Adventures In Digital Marketing

Something I’ve discussed before here, but the connected TV concept being pioneered by Yahoo!, from their widget platform, working with the likes of Samsung and Sony, is starting to hit the mainstream.

Case in point - Sony’s new range of TVs have a user interface which will be very familiar to anyone with a PSP or PS3, and an ethernet plug right there in the back of the TV itself.

Connect them up, and using the XMB (as the interface is known) you can get content from Yahoo! right there on top of the TV image, or watch IPTV content from the likes of YouTube, CNN and so forth instead of anything being “broadcast”.

The name Sony like’s to call their people who work in this field (Convergineers) says it all.

Convergence isn’t something that’s “coming soon” any more.

It’s now.

Howard

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I’ve seen more and more brands dipping their toes into twitter for use as a sales promotion channel lately.

Brands have been on twitter for quite some time now, as well all know, some having good success, and others not doing it quite as well as they could, but what we’ve not fully seen are brands using it as a direct communications channel to clients in relation to a competiton or game, with differing end goals by the look of it.

Only last week, my attention was drawn to a competition being run by Asus computers, producers of the well loved EeePC series, for the launch of a new model they have created (known as the Asus SeaShell for reasons that I can’t fathom aside from it, like all laptops, looks a bit like a clamshell). For your chance to win one of these machines you simply had to follow the brand on twitter (@asusuk) and in turn, they would select a user at random, once a week, to be the lucky winner of the machine.  When I chose to follow them they had about 40 followers.  Now, they have 1472 - not massive by anyone’s measure, but not too shabby either.  All I can think of was that this was an attempt to grow their follower-base to hit the right kind of people who might, in turn, spread the word to others interested in netbooks and so on - so, actually, in terms of “hitting the right people” this is probably quite an interesting exercise for them.

So, one week later, and I come across an email from another technology company, Novatech, a tech and PC retailer which you might not have heard from (but for those of us tech-inclined on the south-coast of the UK trust me, they’re a god-send at times!)  Novatech are running a similar competittion to Asus, but it, for me, fails at the first hurdle due to the barrier to entry.

Again it’s to win a netbook (this time from MSI) and all you have to do is follow BOTH MSI and Novatech on twitter (@msitweets and @novatechltd) - so not one, but two - and then you have to tweet on your own profile that you’re following them, AND then…  you have to register on the novatech forum and post a link on that to your twitter page.

*PHEW*

got that?  couldn’t be simpler right?  erm… well, perhaps it could.  I think this is a bad example of how to use the channels around twitter for a promotion.

And finally, although by no means the last “brand” on twitter doing so, everyone’s favourite mockney chef, Jamie Oliver (@jamie_oliver), is running a regular competition each Friday called “Jamie’s Twitchen” (see what he did there?) where by he asks a question, and the first person from around the twitterverse to reply with the correct answer and the hashtag #jamiestwitchen wins a prize which changes each week.

This is, for me, a great example of how to use the channel in a positive, respectful way that actually makes use of the unique nature of twitter itself, rather than trying to make it into something it’s not intended to be for the sake of a few thousand email addresses you can bombard.

What I think these illustrates is a couple of things.

1) brands (large and small, world famous and not) are waking up to twitter as a very immediate here-and-now channel to run competitions in - and the power of communicating directly to your core audience and what that can give you.

2) sometimes, social media usage can be taken to far (not mentioning any names Novatech!) in your quest to grab user details and build up a pool of “followers” to spread the word to (less is often more)

Twitter is, as I pointed out to a senior client I work with via a linkedin conversation last night, simply another channel within which we can conduct digital marketing.  It’s not the answer to everything, but it’s emerging quite rapidly, that using twitter as part of a sales promotion strategy, or a games/comps strategy, really does seem to work - but as with everything, treat it with respect and don’t abuse the power it can give you.

Overall, I like this trend, I like that we, the users of twitter, are coming up with a plethora of new ways to work it.

It’s evolving!

Howard

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uber-trendy microblogging platform of choice, twitter, is making a reality TV show featuring both "real users" and celebs.

So, this is an interesting one.

Reuters is reporting that Twitter, golden child of the internet new world order, home of the Twitterati, is making moves towards one of of the very media channels which many of us in the “new media” world see as on it’s way to the grave (certainly in it’s current look and feel)…

TV

No, not IPTV, not Apple TV, not dodgy shows you’ve downloaded via torrent from a site i couldn’t possibly list or guide you towards, plain old broadcast medium of choice, Television.

Yes, your favourite microblogging platform and mine is to create it’s own TV series, where “real life” twitter users get to interact on an unscripted show with celebrity twitterers.  Quite how this will happen isn’t clear right now, but it’s being created in collaboration with production companies who seem to be pretty big hitters - one of them being Reveille who are behind “The Office” (presumably the US version?  I dunno?)

I’ll be interested to see how this plays out.  The juxtaposition of such a contemporary, not-quite-worked-out-yet medium like Twitter choosing the traditional, we get it already (or we thought we did) medium of TV is, for me at least, very interesting.

I look forward to the first episode hitting the torrents soon!

Howard

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My colleague Ben pointed me towards this really good presentation on slideshare called “Promotions 2.0 - The Future of Interactive Marketing”.

As someone who works in both digital and heavily in sales promotion right now, I find this particularly interesting, and whilst the content isn’t necessarily going to blow anyones mind in a big way, it’s put together very nicely and I think many of us could well use it as a starting point for our own presentations somewhere down the line.

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 was having my usual day, you know, googling stuff, checking email, reading tweets, :),  and I came across this blog post on the Blue Jam & Toast site, via  tweet from Jim Quillen (@ConnectSocMedia).

In his post, entitled Is Twitter For Serious Marketers, Tom Davenport takes a crack at arguing the case that twitter isn’t a serious marketing tool, and that it’s a fad, a gimmick that’s here today-gone tomorrw after a quick rise to fame (apart from the fact that it’s been around for a long time in reality and only went exponential quite recently when people like Jonathan Ross (@Wossy) and Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) jumped on-board, certainly here in the UK at least), and that as a “serious” marketing tool, it’s not to be bothered with.

Tom compares Twitter to the virtual world Second Life, which had a similar rise to the spotlight, with many brands jumping in feet first and setting up spaces, before falling by the side and becoming less popular.  It’s still going - it’s just not this year’s killer app.

So, I read his post, and he makes a good enough argument, but for me the big issue, and where his argument breaks down, is treating twitter as a be-all and end-all marketing solution to all brands and because it fails, in his eyes, to be of value that it’ therefore worthless.

Because, in my opinion, Twitter’s just another channel we have within our digital tool kit (all be it a very new, highly popular, talked about in the press all the bloody time one), and as digital marketers, we need to make sure that, like all technologies, channels and other tools we can employ on campaigns, we use the right tool for the right job at the right time.

Is twitter the right tool for all brands?  Of course it isn’t.  For some it’s just plain stupid and you would be crazy to even suggest it in your pitch document.

But twitter is a very good tool for some brands, in certain situations, and it’s this that needs thinking about.  Look at how innocent smoothies use it (@innocentdrinks) , look at celebrities (who are brand’s by themselves after all!) use it, like Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver) and @wossy, and then also look at major corporates, like Dell, (@delloutlet) who are using it also.

For all of these brands, and many more, twitter enables them to talk directly to a core audience of customers, often people who are extremely loyal to a brand and passionate about what it represents, on a personal, conversation-like, pseudo one-to-one level - it makes you (me!) the consumer feel like that brand, that I am so involved with I am willing to actually click the FOLLOW button and choose to hear from them, like I am having a direct conversation with them, and that makes me feel special - and therefore, it makes me more likely to spread the word about that brand far and wide.

Twitter isn’t a broadcast medium in the traditional sense - you’re not talking about hitting 1,000’s of people in one go and hope that 0.12% of it sticks or clicks-through.  This is powerful, targetted, small-scale marketing, but the value of talking to such involved and dedicated consumers, people who will talk in a positive light about your stuff to others people who in turn trust them, is well worth the time and effort it takes to set this up and do it well.  That’s something a lot of marketers get wrong when they look at some of the new digital channels to have emerged in recent years and dismiss them as a fad or too small audience-wise to work with.

The confusion between mass, large-scale, generic audience, and focused, small-scale, passionate audience, leads some marketers to think that these channels don’t have value - but they do - because everyone you’re talking to wants to hear from your brand - and that’s the value - they actually want to listen to what you’ve got to say, and they know you’re trying to sell them stuff with it! But they don’t care - because they like it.

Twitter isn’t a short-term, instant win approach either - it might seem like it because it’s free, and anyone can setup an account in minutes - but to get the most out of it, like any social media/network strategy in fact, it takes a lot of time, patience, and dedication to the channel within which you are taking part.  You need to tweet - lots - to get the benefit, and if that’s tweeting core messages that are interesting to the audience and are going to make more people want to follow you, then you’re going to have to be interesting and put some thought into what you have to say.  starting a twitter account and then saying “hello” once a week isn’t going to get you to that million followers (unless you’ve got a Hollywood actress from the brat-pack for a wife I guess).

Is Twitter for serious marketers? Of course it is. (One could argue that in this day and age if you’re not at least considering Twitter as a channel you shouldn’t regard yourself as a serious marketer any more because you’re missing some of the opportunities to get your message out there?) It’s a channel you should consider when you’re planning your campaign as much as you should consider any digital channel.

But does that mean you should use it in all cases and it’s always going to be right?  Nope.  Not at all.  But then that’s not the case with any channel - on or offline.

Howard (@howard_scott)
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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/