Marketing

“Everything is Miscellaneous”

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Weinberger
I just picked up "Everything is Miscellaneous" (David Weinberger) and an odd image popped into my mind: Jimmy Wales hanging out at the Library of Congress.

I had mentally dismissed this double spread ad for Conde Nast
–or so I thought. Excuse my wanting to deconstruct the ad to make a
point. The context and scale of the photograph adds to the incongruity
of the founder of Wikipedia
perched on a railing in one corner of the Library. Its magnificient
cathedral-like arches, and everything else in balance create a great
metaphor. You just know that this guy is here to quietly turn things on
his head –in a good way, mind you.

I know why that image came to mind. The jacket cover of Miscellaneous has a blurb from Mr. Wales lovingly complaining:


"Just when I thought I understood the world, David Wenberger turns it upside down – and rightside up again."

Sure, it’s one of those sweeping ‘advance praise for’ comments you’ve
seen on many other jacket blurbs heaping praise on a new book about the
digital economy.

But it’s hard to exaggerate this book’s analysis. Weinberger, who co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto,
notes that the card catalog system gives us a ‘narrow slit’ to look
through the world of books, but ‘imperfect classification’ in the
digital world, is paradoxically richer. He’s referring of course to
tags and links that create this thing called ‘social knowing’ (the term
‘social media’ isn’t in the index) by showing us connections, and
putting bits of knowledge into context.

Which is exactly what the book does, drawing on centuries of historical
precedents, to make that point of miscellany over and over again.

 

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When drive-time meets talk-time. The other mobile network.

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I’ve always wondered why someone had not come up with a service that allowed drivers to call up someone in another car in front of them, or in the next lane.

Ome compamy has. A new service called SameLane requires drivers to register with their license plate number and a cell phone. They then put up a sticker in their window announcing they are part of the SameLane network. The SameLane mobile number (not their personal mobile number) is also displayed.

When someone in the next lane wants to call up that driver, they call theSameLane  number, enter the license plate number, and the call is patched through.

It has some potential, because it’s an opt-in network, so receiving a call won’t be considered a nuisance. Privacy is maintained by the network, since SameLane says the phone number of the receiver ewill never be disclosed.

But there are potential problems, the first of which is the liability of promoting drivers, rather than passengers, to make calls while driving. SameLane compares ‘talking to strangers’ akin to chatting to someone in a Starbuck’s line. The comparison is obviously misleading.

But it’s an interesting development. Treating thousands of vehicles going in the same direction as you, as a network. 

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Search Engine usage results

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Last Friday I took a snap survey about how readers of this blog and ValleyPRblog use search engines.

Interesting results, as always. Meaning, you get to know the different ways people use something we take for granted.

  • 60 Percent use a search engine from a tool-bar they have installed on their browser.
  • When using search, 75 Percent Always click on Natural Search results first (12 Percent said never!)
  • Only 7 Percent first click on Paid results first (60 Percent never go there first)
  • Interestingly, 57 Percent click on Natural and Paid results ‘Sometimes’ (of the choices Always, Sometimes, and never)
  • 38 Percent Always scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the results (50 Percent do it Sometimes, 12 Percent Never go there; 50 Percent do it sometimes.
  • 44 Percent are darn persistent, and Always click on the next page of results

What might this mean? Remember this was not a scientifically selected sample. But they were random, no doubt, and more importantly, people like you, probably.

I used to work at an interactive marketing agency, and the thinking at that time was that clients were putting way too much money on Paid Search, and neglecting finding ways to get high ranking on the Natural results. Natural (or ‘Organic‘ Search) is the industry term for getting the search engine web crawlers or ‘spiders’ to rank your web site on the left side of a results page.

Translated into marketing, this means spending a lot more time with optimizing those pages on your site so that they are Google and Yahoo friendly.

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Blogging Phoenix-based pilot — Southwest airline’s new brand voice.

/ Angelo Fernando / 3 Comments

Southwest_plane
Who wouda thunk! Your captain, as he prepares for takeoff, is also making mental notes for his blog.

Not sure how many airlines are doing this, but it’s hardly a surprise from a company such as Southwest Airlines, that consistently allow their employees to impact their brand voice. Ray Stark, a phoenix-based captain is doing just that.

A great example for those who are in trepidation about alllowing
those without the title of communictaion or marketing in their titles
to actually have their say.

Would, say, a pizza company let it’s truck drivers comment on the
freshness of its toppings? I’ve heard many a marketing director think
only certain employees ought to be allowed to be spokespersons for the
organization. So back to Southwest. Would you allow a pilot to comment
about tornadoes he may be flying into? Ray Stark says things like this:

The moving weather depiction shows the weather just
west of MCI and heading toward the airport. Hopefully, we can arrive
(and depart) before the worst of it arrives.

But it lends a perspective that no communicator in a corporate
office would have a clue about, which is why employee blogs are so
valuable. We communicators may know a few things (or not) about split
infinitives or RSS feeds, but we could never come up with stuff like
this:

Due to the curvature of the earth, the cloud tops
were hiding out of sight over the horizon as we left PHX. We can now
start to see the mass of moisture in our path.

Which is another way of saying, kudos to Southwest Airlines! They
did break Stark’s long post into three, but they allowed him to be
himself! I used to like their cool ads.

But these are way more valuable. What do you think?

(Cross-posting this from ValleyPrBlog)

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Friday Survey – Search Engine Usage

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Pssst! Could you spare another 1.8 minutes?

This week, I would love to hear about your preferences when using Search.

We always wonder how we ever lived without Search. There are lots of
stats on browser usage, and debate about the 80/20 rule of Natural and
Paid search. But this week I like to get a snapshot of usage among PR,
Marketing, Journalism and Advertising people.

Click here to take survey.

Results will be posted here on Wednesday, May 16th.

(Cross posting from ValleyPRBlog.com)

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Shel Holtz’ tutorial on blogs, brands, social media and marketing

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment
Trust Shel Holtz to articulate something that certainly nags people whether they are in marketing, journalism or just wondering about social media.

It’s a long post but I highly recommend it, especially if someone in your organization questions why you’re trying to implement weird strategies that have been untested, and when everything’s changing too fast.

As a frequent listener to For Immediate Release, I have to say these two people –that’s Shel and Neville Hobson are the brain reserve of social media, and the amazing thing is how they do it for free, twice a week on their podcast, and with posts like this.

You may wonder why this shameless plug. I am just talking to someone about social media and marketing, and I realized that having gleaned so much from them, I have never quite acknowledged it openly.

For the naysayers who wonder about blogs, Shel’s social-media ain’t-really-new comment is worth repeating:

When you think about it, paintings on cave walls were the earliest form
of blogging, an effort by an individual to say, “Here’s what I did
today,” a pre-language journal entry. Blogs simply amplify the content,
making it available to a larger audience and enabling what we call a
“conversation” to ensue about it.

To hijack a cliche:
Cost of MP3 player: 75 bucks
Time taken to download FIR: Two minutes
Education in social media: Priceless

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Wikinomics’ author explains his theory

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

Wikinomics
If you think The Long Tail and The World Is Flat explain the upheavals we are experiencing in marketing and communications, take a look at Wikinomics. It’s the most powerful argument for everything collaborative going on in our Web 2.0 world.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s a long but gripping video presentation on the wonders of mass collaboration, where Don Tapscott (one of the authors) explains what wikinomics is all about. He says things such as ‘by opening up the kimona, you can build trust’ and how ‘the industry that bought you the Beatles (the music industry) is reviled. He is talking, of course, about open-source marketing and the science of sharing. 

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Micro, micro targeting

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Mini
Remember the billboard ads in Spielberg’s Minority Report? The ones where the ads start addressing the potential customer (John Anderton) by name? We’re a long time away from that projected future (2054) but we’ve known for awhile that one-to-one marketing was getting well, funky. This technique is technologically feasible using SMS, for instance, but until now it didn’t take it to the point of actually using the name of the person on  outdoor ads .

Now it’s being done. Two strong cases have shown up.

1. Mini Cooper, USA is using RFID that gets customer participation. It’s an interesting case of looking like an intrusive ad, when it’s not. Why? because the customer has to register on the site, receive an RFID key fob, and carry it when driving, which triggers off the messages

2. Wilkes University (as reported by NY Times today) is taking it one step further, by targeting the students on billboards and posters, without their consent –just like direct mail. Apart from the risk of investing so much in a handful of potential students (where there is no real guarantee that these few would respond to the message) they have built other one-to-one elements into the effort. Such as giving the students being targeted in the ads the contact information of current Wilkes’ students who had attended the same high school.

So much more refreshing than the the wasted efforts in mass targeting, a la Super Bowl ads, that are repeatedly proving to be inefficient.

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Wiki credited with state bill’s passage in Utah

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I am just completing an article on Wikis –not simply on wikipedia, but on the potential for wikis as a marketing and publishing platform. I had been intrigued with Politicopia (not to be confused with Politopia) and its founder Steve Urquhart’s idea of putting hot button issues like this up for public debate in a Wiki.

So the news that in Utah’s legislature passed a bill for school vouchers, debated in Politicopia, was a case in point that this democratic social medium can be stretched to serve a variety of purposes.

Urquhart credited the wiki with shedding ‘sunlight’ by taking private dialog and
putting it into a public forum.

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GoDaddy-esque tactics gives marketing a bad name

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Almost impossible to ignore the GoDaddy pre-game PR that’s been carefully played out. See my longer comment on the Valley PR Blog about Super Bowl advertising
 

Unwittingly, the media –and yes, bloggers– contribute to the story, as Doug Rushkoff told tonight’s Nightline reporter. They were discussing some recent guerrilla marketing tactics such as Ass-vertising (yes, you read that right) for a health & racquet club. Marketing messages on underwear. Now that’s as Godaddy-esque as you can get.

The Boston bomb scare almost outdid it this week, with the placing of electronic panels on bridges –the cartoon characters make obscene gestures. Because of stuff like this that gets tagged under ‘marketing’ no wonder people squirm when they hear someone recommend something out of the box, or a tactic that would push the envelope. There are other envelopes to push, if Godaddy’s agency could get past the hackneyed boob jokes. It’s about time marketing returned to the box, and at least stayed relevant. 

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