFID could end up being, say, for an in-store environment where the reader is in a kiosk, or just attached to some kind of large display, and the tags are in physical objects of some kind - say an SLP product promotion piece.

Check out the video below for bob the builder and moomins!

Howard

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I’ve said this in a few places now, but since Gareth Jones took the helm at Revolution mag it’s come on in leaps and bounds.

This month is nothing different, and there are a couple of really interesting articles in it I think you should read.

The first is the cover article and is about the rise and rise of advergaming - something very close to my heart as a digital marketing fan and an avid gamer.  Atari feature, and if what I am hearing around town is true, they’re trying to lead the way in the online distribution of content and ove it away from a physical distribution model.

The second is about something else I am really looking into a great deal right now - Augmented reality - or placing 3D objects, models, videos and a whole host of other “content” into a physical space using digital technology.  I really think this will have big impacts for out-of-home digital marketing, especially that which gets closer to the point of sale and the retailer/consumer environment.

both can be found on the revolution website at these links:

Game Invaders: http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/news/features/892992/Game-Invaders-loading-please-wait/

Reality Check: http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/news/features/893226/Reality-check/

sometimes it’s amazing how quickly the internet can work against you as a digital marketer.

Last week it was discovered very quickly indeed that Belkin, provider of electronic bits and bobs such as network cards etc., had allegedly posted to the Amazon Mechanical Turk system (a marketplace for getting work carried out by an army of human workers - the kind of thing computers are good at in scale but not good at in ability) asking for people to write “fake” reviews of it’s products for them - applying a 5/5 rating, and while at it, mark down bad reviews to get them out of the way.  This was, again allegedly, done by Michael Bayard who is a Business Development Representative.

This is bad enough in it’s own right, the someone “might” think this is a good thing to do.  But within a short time it was spotted by someone, and then reported on Engadget.com

OUCH!

Today we see on Belkin’s own website a letter within their press section where they say how disappointed they are for the fact that this “may” have happened by a Belkin employee and that in fact they “support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad” as of course they should.

Sometimes these lessons have to get learnt the hard way, but i thought this kind of thing had gone extinct a long time ago - but it seems that every now and then someone “might” just get it wrong and think they can influence things in the wrong way.

Belkin’s President, Mark Reynoso, who posted the letter on their own site has got it right when he says “both good and bad” - that’s the benefit to getting feedback about your products, being able to see where you are going wrong and then make them better!

It worked for Palm recently - their new Pre has made them the golden child once more and they used to get a serious kicking from all over the place - even getting an open letter from Engadget.com - to which they responded in an open way!

transparency - it’s the key to this kind of activity.

Don’t make the mistake that Michael Bayard may have made, allegedly, and trust your audience to do the right thing.

Howard

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A lot of buzz going on right now about Yahoo! and it’s several hardware partners (which include heavyweights like Sony and Samsung) moving closer and closer to the launch of the “Yahoo! Connected TV” platform - a combination of HDTV hardware (like you probably have right now in your house) and some extras, seemingly from Intel and Yahoo!, which allow the TV to display widgets, pulling in various snippets of internet content, right on the TV screen itself alongside the usual programming and shows.

Since Yahoo! purchased Konfabulator some years ago, I’ve not really seen them do anything outstanding with the engine that the likes of Microsoft and Google were not doing with their own Widget and Gadget platforms.

This to me seems like the first major step in widget evolution since apple really decided to build it right into the OS with Dashboard, making it common place for all mac users and then windows users as MS followed suit and built it into Vista.

What is exciting about this though is it’s not a PC.  It’s not a Mac.  It’s not some techy “add-on” perceived by the masses to be geeky - it’s built right in there to the TV.  The device most people interact with on a daily basis for several hours.

Because of this, Connected TV is designed to be user friendly by the average Joe consumer from the ground up.

Use your remote to bring up the TV Widget Dock, select all your favorite TV Widgets, and connect to popular Internet services and online media, while you watch your favorite show.

Making it hopefully as easy for users to get access to widgets as it is to switch over to Celebrity Big Brother.

As digital marketers we’ve been trying to capitalise on the wide distribution, easy development, and very focused audience groups that widgets provide for some time - with varying degrees of success - but the big problem has always been that widget use is restricted to a niche audience who are generally highly technical.  It’s never been a mainstream media channel.

Connected TV could just change all of this, and if it becomes a standard, built in to all TVs that the likes of LG, Sony and Samsung create (I don’t think it will be initially - it’ll be an added cost extra for sure) then people will hopefully get as used to using widgets (even forgetting that they are widgets and simply regarding them as part of TV) on a normal daily basis.

If that were to happen, then as digital marketers we would have a huge new environment with which to target consumers.

I also wonder what this connected platform would mean for segmentation and targetted advertising?  Maybe nothing - but I wonder if they’ve thought about pushing ads to people?  Hopefully not - thinking about it it would be amazingly intrusive to get an overlay banner for the new series of Lost popping up during the latest episode of Heroes!  Scratch that - it’d suck

But -widgets are good - they’re user accessed when they want them.

We like that.

Upon launch it looks like the platform will contain content, naturally, from a key selection of Yahoo! properties like Flickr, and some other 3rd party partners like Blockbuster, Ebay and Twitter (how cool is that!).  But, there’s also an API that any developer can tap into to make widgets for the platform - meaning it’s open to all of us - which is just great from the start (So, Apple, missing something with the AppleTV yet??)

Yahoo! - please please deliver the goods on this.

Oh, and Microsoft?  You might want to check out the sweet user interface that this platform has compared to WIndows 7 Media Center (which isn’t being shown AGAIN at CES? We get no love in the Media Center community??)  Yahoo! makes you look stupid in terms of visual design and usability over a TV interface!

Howard

I forgot one final prediction…

The digital sector will continue to grow in 2009, just not as fast as before

As with previous years I think digital will continue to grow, possibly ahead of TV for the first time in it’s history, but certainly a positive move upwards.  It won’t be anywhere near as big in previous years I don’t think (i could be wrong) but the way marketers want to increase accountability and ROI digital has got to be the platform (in all it’s guises) that clients are going to want to maximise.  Like I’ve said before with the likes of Orange and Nike coming out recently with statements along the lines of “it’s all got to be digital” others will start to follow.  And even if they don’t go the whole hog, digital will certainly canibalise other media as budgets are switched around to get cheaper results.

Howard