Archive for the ‘User-generated content’ Category

Popularity and Influence are not the same

Posted: March 1, 2011 in Marketing Strategy, real-time marketing, social media, social networking, User-generated content
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
0

I read a thought provoking article in AdAge this morning by Matthew Creamer. The title, “Your Followers are no measure of your influence,” does an excellent job of debunking the notion that just because you have millions of followers on Twitter, you are automatically an influencer. But I think that Matthew missed the larger point that there are genuine influencers in every community whether online or not. And that there are different categories of influencers representing three kinds of publishers; editorial, brand and peers.

The Justin Biebers or Ashton Kutchers of the world are not significantly different than the Hollywood hucksters of generations past. For anyone who can remember Orson Wells pitching Paul Masson wines, there is plenty of evidence of celebrities trying to convert their popularity into influence. They leverage their own personal brands to add a cache to what they are promoting; branding 101. These people are professional or editorial influencers and to which also belong most politicians, journalists and analysts. Regardless of your aesthetic, political or social beliefs, it’s hard not to acknowledge this class of bloggers, Tweeters and authors. And it’s hard not to understand that no matter where they come from, they are advancing their own or their sponsor’s agendas.

There’s another class of influencers who are exerting their presence of the Web and across social media; brands themselves. Within every category, there are competing brands that are generating content aimed to influence the conversation about and the perception of their brand and the products and services associated with their brand. And like the editorial influencers, they unabashedly have their own agendas.

So what does that leave? The rest of the social world made up of individuals who demonstrate their influence by their expertise, their ability to communicate and the authenticity of their messages. These are our peers, like the best Mommy bloggers, leaders in various forums; what Augie Ray of Forrester Research calls, Mass Influencers. This group which amounts to around 6% of the online population generates 80% of the influence impressions.

All these different categories of influencers can be leveraged by marketers, both to disseminate their content, buoyed by the influencers own credibility, but also as a means of understanding what consumers are genuinely interested in.

At Blab, http://www.blabbings.com, we understand that if you don’t first understand who the “influencers” really are and what is the nature of their influence, you won’t be able to use them to give a lift to your marketing efforts, regardless of channel.

Social Media, forget the hype and forget the technology

Posted: August 26, 2009 in community marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, SDMA, social media, social networking, User-generated content, Web 2.0
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

There was a full article in the Seattle Times this morning about social media. It’s amazing that a major media outlet either just discovered social media as a topic or there wasn’t enough new news to fill the dwindling number of printed pages. But let’s not get on the subject of newspapers and why most journalists seem to be more afraid of social media than taking steps to become the leaders of it.

What I want to talk about is not newspapers and not about what social media is, isn’t or what its good for. I don’t know and I’m supposedly an expert on the subject for my agency Ascentium. What I do know is that I don’t want to see, hear, blog, tweet or otherwise spew about the definition of social media and how it’s going to change the world, or at least our way of thinking about the world. Been there, done that.

It’s time to focus on the reality, not the potential of social media. Look at what Twitter is being used for politically around the globe. See how the Huffington Post has already redefined journalism. And as marketers, let’s start talking about the work we’re at our companies or for our clients. Let’s see what is working and what isn’t. And let’s define success, not at the nebulous level of “building brand awareness” or “increasing reach”. Let’s apply real metrics to determine the ROI of a very broad array of activities, campaigns and applications that we lump under the category of social media.

As president of the SDMA, we created an editorial calendar of the coming year’s series of monthly events. The kickoff event, to be held on 09/09/09 at the Bellevue Hyatt was listed in our working calendar as social media. From there, we went about selecting a speaker(s). It was easy to find some really smart people who could pontificate on social media. In fact, last week the Seattle Social Media Club had a great presentation on “What the f**k is Social Media?”
But we’ve tried to set the bar higher. Our moderator, Blake Cahill, of Visible Technologies, a social media expert in his own right, reached out to his considerable network and looked for marketers who were actually using various social media techniques and asked them for examples of what is and isn’t working in the very real world of corporate marketing.

The result is a great panel representing brands including Alaska Airlines, Comcast, REI and PCC Natural Markets who are willing and able to talk about what they have learned about social media.

So if you’re interested in going beyond the hype and seeing what social media can really do when applied by top marketers, come join us on Sept. 9, 2009 at 5:30p at the Bellevue Hyatt for the kick off event of the season of the SDMA.

Socialnomics Video – a fun “shift happens” style video for social media

Posted: August 20, 2009 in community marketing, Customer Engagment, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, social media, social networking, Uncategorized, User-generated content, Web 2.0
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

I just looked at a very good short video making the case for the importance of Social Media in today’s world. it’s done ala the Shift Happens videos of a couple of years ago and you have to dig into the blog to find the sources of the some of the statements, not all of which appear to be as documented as I’d like to see. However it still is a good way to spend 4 minutes of your day and puts social media into a context most people haven’t grasped yet. check it out at
http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

Forrester Research features Ascentium among the top Interactive agencies

Posted: June 9, 2009 in aQuantive, Ascentium, Closed Loop Marketing, community marketing, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, ecommerce, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, microsoft, social media, social networking, Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
0

On Friday, Forrester Research published its Forrester Wave™, Interactive Marketing Agencies – Web Design Capabilities, Q2, 2009. Ascentium was covered for the first time along with other top digital agencies including Sapient, imc2, Razorfish, IconNicholson, IBM Interactive, Organic, Blast Radius, iCrossing, OgilvyInteractive, Resource Interactive, and Rosetta, Critical Mass, Molecular, R/GA, VML, Whittmanhart and Arc Worldwide.

In addition to just being favorably reviewed among such a great group an agencies, we take pride in that Ascentium scored the highest out of all the agencies in the category or customer satisfaction. We credit that in large part to emphasis we have given to growing customer loyalty and constantly measuring it with tools like Net Promoter Scores.

When I joined Ascentium almost four years ago, we were primarily a technology consulting firm with strong Web development skills and some good design talent, but we hadn’t yet made the commitment to become a true full service digital agency. But we got together as a team and agreed that the future was in leveraging technology to advance marketing and to move from advertising to engagement.

Three years and a roster of blue chip clients like Microsoft T-Mobile, Dell, Cisco and Random House, later. We have garnered the attention of the likes of Forrester Research and have grown from a local Seattle-based firm to an agency with offices across the country and internationally as well.

It’s been a privilege to be a part of this journey and to have helped nurture it along the way. It wasn’t always easy teaching technologists and marketers to not only get along, but to actually work synergistically, to create a new model for what Forrester has called, the agency of the future.

So congratulations to all the other agencies featured in the Wave, thanks to all the analysts at Forrester who have seen value in what we’ve created and well done to each and every employee I have the privilege of working with at Ascentium. Just wait for what we have in store for you next.

RFIDs for People, it’s finally here

Posted: April 1, 2009 in Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, community marketing, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, ecommerce, enterprise marketing platform, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, microsoft, online marketing suite, re-marketing, social media, social networking, Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags:
0

Chipmaker, BrandChip Inc., announced that they have perfected a RFID chip that can be embedded in jewelry, watches or other personal items commonly worn by average people. This chip will contain opt in personal information regarding the wearer’s tastes, shopping habits and brand preferences. Participating retailers will be able to access the information whenever the wearer comes into the store and can then automatically generate a special offer via mobile phone.

This is the ultimate in one to one marketing. Don Rogers of Peppers and Rogers fame has been quoted as saying he’ll sign up as soon as he can and looks forward to getting some great offers from The Sharper Image. Google is figuring out how to offer a stripped down version for free and Microsoft is said to be studying it and should have a beta in market by 2015.

I applaud these efforts and look forward the next generation when they won’t even need the mobile connection. You will be able to get the offer straight from the chip.

Oh, and by the way, have a great today, April 1, 2009

The PI is Dead, Long Live the PI – Let’s mourn the paper, but not the news

Posted: March 18, 2009 in Ascentium, community marketing, Customer Engagment, Marketing, social media, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags: , , , , ,
0

Today was the last day I will get the Seattle Post Intelligencer on my doorstep in the morning. The 146 year old newspaper has run up against a failed business model and ceased being a traditional print based newspaper today. As of tomorrow, it will exist only as an online news site and it’s unsure what the experience will be.

First, let me shed a tear for nostalgia. No I’m not being trite. I have a lot of respect for what has gone has on before me. The Seattle PI has been a great local paper, although its history has lots of less than Pulitzer prize winning stories (remember the Pulitzer prize is named for one of the worst of the Yellow journalists of his day). That’s a long way of saying I hope the big revolving globe atop the PI’s headquarters continues to spin. I also shed a tear when the giant pink toe shaped “toetruck” was hauled away and was saddened when the twin tepee restaurant (horrible food) was torn down. All were symbols of Seattle and a loss to our popular culture.

But, I am less worried about the state of journalism in Seattle. For every professional journalist whose investigative reports protected us from corruption and misdeeds, I have had to put up with a thousand articles about non-news or yesterday’s news. I’ve also gotten way too used to having to read syndicated articles written thousands of miles away, purporting to speak to issues like employment, real estate and culture that have nothing to do with my local world.

Citizen journalists are far from perfect, but the same can be said for professionals. So let’s hope that citizen journalists will fill the void left by the loss of the PI and let’s hope that we can live without opening the morning paper, sipping a good cup of coffee and learning about man biting dog.

Keeping Ahead or Keeping Pace with Customers

Posted: October 29, 2008 in Ascentium, Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, Customer Engagment, integrated marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, re-marketing, social media, social networking, Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags: , , , , , ,
0

I’m attending the Forrester Research Consumer Forum in Dallas this week. As usual with Forrester, there is some very good information, the networking is great and the event is well run. My only criticism is that some of the analysts present snapshots of research that in some cases is months old and I’ve already reviewed it. This wouldn’t be necessarily bad if the in person sessions shed deeper insight or generated a lively discussion on the topic, but as in most conferences, the Q&A is weak and most discussions are conducted at a fairly low level of expertise.

The theme of this conference is “Keeping Ahead of Tomorrow’s Customer”. It’s a very important topic, especially in troubled economics times. And I was pleased to see that many of the sessions spoke to the guerilla in the room, namely how do we cope with the ups and downs we’re facing every time we look at the markets and the economic forecasts.

I will dive into some of the specific sessions in future posts, but I wanted to raise one question up front. While the theme is keeping ahead of tomorrow’s customer, shouldn’t the real theme be more of keeping pace with customers. It seems a throwback to the old school of marketing to think that we as marketers can keep ahead of customers, that we are responsible for controlling the conversation rather than being active participants.

Is Integrated Marketing the same as Integrating Marketing?

Posted: August 26, 2008 in Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, Customer Engagment, customer lifetime value, integrated marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, social networking, Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
0

The other day I found myself in a heated discussion about integrated marketing. On the one side, it was argued that integrated marketing is a decade old concept that was proven not to be either practical or particularly effective. The other camp argued that integrated marketing is a core element of anything we call marketing2.0 and regardless of name, is something that is essential for the future of marketing. Both sides of the debate have good arguments and I couldn’t find any fault with their logic, however I think both miss the point.

The future of marketing does not hinge on integrating messaging across multiple channels like we tried to do at the advent of the internet age. We’ve learned that different media and different mediums require unique messaging. Just because a TV ad is video, does not mean that it’s going to be a hit on YouTube. Traditional print copy losses most online readers before the first sentence is complete and anything that hints of advertising or hype will be shot down within any community.

On the other side, simply participating in every new social network like Twitter, Imeem or Boing Boing does not automatically mean great marketing. Companies still spend as much on Yellow Pages ads as they do on internet marketing and broadcast TV is still the biggest single line item in any marketing plan. They key is not trying to be everywhere, but trying to be in the right places, where the right customers are.

I started out by saying that both points of view are missing the point. It’s not that they are wrong, but I think the real meaning of integration in today’s marketing world should reflect solutions to the problems that are keeping CMOs up at night. The biggest struggle marketing has is not with customers, but with the rest of the company.

For decades, marketing departments have used their own metrics and their own milestones for success. Even as their methods and tools have become more sophisticated, most marketers still speak in terms of reach & frequency, opens, click-throughs and response rates. Those that do attempt to measure business metrics like ROI, tend to use implied or derived revenue data and quite often their formulas do not reflect basic understanding of finance principles.

And this lack of business rigor is reflected in the way other parts of the enterprise view marketing. From the CMO council to Forrester Research, there are multiple studies that say the same thing. Most CEOs do not believe that marketing can justify its expenditures, even if they know intrinsically there is value in what is being done. Few CFOs accept any numbers marketing presents as accurate and VPs of Sales tends to argue over the influence and therefore impact of marketing programs. In general, they assign the revenue to the one who closed the sale, not the one who found the lead.

The answer is the integration of marketing into the rest of the enterprise, allowing the CMO to take their rightful place as a business leader in the C suite. Like everything else in business, this integration has people, process and technology elements. From a people perspective, marketers have to become increasingly left brain thinkers. Identify themselves as business people, no matter how creative they may be and learn to look at everything they do by asking the question, does this advance the business? From a process point of view, organizations have to stop thinking in terms of the marketing funnel, the sales pipeline and customer service and understand and track the customer along the complete customer lifecycle continuum.

And finally, look to technology as the enabler of both people and process. Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, has got to come out of the Sales closet it normally hides in. If companies’ marketing, sales and customer service groups are not all using the same CRM application, or at least the same data, then they are bound to remain siloed in their approach to the customer. If the data collected from each customer touch point is not brought together and form the basis for a robust business intelligence solution, then each division will continue to report on its own metrics; campaigns, sales, incidents and not understand the value contribution of each interaction.

So, by integrating marketing into a closed loop environment, built upon a platform where all customer interaction is captured in a CRM system and then reported on and analyzed through the multiple lenses of a BI solution, companies will be able to understand their customers across time and behavior, as well as across media. The result will be achievement of integrated marketing through the integration of marketing.

What is Agency2.0?

Posted: July 26, 2008 in Closed Loop Marketing, CMO, Customer Engagment, integrated marketing, Interactive Agency, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags: ,
1

What is Agency2.0? Several of us at Ascentium have been working on the definition of for some time and it is at the heart of how we define ourselves in the future. Last year Peter Kim (who is also presenting with you at MCONN08) at Forrester Research put out a paper entitled, Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency, in which he posited that as corporate marketing organizations reinvent themselves and become customer centric, they will need more and more help from their agencies, not just in traditional ways, but increasing as trusted advisors helping clients “capitalize on emerging channels and technologies.”

This spring he followed up that paper with another good piece called, “The Connected Agency”, where he argued that agencies now need to help their clients listen to customers rather than just shout at them. Peter and I were at a forum together in Toronto in May and spoke about the new role agencies can play helping clients engage with clients, which means multi-directional rather than either the traditional one-way push advertising of most of the last half-century or the bi-directional construct embodied in the 1:1 marketing movement of the last decade.

While I’m not holding up Forrester as the be all and end all in marketing thought leadership, I agree with Peter’s basic tenets that the new style of agency has to be a resource that enables companies to engage. And that engagement is defined by the customer experiences that are generated, managed, monitored and acknowledged by the client. And that it is up to the agency to be a creator of those experiences.

For the agency to be able to create those experiences, they have to be able to bring to bear not only the traditional skills of brand, strategy, research, account planning and creative, but now they need to be able to excel at analytics, technology and business intelligence. This new combination of skills is what defines agency2.0, or at least how we should define it so as to own the space.

Once you’ve defined the space in that way, the agency engagement model you describe of black-box delivery and risk- sharing make sense. I don’t think most marketers are ever very concerned about the internal organization of their agencies as long as they have clear lines of communication and a single throat to choke.

Social Media: Why does brand insist on joining the conversation?

Posted: July 1, 2008 in community marketing, Marketing Strategy, social media, social networking, User-generated content, Web 2.0, web marketing
Tags: ,
1

A colleague of mine, James Rice, participated in a great workshop held in Portland, Oregon, last week called Light Up Your Brand and I just wanted to share with everyone the PowerPoint deck that accompanies his presentation. Of course it loses something on its own, it was designed to illuminate James’ presentation, not be the presentation itself.

So what’s the topic? Social Media? WEb2.0? The death of advertising? Or simply a call attention to the fact that most marketing today is still centered on interruptive advertising? Most agencies are still figuring out how to deliver interruptive advertising on social media rather than using the media for what it’s designed for, having open, honest conversations among many, many people. James asks the question, why do brands insist on “joining the conversation” before they listen to it first and ask themselves what value they can bring before they join in. In fact, I wish most people would listen in first, think about what they can add of value and only then join the conversation, but that’s another topic all together. Check out James’ deck and join the conversation. Here’s the link:

Older Entries